Excerpt from The Olympian and Pythian Odes of Pindar: Translated Into English Verse 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 prece dents, 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. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.