THE EXTANT
ODES OF PINDAR
TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH
with
INTRODUCTION AND SHORT NOTES
BY
ERNEST MYERS, M.A.
_Sometime Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford_
1904
_First edition printed 1874._
_Reprinted (with corrections) 1884, 1888, 1892, 1895, 1899, 1904_
SON OF THE LIGHTNING, FAIR AND FIERY STAR,
STRONG-WINGED IMPERIAL PINDAR, VOICE DIVINE,
LET THESE DEEP DRAUGHTS OF THY ENCHANTED WINE
LIFT ME WITH THEE IN SOARINGS HIGH AND FAR
PROUDER THAN PEGASEAN, OR THE CAR
WHEREIN APOLLO RAPT THE HUNTRESS MAID.
SO LET ME RANGE MINE HOUR, TOO SOON TO FADE
INTO STRANGE PRESENCE OF THE THINGS THAT ARE.
YET KNOW THAT EVEN AMID THIS JARRING NOISE
OF HATES, LOVES, CREEDS, TOGETHER HEAPED AND HURLED,
SOME ECHO FAINT OF GRACE AND GRANDEUR STIRS
FROM THY SWEET HELLAS, HOME OF NOBLE JOYS.
FIRST FRUIT AND BEST OF ALL OUR WESTERN WORLD;
WHATE'ER WE HOLD OF BEAUTY, HALF IS HERS.
INTRODUCTION.
Probably no poet of importance equal or approaching to that of Pindar
finds so few and so infrequent readers. The causes are not far to
seek: in the first and most obvious place comes the great difficulty
of his language, in the second the frequent obscurity of his thought,
resulting mainly from his exceeding allusiveness and his abrupt
transitions, and in the third place that amount of monotony which must
of necessity attach to a series of poems provided for a succession of
similar occasions.
It is as an attempt towards obviating the first of these hindrances
to the study of Pindar, the difficulty of his language, that this
translation is of course especially intended. To whom and in what
cases are translations of poets useful? To a perfect scholar in the
original tongue they are superfluous, to one wholly ignorant of it
they are apt to be (unless here and there to a Keats) meaningless,
flat, and puzzling. There remains the third class of those who have a
certain amount of knowledge of a language, but not enough to
enable them to read unassisted its more difficult books without an
expenditure of time and trouble which is virtually prohibitive. It
is to this class that a translation ought, it would seem, chiefly to
address itself. An intelligent person of cultivated literary taste,
and able to read the easier books in an acquired language, will feel
himself indebted to a hand which unlocks for him the inner chambers
of a temple in whose outer courts he had already delighted to wander.
Without therefore saying that the merely 'English reader' may never
derive pleasure and instruction from a translation of a foreign poet,
for to this rule our current version of the Hebrew psalmists and
prophets furnish one marked exception at least--still, it is probably
to what may be called the half-learned class that the translator must
preeminently look to find an audience.
The other causes of Pindar's unpopularity to which reference was made
above, the obscurity of his thought and the monotony of his subjects,
will in great measure disappear by means of attentive study of the
poems themselves, and of other sources from which may be gathered an
understanding of the region of thought and feeling in which they move.
In proportion to our familiarity not only with Hellenic mythology and
history, but with Hellenic life and habits of thought generally, will
be our readiness and facility in seizing the drift and import of what
Pindar says, in divining what has passed through his mind: and in his
case perhaps even more than in the case of other poets, this facility
will increase indefinitely with our increasing acquaintance with his
works and with the light thrown on each part of them by the rest[1].
The monotony of the odes, though to some extent unquestionably and
unavoidably real, is to some extent also superficial and in appearance
only. The family of the victor, or his country, some incident of his
past, some possibility of his future life, suggest in each case some
different legendary matter, some different way of treating it, some
different application of it, general or particular, or both. Out
of such resources Pindar is inexhaustible in building up in subtly
varying forms the splendid structure of his song.
Yet doubtless the drawbacks in reading Pindar, though they may be
largely reduced, will always in some degree exist: we shall always
wish that he was easier to construe, that his allusions to things
unfamiliar and sometimes undiscoverable to us were less frequent, that
family pride had not made it customary for him to spend so many lines
on an enumeration of prizes won elsewhere and at other times by the
victor of the occasion or by his kin. Such drawbacks can only fall
into insignificance when eclipsed by consideration of the far more
than counterbalancing attractions of the poems, of their unique and
surpassing interest, poetical, historical, and moral.
Of Pindar as a poet it is hard indeed to speak adequately, and
almost as hard to speak briefly, for a discussion of his poetical
characteristics once begun may wander far before even a small part
has been said of what might be. To say that to his poetry in supreme
degree belong the qualities of force, of vividness, often of
impressive weight, of a lofty style, seeming to be the expression of
a like personality, of a mastery of rhythm and metre and imaginative
diction, of a profoundly Hellenic spirit modified by an unmistakable
individuality, above all of a certain sweep and swiftness as of the
flight of an eagle's wing--to say all this would be to suggest some of
the most obvious features of these triumphal odes; and each of these
qualities, and many more requiring exacter delineation, might be
illustrated with numberless instances which even in the faint image
of a translation would furnish ample testimony[2]. But as this
introduction is intended for those who purpose reading Pindar's
poetry, or at any rate the present translation of it, for themselves,
I will leave it to them to discover for themselves the qualities which
have given Pindar his high place among poets, and will pass on to
suggest briefly his claims to interest us by reason of his place in
the history of human action and human thought.
