Bacchylides on Human Life

by A. Y. Campbell
Reprinted from the "Cambridge Review", 27 April 1934.

[This translation of Epinician III, 74 to end, is dependent upon three new corrections of text and one of interpretation; at 87 ...*greek*... compare e.g. Lucretius IV.1133-4, Keats Melancholy 25-26; in the concluding sentence ...*greek*... should be ...*greek*... and ...*greek*... should be ...*greek*..., while ...*greek*... is prepositional as at V. 187. VIII.97, Fr, 7,4. The "lapse" -- "collapse" would have been a truer term -- in "gold is a joy (for ever)" was noted by moderns as a symptom of the inferiority of this poet; the Pindaric strain, wrote Jebb here, "hardly suits Bacchylides"; such can be the effect of a transcriptional error.]

Brief is our day, yet flattering Hope
The ephemeral's heart has oft beguiled;
Hear then a god propound our scope;
Thus herdsman Phoebus once, to Pheres' child:
"Mortal that is, twin thoughts should ever nurse:
One, thy next sunrise crowns the sum;
Yet this therewith, that fifty years
Shall roll, and never drain thy life or purse,
Ere to thine opulent end thou come.
He who lives honestly, and his bosom cheers,
Follows where loftiest profit lies."
My word be one word to the wise:
Untainted spreads the plumbless heaven,
And incorruptible Is the liquid deep;
But Joy is tarnishable; to none is given
The snowy bourne of age to o'erleap,
And none his genial youth renews.
Yet for all that, shall Virtue's light
Fail not with this our body, but the Muse
Feeds it. O, Hieron! Thou to mortal sight
The goodliest flowers of wealth didst once unfold.
Who would from prowess her due praise withhold?
Yet even of Hieron's feats the fadeless tale
Shall in some part for other sake be sung,
His too, thy bard's; the true, the honey-tongue,
The Aegean island nightingale.

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