Fragments of Pindar. [Translations.]

From: The Dial, Vol. IV, No. IV. (April 1844)
Author:
Published: James Munroe and Company 1844 Boston

  [The following fragments of Pindar, found in ancient authors, should have been inserted at the end of the translations contained in our last number.]

THE FREEDOM OF GREECE.

First at Artemisium
The children of the Athenians laid the shining
Foundation of freedom,
And at Salamis and Mycale,
And in Platæa, making it firm
As adamant.

Having risen he went
Over land and sea,
And stood over the vast summits of mountains,
And threaded the recesses, penetrating to the foundations of the groves.

Heaven being willing, even on an osier thou mayest sail.

  Thus rhymed by the old translator of Plutarch;

“Were it the will of heaven, an osier bough
Were vessel safe enough the seas to plough.”

Honors and crowns of the tempest-footed
Horses delight one;
Others life in golden chambers;
And some even are pleased traversing securely
The swelling of the sea in a swift ship.

This I will say to thee,—
The lot of fair and pleasant things
It behoves to show in public to nil the people;
But if any adverse calamity sent from heaven befall
Men, this it becomes to bury in darkness.

To Heaven it is possible from black
Night to make arise unspotted light,
And with cloud-blackening darkness to obscure
The pure splendor of day.

First, indeed, the Fates brought the wise-counselling
Uranian Themis, with golden horses,
By the fountains of Ocean to the awful ascent
Of Olympus, along the shining way,
To be the first spouse of Zeus the Deliverer.
And she bore the golden-filletted, fair-wristed
Hours, preservers of good things.
Equally tremble before God
And a man dear to God.

  Pindar used such exaggeration [in praise of poetry] as to say that even the gods themselves, when at his marriage Zeus asked if they wanted any thing, “asked him to make certain gods for them who should celebrate these great works and all his creation with speech and song.”

  Pindar said of the physiologists, that they “plucked the unripe fruit of wisdom.”

  Pindar said that “hopes were the dreams of those awake.”

T.

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