Pythian 12: For Midas of Acragas

Lover of splendour, fairest of mortal cities, home of Persephone! thou that inhabitest the hill of noble dwellings above the banks, where feed the sheep beside the stream of Acragas! I beseech thee, O queen, along with the kindly favour of gods and men, graciously to welcome, at the hands of renowned Midas, this coronal from Pytho. I beseech thee also to welcome himself, as champion over all Hellas in that art, which Pallas Athene invented when she wove into music the dismal death-dirge of the Gorgons bold,—the dirge, that Perseus heard, while it was poured forth, amid direful woe, from beneath those maidens’ awful serpent-heads, what time he did to death the third of those sisters three,! on the day when he brought doom on sea-girt Seriphus and its people. Verily, he reft of eye-sight the wondrous brood of Phorcus, and made Polydectes bitterly rue his levying of gifts, and the mother’s long slavery and enforced wedlock, when the head of the fair-faced Medusa was carried off by that son of Danae, by him who, we aver, was begotten of a shower of gold. But, when the maiden goddess had released her liegeman from these labours, she essayed to invent the many-voiced music of flutes, that so, by aid of music, she might imitate the cry exceeding shrill that burst from the ravening jaws of Euryale. “’Twas the goddess that found it: but, when she had found it for the use of mortal men, she called it the “many-headed tune,” that glorious incentive to contests, where the folk foregather,—that tune, which swelleth forth from the thin plate of brass, and from the reeds which grow beside the fair city of the Graces, in the holy ground of the nymph of Cephisus, to be the true witnesses to the dancers. But, if there be any bliss among mortal men, it doth not reveal itself without toil; yet a god may bring that bliss to an end, verily, even to-day. That which is fated cannot be fled; but a time shall come which, smiting with a stroke that is unforeseen, shall grant one boon beyond all hope, but shall withhold another.