But I am minded to pray to the Mother[1] for him, to the awful goddess unto whom, and unto Pan, before my door nightly the maidens move in dance and song.
Yet, O Hieron, if thou art skilled to apprehend the true meaning of sayings, thou hast learnt to know this from the men of old; The immortals deal to men two ill things for one good. The foolish cannot bear these with steadfastness but the good only, putting the fair side forward.
But thee a lot of happiness attendeth, for if on any man hath mighty Destiny looked favourably, surely it is on a chief and leader of a people.
A life untroubled abode not either with Peleus, son of Aiakos, or with godlike Kadmos: yet of all mortals these, they say, had highest bliss, who both erewhile listened to the singing of the Muses golden-filleted, the one in seven-gated Thebes, when he wedded large-eyed Harmonia, the other on the mountainside, when he took to him Thetis to be his wife, wise Nereus' glorious daughter. And with both of them gods sate at meat, and they beheld the sons of Kronos sitting as kings on thrones of gold, and they received from them gifts for their espousals; and by grace of Zeus they escaped out of their former toils and raised up their hearts to gladness.
Yet again in the after time the bitter anguish of those daughters[2] robbed Kadmos of a part of bliss: howbeit the Father Zeus came to white-armed Thyone's[3] longed-for couch.
And so did the son of Peleus whom Thetis bare at Phthia, her only son, die by an arrow in war, and moved the Danaoi to lament aloud, when his body was burning in fire.
Now if any by wisdom hath the way of truth he may yet lack good fortune, which cometh of the happy gods.
