The text of str. 1 is fragmentary. singing the praises of sheep-sacrificing Pytho , and Nemea and the Isthmus. I will make my boast, laying my hand on the earth— every debt of praise shines in the light of truth—no Greek, boy or man, has won more victories in his age-group. Zeus, whose spear is the thunderbolt, by the banks of the silver-whirling Alpheus may you also fulfill his prayers for great god-given glory, and place on his head a gray-green wreath of Aetolian olive in the famous games of Phrygian Pelops. Ode 9 For Automedes of Phlius Pentathlon at Nemea Date unknown Graces with golden distaffs, give fame, which moves the minds of men; for the divinely inspired prophet of the violet-eyed Muses is ready to sing the praises of Phlius and the flourishing plain of Nemean Zeus, where white-armed Hera reared the sheep-slaughtering, deep-voiced lion, the first of Heracles' far-famed labors. There the heroes with red shields, the best of the Argives, held games for the first time in honor of Archemorus, whom a fiery-eyed monstrous dragon killed in his sleep: a sign of the slaughter to come. Powerful fate! The son of Oicles could not persuade them to go back to the streets thronged with good men. Hope robs men [of their sense]: it was she who then sent Adrastus son of Talaus to Thebes to Polyneices The mortal men who crown their golden hair with the triennial garland from those glorious games in Nemea are illustrious; and now a god has given it to the victorious Automedes, for he stood out among the pentathletes as the shining moon in the mid-month night sky outshines the light of the stars. In such a way, amid the vast circling crowd of the Greeks, did he display his marvellous body, hurling the wheel-shaped discus, and raise a shout from the people as he flung the shaft of the dark-leaved elder-tree from his hand into the steep sky. He executed the flashing movement of wrestling, and brought strong-limbed bodies down to the earth with such high-spirited strength, then returned to the dark-whirling waters of the Asopus, whose fame has reached every land, even the farthest reaches of the Nile . And the women skilled with the spear who live by the fair-flowing stream of Thermodon, daughters of horse-driving Ares,