Pindar and Anacreon/Pindar/Olympic Odes/12
THE TWELFTH OLYMPIC ODE.
TO ERGOTELES OF HIMERA, ON HIS VICTORY IN THE FOOT RACE, CALLED Δολιχοδρομος,[1] OR THE LONG COURSE, GAINED IN THE SEVENTY-SEVENTH OLYMPIAD.
ARGUMENT.
This ode, almost as short as the preceding, begins with an invocation to Fortune, the supreme arbitress of events, the issue of which is always uncertain, to be propitious to the Himeræans. The victor would have remained in ignoble obscurity, passing his life in domestic broils, had he not removed from Crete, his native land, to Himera: in which town, being favourably received, he cultivated those faculties of strength and swiftness which enabled him to obtain the Olympic, Pythian, and Isthmian crowns.
Oh Fortune, saviour of the state,
Daughter of Eleutherian Jove,
For Himera thy constant love
And guardian care I supplicate.
Toss'd on the rough and stormy sea, 5
The rapid ships are sway'd by thee;
And marshall'd in its long array
Uncertain war allows thy sway.
Since, or in council or in field,
All to thy sovereign fiat yield. 10
While flattering hope's delusive dream
Cheats men with visions false and vain;
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 [2]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. [3] 28
- ↑ This course, according to some, consisted of six, according to others, of twenty-four stadia. It was longer than the diaulos, which was a course from the starting post to the goal and back again without intermission.
- ↑ 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.