upon
honour may he vouchsafe unto it, and shield it from sore disease[9]. I
pray that for the share of glory fallen to them he raise against them
no contrary discontent, but granting them a life unharmed may glorify
them and their commonwealth.

[Footnote 1: Alkimedon's brother. He had won a victory at the Nemean
games.]

[Footnote 2: Aigina had a high commercial reputation, and strangers
were equitably dealt with in her courts.]

[Footnote 3: The two first dragons typify the Aiakids, Aias and
Achilles, who failed to enter Troy, the third typifies Achilles' son,
Neoptolemos, who succeeded.]

[Footnote 4: Aiakos' son, Telamon, was with Herakles when he took
Troy: his great-grandson Neoptolemos was in the Wooden Horse.]

[Footnote 5: To Aigina.]

[Footnote 6: Alkimedon's trainer.]

[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