We know very little of Pindar's life. He was born in or about the year
B.C. 522, at the village of Kynoskephalai near Thebes. He was thus a
citizen of Thebes and seems to have always had his home there. But he
travelled among other states, many of which have been glorified by his
art. For his praise of Athens, 'bulwark of Hellas,' the city which at
Artemision 'laid the foundation of freedom,' the Thebans are said to
have fined him; but the generous Athenians paid the fine, made him
their Proxenos, and erected his statue at the public cost. For the
magnificent Sicilian princes, Hieron of Syracuse and Theron of
Akragas, not unlike the Medici in the position they held, Pindar wrote
five of the longest of his extant odes, and probably visited them in
Sicily. But he would not quit his home to be an ornament of their
courts. When asked why he did not, like Simonides, accept the
invitations of these potentates to make his home with them, he
answered that he had chosen to live his own life, and not to be the
property of another. He died at the age of 79, that is, probably, in
the year 443, twelve years before the Peloponnesian war began. Legend
said that he died in the theatre of Argos, in the arms of Theoxenos,
the boy in whose honour he wrote a Skolion of which an immortal
fragment remains to us. Other myths gathered round his name. It was
said that once when in childhood he had fallen asleep by the way 'a
bee had settled on his lips and gathered honey,' and again that
'he saw in a dream that his mouth was filled with honey and the
honeycomb;' that Pan himself learnt a poem of his and rejoiced to sing
it on the mountains; that finally, while he awaited an answer from
the oracle of Ammon, whence he had enquired what was best for man,
Persephone appeared to him in his sleep and said that she only of the
gods had had no hymn from him, but that he should make her one shortly
when he had come to her; and that he died within ten days of the
vision.
Two several conquerors of Thebes, Pausanias of Sparta and Alexander of
Macedon,
'bade spare
The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower
Went to the ground.'
At Delphi they kept with reverence his iron chair, and the priest of
Apollo cried nightly as he closed the temple, 'Let Pindar the poet go
in unto the supper of the god.'
Thus Pindar was contemporary with an age of Greek history which
justifies the assertion of his consummate interest for the student of
Hellenic life in its prime. It was impossible that a man of his
genius and temperament should have lived through these times without
representing to us with breadth and intensity the spirit that was in
them, and there are several points in Pindar's circumstances which
make his relation to his age peculiarly interesting. We may look on
him as in some points supplementary to the great Athenian dramatists,
whose works are doubtless far the most valuable literary legacy of the
time. Perhaps however the surpassing brilliance of Athenian literature
and history has made us somewhat prone to forget the importance of
non-Athenian elements in the complex whole of Hellenic life and
thought. Athens was the eye of Hellas, nay, she had at Marathon and
Salamis made good her claim to be called the saving arm, but there
were other members not to be forgotten if we would picture to
ourselves the national body in its completeness.
Pindar was a Boeotian, of a country not rich in literary or indeed any
kind of intellectual eminence, yet by no means to be ignored in an
estimate of the Hellenic race. Politically indeed it only rises into
pre-eminence under Epameinondas; before and afterwards Boeotian
policy under the domination of Thebes is seldom either beneficent or
glorious: it must be remembered, however, that the gallant Plataeans
also were Boeotians. The people of Boeotia seem to have had generally
an easy, rather sensually inclined nature, which accorded with their
rich country and absence of nautical and commercial enterprise and
excitement, but in their best men this disposition remains only in the
form of a genial simplicity. Pelopidas in political, and Plutarch and
Pausanias in literary history, will be allowed to be instances of
this. That the poetry which penetrated Hellenic life was not wanting
in Boeotia we have proof enough in the existence of the Sacred Band,
that goodly fellowship of friends which seems to have united what
Hallam has called the three strongest motives to enthusiastic action
that have appeared in history, patriotism, chivalric honour, and
religion. Nor is there any nobler figure in history than that of
Epameinondas.
One fact indeed there is which must always make the thought of
Pindar's Theban citizenship painful to us, and that is the shameful
part taken by Thebes in the Persian war, when compulsion of her
exposed situation, and oligarchical cabal within her walls, drew her
into unholy alliance with the barbarian invader. Had it been otherwise
how passionately pure would Pindar's joy have uttered itself when the
'stone of Tantalos' that hung over the head of Hellas was smitten into
dust in that greatest crisis of the fortunes of humanity. He exults
nobly as it is, he does all honour to Athens, 'bulwark of Hellas,' but
the shame of his own city, his 'mother' Thebes, must have caused him a
pang as bitter as a great soul has ever borne.
