Pythian

Pindar

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

  1. 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,
  2. Telesicrates, or her son;
  3. 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
  4. 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.
  5. They wanted
  6. 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,
  7. and told them to decide with a footrace which of the heroes, who came to be bridegrooms, would take which bride.
  8. 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
  9. 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,
  10. 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.
  4. Apollo, the end and the beginning both grow sweet when a god urges on a man«s work. No doubt he accomplished this with the help of your counsels. Kinship has stepped into the footprints of the father,
  5. who was twice an Olympic victor in the war-enduring armor of Ares;
  6. and the contest in the deep meadow that stretches beneath the rock of Cirrha made Phricias victorious in the race. May a good fate follow them in their future days as well, so that their noble wealth will blossom;
  7. having received no small share of the delights of Greece, may they encounter no envious reversals at the hands of the gods. A god«s heart should be free from pain; but a man is considered fortunate, and wise poets sing his praises, if he wins victory with his hands or the excellence of his feet, and takes the greatest prizes through his courage and strength,
  8. and lives to see his young son duly winning Pythian garlands. He can never set foot in the bronze heavens; but whatever splendor we mortals can attain, he reaches the limit of that voyage. Neither by ship nor on foot could you find
  9. the marvellous road to the meeting-place of the Hyperboreans—
  10. Once Perseus, the leader of his people, entered their homes and feasted among them, when he found them sacrificing glorious hecatombs of donkeys to the god. In the festivities of those people