Or young, or bowed with years,
Give forth the fierce command,
And lay it low in dust.[1]
For lo! the eye of Zeus,
Zeus of our olive groves,
That sees eternally,
Casteth its glance thereon,
And she, Athena, with the clear, grey eyes.
Antistroph. II.
And yet another praise is mine to sing,710
Gift of the mighty God
To this our city, mother of us all,
Her greatest, noblest boast,
Famed for her goodly steeds,
Famed for her bounding colts,
Famed for her sparkling sea.
Poseidon, son of Kronos, Lord and King,[2]
To Thee this boast we owe,
For first in these our streets
Thou to the untamed horse
Did'st use the conquering bit:
And here the well-shaped oar,
By skilled hands deftly plied,
Still leapeth through the sea,
Following in wondrous guise,
The fair Nereids with their hundred feet.
- ↑ Among the legends of the Persian invasion, one was, that the olive in the Acropolis, the day after it had been burnt in the capture of the city, sent out a new and sturdy shoot. The "young" invader is probably Xerxes, the "old" Archidamos or Mardonios.
- ↑ As in the Acropolis, Athena was represented as giving the olive, and Poseidon the sea to the city, so here the patriot poet brings the two together as the joint benefactors of his country.
