Pindar: Pythian 5
There’s no shortage of good translations of Pindar out there, and so no need for a new one (Richard Lattimore’s well-regarded version is available free on archive.org, for instance). Plus anyone essaying a translation of this particular poet has to wrestle with the fact that Hölderlin translated these odes two hundred years ago and rewired German poetry in so doing. Nothing so ambitious here, of course. But it so happens I’m reading Pindar at the moment, and before it is anything else — before it is a means of making the literature from other languages available to new readers, before it is a Benjaminian reorienting of target and source language, before it is mediation — translation is a way of reading. Is, in fact, a way of very close reading. At any rate, having dipped my toe into Pythian 5, I wanted to read the whole thing. Here’s what I ended up with: it’s line-by-line — that is, each line of my version relates directly to the line being translated: if Apollo is mentioned in line 23 of the original, then he’s mentioned in line 23 of mine, and not in any of the adjacent lines in order to accommodate easier flow of English sense: in this regard I suppose I am Benjaminian, or say more Browningesque, as per his Agamemnon. At any rate, if I translated Pindar into smoothly comprehensible English then I really wouldn’t be capturing his essential Pindarness: for he is a writer whose stylistic magnificence and resonance is intrinsically tangled with a kind of oblique allusiveness that is liable to baffle or wrongfoot us, as well as with a series of sudden lurches of focus — from the poem’s present to deep past, from life to myth, from myth to completely unrelated myth — and a tendency to tumble from magniloquence into a bathos of commonplace or moral/religious cliché. If you’re interested in this poem — who knows? you might be! — and are as yet unfamiliar with it I’d suggest reading my version below, which is disposed (in this blog, I mean )into four sections, and then perhaps, having oriented yourself with respect to the mythological and historical scaffolding necessary for a fuller understanding, have a read of Lattimore’s version, see what you think.
So far as we understand, Pindar’s odes were originally performed and recorded as single units. Later editors divided the poems into into sections, each one itself divided into three subsections, labelled ‘strophe’ (turn), ‘antistrophe’ (counterturn) and ‘epode’ (follow-song) — later ode-poets, from Horace to Ben Jonson to Wordsworth, copied this format. Pythian 5 has four of these units, other odes fewer, or more: but as you’ll see, the reasoning behind the division is purely metrical, and doesn’t map onto sense, which often runs directly on from strophe to antistrophe, or from epode to strophe. Still, I’ve retained the structural tabs.
Pythian 5 itself follows-on from — or according to some critics, precedes, despite the numbering — Pythian 4: another ode sung in praise of the chariot-racing successes of Arcesilaus IV of Cyrene. Cyrene was a Greek-speaking settlement in Libya, from which Arcesilaus had travelled across the Mediterranean, bringing his horses with him, to take part in the Pythian games in 466 BC or maybe in 462 BC (or maybe both) — I talk about Pythian 4, and give more context for all this, here. For the purposes of this poem what you need to know is: (a) Pindar is praising Arcesilaus both as a great (magnanimous, just, powerful) ruler of Cyrene, and as a champion horseman and chariot-racer, and (b) Pindar is linking Arcesilaus to the legendary founder of Cyrene, Battus. Battus obeyed a prophesy of the gods to leave his home island, Thira (modern-day Santorini), go across the sea and establish a new colony in Libya, and this poem is interested in that legend and in Arcesilaus’ connection to it.
Much classical literature can best be understood in the context of the various waves of Greek colonisation that, historically, spread across the Mediterranean: in the first — spanning roughly from 734 BC, when Naxos, the first Greek colony in Sicily, was founded until roundabout 688 BC, the foundation of Gela — Greeks placed settlements all over Italy, north Africa and up the Hellespont and along the Black Sea coast. There were several less successful waves later on, in the 6th and 5th centuries, and this larger context explains why so much literary art from the Golden Age of Greece is about odysseying around the Med in search of a home, Greeks abroad (Euripides’ Helen, Iphigeneia in Taurus), about what must be done — propitiating the gods and other supernatural forces, mostly — in order to establish a city (Sophocles’ Theban plays), up to and including Vergil’s Aeneid, which is about establishing a divinely ordained but hard-battled colony in Italy. What does ‘home’ mean? Why do we travel? If the gods truly have ordained this, then why is it so hard?
