Some Pindar for my Father

 

A dark day after a sleepless night. My father, the Revd. Prof. Stuart Hall, in his nineties in a Scottish care home, has contracted Covid. He seems OK right now but I am terrified that he won't recover. He taught me my first steps in ancient Greek and to speak out against racism. My family has been here before when my husband’s stepmother of 60 years died far away in Guernsey under the first lockdown.

I do not share my father’s ardent Christian faith. So this translation of parts of Pindar's gorgeous ‘Get Well Soon’ ode (Pythian 3) to his sick patron Hieron of Syracuse in Sicily will have to do instead of a prayer. We all need Chiron the Centaur-Medic now.

"If I might be forgiven for saying a traditional kind of prayer, I would wish for Chiron the deceased son of Philyra to be alive. He was the child of Ouranos’ son Kronos, and his realm was wide. I would want that creature of the wild to reign again in the valleys of Pelion, with his affectionate attitude towards men…

"Apollo gave him to the Centaur of Magnesia to teach him how to cure many painful human ailments—people afflicted with chronic sores, or with limbs wounded by grey bronze weapons, or with a stone slung from afar, or wasting away from summer heat or wintry weather—he set them all free, saving them from their different afflictions. He treated some with gentle incantations, others with soothing potions, or by wrapping curatives all round their limbs, and others he set right with surgery…

"We should seek from the gods what is appropriate for mortal minds—knowing what lies at our very feet and what kind of destinies we have. O my soul, do not crave immortal life, but make full use of the remedies available! 

"Yet, if wise Chiron were still living in his cave, and  my honey-voiced songs had entranced him and held him spellbound, I would even now have persuaded him to send a physician sprung from Apollo or his father Zeus to cure good men of their feverish diseases. And I would have sailed on a ship, cutting through the Ionian sea, to the fountain of Arethusa, to see my host at Etna…

"If a mortal has the path of truth in mind, he should take his chances that he will fare well at the hands of the gods. 

"But on high the gusting winds blow capriciously."