For thee, Agesias, is that praise prepared which justly and openly Adrastos spake of old concerning the seer Amphiaraos the son of Oikleus, when the earth had swallowed him and his shining steeds.  For afterward, when on seven pyres dead men were burnt, the son[2] of Talaos spake on this wise:  ’I seek the eye of my host, him who was alike a good seer and a good fighter with the spear.’

This praise also belongeth to the Syracusan who is lord of this triumphal song.  I who am no friend of strife or wrongful quarrel will bear him this witness even with a solemn oath, and the sweet voice of the Muses shall not say me nay.

O Phintis[3] yoke me now with all speed the strength of thy mules that on the clear highway we may set our car, that I may go up to the far beginning of this race.  For those mules know well to lead the way in this course as in others, who at Olympia have won crowns:  it behoveth them that we throw open to them the gates of song, for to Pitane by Eurotas’ stream must I begone betimes to-day.

Now Pitane[4], they say, lay with Poseidon the son of Kronos and bare the child Euadne with tresses iris-dark.  The fruit of her body unwedded she hid by her robe’s folds, and in the month of her delivery she sent her handmaids and bade them give the child to the hero son[5] of Elatos to rear, who was lord of the men of Arcady who dwelt at Phaisane, and had for his lot Alpheos to dwell beside.

There was the child Euadne nurtured, and by Apollo’s side she first knew the joys of Aphrodite.

But she might not always hide from Aipytos the seed of the god within her; and he in his heart struggling with bitter strain against a grief too great for speech betook him to Pytho that he might ask of the oracle concerning the intolerable woe.

But she beneath a thicket’s shade put from her silver pitcher and her girdle of scarlet web, and she brought forth a boy in whom was the spirit of God.  By her side the gold-haired god set kindly Eleutho and the Fates, and from her womb in easy travail came forth Iamos to the light.  Him in her anguish she left upon the ground, but by the counsel of gods two bright-eyed serpents nursed and fed him with the harmless venom[6] of the bee.

But when the king came back from rocky Delphi in his chariot he asked all who were in the house concerning the child whom Euadne had born; for he said that the sire whereof he was begotten was Phoibos, and that he should be a prophet unto the people of the land excelling all mortal men, and that his seed should be for ever.

Such was his tale, but they answered that they had neither seen nor heard of him, though he was now born five days.  For he was hidden among rushes in an impenetrable brake, his tender body all suffused with golden and deep purple gleams of iris flowers; wherefore his mother prophesied saying that by this holy name[7] of immortality he should be called throughout all time.