C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
First Pythian Ode
By Pindar (c. 522–433 B.C.)
O
Apollo’s, dark-haired Muses’ joint heirloom,
Alert for whom
The dancer’s footstep listens, and the choir
Of singers wait the sound,
Beginning of the round
Of festal joy, whene’er thy quivering strings
Strike up a prelude to their carolings:
Thou slakest the lancèd bolt of quenchless fire;
Yea, drooped each wing that through the æther sweeps,
Upon his sceptre Zeus’s eagle sleeps,
The while thou sheddest o’er his beaked head bowed
A darkling cloud,
Sweet seal of the eyelids,—and in dreamful swound
His rippling back and sides
Heave with thy music’s tides;
Thou bidst impetuous Ares lay apart
His keen-edged spear, and soothe with sleep his heart;
Thou launchest at the breasts of gods, and bound
As by a spell, they own thy lulling power,
Latoides’s and the deep-zoned Muses’ dower.
Hearing the voice of the Pierides,
Or on the earth or on the restless seas,
Flee panic-stricken. One in Tartaros lies,
Typhon, the gods’ great hundred-headed foe.
The famed Kilikian cavern cradled him;
But now the hill-crags, lo,
O’er Kymè, towering from their ocean-rim,
And Sicily press upon his shaggy breast;
Adds to the rest
The frost-crowned prop of heaven her weight of woe;
Aitna, the yearlong nurse of biting snow,
Gush from her caves, most pure, untamable:
And all day well
The rivers, and the gleaming smoke-wreath’s spire;
And in the gloom of night—
A lurid-purple light—
The flame upheaves vast rocks, and with a roar
Whirls them far out upon the ocean-floor.
It is yon monster makes outpour these dire
Volcanic torrents: wondrous to behold,
A wonder e’en to hear by others told
’Neath dark-leaved heights of Aitna and the plain,
He writhes in pain,
His back all grided by his craggy bed.
Thine, thine the grace we implore,
O Zeus, that rulest o’er
This mountain, forehead of the fruitful land,
Over whose namesake city near at hand
Her illustrious founder hath a glory shed,
Her name proclaiming in the herald’s cries
What time his car at Pytho won the prize,
On outward voyage is a favoring breeze
Held first of blessings, bearing prophecies
Of fair beginning with fair ending crowned.
Auspicious falls her fortune by that word,
For conquering steeds ordained to future fame,
And to an honored name
In many a song of festal joyance heard.
O Phoibos, Lykian and Delian king
That lovest the spring
Kastalian of Parnasos, hold this fast,
Make her a nurse of heroes to the last.
Are all the means to human high emprise:
Men are born wise,
And strong of hand and eloquent of tongue.
And fain to praise, I trust
I fling not as in joust
One whirls and hurls the bronze-cheeked javelin
Without the lists, yet, hurling far, to win
Over my rivals. Ah (the wish hath clung),
If Hieron’s days but wealth and bliss bestow
As now, and add forgetfulness of woe,—
Back crowding memories of battles old
Wherein, stern-souled,
He stood what time the gods gave them a meed
Of honor such as ne’er
Hath fallen to Hellene’s share,
Wealth’s lordly crown. Yea, late he went to war
Like Philoktetes, while one fawned before—
A proud-souled suitor for a friend in need.
Well known is the old story how men came
To bear from Lemnos a sore-wounded frame,
Who, sacking Priam’s city, brought to close
The Danaoi’s toils, himself still in the throes
Of body-sickness. But by fate ’twas done.
And such to Hieron be God’s decrees,
Granting in season, as the years creep by,
All things wherefor he sigh.
Nor, Muse, shalt thou forget Deinomenes,
Chanting the four-horsed chariot’s reward.
Hath he not shared
The triumph of his father? Up then, sing
A song out of our love to Aitna’s king.
On him that city, built on freedom’s base
By the gods’ grace
After the canons of the Hyllid code.
Glad are Pamphylos’s seed,
And the Herakleidan breed
Beneath Taÿgetos, Dorians to remain
And keep the laws Aigimios did ordain,
Rich and renowned. Once Pindos their abode;
Amyklai then, where, the Tyndárids near
Of the white horses, flourished still their spear.
Such lot may human tongues fore’er award
In true accord,
Swayer and swayed by Amenanos’s stream.
Beneath thy blessing hand
A hero in command,
Transmitting through his son his wise decrees,
Shall lead a people on the paths of peace.
Keep hushed at home, I pray, the battle scream
Of the Phœnician and Tyrrhenian host
Whose insolent ships went down off Kyme’s coast:
Of Syracuse’s lord, who plunged the pride
Of their swift galleys in the whelming tide,
Rescuing Hellas from her grievous bands.
For Athens’s favor song of Salamis pleads,
In Sparta let me linger o’er the fight
Beneath Kithairon’s height,—
Disastrous both unto the crooked-bow Medes;
And where the Himeras rolls his flood along,
Bides theme for song
Of triumph in Deinomenes’s children’s praise,
Whose valorous deeds cut short their foemen’s days.
Gather the many strands that loosely run,
And twist in one:
Less will the noise of censuring tongues succeed.
Once surfeit slips between,
Dulled are hope’s edges keen.
And much do words in others’ praise oppress
The souls of men in secret. Ne’ertheless,
Since envy better is than pity, speed
On thy fair course; be helmsman just among
Thy people; on truth’s anvil forge thy tongue.
Thy stroke sends glimmering past falls lustrous now:
High steward thou;
And many eyes thine every action mark.
But in thy spirit’s flower
Biding from hour to hour,
If honeyed speech of men may gladden thee,
Count not the cost. Let thy sail belly free
Unto the wind, as master of a bark.
No juggling gains allure thee, O my friend!
The voice of fame, that outlives this life’s end,
To song and story. Kroisos’s kindly heart
Dies not; but Phalaris, that with cruel art
Burned men alive inside the bull of brass,
A hated bruit weighs down. Nor will the lyres,
Filling the vaulted halls with unison
Of sweet strains, make him one
Among names warbled in the young men’s choirs.
Prosperity is first of fortune’s meeds;
Glory succeeds.
Who hath won both and kept, wealth and renown
He hath attained unto the supreme crown.