For his very calling of song-writer to all Hellenic states without
discrimination, especially when the songs he had to write were of the
class which we still possess, triumphal odes for victories in those
great games which drew to them all men of Hellenic blood at the feet
of common deities, and which with each recurring festival could even
hush the clamour of war in an imperious Truce of God--such a calling
and such associations must have cherished in him the passion for
Panhellenic brotherhood and unanimity, even had there not been much
else both within and without him to join to the same generous end. It
was the time when Panhellenic feeling was probably stronger than ever
before or after. Before, the states had been occupied in building
up their own polities independently; the Hellenic activity had been
dispersing itself centrifugally among the trans-marine colonies,
and those of Italy and Sicily seemed at one time to make it doubtful
whether the nucleus of civilization were to be there or in the
mother-country. But by the time of the Persian war the best energies
of the race had concentrated themselves between the Aegean and Ionian
seas; and the supreme danger of the war had bound the states together
against the common enemy and taught them to forget smaller differences
in the great strife between Hellene and barbarian. Yet again when that
supreme danger was past the old quarrels arose anew more deadly and
more complicated: instead of a Persian there was a Peloponnesian war,
and the Peloponnesian war in its latter stages came, by virtue of the
political principles involved, to partake much of the character of
a civil war. But the time of Pindar, of Aeschylus, of Sophocles, of
Pheidias, of Polygnotos, was that happy interval when Hellas had
beaten off the barbarian from her throat and had not yet murdered
herself. And Pindar's imagination and generosity were both kindled by
the moment; there was no room in his mind for border squabbles, for
commercial jealousies, for oligarchic or democratic envy: these things
were overridden by a sentiment of nationality wanting indeed in
many circumstances which modern nationalities deem essential to the
existence of such sentiment, and many of which are really essential to
its permanence--yet a sentiment which no other nation ever before or
since can have possessed in the peculiar lustre which it then wore in
Hellas; for no other nation has ever before or since known what it was
to stand alone immeasurably advanced at the head of the civilization
of the world.
Pindar was of a noble family, of the house of the Aigeidai, and it is
probable that his kinsmen, or some of them, may have taken the side of
oligarchy in the often recurring dissensions at Thebes, but of this
we know nothing certain. He himself seems to have taken no part in
politics. When he speaks on the subject in his odes it is not with the
voice of a partisan. An ochlocracy is hateful to him, but if he shows
himself an 'aristocrat' it is in the literal and etymological meaning
of the word. Doubtless if Pindar had been asked where the best
servants of the state in public life were most likely to be found he
would have answered that it would be among those ancient families in
whose veins ran the blood of gods and demigods, who had spent blood
and money for the city's honour, championing her in war or in the
mimic strife of the games, who had honourable traditions to be guided
by and an honourable name to lose or save. These things were seldom
undervalued by Hellenic feeling: even in Athens, after it was already
the headquarters of the democratic principle, the noble and wealthy
families obtained, not probably without wisdom of their own in loyally
accepting a democratic position, as fair a place and prospects as
anywhere in Hellas. But that, when the noble nature, the [Greek:
aretae], which traditions of nobility ought to have secured, was
lacking, then wealth and birth were still entitled to power, this
was a doctrine repugnant utterly to Pindar's mind: nor would his
indignation slumber when he saw the rich and highborn, however gifted,
forgetting at any time that their power was a trust for the community
and using it for their own selfish profit. An 'aristocrat' after
Pindar's mind would assuredly have a far keener eye to his duties
than to his rights, would consider indeed that in his larger share of
duties lay his infinitely most precious right.
But he 'loved that beauty should go beautifully;' personal excellence
of some kind was in his eyes essential; but on this he would fain
shed outward radiance and majesty. His imagination rejoiced in
splendour--splendour of stately palace--halls where the columns were
of marble and the entablature of wrought gold, splendour of temples of
gods where the sculptor's waxing art had brought the very deities to
dwell with man, splendour of the white-pillared cities that glittered
across the Aegean and Sicilian seas, splendour of the holy Panhellenic
games, of whirlwind chariots and the fiery grace of thoroughbreds,
of the naked shapely limbs of the athlete man and boy. On this
characteristic of Pindar it is needless to dwell, for there are not
many odes of those remaining which do not impress it on our minds.
And it is more with him than a mere manner in poetical style. The
same defect which we feel more or less present in all poets of
antiquity--least of all perhaps in Virgil and Sophokles, but even in
them somewhat--a certain want of widely sympathetic tenderness, this
is unquestionably present in Pindar. What of this quality may have
found expression in his lost poems, especially the Dirges, we can
scarcely guess, but in his triumphal odes it hardly appears at all,
unless in the touches of tender gracefulness into which he softens
when speaking of the young. And we find this want in him mainly
because objects of pity, such as especially elicit that quality of
tenderness, are never or seldom present to Pindar's mind. He sees evil
only in the shape of some moral baseness, falsehood, envy, arrogance,
and the like, to be scathed in passing by the good man's scorn, or
else in the shape of a dark mystery of pain, to be endured by those on
whom it causelessly falls in a proud though undefiant silence. It was
not for him, as for the great tragedians, to 'purge the mind by pity
and fear,' for those passions had scarcely a place in his own mind or
in the minds of those of whom he in his high phantasy would fain have
had the world consist. And as in this point somewhat, so still more in
others, does Pindar remind us, even more than might have been expected
in a contemporary, of Aeschylus. The latter by virtue of his Athenian
nurture as well as of his own greater natural gifts reveals to us
a greater number of thoughts, and those more advanced and more
interesting than we find in Pindar, but the similarity in moral temper
and tone is very striking, as also is the way in which we see this
temper acting on their beliefs. Both hold strongly, as is the wont
of powerful minds in an age of stability as opposed to an age of
transition, to the traditions and beliefs on which the society around
them rests, but both modify these traditions and beliefs according
to the light which arises in them, and which is as much moral as
intellectual light. In so doing they are indeed in harmony with the
best instincts of the society around them, but they lead and guide
such instincts and give them shape and definiteness. In the Oresteän
trilogy of Aeschylus we have an ever-memorable assertion of the
supreme claims of human morality to human allegiance, of the eternal
truth that humanity can know no object of reverence and worship except
itself idealised, its own virtues victorious over its own vices, and
existing in the greatest perfection which it can at any given time
conceive. Somewhat the same lesson as that of the Oresteia is taught
later, with more of sweetness and harmony, but not with more force,
in the Oedipus Coloneus of Sophokles. And in Pindar we see the same
tendencies inchoate. Like Aeschylus he does by implication subordinate
to morality both politics and religion. He ignores or flatly denies
tales that bring discredit on the gods; he will only bow down to them
when they have the virtues he respects in man. Yet he, like Aeschylus
and Sophokles, does so bow down, sincerely and without hesitation, and
that poets of their temper could do so was well indeed for poetry.
