Quotes from Robert Fagles

The catastrophe of the tragic hero thus becomes the catastrophe of the fifth-century man; all his furious energy and intellectual daring drive him on to this terrible discovery of his fundamental ignorance - he is not the measure of all things but the thing measured and found wanting.

Homer was thus at once contemporary in content and antique in form." - Bernard Knox

Have you no pity for him, our helpless son? Or me, and the destiny that weighs me down, your widow, now so soon? Yes, soon they will kill you off, all the Achaean forces massed for assault, and then bereft of you, better for me to sink beneath the earth. What other warmth, what comfort's left for me, once you have met your doom? Nothing but torment!

The meter itself demands a special vocabulary, for many combinations of long and short syllables that are common in the spoken language cannot be admitted to the line Ã¢â'¬â€any word with three consecutive short syllables, for example, any word with one short syllable between two longs. This difficulty was met by choosing freely among the many variations of pronunciation and prosody afforded by Greek dialectal differences; the epic language is a mixture of dialects." - Bernard Knox

And Apollo lord of the silver bow and Queen Athena, for all the world like carrion birds, like vultures, slowly settled atop the broad towering oak.

Suspicious we are, we men who walk the earth.

The god of war is impartial: he hands out death to the man who hands out death.