This it is that beareth abroad the name of Iolaos in song, and the names of the mighty Kastor and of thee, king Polydeukes, ye sons of gods, who one day in Therapnai and the next in Olympus have your dwelling-place.

[Footnote 1:  Alkmene.]

[Footnote 2:  Mother of Ismenios and Teucros, by Apollo.]

[Footnote 3:  In Phokis.]

[Footnote 4:  Agamemnon.  It is a strange variety of the tale that he is spoken of as having been murdered at Amyklai and not at Argos or Mykenai.  So above Orestes is called Lakonian.]

[Footnote 5:  Kassandra.]

[Footnote 6:  (Not for a party.)]

XII.

For Midas of Akragas,

Winner in the flute-playing match.

* * * * *

This is an early ode:  the victory was won either in 494 or 450.  It was to be sung, it would seem, at Akragas, and very probably in a procession to the shrine of the tutelar divinity of the city, with an address to whom it seemingly begins, though it is difficult to say what degree of personification is intended.

* * * * *

I pray thee, lover of splendour, most beautiful among the cities of men, haunt of Persephone, thou who by the banks of Akragas’ stream that nourisheth thy flocks, inhabitest a citadel builded pleasantly—­O queen, graciously and with goodwill of gods and men welcome this crown that is come forth from Pytho for Midas’ fair renown; and him too welcome therewithal who hath overcome all Hellas in the art which once on a time Pallas Athene devised, when she made music of the fierce Gorgon’s death-lament.

That heard she pouring from the maiden heads and heads of serpents unapproachable amidst the anguish of their pains, when Perseus had stricken the third sister, and to the isle Seriphos and its folk bare thence their doom.

Yea also he struck with blindness the wondrous brood of Phorkos[1], and to Polydektes’ bridal brought a grievous gift, and grievous eternally he made for that man his mother’s slavery and ravished bed:  for this he won the fair-faced Medusa’s head, he who was the son of Danae, and sprung, they say, from a living stream of gold.

But the Maiden[2], when that she had delivered her well-beloved from these toils, contrived the manifold music of the flute, that with such instrument she might repeat the shrill lament that reached her from Euryale’s[3] ravening jaws.

A goddess was the deviser thereof, but having created it for a possession of mortal men, she named that air she played the many-headed[4] air, that speaketh gloriously of folk-stirring games, as it issueth through the thin-beat bronze and the reeds which grow by the Graces’ city of goodly dancing-ground in the precinct of Kephisos’ nymph, the dancers’ faithful witnesses.