By rare and happy fortune they were inspired at once by the rich and
varied presences of mythology, 'the fair humanities of old religion,'
and also by the highest aspirations of an age of moral and
intellectual advance. We do not of course always, or even often, find
the moral principles clearly and consciously expressed or consistently
supported, but we cannot but feel that they are present in the shape
of instincts, and those instincts pervading and architectonic.
And if we allow so much of ethical enlightenment to these great
spokesmen of the Hellenic people, we cannot deny something of like
honour to the race among whom they were reared. Let us apportion our
debt of gratitude to our forerunners as it is justly due. There would
seem to be much of fallacy and of the injustice of a shallow judgment
in the contrast as popularly drawn between 'Hellenism' and 'Hebraism,'
according to which the former is spoken of as exclusively proclaiming
to the world the value of Beauty, the latter the value of
Righteousness. In this there is surely much injustice done to Hellas.
Because she taught the one, she did not therefore leave the other
untaught. It may have been for a short time, as her other greatness
was for a short time, though its effects are eternal, but for that
short time the national life, of Athens at any rate, is at least as
full of high moral feeling as that of any other people in the world.
Will not the names of Solon, of Aristeides, of Kallikratidas, of
Epameinondas, of Timoleon and many more, remind us that life could be
to the Hellene something of deeper moral import than a brilliant game,
or a garden of vivid and sweet sights and sounds where Beauty and
Knowledge entered, but Goodness was forgotten and shut out? For it
is not merely that these men, and very many more endowed with ample
portion of their spirit, were produced and reared among the race; they
were honoured and valued in a way that surely postulated the existence
of high ethical feeling in their countrymen. And even when the days
of unselfish statesmen and magnanimous cities were over, there were
philosophers whose schools were not the less filled because they
claimed a high place for righteousness in human life. To Solon and
Aristeides succeeded Socrates and Plato, to Epameinondas and Timoleon
succeeded Zeno and Epictetus. That the morality of the Hellenes was
complete on all sides, it would of course be irrational to maintain.
They had not, for instance, any more than the Hebrews, or any other
nation of antiquity, learnt to abhor slavery, though probably it
existed in a milder form at Athens than anywhere else in the old or
new world: they were more implacable in revenge and laxer in sexual
indulgence than the Christian ethics would allow in theory, though not
perhaps much more so than Christendom has shown itself in practice.
And though undoubtedly the greatest single impulse ever given to
morality came from Palestine, yet the ground which nurtured the seeds
of Christianity was as much Hellenic as Hebrew. It would be impossible
here to enter on an exhaustive comparison of the ethical capacities of
the two races, but before we pronounce hastily for the superiority of
the Hebrew there are surely some difficulties to surmount. We may
well ask, for example, Would Hellas ever have accepted as her chief
national hero such a man as David a man who in his life is conspicuous
by his crimes not less than by his brilliant gifts, and who dies with
the words of blood and perfidy on his lips, charging his son with the
last slaughterous satisfaction of his hate which he had sworn before
his God to forego? And though the great Hebrew prophets teach often
a far loftier morality than this, they cannot have been nearly so
representative of the feeling of this nation as were Aeschylus and
Sophocles and Pindar of the feeling of theirs. The Hebrews of the
prophets' age 'slew the prophets,' and left it to the slayers'
descendants to 'build their sepulchres,' and at the same time to
show their inherited character still more unmistakeably by once more
slaying the last prophet and the greatest.[3]
In truth in the literature, the art, the life generally of Hellas in
her prime, the moral interest whenever it appears, and that is not
seldom, claims for itself the grave and preponderant attention which
it must claim if it is to appear with fit dignity. But it is not
thrust forward unseasonably or in exaggeration, nor is it placed in a
false opposition to the interests of the aesthetic instincts, which
after all shade into the moral more imperceptibly than might be
generally allowed. There must be a moral side to all societies, and
the Hellenic society, the choicest that the world has seen, the
completest, that is, at once in sensibilities and in energies, could
not but show the excellence of its sensibilities in receiving moral
impressions, the excellence of its energies in achieving moral
conduct.
