Page:Odes of Pindar (Myers).djvu/173

Rh fellows in comely form, and in games have shown his strength to be the best, let such an one remember that his raiment is upon mortal limbs, and that the earth shall be his vesture at the end.

Yet in good words of his fellow-citizens is it meet that his praise be told, and that we make his name comely with notes of honey-sounding song.

Now among the neighbouring peoples sixteen illustrious victories have crowned Aristagoras and his famous clan in the wrestling-match and in the pankration of weighty honour. But hopes too diffident of his parents kept back the might of their son from essaying the Pythian or Olympian strife: yet verily by the God of Truth I am persuaded that both at Castaly and at the tree-clad hill of Kronos, had he gone thither, he should have turned back home with more honour than any of his rivals who had striven with him, when that he had kept the fifth year's feast ordained of Herakles with dance and song, and with the shining shoots had bound his hair.

But thus among mortals is one cast down from weal by empty boasts, while another through overmuch mistrusting of his strength is robbed of his due honours, for that a spirit of little daring draggeth him backward by the hand.

This were an easy thing to divine, that Peisander's stock was from Sparta in the time of old (for from Amyklai he came with Orestes, bringing hither an army of Aiolians in bronze mail): and also that the blood of his mother's brother Melanippos was blended with Ismenos' stream.

The virtues of an old descent repeat their vigour uncertainly in the generations of men. Neither doth the black-soiled tilth bring forth fruit continually, neither will the trees be persuaded to bear with every year's return a fragrant flower of equal wealth, but in their turns only.