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Verily of Zeus is Pisa the abode, of Herakles the Olympian feast was founded from the chief spoils of war, and Theron's name must we proclaim for his victory with the four-horse-car, a righteous and god-fearing host, the stay of Akragas, of famous sires the flower, a saviour of the state.
I pray thee, lover of splendour, most beautiful among the cities of men, haunt of Persephone, thou who by the banks of Akragas' stream that nourisheth thy flocks, inhabitest a citadel builded pleasantly O queen, graciously and with goodwill of gods and men welcome this crown that is come forth from Pytho for Midas' fair renown; and him too welcome therewithal who hath overcome all Hellas in the art which once on a time Pallas Athene devised, when she made music of the fierce Gorgon's death-lament.
Hearken! for once more we plough the field of Aphrodite of the glancing eyes, or of the Graces call it if you will, in this our pilgrimage to the everlasting centre-stone of deep-murmuring earth. For there for the blissful Emmenidai, and for Akragas by the riverside, and chiefliest for Xenokrates, is builded a ready treasure of song within the valley of Apollo rich in golden gifts.
Tyndareus' hospitable sons and lovely-haired Helen shall I please assuredly in doing honour to renownëd Akragas by a hymn upraised for Theron's Olympian crown; for hereunto hath the Muse been present with me that I should find out a fair new device, fitting to feet that move in Dorian time the Komos-voices' splendid strain.
Forasmuch as thou art wise it is nothing hidden to thee that I sing, while I do honour to the Isthmian victory won by speed of horses, which to Xenokrates did Poseidon give, and sent to him a wreath of Dorian parsley to bind about his hair, a man of goodly chariot, a light of the people of Akragas.
It was to be sung, it would seem, at Akragas, and very probably in a procession to the shrine of the tutelar divinity of the city, with an address to whom it seemingly begins, though it is difficult to say what degree of personification is intended.
For the magnificent Sicilian princes, Hieron of Syracuse and Theron of Akragas, not unlike the Medici in the position they held, Pindar wrote five of the longest of his extant odes, and probably visited them in Sicily. But he would not quit his home to be an ornament of their courts.
Come bend thy bow on the mark, O my soul at whom again are we to launch our shafts of honour from a friendly mind? At Akragas will I take aim, and will proclaim and swear it with a mind of truth, that for a hundred years no city hath brought forth a man of mind more prone to well-doing towards friends or of more liberal mood than Theron.
But at Akragas and at Selinous the greatest of the existing buildings belong to the days of republican freedom and independence. At Akragas what the tyrant began the democracy went on with. The series of temples that line the southern wall are due to an impulse which began under Thêrôn and went on to the days of the Carthaginian siege.
Hanno escaped in a boat, and went to Carthage to report to his superiors the disgraceful high treason of Hannibal's officer; the Phoenician garrison in the town was put to death by the Romans, and the citizens were sold into slavery . To secure the island from such surprises as the landing of 540, the city received a new body of inhabitants selected from Sicilians well disposed towards Rome; the old glorious Akragas was no more.
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