Anyway: Cyrene was a major city near the coast in eastern Libya. There were five big Greek cities in this area, known as the ‘pentapoleis’, but Cyrene was the biggest, so rich and important the whole of Libya was sometimes called Cyrenaica. It was founded in 631BC by colonists from Thira, though historians aren’t sure why they left their home island: maybe there was a famine, maybe the island was too small for an expanding population, maybe they just fancied a change. Their leader was, according to tradition, Aristotle (not the famous philosopher of course; a different guy with the same name). When he got to Libya and established his city he adopted the regnal name Battus, and his dynasty was known as the Battiadae. It so happens that the particular Battiad addressed and praised by Pindar in this ode, Arcesilaus IV, was the last of his line. However remarkable his victories at the Pythian and Olympic games, as both horse-rider and chariot-racer, it seems he was a bad king, tyrannical in the modern as well as the Greek sense of the word: he executed and exiled many Cyrenaean nobles and depended on shipped-in mercenaries to prop up his rule. Eventually, round about 460 — so only a couple of years after this poem — the Cyrenaeans rebelled, overthrew him and set the city up as a democracy. Arcesilaus and his son Battus V were later killed, their heads cut off and thrown into the sea. Whether this encourages us to read the poem as in some sense ironic, I’m not sure. I honestly don’t know how far irony is the best way of apprehending Pindar (unlike, let’s say, Euripides). Anyway, here we go. First quarter:
[στρ α]
ὁ πλοῦτος εὐρυσθενής,
ὅταν τις ἀρετᾷ κεκραμένον καθαρᾷ
βροτήσιος ἀνὴρ πότμου παραδόντος, αὐτὸν ἀνάγῃ
πολύφιλον ἑπέταν.
ὦ θεόμορ᾽ Ἀρκεσίλα,
σύ τοί νιν κλυτᾶς
αἰῶνος ἀκρᾶν βαθμίδων ἄπο
σὺν εὐδοξίᾳ μετανίσεαι
ἕκατι χρυσαρμάτου Κάστορος:
εὐδίαν ὃς μετὰ χειμέριον ὄμβρον τεὰν [10]
καταιθύσσει μάκαιραν ἑστίαν.[ἀντ α]
σοφοὶ δέ τοι κάλλιον
φέροντι καὶ τὰν θεόσδοτον δύναμιν.
σὲ δ᾽ ἐρχόμενον ἐν δίκᾳ πολὺς ὄλβος ἀμφινέμεται:
τὸ μέν, ὅτι βασιλεὺς
ἐσσὶ μεγαλᾶν πολίων,
ἔχει συγγενὴς
ὀφθαλμὸς αἰδοιότατον γέρας
τεᾷ τοῦτο μιγνύμενον φρενί:
μάκαρ δὲ καὶ νῦν, κλεεννᾶς ὅτι [20]
εὖχος ἤδη παρὰ Πυθιάδος ἵπποις ἑλὼν
δέδεξαι τόνδε κῶμον ἀνέρων,[ἐπ α]
Ἀπολλώνιον ἄθυρμα. τῷ σε μὴ λαθέτω
Κυράνας γλυκὺν ἀμφὶ κᾶπον Ἀφροδίτας ἀειδόμενον,
παντὶ μὲν θεὸν αἴτιον ὑπερτιθέμεν:
φιλεῖν δὲ Κάρρωτον ἔξοχ᾽ ἑταίρων:
ὃς οὐ τὰν Ἐπιμαθέος ἄγων
ὀψινόου θυγατέρα Πρόφασιν, Βαττιδᾶν
ἀφίκετο δόμους θεμισκρεόντων:
ἀλλ᾽ ἀρισθάρματον [30]
ὕδατι Κασταλίας ξενωθεὶς γέρας ἀμφέβαλε τεαῖσιν κόμαις,[Strophe A]
Wealth is widely-powerful
when it’s mixed with cleanly virtue —
when a mortal man receives it as his destiny,
it comes a servant, bringing many friends.
