Idyll 16

16. The Graces, or Hiero This is ever the care of the daughters of Zeus, and ever of singers:

to hymn the immortals, to hymn the glorious deeds of good men.

The Muses are goddesses, and goddesses sing of gods;

but we are mortals here, and let mortals sing of mortals.

For who of all who dwell beneath the gray dawn

will open his door and gladly receive my Graces

when they spread their wings, and not send them off again unrewarded?

But they come back home in anger, on bare feet,

reviling me much because they went a fruitless journey,

and reluctant once more, in the bottom of an empty chest,

they remain, their heads cast down upon their cold knees,

where their seat is always, when they return unsuccessful.

Who of men now is of such a kind? Who will love the one who speaks well of him?

I do not know; for men no longer, as before, are eager

to be praised for noble deeds, but are mastered by gain.

Each, with his hands under his cloak, looks about for where he may get

silver, and would not rub the rust off a coin to give to anyone,

but at once declares: The shin is nearer than the knee;

let me have something for myself; the gods honor singers.

And who would listen to another? Homer is enough for all.

He is the best of singers, who shall take nothing from me.

Foolish men, what gain is the countless gold

lying within? This is not what the wise count the use of wealth,

but to give some to one's own soul, and some to a singer,

and to do good service to many kinsmen, and to many other

men besides, and ever to offer altar-sacrifice to the gods,

and not to be a bad host, but having welcomed a guest at table

to send him off when he wishes to depart,

and above all to honor the holy interpreters of the Muses,

so that even when hidden in Hades you may be heard of as noble,

and not lament without glory by cold Acheron,

like some man with hands callused inside by the mattock,

bewailing the bare poverty he has inherited from his fathers.

Many in the halls of Antiochus and of lord Aleuas

received their monthly measure of food, the bondsmen;

and many calves, driven to the pens of the Scopadae,

lowed along with the horned cattle,

and over the Crannonian plain countless

choice sheep the shepherds folded for the hospitable Creondae;

but no joy of these was theirs, when they had poured out their sweet

life into the wide raft of hateful Acheron,

and, forgotten, leaving behind all those many blessings,

among the wretched dead they lay through long ages,

had not that singer of Ceos, with his varied voice,

set them, named, on the many-stringed lyre among men

of later days; and even the swift horses won honor,

that came back garlanded for them from the holy games.

And who would ever have known the chiefs of the Lycians, who the long-haired

sons of Priam, or Cycnus pale as a woman in his skin,

had not singers hymned the battles of men of old?

Nor would Odysseus, who wandered a hundred and twenty months

among all peoples, and went living to the farthest Hades,

and escaped the cave of the deadly Cyclops,

have had long-lasting fame; and silent would Eumaeus

the swineherd have been, and Philoetius, busy

with the herded cattle, and great-hearted Laertes himself,

had not the songs of the Ionian man profited them.

From the Muses good fame comes to men,

but the living waste the wealth of the dead.

Yet equal is the labor of measuring the waves upon the shore,

as many as the wind drives landward from the gray sea,

or of washing clean a brick of mud with clear water,

and of trying to win over a man corrupted by love of gain.

Farewell to such a man; let him have countless

silver, and let longing for more ever possess him.

But I would choose honor and the friendship of men

before many mules and horses.

I seek to whom of mortals I may come welcome

with the Muses; for hard are the roads for singers

without the daughters of Zeus, who counsels greatly.

Not yet has the sky grown weary of leading round the months and the years;

many horses shall yet turn the chariot-wheel;

there shall be a man who will have need of me as his singer,

having done as great deeds as great Achilles or heavy Ajax

in the plain of Simois, where lies the tomb of Phrygian Ilus.

Already now the Phoenicians who dwell beneath the setting sun

on the farthest verge of Libya are shuddering with dread.

Already the Syracusans grip their spears by the middle,

their arms weighed down with shields of willow;

and among them Hiero, equal to the heroes of old,

girds himself, and horsehair plumes shade his helmet.

Would, O most glorious Zeus, father, and lady Athena,

and the Maiden, who with your mother have for your portion the great city

of the rich Ephyraeans by the waters of Lysimeleia,

that an evil necessity might send our enemies out of the island

over the Sardinian wave, bearing word of the death of dear ones

to children and to wives, few to be counted out of many;

and that the cities might again be dwelt in by their former citizens,

all that the enemies' hands ravaged to the ground;

and that men might work the flourishing fields; and that the countless

thousands of sheep, fattened on the pasture,

might bleat over the plain, and that the cattle, coming in herds

to the steading, might hasten the homing wayfarer at dusk;

and that the fallow lands might be worked toward the sowing, when the cicada,

watching the shepherds at noon, sheltered within the trees,

sings in the boughs; and that the spiders might spread their fine

webs over the armor, and that of the war-cry there might not be even a name.

And may singers carry the high fame of Hiero

both beyond the Scythian sea and to where the broad wall

that Semiramis bound with bitumen reigned over the land.

I am but one, and the daughters of Zeus love many

others too; and may they all care to hymn Sicilian Arethusa

with her peoples, and the spearman Hiero.

O goddesses, daughters of Eteocles, you who love

Minyan Orchomenus, once hateful to Thebes,

unbidden indeed would I stay at home, but to those who call

I would come boldly, with my Muses.

Nor will I leave you behind; for what is dear to men

apart from the Graces? May I be ever with the Graces.