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Title: The Extant Odes of Pindar

Author: Pindar

Release Date: January 14, 2004 [EBook #10717]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE EXTANT

ODES OF PINDAR

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH

with

INTRODUCTION AND SHORT NOTES

BY

ERNEST MYERS, M.A.

_Sometime Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford_


1904

_First edition printed 1874._

_Reprinted (with corrections) 1884, 1888, 1892, 1895, 1899, 1904_

  SON OF THE LIGHTNING, FAIR AND FIERY STAR,
  STRONG-WINGED IMPERIAL PINDAR, VOICE DIVINE,
  LET THESE DEEP DRAUGHTS OF THY ENCHANTED WINE
  LIFT ME WITH THEE IN SOARINGS HIGH AND FAR
  PROUDER THAN PEGASEAN, OR THE CAR
  WHEREIN APOLLO RAPT THE HUNTRESS MAID.
  SO LET ME RANGE MINE HOUR, TOO SOON TO FADE
  INTO STRANGE PRESENCE OF THE THINGS THAT ARE.
  YET KNOW THAT EVEN AMID THIS JARRING NOISE
  OF HATES, LOVES, CREEDS, TOGETHER HEAPED AND HURLED,
  SOME ECHO FAINT OF GRACE AND GRANDEUR STIRS
  FROM THY SWEET HELLAS, HOME OF NOBLE JOYS.
  FIRST FRUIT AND BEST OF ALL OUR WESTERN WORLD;
  WHATE'ER WE HOLD OF BEAUTY, HALF IS HERS.




INTRODUCTION.


Probably no poet of importance equal or approaching to that of Pindar
finds so few and so infrequent readers. The causes are not far to
seek: in the first and most obvious place comes the great difficulty
of his language, in the second the frequent obscurity of his thought,
resulting mainly from his exceeding allusiveness and his abrupt
transitions, and in the third place that amount of monotony which must
of necessity attach to a series of poems provided for a succession of
similar occasions.

It is as an attempt towards obviating the first of these hindrances
to the study of Pindar, the difficulty of his language, that this
translation is of course especially intended. To whom and in what
cases are translations of poets useful? To a perfect scholar in the
original tongue they are superfluous, to one wholly ignorant of it
they are apt to be (unless here and there to a Keats) meaningless,
flat, and puzzling. There remains the third class of those who have a
certain amount of knowledge of a language, but not enough to
enable them to read unassisted its more difficult books without an
expenditure of time and trouble which is virtually prohibitive. It
is to this class that a translation ought, it would seem, chiefly to
address itself. An intelligent person of cultivated literary taste,
and able to read the easier books in an acquired language, will feel
himself indebted to a hand which unlocks for him the inner chambers
of a temple in whose outer courts he had already delighted to wander.
Without therefore saying that the merely 'English reader' may never
derive pleasure and instruction from a translation of a foreign poet,
for to this rule our current version of the Hebrew psalmists and
prophets furnish one marked exception at least--still, it is probably
to what may be called the half-learned class that the translator must
preeminently look to find an audience.

The other causes of Pindar's unpopularity to which reference was made
above, the obscurity of his thought and the monotony of his subjects,
will in great measure disappear by means of attentive study of the
poems themselves, and of other sources from which may be gathered an
understanding of the region of thought and feeling in which they move.
In proportion to our familiarity not only with Hellenic mythology and
history, but with Hellenic life and habits of thought generally, will
be our readiness and facility in seizing the drift and import of what
Pindar says, in divining what has passed through his mind: and in his
case perhaps even more than in the case of other poets, this facility
will increase indefinitely with our increasing acquaintance with his
works and with the light thrown on each part of them by the rest[1].

The monotony of the odes, though to some extent unquestionably and
unavoidably real, is to some extent also superficial and in appearance
only. The family of the victor, or his country, some incident of his
past, some possibility of his future life, suggest in each case some
different legendary matter, some different way of treating it, some
different application of it, general or particular, or both. Out
of such resources Pindar is inexhaustible in building up in subtly
varying forms the splendid structure of his song.

Yet doubtless the drawbacks in reading Pindar, though they may be
largely reduced, will always in some degree exist: we shall always
wish that he was easier to construe, that his allusions to things
unfamiliar and sometimes undiscoverable to us were less frequent, that
family pride had not made it customary for him to spend so many lines
on an enumeration of prizes won elsewhere and at other times by the
victor of the occasion or by his kin. Such drawbacks can only fall
into insignificance when eclipsed by consideration of the far more
than counterbalancing attractions of the poems, of their unique and
surpassing interest, poetical, historical, and moral.


Of Pindar as a poet it is hard indeed to speak adequately, and
almost as hard to speak briefly, for a discussion of his poetical
characteristics once begun may wander far before even a small part
has been said of what might be. To say that to his poetry in supreme
degree belong the qualities of force, of vividness, often of
impressive weight, of a lofty style, seeming to be the expression of
a like personality, of a mastery of rhythm and metre and imaginative
diction, of a profoundly Hellenic spirit modified by an unmistakable
individuality, above all of a certain sweep and swiftness as of the
flight of an eagle's wing--to say all this would be to suggest some of
the most obvious features of these triumphal odes; and each of these
qualities, and many more requiring exacter delineation, might be
illustrated with numberless instances which even in the faint image
of a translation would furnish ample testimony[2]. But as this
introduction is intended for those who purpose reading Pindar's
poetry, or at any rate the present translation of it, for themselves,
I will leave it to them to discover for themselves the qualities which
have given Pindar his high place among poets, and will pass on to
suggest briefly his claims to interest us by reason of his place in
the history of human action and human thought.

We know very little of Pindar's life. He was born in or about the year
B.C. 522, at the village of Kynoskephalai near Thebes. He was thus a
citizen of Thebes and seems to have always had his home there. But he
travelled among other states, many of which have been glorified by his
art. For his praise of Athens, 'bulwark of Hellas,' the city which at
Artemision 'laid the foundation of freedom,' the Thebans are said to
have fined him; but the generous Athenians paid the fine, made him
their Proxenos, and erected his statue at the public cost. For the
magnificent Sicilian princes, Hieron of Syracuse and Theron of
Akragas, not unlike the Medici in the position they held, Pindar wrote
five of the longest of his extant odes, and probably visited them in
Sicily. But he would not quit his home to be an ornament of their
courts. When asked why he did not, like Simonides, accept the
invitations of these potentates to make his home with them, he
answered that he had chosen to live his own life, and not to be the
property of another. He died at the age of 79, that is, probably, in
the year 443, twelve years before the Peloponnesian war began. Legend
said that he died in the theatre of Argos, in the arms of Theoxenos,
the boy in whose honour he wrote a Skolion of which an immortal
fragment remains to us. Other myths gathered round his name. It was
said that once when in childhood he had fallen asleep by the way 'a
bee had settled on his lips and gathered honey,' and again that
'he saw in a dream that his mouth was filled with honey and the
honeycomb;' that Pan himself learnt a poem of his and rejoiced to sing
it on the mountains; that finally, while he awaited an answer from
the oracle of Ammon, whence he had enquired what was best for man,
Persephone appeared to him in his sleep and said that she only of the
gods had had no hymn from him, but that he should make her one shortly
when he had come to her; and that he died within ten days of the
vision.

Two several conquerors of Thebes, Pausanias of Sparta and Alexander of
Macedon,

  'bade spare
  The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower
  Went to the ground.'

At Delphi they kept with reverence his iron chair, and the priest of
Apollo cried nightly as he closed the temple, 'Let Pindar the poet go
in unto the supper of the god.'

Thus Pindar was contemporary with an age of Greek history which
justifies the assertion of his consummate interest for the student of
Hellenic life in its prime. It was impossible that a man of his
genius and temperament should have lived through these times without
representing to us with breadth and intensity the spirit that was in
them, and there are several points in Pindar's circumstances which
make his relation to his age peculiarly interesting. We may look on
him as in some points supplementary to the great Athenian dramatists,
whose works are doubtless far the most valuable literary legacy of the
time. Perhaps however the surpassing brilliance of Athenian literature
and history has made us somewhat prone to forget the importance of
non-Athenian elements in the complex whole of Hellenic life and
thought. Athens was the eye of Hellas, nay, she had at Marathon and
Salamis made good her claim to be called the saving arm, but there
were other members not to be forgotten if we would picture to
ourselves the national body in its completeness.

Pindar was a Boeotian, of a country not rich in literary or indeed any
kind of intellectual eminence, yet by no means to be ignored in an
estimate of the Hellenic race. Politically indeed it only rises into
pre-eminence under Epameinondas; before and afterwards Boeotian
policy under the domination of Thebes is seldom either beneficent or
glorious: it must be remembered, however, that the gallant Plataeans
also were Boeotians. The people of Boeotia seem to have had generally
an easy, rather sensually inclined nature, which accorded with their
rich country and absence of nautical and commercial enterprise and
excitement, but in their best men this disposition remains only in the
form of a genial simplicity. Pelopidas in political, and Plutarch and
Pausanias in literary history, will be allowed to be instances of
this. That the poetry which penetrated Hellenic life was not wanting
in Boeotia we have proof enough in the existence of the Sacred Band,
that goodly fellowship of friends which seems to have united what
Hallam has called the three strongest motives to enthusiastic action
that have appeared in history, patriotism, chivalric honour, and
religion. Nor is there any nobler figure in history than that of
Epameinondas.

One fact indeed there is which must always make the thought of
Pindar's Theban citizenship painful to us, and that is the shameful
part taken by Thebes in the Persian war, when compulsion of her
exposed situation, and oligarchical cabal within her walls, drew her
into unholy alliance with the barbarian invader. Had it been otherwise
how passionately pure would Pindar's joy have uttered itself when the
'stone of Tantalos' that hung over the head of Hellas was smitten into
dust in that greatest crisis of the fortunes of humanity. He exults
nobly as it is, he does all honour to Athens, 'bulwark of Hellas,' but
the shame of his own city, his 'mother' Thebes, must have caused him a
pang as bitter as a great soul has ever borne.

For his very calling of song-writer to all Hellenic states without
discrimination, especially when the songs he had to write were of the
class which we still possess, triumphal odes for victories in those
great games which drew to them all men of Hellenic blood at the feet
of common deities, and which with each recurring festival could even
hush the clamour of war in an imperious Truce of God--such a calling
and such associations must have cherished in him the passion for
Panhellenic brotherhood and unanimity, even had there not been much
else both within and without him to join to the same generous end. It
was the time when Panhellenic feeling was probably stronger than ever
before or after. Before, the states had been occupied in building
up their own polities independently; the Hellenic activity had been
dispersing itself centrifugally among the trans-marine colonies,
and those of Italy and Sicily seemed at one time to make it doubtful
whether the nucleus of civilization were to be there or in the
mother-country. But by the time of the Persian war the best energies
of the race had concentrated themselves between the Aegean and Ionian
seas; and the supreme danger of the war had bound the states together
against the common enemy and taught them to forget smaller differences
in the great strife between Hellene and barbarian. Yet again when that
supreme danger was past the old quarrels arose anew more deadly and
more complicated: instead of a Persian there was a Peloponnesian war,
and the Peloponnesian war in its latter stages came, by virtue of the
political principles involved, to partake much of the character of
a civil war. But the time of Pindar, of Aeschylus, of Sophocles, of
Pheidias, of Polygnotos, was that happy interval when Hellas had
beaten off the barbarian from her throat and had not yet murdered
herself. And Pindar's imagination and generosity were both kindled by
the moment; there was no room in his mind for border squabbles, for
commercial jealousies, for oligarchic or democratic envy: these things
were overridden by a sentiment of nationality wanting indeed in
many circumstances which modern nationalities deem essential to the
existence of such sentiment, and many of which are really essential to
its permanence--yet a sentiment which no other nation ever before or
since can have possessed in the peculiar lustre which it then wore in
Hellas; for no other nation has ever before or since known what it was
to stand alone immeasurably advanced at the head of the civilization
of the world.

Pindar was of a noble family, of the house of the Aigeidai, and it is
probable that his kinsmen, or some of them, may have taken the side of
oligarchy in the often recurring dissensions at Thebes, but of this
we know nothing certain. He himself seems to have taken no part in
politics. When he speaks on the subject in his odes it is not with the
voice of a partisan. An ochlocracy is hateful to him, but if he shows
himself an 'aristocrat' it is in the literal and etymological meaning
of the word. Doubtless if Pindar had been asked where the best
servants of the state in public life were most likely to be found he
would have answered that it would be among those ancient families in
whose veins ran the blood of gods and demigods, who had spent blood
and money for the city's honour, championing her in war or in the
mimic strife of the games, who had honourable traditions to be guided
by and an honourable name to lose or save. These things were seldom
undervalued by Hellenic feeling: even in Athens, after it was already
the headquarters of the democratic principle, the noble and wealthy
families obtained, not probably without wisdom of their own in loyally
accepting a democratic position, as fair a place and prospects as
anywhere in Hellas. But that, when the noble nature, the [Greek:
aretae], which traditions of nobility ought to have secured, was
lacking, then wealth and birth were still entitled to power, this
was a doctrine repugnant utterly to Pindar's mind: nor would his
indignation slumber when he saw the rich and highborn, however gifted,
forgetting at any time that their power was a trust for the community
and using it for their own selfish profit. An 'aristocrat' after
Pindar's mind would assuredly have a far keener eye to his duties
than to his rights, would consider indeed that in his larger share of
duties lay his infinitely most precious right.

But he 'loved that beauty should go beautifully;' personal excellence
of some kind was in his eyes essential; but on this he would fain
shed outward radiance and majesty. His imagination rejoiced in
splendour--splendour of stately palace--halls where the columns were
of marble and the entablature of wrought gold, splendour of temples of
gods where the sculptor's waxing art had brought the very deities to
dwell with man, splendour of the white-pillared cities that glittered
across the Aegean and Sicilian seas, splendour of the holy Panhellenic
games, of whirlwind chariots and the fiery grace of thoroughbreds,
of the naked shapely limbs of the athlete man and boy. On this
characteristic of Pindar it is needless to dwell, for there are not
many odes of those remaining which do not impress it on our minds.

