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his reins were undamaged in the precinct of the twelve swift-footed courses. For he broke no part of his strong equipment; it hangs dedicated there,
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all the handiwork of dextrous craftsmen, which he brought past the hill of Crisa to the hollow valley of the god. The cypress shrine keeps it
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beside the statue which the Cretan bowmen set up in the Parnassian chamber, carved from a single piece of wood.
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Therefore it is fitting to welcome a benefactor with a willing mind.
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Son of Alexibias, the lovely-haired Graces make you radiant. You are blessed, you who have, even after great hardship, a memorial of the best words. For among forty
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drivers who fell, having brought your chariot through unscathed with a fearless mind, you have come now from the splendid games to the plain of Libya and your ancestral city.
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But no man is without a share of toils, or ever will be.
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Yet the ancient prosperity of Battus continues, despite its dispensation of both good and bad, a tower of the city and a most brilliant shining eye to strangers. Even loud-roaring lions fled in fear from Battus, when he unleashed on them his voice from across the sea.
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And Apollo, the first leader, doomed the beasts to dread fear, so that his oracles to the guardian of Cyrene would not go unfulfilled.
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It is Apollo who dispenses remedies to men and women for grievous diseases,
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and who bestowed on us the cithara, and gives the Muses’ inspiration to whomever he will, bringing peaceful concord into the mind, and who possesses the oracular shrine; wherefore he settled the mighty descendants of Heracles and Aegimius in Lacedaemon
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and in Argos and in sacred Pylos. But it is my part to sing of the lovely glory that comes from Sparta,
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where the Aegeidae were born, and from there
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they went to Thera, my ancestors, not without the gods; they were led by a certain fate. From there we have received the feast with its many sacrifices, and at your
