[Footnote 7:  I. e.  Alkimedon has escaped the disagreeable circumstances of defeat and transferred them to the four opponents against whom he was matched in four successive ties.]

[Footnote 8:  Iphion seems to have been the father and Kallimachos the uncle of Alkimedon.]

[Footnote 9:  Perhaps Iphion and Kallimachos died of some severe illness.]

IX.

For Epharmostos of Opous,

Winner in the wrestling-match.

* * * * *

The date of this ode is uncertain.  Its last line seems to imply that it was sung at a banquet at Opous, after crowning the altar of Aias Oileus, tutelar hero of the Lokrians.  From the beginning we gather that on the night of the victory at Olympia Epharmostos’ friends had sung in his honour the conventional triple strain of Archilochos—­

  [Greek:  (o kallinike chair’ anax Herakleaes
  autos te k’ Iolaos, aichmaeta duo.
  taenella kallinike)]

to which perhaps some slight additions had been made, but not by Pindar.

* * * * *

The strain of Archilochos sung without music at Olympia, the triple resonant psalm of victory, sufficed to lead to the hill of Kronos Epharmostos triumphing with his comrade friends:  but now with darts of other sort, shot from the Muses’ far-delivering bow, praise Zeus of the red lightning, and Elis’ holy headland, which on a time Pelops the Lydian hero chose to be Hippodameia’s goodly dower.

And shoot a feathered arrow of sweet song Pythoward, for thy words shall not fall to the ground when thou tunest the throbbing lyre to the praise of the wrestlings of a man from famous Opous, and celebratest her and her son.  For Themis and her noble daughter Eunomia the Preserver have made her their own, and she flourisheth in excellent deeds both at Kastalia and beside Alpheos’ stream:  whence come the choicest of all crowns to glorify the mother city of Lokrians, the city of beautiful trees.

I, to illuminate the city of my friends with eager blaze of song, swifter than high-bred steed or winged ship will send everywhere these tidings, so be it that my hand is blessed at all in labouring in the choice garden of the Graces; for they give all pleasant things to men.

By fate divine receive men also valour and wisdom:  how else[1] might the hands of Herakles have wielded his club against the trident, when at Pylos Poseidon took his stand and prest hard on him, ay, and there prest him hard embattled Phoibos with his silver bow, neither would Hades keep his staff unraised, wherewith he leadeth down to ways beneath the hollow earth the bodies of men that die?