Nemean
Pindar
Pindar. Arnson Svarlien, Diane, translator. Created for the Perseus Project, 1990.
- For many stories have been told in many ways. But to find something new and submit it to the touchstone for testing is danger itself. Words are a dainty morsel for the envious; and envy always clings to the noble, and has no quarrel with worse men.
- Envy devoured the son of Telamon, throwing him onto his own sword. A man who was not gifted in speech, but brave in his heart, is held down by oblivion
- under deadly strife; and the greatest prize of honor has been offered to the shifty lie. For in a secret vote the Danaans favored Odysseus; and Aias, robbed of the golden armor, wrestled with death.
- Truly, they did not tear equal wounds in the warm flesh of the enemy when they were driven back
- under the man-protecting spear, at one time around the newly-slain corpse of Achilles, and on destructive days spent on other toils. It seems that hateful Misrepresentation existed even long ago: a fellow traveler of flattering tales, deceitful-minded, a malignant disgrace. She does violence to the illustrious, and upholds the rotten glory of the obscure.
- May I never have such a nature, father Zeus; may I stick to the simple paths of life, so that when I die I will not fasten a bad name to my children. Some men pray for gold, others for boundless land; I pray to find favor with my fellow-citizens until my limbs are buried in the earth, by praising what is praiseworthy and casting blame on wrongdoers.
- Excellence grows among skillful and just men up to the liquid air, as a tree shoots up fed by fresh dew. The uses of friends are of all kinds; those in times of toil are the highest, yet delight also seeks to set a trustworthy pledge before the eyes. Megas, to bring your soul back to life again
- is not possible for me. Empty hopes end in vain; but it is easy to set up, for your fatherland and for the Chariads, a monument of the Muses in honor of the twice illustrious feet of two men. I rejoice in letting fly a boast suitable to such a deed; and with incantations a man
- makes hardship painless. Truly, the song of victory existed long ago, even before the quarrel arose between Adrastus and the race of Cadmus.
- Muses, we will go in victory procession from Apollo’s shrine in Sicyon to newly-founded Aetna, where the doors flung open wide are overwhelmed by guests, at the prosperous home of Chromius. Make a sweet song of verses! For, mounting his chariot of victorious horses, he gives the word to sing for the mother and her twin children
- who jointly watch over steep Pytho.
- There is a saying among men: a noble deed when it is accomplished should not be buried silently in the ground; and divine song is suited to boasting. But we will wake the shouting lyre and the flute in honor of the very pinnacle of horse-contests, which Adrastus established for Phoebus by the streams of the Asopus.
- Having mentioned them, I will adorn that hero with glorious honors,
- who, at the time when he was ruler there, made his city famous and glorious with new festivals, and contests of men’s strength, and hollow chariots. For once Adrastus fled from bold-thinking Amphiaraus and terrible civil strife, from his ancestral home, Argos ; and the sons of Talaus were no longer rulers, overpowered by sedition.
- A stronger man puts an end to the previous justice.
- The sons of Talaus gave man-conquering Eriphyle, as a faithful pledge, in marriage to Amphiaraus son of Oicles, and became the most powerful of the golden-haired Danaans; and once they led a noble army of men to seven-gated Thebes—an expedition not attended by birds of good omen. In their mad desire to leave home, the son of Cronus, by whirling his lightning-bolt, urged them not to go,
- but to abstain from the journey.
- And so that company, in bronze armor, and with their horses in war-harnesses, was hastening to arrive at manifest doom. And planting [*](ἐρεισάμενοι. Wilamowitz: “ reditum in Ismeni ripa sibi fixerunt. ” ) their sweet return on the banks of the Ismenus, they fattened the white-flowering smoke with their corpses [*](Reading σώμασι πίαναν (Bergk). ). For seven funeral pyres feasted on their bodies’ young limbs. But, for the sake of Amphiaraus, Zeus with his all-powerful thunderbolt
- split the deep-breasted earth, and concealed him together with his horses,
- before he could be struck in the back by the spear of Periclymenus, and his warlike spirit disgraced. For amid divinely-sent panic even the children of gods flee. If it is possible, son of Cronus, I would like to put off for as long as I can this fierce trial of empurpled spears, this contest for life and death;