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Pindar; Gilbert West: 'Odes of Pindar, With several other Pieces in Prose and Verse, Translated from the Greek. To which is added a Dissertation on the Olympick Games by Gilbert West', London, R. Dodsley, 1749, 1st edition of Gilbert West's translation, (iv), & xxii & ccviii & 316pp, 4to, contemporary calf gilt worn, armorial bookplate on front pastedown of Augustus MacDonald Hopper (1816-1878), Archdeacon of Norwich from 1868 until his death, with his ownership signature on FFEP. This translation of Pindar is West's most important literary achievement, and was widely admired by his contemporaries; his choice of subject may owe something to his father, who published an edition of Pindar in 1697. The long prefatory essay on the Olympic games was quickly recognized as a work of considerable originality. 'While the translation itself is conventionally elegant, West's notes mark a breakthrough in the reading of the odes in terms of their historical occasion, and the dissertation, praised by Gibbon, offers a rare eighteenth-century appreciation of the cultural and political significance of sport' (ODNB).
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