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 Mĕlia[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.
