Quotes from Homer

However, what is done is better left alone, though we resent it still, and we must curb our hearts perforce...as for my death, when Zeus and the other deathless gods appoint it, let it come.

10.?ILIÁDOS K

The War-god has no favourites: he has been known to kill the man who thought he was going to do the killing

My good friend, if, when we were once out of this fight, we could escape old age and death thenceforward and for ever, I should neither press forward myself nor bid you do so, but death in ten thousand shapes hangs ever over our heads, and no man can elude him; therefore let us go forward and either win glory for ourselves, or yield it to another.

Men are so quick to blame the gods: they say that [the gods] devise their misery. But [men] themselves- in their depravity- design grief greater than the griefs that fate assigns.

Xanthus, you waste your breath by prophesying my destruction. I know well enough that I am doomed to perish here...Nevertheless, I am not going to stop until I have given the Trojans their bellyful of war.

I shall be among the riders, and command them with word and counsel; such is the privilege of the old men. The young spearmen shall do the spear-fighting, those who are born 325  of a generation later than mine, who trust in their own strength.

Sullen Telemachus said, "Mother, no, you must not criticize the loyal bard for singing as it pleases him to sing. Poets are not to blame for how things are; Zeus is;

11.?ILIÁDOS ?

no es un bien la soberanía de muchos; uno solo sea príncipe, uno solo rey: aquél a quien el hijo del artero Crono ha dado cetro y leyes para que reine sobre nosotros.

It were too much toil for me, as if I were a god, to tell all this, for all about the stone wall the inhuman strength of the fire was rising

It is the height of folly to be wise too late.

and beseeched all the Achaeans

There was no room for fear in Achilles' heart and he sprang at the Trojans with his terrible war-cry.

bitch that I am, vicious, scheming- horror to freeze the heart oh how I wish that first day my mother brought me into the light some black whirlwind had rushed me out to the mountains or into the surf where the roaring breakers crash and drag and the waves had swept me off before all this had happened

Man, supposing you and I, escaping this battle, would be able to live on forever, ageless, immortal, so neither would I myself go on fighting in the foremost 325  nor would I urge you into the fighting where men win glory. But now, seeing that the spirits of death stand close about us in their thousands, no man can turn aside nor escape them, let us go on and win glory for ourselves, or yield it to others.

he strode among the champions in fear for the shepherd of the people, lest he be hurt, and all their labor slip away into nothing.

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.

the English of the nineteenth or early twentieth century is no closer to Homeric Greek than the language of today. The use of a noncolloquial or archaizing linguistic register can blind readers to the real, inevitable, and vast gap between the Greek original and any modern translation. My use of contemporary language—rather than the English of a generation or two ago—is meant to remind readers that this text can engage us in a direct way, and also that it is genuinely ancient.

the will of Zeus

they arise from over-saturation with the Iliad.

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.

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.

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.