Pythian

Pindar

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

  1. 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
  2. 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,
  3. 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:
  4. he nurtures a mind and tongue that are beyond his years; in courage he is a long-winged eagle among birds; his strength in competition is like a bulwark. Among the Muses, he has had wings since he was a child in his dear mother’s lap,
  5. and he has proved himself a skillful charioteer.
  6. He has boldly tried every local opportunity for fine deeds, and now a god gladly brings his power to perfection; and in the future, blessed sons of Cronus, grant him the same, both in deeds and in counsels,
  7. lest some fruit-destroying blast of winter wind quell his life. The great mind of Zeus steers the fortune of men that he loves. I pray to him
  8. to grant another prize of honor at Olympia to the race of Battus.
  1. Listen! for we are again ploughing the field of dark-eyed Aphrodite, or of the Graces, as we approach the sacred navel of the loud-roaring land;
  2. where, for the prosperous Emmenids and Acragas on the river, and especially for Xenocrates, a Pythian victor’s treasure-house of songs has been built and is ready in the glen of Apollo, rich in gold.
  3. It is buffeted by neither the invading onset of winter rain, the loud-roaring cloud’s pitiless army, nor the wind that sweeps all kinds of rubble into the depths of the sea. Its facade, shining in pure light,
  4. will announce your chariot victory to the speech of men and make it famous—the victory you share with your father and your race, Thrasybulus, won in the vales of Crisa.
  5. You keep it on your right hand and
  6. uphold the commandment, one of the precepts which they say once in the mountains the son of Philyra enjoined on the powerful son of Peleus, when he was separated from his parents: first of the gods, worship the son of Cronus, the loud-voiced ruler of lightning and thunder;
  7. and never deprive your parents of such honor during their allotted lifetime.
  8. Long ago, too, powerful Antilochus showed that he had this way of thinking;
  9. he died for his father’s sake, by awaiting the man-slaying commander of the Ethiopians, Memnon. For the horse kept Nestor’s chariot from moving, since it had been wounded by Paris ’ arrows; and Memnon was aiming his strong spear.
  10. The old man of Messene, his mind reeling, shouted to his son;
  11. the cry he hurled did not fall to the ground; his god-like son stayed on the spot and paid for his father’s rescue with his own life,
  12. and because he accomplished this tremendous deed he seemed to the younger men to be the greatest man of his time in excellence towards his parents. These things are past. Of men alive today, Thrasybulus