O Heaven-loved Arcesilaus!
You search for such glory
with every step of your famous life
your celebrity crosses over —
aided by Castor of the Golden-chariot,
who, after winter rains, [10]
shines calm upon your blessed home.[Antistrophe A]
The wise beautifully
carry such eminence as the gods gift them.
And for you, walking the straight path, joy is great:
above all as you are a king
ruling mighty cities,
you bring your bloodline
and see your heritage
mingling in your breast:
joyful that this very day you have [20]
won respect with your horses, seized Pythian
honours, the whole good comedy of humankind,[Epode A]
you are Apollo’s beloved plaything. And so don’t forget —
in Cyrene’s sweet Aphrodite-garden, as you are praised in song —
that it all comes from the god above.
And love Carrhotus above all other friends:
who did not, on his return, foist Epimetheus’s
belated daughter Excuse on Battus’s
palace and rightful dynasty:
instead the best of chariot-racers [30]
received, beside Castalian waters, the winner’s chaplet on his brow,
Strophe A starts with praise of Arcesilaus: it’s true he’s very rich, but that’s no reason to hate him! It’s good to be wealthy provided you are virtuous, and besides riches are a gift of the gods, and so not to be challenged. The Greek word in that first line, εὐρυσθενής (‘of far-extended might, mighty’) crops up variously in Homer, although always in relation to of Poseidon [Iliad 7.455, 8.201, Odyssey 13.140], which to me suggests that Pindar is praising his patron for his reach across the seas: after all he did bring Libyan horses all the way to Delphi (where the Pythian games were held), on the Greek mainland. Line 22's ‘comedy’ is a bit of a reach: the Greek, κῶμος, means ‘festival, procession, revel, carousal’ and therefore ‘the revellers at such a festival’ and ‘the song or ode sung at such an event’. It’s more usually translated as ‘festival’, but the word is the root of our comedy, and I like the vibe of it here. Epithemeus was a figure from myth, the brother of Prometheus — we all know his myth, of course. ‘Prometheus’ means fore-thought, where ‘Epimetheus’ means after-thought, and Pindar’s point, I suppose, is to reference the political situation in Cyrene. Πρόφασιν is an anthropomorphisation of the idea of making excuses for what you have done.
The ‘Castalian waters’ of line 31 refers to Castalia, a mythological naiad-nymph, daughter of Achelous, who was believed to inhabit a particular spring in Delphi. It was presumably beside this sacred spring that the winners received their chaplets (woven and worn on the head, unlike today’s medals hung about necks). ‘Carrhōtus’, in line 26, was Arcesilaus’ wife’s brother, the actual charioteer. What, did you think the king himself got up and drove the chariot? Dangerous business, that! Mind you, in line 51 of this very poem Pindar says directly that Arcesilaus himself ‘steered the car to victory’, but I guess that’s how we talk of kings.
[στρ β]
ἀκηράτοις ἁνίαις
ποδαρκέων δωδεκάδρομον τέμενος.
κατέκλασε γὰρ ἐντέων σθένος οὐδέν: ἀλλὰ κρέμαται,
ὁπόσα χεριαρᾶν
τεκτόνων δαίδαλ᾽ ἄγων
Κρισαῖον λόφον
ἄμειψεν ἐν κοιλόπεδον νάπος
θεοῦ: τό σφ᾽ ἔχει κυπαρίσσινον
μέλαθρον ἀμφ᾽ ἀνδριάντι σχεδόν, [40]
Κρῆτες ὃν τοξοφόροι τέγεϊ Παρνασσίῳ
καθέσσαντο μονόδροπον φυτόν.[ἀντ β]
ἑκόντι τοίνυν πρέπει
νόῳ τὸν εὐεργέταν ὑπαντιάσαι.
