Victory Odes

By Pindar.

Translated by Arthur S. Way.

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Introduction

Though it is quite possible, and indeed probable, that the Epinician Odes do not represent Pindar’s highest achievement in the realm of pure poetry, the student of history has every reason to be thankful that, of all his works, it is these that have escaped the ruin that has overtaken the rest. For they furnish us, perhaps more fully and more convincingly than any other remains of antiquity, with a solution of a problem which has troubled historians. Some of these have exclaimed against what they consider the narrow, shortsighted, parochial spirit of the Greeks generally, in failing to see that their material prosperity, their safety and true independence would be best secured, if not by frankly enrolling themselves under the hegemony of one strong state (preferably Athens), at least by a close federation as binding on each member as that of the United States of America. Still more writers have denounced what they consider the unpatriotic selfishness of the aristocratical party in the several states, their unscrupulous plottings and alliances with the enemies of their respective cities, and, when they gained the upper hand, their ruthless treatment of the democracies.

Does not Pindar furnish us with the key to this jealous isolation, by showing us how each city cherished a belief in its divine origin, how the first parent of each state, or its founder, was a divine being, whose very name it perpetuated—for in Pindar the name of the goddess-founder and that of the state are interchangeable—Thebe, Aegina, Cyrene; or how its founders were demigods who settled there in obedience to divine commands? To subordinate this heavenly guardianship to other powers might well seem sacrilege. And the tradition of the sacredness of an independence thus hallowed, when once established, might well survive the age of unquestioning faith.

For the families of the aristocracy, to whom a thousand memories called far more powerfully and insistently than to any other order of nobility in the world’s history, there were incentives to political exclusiveness whose cogency we cannot appreciate unless we take the Olympian hierarchy as seriously as Pindar did. The chronique scandaleuse of Olympus, which shocked Plato, inspired Pindar. While repudiating belief in anything derogatory to the Gods, he does not consider their amours with mortal women (or even their paederasty) in that hght. The men whose praises he sang had in their veins the blood of Gods: their human ancestors were half divine, and their achievements were worthy of their high descent. The sons of the great houses whose lineage was from Heracles, Aeacus, Perseus, counted themselves of different clay from the common herd: they recognised in their hearts that they owed no duty to a democratic constitution: they never ceased to chafe under the yoke of equality with beings whom they held scarce fit to be their servants, and to intrigue against a system which placed their personal liberty at the mercy of the caprice of the “base,” and allowed their wealth to be exploited for purposes with which they had no sympathy. No wonder that they accepted with complacency the poet’s digressions into the old heroic myths that to us are but fairy tales: for them these were unassailable fact. Their records in song were the charter of their superiority to the world around them, of their right divine to govern their fellow-men.

It must also be remembered that these highborn men were superior to the lower classes not only in pride of lineage, but they bore about with them the witness to this in their bodily development. The aristocrat was a stronger man, and far more skilled in the use of that strength for personal encounters than the average democrat. He was a man of leisure, and we may say that practically all such men made it their aim, their daily practice, to perfect their physical condition in the gymnasiums which were in every town. In many states, perhaps in all which belonged to the Peloponnesian League, a small organized body of aristocrats kept the far more numerous commonalty in subjection, solely by their fighting superiority.1 We must not lose sight of the transcendent importance of bodily vigour in an age when all fighting was hand-to-hand, and where the numbers on each side were so small that a few abnormally strong men might, by breaking the enemies’ line, decide the issue. Each successful champion in the great athletic contests means a large number of men who went through a course of training in which they were wrought up to the highest pitch of perfection not only of muscular development, but also of pluck and endurance.

Among reasons which have been assigned for the discursiveness of these triumphal odes, in which a very small space is given to the victor, and none to the details of the contest, perhaps the most important was this: excessive praise was universally regarded as mischievous to its objects, as tending directly to provoke the jealousy of the Gods, and to invite their nemesis. In the mouth of an enemy it was malicious, tactless in that of a friend. Hence the praise in an ode was distributed widely: the bard celebrated the champion, his family, former victors, the city or island of his birth, his ancestors, the ancient heroes of the land, so that the φθόνος might fall heavily on none, especially as all success was ascribed to the Gods, to whom the competitors sacrificed before engaging in the contest. A religious halo surrounded the Great Games. “Not unto us” is the burden of more than one ode, in which success is expressly attributed to the help of a God, as Poseidon, and often to the Graces.

A feature of the Games which strikes us moderns unpleasantly is the absence among the Greeks of what we call the sporting spirit. While no praise was too high, no reward too splendid for the victor, his unsuccessful competitors neither expected nor obtained any sympathy even from their fellow-townsmen. Even the victor was sometimes assailed by envious disparagement, especially where a state was rent by political factions; while the vanquished had to hide his head from the storm of derision which greeted his failure.

Victory Odes

The Olympian Odes

I

For Hiero, ruler of Syracuse, on a victory won by his horse Pherenikus, 476 BC.

Strophe 1

Chiefest is water of all things, for streaming
Therefrom all life and existence came;
And all proud treasure of princes the gleaming
Splendour of gold outshines, as the flame
Of a great fire flings through the night its rays.
But, heart of mine, if thou fain wouldst praise
Triumphs in athlete-contests won,
Search not, when day with his glory is glowing,
For a radiant star more life-bestowing
In the whole void sky, than the kingly sun.
Even so shall we find no brighter crown
Than Olympia giveth whereof to sing;
For thence doth the chant of high renown
O’er the spirits of bards its perfume fling,
When, the praise of Kronion in song resounding,
Unto Hiero’s blest hearth wealth-abounding
The hymn of his praise they bring.

