HKB
the earth an anchor from the prow, to save us from the rocky reef, for the glory of my song of praise flitteth like a honey-bee from tale to tale.
I have hope that when the folk of Ephyra pour forth my sweet strains by Peneus' side, yet more glorious shall I make their Hippokleas for his crowns and by my songs among his fellows and his elders, and I will make him possess the minds of the young maidens.
For various longings stir secretly the minds of various men; yet each if he attain to the thing he striveth for will hold his eager desire for the time present to him, but what a year shall bring forth, none shall foreknow by any sign.
My trust is in the kindly courtesy of my host Thorax, of him who to speed my fortune hath yoked this four-horse car of the Pierides, as friend for friend, and willing guide for guide.
As gold to him that trieth it by a touch-stone, so is a true soul known.
His noble brethren also will we praise, for that they exalt and make great the Thessalians' commonwealth. For in the hands of good men lieth the good piloting of the cities wherein their fathers ruled.
[Footnote 1: Hippokleas' birth-place.]
[Footnote 2: Down the stadion (220 yards) and back.]
[Footnote 3: I. e. in the race run in full armour, like that at Pytho which Telesikrates, of Kyrene won, celebrated in the fore-going ode.]
[Footnote 4: Probably a horse with which Hippokleas' father won a race at Pytho.]
XI.
FOR THRASYDAIOS OF THEBES,
WINNER IN THE BOYS' SHORT FOOT-RACE.
The date of this victory was B.C. 478, nearly two years after the battle of Plataea, and the deliverance of Thebes from Persian influence and the sway of a tyrannous oligarchy. But beyond this we have nothing certain to which we can refer the allusions to Theban affairs, public and private, which we have reason to think present in the ode.
Daughters of Kadmos, thou Semele whose goings are with the queens of Olympus, and thou Ino Leukothea who housest with the Nereids of the sea, come ye up with the mother[1] of a mighty son, even of Herakles, unto the temple of M[)e]lia[2] and into the holy place of the golden tripods, which beyond all others Loxias hath honoured, and named it the shrine Ismenian, a truthful seat of seers; where now, O children of Harmonia, he calleth the whole heroic sisterhood of the soil to assemble themselves together, that of holy Themis and of Pytho and the Earth-navel of just judgments ye may sing at early evening, doing honour to seven-gated Thebes, and to the games at Kirrha, wherein Thrasydaios hath made his father's house glorious by casting thereon a third wreath for his victory in the rich cornlands[3] of Pylades, who was the host of Lakonian Orestes.
Orestes, on the murder of his father, Arsinoë his nurse saved from the violent hands of Klytaimnestra and out of the ruinous treason, what time the daughter of Dardanid Priam, Kassandra, was by the glittering bronze in company with Agamemnon's soul sped to the shadowy shore of Acheron by the woman who had no pity.
Did then the slaughter of Iphigenia far from her own land on Euripos' shore so sting her mother to the arousal of a wrath of grievous act? Or had nocturnal loves misguided her, in thraldom to a paramour's embrace? a sin in new-wed brides most hateful, and that cannot be hidden for the talk of stranger tongues: for the citizens repeat the shame. For prosperity must sustain an envy equalling itself: but concerning the man of low place the rumour is obscure.
Thus died the hero himself[4], the son of Atreus, when after long time he came unto famous Amyklai, and drew down with him to death the maiden prophetess[5], after that he consumed with fire the Trojans' habitations of softness.