This, however, is no place to discuss at length questions in the
history of ethics. Yet it must be remembered that in the ancient world
departments of thought, and the affairs of men generally, were far
less specialized than in modern times. If the philosophy of Hellas be
the most explicit witness to her ethical development, her poetry
is the most eloquent. And scarcely at any time, scarcely even in
Aristotle, did Hellenic philosophy in any department lose most
significant traces of its poetical ancestry. But enough here if I have
succeeded in pointing out that in the great poet with whom we are
concerned there is an ethical as well as a poetical and historical
interest, supplying one more reason against neglect of his legacy of
song.
Yet indeed even now there remains a further question which to the
mind of any one who at present labours in this field of classical
scholarship must recur persistently if not depressingly, and on which
it is natural if not necessary to say a few words. If the selection
of Pindar in particular as a Greek poet with claims to be further
popularized among Englishmen may be defended, there is still a more
general count to which all who make endeavours to attract or retain
attention to Greek literature will in these times be called upon to
plead by voices which command respect. To such pleas this is not the
place to give large room, or to discriminate in detail between the
reasonable and unreasonable elements in the attacks on a system of
education in which a preeminent position is allotted to the literature
of antiquity. While fully admitting that much time and labour are
still wasted in efforts to plant the study of ancient and especially
of Greek literature in uncongenial soil, while admitting also most
fully the claims, and the still imperfect recognition of the claims,
of physical science to a rank among the foremost in modern education,
I should yet be abundantly willing that this attempt to help in
facilitating the study of a Greek author should be looked on as
implying adhesion to the protest still sometimes raised, that in
the higher parts of a liberal education no study can claim a more
important place than the study of the history and the literature of
Hellas. The interest which belongs to these is far wider and
deeper than any mere literary interest. To the human mind the most
interesting of phenomena are and ought to be the phenomena of the
human mind, and this granted, can there be any knowledge more
desirable than the knowledge of the most vigorous and sensitive and in
some ways also the most fruitful action of human minds that the world
has known hitherto?
But again, we are told that the age we seek thus toilsomely to
illustrate and realize is too remote to justify the attempt, that our
civilisation is of too different a type from the Hellenic, and that a
gulf of three-and-twenty centuries is too much for our sight to strain
across. But is not the Hellenic life at least less remote now to
Western Europe than it has ever been since the Northern invasions?
Though the separation in time widens does not the separation in
thought decrease? Is not one civilisation more like another than it
can be to any barbarism? And shall not this same Physical Science
herself by accustoming us to look on men in large masses at once, and
on the development of humanity as a process of infinite duration, as
a sectional growth included in universal evolution--Science, in whose
eyes a thousand years are as a watch in the night--shall she not
thereby quicken our sympathies with the most gifted race that has
appeared in our short human history, and arouse the same feeling
toward it as a family may cherish toward the memory of their best and
choicest, who has died young?
Only let us take heed that such regret shall make us not more but
less unworthy of those noble forerunners. One symptom of the renewed
influence of antiquity on the modern world is doubtless and has been
from time to time since the Revival of Letters a tendency to selfish
and somewhat sickly theories so-called of life, where sensibility
degenerates through self-consciousness into affectation, and
efforts to appreciate fully the delightfulness of life and art are
overstrained into a wearisome literary voluptuousness, where duty has
already disappeared and the human sympathies on which duty is based
scarcely linger in a faint aesthetic form, soon to leave the would-be
exquisiteness to putrefy into the vulgarity of egoism. Such tendencies
have less in common with the Hellenic prime than with the court of
Leo the Tenth, though even that had perhaps an advantage over them as
being in some ways a more real thing. But that the Hellenic prime with
all its exquisite sensibility was deficient in recognition of a high
ideal of duty can never be believed among those who have studied it
candidly and attentively; I have endeavoured above to suggest that in
this point, take it all in all, it yields to no age or race. It would
indeed be a mistaken following of those noble servants of humanity
to draw from their memories an argument for selfish isolation or for
despair of the commonwealth of man. He who has drunk deeply of that
divine well and gazed long at the fair vision of what then was, will,
if his nature be capable of true sympathy with the various elements
of that wonderful age, turn again without bitterness to the confused
modern world, saddened but not paralysed by the comparison, grieving,
but with no querulous grief, for the certainty that those days are
done.
1874.
PREFATORY NOTE.
The few notes appended to this translation are not intended to supply
the place of such reference to Dictionaries of Mythology, Antiquities
and Geography, as is needful to the student of Pindar who is not
already somewhat accomplished in knowledge of the customs, history
and legendary traditions of Hellas. And although it may reasonably be
supposed that the chief of these will be already known to most readers
of Pindar, yet so profusely allusive is this poet that to understand
his allusions will very often require knowledge which would not have
been derived from a study of the more commonly read Hellenic writers.
Nor have I attempted to trace in detail the connection of the parts
in each ode which binds them into one harmonious whole with many
meanings--a connection so consummately contrived where we can trace it
that we may suppose it no less exquisite where we cannot. Study
and thought will generally suggest explanations, though these will
sometimes approve themselves differently to different minds. Too often
we must acknowledge, as elsewhere in ancient literature, that the key
is lost beyond all certain hope of recovery.
