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THE

OLYMPIAN AND PYTHIAN

ODES OF PINDAR.

THE

OLYMPΙΑΝ AND PYTHIAN

ODES OF PINDAR.

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH VERSE

BY THE

REV. FRANCIS DAVID MORICE, M.A.,

FELLOW AND FORMERLY LECTURER OF QUEEN'S COLLege,
OXFORD; AND ASSISTANT-MASTER AT RUGBY SCHOOL.

HENRY S. KING & Co., LONDON.

1876.

293. f. 44

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

A BRIEF SKETCH of the difficulties attending such a work as the present will perhaps be the best apology for its shortcomings. It is probably needless to dwell on such as are common to all translators the prefaces of the late Professor Conington and others have practically exhausted that question. Upon such as arise from the special characteristics of my author, a few words hereafter may not be out of place. But there are others for which I am myself responsible; those, namely, which spring from the ideal of translation at which I have felt bound to aim-an ideal involving severer restrictions than most translators have cared to accept, and consequent labour, which might, under shelter of good precedents, have been evaded. That the present translation does not fully realize this ideal, is only too certain; but at least I have never consciously abandoned it; and believing it to be, in spite of all difficulties, true and good in itself, I venture to claim at least the credit of an attempt in the right direction,

A perfect translation should, if I mistake not, set before its readers, not merely all the original author's substance, but very much also of his form. The diction and metrical shape of a first-rate Greek or Latin poem are scarcely less essential to the effect which it produces as a whole, than the thoughts to which these surroundings have been given. The perfectly natural and harmonious adaptation of form to matter is one of the most striking and special characteristics of the best classical literature. We see it in prose and verse alike. The εἰρομένη λέξις of Herodotus, the Dialogue form of Plato, the 'Antithesis' of early Attic oratory,

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