immortalized out of so many myriads in this hour, by the will of the surpassingly good god, deems it worthy to worship you and begs, as far as human power allows,

Even at the summit the rite keeps its proportion. The man has been immortalized — the verb is apathanatistheís, the rite's own great word — and singled out from so many myriads, a chosen one; and yet the two verbs that follow are proskynêsai and déetai: he asks leave 'to worship you' and he 'begs.' Proskynéō is the full Eastern prostration, the face-down bow to a king or a god. The newly-deathless mortal's first act is to fall on his face. The qualifier is the most human touch in the whole ascent: he worships katà dýnamin anthrōpínēn, 'as far as human power allows.' Even immortalized, even chosen from myriads, he knows the reverence he can offer is only a man's — finite, from below. The rite that dares to make a mortal a god is scrupulously clear that he remains, in the doing of it, a mortal doing his best. And behind it all stands the highest god, named only by a quality: hyperballóntōs agathoû, 'surpassingly good' — the Platonic Good, glimpsed past even Helios.