Still less have I attempted to discuss questions of critical
scholarship. Sometimes where there are more than one plausible reading
I have signified which I adopt; once only (Ol. 2. 56.) I have ventured
on an emendation of my own. For the most part I have, as was natural,
followed the text of Böckh and Dissen.
In the spelling of names I remain in that inconsistency which at
present attaches to most modern writers who deal with them. Olympus,
Athens, Corinth, Syracuse, and the like are naturalized among us by
long familiarity; it seems at present at least pedantic to change
them. In the case of other less familiar names I have concurred with
the desire, which seems in the main a reasonable one, that the names
of Hellenic persons and places should be reproduced, as far as
possible, without Latin mediation.
Of the Fragments I have translated six of the longest and most
interesting. They are 289 in all, but the greater part are not longer
than a line or two, and very many even shorter.
The odes are unequal in poetical merit, and many readers may not
unreasonably wish to have those pointed out which, in the judgement of
one acquainted with all, are among the best worth reading; though of
course the choice of individual readers will not always be the same.
To those therefore who would wish to begin with a selection, the
following may be recommended as at any rate among those of preeminent
merit: Pyth. 4, 9, 1, 10, 3; Ol. 7, 6, 2, 3, 13, 8, 1; Nem. 5, 10;
Isthm. 2, 7; all the Fragments translated.
In the arrangement of the odes I have adhered to the traditional
order. I should much have liked to place them in what must always be
the most interesting and rational arrangement of a poet's works,
that is, in chronological order. This would have been approximately
possible, as we know the dates of the greater part of them. But
convenience of reference and of comparison with the Greek text seems
to supply a balance of reasons on the other side. Subjoined however is
a list of the odes in their probable chronological order so far as it
can be obtained.
Pythian 10-------------B.C. 502.
" 6------------- " 494.
" 12------------- " 494 or 490.
" 7------------- " 490.
" 3------------- " 486 or 482.
Olympian 10 } ---------- " 484.
" 11 } ---------- " 484.
Isthmian 5
Nemean 5
Isthmian 7 ------------ " 480.
Isthmian 3
Pythian 8-------------- " 478.
" 9-------------- " 478.
" 11-------------- " 478.
" 2-------------- " 477.
Olympian 14-------------- " 476.
" }----------------- " 476.
" }----------------- " 476.
Pythian 1
Nemean 1--------------- " 473.
Olympian 1--------------- " 472.
" 12-------------- " 472.
Nemean 9
Isthmian 2
Olympian 6-------------- " 468.
Pythian 4 }------------- " 466.
" 5 }
Olympian 7-------------- " 464.
" 13-------------- " 464.
Nemean 7
" 3
" 4
" 6
" 8
Olympian 9-------------- " 456.
Isthmian 6
Olympian 4 }------------ " 452.
" 5 }
The Olympic games were held once in four years, in honour of Zeus. The
prize was a wreath of wild olive.
The Pythian games were held once in four years, in honour of Apollo.
The prize was a wreath of bay.
The Nemean games were held once in two years, in honour of Zeus. The
prize was a wreath of wild parsley.
The Isthmian games were held once in two years, in honour of Poseidon.
The prize was a wreath of wild parsley or of pine.
[Footnote 1: The importance and interest to a student in Hellenic
literature of a collateral study of whatever remains to us of Hellenic
plastic art--statues, vases, gems, and coins--can hardly be too
strongly insisted on.]
[Footnote 2: In Mr. J.A. Symonds' 'Studies of the Greek Poets' there
is an essay on Pindar which dwells with much appreciative eloquence
upon the poets literary characteristics.]
[Footnote 3: In thus touching on the obligations of our morality to
the Hebrew and to the Hellene respectively, I have insisted more
exclusively on the weak points of the former than I should have done
in a fuller discussion of the subject: here I am merely concerned to
question in passing what seems to be a popular one-sided estimate.]
* * * * *
OLYMPIAN ODES.
I.
FOR HIERON OF SYRACUSE,
WINNER IN THE HORSE-RACE.
* * * * *
This ode seems to owe its position at the head of Pindar's extant
works to Aristophanes the grammarian, who placed it there on account
of its being specially occupied with the glorification of the Olympic
games in comparison with others, and with the story of Pelops, who was
their founder.
Hieron won this race B.C. 472, while at the height of his power at
Syracuse. Probably the ode was sung at Syracuse, perhaps, as has been
suggested, at a banquet.
* * * * *
Best is Water of all, and Gold as a flaming fire in the night shineth
eminent amid lordly wealth; but if of prizes in the games thou art
fain, O my soul, to tell, then, as for no bright star more quickening
than the sun must thou search in the void firmament by day, so neither
shall we find any games greater than the Olympic whereof to utter our
voice: for hence cometh the glorious hymn and entereth into the minds
of the skilled in song, so that they celebrate the son[1] of Kronos,
when to the rich and happy hearth of Hieron they are come; for he
wieldeth the sceptre of justice in Sicily of many flocks, culling the
choice fruits of all kinds of excellence: and with the flower of music
is he made splendid, even such strains as we sing blithely at the
table of a friend.
Take from the peg the Dorian lute, if in any wise the glory of
Pherenikos[2] at Pisa hath swayed thy soul unto glad thoughts, when by
the banks of Alpheos he ran, and gave his body ungoaded in the
course, and brought victory to his master, the Syracusans' king, who
delighteth in horses.