And it is more with him than a mere manner in poetical style. The
same defect which we feel more or less present in all poets of
antiquity--least of all perhaps in Virgil and Sophokles, but even in
them somewhat--a certain want of widely sympathetic tenderness, this
is unquestionably present in Pindar. What of this quality may have
found expression in his lost poems, especially the Dirges, we can
scarcely guess, but in his triumphal odes it hardly appears at all,
unless in the touches of tender gracefulness into which he softens
when speaking of the young. And we find this want in him mainly
because objects of pity, such as especially elicit that quality of
tenderness, are never or seldom present to Pindar's mind. He sees evil
only in the shape of some moral baseness, falsehood, envy, arrogance,
and the like, to be scathed in passing by the good man's scorn, or
else in the shape of a dark mystery of pain, to be endured by those on
whom it causelessly falls in a proud though undefiant silence. It was
not for him, as for the great tragedians, to 'purge the mind by pity
and fear,' for those passions had scarcely a place in his own mind or
in the minds of those of whom he in his high phantasy would fain have
had the world consist. And as in this point somewhat, so still more in
others, does Pindar remind us, even more than might have been expected
in a contemporary, of Aeschylus. The latter by virtue of his Athenian
nurture as well as of his own greater natural gifts reveals to us
a greater number of thoughts, and those more advanced and more
interesting than we find in Pindar, but the similarity in moral temper
and tone is very striking, as also is the way in which we see this
temper acting on their beliefs. Both hold strongly, as is the wont
of powerful minds in an age of stability as opposed to an age of
transition, to the traditions and beliefs on which the society around
them rests, but both modify these traditions and beliefs according
to the light which arises in them, and which is as much moral as
intellectual light. In so doing they are indeed in harmony with the
best instincts of the society around them, but they lead and guide
such instincts and give them shape and definiteness. In the Oresteaen
trilogy of Aeschylus we have an ever-memorable assertion of the
supreme claims of human morality to human allegiance, of the eternal
truth that humanity can know no object of reverence and worship except
itself idealised, its own virtues victorious over its own vices, and
existing in the greatest perfection which it can at any given time
conceive. Somewhat the same lesson as that of the Oresteia is taught
later, with more of sweetness and harmony, but not with more force,
in the Oedipus Coloneus of Sophokles. And in Pindar we see the same
tendencies inchoate. Like Aeschylus he does by implication subordinate
to morality both politics and religion. He ignores or flatly denies
tales that bring discredit on the gods; he will only bow down to them
when they have the virtues he respects in man. Yet he, like Aeschylus
and Sophokles, does so bow down, sincerely and without hesitation, and
that poets of their temper could do so was well indeed for poetry.
By rare and happy fortune they were inspired at once by the rich and
varied presences of mythology, 'the fair humanities of old religion,'
and also by the highest aspirations of an age of moral and
intellectual advance. We do not of course always, or even often, find
the moral principles clearly and consciously expressed or consistently
supported, but we cannot but feel that they are present in the shape
of instincts, and those instincts pervading and architectonic.

And if we allow so much of ethical enlightenment to these great
spokesmen of the Hellenic people, we cannot deny something of like
honour to the race among whom they were reared. Let us apportion our
debt of gratitude to our forerunners as it is justly due. There would
seem to be much of fallacy and of the injustice of a shallow judgment
in the contrast as popularly drawn between 'Hellenism' and 'Hebraism,'
according to which the former is spoken of as exclusively proclaiming
to the world the value of Beauty, the latter the value of
Righteousness. In this there is surely much injustice done to Hellas.
Because she taught the one, she did not therefore leave the other
untaught. It may have been for a short time, as her other greatness
was for a short time, though its effects are eternal, but for that
short time the national life, of Athens at any rate, is at least as
full of high moral feeling as that of any other people in the world.
Will not the names of Solon, of Aristeides, of Kallikratidas, of
Epameinondas, of Timoleon and many more, remind us that life could be
to the Hellene something of deeper moral import than a brilliant game,
or a garden of vivid and sweet sights and sounds where Beauty and
Knowledge entered, but Goodness was forgotten and shut out? For it
is not merely that these men, and very many more endowed with ample
portion of their spirit, were produced and reared among the race; they
were honoured and valued in a way that surely postulated the existence
of high ethical feeling in their countrymen. And even when the days
of unselfish statesmen and magnanimous cities were over, there were
philosophers whose schools were not the less filled because they
claimed a high place for righteousness in human life. To Solon and
Aristeides succeeded Socrates and Plato, to Epameinondas and Timoleon
succeeded Zeno and Epictetus. That the morality of the Hellenes was
complete on all sides, it would of course be irrational to maintain.
They had not, for instance, any more than the Hebrews, or any other
nation of antiquity, learnt to abhor slavery, though probably it
existed in a milder form at Athens than anywhere else in the old or
new world: they were more implacable in revenge and laxer in sexual
indulgence than the Christian ethics would allow in theory, though not
perhaps much more so than Christendom has shown itself in practice.
And though undoubtedly the greatest single impulse ever given to
morality came from Palestine, yet the ground which nurtured the seeds
of Christianity was as much Hellenic as Hebrew. It would be impossible
here to enter on an exhaustive comparison of the ethical capacities of
the two races, but before we pronounce hastily for the superiority of
the Hebrew there are surely some difficulties to surmount. We may
well ask, for example, Would Hellas ever have accepted as her chief
national hero such a man as David a man who in his life is conspicuous
by his crimes not less than by his brilliant gifts, and who dies with
the words of blood and perfidy on his lips, charging his son with the
last slaughterous satisfaction of his hate which he had sworn before
his God to forego? And though the great Hebrew prophets teach often
a far loftier morality than this, they cannot have been nearly so
representative of the feeling of this nation as were Aeschylus and
Sophocles and Pindar of the feeling of theirs. The Hebrews of the
prophets' age 'slew the prophets,' and left it to the slayers'
descendants to 'build their sepulchres,' and at the same time to
show their inherited character still more unmistakeably by once more
slaying the last prophet and the greatest.[3]

In truth in the literature, the art, the life generally of Hellas in
her prime, the moral interest whenever it appears, and that is not
seldom, claims for itself the grave and preponderant attention which
it must claim if it is to appear with fit dignity. But it is not
thrust forward unseasonably or in exaggeration, nor is it placed in a
false opposition to the interests of the aesthetic instincts, which
after all shade into the moral more imperceptibly than might be
generally allowed. There must be a moral side to all societies, and
the Hellenic society, the choicest that the world has seen, the
completest, that is, at once in sensibilities and in energies, could
not but show the excellence of its sensibilities in receiving moral
impressions, the excellence of its energies in achieving moral
conduct.

This, however, is no place to discuss at length questions in the
history of ethics. Yet it must be remembered that in the ancient world
departments of thought, and the affairs of men generally, were far
less specialized than in modern times. If the philosophy of Hellas be
the most explicit witness to her ethical development, her poetry
is the most eloquent. And scarcely at any time, scarcely even in
Aristotle, did Hellenic philosophy in any department lose most
significant traces of its poetical ancestry. But enough here if I have
succeeded in pointing out that in the great poet with whom we are
concerned there is an ethical as well as a poetical and historical
interest, supplying one more reason against neglect of his legacy of
song.

Yet indeed even now there remains a further question which to the
mind of any one who at present labours in this field of classical
scholarship must recur persistently if not depressingly, and on which
it is natural if not necessary to say a few words. If the selection
of Pindar in particular as a Greek poet with claims to be further
popularized among Englishmen may be defended, there is still a more
general count to which all who make endeavours to attract or retain
attention to Greek literature will in these times be called upon to
plead by voices which command respect. To such pleas this is not the
place to give large room, or to discriminate in detail between the
reasonable and unreasonable elements in the attacks on a system of
education in which a preeminent position is allotted to the literature
of antiquity. While fully admitting that much time and labour are
still wasted in efforts to plant the study of ancient and especially
of Greek literature in uncongenial soil, while admitting also most
fully the claims, and the still imperfect recognition of the claims,
of physical science to a rank among the foremost in modern education,
I should yet be abundantly willing that this attempt to help in
facilitating the study of a Greek author should be looked on as
implying adhesion to the protest still sometimes raised, that in
the higher parts of a liberal education no study can claim a more
important place than the study of the history and the literature of
Hellas. The interest which belongs to these is far wider and
deeper than any mere literary interest. To the human mind the most
interesting of phenomena are and ought to be the phenomena of the
human mind, and this granted, can there be any knowledge more
desirable than the knowledge of the most vigorous and sensitive and in
some ways also the most fruitful action of human minds that the world
has known hitherto?

But again, we are told that the age we seek thus toilsomely to
illustrate and realize is too remote to justify the attempt, that our
civilisation is of too different a type from the Hellenic, and that a
gulf of three-and-twenty centuries is too much for our sight to strain
across. But is not the Hellenic life at least less remote now to
Western Europe than it has ever been since the Northern invasions?
Though the separation in time widens does not the separation in
thought decrease? Is not one civilisation more like another than it
can be to any barbarism? And shall not this same Physical Science
herself by accustoming us to look on men in large masses at once, and
on the development of humanity as a process of infinite duration, as
a sectional growth included in universal evolution--Science, in whose
eyes a thousand years are as a watch in the night--shall she not
thereby quicken our sympathies with the most gifted race that has
appeared in our short human history, and arouse the same feeling
toward it as a family may cherish toward the memory of their best and
choicest, who has died young?

Only let us take heed that such regret shall make us not more but
less unworthy of those noble forerunners. One symptom of the renewed
influence of antiquity on the modern world is doubtless and has been
from time to time since the Revival of Letters a tendency to selfish
and somewhat sickly theories so-called of life, where sensibility
degenerates through self-consciousness into affectation, and
efforts to appreciate fully the delightfulness of life and art are
overstrained into a wearisome literary voluptuousness, where duty has
already disappeared and the human sympathies on which duty is based
scarcely linger in a faint aesthetic form, soon to leave the would-be
exquisiteness to putrefy into the vulgarity of egoism. Such tendencies
have less in common with the Hellenic prime than with the court of
Leo the Tenth, though even that had perhaps an advantage over them as
being in some ways a more real thing. But that the Hellenic prime with
all its exquisite sensibility was deficient in recognition of a high
ideal of duty can never be believed among those who have studied it
candidly and attentively; I have endeavoured above to suggest that in
this point, take it all in all, it yields to no age or race. It would
indeed be a mistaken following of those noble servants of humanity
to draw from their memories an argument for selfish isolation or for
despair of the commonwealth of man. He who has drunk deeply of that
divine well and gazed long at the fair vision of what then was, will,
if his nature be capable of true sympathy with the various elements
of that wonderful age, turn again without bitterness to the confused
modern world, saddened but not paralysed by the comparison, grieving,
but with no querulous grief, for the certainty that those days are
done.

1874.



PREFATORY NOTE.

The few notes appended to this translation are not intended to supply
the place of such reference to Dictionaries of Mythology, Antiquities
and Geography, as is needful to the student of Pindar who is not
already somewhat accomplished in knowledge of the customs, history
and legendary traditions of Hellas. And although it may reasonably be
supposed that the chief of these will be already known to most readers
of Pindar, yet so profusely allusive is this poet that to understand
his allusions will very often require knowledge which would not have
been derived from a study of the more commonly read Hellenic writers.

Nor have I attempted to trace in detail the connection of the parts
in each ode which binds them into one harmonious whole with many
meanings--a connection so consummately contrived where we can trace it
that we may suppose it no less exquisite where we cannot. Study
and thought will generally suggest explanations, though these will
sometimes approve themselves differently to different minds. Too often
we must acknowledge, as elsewhere in ancient literature, that the key
is lost beyond all certain hope of recovery.

Still less have I attempted to discuss questions of critical
scholarship. Sometimes where there are more than one plausible reading
I have signified which I adopt; once only (Ol. 2. 56.) I have ventured
on an emendation of my own. For the most part I have, as was natural,
followed the text of Boeckh and Dissen.

In the spelling of names I remain in that inconsistency which at
present attaches to most modern writers who deal with them. Olympus,
Athens, Corinth, Syracuse, and the like are naturalized among us by
long familiarity; it seems at present at least pedantic to change
them. In the case of other less familiar names I have concurred with
the desire, which seems in the main a reasonable one, that the names
of Hellenic persons and places should be reproduced, as far as
possible, without Latin mediation.

Of the Fragments I have translated six of the longest and most
interesting. They are 289 in all, but the greater part are not longer
than a line or two, and very many even shorter.

The odes are unequal in poetical merit, and many readers may not
unreasonably wish to have those pointed out which, in the judgement of
one acquainted with all, are among the best worth reading; though of
course the choice of individual readers will not always be the same.
To those therefore who would wish to begin with a selection, the
following may be recommended as at any rate among those of preeminent
merit: Pyth. 4, 9, 1, 10, 3; Ol. 7, 6, 2, 3, 13, 8, 1; Nem. 5, 10;
Isthm. 2, 7; all the Fragments translated.

In the arrangement of the odes I have adhered to the traditional
order. I should much have liked to place them in what must always be
the most interesting and rational arrangement of a poet's works,
that is, in chronological order. This would have been approximately
possible, as we know the dates of the greater part of them. But
convenience of reference and of comparison with the Greek text seems
to supply a balance of reasons on the other side. Subjoined however is
a list of the odes in their probable chronological order so far as it
can be obtained.

