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1 " Creatures of a day. What is someone? What is no one? Man is the dream of a shadow. "
― Pindar , The Odes
2 " Creatures of a day, what is any one? What is he not? Man is but a dream of a shadow. Yet when there comes as a gift of heaven a gleam of sunshine, there rest upon men a radiant light and, aye, a gentle life. "
3 " But in one short span of time winds quickly shift direction, veering back and forth. "
4 " If a man is born for success, another may with a god’s help 20 sharpen his edge and drive him towards prodigious feats of glory; and without exertion few have won joy, which is a radiance in men’s lives beyond all deeds. "
5 " Creatures of a day! What is man? "
6 " Men’s pleasure swells in a brief space of time, and likewise falls to the ground, shaken by an adverse judgement. "
7 " To whom and in what cases are translations of poets useful? To a perfect scholar in the original tongue they are superfluous, to one wholly ignorant of it they are apt to be (unless here and there to a Keats) meaningless, flat, and puzzling. There remains the third class of those who have a certain amount of knowledge of a language, but not enough to enable them to read unassisted its more difficult books without an expenditure of time and trouble which is virtually prohibitive. It is to this class that a translation ought, it would seem, chiefly to address itself. An intelligent person of cultivated literary taste, and able to read the easier books in an acquired language, will feel himself indebted to a hand which unlocks for him the inner chambers of a temple in whose outer courts he had already delighted to wander. "
8 " Leave your sacred cave, son of Philyra, and marvel at the spirit and great strength of this woman; look at what a struggle she is engaged in, with a fearless head, this young girl with a heart more than equal to any toil; her mind is not shaken with the cold wind of fear. From what mortal was she born? From what stock has this cutting been taken, that she should be living in the hollows of the shady mountains and putting to the test her boundless valor? Is it lawful to lay my renowned hand on her? And to cut the honey-sweet grass of her bed?”-Pythian 9For Telesicrates of Cyrene Hoplite Race "
