Tuesday, March 22, 2022
A Gift for Apollo
Diodorus Siculus 11.33.2 (after the Battle of Plataea in 479 B.C.; tr. C.H. Oldfather, with his note):
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The Greeks, taking a tenth part of the spoils, made a gold tripod and set it up in Delphi as a thank-offering to the God, inscribing on it the following couplet:See Marcus N. Tod, A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century B.C., 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946), pp. 22-24, and Peter Green, The Greco-Persian Wars (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 273-274.This is the gift the saviours of far-flung Hellas upraised here,1 This inscription is found only in Diodorus, and is dubiously attributed to Simonides (frag. 102 Diehl; 168 Edmonds).
Having delivered their states from loathsome slavery's bonds.1
οἱ δ᾽ Ἕλληνες ἐκ τῶν λαφύρων δεκάτην ἐξελόμενοι κατεσκεύασαν χρυσοῦν τρίποδα, καὶ ἀνέθηκαν εἰς Δελφοὺς χαριστήριον τῷ θεῷ, ἐπιγράψαντες ἐλεγεῖον τόδε,Ἑλλάδος εὐρυχόρου σωτῆρες τόνδ᾽ ἀνέθηκαν,
δουλοσύνης στυγερᾶς ῥυσάμενοι πόλιας.
