Şiir 3
Ode 3 For Hieron of Syracuse Chariot-Race at Olympia 468 B. C.
Clio , giver of sweet gifts, sing the praises of the mistress of most fertile Sicily, Demeter, and of her violet-garlanded daughter, and of Hieron's swift horses, racers at Olympia;
for they sped with majestic Victory and with Aglaia by the wide-whirling Alpheus, where they made the son of Deinomenes a prosperous man, a victor winning garlands.
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Ah! thrice-blessed man! Zeus has granted him the honor of ruling most widely over the Greeks, and he knows not to hide his towered wealth under black-cloaked darkness.
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The temples teem with cattle-sacrificing festivities; the streets teem with hospitality. Gold flashes and glitters, the gold of tall ornate tripods standing
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before the temple, where the Delphians administer the great precinct
of Phoebus beside the Castalian stream. A man should honor the god, for that is the greatest prosperity.
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For indeed, once the ruler of horse-taming Lydia,
Croesus—when Zeus was bringing about the decreed fate, and Sardis was being sacked by the Persian army—Croesus was protected by the god of the golden lyre,
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Apollo. When he had come to that unexpected day,
Croesus had no intention of waiting any longer for the tears of slavery. He had a pyre built before his bronze-walled courtyard,
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and he mounted the pyre with his dear wife and his daughters with beautiful hair;
they were weeping inconsolably. He raised his arms to the steep sky
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and shouted, overweening deity, where is the gratitude of the gods? Where is lord Apollo?
The palace of Alyattes falls into ruins countless
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city the Pactolus whirling with [gold runs red with blood],
women are brutally led out of the well-built halls.
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