Olympian

Pindar

Pindar. Arnson Svarlien, Diane, translator. Created for the Perseus Project, 1990.

  1. when he had persuaded the Hyperborean people, the servants of Apollo, with speech. With trustworthy intentions he was entreating them for a shady plant, to be shared by all men and to be a garland of excellence in the grove of Zeus which is hospitable to all. For already the altars had been consecrated to his father, and in mid-month the full
  2. evening’s eye shone brightly, the Moon on her golden chariot,
  3. and he had established the consecrated trial of the great games along with the four years’ festival beside the sacred banks of the Alpheus. But Pelops’ sacred ground was not flourishing with beautiful trees in the valleys below the hill of Cronus. He saw that this garden, bare of trees, was exposed to the piercing rays of the sun.
  4. And so his spirit prompted him to travel to the land
  5. of the Danube, where the horse-driving daughter of Leto had received him when he came from the mountain-glens and deep, winding valleys of Arcadia ; through the commands of Eurystheus, compulsion from his father urged him on the quest of the doe with the golden horns, which once Taÿgete
  6. had inscribed as a sacred dedication to Artemis who sets things right.
  7. Pursuing that doe he had also seen that land beyond the cold blasts of Boreas; there he had stood and marvelled at the trees, and sweet desire for them possessed him, to plant them around the boundary-line of the horse-racing ground with its twelve courses. And now in his kindness he comes regularly to this festival of ours, together with the godlike
  8. twin sons of deep-waisted Leda.
  9. For Heracles, when he ascended to Olympus, assigned to them the ordering of the marvellous contest of men, the contest in excellence and in the driving of swift chariots. And so my spirit somehow urges me to say that glory has come to the Emmenidae and to Theron through the dispensation of the sons of Tyndareus with their fine horses, because that family
  10. comes to them with the most hospitable feasting-tables of any mortal men,
  11. observing the rites of the blessed gods with pious thoughts. If water is best and gold is the most honored of all possessions, so now Theron reaches the farthest point by his own native excellence; he touches the pillars of Heracles. Beyond that the wise cannot set foot; nor can the unskilled set foot
  12. beyond that. I will not pursue it; I would be a fool.