Quotes from Homer

King who feed on your people, since you rule nonentities;

You suitors who plague my mother, you, you insolent, overweening . . .

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.

Nace una fuerza de la unión de los hombres, aunque sean débiles; y nosotros somos capaces de luchar con los valientes.

the bronze blade stripped bark and leafage, and now at last the sons of the Achaians carry it in their hands in state when they administer the justice of Zeus.

clear of the ships and shelters!" So he pleaded, lost in his own great innocence ... condemned to beg for his own death and brutal doom.

Moderation is best in all things, and not letting a man go when he wants to do so is as bad as telling him to go if he would like to stay. One should treat a guest well as long as he is in the house and speed him when he wants to leave it.

That was all gods' work, weaving ruin there So it should make a song for men to come!

A man cannot hide away the cravings of a hungry belly; this is an enemy which gives much trouble to all men; it is because of this that ships are fitted out to sail the seas, and to make war upon other people.

O old friend, if we two escaping this war were destined to be ageless and deathless always, I myself would not fight in the frontlines, nor would I send you into battle where men win glory; but now, since the fates of death stand by us in their thousands, which a mortal man cannot escape nor flee, let us go—either we will give the right to vaunt to someone else or he to us.

885]   "Brag while you can, Hector. Zeus and Apollo Have given you

he was standing on the stern of his huge-hollowed vessel 600  looking out over the sheer war work and the sorrowful onrush.

And he, Achilles, will rouse his companion Patroclus, whom shining Hector with his spear will kill in front of Ilion, after Patroclus has destroyed a multitude of other young men, among them my own son, godlike Sarpedon; and enraged at Patroclus dying, godlike Achilles will kill Hector. And from that point, then, without respite, I will effect a retreat from the ships, all the way until that time the Achaeans?70 capture steep Ilion through the designs of Athena.

Of all that breathes and crawls across the earth, our mother earth breeds nothing feebler than a man. So long as the gods grant him power, spring in his knees, he thinks he will never suffer affliction down the years. But then, when the happy gods bring on the long hard times, bear them he must, against his will, and steel his heart. Our lives, our mood and mind as we pass across the earth, turn as the days turn... as the father of men and gods make each day dawn.

For I have seen the cities of men; and learned their manners.

All the other Greeks who had survived the brutal sack of Troy sailed safely home to their own wives—except this man alone. Calypso, a great

Hear me, God of the silver bow, you who stand over Chryse and Killa most holy, you whose might rules Tenedos, God of Plague; if ever I roofed over a temple that pleased you, or if ever I burned as sacrifice to you the fatty thighbones?40 of bulls and of goats—grant me this wish: May the Danaans pay for my tears with your arrows.

Never have you patience frankly to speak forth to me the thing that you purpose.

the motives of the writer form as important an ingredient in the analysis or his history, as the facts he records. Probability is a powerful and troublesome test; and it is by this troublesome standard that a large portion of historical evidence is sifted.

let not forgetfulness take you, after you are released from the kindly sweet slumber.

Tell me about a complicated man.

Nothing is more miserable than man, Of all upon the earth that breathes and creeps.

Then thus the blue-eyed maid: O full of days!

Speaking so he stirred up Athene, who was eager before this, and she went in a flash of speed down the pinnacles of Olympus. As when the son of devious-devising Kronos casts down a star, portent to sailors or widespread armies of peoples glittering and thickly the sparks of fire break from it, in such likeness Pallas Athene swept flashing earthward