OLYMPIAN ODES: 6. EVADNE AND HER SON by PINDAR

BY Cronus' son Poseidon loved and won
Was Pitane, to whom a child she bare,
The dusky-haired Evadne; but men say
With flowing robes she hid her maiden care
Till the due moon, then sent her babe away
To Eilatus' wise son
Who o'er Arcadians at Phaesane reigned
Beside Alpheus' streams, and nurtured there
His tender charge grew up a damsel fair,
Whose virginal sweet love Apollo gained.

From AEpytus she could not hide for aye
Her Heavenly burden, and the king reined tight
His wordless wrath, and went to ask for aid
From Pytho's prophet in his grievous plight;
While she beneath the brake's deep purple shade
Her crimson zone laid by,
And put her silver pitcher down, and bare
A godlike-minded son, for at her side
The bright-haired god had set the Fates to bide,
And sent her Eileityia's gentle care.

And Iamus came forth with pleasing pain
Into the sun's clear light. But on the ground
She needs must leave him in her hapless mood,
When lo! two grey-eyed snakes the infant found,
By God's design, and nursed him with the food
Of bees' unharmful bane.
But when the king came driving with all speed
From rocky Pytho home, he asked each one
Through all his household for Evadne's son,
Proclaiming him Apollo's very seed;

And thus the boy's fair fortune he revealed,
That far beyond all mortals he should prove
A prophet of mankind of fadeless race.
But all declared that none beneath that roof
Had heard the five-day babe, nor seen his face;
For he, in reeds concealed,
Lay mid the trackless brake, his tender frame
Suffused with pansies' gold and purple rays;
Wherefore his mother vowed him all his days
To bear the pansy's death-denying name.

And when his golden youth was blooming fair
Deep in Alpheus' stream the stripling stood,
And called his grandsire, the wide-ruling king
Poseidon, and blest Delos' Archer-god,
Praying that honour for his head might spring,
And a great people's care.
'Neath the bare heavens he stood in utter night;
And thus his father's faultless words came back:
'Arise, my son, pursue my voice's track,
And hither come where all men meet in light.'

To Cronus' steep and lofty hill they came.
There was he given a twofold prophet-boon:
To hear that night the voice that cannot lie,
And, -- after Heracles, the Alcidae's son,
The brave-thewed hero reverenced for aye,
In his dread Father's name
An all-embracing festival had planned
And wrought the Games' great code, -- then should he found,
On the top tier of Zeus's altar-mound,
A new prophetic shrine by God's command.

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