going ode.]

[Footnote 4: Probably a horse with which Hippokleas' father won a race
at Pytho.]

XI.

FOR THRASYDAIOS OF THEBES,

WINNER IN THE BOYS' SHORT FOOT-RACE.

* * * * *

The date of this victory was B.C. 478, nearly two years after the
battle of Plataea, and the deliverance of Thebes from Persian
influence and the sway of a tyrannous oligarchy. But beyond this we
have nothing certain to which we can refer the allusions to Theban
affairs, public and private, which we have reason to think present in
the ode.

* * * * *

Daughters of Kadmos, thou Semele whose goings are with the queens of
Olympus, and thou Ino Leukothea who housest with the Nereids of the
sea, come ye up with the mother[1] of a mighty son, even of Herakles,
unto the temple of M[)e]lia[2] and into the holy place of the golden
tripods, which beyond all others Loxias hath honoured, and named it
the shrine Ismenian, a truthful seat of seers; where now, O children
of Harmonia, he calleth the whole heroic sisterhood of the soil to
assemble themselves together, that of holy Themis and of Pytho and
the Earth-navel of just judgments ye may sing at early evening, doing
honour to seven-gated Thebes, and to the games at Kirrha, wherein
Thrasydaios hath made his father's house glorious by casting thereon a
third wreath for his victory in the rich cornlands[3] of Pylades, who
was the host of Lakonian Orestes.

Orestes, on the murder of his father, Arsinoe his nurse saved from the
violent hands of Klytaimnestra and out of the ruinous treason, what
time the daughter of Dardanid Priam, Kassandra, was by the glittering
bronze in company with Agamemnon's soul sped to the shadowy shore of
Acheron by the woman who had no pity.

Did then the slaughter of Iphigenia far from her own land on Euripos'
shore so sting her mother to the arousal of a wrath of grievous act?
Or had nocturnal loves misguided her, in thraldom to a paramour's
embrace? a sin in new-wed brides most hateful, and that cannot be
hidden for the talk of stranger tongues: for the citizens repeat the
shame. For prosperity must sustain an envy equalling itself: but
concerning the man of low place the rumour is obscure.

Thus died the hero himself[4], the son of Atreus, when after long
time he came unto famous Amyklai, and drew down with him to death the
maiden prophetess[5], after that he consumed with fire the Trojans'
habitati