Pythian

Pindar

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

  1. come and greet the gracious offering of the seven-toned lyre. Learn and become who you are. To children, you know, an ape is pretty, always
  2. pretty. But Rhadamanthys has prospered, because his allotted portion was the blameless fruit of intelligence, and he does not delight his inner spirit with deceptions,
  3. the kind that always follow a man because of the schemes of whisperers. Those who mutter slander are an evil that makes both sides helpless; they are utterly like foxes in their temper. But what does the fox really gain by outfoxing? For while the rest of the tackle labors in the depths,
  4. I am unsinkable, like a cork above the surface of the salt sea. [*](With Snell the comma is omitted between ἕρκος and ἅλμας. )
  5. A crafty citizen is unable to speak a compelling word among noble men; and yet he fawns on everyone, weaving complete destruction. [*](Reading with Snell ἄταν for ἀγὰν. ) I do not share his boldness. Let me be a friend to my friend; but I will be an enemy to my enemy, and pounce on him like a wolf,
  6. treading every crooked path. Under every type of law the man who speaks straightforwardly prospers: in a tyranny, and where the raucous masses oversee the state, and where men of skill do. One must not fight against a god,
  7. who raises up some men’s fortunes at one time, and at another gives great glory to others. But even this
  8. does not comfort the minds of the envious; they pull the line too tight and plant a painful wound in their own heart before they get what they are scheming for. It is best to take the yoke on one’s neck and bear it lightly; kicking against the goad
  9. makes the path treacherous. I hope that I may associate with noble men and please them.
  1. If it were proper for this commonplace prayer to be made by my tongue, I would want Cheiron the son of Philyra to be alive again, he who has departed, the wide-ruling son of Cronus son of Uranus; and I would want him to reign again in the glens of Pelion, the beast of the wilds
  2. whose mind was friendly to men; just as he was when once he reared Asclepius, that gentle craftsman who drove pain from the limbs that he healed, that hero who cured all types of diseases.
  3. His mother, the daughter of Phlegyas with his fine horses, before she could bring him to term with the help of Eleithuia who attends on childbirth, was stricken by the golden
  4. arrows of Artemis in her bedroom and descended to the house of Hades, by the skills of Apollo. The anger of the children of Zeus is not in vain. But she made light of Apollo, in the error of her mind, and consented to another marriage without her father’s knowledge, although she had before lain with Phoebus of the unshorn hair,
  5. and was bearing within her the pure seed of the god. She did not wait for the marriage-feast to come, nor for the full-voiced cry of the hymenaeal chorus, such things as unmarried girls her own age love to murmur in evening songs to their companion. [*](Reading with Snell ἑταίρᾳ for ἑταῖραι.) Instead,
  6. she was in love with what was distant; many others have felt that passion. There is a worthless tribe among men which dishonors what is at home and looks far away, hunting down empty air with hopes that cannot be fulfilled.
  7. Such was the strong infatuation
  8. that the spirit of lovely-robed Coronis had caught. For she lay in the bed of a stranger who came from Arcadia ; but she did not elude the watcher. Even in Pytho where sheep are sacrificed, the king of the temple happened to perceive it, Loxias, persuading his thoughts with his unerring counsellor: his mind, which knows all things. He does not grasp falsehood, and he is deceived
  9. by neither god nor man, neither in deeds nor in thoughts.
  10. Knowing even then of her sleeping with Ischys, son of Elatus, and of her lawless deceit, he sent his sister, raging with irresistible force, to Lacereia, since the girl lived by the banks of Lake Boebias.
  11. A contrary fortune turned her to evil and overcame her. And many neighbors shared her fate and perished with her; fire leaps from a single spark on a mountain, and destroys a great forest.