THE SECOND NEMEAN ODE.
TO TIMODEMUS, THE ATHENIAN, ON HIS VICTORY IN THE PANCRATIUM.
ARGUMENT.
The poet declares this to be the first victory which Timodemus has obtained, considering it as a presage of future success in the Pythian and Isthmian games. This is the more probable, as his ancestors have rendered the family illustrious by their numerous victories gained in many preceding contests, several of which he enumerates.—Concludes with an exhortation to the citizens to celebrate with hymns the glorious return of Timodemus to his country.
As bards of the Homeric train [1]
From Jove preluding, weave the strain,
So has this hero the foundation laid
Of conquests in the sacred games,
And now his earliest chaplet claims 5
Where Nemea's grove expands her hallow'd shade.
- ↑ The scholiast, in commenting on the opening lines of this ode, gives a variety of conjectures on the origin of the phrase ῥαρτειν ωδας, and quotes a fragment of Callimachus, (cxxxviii. Bentl.,) whence some consider ῥαψωδους and ῥαπδωδους as synonymous. The author of the Etymologicum Magnum says that ωδη was anciently used as a generic term for a poem: and in all probability nothing more is meant by a rhapsodist than a composer of verses. The scholiast quotes Hippostratus as his authority for asserting that Cinæthus the Syracusan was the first who rhapsodised or wove together the scattered portions of Homer's divine poems. The same expression occurs in [[../../Isthmian Odes/2|Isth. ii.]], 66, on which passage the classical reader will do well to consult Heyne's elaborate comment (in vv, lect.) Sudorius's paraphrase is opere expolito.
