A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

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146 The Poets and the Philosophers
Quickly they came like light; and thou, blest lady,
Smiling with clear, undying eyes didst ask me
What was the woe that troubled me and wherefore
Now I had called thee;
What I fain would have to assuage the torment
Of my frenzied soul; and whom now, to please thee,
Must persuasion lure to thy love, and who now,
Sappho, hath wronged thee?
Come to me now, too, and from tyrannous sorrow
Free me; and all things that my soul desires to
Have done, do for me, Queen, and let thyself now, too,
Be my great ally
V. Pindar
hieron's victory in the horse-race at olympia
Most splen- Best is Water of all, and Gold as a flaming fire in the
*^
are the night shineth eminent amid lordly wealth ; but if of prizes
Olympic.
jj^
^j^g games thou art fain, 3 my soul, to tell, then, as thou
Pindar,
must Search in the void firmament byj dayj for no bright
Olympian, i.
,
star more quickening than the sun, so neither shall we
Ancient
'
find any games greater than the Olympic whereof to utter
Hieron is
Syracuse.
Pherenicus
nor ,154.
^^^ voice; for hence cometh the glorious hymn and entereth
into the minds of the skilled in song, so that they
celebrate the son of Cronos, when to the rich and happy
hearth of Hieron they are come; for he wieldeth the sceptre
of justice in Sicily of many flocks, culling the choice fruits
^^ ^^^ kinds of excellence; and with the flower of music
("^''^^5"'"^ is he made splendid, even such strains as we sing blithely
that won;
at the table of a friend.
used'tor^"^^
Take from the peg the Dorian lute, if in any wise the
Ai^hef'^il^^^
glory of Pherenicus at Pisa hath swayed thy soul unto
by Olympia. glad thoughts, when by the banks of Alpheus he ran,