  Pythian    10-------------B.C. 502.
        "           6-------------    "   494.
        "         12-------------    "   494 or 490.
        "           7-------------    "   490.
        "           3-------------    "   486 or 482.
  Olympian 10 } ----------     "   484.
            "     11 } ----------     "   484.
  Isthmian    5
  Nemean     5
  Isthmian    7 ------------     "  480.
  Isthmian    3
  Pythian      8--------------   "  478.
         "          9--------------   "  478.
         "        11--------------   "  478.
         "          2--------------   "  477.
  Olympian 14--------------   "  476.
         "       }-----------------    "  476.
         "       }-----------------    "  476.
  Pythian      1
  Nemean     1---------------  "  473.
  Olympian   1---------------  " 472.
         "         12--------------  "  472.
  Nemean      9
  Isthmian     2
  Olympian    6--------------  "  468.
  Pythian       4 }-------------  "  466.
          "          5 }
  Olympian    7--------------  "  464.
          "        13--------------  "  464.
  Nemean      7
          "          3
          "          4
          "          6
          "          8
  Olympian    9--------------  "  456.
  Isthmian     6
  Olympian    4 }------------   "  452.
          "          5 }

The Olympic games were held once in four years, in honour of Zeus. The
prize was a wreath of wild olive.

The Pythian games were held once in four years, in honour of Apollo.
The prize was a wreath of bay.

The Nemean games were held once in two years, in honour of Zeus. The
prize was a wreath of wild parsley.

The Isthmian games were held once in two years, in honour of Poseidon.
The prize was a wreath of wild parsley or of pine.


[Footnote 1: The importance and interest to a student in Hellenic
literature of a collateral study of whatever remains to us of Hellenic
plastic art--statues, vases, gems, and coins--can hardly be too
strongly insisted on.]

[Footnote 2: In Mr. J.A. Symonds' 'Studies of the Greek Poets' there
is an essay on Pindar which dwells with much appreciative eloquence
upon the poets literary characteristics.]

[Footnote 3: In thus touching on the obligations of our morality to
the Hebrew and to the Hellene respectively, I have insisted more
exclusively on the weak points of the former than I should have done
in a fuller discussion of the subject: here I am merely concerned to
question in passing what seems to be a popular one-sided estimate.]

       *       *       *       *       *



OLYMPIAN ODES.


I.

FOR HIERON OF SYRACUSE,

WINNER IN THE HORSE-RACE.

       *       *       *       *       *

This ode seems to owe its position at the head of Pindar's extant
works to Aristophanes the grammarian, who placed it there on account
of its being specially occupied with the glorification of the Olympic
games in comparison with others, and with the story of Pelops, who was
their founder.

Hieron won this race B.C. 472, while at the height of his power at
Syracuse. Probably the ode was sung at Syracuse, perhaps, as has been
suggested, at a banquet.

       *       *       *       *       *

Best is Water of all, and Gold as a flaming fire in the night shineth
eminent amid lordly wealth; but if of prizes in the games thou art
fain, O my soul, to tell, then, as for no bright star more quickening
than the sun must thou search in the void firmament by day, so neither
shall we find any games greater than the Olympic whereof to utter our
voice: for hence cometh the glorious hymn and entereth into the minds
of the skilled in song, so that they celebrate the son[1] of Kronos,
when to the rich and happy hearth of Hieron they are come; for he
wieldeth the sceptre of justice in Sicily of many flocks, culling the
choice fruits of all kinds of excellence: and with the flower of music
is he made splendid, even such strains as we sing blithely at the
table of a friend.

Take from the peg the Dorian lute, if in any wise the glory of
Pherenikos[2] at Pisa hath swayed thy soul unto glad thoughts, when by
the banks of Alpheos he ran, and gave his body ungoaded in the
course, and brought victory to his master, the Syracusans' king, who
delighteth in horses.

Bright is his fame in Lydian Pelops' colony[3], inhabited of a goodly
race, whose founder mighty earth-enfolding Poseidon loved, what time
from the vessel of purifying[4] Klotho took him with the bright ivory
furnishment of his shoulder.

Verily many things are wondrous, and haply tales decked out with
cunning fables beyond the truth make false men's speech concerning
them. For Charis[5], who maketh all sweet things for mortal men, by
lending honour unto such maketh oft the unbelievable thing to be
believed; but the days that follow after are the wisest witnesses.

Meet is it for a man that concerning gods he speak honourably; for the
reproach is less. Of thee, son of Tantalos, I will speak contrariwise
to them who have gone before me, and I will tell how when thy father
had bidden thee to that most seemly feast at his beloved Sipylos,
repaying to the gods their banquet, then did he of the Bright
Trident[6], his heart vanquished by love, snatch thee and bear thee
behind his golden steeds to the house of august Zeus in the highest,
whither again on a like errand came Ganymede in the after time.

But when thou hadst vanished, and the men who sought thee long brought
thee not to thy mother, some one of the envious neighbours said
secretly that over water heated to boiling they had hewn asunder with
a knife thy limbs, and at the tables had shared among them and eaten
sodden fragments of thy flesh. But to me it is impossible to call one
of the blessed gods cannibal; I keep aloof; in telling ill tales is
often little gain.

Now if any man ever had honour of the guardians of Olympus, Tantalos
was that man; but his high fortune he could not digest, and by excess
thereof won him an overwhelming woe, in that the Father hath hung
above him a mighty stone that he would fain ward from his head, and
therewithal he is fallen from joy.

This hopeless life of endless misery he endureth with other three[7],
for that he stole from the immortals and gave to his fellows at
a feast the nectar and ambrosia, whereby the gods had made him
incorruptible. But if a man thinketh that in doing aught he shall be
hidden from God, he erreth.

Therefore also the immortals sent back again his son to be once more
counted with the short-lived race of men. And he when toward the bloom
of his sweet youth the down began to shade his darkening cheek, took
counsel with himself speedily to take to him for his wife the noble
Hippodameia from her Pisan father's hand.

And he came and stood upon the margin of the hoary sea, alone in the
darkness of the night, and called aloud on the deep-voiced Wielder of
the Trident; and he appeared unto him nigh at his foot.

Then he said unto him: 'Lo now, O Poseidon, if the kind gifts of the
Cyprian goddess are anywise pleasant in thine eyes, restrain Oinomaos'
bronze spear, and send me unto Elis upon a chariot exceeding swift,
and give the victory to my hands. Thirteen lovers already hath
Oinomaos slain, and still delayeth to give his daughter in marriage.
Now a great peril alloweth not of a coward: and forasmuch as men must
die, wherefore should one sit vainly in the dark through a dull and
nameless age, and without lot in noble deeds? Not so, but I will dare
this strife: do thou give the issue I desire.'

Thus spake he, nor were his words in vain: for the god made him a
glorious gift of a golden car and winged untiring steeds: so he
overcame Oinomaos and won the maiden for his bride.

And he begat six sons, chieftains, whose thoughts were ever of brave
deeds: and now hath he part in honour of blood-offerings in his grave
beside Alpheos' stream, and hath a frequented tomb, whereto many
strangers resort: and from afar off he beholdeth the glory of the
Olympian games in the courses called of Pelops, where is striving
of swift feet and of strong bodies brave to labour; but he that
overcometh hath for the sake of those games a sweet tranquillity
throughout his life for evermore.

Now the good that cometh of to-day is ever sovereign unto every man.
My part it is to crown Hieron with an equestrian strain in Aeolian
mood: and sure am I that no host among men that now are shall I ever
glorify in sounding labyrinths of song more learned in the learning of
honour and withal with more might to work thereto. A god hath guard
over thy hopes, O Hieron, and taketh care for them with a peculiar
care: and if he fail thee not, I trust that I shall again proclaim in
song a sweeter glory yet, and find thereto in words a ready way, when
to the fair-shining hill of Kronos I am come. Her strongest-winged
dart my Muse hath yet in store.

Of many kinds is the greatness of men; but the highest is to be
achieved by kings. Look not thou for more than this. May it be thine
to walk loftily all thy life, and mine to be the friend of winners in
the games, winning honour for my art among Hellenes everywhere.


[Footnote 1: The Olympic games were sacred to Zeus.]

[Footnote 2: The horse that won this race for Hieron.]

[Footnote 3: Peloponnesos.]

[Footnote 4: I. e. immediately on his birth, for among the Fates
Klotho was peculiarly concerned with the beginning of man's life.
Pindar refuses to accept the legend which made Pelops' ivory shoulder
a substitute for his fleshly one eaten at Tantalos' table by the gods;
for thus the gods would have been guilty of an infamous act.]

[Footnote 5: Goddess of Grace or Beauty. Often there are three
Charites or Graces. Pindar means here that men are prone to believe
an untrue tale for the sake of the beauty of the form in which it is
presented, but that such tales will not stand the test of time.]

[Footnote 6: Poseidon.]

[Footnote 7: Sisyphos, Ixion, and Tityos.]



II.

FOR THERON OF AKRAGAS,

WINNER IN THE CHARIOT-RACE.

       *       *       *       *       *

  Theron's ancestors the Emmenidai migrated from Rhodes to Sicily and
  first colonized Gela and then Akragas (the Latin Agrigentum and
  Italian Girgenti). His chariot won this victory B.C. 476.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lords of the lute[1], my songs, what god, what hero, or what man, are
we to celebrate?[2] Verily of Zeus is Pisa the abode, of Herakles the
Olympian feast was founded from the chief spoils of war, and Theron's
name must we proclaim for his victory with the four-horse-car, a
righteous and god-fearing host, the stay of Akragas, of famous sires
the flower, a saviour of the state.

They after long toils bravely borne took by a river's side a sacred
dwelling place, and became the eye of Sicily, and a life of good luck
clave to them, bringing them wealth and honour to crown their inborn
worth.

O son of Kronos and of Rhea, lord of Olympus' seat, and of the chief
of games and of Alpheos' ford, for joy in these my songs guard ever
graciously their native fields for their sons that shall come after
them.

Now of deeds done whether they be right or wrong not even Time the
father of all can make undone the accomplishment, yet with happy
fortune forgetfulness may come. For by high delights an alien pain is
quelled and dieth, when the decree of God sendeth happiness to grow
aloft and widely.

And this word is true concerning Kadmos' fair-throned daughters, whose
calamities were great, yet their sore grief fell before greater
good. Amid the Olympians long-haired Semele still liveth, albeit she
perished in the thunder's roar, and Pallas cherisheth her ever, and
Father Zeus exceedingly, and her son, the ivy-bearing god. And in the
sea too they say that to Ino, among the sea-maids of Nereus, life
incorruptible hath been ordained for evermore.

Ay but to mortals the day of death is certain never, neither at what
time we shall see in calm the end of one of the Sun's children, the
Days, with good thitherto unfailing; now this way and now that run
currents bringing joys or toils to men.

Thus destiny which from their fathers holdeth the happy fortune of
this race[3], together with prosperity heaven-sent bringeth ever at
some other time better reverse: from the day when Laios was slain by
his destined son[4] who met him on the road and made fulfilment of the
oracle spoken of old at Pytho. Then swift Erinys when she saw it slew
by each other's hand his war-like sons: yet after that Polyneikes fell
Thersander[5] lived after him and won honour in the Second Strife[6]
and in the fights of war, a saviour scion to the Adrastid house.

From him they have beginning of their race: meet is it that
Ainesidamos receive our hymn of triumph, on the lyre. For at Olympia
he himself received a prize and at Pytho, and at the Isthmus to his
brother of no less a lot did kindred Graces bring crowns for the
twelve rounds of the four-horse chariot-race.

Victory setteth free the essayer from the struggle's griefs, yea and
the wealth that a noble nature hath made glorious bringeth power for
this and that, putting into the heart of man a deep and eager mood, a
star far seen, a light wherein a man shall trust if but[7] the holder
thereof knoweth the things that shall be, how that of all who die the
guilty souls pay penalty, for all the sins sinned in this realm
of Zeus One judgeth under earth, pronouncing sentence by unloved
constraint.

But evenly ever in sunlight night and day an unlaborious life the good
receive, neither with violent hand vex they the earth nor the waters
of the sea, in that new world; but with the honoured of the gods,
whosoever had pleasure in keeping of oaths, they possess a tearless
life: but the other part suffer pain too dire to look upon.

Then whosoever have been of good courage to the abiding steadfast
thrice on either side of death and have refrained their souls from
all iniquity, travel the road of Zeus unto the tower of Kronos: there
round the islands of the blest the Ocean-breezes blow, and golden
flowers are glowing, some from the land on trees of splendour, and
some the water feedeth, with wreaths whereof they entwine their hands:
so ordereth Rhadamanthos' just decree, whom at his own right hand hath
ever the father Kronos, husband of Rhea, throned above all worlds[8].

Peleus and Kadmos are counted of that company; and the mother of
Achilles, when her prayer had moved the heart of Zeus, bare thither
her son, even him who overthrew Hector, Troy's unbending invincible
pillar, even him who gave Kyknos to death and the Ethiop son[9] of the
Morning.

Many swift arrows have I beneath my bended arm within my quiver,
arrows that have a voice for the wise, but for the multitude they need
interpreters. His art is true who of his nature hath knowledge; they
who have but learnt, strong in the multitude of words, are but as
crows that chatter vain things in strife against the divine bird of
Zeus.

Come bend thy bow on the mark, O my soul--at whom again are we to
launch our shafts of honour from a friendly mind? At Akragas will I
take aim, and will proclaim and swear it with a mind of truth, that
for a hundred years no city hath brought forth a man of mind more
prone to well-doing towards friends or of more liberal mood than
Theron.

Yet praise is overtaken of distaste, wherewith is no justice, but from
covetous men it cometh, and is fain to babble against and darken the
good man's noble deeds.

The sea-sand none hath numbered; and the joys that Theron hath given
to others--who shall declare the tale thereof?


[Footnote 1: In Hellenic music the accompaniment was deemed
subordinate to the words.]

[Footnote 2: Here are three questions and three answers.]

[Footnote 3: The Emmenidai.]

[Footnote 4: Oedipus.]

[Footnote 5: Son of Polyneikes. Theron traced his descent from him.]

[Footnote 6: The War of the Epigonoi against Thebes.]

[Footnote 7: Reading [Greek: ei ge min echon]. The old readings were
[Greek: ei de min echon] and [Greek: ei de min echei; eu de min echon]
has also been suggested; but of these three none seems to me to be at
all satisfactory. In the reading I suggest the change is very slight,
and it makes good sense.]

[Footnote 8: For Pindar's ideas as to a future life see especially
the fragments of his Dirges which remain to us. He seems to have been
influenced by Pythagoreanism.]

[Footnote 9: Memnon.]



III.

