when he said one day in Sparta,
"Money is the man; and a poor man
can be neither good nor honourable."
Ibykos
Simonides
shining in all weather,
when they were enveloped by the black mists of death.
but although they died
they are not dead, for their courage raises them in glory
from the rooms of Hell.
and the wine of our praise.
Neither mold nor worms, nor time
which destroys all things, will blacken their deaths.
The shrine of these brave men
has found its guardian
in the glory of Greece. Leonidas, the Spartan King,
lives in the great ornament he left behind
of unending fame and virtue.
that we who were slain obeyed the code.
those slain with you lie famous in their graves,
for they attacked absorbing the head-on assault
of endless Persian men, arrows and swift horse
the Persians near the Spercheios River,
a seer who even when aware that death was near
would not desert his Spartan Kings.
Theognis
though the vineyards of the Euboian plain;
saw the city of Sparta shining by the reedy Eurotas.
Everywhere people took me into their homes
yet my heart found no pleasure in foreign kindness.
No place is as precious as one's homeland.
Bakchylides
goldhaired girls
danced to a song
when courageous Idas
led Marpessa of the violet braids
to his own rooms
after eluding death.
Poseidon the sealord
gave him a chariot
and horses equal to the wind,
and sent him to the handsome city of Pleuron
and to the son of Ares of the gold shield.
