I respect and reverence you, dear father-in-law, I wish I had chosen death rather than following your son, leaving behind my bridal chamber, my beloved daughter, my dear childhood friends and my kin. But I did not, and I pine away in sorrow.
Sleep is sweet, whomever it seizes, though he has cares.
Both were gods of the same line, a single father, but Zeus was the elder-born and Zeus knew more.
Human beings live for only a short time, and when a man is harsh himself, and his mind knows harsh thoughts, all men pray that sufferings will befall him hereafter while he lives; and when he is dead all men make fun of him. But when a man is blameless himself, and his thoughts are blameless, the friends he has entertained carry his fame widely to all mankind, and many are they who call him excellent.
And so the Trojans buried Hector, breaker of horses.
We who are gods forever have to endure the most horrible hurts, by each other’s hatred, as we try to give favor to mortals.
Trojans and Achaians, who like wolves sprang upon one another, with man against man in the onfall.
Aphrodite forever stands by her man and drives the spirits of death away from him.
Better to be the poor servant of a poor master.
There is no thought of death in your mind now, and yet death stands close beside you as you put on the immortal armor of a surpassing man.
Poor wretches, what evil has come on you? Your heads and faces and the knees underneath you are shrouded in night and darkness; a sound of wailing has broken out, your cheeks are covered with tears, and the walls bleed, and the fine supporting pillars. All the forecourt is huddled with ghosts, the yard is full of them as they flock down to the underworld and the darkness. The sun has perished out of the sky, and a foul mist has come over.
Now Odysseus was sitting close to the fire, but suddenly turned to the dark side; 390 for presently he thought in his heart that, as she handled him, she might be aware of his scar, and all his story might come out. She came up close and washed her lord, and at once she recognized that scar, which once the boar with his white tusk had inflicted on him, when he went to Parnassos, to.
As inhuman fire sweeps on in fury through the deep angles of a drywood mountain and sets ablaze the depth of the timber and the blustering wind lashes the flame along, so Achilleus swept everywhere with his spear like something more than a mortal harrying them as they died, and the black earth ran blood.
No man is going to hurl me to Hades, unless it is fated, but as for fate, I think that no man yet has escaped it once it has taken its first form, neither brave man nor coward.
I would rather follow the plow as thrall to another man, one with no land allotted him and not much to live on, than be a king over all the perished dead.
So he spoke and strode on, a god, through the mortals’ struggle.
My son, Achilles is of nobler birth than you and he is also by far the stronger man. But you are older than he is. It is for you to give him sound advice, make suggestions and give him a lead which he will follow to his own advantage.’’ Nestor.
The Odyssey puts us into a world that is a peculiar mixture of the strange and the familiar. The tension between strangeness and familiarity is in fact the poem’s central subject.
Of all creatures that breathe and walk on the earth there is nothing more helpless than a man is, of all that the earth fosters; for he thinks that he will never suffer misfortune in future days, while the gods grant him courage, and his knees have spring in them. But when the blessed gods bring sad days upon him, against his will he must suffer it with enduring spirit.
Ah, wretched man! unmindful of thy end! A moment’s glory; and what fates attend!