FOR THERON OF AKRAGAS,

WINNER IN THE CHARIOT-RACE.

       *       *       *       *       *

This ode celebrates the same victory as the preceeding one. It was
sung at the feast of the Theoxenia, given by Theron in the name of
the Dioskouroi (Kastor and Polydeukes) to the other gods. Hence the
epithet _hospitable_ ([Greek: philoxeinois]) applied to the Dioskouroi
in the first line. The clan of the Emmenidai to which Theron belonged
was especially devoted to the worship of the Twins.

       *       *       *       *       *

Tyndareus' hospitable sons and lovely-haired Helen shall I please
assuredly in doing honour to renowned Akragas by a hymn upraised for
Theron's Olympian crown; for hereunto hath the Muse been present with
me that I should find out a fair new[1] device, fitting to feet that
move in Dorian time the Komos-voices' splendid strain.

For crowns entwined about his hair demand from me this god-appointed
debt, that for Ainesidamos' son I join in seemly sort the lyre of
various tones with the flute's cry and ordering of words.

And Pisa bids me speak aloud, for from her come to men songs of
divine assignment, when the just judge of games the Aitolian[2] man,
fulfilling Herakles' behests of old, hath laid upon one's hair above
his brows pale-gleaming glory of olive.

That tree from Ister's shadowy springs did the son of Amphitryon bear
to be a memorial most glorious of Olympian triumphs, when that by his
words he had won the Hyperborean folk, who serve Apollo. In loyal
temper he besought for the precinct of Zeus, whereto all men go up,
a plant that should be a shadow of all folk in common, and withal a
crown for valorous deeds.

For already, when the altars had been sanctified to his sire, the
midmonth Moon riding her golden car lit full the counter-flame of the
eye of Even, and just judgment of great games did he ordain, and the
fifth year's feast beside the holy steeps of Alpheos[3].

But no fair trees were nursed upon that place in Kronian Pelops'
glens; whereof being naked his garden seemed to him to be given over
to the keen rays of the sun.

Then was it that his soul stirred to urge him into the land of Ister;
where Leto's horse-loving daughter[4] received him erst when he was
come from the ridged hills and winding dells of Arcady, what time his
father laid constraint upon him to go at Eurystheus' bidding to fetch
the golden-horned hind, which once Taygete vowed to her[5] of Orthion
and made a sign thereon of consecration. For in that chase he saw also
the land that lieth behind the blast of the cold North-wind: there he
halted and marvelled at the trees: and sweet desire thereof possessed
him that he might plant them at the end of the course which the
race-horses should run twelve times round.

So now to this feast cometh he in good-will in company with the Twins
Divine, deep-girdled Leto's children. For to them he gave charge when
he ascended into Olympus to order the spectacle of the games, both the
struggle of man with man, and the driving of the nimble car.

Me anywise my soul stirreth to declare that to the Emmenidai and to
Theron hath glory come by gift of the Tyndaridai of goodly steeds,
for that beyond all mortals they do honour to them with tables of
hospitality, keeping with pious spirit the rite of blessed gods.

Now if Water be the Best[6], and of possessions Gold be the most
precious, so now to the furthest bound doth Theron by his fair deeds
attain, and from his own home touch the pillars of Herakles. Pathless
the things beyond, pathless alike to the unwise and the wise. Here I
will search no more; the quest were vain.


[Footnote 1: i. e. probably a new combination of lyre and flute to
accompany the singing.]

[Footnote 2: When the Dorians invaded Peloponnesos one of their
leaders is said to have been Oxylos, a man of Elean descent but living
in Aitolia. As a result of the invasion he became king of Elis;
and the judge at the Olympic games seems to have been considered a
descendant of him or of some Aitolian who came with him.]

[Footnote 3: The Olympic games were held in the middle of the month
Hekatombaion, when the moon was full. It is here implied that Herakles
wished to institute them when the moon was full, as that was a season
of good luck.]

[Footnote 4: Artemis.]

[Footnote 5: Artemis.]

[Footnote 6: See Ol. i. 1.]



IV.

FOR PSAUMIS OF KAMARINA,

WINNER IN THE MULE-CHARIOT-RACE.

       *       *       *       *       *

Psaumis won this race in the year 452; therefore this ode and its
companion, the next following, are the latest work of Pindar possessed
by us to which we can assign a date.

The mule-chariot-race was introduced at Olympia B.C. 500 and abolished
B.C. 444, according to Pausanias.

This ode seems to have been written immediately on Psaumis' victory,
to be sung the same night beneath the moon by the company of friends
who escorted the winner to return thanks at the altar of Zeus.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hurler of thunderbolts unfaltering, the most high Zeus, for that thy
chosen hour recurrent hath sent me with a song set to the music of
the subtle lute for a witness to the greatest of all games--and
when friends have good hap the good are glad forthwith at the sweet
tidings--now therefore, O son of Kronos, unto whom AEtna belongeth,
the wind-beaten burden that crusheth fierce Typhon's hundred heads,
receive thou this band of triumph for an Olympian victory won by the
Graces' aid, a most enduring light of far-prevailing valorous deeds.

For the sake of Psaumis' mule-chariot it draweth nigh to
thee--Psaumis, who, crowned with Pisan olive, hasteth to raise up
glory for Kamarina. May God be gracious to our prayers for what shall
be! For I praise him as a man most zealous in the rearing of horses,
and delighting in ever-open hospitality, and bent on peace and on the
welfare of his city, with guileless soul.

With no lie will I tinge my tale: trial is the test of men; this
it was that delivered the son of Klymenos from the Lemnian women's
slight. He, when he had won the foot-race in bronze armour[1], spake
thus to Hypsipyle as he went to receive his crown: 'For fleetness such
am I: hands have I and a heart to match. So also on young men grow
oftentimes grey hairs even before the natural season of man's
life[2].'


[Footnote 1: See introduction to Pythian ix.]

[Footnote 2: We may suppose that Psaumis probably had grey hair.]



V.

FOR PSAUMIS OF KAMARINA,

WINNER IN THE MULE-CHARIOT-RACE.

       *       *       *       *       *

  This ode is for the same victory as the foregoing one, but was to be
  sung after Psaumis' return home, at Kamarina, and probably at, or in
  procession to, a temple of either Pallas, Zeus, or the tutelary nymph
  Kamarina, all of whom are invoked. The city is called 'new-peopled'
  ([Greek: neoikos]) because it had been destroyed by Gelo, and was only
  restored B.C. 461, nine years before this victory, the first which had
  been won by any citizen since its restoration.

       *       *       *       *       *

Of lofty deeds and crowns Olympian this sweet delight, O daughter[1]
of Ocean, with glad heart receive, the gift of Psaumis and his
untiring car. He to make great thy city, Kamarina, with its fostered
folk, hath honoured six twin altars in great feasts of the gods with
sacrifices of oxen and five-day contests of games, with chariots of
horses and of mules and with the steed of single frontlet[2].

To thee hath the victor consecrated the proud token[3] of his fame,
and hath glorified by the herald's voice his father Akron and this
new-peopled town.

Also, returning from the gracious dwelling place of Oinomaos and
Pelops, thy sacred grove, O city-guarding Pallas, doth he sing, and
the river Oanis, and the lake of his native land, and the sacred
channels wherethrough doth Hipparis give water to the people, and
build[4] with speed a lofty forest of stedfast dwellings, bringing
from perplexity to the light this commonwealth of citizens.

Now ever in fair deeds must toil and cost contend toward an
accomplishment hidden in perilous chance: yet if men have good hap
therein, even to their own townsfolk is their wisdom approved.

O guardian Zeus that sittest above the clouds, that inhabitest the
Kronian hill and honourest the broad river of Alpheos and Ida's holy
cave, suppliant to thee I come, making my cry on Lydian flutes, to
pray thee that thou wilt glorify this city with brave men's renown.

For thee also, Olympian victor, I pray that, joying in the steeds
Poseidon[5] gave, thou mayest bear with thee to the end a serene old
age, and may thy sons, O Psaumis, be at thy side. If a man cherish his
wealth to sound ends, having a sufficiency of goods and adding thereto
fair repute, let him not seek to become a god.


[Footnote 1: Kamarina.]

[Footnote 2: I. e. probably with horses ridden, not driven.]

[Footnote 3: His Olympian crown of wild olive.]

[Footnote 4: This seems to mean that the new city was built with wood
brought down the stream of the river Hipparis.]

[Footnote 5: When Poseidon and Athene were contending for the
protectorate of Athens, Poseidon brought the first horse up out of the
earth, Athene the first olive-tree.]



VI.

FOR AGESIAS OF SYRACUSE,

WINNER IN THE MULE-CHARIOT-RACE.

       *       *       *       *       *
  One of the Iamid clan, to which belonged hereditary priestly functions
  in Arcadia and at Olympia, had come with the first colonists to Syracuse,
  and from him the present victor Agesias was descended. Thus
  the ode is chiefly concerned with the story of his ancestor Iamos.
  Agesias was a citizen of Stymphalos in Arcadia, as well as of Syracuse,
  where he lived, and the ode was sung by a chorus in Stymphalos,
  B.C. 468.

       *       *       *       *       *

Golden pillars will we set up in the porch of the house of our song,
as in a stately palace-hall; for it beseemeth that in the fore-front
of the work the entablature shoot far its splendour.

Now if one be an Olympian conqueror and treasurer to the prophetic
altar of Zeus at Pisa, and joint founder[1] of glorious Syracuse,
shall such an one hide him from hymns of praise, if his lot be among
citizens who hear without envy the desired sounds of song? For in a
sandal of such sort let the son of Sostratos know that his fortunate
foot is set. Deeds of no risk are honourless whether done among men or
among hollow ships; but if a noble deed be wrought with labour, many
make mention thereof.

For thee, Agesias, is that praise prepared which justly and openly
Adrastos spake of old concerning the seer Amphiaraos the son of
Oikleus, when the earth had swallowed him and his shining steeds. For
afterward, when on seven pyres dead men were burnt, the son[2] of
Talaos spake on this wise: 'I seek the eye of my host, him who was
alike a good seer and a good fighter with the spear.'

This praise also belongeth to the Syracusan who is lord of this
triumphal song. I who am no friend of strife or wrongful quarrel will
bear him this witness even with a solemn oath, and the sweet voice of
the Muses shall not say me nay.

O Phintis[3] yoke me now with all speed the strength of thy mules that
on the clear highway we may set our car, that I may go up to the far
beginning of this race. For those mules know well to lead the way in
this course as in others, who at Olympia have won crowns: it behoveth
them that we throw open to them the gates of song, for to Pitane by
Eurotas' stream must I begone betimes to-day.

Now Pitane[4], they say, lay with Poseidon the son of Kronos and
bare the child Euadne with tresses iris-dark. The fruit of her body
unwedded she hid by her robe's folds, and in the month of her delivery
she sent her handmaids and bade them give the child to the hero son[5]
of Elatos to rear, who was lord of the men of Arcady who dwelt at
Phaisane, and had for his lot Alpheos to dwell beside.

There was the child Euadne nurtured, and by Apollo's side she first
knew the joys of Aphrodite.

But she might not always hide from Aipytos the seed of the god within
her; and he in his heart struggling with bitter strain against a grief
too great for speech betook him to Pytho that he might ask of the
oracle concerning the intolerable woe.

But she beneath a thicket's shade put from her silver pitcher and her
girdle of scarlet web, and she brought forth a boy in whom was the
spirit of God. By her side the gold-haired god set kindly Eleutho and
the Fates, and from her womb in easy travail came forth Iamos to the
light. Him in her anguish she left upon the ground, but by the counsel
of gods two bright-eyed serpents nursed and fed him with the harmless
venom[6] of the bee.

But when the king came back from rocky Delphi in his chariot he asked
all who were in the house concerning the child whom Euadne had born;
for he said that the sire whereof he was begotten was Phoibos, and
that he should be a prophet unto the people of the land excelling all
mortal men, and that his seed should be for ever.

Such was his tale, but they answered that they had neither seen nor
heard of him, though he was now born five days. For he was hidden
among rushes in an impenetrable brake, his tender body all suffused
with golden and deep purple gleams of iris flowers; wherefore his
mother prophesied saying that by this holy name[7] of immortality he
should be called throughout all time.

But when he had come to the ripeness of golden-crowned sweet youth,
he went down into the middle of Alpheos and called on wide-ruling
Poseidon his grandsire, and on the guardian of god-built Delos, the
bearer of the bow[8], praying that honour might be upon his head for
the rearing of a people; and he stood beneath the heavens, and it was
night.

Then the infallible Voice of his father answered and said unto him:
Arise, my son, and come hither, following my voice, into a place where
all men shall meet together.

So they came to the steep rock of lofty Kronion; there the god gave
him a twofold treasure of prophecy, that for the time then being he
should hearken to his voice that cannot lie; but when Herakles of
valorous counsels, the sacred scion of the Alkeidai, should have come,
and should have founded a multitudinous feast and the chief ordinance
of games[9], then again on the summit of the altar of Zeus he bade him
establish yet another oracle, that thenceforth the race of Iamidai
should be glorious among Hellenes.

Good luck abode with them; for that they know the worth of valour they
are entered on a glorious road.

The matter proveth the man, but from the envious calumny ever
threateneth them on whom, as they drive foremost in the twelfth[10]
round of the course, Charis sheddeth blushing beauty to win them fame
more fair.

Now if in very truth, Agesias, thy mother's ancestors dwelling by the
borders of Kyllene did piously and oft offer up prayer and sacrifice
to Hermes, herald of the gods, who hath to his keeping the strife and
appointment of games, and doeth honour to Arcadia the nurse of goodly
men,--then surely he, O son of Sostratos, with his loud-thundering
sire, is the accomplisher of this thy bliss.

Methinks I have upon my tongue a whetstone of loud sounding speech,
which to harmonious breath constraineth me nothing loth. Mother of my
mother was Stymphalian Metope[11] of fair flowers, for she bare Thebe
the charioteer, whose pleasant fountain I will drink, while I weave
for warriors the changes of my song.