Ἀλεξιβιάδα, σὲ δ᾽ ἠΰκομοι φλέγοντι Χάριτες.
μακάριος, ὃς ἔχεις
καὶ πεδὰ μέγαν κάματον
λόγων φερτάτων
μναμήϊ᾽: ἐν τεσσαράκοντα γὰρ
πετόντεσσιν ἁνιόχοις ὅλον [50]
δίφρον κομίξαις ἀταρβεῖ φρενί,
ἦλθες ἤδη Λιβύας πεδίον ἐξ ἀγλαῶν
ἀέθλων καὶ πατρωΐαν πόλιν.[ἐπ β]
πόνων δ᾽ οὔ τις ἀπόκλαρός ἐστιν οὔτ᾽ ἔσεται:
ὁ Βάττου δ᾽ ἕπεται παλαιὸς ὄλβος ἔμπαν τὰ καὶ τὰ νέμων,
πύργος ἄστεος ὄμμα τε φαεννότατον
ξένοισι. κεῖνόν γε καὶ βαρύκομποι
λέοντες περὶ δείματι φύγον,
γλῶσσαν ἐπεί σφιν ἀπένεικεν ὑπερποντίαν:
ὁ δ᾽ ἀρχαγέτας ἔδωκ᾽ Ἀπόλλων [60]
θῆρας αἰνῷ φόβῳ,
ὄφρα μὴ ταμίᾳ Κυράνας ἀτελὴς γένοιτο μαντεύμασιν.[Strophe B]
holding clean reins
for twelve circuits of the sacred track.
He broke none of his fine equipment: it hangs there now —
all of it superbly crafted
by daedal experts —
behind the hill of Crisa
in the hollow valley
of the god: in a shrine of cypress timber
under dark roofbeams, beside the statue [40]
(dedicated to the Parnassians by the Cretan archers)
that is carved from a single block of wood.[Antistrophe B]
Therefore it’s clear that you
should willingly thank your benefactor.
Son of Alexibius! A name lit-up by the lovely-haired Graces.
You are blessed
that, after great striving,
the best words
record your achievement: full forty
charioteers crashed during the race [50]
but you steered your car fearlessly to the end —
and now you have returned to Libya from the shining games
bringing your prize to the city of your fathers.[Epode B]
But no man is free from troubles, now or to-come.
Battus still enjoys his time-honoured prosperity, despite ups and downs:
a tower, and starlight — strength, and a bright guide —
to all strangers. Think when the loud-roaring
lions all ran away
as he unloosed on them his foreigner’s tongue!
(though it was actually Apollo the Arch-Hegemon [60]
who filled those beasts with terror
to ensure his oracles concerning Cyrene’s rule did not fail)
In line 32’s ἁνία are ‘reins’ (it’s more usually ἡνία), and ἀκηράτος means ‘clean, undefiled, pure, untouched’. Some translators render this as ‘untangled reins’ and some as ‘unsevered’ (was there a tradition that the losers’ reins would be cut and only the winner allowed to keep his whole? It’s not mentioned anywhere else). I’ve just gone with ‘clean’. The stadium round which racers drove their chariots at the Pythan games is called, by Pindar, a τέμενος, a word that means both ‘a piece of ground cut or marked off, a precinct’ and ‘a sacred enclosure’: temenos, via the Latin templum, comes down to English as ‘temple’. The thought of racing horses in a temple is perhaps a strange one, although the relationship between sport and religion is a long-standing, involved one: people talk of ‘the sacred turf of Wembley’, after all.
