Upon the flower-crowned prow[8] will I go up to sing of brave deeds done.  Youth is approved by valour in dread wars; and hence say I that thou hast won boundless renown in thy battles, now with horsemen, now on foot:  also the counsels of thine elder years give me sure ground of praising thee every way.

All hail!  This song like to Phenician merchandize is sent across the hoary sea:  do thou look favourably on the strain of Kaster in Aeolian mood[9], and greet it in honour of the seven-stringed lute.

Be what thou art, now I have told thee what that is:  in the eyes of children the fawning ape is ever comely:  but the good fortune of Rhadamanthos hath come to him because the fruit that his soul bare was true, neither delighteth he in deceits within his heart, such as by whisperer’s arts ever wait upon mortal man.

An overpowering evil are the secret speakings of slander, to the slandered and to the listener thereto alike, and are as foxes in relentless temper.  Yet for the beast whose name is of gain[10] what great thing is gained thereby?  For like the cork above the net, while the rest of the tackle laboureth deep in the sea, I am unmerged in the brine.

Impossible is it that a guileful citizen utter potent words among the good, nevertheless he fawneth on all and useth every subtlety.  No part have I in that bold boast of his, ’Let me be a friend to my friend, but toward an enemy I will be an enemy and as a wolf will cross his path, treading now here now there in crooked ways[11].’  For every form of polity is a man of direct speech best, whether under a despotism, or whether the wild multitude, or the wisest, have the state in their keeping.

Against God it is not meet to strive, who now upholdeth these, and now again to those giveth great glory.  But not even this cheereth the heart of the envious; for they measure by an unjust balance, and their own hearts they afflict with bitter pain, till such time as they attain to that which their hearts devise.

To take the car’s yoke on one’s neck and run on lightly, this helpeth; but to kick against the goad is to make the course perilous.  Be it mine to dwell among the good, and to win their love.

[Footnote 1:  Pindar here identifies himself with his ode, which he sent, not took, to Syracuse.  Compare Ol. vii. 13, &c.]

[Footnote 2:  Properly [Greek:  harmata] would seem to include all except the body of the chariot ([Greek:  diphros]) in which the charioteer stood.]

[Footnote 3:  His father-in-law Deioneus.]

[Footnote 4:  I. e. to estimate rightly one’s capacities, circumstances, rights, duties.]

[Footnote 5:  Reading [Greek:  poti koiton ikont’].]

[Footnote 6:  The message spoken of above, v. 24.]

[Footnote 7:  The cloud, the phantom-Hera.]

[Footnote 8:  The prow of the ship carrying this ode, with which Pindar, as has been said, identifies himself.]