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.

Nemean 7 in fact is the most controversial and obscure of Pindar's victory odes and scholars ancient and modern have been ingenious and imaginative in their attempts to explain it so far with no agreed success. Pindar (Greek: Πίνδαρος Pindaros pronounced [píndaros]; Latin: Pindarus) (c. During the invasion in 480/79 BC when Pindar was almost forty years old Thebes was occupied by Xerxes' general Mardonius who with many Theban aristocrats subsequently periPindard at the Battle of Plataea.

Pindar (Greek: Πίνδαρος Pindaros pronounced [píndaros]; Latin: Pindarus) (c. Quintilian wrote "Of the nine lyric poets Pindar is by far the greatest in virtue of his inspired magnificence the beauty of his thoughts and figures the rich exuberance of his language and matter and his rolling flood of eloquence characteristics which as Horace rightly held make him inimitable. The brilliance of his poetry then began to be more widely appreciated.