Line 36’s ‘daedal’ is, it seems to me, a regular-enough English word to work here (other translators go with ‘cunning’, ‘intricate’, Loeb has ‘dainty’): the Greek is δαίδαλ[α]. Crisa (Κρῖσα) was regarded as one of the most ancient towns in Greece: it was situated a little southwest of Delphi, at the southern end of a projecting spur of Mount Parnassus — far enough away, according to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, that the sounds of rolling chariots and thundering hoofs would not distrurb the god. Crisa was, according to legend, founded by Apollo. Line 40’s: μέλαθρον, melathron, just means ‘roofbeam, ridgepole, vault of the roof’, but I’ve kept-in a reference to the first portion of that word, μέλας, black.
Alexibius was presumably Arcesilaus’s Dad; he’s listed in the dynasty as King Battus IV, but perhaps that was his regnal name, and his actual name was Alex. On how the legendary first Battus was able to scare away those lions, and why Apollo is called ‘the Arch-Hegemon’ in line 60, see here. The ‘he’ in the lines that immediately follow, below, is Apollo:
[στρ γ]
ὃ καὶ βαρειᾶν νόσων
ἀκέσματ᾽ ἄνδρεσσι καὶ γυναιξὶ νέμει,
πόρεν τε κίθαριν, δίδωσί τε Μοῖσαν οἷς ἂν ἐθέλῃ,
ἀπόλεμον ἀγαγὼν
ἐς πραπίδας εὐνομίαν,
μυχόν τ᾽ ἀμφέπει
μαντήϊον: τῷ καὶ Λακεδαίμονι
ἐν Ἄργει τε καὶ ζαθέᾳ Πύλῳ [70]
ἔνασσεν ἀλκάεντας Ἡρακλέος
ἐκγόνους Αἰγιμιοῦ τε. τὸ δ᾽ ἐμὸν γαρύειν
ἀπὸ Σπάρτας ἐπήρατον κλέος:[ἀντ γ]
ὅθεν γεγενναμένοι
ἵκοντο Θήρανδε φῶτες Αἰγεΐδαι,
ἐμοὶ πατέρες, οὐ θεῶν ἄτερ, ἀλλὰ μοῖρά τις ἄγεν:
πολύθυτον ἔρανον
ἔνθεν ἀναδεξάμενοι,
Ἄπολλον, τεᾷ,
Καρνήϊ᾽, ἐν δαιτὶ σεβίζομεν [80]
Κυράνας ἀγακτιμέναν πόλιν:
ἔχοντι τὰν χαλκοχάρμαι ξένοι
Τρῶες Ἀντανορίδαι. σὺν Ἑλένᾳ γὰρ μόλον,
καπνωθεῖσαν πάτραν ἐπεὶ ἴδον[ἐπ γ]
ἐν Ἄρει. τὸ δ᾽ ἐλάσιππον ἔθνος ἐνδυκέως
δέκονται θυσίαισιν ἄνδρες οἰχνέοντές σφε δωροφόροι,
τοὺς Ἀριστοτέλης ἄγαγε, ναυσὶ θοαῖς
ἁλὸς βαθεῖαν κέλευθον ἀνοίγων.
κτίσεν δ᾽ ἄλσεα μείζονα θεῶν,
εὐθύτομόν τε κατέθηκεν Ἀπολλωνίαις [90]
ἀλεξιμβρότοις πεδιάδα πομπαῖς
ἔμμεν ἱππόκροτον
σκυρωτὰν ὁδόν, ἔνθα πρυμνοῖς ἀγορᾶς ἔπι δίχα κεῖται θανών.[Strophe C]
for those weighed-down by disease
he supplies the remedy, equally to men and women:
and he gives the cittern, and the Muses’ inspiration,
to the peace-lovers, granting
harmony of the heart,
from the innermost place
of the Mantic oracles: the Lacedaemonians
he settles in Argos and Pylos [70]
the brave descendants of Heracles —
and those sprung from Aegimius, too. My task is to sing
of the superb glory of Sparta:[Antistrophe C]
from where the trueborn
Aegeidae travelled to Thira —
my forefathers! — not without gods, and drawn by unborn fate:
abounding in sacrificial meats
with which to supply
your festival, Apollo
Carneian, and so we honour [80]
Cyrene’s nobly-built city:
a city also of foreigners’ donated bronze
Antenor of Troy’s descendants, who came with Helen
when their fatherland was scorched by wargod[Epode C]
Ares. The chariot-racing tribe sedulously
accepts the sacrifices of those bringing gifts,
men carried by Aristotle, whose swift ships
he opened paths across the deep sea: he augmented the divine grove
of Apollo to heal — laid down a straight path [90]
resounding with the tramp of horses,
a paved road to where, behind the agora, he now lies in death.