Now rouse thy fellows, Aineas, first to proclaim the name of
maiden[12] Hera, and next to know for sure whether we are escaped from
the ancient reproach that spake truly of Boeotian swine. For thou art
a true messenger, a writing-tally[13] of the Muses goodly-haired, a
bowl wherein to mix high-sounding songs.

And bid them make mention of Syracuse and of Ortygia, which Hieron
ruleth with righteous sceptre devising true counsels, and doth honour
to Demeter whose footsteps make red the corn, and to the feast of her
daughter with white steeds, and to the might of Aetnaean Zeus. Also he
is well known of the sweet voices of the song and lute. Let not the
on-coming time break his good fortune. And with joyful welcome may
he receive this triumphal song, which travelleth from home to home,
leaving Stymphalos' walls, the mother-city of Arcadia, rich in flocks.

Good in a stormy night are two anchors let fall from a swift ship. May
friendly gods grant to both peoples[14] an illustrious lot: and thou
O lord and ruler of the sea, husband of Amphitrite of the golden
distaff, grant this my friend straight voyage and unharmed, and bless
the joyous flower of my song.


[Footnote 1: Agesias is so called because an Iamid ancestor of his had
gone with Archias when he planted the Corinthian colony of Syracuse.]

[Footnote 2: Adrastos.]

[Footnote 3: Phintis was Agesias' charioteer.]

[Footnote 4: I. e. the nymph who gave her name to the place.]

[Footnote 5: Aipytos.]

[Footnote 6: Honey.]

[Footnote 7: Iamos, from [Greek: ion]: the iris was considered a
symbol of immortality.]

[Footnote 8: His father, Apollo.]

[Footnote 9: At Olympia.]

[Footnote 10: The course in the chariot-race was twelve times round
the Hippodrome.]

[Footnote 11: The nymph of the lake Metope near Stymphalos.]

[Footnote 12: Hera was worshipped in her prenuptial as well as her
postnuptial state.]

[Footnote 13: It was a custom between correspondents who wished for
secrecy to have duplicate [Greek: skutalai], or letter-sticks. The
writer wrote on a roll wrapt round his stick, and the receiver of the
letter read it wrapt similarly on his. And thus Aineas the bearer of
this ode would teach the chorus of Stymphalians how rightly to sing
and understand it. See [Greek: skutalae] in Dict. Ant.]

[Footnote 14: I. e. of Stymphalos and Syracuse. Agesias was a citizen
of both, and thus his two homes are compared to two anchors.]



VII.

FOR DIAGORAS OF RHODES,

WINNER IN THE BOXING-MATCH.

       *       *       *       *       *

  Rhodes is said to have been colonised at the time of the Dorian
  migrations by Argive Dorians from Epidauros, who were Herakleidai of
  of the family of Tlepolemos. They founded a confederacy of three
  cities, Kameiros, Lindos, and Ialysos. Ialysos was then ruled by
  the dynasty of the Eratidai. Their kingly power had now been extinct
  two hundred years, but the family was still pre-eminent in the state.
  Of this family was Diagoras, and probably the ode was sung at a
  family festival; but it commemorates the glories of the island generally.
  The Rhodians caused it to be engraved in letters of gold in the
  temple of Athene at Lindos.

  There is a noteworthy incident of the Peloponnesian war which should
  be remembered in connection with this ode. In the year 406, fifty-eight
  years after this victory of Diagoras, during the final and most
  embittering agony of Athens, one Dorieus, a son of Diagoras, and himself
  a famous athlete, was captured by the Athenians in a sea-fight.
  It was then the custom either to release prisoners of war for a ransom
  or else to put them to death. The Athenians asked no ransom of
  Dorieus, but set him free on the spot.

       *       *       *       *       *

As when from a wealthy hand one lifting a cup, made glad within with
the dew of the vine, maketh gift thereof to a youth his daughter's
spouse, a largess of the feast from home to home, an all-golden
choicest treasure, that the banquet may have grace, and that he may
glorify his kin; and therewith he maketh him envied in the eyes of the
friends around him for a wedlock wherein hearts are wedded--

So also I, my liquid nectar sending, the Muses' gift, the sweet fruit
of my soul, to men that are winners in the games at Pytho or Olympia
make holy offering. Happy is he whom good report encompasseth; now
on one man, now on another doth the Grace that quickeneth look
favourably, and tune for him the lyre and the pipe's stops of music
manifold.

Thus to the sound of the twain am I come with Diagoras sailing home,
to sing the sea-girt Rhodes, child of Aphrodite and bride of Helios,
that to a mighty and fair-fighting man, who by Alpheos' stream and by
Kastalia's hath won him crowns, I may for his boxing make award of
glory, and to his father Demegetos in whom Justice hath her delight,
dwellers in the isle of three cities with an Argive host, nigh to a
promontory of spacious Asia.

Fain would I truly tell from the beginning from Tlepolemos the message
of my word, the common right of this puissant seed of Herakles. For
on the father's side they claim from Zeus, and on the mother's from
Astydameia, sons of Amyntor.

Now round the minds of men hang follies unnumbered--this is the
unachievable thing, to find what shall be best hap for a man both
presently and also at the last. Yea for the very founder[1] of this
country once on a time struck with his staff of tough wild-olive-wood
Alkmene's bastard brother Likymnios in Tiryns as he came forth from
Midea's chamber, and slew him in the kindling of his wrath. So even
the wise man's feet are turned astray by tumult of the soul.

Then he came to enquire of the oracle of God. And he of the golden
hair from his sweet-incensed shrine spake unto him of a sailing of
ships that should be from the shore of Lerna unto a pasture ringed
with sea, where sometime the great king of gods rained on the
city golden snow, what time by Hephaistos' handicraft beneath the
bronze-wrought axe from the crown of her father's head Athene leapt to
light and cried aloud with an exceeding cry; and Heaven trembled at
her coming, and Earth, the Mother.

Then also the god who giveth light to men, Hyperion, bade his beloved
sons see that they guard the payment of the debt, that they should
build first for the goddess an altar in the sight of all men, and
laying thereon a holy offering they should make glad the hearts of
the father and of his daughter of the sounding spear. Now Reverence,
Forethought's child, putteth valour and the joy of battle into the
hearts of men; yet withal there cometh upon them bafflingly the cloud
of forgetfulness and maketh the mind to swerve from the straight path
of action. For they though they had brands burning yet kindled not the
seed of flame, but with fireless rites they made a grove on the hill
of the citadel. For them Zeus brought a yellow cloud into the sky and
rained much gold upon the land; and Glaukopis herself gave them to
excel the dwellers upon earth in every art of handicraft. For on their
roads ran the semblances of beasts and creeping things: whereof they
have great glory, for to him that hath knowledge the subtlety that is
without deceit[2] is the greater altogether.

Now the ancient story of men saith that when Zeus and the other gods
made division of the earth among them, not yet was island Rhodes
apparent in the open sea, but in the briny depths lay hid. And for
that Helios was otherwhere, none drew a lot for him; so they left him
portionless of land, that holy god. And when he spake thereof Zeus
would cast lots afresh; but he suffered him not, for that he said that
beneath the hoary sea he saw a certain land waxing from its root in
earth, that should bring forth food for many men, and rejoice in
flocks. And straightway he bade her of the golden fillet, Lachesis, to
stretch her hands on high, nor violate the gods' great oath, but with
the son of Kronos promise him that the isle sent up to the light of
heaven should be thenceforth a title of himself alone.

And in the end of the matter his speech had fulfilment; there sprang
up from the watery main an island, and the father who begetteth
the keen rays of day hath the dominion thereof, even the lord of
fire-breathing steeds. There sometime having lain with Rhodos he begat
seven sons, who had of him minds wiser than any among the men of old;
and one begat Kameiros, and Ialysos his eldest, and Lindos: and they
held each apart their shares of cities, making threefold division of
their father's land, and these men call their dwelling-places. There
is a sweet amends for his piteous ill-hap ordained for Tlepolemos
leader of the Tirynthians at the beginning, as for a god, even the
leading thither of sheep for a savoury burnt-offering, and the award
of honour in games[3].

Of garlands from these games hath Diagoras twice won him crowns, and
four times he had good luck at famous Isthmos and twice following
at Nemea, and twice at rocky Athens. And at Argos the bronze shield
knoweth him, and the deeds of Arcadia and of Thebes and the yearly
games Boeotian, and Pellene and Aigina where six times he won; and the
pillar of stone at Megara hath the same tale to tell.

But do thou, O Father Zeus, who holdest sway on the mountain-ridges of
Atabyrios glorify the accustomed Olympian winner's hymn, and the man
who hath done valiantly with his fists: give him honour at the hands
of citizens and of strangers; for he walketh in the straight way that
abhorreth insolence, having learnt well the lessons his true soul hath
taught him, which hath come to him from his noble sires. Darken not
thou the light of one who springeth from the same stock of Kallianax.
Surely with the joys of Eratidai the whole city maketh mirth. But the
varying breezes even at the same point of time speed each upon their
various ways.


[Footnote 1: Tlepolemos.]

[Footnote 2: That is, probably, without magic, or the pretence of
being anything but machines. This is considered an allusion to the
Telchines who lived before the Heliadai in Rhodes, and were magicians
as well as craftsmen. For illustrations of Rhodian art at various
times the British Museum may be consulted, which is particularly rich
in vases from Kameiros and Ialysos.]

[Footnote 3: That is, he presides over the celebration of games, as
tutelar hero of the island.]



VIII.

FOR ALKIMEDON OF AIGINA,

WINNER IN THE WRESTLING-MATCH OF BOYS.

       *       *       *       *       *

The date of this victory is B.C. 460. Long as the ode is, it would
seem however to have been written, like the fourth Olympian, to be
sung in the procession to the altar of Zeus on the night of the
victory.

Of the forty-four odes remaining to us no less than eleven are in
honour of winners from Aigina.

       *       *       *       *       *

O mother of gold-crowned contests, Olympia, queen of truth; where men
that are diviners observing burnt-offerings make trial of Zeus the
wielder of white lightnings, whether he hath any word concerning
men who seek in their hearts to attain unto great prowess and a
breathing-space from toil; for it is given in answer to the reverent
prayers of men--do thou, O tree-clad precinct of Pisa by Alpheos,
receive this triumph and the carrying of the crown.

Great is his glory ever on whom the splendour of thy honour waiteth.
Yet this good cometh to one, that to another, and many are the roads
to happy life by the grace of gods.

Thee, O Timosthenes[1], and thy brother hath Destiny assigned to Zeus
the guardian of your house, even to him who hath made thee glorious at
Nemea, and Alkimedon by the hill of Kronos a winner in Olympic games.

Now the boy was fair to look upon, neither shamed he by his deeds his
beauty, but in the wrestling match victorious made proclamation that
his country was Aigina of long oars, where saviour Themis who sitteth
in judgment by Zeus the stranger's succour is honoured more than any
elsewhere among men[2].

For in a matter mighty and bearing many ways to judge with unswayed
mind and suitably, this is a hard essay, yet hath some ordinance of
immortals given this sea-defended land to be to strangers out of every
clime a pillar built of God. May coming time not weary of this work.

To a Dorian folk was the land given in trust from Aiakos, even the man
whom Leto's son and far-ruling Poseidon, when they would make a crown
for Ilion, called to work with them at the wall, for that it was
destined that at the uprising of wars in city-wasting fights it should
breathe forth fierce smoke.

Now when it was new-built three dragons fiery-eyed leapt at the
rampart: two fell and perished in despair; but the third sprang in
with a war-cry[3].

Then Apollo pondering, the sign spake straightway unto Aiakos by his
side: 'Hero, where thy hands have wrought is Pergamos taken: thus
saith this sign, sent of the son of Kronos, loud-thundering Zeus. And
that not without thy seed; but with the first and fourth it shall be
subdued'[4].

Thus plainly spoke the god, and away to Xanthos and the Amazons of
goodly steeds and to Ister urged his car.

And the Trident-wielder for Isthmos over seas harnessed his swift
chariot, and hither[5] first he bare with him Aiakos behind the golden
mares, and so on unto the mount of Corinth, to behold his feast of
fame.

Now shall there never among men be aught that pleaseth all alike. If
I for Melesias[6] raise up glory in my song of his boys, let not envy
cast at me her cruel stone. Nay but at Nemea too will I tell of honour
of like kind with this, and of another ensuing thereon, won in the
pankration of men.

Verily to teach is easier to him that knoweth: it is folly if one hath
not first learnt, for without trial the mind wavereth. And beyond all
others can Melesias declare all works on that wise, what method shall
advance a man who from the sacred games may win the longed-for glory.

Now for the thirtieth time is honour gained for him by the victory of
Alkimedon, who by God's grace, nor failing himself in prowess, hath
put off from him upon the bodies of four striplings the loathed return
ungreeted of fair speech, and the path obscure[7]; and in his father's
father he hath breathed new vigour to wrestle with old age. A man that
hath done honourable deeds taketh no thought of death.

But I must needs arouse memory, and tell of the glory of their hands
that gave victory to the Blepsiad clan, to whom this is now the sixth
crown that hath come from the wreathed games to bind their brows.

Even the dead have their share when paid them with due rites, and
the grace of kinsmen's honour the dust concealeth not. From Hermes'
daughter Fame shall Iphion[8] hear and tell to Kallimachos this lustre
of Olympic glory, which Zeus hath granted to this house. Honour upon
honour may he vouchsafe unto it, and shield it from sore disease[9]. I
pray that for the share of glory fallen to them he raise against them
no contrary discontent, but granting them a life unharmed may glorify
them and their commonwealth.


[Footnote 1: Alkimedon's brother. He had won a victory at the Nemean
games.]

[Footnote 2: Aigina had a high commercial reputation, and strangers
were equitably dealt with in her courts.]

[Footnote 3: The two first dragons typify the Aiakids, Aias and
Achilles, who failed to enter Troy, the third typifies Achilles' son,
Neoptolemos, who succeeded.]

[Footnote 4: Aiakos' son, Telamon, was with Herakles when he took
Troy: his great-grandson Neoptolemos was in the Wooden Horse.]