Bright is his fame in Lydian Pelops' colony[3], inhabited of a goodly
race, whose founder mighty earth-enfolding Poseidon loved, what time
from the vessel of purifying[4] Klotho took him with the bright ivory
furnishment of his shoulder.
Verily many things are wondrous, and haply tales decked out with
cunning fables beyond the truth make false men's speech concerning
them. For Charis[5], who maketh all sweet things for mortal men, by
lending honour unto such maketh oft the unbelievable thing to be
believed; but the days that follow after are the wisest witnesses.
Meet is it for a man that concerning gods he speak honourably; for the
reproach is less. Of thee, son of Tantalos, I will speak contrariwise
to them who have gone before me, and I will tell how when thy father
had bidden thee to that most seemly feast at his beloved Sipylos,
repaying to the gods their banquet, then did he of the Bright
Trident[6], his heart vanquished by love, snatch thee and bear thee
behind his golden steeds to the house of august Zeus in the highest,
whither again on a like errand came Ganymede in the after time.
But when thou hadst vanished, and the men who sought thee long brought
thee not to thy mother, some one of the envious neighbours said
secretly that over water heated to boiling they had hewn asunder with
a knife thy limbs, and at the tables had shared among them and eaten
sodden fragments of thy flesh. But to me it is impossible to call one
of the blessed gods cannibal; I keep aloof; in telling ill tales is
often little gain.
Now if any man ever had honour of the guardians of Olympus, Tantalos
was that man; but his high fortune he could not digest, and by excess
thereof won him an overwhelming woe, in that the Father hath hung
above him a mighty stone that he would fain ward from his head, and
therewithal he is fallen from joy.
This hopeless life of endless misery he endureth with other three[7],
for that he stole from the immortals and gave to his fellows at
a feast the nectar and ambrosia, whereby the gods had made him
incorruptible. But if a man thinketh that in doing aught he shall be
hidden from God, he erreth.
Therefore also the immortals sent back again his son to be once more
counted with the short-lived race of men. And he when toward the bloom
of his sweet youth the down began to shade his darkening cheek, took
counsel with himself speedily to take to him for his wife the noble
Hippodameia from her Pisan father's hand.
And he came and stood upon the margin of the hoary sea, alone in the
darkness of the night, and called aloud on the deep-voiced Wielder of
the Trident; and he appeared unto him nigh at his foot.
Then he said unto him: 'Lo now, O Poseidon, if the kind gifts of the
Cyprian goddess are anywise pleasant in thine eyes, restrain Oinomaos'
bronze spear, and send me unto Elis upon a chariot exceeding swift,
and give the victory to my hands. Thirteen lovers already hath
Oinomaos slain, and still delayeth to give his daughter in marriage.
Now a great peril alloweth not of a coward: and forasmuch as men must
die, wherefore should one sit vainly in the dark through a dull and
nameless age, and without lot in noble deeds? Not so, but I will dare
this strife: do thou give the issue I desire.'
Thus spake he, nor were his words in vain: for the god made him a
glorious gift of a golden car and winged untiring steeds: so he
overcame Oinomaos and won the maiden for his bride.
And he begat six sons, chieftains, whose thoughts were ever of brave
deeds: and now hath he part in honour of blood-offerings in his grave
beside Alpheos' stream, and hath a frequented tomb, whereto many
strangers resort: and from afar off he beholdeth the glory of the
Olympian games in the courses called of Pelops, where is striving
of swift feet and of strong bodies brave to labour; but he that
overcometh hath for the sake of those games a sweet tranquillity
throughout his life for evermore.
Now the good that cometh of to-day is ever sovereign unto every man.
My part it is to crown Hieron with an equestrian strain in Aeolian
mood: and sure am I that no host among men that now are shall I ever
glorify in sounding labyrinths of song more learned in the learning of
honour and withal with more might to work thereto. A god hath guard
over thy hopes, O Hieron, and taketh care for them with a peculiar
care: and if he fail thee not, I trust that I shall again proclaim in
song a sweeter glory yet, and find thereto in words a ready way, when
to the fair-shining hill of Kronos I am come. Her strongest-wingëd
dart my Muse hath yet in store.
Of many kinds is the greatness of men; but the highest is to be
achieved by kings. Look not thou for more than this. May it be thine
to walk loftily all thy life, and mine to be the friend of winners in
the games, winning honour for my art among Hellenes everywhere.
[Footnote 1: The Olympic games were sacred to Zeus.]
[Footnote 2: The horse that won this race for Hieron.]
[Footnote 3: Peloponnesos.]
[Footnote 4: I. e. immediately on his birth, for among the Fates
Klotho was peculiarly concerned with the beginning of man's life.
Pindar refuses to accept the legend which made Pelops' ivory shoulder
a substitute for his fleshly one eaten at Tantalos' table by the gods;
for thus the gods would have been guilty of an infamous act.]
[Footnote 5: Goddess of Grace or Beauty. Often there are three
Charites or Graces. Pindar means here that men are prone to believe
an untrue tale for the sake of the beauty of the form in which it is
presented, but that such tales will not stand the test of time.]
[Footnote 6: Poseidon.]
[Footnote 7: Sisyphos, Ixion, and Tityos.]
