Oxford scholar pens Games ode

ATHENS (Reuters) - In ancient Olympia, the poet Pindar praised winning athletes in complex, rhythmic victory odes.


Twenty five centuries later, an Oxford scholar is reviving the Pindaric ode to sing the praises of the Olympic host city.


"Pindar was the greatest poet of his time and was often commissioned to write victory odes for the ancient Games," said Armand D'Angour a classics fellow and tutor at Oxford's Jesus College.


He composed the 25-line Ode to Athens in Ancient Greek at the request of long-time International Olympic Committee member Mary Glen-Haig.


"O Mother-city of all wisdom, famed of all Hellas, now receive in gladness this thanks-offering of words finessed in ancient style," goes the English version that Glen-Haig will read at the closing IOC session on Sunday.


Glen-Haig, who fenced for Britain at the 1948-1960 Olympics, got the idea after she learned that during the first modern Games in 1896 in Athens another Oxford scholar infiltrated the closing ceremony to recite his ode in Ancient Greek.


D'Angour said IOC President Jacques Rogge had decided the English translation will suffice for the international audience, but has come to Athens to persuade the IOC the Greek version was the real thing.


"Anyone can do it in English, but only in classical Greek you get the complexity and the beauty, in the modern version you lose the rhythm," he said.

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