[Footnote 11: It appears to me to be an absurdity to suppose that
Pindar means to express in this sentence his own rule of conduct,
as the commentators have fancied. He is all through this passage
condemning 'crooked ways.']

III.

FOR HIERON OF SYRACUSE,

WINNER IN THE HORSE-RACE.

* * * * *

The dates both of the victory and of the ode are uncertain. But as
Pherenikos, the horse that won this race at Pytho, is the same that
won at Olympia B.C. 472, in honour of which event the First Olympian
was written, the victory cannot have been very long before that date,
though the language of the ode implies that it was written a good deal
later, probably for an anniversary of the victory. It must at least
have been written before Hieron's death in 467. It is much occupied
with his illness.

* * * * *

Fain were I (if meet it be to utter from my mouth the prayer conceived
of all) that Cheiron the son of Philyra were alive and had not
perished among men, even the wide-ruling seed of Kronos the son of
Ouranos; and that there still lorded it in Pelion's glens that Beast
untamed, whose soul was loving unto men, even such as when of old he
trained the gentle deviser of limb-saving anodynes, Asklepios, the
hero that was a defence against all kind of bodily plague.

Of him was the daughter[1] of Phlegyas of goodly steeds not yet
delivered by Eileithuia aid of mothers, ere by the golden bow she was
slain at the hands of Artemis, and from her child-bed chamber went
down into the house of Hades, by contriving of Apollo. Not idle is the
wrath of sons of Zeus.

She in the folly of her heart had set Apollo at nought, and taken
another spouse without knowledge of her sire, albeit ere then she had
lain with Phoibos of the unshorn hair, and bare within her the seed of
a very god.

Neither awaited she the marriage-tables nor the sound of many voices
in hymeneal song, such as the bride's girl-mates are wont to sing at
eventide with merry minstrelsy: but lo, she had longing for things
otherwhere, even as many before and after. For a tribe there is most
foolish among men, of such as scorn the things of home, and gaze on
things that are afar off, and chase a cheating prey with hopes that
shall never be fulfilled.

Of such sort was the frenzied strong desire fair-robed Koronis
harboured in her heart, for she lay in the couch of a stranger that
was come from Arcady.