Good in a stormy night are two anchors let fall from a swift ship.  May friendly gods grant to both peoples[14] an illustrious lot:  and thou O lord and ruler of the sea, husband of Amphitrite of the golden distaff, grant this my friend straight voyage and unharmed, and bless the joyous flower of my song.

[Footnote 1:  Agesias is so called because an Iamid ancestor of his had gone with Archias when he planted the Corinthian colony of Syracuse.]

[Footnote 2:  Adrastos.]

[Footnote 3:  Phintis was Agesias’ charioteer.]

[Footnote 4:  I. e. the nymph who gave her name to the place.]

[Footnote 5:  Aipytos.]

[Footnote 6:  Honey.]

[Footnote 7:  Iamos, from [Greek:  ion]:  the iris was considered a symbol of immortality.]

[Footnote 8:  His father, Apollo.]

[Footnote 9:  At Olympia.]

[Footnote 10:  The course in the chariot-race was twelve times round the Hippodrome.]

[Footnote 11:  The nymph of the lake Metope near Stymphalos.]

[Footnote 12:  Hera was worshipped in her prenuptial as well as her postnuptial state.]

[Footnote 13:  It was a custom between correspondents who wished for secrecy to have duplicate [Greek:  skutalai], or letter-sticks.  The writer wrote on a roll wrapt round his stick, and the receiver of the letter read it wrapt similarly on his.  And thus Aineas the bearer of this ode would teach the chorus of Stymphalians how rightly to sing and understand it.  See [Greek:  skutalae] in Dict.  Ant.]

[Footnote 14:  I. e. of Stymphalos and Syracuse.  Agesias was a citizen of both, and thus his two homes are compared to two anchors.]

VII.

For Diagoras of Rhodes,

Winner in the boxing-match.

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Rhodes is said to have been colonised at the time of the Dorian migrations by Argive Dorians from Epidauros, who were Herakleidai of of the family of Tlepolemos.  They founded a confederacy of three cities, Kameiros, Lindos, and Ialysos.  Ialysos was then ruled by the dynasty of the Eratidai.  Their kingly power had now been extinct two hundred years, but the family was still pre-eminent in the state.  Of this family was Diagoras, and probably the ode was sung at a family festival; but it commemorates the glories of the island generally.  The Rhodians caused it to be engraved in letters of gold in the temple of Athene at Lindos.

There is a noteworthy incident of the Peloponnesian war which should be remembered in connection with this ode.  In the year 406, fifty-eight years after this victory of Diagoras, during the final and most embittering agony of Athens, one Dorieus, a son of Diagoras, and himself a famous athlete, was captured by the Athenians in a sea-fight.  It was then the custom either to release prisoners of war for a ransom or else to put them to death.  The Athenians asked no ransom of Dorieus, but set him free on the spot.

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