Pythian

Pindar

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

  1. desirable fame from Delphi.
  2. Great excellence can always inspire many stories; but to embroider a short account from a lengthy theme is what wise men love to hear. Right proportion in the same way contains the gist of the whole; as seven-gated Thebes once knew well,
  3. Telesicrates was not dishonored by Iolaus; when he had cut off the head of Eurystheus with the edge of his sword, he was buried below the earth by the tomb of the charioteer Amphitryon, his father’s father, where he lay as the guest of the Sown Men, having come to dwell in the streets of the Cadmeans, who ride on white horses.
  4. Wise Alcmena lay with Amphitryon and with Zeus, and bore
  5. in a single birth twin sons, strong and victorious in battle. Only a mute man does not have Heracles’ name on his lips, and does not always remember the waters of Dirce, which reared him and Iphicles. To them I will sing a victory-song for the fulfillment of my prayer;
  6. may the pure light of the clear-voiced Graces not desert me. For I say that I have praised this city three times, in Aegina and on the hill of Nisus,
  7. truly escaping silent helplessness. Therefore, whether a man is friendly or hostile among the citizens, let him not obscure a thing that is done well for the common good and so dishonor the precept of the old man of the sea,
  8. who said to praise with all your spirit, and with justice, even an enemy when he accomplishes fine deeds. The women saw your many victories at the seasonal rites of Pallas, and each silently prayed that you could be her dear husband,
  9. Telesicrates, or her son;
  10. and in the Attic Olympia too, and in the contests of deep-bosomed Mother Earth, and in all your local games. But while I am quenching my thirst for song, someone exacts an unpaid debt from me, to awake again
  11. the ancient glory of his ancestors as well: for the sake of a Libyan woman they went to the city of Irasa, as suitors of the very famous daughter of Antaeus with the beautiful hair. Many excellent kinsmen sought her, and many strangers too, since her beauty was marvellous.
  12. They wanted
  13. to pluck the flowering fruit of golden-crowned Youth. But her father, cultivating for his daughter a more renowned marriage, heard how Danaus once in Argos had found for his forty-eight daughters, before noon overtook them, a very swift marriage. For right away he stood the whole band of suitors at the end of a course,
  14. and told them to decide with a footrace which of the heroes, who came to be bridegrooms, would take which bride.
  15. The Libyan too made such an offer in joining his daughter with a husband. He placed her at the goal, when he had arrayed her as the crowning prize, and in their midst he announced that that man should lead her to his home, whoever was the first to leap forward
  16. and touch her robes. There Alexidamus, when he had sped to the front of the swift race, took the noble girl’s hand in his hand and led her through the crowd of Nomad horsemen. They cast on that man many leaves and garlands,
  17. and before he had received many wings for his victories.
  1. Lacedaemon is prosperous; Thessaly is divinely blessed. Both are ruled by the race of a single ancestor, Heracles, the best in battle. Why do I make this untimely boast? Because Pytho summons me, and Pelinna,
  2. and the sons of Aleuas; they want me to present to Hippocleas the glorious voices of men in celebration.
  3. For he is trying his hand at contests, and the gorge of Parnassus proclaimed him to the people that live around as the greatest of the boys in the double-course footrace.