Antistrophe 1

Hiero!—yea, for the rod of his power
Is a sceptre of righteousness stretched o’er the land
Of the myriad flocks; and the choice of the flower
Of chivalry ever is plucked by his hand.
Yea, and he also is garlanded
With the blossom of song enstarring his head,
The song that with gladsome voices now
We singers chant, at the banquet meeting
Of the Prince who giveth us friendship’s greeting.
Now, O my Muse, from its rest take thou
The lyre that is strung to the Dorian strain,
If the glory of fleet Pherenikus, he
Who triumphed in Pisa’s Olympian plain,
Haply with rapture of song thrilled thee,
When flashed in the course by Alpheus’ river
His body by lash or by goad touched never,
And wedded to victory

Epode 1

His lord, the ruler of Syracuse-town,
The king who joyeth in gallant steeds.
Flasheth afar his name’s renown,
Flasheth from Sicily far oversea
Where Pelops, the exile from Lydia’s meads,
Founded a hero-colony—
Pelops, beloved of the Earth-enfolder,
Poseidon the strong, when the Fate of the Thread
Drew him resplendent with ivory shoulder
From the undefiled laver, whom men deemed dead.
There be marvels full many; and fables hoary
With inventions manifold broidered o’er
Falsify legend, I wot, with a story
Wherein truth liveth no more.

Strophe 2

But the Grace of Beauty, which aye is weaving
All manner of charm round the souls of men,
Taketh these tales unworthy believing,
And arrays them in honour: so cometh it then
That man with unwavering credence clings
To a false-feigned tale of impossible things.
But the after-days are the witnesses
That be wisest. Reverent speech beseemeth
The mortal who uttereth that which he deemeth
Of the Gods—so shall his reproach be less.
O Tantalus’ son, I will speak not as they
Who told thy story in days of old!
But thy father bade thee a guest that day
To a banquet arrayed by the righteous-souled
Upon Sipylus’ loved height—so he tendered
To the Gods requital for boons they had rendered.
On a sudden the chariot of gold

Antistrophe 2

Of the Lord of the Trident gleaming splendid,
Whose soul was with love for thy youth overcome,
Bare thee, as up through the blue ye ascended,
To imperial Zeus’s glory-home,
Whither also came in the after-day
Ganymedes ravished from earth away
In halls celestial the nectar to pour.
But when viewless thus from the earth they had caught thee,
Nor the questers that far and near had sought thee
To the arms of thy mother could thee restore,
Then spake some neighbour in envious spite
A whispered slander of sin and shame,
How that over the boiling water’s might
Which hissed in the bronze that bestrode the flame
Did they carve thy flesh with the knife, and seethe it,
And served at the feast, and—dare lips breathe it?—
That the God-guests ate of the same!

Epode 2

But impossible is it for me to call
Any Blest One man-eater—with loathing and scorn
I recoil! O, the profit is passing small
That the dealer in slander hath ofttimes found.
But if ever a man on the earth was born
Whom the Watchers from Heaven with honour crowned,
That man was Tantalus: yet of their favour
No profit he had, nor of that high bliss.
But the man’s proud stomach was drunk with its savour
And gorged with pride; and by reason of this
He drew on him ruin utter-crushing;
For Zeus hung o’er him a huge black scaur,
And he cowers from it aye on his head down-rushing
From happiness exiled far.

Strophe 3

And there unto torment fettered for ever
Living on, living on in eternal despair
He abides with the Three2 on whom hope dawns never,
He who from the feast of the Gods could dare
To steal the ambrosia and nectar whereby
They had given him immortality,
That the guests of his wine-cup might revel thereon!
But who thinketh to hide his evil doing
From God, he errs to his bitter ruing!
So then the Immortals sent back his son
Exiled to earth from the heavenly home,
Thenceforth with the sons of a day to abide.
But in process of time, when Pelops was come
To the flower-bright season of life’s springtide,
When the soft rose-tint of his cheek ’gan darken,
To the whisper of love did his spirit hearken,
And he dreamed of the world-famed bride

Antistrophe 3

Hippodameia, the glorious daughter
Of the Lord of Pisa, a prize for him
Who could win her. Alone by the surf-white water
Of the sea he stood in the darkness dim.
To the Thunder-voiced he cried o’er the wave,
To the Lord of the Trident mighty to save:
And lo, at his side did the God appear.
And “O Poseidon,” he spake imploring,
“If the gifts of the Cyprian Queen’s outpouring
To thy spirit, O King, be in any wise dear,
His bronze lance let not Oenomaus lift
To mine hurt, but cause me to Elis to ride
On a god-given chariot passing swift:
There throne thou me by victory’s side.
For lovers by that spear merciless-slaying
Have died thirteen, and he still is delaying
To bestow his child as a bride.

Epode 3

In the path doth a mighty peril lie;
To the craven soul no welcome it gives.
But, seeing a man must needs once die,
Wherefore should I unto old age screen
From peril a life that only lives,
Sitting nameless and fameless in darkness unseen,
In the deeds of the valiant never sharing?
Nay, lies at my feet the challenge now:
I will accept it for doing and daring!
Good speed to mine heart’s desire grant thou!”
Not fruitless the cry of his heart’s desiring
Was uttered. The God heard gracious-souled,
And crowned him with honour. Winged steeds untiring
He gave, and a chariot of gold.