[Footnote 5: To Aigina.]

[Footnote 6: Alkimedon's trainer.]

[Footnote 7: I. e. Alkimedon has escaped the disagreeable
circumstances of defeat and transferred them to the four opponents
against whom he was matched in four successive ties.]

[Footnote 8: Iphion seems to have been the father and Kallimachos the
uncle of Alkimedon.]

[Footnote 9: Perhaps Iphion and Kallimachos died of some severe
illness.]



IX.

FOR EPHARMOSTOS OF OPOUS,

WINNER IN THE WRESTLING-MATCH.

       *       *       *       *       *

The date of this ode is uncertain. Its last line seems to imply that
it was sung at a banquet at Opous, after crowning the altar of Aias
Oileus, tutelar hero of the Lokrians. From the beginning we gather
that on the night of the victory at Olympia Epharmostos' friends had
sung in his honour the conventional triple strain of Archilochos--

  [Greek: (o kallinike chair' anax Herakleaes
  autos te k' Iolaos, aichmaeta duo.
  taenella kallinike)]

to which perhaps some slight additions had been made, but not by
Pindar.

       *       *       *       *       *

The strain of Archilochos sung without music at Olympia, the triple
resonant psalm of victory, sufficed to lead to the hill of Kronos
Epharmostos triumphing with his comrade friends: but now with darts of
other sort, shot from the Muses' far-delivering bow, praise Zeus of
the red lightning, and Elis' holy headland, which on a time Pelops the
Lydian hero chose to be Hippodameia's goodly dower.

And shoot a feathered arrow of sweet song Pythoward, for thy words
shall not fall to the ground when thou tunest the throbbing lyre
to the praise of the wrestlings of a man from famous Opous, and
celebratest her and her son. For Themis and her noble daughter
Eunomia the Preserver have made her their own, and she flourisheth in
excellent deeds both at Kastalia and beside Alpheos' stream: whence
come the choicest of all crowns to glorify the mother city of
Lokrians, the city of beautiful trees.

I, to illuminate the city of my friends with eager blaze of song,
swifter than high-bred steed or winged ship will send everywhere these
tidings, so be it that my hand is blessed at all in labouring in the
choice garden of the Graces; for they give all pleasant things to men.

By fate divine receive men also valour and wisdom: how else[1] might
the hands of Herakles have wielded his club against the trident, when
at Pylos Poseidon took his stand and prest hard on him, ay, and there
prest him hard embattled Phoibos with his silver bow, neither would
Hades keep his staff unraised, wherewith he leadeth down to ways
beneath the hollow earth the bodies of men that die?

O my mouth, fling this tale from thee, for to speak evil of gods is
a hateful wisdom, and loud and unmeasured words strike a note that
trembleth upon madness. Of such things talk thou not; leave war of
immortals and all strife aside; and bring thy words to the city of
Protogeneia, where by decree of Zeus of the bickering lightning-flash
Pyrrha and Deukalion coming down from Parnassos first fixed their
home, and without bed of marriage made out of stones a race to be one
folk: and hence cometh the name of peoples[2]. Awake for them the
clear-toned gale of song, and if old wine be best, yet among songs
prefer the newer flowers.

Truly men say that once a mighty water swept over the dark earth, but
by the craft of Zeus an ebb suddenly drew off the flood. From these
first men came anciently your ancestors of the brazen shields, sons of
the women of the stock of Iapetos and of the mighty Kronidai, Kings
that dwelt in the land continually; until the Olympian Lord caught up
the daughter[3] of Opoeeis from the land of the Epeians, and lay with
her in a silent place among the ridges of Mainalos; and afterward
brought her unto Lokros, that age might not bring him[4] low beneath
the burden of childlessness. But the wife bare within her the seed of
the Mightiest, and the hero saw the bastard born and rejoiced, and
called him by the name of his mother's father, and he became a man
preeminent in beauty and great deeds: and his father gave unto him a
city and a people to rule over.

Then there came unto him strangers, from Argos and from Thebes, and
from Arcadia others, and from Pisa. But the son of Aktor and Aigina,
Menoitios, he honoured above all settlers, him whose son[5] went with
the Atreidai to the plain of Teuthras and stood alone beside Achilles,
when Telephos had turned the valiant Danaoi to flight, and drove them
into the sterns of their sea-ships; so proved he to them that had
understanding that Patroklos' soul was strong. And thenceforward the
son of Thetis persuaded him that he should never in murderous battle
take his post far from his friend's conquering spear.

Fit speech may I find for my journey in the Muses' car; and let me
therewith have daring and powers of ample scope. To back the prowess
of a friend I came, when Lampromachos won his Isthmian crown, when on
the same day both he and his brother overcame. And afterward at the
gates[6] of Corinth two triumphs again befell Epharmostos, and more in
the valleys of Nemea. At Argos he triumphed over men, as over boys
at Athens. And I might tell how at Marathon he stole from among the
beardless and confronted the full-grown for the prize of silver
vessels, how without a fall he threw his men with swift and cunning
shock, and how loud the shouting pealed when round the ring he ran,
in the beauty of his youth and his fair form and fresh from fairest
deeds.

Also before the Parrhasian host was he glorified, at the assembly of
Lykaian Zeus, and again when at Pellene he bare away a warm antidote
of cold winds[7]. And the tomb of Iolaos, and Eleusis by the sea, are
just witnesses to his honours.

The natural is ever best: yet many men by learning of prowess essay to
achieve fame. The thing done without God is better kept in silence.
For some ways lead further than do others, but one practice will not
train us all alike. Skill of all kinds is hard to attain unto: but
when thou bringest forth this prize, proclaim aloud with a good
courage that by fate divine this man at least was born deft-handed,
nimble-limbed, with the light of valour in his eyes, and that now
being victorious he hath crowned at the feast Oilean Alas' altar.


[Footnote 1: This is the common interpretation, implying that Herakles
in contending with the gods here mentioned must have been helped by
other gods. But perhaps it might also be translated 'therefore how
could the hands, &c.,' meaning that since valour, as has just been
said, comes from a divine source, it could not be used against gods,
and that thus the story ought to be rejected.]

[Footnote 2: Perhaps the story of the stones arose from the like sound
of [Greek: Laos] and [Greek: Laas], words here regarded in the inverse
relation to each other.]

[Footnote 3: Protogeneia.]

[Footnote 4: Lokros.]

[Footnote 5: Patroklos.]

[Footnote 6: The Isthmus, the gate between the two seas.]

[Footnote 7: A cloak, the prize.]



X.

FOR AGESIDAMOS OF EPIZEPHYRIAN LOKRIS,

WINNER IN THE BOYS' BOXING-MATCH.

       *       *       *       *       *

  This ode bears somewhat the same relation to the next that the fourth
  does to the fifth. It was to be sung at Olympia on the night after
  the victory, and Pindar promises the boy to write a longer one for
  the celebration of his victory in his Italian home. The date is
  B.C. 484.

       *       *       *       *       *

Sometimes have men most need of winds, sometimes of showered waters of
the firmament, the children of the cloud.

But when through his labour one fareth well, then are due honey-voiced
songs, be they even a prelude to words that shall come after, a pledge
confirmed by oath in honour of high excellence.

Ample is the glory stored for Olympian winners: thereof my shepherd
tongue is fain to keep some part in fold. But only by the help of God
is wisdom[1] kept ever blooming in the soul.

Son of Archestratos, Agesidamos, know certainly that for thy boxing I
will lay a glory of sweet strains upon thy crown of golden[2] olive,
and will have in remembrance the race of the Lokrians' colony in the West.

There do ye, O Muses, join in the song of triumph: I pledge my word
that to no stranger-banishing folk shall ye come, nor unacquainted
with things noble, but of the highest in arts and valiant with the
spear. For neither tawny fox nor roaring lion may change his native
temper.

[Footnote 1: Perhaps [Greek: sophos] (which means often rather clever
or skilful than wise) has here the special reference to poetic skill,
which it often has in Pindar.]

[Footnote 2: Golden here means supremely excellent, as in the first
line of the eighth Olympian.]



XI.

FOR AGESIDAMOS OF EPIZEPHYRIAN LOKRIS,

WINNER IN THE BOYS' BOXING-MATCH.

       *       *       *       *       *

  It would seem by his own confession that Pindar did not remember till
  long afterwards the promise he made to Agesidamos in the last ode.
  We do not know how long afterwards this was written, but it must
  have been too late to greet the winner on his arrival in Italy; probably
  it was to be sung at the anniversary or some memorial celebration
  of his victory.

       *       *       *       *       *

Read me the name of the Olympic winner Archestratos' son that I may
know where it is written upon my heart: for I had forgotten that I
owed him a sweet strain.

But do thou, O Muse, and thou Truth, daughter of Zeus, put forth your
hands and keep from me the reproach of having wronged a friend by
breaking my pledged word. For from afar hath overtaken me the time
that was then yet to come, and hath shamed my deep debt.

Nevertheless from that sore reproach I may be delivered by payment
with usury: behold how[1] the rushing wave sweepeth down the rolling
shingle, and how we also will render for our friend's honour a tribute
to him and to his people.

Truth inhabiteth the city of the Lokrians of the West, and Kalliope
they hold in honour and mailed Ares; yea even conquering Herakles was
foiled by that Kykneaen combat[2].

Now let Agesidamos, winner in the boxing at Olympia, so render thanks
to Ilas[3] as Patroklos of old to Achilles. If one be born with
excellent gifts, then may another who sharpeneth his natural edge
speed him, God helping, to an exceeding weight of glory. Without toil
there have triumphed a very few.

Of that light in the life of a man before all other deeds, that first
of contests, the ordinances of Zeus[4] have stirred me to sing, even
the games which by the ancient tomb of Pelops the mighty Herakles
founded, after that he slew Kleatos, Poseidon's goodly son, and slew
also Eurytos, that he might wrest from tyrannous Augeas against his
will reward for service done[5].

Lying in ambush beneath Kleonai did Herakles overcome them on the
road, for that formerly these same violent sons of Molos made havoc of
his own Tirynthian folk by hiding in the valleys of Elis. And not long
after the guest-betraying king of the Epeans saw his rich native land,
his own city, beneath fierce fire and iron blows sink down into the
deep moat of calamity. Of strife against stronger powers it is hard
to be rid. Likewise Augeas last of all in his perplexity fell into
captivity and escaped not precipitate death.

Then the mighty son of Zeus having gathered together all his host at
Pisa, and all the booty, measured a sacred grove for his sovereign
Father; and having fenced round the Altis he marked the bounds thereof
in a clear space, and the plain encompassing it he ordained for rest
and feasting, and paid honour to the river Alpheos together with the
twelve greatest gods. And he named it by the name of the Hill of
Kronos; for theretofore it was without name, when Oinomaos was king,
and it was sprinkled with much snow[6].

And at this first-born rite the Fates stood hard at hand, and he who
alone proveth sure truth, even Time. He travelling onward hath told us
the clear tale of how the founder set apart the choicest of the spoil
for an offering from the war, and sacrificed, and how he ordained the
fifth-year feast with the victories of that first Olympiad.

Who then won to their lot the new-appointed crown by hands or feet
or chariot, setting before them the prize of glory in the games, and
winning it by their act? In the foot-race down the straight course of
the stadion was Likymnios' son Oionos first, from Nidea had he led his
host: in the wrestling was Tegea glorified by Echemos: Doryklos won
the prize of boxing, a dweller in the city of Tiryns, and with the
four-horse chariot, Samos of Mantinea, Halirrhothios' son: with the
javelin Phrastor hit the mark: in distance Enikeus beyond all others
hurled the stone with a circling sweep, and all the warrior company
thundered a great applause.

Then on the evening the lovely shining of the fair-faced moon beamed
forth, and all the precinct sounded with songs of festal glee, after
the manner which is to this day for triumph.

So following the first beginning of old time, we likewise in a song
named of proud victory will celebrate the thunder and the flaming
bolt of loud-pealing Zeus, the fiery lightning that goeth with all
victory[7].

And soft tones to the music of the flute shall meet and mingle with my
verse, which beside famous Dirke hath come to light after long time.

But even as a son by his lawful wife is welcome to a father who hath
now travelled to the other side of youth, and maketh his soul warm
with love--for wealth that must fall to a strange owner from without
is most hateful to a dying man--so also, Agesidamos, when a man who
hath done honourable deeds goeth unsung to the house of Hades, this
man hath spent vain breath, and won but brief gladness for his toil.

On thee the pleasant lyre and the sweet pipe shed their grace, and the
Pierian daughters of Zeus foster thy wide-spread fame.

I with them, setting myself thereunto fervently, have embraced the
Lokrians' famous race, and have sprinkled my honey upon a city of
goodly men: and I have told the praises of Archestratos' comely son,
whom I beheld victorious by the might of his hand beside the altar at
Olympia, and saw on that day how fair he was of form, how gifted with
that spring-tide bloom, which erst with favour of the Cyprian queen
warded from Ganymede unrelenting death.


[Footnote 1: Reading [Greek: horat on hopa].]

[Footnote 2: This Kyknos seems to have been a Lokrian freebooter, said
to have fought with success against Herakles.]

[Footnote 3: His trainer.]

[Footnote 4: Probably because Zeus was especially concerned, both with
the fulfilment of promises and with the Olympic games.]

[Footnote 5: For the story of these Moliones see Nestor's speech, Hom.
Il. xi. 670-761.]

[Footnote 6: Perhaps this implies a tradition of a colder climate
anciently prevailing in Peloponnesos: perhaps the mention of snow is
merely picturesque, referring to the habitual appearance of the hill
in winter, and the passage should then rather be rendered 'when
Oinomaos was king its snow-sprinkled top was without name.']

[Footnote 7: The Lokrians worshipped Zeus especially as the Thunderer,
as certain coins of theirs, stamped with a thunderbolt, still
testify.]



XII.

FOR ERGOTELES OF HIMERA,

WINNER IN THE LONG FOOT-RACE.

