Wherefore Pindar, scorning to beat about the bush with explanation or apology for the phrase, calls Ætna outright—
"The wind-swept press of Typho."
Psaumis was an elderly man, and his appearance in the lists seems to have provoked irreverent jokes in some quarters. But Pindar soothes his patron, and shames the levity of the jesters, by recalling the myth of another grey-haired champion, the hero-son of Clymenus. He too had been scorned by his rivals; but he recked little for their scorn when he took his prize from the fair hands of Queen Hypsipylè, and read a lesson to his detractors:—
"Such is my speed! And know
My hands too, and heart are so!
On heads that have not passed their prime,
Locks of grey full often grow,
Ere the appointed time!"
Camarina, it will be remembered, had lately been repeopled by the expelled adherents of Hiero's dynasty at Syracuse (B.C. 461); thus, then, in the Fifth Ode, Pindar describes the new houses rising on the banks of the Hipparis, and constructed of logs brought downstream from the interior. The river-god, says the poet, builds and blesses the city—
"Hipparis, that waters all thy host with honoured urns,
Gathering a stately forest round his banks of storied homes,—
Guided of whose grace thy people fast from dearth to glory comes!"
