Pythian

Pindar

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

  1. all the handiwork of dextrous craftsmen, which he brought past the hill of Crisa to the hollow valley of the god. The cypress shrine keeps it
  2. beside the statue which the Cretan bowmen set up in the Parnassian chamber, carved from a single piece of wood.
  3. Therefore it is fitting to welcome a benefactor with a willing mind.
  4. Son of Alexibias, the lovely-haired Graces make you radiant. You are blessed, you who have, even after great hardship, a memorial of the best words. For among forty
  5. drivers who fell, having brought your chariot through unscathed with a fearless mind, you have come now from the splendid games to the plain of Libya and your ancestral city.
  6. But no man is without a share of toils, or ever will be.
  7. Yet the ancient prosperity of Battus continues, despite its dispensation of both good and bad, a tower of the city and a most brilliant shining eye to strangers. Even loud-roaring lions fled in fear from Battus, when he unleashed on them his voice from across the sea.
  8. And Apollo, the first leader, doomed the beasts to dread fear, so that his oracles to the guardian of Cyrene would not go unfulfilled.
  9. It is Apollo who dispenses remedies to men and women for grievous diseases,
  10. and who bestowed on us the cithara, and gives the Muses’ inspiration to whomever he will, bringing peaceful concord into the mind, and who possesses the oracular shrine; wherefore he settled the mighty descendants of Heracles and Aegimius in Lacedaemon
  11. and in Argos and in sacred Pylos. But it is my part to sing of the lovely glory that comes from Sparta,
  12. where the Aegeidae were born, and from there
  13. they went to Thera, my ancestors, not without the gods; they were led by a certain fate. From there we have received the feast with its many sacrifices, and at your
  14. banquet, Carneian Apollo, we honor the well-built city of Cyrene, which is held by foreigners who delight in bronze, the Trojan descendants of Antenor. For they came with Helen, after they had seen their native city consumed in the smoke
  15. of war. And that horse-driving race was faithfully welcomed with sacrifices by men who came to them bringing gifts, men whom Aristoteles [*](The other name of the founder of Cyrene, Battus. ) led, when, with his swift ships, he opened a deep path across the sea. And he founded precincts of the gods that were greater than before,
  16. and he established, for the processions of Apollo, protector of men, a straight cut, level, paved road for the clatter of horses’ hooves, where at the edge of the marketplace he rests by himself in death.
  17. He was blessed when he dwelled among men,
  18. and thereafter a hero worshipped by the people. Apart from him, in front of the houses, are the other sacred kings who took their allotted places in Hades, and somehow below the earth they hear, in their minds, great excellence sprinkled with gentle dew
  19. by the outpourings of victory-songs—prosperity for themselves, and a justly earned and shared grace for their son Arcesilas. It is fitting for him, in the song of the young men, to celebrate Phoebus with his golden sword,
  20. now that he has received from Pytho the graceful victory-song as a compensation for his expense. Intelligent men praise him. I will say what has been said by others: