Winner in the chariot-race.

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Pindar has made this victory of Arkesilas, King of the Hellenic colony of Kyrene in Africa, an occasion for telling the story of Jason’s expedition with the Argonauts.  The ostensible reason for introducing the story is that Kyrene had been colonised from the island of Thera by the descendants of the Argonaut Euphemos, according to the prophecy of Medea related at the beginning of the ode.  But Pindar had another reason.  He wished to suggest an analogy between the relation of the Iolkian king Pelias to Jason and the relation of Arkesilas to his exiled kinsman Demophilos.  Demophilos had been staying at Thebes, where Pindar wrote this ode, to be afterwards recited at Kyrene.  It was written B.C. 466, when Pindar was fifty-six years of age, and is unsurpassed in his extant works, or indeed by anything of this kind in all poetry.

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This day O Muse must thou tarry in a friend’s house, the house of the king of Kyrene of goodly horses, that with Arkesilas at his triumph thou mayst swell the favourable gale of song, the due of Leto’s children, and of Pytho.  For at Pytho of old she who sitteth beside the eagles of Zeus—­nor was Apollo absent then—­the priestess, spake this oracle, that Battos should found a power in fruitful Libya, that straightway departing from the holy isle he might lay the foundations of a city of goodly chariots upon a white breast of the swelling earth, and might fulfil in the seventeenth generation the word of Medea spoken at Thera, which of old the passionate child of Aietes, queen of Colchians, breathed from immortal lips.  For on this wise spake she to the warrior Jason’s god-begotten crew:  ’Hearken O sons of high-hearted mortals and of gods.  Lo I say unto you that from this sea-lashed land the daughter[1] of Epaphos shall sometime be planted with a root to bring forth cities that shall possess the minds of men, where Zeus Ammon’s shrine is builded.

And instead of short-finned dolphins they shall take to them fleet mares, and reins instead of oars shall they ply, and speed the whirlwind-footed car.

By that augury shall it come to pass that Thera shall be mother-city of mighty commonwealths, even the augury that once at the outpourings of the Tritonian lake Euphemos leaping from the prow took at the hands of a god who in the likeness of man tendered this present to the stranger of a clod of earth; and the Father Kronian Zeus confirmed it with a peal of thunder.

[2]What time he came suddenly upon them as they were hanging against the ship the bronze-fluked anchor, fleet Argo’s bridle; for now for twelve days had we borne from Ocean over long backs of desert-land our sea-ship, after that by my counsel we drew it up upon the shore.

Then came to us the solitary god, having put on the splendid semblance of a noble man; and he began friendly speech, such as well-doers use when they bid new-comers to the feast.