Nemean

Pindar

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

  1. 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.
  2. 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
  3. 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.
  4. Truly, they did not tear equal wounds in the warm flesh of the enemy when they were driven back
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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
  8. 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
  9. makes hardship painless. Truly, the song of victory existed long ago, even before the quarrel arose between Adrastus and the race of Cadmus.
  1. 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
  2. who jointly watch over steep Pytho.
  3. 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.
  4. Having mentioned them, I will adorn that hero with glorious honors,
  5. 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.
  6. A stronger man puts an end to the previous justice.
  7. 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,
  8. but to abstain from the journey.
  9. 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
  10. split the deep-breasted earth, and concealed him together with his horses,
  11. 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;