Now glads the heart with transport's beam,
Now whirls them in despair again. 9
But not to any son of earth 15
Has ever yet a sign been given
By the immortal powers of heaven
To know th' event before it come to birth.
Full oft the wishes of mankind
An unexpected issue find, 20
When joy's bright promise ends in wo.
Oft too the beams of bliss arise
To him whose shatter'd vessel lies
Whelm'd in the stormy gulf below. 18
Son of Philanor!—like the bird [1]25
Whose shouts within are only heard,
Ne'er had thy speed, unknown to fame,
Exalted an inglorious name.
Driven by sedition's broils to roam
Far from thy native Cretan home, 30
Olympia's verdant chaplet now
Encircles thine illustrious brow.
For thee their twofold chaplets twine
The Delphic palm and Isthmian pine,
Now fix'd in Himera's adopted plain, 35
The tepid fountains of the nymphs you crown,
Ergoteles, with your own high renown,
And bid their springs unwonted honour gain. [2] 28
- ↑ I. e., the cock, sacred to Mars. By this simile Pindar intimates that had not Ergoteles been expelled by domestic sedition from his native land, he would still have remained inglorious at home, like a cock enclosed within a coop. Heyne remarks that this image is the more obvious, as, the coins of Himera were usually distinguished by the image of that bird. The Himeræans experienced in a remarkable manner the instability of human fortune, as their city was destroyed by the Carthaginians in little more than two hundred years from its foundation.
- ↑ This allusion to the celebrated warm springs of Himera is understood by some commentators in an allegorical sense.
