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This ode seems to be of earlier date than the last, though placed after it in our order. The occasion is similar. Probably it was sung at a banquet at Lampon's house.
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As one may do amid merry revel of men, so mingle we a second time the bowls of Muses' melody in honour of Lampon's athlete progeny.
Our first, O Zeus, was unto thee, when at Nemea we[1] won thy excellent crown, and now is this second unto the lord[2] of Isthmos and unto the fifty daughters of Nereus, for that Phylakidas the youngest son is winner in the games. And be it ours to make ready yet a third for the Saviour[3], the Olympian one, and in honour of Aigina make libation of our honey-speaking song.
For if a man rejoice to suffer cost and toil, and achieve god-builded excellence, and therewithal fate plant for him fair renown, already at the farthest bounds of bliss hath such an one cast anchor, for the glory that he hath thereby from God. With such desires prayeth the son[4] of Kleonikos that he may fulfil them ere he meet death or hoary eld.
Now I call on high-throned Klotho and her sister Fates to draw nigh unto the praying of the man I love.
And upon you also, golden-charioted seed of Aiakos, I say it is clear law to me to shed the dew of my good words, what time I set my foot[5] upon this isle.
For innumerable hundred-foot[6] straight roads are cleft for your fair deeds to go forth, beyond the springs of Nile, and through the Hyperboreans' midst: neither is any town so barbarous and strange of speech that it knoweth not the fame of Peleus, that blissful son-in-law of gods, or of Aias son of Telamon, and of Aias' sire; whom unto brazen war an eager ally with Tirynthian men Alkmene's son took with him in his ships to Troy, to the place of heroes' toil, to take vengeance for Laomedon's untruth.
There did Herakles take the city of Pergamos, and with help of Telamon slew the nations of the Meropes, and the herdsman whose stature was as a mountain, Alkyoneus whom he found at Phlegrai, and spared not of his hands the terrible twanging bowstring.