The Odyssey

by Homer

Leaving the waters of the splendid East, the Sun leapt up into the brazen firmament to bring light to the immortals and to mortal men on the fruitful earth.

We would have lived in the same country and met continually. Nor could anything have intervened to spoil our pleasure in each [180] other’s company, till the darkness of death had swallowed us up.

He is not doomed to end his days on the island, away from all his friends. He is destined to see his friends and come to his high-roofed house and his native land once more.’

When she had finished, bright-eyed Athene withdrew to Olympus, where people say the gods have made their everlasting home. Shaken by no wind, drenched by no showers, and invaded by no snows, it is set in cloudless limpid air with a white radiance playing over all.

“As for your own end, Death will come to you far away from the sea, a gentle Death. When he takes you, you will die peacefully of old age, surrounded by a prosperous people. This is the truth that I have told you.”

That was my undoing too; it was that that brought me to the grave. It was not that the keen-eyed Archeress sought me out in our home and killed me [200] with her gentle darts. Nor was I attacked by any of the malignant diseases that so often make the body waste away and die. No, it was my heartache for you, my glorious Odysseus, and for your wise and gentle ways, that brought my life with all its sweetness to an end.”

If I could return for a single moment to my father’s house as I then was I would make those who forcibly rob him of his position of honour cringe before the might of my unconquerable hands.”

There is no homecoming for the man who draws near them unawares and hears the Sirens’ voices; no welcome from his wife, no little children brightening at their father’s return. For with their high clear song the Sirens bewitch him, as they sit there in a meadow piled high with the mouldering skeletons of men, whose withered skin still hangs upon their bones.

Athene now appeared before Odysseus, Laertes’ son, and urged him to go round collecting scraps from the Suitors and so learn to distinguish the good from the bad, though this did not mean that in the end she was to save a single one from destruction.

When she came near to her Suitors the great lady drew a fold of her shining veil [210] across her cheeks and took her stand by a pillar of the massive roof, with a faithful maid on either side. The Suitors went weak at the knees. Their hearts melted with desire, and every man among them voiced a prayer that he might sleep with her.

The master-strategist Odysseus gave them a black look. ‘You dogs!’ he cried. ‘You never thought to see me back from Troy. So you fleeced my household; you raped my maids; you courted my wife behind my back though I was alive – with no more fear of the gods in heaven than of the human vengeance that might [40] come. One and all, your fate is sealed.’

So even death, Achilles, did not destroy your name, and your great glory will last for ever among all mankind.