Okay, guys, I am in for a world of hurt with far too many deadlines coming up, so today, I am taking the day off so I can work for a while longer and hopefully get things done. I quote from Pindar and hope his words will inspire you as his words do me.

Pindar (Pindaros, Πίνδαρος) was alive from around 522 BC to 443 BC and was an Ancient Hellenic lyric poet from Thebes. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Hellas, his work is the best preserved. He was a very reverent poet, and because of that, I greatly enjoy his work. He was alive in a time of religious reforms, but he clung to the old ways and views--the ways and views I adhere to myself. Pindar wrote many odes to winners of sporting events and battles, and often he included the Gods in his praise. One of these odes today: as a little pick-me-up for myself and anyone who might need it.

The following ode is dedicated to Midas of Akras, who was the winner in the Pythian flute-playing match 494 or 450. It was to be sung, it would seem, at Akragas, and very probably in a procession to the shrine of the tutelar divinity of the city, who seems to be addressed at the start.


I pray thee, lover of splendour, most beautiful among the cities of
men, haunt of Persephone, thou who by the banks of Akragas' stream
that nourisheth thy flocks, inhabitest a citadel builded pleasantly--
O queen, graciously and with goodwill of gods and men welcome this crown
that is come forth from Pytho for Midas' fair renown; and him too
welcome therewithal who hath overcome all Hellas in the art which once
on a time Pallas Athene devised, when she made music of the fierce
Gorgon's death-lament.
That heard she pouring from the maiden heads and heads of serpents
unapproachable amidst the anguish of their pains, when Perseus had
stricken the third sister, and to the isle Seriphos and its folk bare
thence their doom.
Yea also he struck with blindness the wondrous brood of Phorkos,
and to Polydektes' bridal brought a grievous gift, and grievous
eternally he made for that man his mother's slavery and ravished bed:
for this he won the fair-faced Medusa's head, he who was the son of
Danaë, and sprung, they say, from a living stream of gold.
But the Maiden, when that she had delivered her well-beloved from
these toils, contrived the manifold music of the flute, that with such
instrument she might repeat the shrill lament that reached her from
Euryale's ravening jaws.
A goddess was the deviser thereof, but having created it for
a possession of mortal men, she named that air she played the
many-headed air, that speaketh gloriously of folk-stirring games,
as it issueth through the thin-beat bronze and the reeds which grow by
the Graces' city of goodly dancing-ground in the precinct of Kephisos'
nymph, the dancers' faithful witnesses.
But if there be any bliss among mortal men, without labour it is not
made manifest: it may be that God will accomplish it even to-day, yet
the thing ordained is not avoidable: yea, there shall be a time that
shall lay hold on a man unaware, and shall give him one thing beyond
his hope, but another it shall bestow not yet.