Apollo Carneian [lines 79–80] invokes the god as patron of the festival of the Carneia, a major celebration in Sparta/Lacedaemonia. This town was from where Pindar himself came. The Spartans traced their ancestry back to Heracles, and Aegimius was Heracles’ friend and comrade — from Aegimius’ sons, the ‘Aegeidae’, were descended the Dorian people, or so the myth says. Sparta is situated between Argos and Pylos, and there is a close connection between the Spartan and Dorian peoples (to quote George Grote: ‘Herakles himself had rendered inestimable aid to the Dorian king Aegimius, when the latter was hard pressed in a contest with the Lapithae; Herakles defeated the Lapithae and slew their king Koronus; in return for which Aegimius assigned to his deliverers one third part of his whole territory and adopted Hyllus as his son.’) By the 5th century ‘Dorian’ described pretty much ‘mainland Greece’, just as ‘Ionian’ described Greeks of the islands and coastal areas. The Peloponnesian war (several decades in the future, as Pindar is writing) was really a battle between Dorians and Ionians — though Dorians also lived on some islands (as for example: Thira). Anyway, Pindar claims descent from Aegimius and then segues into praise of Battus, founder of Cyrene (real name Aristotle, remember), who amongst other things made a straight road from the shrine of Apollo direcr to Cyrene town, and established a sacred burial ground beyond the ‘agora’ or market place therein. He and his line are buried there, and Pindar imagines them looking on with pleasure at Arcesilaus’s sporting achievements. Which seems a bit sappy to me, or perhaps spooky, of conceivably both, sappy-spooky. But there you go. The ‘he’ in the next line is Battus:
[στρ δ]
μάκαρ μὲν ἀνδρῶν μέτα
ἔναιεν, ἥρως δ᾽ ἔπειτα λαοσεβής.
ἄτερθε δὲ πρὸ δωμάτων ἕτεροι λαχόντες Ἀΐδαν
βασιλέες ἱεροὶ
ἐντί, μεγάλαν δ᾽ ἀρετὰν
δρόσῳ μαλθακᾷ
ῥανθεῖσαν κώμων ὑπὸ χεύμασιν, [100]
ἀκούοντί που χθονίᾳ φρενί,
σφὸν ὄλβον υἱῷ τε κοινὰν χάριν
ἔνδικόν τ᾽ Ἀρκεσίλᾳ. τὸν ἐν ἀοιδᾷ νέων
πρέπει χρυσάορα Φοῖβον ἀπύειν,[ἀντ δ]
ἔχοντα Πυθωνόθεν
τὸ καλλίνικον λυτήριον δαπανᾶν
μέλος χαρίεν. ἄνδρα κεῖνον ἐπαινέοντι συνετοί.
