The natural is ever best:  yet many men by learning of prowess essay to achieve fame.  The thing done without God is better kept in silence.  For some ways lead further than do others, but one practice will not train us all alike.  Skill of all kinds is hard to attain unto:  but when thou bringest forth this prize, proclaim aloud with a good courage that by fate divine this man at least was born deft-handed, nimble-limbed, with the light of valour in his eyes, and that now being victorious he hath crowned at the feast Oilean Alas’ altar.

[Footnote 1:  This is the common interpretation, implying that Herakles in contending with the gods here mentioned must have been helped by other gods.  But perhaps it might also be translated ’therefore how could the hands, &c.,’ meaning that since valour, as has just been said, comes from a divine source, it could not be used against gods, and that thus the story ought to be rejected.]

[Footnote 2:  Perhaps the story of the stones arose from the like sound of [Greek:  Laos] and [Greek:  Laas], words here regarded in the inverse relation to each other.]

[Footnote 3:  Protogeneia.]

[Footnote 4:  Lokros.]

[Footnote 5:  Patroklos.]

[Footnote 6:  The Isthmus, the gate between the two seas.]

[Footnote 7:  A cloak, the prize.]

X.

For Agesidamos of Epizephyrian LOKRIS,

Winner in the boys’ boxing-match.

* * * * *

This ode bears somewhat the same relation to the next that the fourth does to the fifth.  It was to be sung at Olympia on the night after the victory, and Pindar promises the boy to write a longer one for the celebration of his victory in his Italian home.  The date is B.C. 484.

* * * * *

Sometimes have men most need of winds, sometimes of showered waters of the firmament, the children of the cloud.

But when through his labour one fareth well, then are due honey-voiced songs, be they even a prelude to words that shall come after, a pledge confirmed by oath in honour of high excellence.

Ample is the glory stored for Olympian winners:  thereof my shepherd tongue is fain to keep some part in fold.  But only by the help of God is wisdom[1] kept ever blooming in the soul.

Son of Archestratos, Agesidamos, know certainly that for thy boxing I will lay a glory of sweet strains upon thy crown of golden[2] olive, and will have in remembrance the race of the Lokrians’ colony in the West.

There do ye, O Muses, join in the song of triumph:  I pledge my word that to no stranger-banishing folk shall ye come, nor unacquainted with things noble, but of the highest in arts and valiant with the spear.  For neither tawny fox nor roaring lion may change his native temper.