For few are the children who turn out to be equals of their fathers, and the greater number are worse; few are better than their father is.
For nothing is better than this more steadfast than when two people, a man and his wife, keep a harmonious household; a thing that brings much distress to the people who hate them and pleasure to their will-wishers, and for them the best reputation.
Show yourselves men my friends, and keep a stout heart. Think of your honour. With all men’s eyes upon you it is a shame to be a coward. He that fights and will not run may live to see another sun. He that runs and will not fight is bound to die and serves him right.
As on the sacred threshing floor wind blows the chaff, while men stand winnowing the crop, when Demeter, with her golden hair, separates the grain from the chaff in the rushing breeze, and piles of chaff grow whiter, so then Achaean troops grew white, covered with dust stirred up by horses hooves.
No time for speeches now, it’s time to fight.
Draw closer to me, let us once more throw our arms around one another, and find sad comfort in the sharing of our sorrows.
I have endured what no one on earth has endured before. I kissed the hands of the man who killed my son.
Tell me about a complicated man.
With that, the owl-eyed goddess flew away like a bird, up through the smoke.
As it is, you lie mangled here, and my heart rejects all thought of food. Not that I lack it. I lack you.
The Iliad, said Aristotle, is pathetic and simple; the Odyssey is ethical and mixed.
What are they here – violent, savage, lawless? or friendly to strangers, god-fearing men?
So the immortals spun our lives that we, we wretched men live on to bear such torments-the gods live free of sorrows. There are two great jars that stand on the floor of Zeus’s halls and hold his gifts, our miseries one, the other blessings. When Zeus who loves the lightning mixes gifts for a man, now he meets with misfortune, now good times in turn.
But it gained us nothing – what good can come of grief?
They burst into cries, wailing, streaming live tears that gained us nothing – what good can come of grief?
There I sacked the city, killed the men, but as for the wives and plunder, that rich haul we dragged away from the place –.
We’re glad to say we’re men of Atrides Agamemnon, whose fame is the proudest thing on earth these days, so great a city he sacked, such multitudes he killed!
By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man – some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive – than rule down here over all the breathless dead.
Athena stroked Odysseus with her wand. She shriveled the supple skin on his lithe limbs, stripped the russet curls from his head, covered his body top to toe with the wrinkled hide of an old man and dimmed the fire in his eyes, so shining once. She turned his shirt and cloak into squalid rags, ripped and filthy, smeared with grime and soot. She flung over this the long pelt of a bounding deer, 500 rubbed bare, and gave him a staff and beggar’s sack, torn and tattered, slung from a fraying rope.
So the other gods as well as chariot-fighting men slept through the night;.