Laudator Temporis Acti

Ion of Chios, elegaic fragment 27 West (tr. David A. Campbell, with his notes):

Greetings to our king, our saviour and father¹; and for us let the wine-pouring attendants mix the bowl from silver pitchers; and let him who holds in his hands the golden jug wash our hands on to the floor.² Let us make holy libation to Heracles and Alcmena, to Procles and Perseus' descendants,³ beginning with Zeus, and let us drink and play; let the singing last all night, let there be dancing; begin the jollity with a will; and if any one has a shapely woman waiting to share his bed, he will drink more confidently than the rest.

¹ Dionysus or wine (cf. 'king wine' in 26.16) rather than the Spartan king.
² Text of this sentence very insecure.
³ Ion lists the ancestors of the Spartan king Archidamus: Perseus was great-grandfather of Heracles (son of Alcmena), whose descendants, the Heracleidae, carried out the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnese; Procles established the Eurypontid line of kings. Jacoby, C.Q. 41 (1947) 9 dated the poem to 463/2, when Cimon led Athenian troops to help Archidamus against the Messenians; West, B.I.C.S. 32 (1985) 74 to c. 450, when Cimon was in Sparta to negotiate the 5-year truce.

χαιρέτω ἡμέτερος βασιλεὺς σωτήρ τε πατήρ τε·
    ἡμῖν δὲ κρητῆρ᾿ οἰνοχόοι θέραπες
κιρνάντων προχύταισιν ἐν ἀργυρέοις· †ὁ δὲ χρυσὸς
    οἶνον ἔχων χειρῶν νιζέτω εἰς ἔδαφος.†
σπένδοντες δ᾿ ἁγνῶς Ἡρακλεῖ τ᾿ Ἀλκμήνῃ τε,        5
    Προκλεῖ Περσείδαις τ᾿ ἐκ Διὸς ἀρχόμενοι
πίνωμεν, παίζωμεν· ἴτω διὰ νυκτὸς ἀοιδή,
    ὀρχείσθω τις· ἑκὼν δ᾿ ἄρχε φιλοφροσύνης.
ὅντινα δ᾿ εὐειδὴς μίμνει θήλεια πάρευνος,
    κεῖνος τῶν ἄλλων κυδρότερον πίεται.        10

Gentili and Prato, edd., Poetae Elegiaci, 2nd ed., Vol. II (2002; rpt. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), pp. 65-66:


See Edmund Stewart, "Ion of Chios: The Case of a Foreign Poet in Classical Sparta."