alike a good seer and a good fighter with the spear.'

This praise also belongeth to the Syracusan who is lord of this
triumphal song. I who am no friend of strife or wrongful quarrel will
bear him this witness even with a solemn oath, and the sweet voice of
the Muses shall not say me nay.

O Phintis[3] yoke me now with all speed the strength of thy mules that
on the clear highway we may set our car, that I may go up to the far
beginning of this race. For those mules know well to lead the way in
this course as in others, who at Olympia have won crowns: it behoveth
them that we throw open to them the gates of song, for to Pitane by
Eurotas' stream must I begone betimes to-day.

Now Pitane[4], they say, lay with Poseidon the son of Kronos and
bare the child Euadne with tresses iris-dark. The fruit of her body
unwedded she hid by her robe's folds, and in the month of her delivery
she sent her handmaids and bade them give the child to the hero son[5]
of Elatos to rear, who was lord of the men of Arcady who dwelt at
Phaisane, and had for his lot Alpheos to dwell beside.

There was the child Euadne nurtured, and by Apollo's side she first
knew the joys of Aphrodite.

But she might not always hide from Aipytos the seed of the god within
her; and he in his heart struggling with bitter strain against a grief
too great for speech betook him to Pytho that he might ask of the
oracle concerning the intolerable woe.

But she beneath a thicket's shade put from her silver pitcher and her