|95 Creatures of a day. What is a someone, what is a no one? Α dream of a shade |96 is man. But when the radiance [aiglē] that is given by Zeus comes, |97 then there is a light shining over men, and the recircling of time [aiōn] is sweet to the taste. |98 Aegina! Mother near and dear [philē]! Make a [naval] mission [stolos] of freedom |99 for this polis [= the island state of Aegina] as you bring it back to safety [komizein], back to Zeus! May it happen with the help of Aiakos the Ruler. |100 And of Peleus. And of noble Telamon. And especially of Achilles.
Pindar Pythian 8.95-100
The land of this island, named after the local goddess Aegina, is invoked here as the Mother Earth of the island’s population. This reverent invocation of Mother Aegina is a pointed reference to the glorious past of the island state, likewise called Aegina, as a major maritime power in the Mediterranean world. In a gesture of sacred nostalgia, the people of Aegina are represented here as praying to their mother goddess to send for them ‘a [naval] mission of freedom’, an eleutheros stolos (line 98), which is to be activated by the superhuman help of the prototypical native son of Aegina, the hero Aiakos (line 99), and of his heroic descendants, namely Peleus, Telamon, and ‘especially’ Achilles (line 100).
The aiglē or ‘radiance’ of Zeus in line 96 of this song is imagined as the power of song to visualize this radiance. And the light that comes from Zeus is envisioned as a clear sky that follows a spell of fearsome darkness for sailors beset by a storm at sea. Such a salvation from darkness and death is expressed by the use of the word aiglē, ‘radiance’, in line 140 of Ode 13 of Bacchylides, which signals the cessation of violent winds and the ultimate salvation of the Achaeans.
The word komizein at line 99 of this song, which I translate as ‘bring back to safety’, can be interpreted in the mystical sense of ‘bring back to light and life’, parallel to the mystical sense of the noun nostos, ‘return to light and life’. This meaning connects with the meaning of aiōn at line 97 in the sense of an eternally recycling and luminous ‘life-force’. The adverb aiei, ‘forever’, is the old locative singular of the noun aiōn in the sense of a ‘life’ or a ‘life-force’ that keeps coming back to life by way of a ‘recircling of time’, and this locative aiei means literally ‘in a recircling of time’, signaling an eternal return.