λεγόμενον ἐρέω:
κρέσσονα μὲν ἁλικίας
νόον φέρβεται [110]
γλῶσσάν τε: θάρσος δὲ τανύπτερος
ἐν ὄρνιξιν αἰετὸς ἔπλετο:
ἀγωνίας δ᾽, ἕρκος οἷον, σθένος:
ἔν τε Μοίσαισι ποτανὸς ἀπὸ ματρὸς φίλας,
πέφανταί θ᾽ ἁρματηλάτας σοφός:[ἐπ δ]
ὅσαι τ᾽ εἰσὶν ἐπιχωρίων καλῶν ἔσοδοι,
τετόλμακε. θεός τέ οἱ τὸ νῦν τε πρόφρων τελεῖ δύνασιν,
καὶ τὸ λοιπὸν ὁμοῖα, Κρονίδαι μάκαρες,
διδοῖτ᾽ ἐπ᾽ ἔργοισιν ἀμφί τε βουλαῖς
ἔχειν, μὴ φθινοπωρὶς ἀνέμων [120]
χειμερία κατὰ πνοὰ δαμαλίζοι χρόνον.
Διός τοι νόος μέγας κυβερνᾷ
δαίμον᾽ ἀνδρῶν φίλων.
εὔχομαί νιν Ὀλυμπίᾳ τοῦτο δόμεν γέρας ἔπι Βάττου γένει.[Strophe D]
Blessed he lived among men
and afterwards became a hero, worshipped by the people.
Apart from him, before the houses, are those who live in Hades:
the sacred kings
bestowing great prosperity
like soft dew
sparkling beneath hymns that gush down [100]
to where their chthonic souls are listening
in happiness, sharing common grace with their son
Arcesilaus. And the choir of young people
lift praises to Phoebus of the golden sword,[Antistrophe D]
inspired by Pytho
their song ransoming the victor’s reward
with graciousness. The man is praised by those who know.
I simply say what others say:
his strength is beyond his years
nourished by his mind [110]
and tongue: for boldness he is the broad-winged
eagle among struggling
birds, a wall of vigour:
from his mother’s lap he had soared up to the Muses,
a great charioteer:[Epode D]
every way-in to noble exploits
he dares, even know the gods perfect his endeavours
and from here on, blessed sons of Cronos,
grant him both deeds and will —
ensure no autumn stormwinds [120]
blow winter into his timeline.
Zeus’s mighty mind governs all
loving the daimon in men.
I petition him to grant the new prize at Olympia to the tribe of Battus!
So the poem ends with the sycophantic hope that Arcesilaus will also win the races at the upcoming Olympian games. Line 123’s δαίμων is a tricky word for which to find a single English equivalent: a ‘daimon’ (the root of our more straightforwardly wicked/dangerous ‘demon’) originally meant a kind of lesser god, or supernatural guiding spirit. It might lead a person astray, but then again, might not. Plato thought we were all allotted a ‘daimon’ at birth, and lived with it all our lives. In the Symposium, Diotima tells us that love is not a deity, but rather a ‘great daimon’ and therefore ‘something between divine and mortal’ [202d–e]. In Plato’s Apology, Socrates claims his daimon sometimes warned him — actually spoke to him, it seems — against mistakes he was about to make. Here, my reading is that Zeus — God (Διός, Dios, is the genitive singular of Ζεύς, Zeus , because it is the mighty mind of Zeus about which Pindar is talking) — loves us not so much for our bodies or selves, but for our diamones. Anyway: there’s your poem.
+++
[Strophe A]
Wealth is widely-powerful
when it’s mixed with cleanly virtue —
when a mortal man receives it as his destiny,
it comes a servant, bringing many friends.
O Heaven-loved Arcesilaus!
You search for such glory
with every step of your famous life
your celebrity crossing over —
aided by Castor of the Golden-chariot,
who, after winter rains, [10]
shines calm upon your blessed home.
[Antistrophe A]
The wise beautifully
carry such eminence as the gods gift them.
