PINDAR'S

EPINICIAN OR TRIUMPHAL ODES,

IN FOUR BOOKS;

TOGETHER WITH THE

FRAGMENTS OF HIS LOST COMPOSITIONS:

REVISED AND EXPLAINED, BY

JOHN WILLIAM DONALDSON, M.A.

HEAD MASTER OF BURY SCHOOL,

AND LATE FELLOW AND ASSISTANT TUTOR OF
TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

φωνάντα συνετοῖσιν· ἐς δὲ τοπὴν ἑρμηνέων
χατίζει.

NEW EDITION.

LONDON:

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL, AND CO.

ΤΟ

THE RIGHT REVEREND

JAMES HENRY MONK, D.D.,

LORD BISHOP OF GLOUCESTER AND BRISTOL;

THIS WORK IS INSCRIBED,

AS A TRIBUTE OF RESPECT, DUE TO HIS EMINENCE

IN LITERATURE AND SCHOLARSHIP;

AND AS AN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF THE ZEAL AND ENERGY

WITH WHICH HE

PROMOTED THE CULTIVATION OF A CLASSICAL TASTE

IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE,

WHILE OCCUPYING A DISTINGUISHED POSITION

IN THAT GREAT SEAT OF LEARNING.

PREFA CE.

AMID the general wreck of Grecian literature, no loss, perhaps, has been more justly deplored than that of the great mass of lyric poetry of which we have been deprived by the slow working of time, or the ruder hands of Khalif Omar. It is not, however, merely on account of the beauty of this poetry, that we are justified in our lively regret; it is not on account of their exquisite rhythms, their touching pathos, the dying falls of their music, their martial energy, or their patriotic fervour, that we lament the destruction of the great master-pieces of the Grecian lyre; it is rather because they would have enabled us, better than any extant branches of Greek literature, to reconstruct a vivid picture of ancient life in all its private and intimate relations of social intercourse, because they would have brought before us, in fresh and glowing colours, the crowded feasts and public sacrifices, the merry comus, the solemn pæan, and the mysterious dithyramb, with which the people of old Hellas honoured the gods of their fathers. But, though we have lost much, it is still a matter of no small congratulation that we have preserved a series of forty-four choral odes, by one of the greatest of these minstrels: and it is also satisfactory to reflect, that the class to which these poems belonged-that of the epinician or triumphal odesadmitted of greater varieties in the mode of treating the

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