Ariston men hudor ‘Water is best’
Water on-one-hand best
This line is much-quoted, usually as a light-hearted reference to the benefits of water. For example, if someone is offered a drink, and they choose water instead of wine or beer, the host might cheerfully say: ‘Oh well, as the poet said, “Water is best” ! ‘ The original is more serious: it is the opening of a long ode (Olympian 1) by the lyric poet Pindar (400s BC) celebrating a victor in a sports contest, which opens: ‘Water is best, but gold is a fire blazing at night, above lordly wealth…. and in the sky the brightest star by day is the sun’.
The Greeks were generally impressed with bold aspects in nature, such as: metals; colours; and features such as the sea and the sky – and they feature a lot as imagery in poetry. Their early scientists thought everything was made of four elements: air, earth, fire and water. This probably explains why Pindar chose the images of water, gold and the sun to celebrate the victor in the games, to highlight the glory of winning.
Etymology ‘ariston’ means best (hence words such as aristocracy). ‘hudor’ means water (hence words such as de-hydration and hydraulics)
Background ‘Victory odes’ (epinikia), long poems, would be sung by choirs to celebrate the victor in an event at one of the four great games in ancient Greece, each held every four years (of which the Olympian Games were one). Victors in games were held in high esteem by their local community for the rest of their lives; and much celebrated (just as we do nowadays, with great winners such as Dame Kelly Homes, Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill, Sir Chris Hoy and Sir Steve Redgrave – the fact these outstanding modern athletes all have major honorific titles illustrates the point). The odes were typically about 200 or 300 lines long, and contained stories from myth which:
reflected the excellent skills of the athlete (as a runner, thrower or jumper, for example)
were connected with their home town (there were hundreds of myths in ancient Greece, and most places had a few myths associated with them).
Olympian 1 (with the quote above) was written to celebrate the victory in the horse-race at the Olympian Games of 476BC of a horse Phrenichus and its jockey. Their patron was Hieron 1, the ruler of Syracuse in Sicily. The poem explores the myth of Pelops, who won a chariot-race for the hand of Hippodameia in marriage, with a golden chariot and winged horses given to him by the god Poseidon. Pelops lived in the region of Elis which included the town of Olympia, the location of the games. The southern part of Greece is called the Peloponnese, meaning ‘island of Pelops’ (Pelops = Pelops, nesos = island). Reading: Wiki on Pindar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pindar Wiki on Victory Odes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epinikion
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