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For me, the most secure [path?] is the one which when she arrived at the flowery banks
of the Nile, [gadfly-driven] Io, bearing the child Epaphus. There [she bore him?] ruler over linen-robed teeming with majestic
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and greatest mortal from this race Cadmus, son of Agenor, begat Semele in seven-gated Thebes, and she bore the rouser of Bacchants,
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Dionysus, the and [lord of] garland-[bearing] choruses.
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Ode 20 (Dithyramb 6) Idas: for the Lacedaemonians
Once in [spacious] Sparta the golden-haired Lacedaemonian such a song when
bold-hearted [Idas] led Marpessa, the maiden with lovely [cheeks], fleeing of death Poseidon, the lord of the sea
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and to him horses [swift as the wind]
to well-built Pleuron, the son of [Ares] with golden shield The rest of the ode is lost.
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