       *       *       *       *       *

  Ergoteles was a native of Knosos in Crete, but civil dissension had
  compelled him to leave his country. He came to Sicily and was
  naturalized as a citizen of Himera. Had he stayed in Crete he
  would not have won this victory; nor the Pythian and Isthmian
  victories, referred to at the end of the ode, for the Cretans seem to
  have kept aloof, in an insular spirit, from the Panhellenic games.

  The date of the ode is B.C. 472, the year after the Himeraeans had
  expelled the tyrant Thrasydaios of Akragas. The prayer to Fortune
  would seem to have reference specially to this event. The ode was
  probably sung in a temple either of Zeus or of Fortune.

       *       *       *       *       *

I pray thee, daughter of Zeus the Deliverer, keep watch over
wide-ruling Himera, O saviour Fortune.

By thee upon the sea swift ships are piloted, and on dry land fierce
wars and meetings of councils.

Up and down the hopes of men are tossed as they cleave the waves of
baffling falsity: and a sure token of what shall come to pass hath
never any man on the earth received from God: the divinations of
things to come are blind.

Many the chances that fall to men when they look not for them,
sometimes to thwart delight, yet others after battling with the surge
of sorrowful pain have suddenly received for their affliction some
happiness profound.

Son of Philanor, verily even the glory of thy fleet feet would have
fallen into the sere leaf unrenowned, abiding by the hearth of thy
kin, as a cock that fighteth but at home, had not the strife of
citizen against citizen driven thee from Knosos thy native land.

But now at Olympia hast thou won a crown, O Ergoteles, and at Pytho
twice, and at Isthmos, whereby thou glorifiest the hot springs where
the nymphs Sicilian bathe, dwelling in a land that is become to thee
as thine own.



XIII.

FOR XENOPHON OF CORINTH,

WINNER IN THE STADION RACE AND IN THE PENTATHLON.

       *       *       *       *       *

The date of this victory is B.C. 464, when Xenophon won both the
Stadion, or short foot-race of about a furlong or 220 yards, and also
the Pentathlon, that is, probably, he won at least three out of the
five contests which composed the Pentathlon--the Jump, Throwing the
Disk, Throwing the Javelin, the Foot-race, and Wrestling, ([Greek:
alma podokeian diskon akonta palaen]). For details, see Dict. Antiq.
and Note on Nem. vii 71-73.

This ode and the speech of Glaukos in the sixth Book of the Iliad
are the most conspicuous passages in poetry which refer to the great
Corinthian hero Bellerophon.

It is thought that this ode was sung on the winner's public entrance
into Corinth.

       *       *       *       *       *

Thrice winner in Olympic games, of citizens beloved, to strangers
hospitable, the house in whose praise will I now celebrate happy
Corinth, portal of Isthmian Poseidon and nursery of splendid youth.
For therein dwell Order, and her sisters, sure foundation of states,
Justice and likeminded Peace, dispensers of wealth to men, wise
Themis' golden daughters. And they are minded to keep far from them
Insolence the braggart mother of Loathing.

I have fair witness to bear of them, and a just boldness stirreth my
tongue to speak. Nature inborn none shall prevail to hide. Unto you,
sons[1] of Aletes, ofttimes have the flowery Hours given splendour
of victory, as to men excelling in valour, pre-eminent at the sacred
games, and ofttimes of old have they put subtleties into your men's
hearts to devise; and of an inventor cometh every work.

Whence were revealed the new graces of Dionysos with the dithyramb
that winneth the ox[2]? Who made new means of guidance to the harness
of horses, or on the shrines of gods set the twin images of the king
of birds [3]? Among them thriveth the Muse of dulcet breath, and Ares
in the young men's terrible spears. Sovran lord of Olympia, be not
thou jealous of my words henceforth for ever, O father Zeus; rule
thou this folk unharmed, and keep unchanged the favourable gale of
Xenophon's good hap. Welcome from him this customary escort of his
crown, which from the plains of Pisa he is bringing, having won with
the five contests the stadion-race beside; the like whereof never yet
did mortal man.

Also two parsley-wreaths shadowed his head before the people at the
games of Isthmos, nor doth Nemea tell a different tale. And of his
father Thessalos' lightning feet is record by the streams of Alpheos,
and at Pytho he hath renown for the single and for the double stadion
gained both in a single day, and in the same month at rocky Athens a
day of swiftness crowned his hair for three illustrious deeds, and the
Hellotia[4] seven times, and at the games of Poseidon between seas
longer hymns followed his father Ptoiodoros with Terpsias and
Eritimos. And how often ye were first at Delphi or in the Pastures of
the Lion[5], though with full many do I match your crowd of honours,
yet can I no more surely tell than the tale of pebbles on the
sea-shore. But in everything is there due measure, and most excellent
is it to have respect unto fitness of times.

I with your fleet sailing a privateer will speak no lie concerning the
valour of Corinth's heroes, whether I proclaim the craft of her men
of old or their might in war, whether of Sisyphos of subtlest cunning
even as a god, and Medea who made for herself a marriage in her sire's
despite, saviour of the ship Argo and her crew: or whether how of old
in the struggle before the walls of Dardanos the sons of Corinth were
deemed to turn the issue of battle either way, these with Atreus' son
striving to win Helen back, those to thrust them utterly away[6].

Now when Glaukos was come thither out of Lydia the Danaoi feared him.
To them he proclaimed that in the city of Peirene his sire bare rule
and had rich heritage of land and palace, even he who once, when he
longed to bridle the snaky Gorgon's son, Pegasos, at Peirene's spring,
suffered many things, until the time when maiden Pallas brought to
him a bit with head-band of gold, and from a dream behold it was very
deed.

For she said unto him 'Sleepest thou O Aiolid king? Come, take this
charmer of steeds, and show it to thy father[7] the tamer of horses,
with the sacrifice of a white bull.'

Thus in the darkness as he slumbered spake the maiden wielder of
the shadowy aegis--so it seemed unto him--and he leapt up and stood
upright upon his feet. And he seized the wondrous bit that lay by his
side, and found with joy the prophet of the land, and showed to him,
the son of Koiranos, the whole issue of the matter, how on the altar
of the goddess he lay all night according to the word of his prophecy,
and how with her own hands the child of Zeus whose spear is the
lightning brought unto him the soul-subduing gold.

Then the seer bade him with all speed obey the vision, and that when
he should have sacrificed to the wide-ruling Earth-enfolder the
strong-foot beast[8], he should build an altar straightway to Athene,
queen of steeds.

Now the power of Gods bringeth easily to pass such things as make
forecast forsworn. Surely with zealous haste did bold Bellerophon bind
round the winged steed's jaw the softening charm, and make him his:
then straightway he flew up and disported him in his brazen arms.

In company with that horse also on a time, from out of the bosom of
the chill and desert air, he smote the archer host of Amazons, and
slew the Solymoi, and Chimaira breathing fire. I will keep silence
touching the fate of him: howbeit Pegasos hath in Olympus found a home
in the ancient stalls of Zeus.

But for me who am to hurl straight the whirling javelin it is not meet
to spend beside the mark my store of darts with utmost force of hand:
for to the Muses throned in splendour and to the Oligaithidai a
willing ally came I, at the Isthmos and again at Nemea. In a brief
word will I proclaim the host of them, and a witness sworn and true
shall be to me in the sweet-tongued voice of the good herald[9], heard
at both places sixty times.

Now have their acts at Olympia, methinks, been told already: of those
that shall be hereafter I will hereafter clearly speak. Now I live in
hope, but the end is in the hands of gods. But if the fortune of the
house fail not, we will commit to Zeus and Enyalios the accomplishment
thereof.

Yet other glories won they, by Parnassos' brow, and at Argos how many
and at Thebes, and such as nigh the Arcadians[10] the lordly altar of
Zeus Lykaios shall attest, and Pallene, and Sikyon, and Megara,
and the well-fenced grove of the Aiakidai, and Eleusis, and lusty
Marathon, and the fair rich cities beneath Aetna's towering crest, and
Euboea. Nay over all Hellas if thou searchest, thou shalt find more
than one sight can view.

O king Zeus the Accomplisher, grant them with so light feet[11] to
move through life, give them all honour, and sweet hap of their goodly
things.


[Footnote 1: The clan of the Oligaithidai, to which Xenophon
belonged.]

[Footnote 2: I. e. as a prize. But the passage may be taken
differently as referring to the symbolical identification of Dionysos
with the bull. Dithyrambic poetry was said to have been invented or
improved by Arion of Corinth.]

[Footnote 3: This refers to the introduction into architecture by the
Corinthians of the pediment, within or above which were at that time
constantly placed images of eagles.]

[Footnote 4: The feast of Athene Hellotis.]

[Footnote 5: Nemea.]

[Footnote 6: The Lykians who fought under Glaukos on the Trojan side
were of Corinthian descent.]

[Footnote 7: Poseidon.]

[Footnote 8: A bull.]

[Footnote 9: Proclaiming the name and city of the winner in the
games.]

[Footnote 10: Reading [Greek: Arkasin asson].]

[Footnote 11: As in their foot-races.]



XIV.

FOR ASOPICHOS OF ORCHOMENOS,

WINNER IN THE BOYS' SHORT FOOT-RACE.

       *       *       *       *       *

This ode was to be sung, probably by a chorus of boys, at the winner's
city Orchomenos, and most likely in the temple of the three or Graces,
Aglaia, Euphrosyne and Thalia.

The date of the victory is B.C. 476.

       *       *       *       *       *

O ye who haunt the land of goodly steeds that drinketh of Kephisos'
waters, lusty Orchomenos' queens renowned in song, O Graces, guardians
of the Minyai's ancient race, hearken, for unto you I pray. For by
your gift come unto men all pleasant things and sweet, and the wisdom
of a man and his beauty, and the splendour of his fame. Yea even gods
without the Graces' aid rule never at feast or dance; but these have
charge of all things done in heaven, and beside Pythian Apollo of
the golden bow they have set their thrones, and worship the eternal
majesty of the Olympian Father.

O lady Aglaia, and thou Euphrosyne, lover of song, children of the
mightiest of the gods, listen and hear, and thou Thalia delighting in
sweet sounds, and look down upon this triumphal company, moving with
light step under happy fate. In Lydian mood of melody concerning
Asopichos am I come hither to sing, for that through thee, Aglaia,
in the Olympic games the Minyai's home is winner. Fly, Echo, to
Persephone's dark-walled home, and to his father bear the noble
tidings, that seeing him thou mayest speak to him of his son, saying
that for his father's honour in Pisa's famous valley he hath crowned
his boyish hair with garlands from the glorious games.



THE PYTHIAN ODES.

I.

FOR HIERON OF AITNA,

WINNER IN THE CHARIOT-RACE.

       *       *       *       *       *
The date of this victory is B.C. 474

In the year 480, the year of Salamis, the Syracusans under Hieron had
defeated the Carthaginians in the great battle of Himera.

In 479 a great eruption of Etna (Aitna) began. In 476 Hieron founded,
near the mountain but we may suppose at a safe distance, the new city
of Aitna, in honour of which he had himself proclaimed as an Aitnaian
after this and other victories in the games.

And in this same year, 474, he had defeated the Etruscans, or Tuscans,
or Tyrrhenians in a great sea-fight before Cumae.

Pindar might well delight to honour those who had been waging so well
against the barbarians of the South and West the same war which the
Hellenes of the mother-country waged against the barbarians of the
East.

       *       *       *       *       *

O golden Lyre, thou common treasure of Apollo and the Muses
violet-tressed, thou whom the dancer's step, prelude of festal mirth,
obeyeth, and the singers heed thy bidding, what time with quivering
strings thou utterest preamble of choir-leading overture--lo even the
sworded lightning of immortal fire thou quenched, and on the sceptre
of Zeus his eagle sleepeth, slackening his swift wings either side,
the king of birds, for a dark mist thou hast distilled on his arched
head, a gentle seal upon his eyes, and he in slumber heaveth his
supple back, spell-bound beneath thy throbs.

Yea also violent Ares, leaving far off the fierce point of his spears,
letteth his heart have joy in rest, for thy shafts soothe hearts
divine by the cunning of Leto's son and the deep-bosomed Muses.

But whatsoever things Zeus loveth not fly frighted from the voice of
the Pierides, whether on earth or on the raging sea; whereof is he who
lieth in dreadful Tartaros, the foe of the gods, Typhon of the hundred
heads, whom erst the den Kilikian of many names did breed, but now
verily the sea-constraining cliffs beyond Cumae, and Sicily, lie heavy
on his shaggy breast: and he is fast bound by a pillar of the sky,
even by snowy Etna, nursing the whole year's length her frozen snow.

Whereout pure springs of unapproachable fire are vomited from the
inmost depths: in the daytime the lava-streams pour forth a lurid rush
of smoke: but in the darkness a red rolling flame sweepeth rocks with
uproar to the wide deep sea.

That dragon-thing[1] it is that maketh issue from beneath the terrible
fiery flood, a monster marvellous to look upon, yea a marvel to hear
of from such as go thereby and tell what thing is prisoned between
the dark-wooded tops of Etna and the plain, where the back of him is
galled and furrowed by the bed whereon he lieth.

O Zeus, be it ours to find favour in thy sight, who art defender
of this mountain, the forehead of a fruitful land, whose namesake
neighbour city hath been ennobled by her glorious founder, for that on
the race-course at the Pythian games the herald made proclamation of
her name aloud, telling of Hieron's fair victory in the chariot-race.

Now the first boon to men in ships is that a favourable breeze come to
them as they set forth upon the sea; for this is promise that in
the end also they shall come with good hap home. So after this good
fortune doth reason show us hope of crowns to come for Aitna's horses,
and honour in the banquet-songs.

O Phoibos, lord of Lykia and of Delos, who lovest the spring of
Castaly on thy Parnassos, be this the purpose of thy will, and grant
the land fair issue of her men.

For from gods come all means of mortal valour, hereby come bards and
men of mighty hand and eloquent speech.

This is the man I am fain to praise, and trust that not outside the
ring shall I hurl the bronze-tipped javelin I brandish in my hand, but
with far throw outdo my rivals in the match.

Would that his whole life may give him, even as now, good luck and
wealth right onward, and of his pains forgetfulness.

