Odysseus

Tell me, O Muse, of that many-sided hero who traveled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy.

So now all who escaped death in battle or by shipwreck had got safely home except Odysseus, and he, though he was longing for his return [ nostos] to his wife and country, was detained by the goddess Calypso, who had got him into a large cave and wanted to marry him.

"Sir," said Telemakhos, "as regards your question, so long as my father was here it was well with us and with the house, but the gods in their displeasure have willed it otherwise, and have hidden him away more closely than mortal man was ever yet hidden.

He escorted Chryseis on board and sent moreover a hecatomb for the god.

Chryseis also left the ship, and Odysseus led her to the altar to deliver her into the hands of her father.

Let the Achaeans find me a prize in fair exchange to my liking, or I will come and take your own, or that of Ajax or of Odysseus;

then it was that Odysseus alone was able to call them back and turn them about, and at last by his speech, together with Nestor, persuaded them to remain.

he adorned Agamemnon with purple only, and Odysseus with a single cloak from home.

"But the dwelling of Odysseus he made in no way like these, but, as belonging to a cautious man, equipped for this very purpose.

and it was partly by the prompting of Hermes, partly through his own self-restraint and avoidance of excessive indulgence in such things, that Odysseus was not turned into a pig.

Again, his accuser said that he often quoted the passage from Homer, showing how Odysseus:

But whatever man of the people he saw and found him shouting, him he drove with his sceptre and chid him with loud words:

I ran past the city on the Hellespont as no Odysseus ever ran past the songs of the Sirens.

But the misfortune that has befallen the most excellent Maximus has taught us to consider as credible even those things, until now mythical and quite incredible.

So that not for a year only, as Alcinous listened to Odysseus, but for all my life I would pray to listen to you, and on this account at least this life would seem long to me, even though I am ill-disposed toward it.

" But the rest, grown fast to the world like seaweed on sea-girt rocks, make light of immortality, like the old man of Ithaca, longing not for the truth and the heavenly fatherland, and besides for the light that truly is, but for the smoke.

"Come hither, much-praised Odysseus, great glory of the Achaeans;

" Under this Aeolus Odysseus is entertained as a guest, after the capture of Ilium.

But, as it seems, the most of those who inscribe themselves with the name, like the comrades of Odysseus, go after the discourse boorishly, passing by, not the Sirens, but the rhythm and the melody, stopping their ears with want of learning, since they know they will not be able, having once submitted their hearing to the Greek studies, thereafter to attain the return home.

likewise I beheld the son of Laertes, who came from his island hills, and with him Nireus, handsomest of the Achaeans.

Odysseus cannot possibly hurt us.

True, he is enslaved by the love of popularity, a fearful evil.

You see, Telemachus did not kill the wife of Odysseus, because she did not marry husband upon husband, but the marriage-bed remained untainted in her home.

the other was the son of Strophius, a crafty plotter, like Odysseus, treacherous in silence, but true to his friends, bold for the fight, clever in war and a deadly serpent.

Presently enter ODYSSEUS and DIOMEDE in dull leather armour, DIOMEDE carrying at his belt DOLON’S wolf-skin and mask.

ODYSSEUS.

ODYSSEUS.

longing to eat the lotus, and the sacred cattle of the sun, whose flesh shall utter in the days to come a human voice, bitter to Odysseus.

Odysseus, king of Ithaca, has taken you to be his slave.

Unhappy Odysseus, he does not know the sufferings that await him;

For he regards with complacency Autolycus, the maternal uncle of Odysseus, and says he was gifted beyond all men in thievery and perjury.

And it fell out that the soul of Odysseus drew the last lot of all and came to make its choice, and, from memory of its former toils having flung away ambition, went about for a long time in quest of the life of an ordinary citizen who minded his own business, and with difficulty found it lying in some corner disregarded by the others, and upon seeing it said that it would have done the same had i …

O Zeus, forefather of my forebears, if only I might destroy that deep dissembler, that hateful sneak, and the two brother-kings, and finally die myself, also!

