Pindar

Pindar (c. 518 – c. 438 BC) was a Greek lyric poet from Thebes in Boeotia, and the most celebrated of the nine canonical lyric poets of the ancient world. He composed choral songs of many kinds, but the epinikia, or victory odes, are the only works of his that survive complete. They were commissioned to celebrate winners at the four great Greek games: the Olympian, Pythian, Nemean and Isthmian festivals.

His patrons included Hieron of Syracuse, Theron of Acragas, Arcesilas of Cyrene and the athletic families of Aegina and Thebes. The odes were sung by a chorus at the victor's home or at the festival, and they weave praise of the winner into myth and moral reflection. The 45 odes given here are in the prose translation by Sir John Sandys (1844–1922), published in the Loeb Classical Library in 1915, in the order of the four books: 14 Olympian, 12 Pythian, 11 Nemean and 8 Isthmian. A second prose version, by Ernest Myers (first published 1874), follows them, with the odes numbered as Myers numbers them (his Isthmian 3 runs the two parts that Sandys divides as Isthmian 3 and 4).