Kallipateira

“O high-born Rhodian lady,

how came you to our door?

For women are debarred from here

by usages of yore.”

“My nephew’s name is Eukles;

my father and my son,

and my three brothers, all of these 

Olympic glory won.

“Judges of Greece, their merits  

bespeak my right to pass,   

proud of their splendid bodies, these

that clinch for crowns of Herakles,

sprigs of wild olive: spirits

manly and marvellous.

“I am no common woman.

My brave men shine in story:

they earned what cannot fade.                

Writ gold on sparkling marble

their golden hymn of glory,

that deathless Pindar made.”  

Kallipateira’s father Diagoras of Rhodes won the boxing at the 79th Olympic Games in  464 BC. The island’s airport is named after him. He also won at the Pythian, Isthmian and Nemean Games, making the Grand Slam of four majors, ‘periodonikês’, and triumphed repeatedly at other Games all over Greece. He was regarded as a model of athletic prowess. Pindar’s great poem on his victory, Olympian Ode 7, was inscribed in gold letters onmarble at the Temple of Athena at Lindos, Rhodes. 

Translation from Greek by © Timothy Ades