I.
FOR HIERON OF AITNA,
WINNER IN THE CHARIOT-RACE.
The date of this victory is B. C. 474.
In the year 480, the year of Salamis, the Syracusans under Hieron had defeated the Carthaginians in the great battle of Himera.
In 479 a great eruption of Etna (Aitna) began. In 476 Hieron founded, near the mountain but we may suppose at a safe distance, the new city of Aitna, in honour of which he had himself proclaimed as an Aitnaian after this and other victories in the games.
And in this same year, 474, he had defeated the Etruscans, or Tuscans, or Tyrrhenians in a great sea-fight before Cumae.
Pindar might well delight to honour those who had been waging so well against the barbarians of the South and West the same war which the Hellenes of the mother-country waged against the barbarians of the East.
O golden Lyre, thou common treasure of Apollo and the Muses violet-tressed, thou whom the dancer's step, prelude of festal mirth, obeyeth, and the singers heed thy bidding, what time with quivering strings thou utterest preamble of choir-leading overture—lo even the sworded lightning of immortal fire thou quenchest, and on the sceptre of Zeus his eagle sleepeth, slackening his swift wings either side, the king of birds, for a dark mist thou hast distilled on his arched head, a gentle seal upon his eyes, and he in slumber heaveth his supple back, spell-bound beneath thy throbs.
Yea also violent Ares, leaving far off the fierce point of his