Such are the whispered slanders that Odysseus moulds and breathes into the ears of all, and he wins much belief.

I know it, Odysseus, and some time ago I came on the path as a lookout friendly to your hunt.

It is after this man that those two whom I named to you, Diomedes and forceful Odysseus, are sailing.

when, with no other hope of taking Ilium, they had summoned you by their prayers to come from home, they judged you not worthy of the arms of Achilles, not worthy to receive them—even though you had come and were claiming them by right—but instead handed them over to Odysseus.

This is what the Atreids and the forceful Odysseus have done to me, boy.

Neoptolemus abandons a resolution that he has been persuaded by Odysseus to adopt, because of the pain that it gives him to tell a lie:

It is true that his motive for changing was pleasure, though a noble pleasure, since it was pleasant for him to speak the truth, and he had only told a lie at the instigation of Odysseus.

But when they come to wicked men, you must flee such imitation, stopping up your ears no less than they say Odysseus did against the songs of the Sirens.

As I once heard from a man skilled in discerning a poet's meaning, the whole poetry of Homer is a praise of virtue, and everything in it bears toward this, except what is by-work—and not least in those passages where he has portrayed the leader of the Cephallenians, saved naked from the shipwreck.

And then he was judged of such worth by the rest of the Phaeacians too, that, forsaking the luxury in which they lived, they all looked to him and emulated him, and there was at that time no Phaeacian who would have prayed for anything sooner than to become Odysseus—and that a man saved from a shipwreck.

and when I see it well alight, I will lift the heated brand, and, thrusting it full in the Cyclops’ eye, melt out his sight with its blaze;

I filled a cup of this Maronian wine and offered him a draught, saying, Cyclops, son of Ocean’s god, see here what heavenly drink the grapes of Hellas yield, glad gift of Dionysus.

and, as when a man in fitting the timbers of a ship makes his auger spin to and fro with a double strap, so will I make the brand revolve in the eye that gives the Cyclops light and will scorch up the pupil thereof.

See where Odysseus comes in haste, to announce some fresh command to you, Hecuba.

Now the zeal of the rival disputants was almost equal, until that shifty, smooth-mouthed liar, the son of Laertes, whose tongue is always at the service of the mob, persuaded the army not to put aside the best of all the Danaids for want of a servant-maid’s sacrifice, nor have it said by any of the dead that stand beside Persephone that the Danaids have left the plains of Troy without gratitude fo …

It is the Achaeans’ will to sacrifice your daughter Polyxena at the mound heaped over Achilles’ grave;

And by the craft of Odysseus, they took me from my mother, pretending a marriage with Achilles.

What about Odysseus?

Iphigenia:

And the bright goddess Calypso was joined to Odysseus in sweet love, and bore him Nausithous and Nausinous.

And Circe the daughter of Helius, Hyperion's son, loved steadfast Odysseus and bore Agrius and Latinus who was faultless and strong:

What price would any of you pay, judges, to examine him who led the great army against Troy, or Odysseus, or Sisyphus, or countless others, both men and women, whom I might mention?

Well then, do we not now find that the soul acts in exactly the opposite way, leading those elements of which it is said to consist and opposing them in almost everything through all our life, and tyrannizing over them in every way, sometimes inflicting harsh and painful punishments (those of gymnastics and medicine), and sometimes milder ones, sometimes threatening and sometimes admonishing, in s …

Do you suppose that, when he wrote those words, he thought of the soul as a harmony which would be led by the conditions of the body, and not rather as something fitted to lead and rule them, and itself a far more divine thing than a harmony?

Endure it, heart, you have born worse than this.

They detect Odysseus, who had feigned madness because he did not wish to join the expedition, when, at the suggestion of Palamedes, they snatched up his son Telemachus to punish him.

Well, I, for my part, gentlemen, he said, am tired by this time of packing up and walking and running and carrying my arms and being in line and standing guard and fighting, and what I long for now is to be rid of these toils, since we have the sea, and to sail the rest of the way, and so reach Greece stretched out on my back, like Odysseus.