HKB
did not win. No doubt the race must have been run in heats, but these must still have been crowded enough to make the crush at the turns exceedingly dangerous.]
[Footnote 8: Pausanias says that Battos, the founder of Kyrene, was dumb when he went to Africa, but that on suddenly meeting a lion the fright gave him utterance. According to Pindar the lions seem to have been still more alarmed, being startled by Battos' foreign accent.]
[Footnote 9: The Dorians.]
[Footnote 10: There were Aigidai at Sparta and Spartan colonies, of which Kyrene was one, and also at Thebes: to the latter branch of the family Pindar belonged.]
[Footnote 11: The Karneia, a Dorian feast of which we hear often in history.]
[Footnote 12: These Trojan refugees were supposed to have anciently settled on the site where Kyrene was afterwards built. Battos (or Aristoteles) and his new settlers honoured the dead Trojans as tutelar heroes of the spot.]
[Footnote 13: Battos.]
[Footnote 14: The sacred street of Apollo, along which the procession moved which sang this ode. The pavement, and the tombs cut in the rock on each side are still to be seen, or at least were in 1817, when the Italian traveller Della Cella visited the place. Böckh quotes from his Viaggio da Tripoli di Barberia alle frontiere occedentali dell' Egitto, p. 139: 'Oggi ho passeggiato in una delle strade (di Cirene) che serba ancora Papparenza di essere stata fra le più cospicue. Non solo è tutta intagliata nel vivo sasso, ma a due lati è fiancheggiata da lunga fila di tombe quadrate di dieci circa piedi di altezza, anch' esse tutte d'un pezzo scavate nella roccia.']
[Footnote 15: I. e., probably, calamity in old age.]
VI.
FOR XENOKRATES OF AKRAGAS,
WINNER IN THE CHARIOT-RACE.
This victory was won B.C. 494, when Pindar was twenty-eight years old, and the ode was probably written to be sung at Delphi immediately on the event. Thus, next to the tenth Pythian, written eight years before, this is the earliest of Pindar's poems that remains to us.
Xenokrates was a son of Ainesidamos and brother of Theron. The second Isthmian is also in his honour.
Hearken! for once more we plough the field[1] of Aphrodite of the glancing eyes, or of the Graces call it if you will, in this our pilgrimage to the everlasting centre-stone of deep-murmuring[2] earth.
For there for the blissful Emmenidai, and for Akragas by the riverside, and chiefliest for Xenokrates, is builded a ready treasure of song within the valley of Apollo rich in golden gifts.
That treasure of his shall neither wind nor wintry rain-storm coming from strange lands, as a fierce host born of the thunderous cloud, carry into the hiding places of the sea, to be beaten by the all-sweeping drift:
But in clear light its front shall give tidings of a victory won in Krisa's dells, glorious in the speech of men to thy father Thrasyboulos, and to all his kin with him.
Thou verily in that thou settest him ever at thy right hand cherishest the charge which once upon the mountains they say the son[3] of Philyra gave to him of exceeding might, even to the son of Peleas, when he had lost his sire: first that of all gods he most reverence Kronos' son, the deep-voiced lord of lightnings and of thunders, and then that he never rob of like honour a parent's spell of life.
Also of old time had mighty Antilochos this mind within him, who died for his father's sake, when he abode the murderous onset of Memnon, the leader of the Ethiop hosts.