The Iliad, said Aristotle, is pathetic and simple; the Odyssey is ethical and mixed.
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.
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;.
Now the gods were seated in assembly by Zeus.
In the war of Troy, the Greeks having sacked some of the neighbouring towns, and taken from thence two beautiful captives, Chryseis and Briseis, allotted the first to Agamemnon, and the last to Achilles.
Then thus the blue-eyed maid: “O full of days!
The child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared.
Human beings have short lives.330 If we are cruel, everyone will curse us during our life, and mock us when we die. The names of those who act with nobleness are brought by travelers across the world, and many people speak about their goodness.
During the daytime I glut myself with sorrow and lament, having my own duties to see to, and my house-maidens’ work: but night falls and the world sleeps. Then I lie in my bed and the swarming cares so assail my inmost heart that I go distraught with misery.