[Footnote 4: Probably a horse with which Hippokleas' father won a race
at Pytho.]



XI.

FOR THRASYDAIOS OF THEBES,

WINNER IN THE BOYS' SHORT FOOT-RACE.

* * * * *

The date of this victory was B.C. 478, nearly two years after the
battle of Plataea, and the deliverance of Thebes from Persian
influence and the sway of a tyrannous oligarchy. But beyond this we
have nothing certain to which we can refer the allusions to Theban
affairs, public and private, which we have reason to think present in
the ode.

* * * * *

Daughters of Kadmos, thou Semele whose goings are with the queens of
Olympus, and thou Ino Leukothea who housest with the Nereids of the
sea, come ye up with the mother[1] of a mighty son, even of Herakles,
unto the temple of M[)e]lia[2] and into the holy place of the golden
tripods, which beyond all others Loxias hath honoured, and named it
the shrine Ismenian, a truthful seat of seers; where now, O children
of Harmonia, he calleth the whole heroic sisterhood of the soil to