And for you, walking the straight path, joy is great:
above all as you are a king
ruling mighty cities,
you bring your bloodline
and see your heritage
mingling in your breast:
joyful that this very day you have [20]
won respect with your horses, seized Pythian
honours, the whole good comedy of humankind,
[Epode A]
as Apollo’s beloved plaything. And so don’t forget —
in Cyrene’s sweet Aphrodite-garden, as you are praised in song —
that it all comes from God above:
and love Carrhotus above all other friends:
who did not, on his return, foist Epimetheus’s
belated daughter Excuse, on Battus’s
palace and rightful dynasty:
instead the best of chariot-racers [30]
received, beside Castalian waters, the winner’s chaplet on his brow,
[Strophe B]
holding clean reins
for twelve circuits of the sacred track.
He broke none of his fine equipment: it hangs there now,
all of it superbly crafted
by daedal experts
behind the hill of Crisa
in the hollow valley
of the god: in a shrine of cypress timber
under dark roofbeams, beside the statue [40]
(dedicated to the Parnassians by the Cretan archers)
that was carved from a single block of wood.
[Antistrophe B]
Therefore it’s clear that you
should willingly thank your benefactor.
Son of Alexibius! A name lit-up by the lovely-haired Graces.
You are blessed
that, after great striving,
the best words
record your achievement: full forty
charioteers crashed during the race [50]
but you steered your car fearlessly to the end —
and now you have returned to Libya from the shining games
bringing the prize to the city of your fathers.
[Epode B]
But no man is free from troubles, now or to-come.
Battus still enjoys his time-honoured prosperity, despite ups and downs:
a tower, and starlight — strength, and a bright guide —
to all strangers. Think when the loud-roaring
lions all ran away
as he unloosed on them his foreigner’s tongue!
(though it was actually Apollo the Arch-Hegemon [60]
who filled those beasts with terror
to ensure his oracles concerning Cyrene’s rule did not fail)
[Strophe C]
for those weighed-down by disease
he supplies the remedy, equally to men and women:
and he gives the cittern, and the Muses’ inspiration,
to the peace-lovers, granting
harmony of the heart,
from the innermost place
of the Mantic oracles: the Lacedaemonians
he settles in Argos and Pylos [70]
the brave descendants of Heracles
and those sprung from Aegimius. It is my task to sing
of the superb glory of Sparta:
[Antistrophe C]
from where the trueborn
Aegeidae once travelled to Thira —
my forefathers! — not without gods, but drawn by unborn fate:
abounding in sacrificial meats
from thence to catch-up
your thing, Apollo
Carneian, and so we honour [80]
Cyrene’s nobly-built city:
a city also of foreigners’ donated bronze
Antenor of Troy’s descendants, who came with Helen
when their fatherland was scorched by war,
[Epode C]
by Ares. The chariot-race tribe sedulously
accept the sacrifices of those bringing gifts,
men brought by Aristotle, whose swift ships
he opened paths across the deep sea: he augmented the divine grove
of Apollo, to heal — laid down a straight path [90]
sounding with the tramp of horses,
a paved road to town where, behind the agora, he now lies in death.
[Strophe D]
Blessed he lived among men
and afterwards became a hero, worshipped by the people.
Apart from him, before the houses, are those who live in Hades:
the sacred kings
bestowing great prosperity
like soft dew
sparkling beneath hymns that gush down [100]
to where their chthonic souls are listening
in happiness, sharing common grace with their son
Arcesilaus. And the choir of young people
lift praises to Phoebus of the golden sword,
[Antistrophe D]
inspired by Pytho
their song ransoming the victor’s reward
with graciousness. The man is praised by those who know.
I simply say what others say:
his strength is beyond his years
nourished by his mind [110]
and tongue: for boldness he is the broad-winged
eagle among struggling
birds, a wall of vigour:
from his mother’s lap he soared up to the Muses,
a great charioteer:
[Epode D]
every way-in to noble exploits
he dares, even know the gods perfect his endeavours
and from here on, blessed sons of Cronos,
grant him both deeds and will —
ensure no autumn stormwinds [120]
blow winter into his timeline.
Zeus’s mighty mind governs all
loving the daimon in men.
I petition him to grant the new prize at Olympia to the tribe of Battus!