II.
FOR THERON OF AKRAGAS,
WINNER IN THE CHARIOT-RACE.
* * * * *
Theron's ancestors the Emmenidai migrated from Rhodes to Sicily and
first colonized Gela and then Akragas (the Latin Agrigentum and
Italian Girgenti). His chariot won this victory B.C. 476.
* * * * *
Lords of the lute[1], my songs, what god, what hero, or what man, are
we to celebrate?[2] Verily of Zeus is Pisa the abode, of Herakles the
Olympian feast was founded from the chief spoils of war, and Theron's
name must we proclaim for his victory with the four-horse-car, a
righteous and god-fearing host, the stay of Akragas, of famous sires
the flower, a saviour of the state.
They after long toils bravely borne took by a river's side a sacred
dwelling place, and became the eye of Sicily, and a life of good luck
clave to them, bringing them wealth and honour to crown their inborn
worth.
O son of Kronos and of Rhea, lord of Olympus' seat, and of the chief
of games and of Alpheos' ford, for joy in these my songs guard ever
graciously their native fields for their sons that shall come after
them.
Now of deeds done whether they be right or wrong not even Time the
father of all can make undone the accomplishment, yet with happy
fortune forgetfulness may come. For by high delights an alien pain is
quelled and dieth, when the decree of God sendeth happiness to grow
aloft and widely.
And this word is true concerning Kadmos' fair-throned daughters, whose
calamities were great, yet their sore grief fell before greater
good. Amid the Olympians long-haired Semele still liveth, albeit she
perished in the thunder's roar, and Pallas cherisheth her ever, and
Father Zeus exceedingly, and her son, the ivy-bearing god. And in the
sea too they say that to Ino, among the sea-maids of Nereus, life
incorruptible hath been ordained for evermore.
Ay but to mortals the day of death is certain never, neither at what
time we shall see in calm the end of one of the Sun's children, the
Days, with good thitherto unfailing; now this way and now that run
currents bringing joys or toils to men.
Thus destiny which from their fathers holdeth the happy fortune of
this race[3], together with prosperity heaven-sent bringeth ever at
some other time better reverse: from the day when Laïos was slain by
his destined son[4] who met him on the road and made fulfilment of the
oracle spoken of old at Pytho. Then swift Erinys when she saw it slew
by each other's hand his war-like sons: yet after that Polyneikes fell
Thersander[5] lived after him and won honour in the Second Strife[6]
and in the fights of war, a saviour scion to the Adrastid house.
From him they have beginning of their race: meet is it that
Ainesidamos receive our hymn of triumph, on the lyre. For at Olympia
he himself received a prize and at Pytho, and at the Isthmus to his
brother of no less a lot did kindred Graces bring crowns for the
twelve rounds of the four-horse chariot-race.
Victory setteth free the essayer from the struggle's griefs, yea and
the wealth that a noble nature hath made glorious bringeth power for
this and that, putting into the heart of man a deep and eager mood, a
star far seen, a light wherein a man shall trust if but[7] the holder
thereof knoweth the things that shall be, how that of all who die the
guilty souls pay penalty, for all the sins sinned in this realm
of Zeus One judgeth under earth, pronouncing sentence by unloved
constraint.
But evenly ever in sunlight night and day an unlaborious life the good
receive, neither with violent hand vex they the earth nor the waters
of the sea, in that new world; but with the honoured of the gods,
whosoever had pleasure in keeping of oaths, they possess a tearless
life: but the other part suffer pain too dire to look upon.
Then whosoever have been of good courage to the abiding steadfast
thrice on either side of death and have refrained their souls from
all iniquity, travel the road of Zeus unto the tower of Kronos: there
round the islands of the blest the Ocean-breezes blow, and golden
flowers are glowing, some from the land on trees of splendour, and
some the water feedeth, with wreaths whereof they entwine their hands:
so ordereth Rhadamanthos' just decree, whom at his own right hand hath
ever the father Kronos, husband of Rhea, throned above all worlds[8].
Peleus and Kadmos are counted of that company; and the mother of
Achilles, when her prayer had moved the heart of Zeus, bare thither
her son, even him who overthrew Hector, Troy's unbending invincible
pillar, even him who gave Kyknos to death and the Ethiop son[9] of the
Morning.
Many swift arrows have I beneath my bended arm within my quiver,
arrows that have a voice for the wise, but for the multitude they need
interpreters. His art is true who of his nature hath knowledge; they
who have but learnt, strong in the multitude of words, are but as
crows that chatter vain things in strife against the divine bird of
Zeus.
Come bend thy bow on the mark, O my soul--at whom again are we to
launch our shafts of honour from a friendly mind? At Akragas will I
take aim, and will proclaim and swear it with a mind of truth, that
for a hundred years no city hath brought forth a man of mind more
prone to well-doing towards friends or of more liberal mood than
Theron.
Yet praise is overtaken of distaste, wherewith is no justice, but from
covetous men it cometh, and is fain to babble against and darken the
good man's noble deeds.
The sea-sand none hath numbered; and the joys that Theron hath given
to others--who shall declare the tale thereof?
[Footnote 1: In Hellenic music the accompaniment was deemed
subordinate to the words.]
[Footnote 2: Here are three questions and three answers.]