"But sure as water knows no peer, and best
Is gold of riches, Thero's deeds have pressed
To fame's last cape! What further lies, is barred alike to fools and wise:—
I will not venture there, else vain were I!"
Thus, having in fancy conducted his patron to the fabled Pillars of Heracles, the limits of the ancient world, which later authors identified with the Straits of Gibraltar, Pindar leaves him to "the contemplation of his own perfections"—not quite a god, but all that man may be.
The Eleventh Olympian Ode is addressed to the boy-wrestler Agesidamus of Western Locris. The poet had been an eyewitness of the victory[1] which it records, and had hastily composed a brief Ode for performance at a banquet immediately following upon the victory. This poem, which figures in our collection as the Tenth Olympian, after an allusion to the circumstances of its production—a timely service rendered at a moment's notice by the bard to his patron,—goes on to promise a future lay more worthy of its occasion, to be sung when Agesidamus reaches his Italian home:—
"If Heaven empower this mortal to unfold
Poesy's bright flowers: and so,
Agesidamus, for thy prowess know—
Son of Archestratus—my songs anew
Shall gild your golden bays,
And bring the clans of Western Locrians praise."
And the Ode closes with a tribute to the chivalry and culture of these Locrians, ingrained in them as cunning is in foxes, or courage in lions.
- ↑ Cf. line 100 of the Ode.