Verily it shall remind him in what fightings of wars he stood up with
steadfast soul, when the people found grace of glory at the hands
of gods, such as none of the Hellenes hath reaped, a proud crown of
wealth.

For after the ensample of Philoktetes he went but now to war: and when
necessity was upon them even they of proud spirit sought of him a
boon.

To Lemnos once they say came godlike heroes to fetch thence the archer
son of Paian, vexed of an ulcerous wound; and he sacked the city of
Priam and made an end of the Danaoi's labours, for the body wherewith
he went was sick, but this was destined from the beginning.

Even thus to Hieron may God be a guide for the time approaching, and
give him to lay hold upon the things of his desire.

Also in the house of Deinomenes do me grace, O Muse, to sing, for sake
of our four-horsed car: no alien joy to him is his sire's victory.

Come then and next for Etna's king let us devise a friendly song, for
whom with god-built freedom after the laws of Hyllic pattern hath that
city been founded of Hieron's hand: for the desire of the sons of
Pamphylos and of the Herakleidai dwelling beneath the heights of
Taygetos is to abide continually in the Dorian laws of Aigimios. At
Amyklai they dwelt prosperously, when they were come down out of
Pindos and drew near in honour to the Tyndaridai who ride on white
horses, and the glory of their spears waxed great.

Thou Zeus, with whom are the issues of things, grant that the true
speech of men ever bear no worse report of citizens and kings beside
the water of Amenas. By thine aid shall a man that is chief and
that instructeth his son after him give due honour unto his people and
move them to be of one voice peacefully.

I pray thee, son of Kronos, grant that the Phenician and the Tuscan
war-cry be hushed at home, since they have beheld the calamity of
their ships that befell them before Cumae, even how they were smitten
by the captain of the Syracusans, who from their swift ships hurled
their youth into the sea, to deliver Hellas from the bondage of the
oppressor.

From Salamis shall I of Athenians take reward of thanks, at Sparta
when I shall tell[2] in a song to come of the battle[3] before
Kithairon, wherein the Medes that bear crooked bows were overthrown,
but by the fair-watered banks of Himeras it shall be for the song
I have rendered to the sons of Deinomenes, which by their valour they
have earned, since the men that warred against them are overthrown.

If thou shalt speak in season, and comprehend in brief the ends of
many matters, less impeachment followeth of men; for surfeit blunteth
the eagerness of expectancy; and city-talk of others' praise grieveth
hearts secretly.

Nevertheless, for that envy is preferred before pity[4], let slip not
fair occasion: guide with just helm thy people and forge the sword
of thy speech on an anvil whereof cometh no lie. Even a word falling
lightly is of import in that it proceedeth from thee. Of many things
art thou steward: many witnesses are there to thy deeds of either
kind.

But abiding in the fair flower of this spirit, if thou art fain to be
continually of good report, be not too careful for the cost: loose
free like a mariner thy sail unto the wind.

Friend, be not deceived by time-serving words of guile. The voice of
the report that liveth after a man, this alone revealeth the lives of
dead men to the singers and to the chroniclers: the loving-kindness
of Craesus fadeth not away; but him who burned men with fire within a
brazen bull, Phalaris that had no pity, men tell of everywhere
with hate, neither will any lute in hall suffer him in the gentle
fellowship of young boys' themes of songs.

To be happy is the chiefest prize; to be glorious the next lot: if a
man have lighted on both and taken them to be his, he hath attained
unto the supreme crown.


[Footnote 1: Typhon.]

[Footnote 2: Reading [Greek: erion].]

[Footnote 3: Plataea.]

[Footnote 4: I. e. it is better to be envied than to be pitied.]



II.

FOR HIERON OF SYRACUSE,

WINNER IN THE CHARIOT-RACE.

       *       *       *       *       *

The classification of this ode as Pythian is probably a mistake:
perhaps the victory was won at the Theban festival in honour of
Herakles, or of Iolaos.

Anaxilaos, tyrant of Rhegium and Messana, had been deterred by
Hieron's threats from attacking the Epizephyrian Lokrians, and the ode
is partly occupied with congratulations of Hieron on this protective
act. As Anaxilaos died B.C. 476, and Hieron was only placed at the
head of the Syracusan state two years before, this seems to fix the
date somewhere in these two years. As Pindar talks of sending his song
across the sea, we may suppose that it was sung at Syracuse.

There is much obscurity about the significances of this ode. The
poet's motive in telling the story of Ixion's sins has been variously
guessed at. Some think it was meant to deter Hieron from contriving
the death of his brother Polyzelos in battle in order to get
possession of Polyzelos' wife (and if Hieron was to be suspected of
such a thought it would be quite in Pindar's manner to mingle warning
and reproof with praise): some think that it refers to the ingratitude
of Anaxilaos toward Hieron. And most probably the latter part of the
ode, in which sincerity is approved, and flattery and calumny are
condemned, had some special and personal reference, though we need not
suppose, as the commentators are fond of doing here and elsewhere,
that it was aimed at Bacchylides or other rival poets.

       *       *       *       *       *

Great city of Syracuse, precinct of warrior Ares, of iron-armed men
and steeds the nursing-place divine, to thee I come[1], bearing from
my bright Thebes this song, the tidings of earth-shaking racing of the
four-horse car, wherein hath Hieron with his goodly chariot
overcome, and decked with far-seen splendour of crowns Ortygia the
dwelling-place of Artemis of the river, her by whose help he tamed
with soothing hand his colts of spangled rein.

For the archer maiden with both hands fitteth the glittering
trappings, and Hermes, god of games, whensoever Hieron to the polished
car and bridle-guided wheels[2] yoketh the strength of his steeds,
calling on the wide-ruling god, the trident-wielder.

Now unto various kings pay various men sweet song, their valour's
meed. So the fair speech of Cyprus echoeth around the name of Kinyras,
him whom Apollo of the golden hair loved fervently, and who dwelt a
priest in the house of Aphrodite: for to such praise are men moved by
the thankfulness that followeth the recompense of friendly acts. But
of thee, O thou son of Deinomenes, the maiden daughter of the Lokrian
in the west before the house-door telleth in her song, being out of
bewildering woes of war by thy might delivered, so that her eyes are
not afraid for anything.

Ixion, they say, by order of the gods, writhing on his winged wheel,
proclaimeth this message unto men: _To him who doeth thee service make
recompense of fair reward_.

This lesson learned he plainly; for when that among the friendly
Kronidai he had gotten a life of pleasantness, his bliss became
greater than he could bear, and with mad heart he lusted after Hera,
whose place was in the happy marriage-bed of Zeus: yet insolence drove
him to the exceeding folly; but quickly suffering his deserts the man
gained to himself a misery most rare.

Two sins are the causes of his pain; one that he first among the
heroes shed blood of kindred[3] craftily, the other that in the
chambers of the ample heavens he attempted the wife of Zeus--for in
all things it behoveth to take measure by oneself[4].

Yet a mocking love-bed hurried him as he approached the couch[5] into
a sea of trouble; for he lay with a cloud, pursuing the sweet lie,
fond man: for its form was as the form of the most highest among the
daughters of heaven, even the child of Kronos; and the hands of Zeus
had made it that it might be a snare unto him, a fair mischief. Thus
came he unto the four-spoked wheel, his own destruction; and having
fallen into chains without escape he became proclaimer of that
message[6] unto many.

His mate[7], without favour of the Graces, bare unto him a monstrous
son, and like no other thing anywhere, even as its mother was, a thing
with no place or honour, neither among men, neither in the society of
gods. Him she reared and called by the name Kentauros, and he in the
valleys of Pelion lay with Magnesian mares, and there were born thence
a wondrous tribe, like unto both parents, their nether parts like unto
the dams, and their upper parts like unto the sire.

God achieveth all ends whereon he thinketh--God who overtaketh even
the winged eagle, and outstrippeth the dolphin of the sea, and
bringeth low many a man in his pride, while to others he giveth glory
incorruptible.

For me it is meet to eschew the sharp tooth of bitter words; for,
though afar off, I have seen the fierce Archilochos lacking most
things and fattening but on cruel words of hate. Of most worth are
riches when joined to the happy gift of wisdom. And this lot hast
thou, and mayest illustrate it with liberal soul, thou sovereign chief
over many streets filled with goodly garlands, and much people. If any
saith that ever yet was any man of old time throughout Hellas who
excelled thee in honour or in the multitude of possessions, such an one
with vain purpose essayeth a fruitless task.

Upon the flower-crowned prow[8] will I go up to sing of brave deeds
done. Youth is approved by valour in dread wars; and hence say I that
thou hast won boundless renown in thy battles, now with horsemen, now
on foot: also the counsels of thine elder years give me sure ground of
praising thee every way.

All hail! This song like to Phenician merchandize is sent across the
hoary sea: do thou look favourably on the strain of Kaster in Aeolian
mood[9], and greet it in honour of the seven-stringed lute.

Be what thou art, now I have told thee what that is: in the eyes of
children the fawning ape is ever comely: but the good fortune of
Rhadamanthos hath come to him because the fruit that his soul bare was
true, neither delighteth he in deceits within his heart, such as by
whisperer's arts ever wait upon mortal man.

An overpowering evil are the secret speakings of slander, to the
slandered and to the listener thereto alike, and are as foxes in
relentless temper. Yet for the beast whose name is of gain[10] what
great thing is gained thereby? For like the cork above the net, while
the rest of the tackle laboureth deep in the sea, I am unmerged in the
brine.

Impossible is it that a guileful citizen utter potent words among the
good, nevertheless he fawneth on all and useth every subtlety. No part
have I in that bold boast of his, 'Let me be a friend to my friend,
but toward an enemy I will be an enemy and as a wolf will cross his
path, treading now here now there in crooked ways[11].' For every form
of polity is a man of direct speech best, whether under a despotism,
or whether the wild multitude, or the wisest, have the state in their
keeping.

Against God it is not meet to strive, who now upholdeth these, and
now again to those giveth great glory. But not even this cheereth the
heart of the envious; for they measure by an unjust balance, and their
own hearts they afflict with bitter pain, till such time as they
attain to that which their hearts devise.

To take the car's yoke on one's neck and run on lightly, this helpeth;
but to kick against the goad is to make the course perilous. Be it
mine to dwell among the good, and to win their love.


[Footnote 1: Pindar here identifies himself with his ode, which he
sent, not took, to Syracuse. Compare Ol. vii. 13, &c.]

[Footnote 2: Properly [Greek: harmata] would seem to include all
except the body of the chariot ([Greek: diphros]) in which the
charioteer stood.]

[Footnote 3: His father-in-law Deioneus.]

[Footnote 4: I. e. to estimate rightly one's capacities,
circumstances, rights, duties.]

[Footnote 5: Reading [Greek: poti koiton ikont'].]

[Footnote 6: The message spoken of above, v. 24.]

[Footnote 7: The cloud, the phantom-Hera.]

[Footnote 8: The prow of the ship carrying this ode, with which
Pindar, as has been said, identifies himself.]

[Footnote 9: It is supposed that another ode, more especially in
honour of the chariot-victory, is here meant, which was to be sent
later.

From this point to the end the ode reads like a postscript of private
import and reference.]

[Footnote 10: It is at least doubtful whether [Greek: kerdo] a fox is
really connected with [Greek: kerdos] gain.]

[Footnote 11: It appears to me to be an absurdity to suppose that
Pindar means to express in this sentence his own rule of conduct,
as the commentators have fancied. He is all through this passage
condemning 'crooked ways.']



III.

FOR HIERON OF SYRACUSE,

WINNER IN THE HORSE-RACE.

       *       *       *       *       *

The dates both of the victory and of the ode are uncertain. But as
Pherenikos, the horse that won this race at Pytho, is the same that
won at Olympia B.C. 472, in honour of which event the First Olympian
was written, the victory cannot have been very long before that date,
though the language of the ode implies that it was written a good deal
later, probably for an anniversary of the victory. It must at least
have been written before Hieron's death in 467. It is much occupied
with his illness.

       *       *       *       *       *

Fain were I (if meet it be to utter from my mouth the prayer conceived
of all) that Cheiron the son of Philyra were alive and had not
perished among men, even the wide-ruling seed of Kronos the son of
Ouranos; and that there still lorded it in Pelion's glens that Beast
untamed, whose soul was loving unto men, even such as when of old he
trained the gentle deviser of limb-saving anodynes, Asklepios, the
hero that was a defence against all kind of bodily plague.

Of him was the daughter[1] of Phlegyas of goodly steeds not yet
delivered by Eileithuia aid of mothers, ere by the golden bow she was
slain at the hands of Artemis, and from her child-bed chamber went
down into the house of Hades, by contriving of Apollo. Not idle is the
wrath of sons of Zeus.

She in the folly of her heart had set Apollo at nought, and taken
another spouse without knowledge of her sire, albeit ere then she had
lain with Phoibos of the unshorn hair, and bare within her the seed of
a very god.

Neither awaited she the marriage-tables nor the sound of many voices
in hymeneal song, such as the bride's girl-mates are wont to sing at
eventide with merry minstrelsy: but lo, she had longing for things
otherwhere, even as many before and after. For a tribe there is most
foolish among men, of such as scorn the things of home, and gaze on
things that are afar off, and chase a cheating prey with hopes that
shall never be fulfilled.

Of such sort was the frenzied strong desire fair-robed Koronis
harboured in her heart, for she lay in the couch of a stranger that
was come from Arcady.

But one that watched beheld her: for albeit he was at sheep-gathering
Pytho, yet was the temple's king Loxias aware thereof, beside his
unerring partner[2], for he gave heed to his own wisdom, his mind that
knoweth all things; in lies it hath no part, neither in act or thought
may god or man deceive him.

Therefore when he was aware of how she lay with the stranger Ischys
son of Elatos, and of her guile unrighteous, he sent his sister fierce
with terrible wrath to go to Lakereia--for by the steep shores of the
Boibian lake was the home of her virginity--and thus a doom adverse
blasted her life and smote her down: and of her neighbours many fared
ill therefore and perished with her: so doth a fire that from one
spark has leapt upon a mou