Within Therapne's gloomy cell,
Another on Olympus' towering height.

By turns they visit this ethereal sky,
And live alternate, and alternate die.-Pope.

So Virgil (Æn. vi. 121):

Si fratrem Pollux alterna morte redemit,
Itque reditque viam toties.-

95

Therapne was a town of Laconia, where Castor and Pollux were born. Heyne conjectures, and I think with great probability, that this fable of the Dioscuri owed its origin to some confused notion of the daily rising and setting of Luciferus and Hesperus. Pindar again relates the story (Nem. x. 100, et sq. 173, sq.).

THE TWELFTH PYTHIAN ODE.

TO MIDAS, OF AGRAGAS, ON HIS VICTORIES IN THE MUSICAL CONTEST, GAINED IN THE TWENTY-FOURTH AND TWENTYFIFTH PYTHIAD.

ARGUMENT.

THE poet in this beautiful ode first invokes the city of Agrigentum, personifying her under the character of a goddess -Proceeds to describe the invention of the flute, which he attributes to Minerva, who by its shrill tones imitated the cry of the Gorgon slaughtered by Perseus-He then expatiates on its various other uses, in exciting the combatants to the field, &c.-Concludes with a highly poetical reflection on the mutability of human fortune.

THEE, shining on the well-built mountain's head,
Fairest of mortal cities, I entreat,

Proserpina's imperial seat,

By Acragas' sheep-feeding banks outspread,

With gods' and men's propitious love,
Accept this crown from Pytho's plain,
Won by illustrious Midas' strain,
And him who conquers Greece approve,
In that high art Athena found of old,

5

Which mimick'd in their howl the Gorgon sisters bold. 14

10

As from the triple virgin's head,
By dragon locks encompass'd round,
She heard the voice, ere life had fled,
Elaborate a mournful sound;

When Perseus' valiant arm had slain

15

The third part of the sister train;

And, whelm'd beneath her people's grave,

Seriphus bosom'd in the wave;
Obscuring, by the foul disgrace,

Phorcys' imperishable race;
When he to Polydectes brought
The festal gift with ruin fraught:
Who long his mother Danae held
Captive in wedlock's chain compell'd,

20

Bearing the head that show'd Medusa's beauteous

face. 29

He who is call'd in legends old

The offspring of self-fallen gold.

25

10 The name Athena, diamλeαioa, the weaver, in its literal sense may probably be deduced from 2x, filum texuit. The origin of the Gorgonian strain is here finely related. The triple monster surrounded by its dragon locks is described by Eschylus (P. V. 796, sq.)

πελας δ' αδελφαι τωνδε τρεις καταπτεροι,

δρακοντομάλλοι Γοργονες, βροτοστυγεις.

The names of the three Gorgon sisters were Stheno, Euryale, Medusa: and each head is afterwards described (v. 35, &c.) as uttering its separate lamentation, which was imitated in a separate strain.

But when from each laborious deed
Her much-loved hero she had freed,
The virgin goddess made to sigh

30

The flute's sonorous melody;

That soon as left the mournful note

Euryale's rapacious throat,

Her instrument's shrill sounds might flow
In tones of imitative woe.

35

But when she deign'd the heavenly art
For mortal pleasure to impart,

She bade the high and glorious strain
The name of many heads retain,

Memorial of that stubborn fight

Which roused the adverse people's might. 42

Such as with dulcet voice proceeds
From slender brass and vocal reeds;
Which near the Graces' temple spring,
Where festal choirs exult and sing,
To witness in Cephisis' grove

The bands in measured cadence move.
What bliss soe'er to man is known,
Laborious efforts gain alone.
Such as the god will crown to-day,
Or brighten with to-morrow's ray.
Though fix'd th' irrevocable doom,
Yet soon or late the time shall come
That either cheats th' expecting mind,
Or leaves its wishes far behind.

47 The river Cephisus empties itself into the lake Copais, here designated by Kaquis, a nymph sprung from that river. 53 This moral conclusion arises naturally from the subject, as we are informed by the scholiast that Midas gained the victory against his expectations, since his pipe became broken in the contest.

THE NEMEAN ODES.

PIND.

L

OF THE NEMEAN GAMES.

THESE games were probably so called from Nemea, a town of Argolis, with a wood in which Hercules when a youth is fabled to have killed a lion which infested that region; and in commemoration of this exploit the games were instituted, about the same time with the Olympic. They were among the most celebrated in Greece, and are said to have been originally held by the Argives, in memory of Opheltes, or Archemorus, son of Lycurgus, and king of Nemea, whose death was occasioned by the bite of a serpent, and to have been renewed by Hercules.

According to Pausanias (in Phocaicis) Adrastus was the author, and his descendants, the Epigoni, were the restorers of these games, which were held every third year, on the twelfth day of the month called by the Macedonians Пaveμos, by the Athenians Bondpoμiwv, answering to our August. The Argives, Corinthians, and Cleonæans, were alternate presidents of these games, in which were exhibited chariot, horse, and foot races, boxing, wrestling, and all the usual exercises, whether gymnastic or equestrian. The reward at first bestowed on the conqueror was a crown of olive, afterwards changed for one of parsley, which being a funereal plant, served to commemorate the death of Archemorus, in whose honor an oration was usually pronounced, and the distributors of prizes at these games were clad in mourning garments. A magnificent account of their celebration is contained in the opening of the sixth book of the Thebais of Statius.