The Odyssey

by Homer

Tell me about a complicated man. Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy, and where he went, and who he met, the pain he suffered in the storms at sea, and how he worked to save his life and bring his men back home. He failed to keep them safe; poor fools, they ate the Sun God’s cattle, and the god kept them from home. Now goddess, child of Zeus, tell the old story for our modern times.10 Find the beginning.

“Dear boy, you call to mind how much we suffered, with strong, unyielding hearts, in distant lands when we were sailing over misty seas, led by Achilles on a hunt for spoils, and when we fought around the mighty city of Priam. Our best warriors were killed. Ajax lies dead there, and there lies Achilles; there lies his godlike friend and guide, Patroclus;110 my own strong, matchless son lies dead there too, Antilochus, who fought and ran so well. More pain, more grief—our sufferings increased. Who could recount so many, many losses? If you stayed here five years and kept on asking how many things the fighters suffered there, you would get bored and go back home again before the story ended. Nine long years we schemed to bring them down, and finally Zeus made our plots succeed. Odysseus,120 your father, if you really are his son— well, no one dared to try to equal him in cleverness. That man was always best at every kind of trick.

I can take no joy in all my wealth. Whoever they may be, your fathers have surely told you how much I have suffered! I lost my lovely home, and I was parted for many years from all my splendid riches. I wish I had stayed here, with just a third of all the treasure I have now acquired, if those who died at Troy, so far away from Argive pastures, were alive and well. I sit here in my palace, mourning all 100 who died, and often weeping. Sometimes tears bring comfort to my heart, but not for long; cold grief grows sickening. I miss them all, but one man most. When I remember him, I cannot eat or sleep, since no one labored like him—Odysseus. His destiny was suffering, and mine the endless pain of missing him.

Of all the creatures that live and breathe and creep on earth, we humans130 are weakest. When the gods bestow on us good fortune, and our legs are spry and limber, we think that nothing can ever can go wrong; but when the gods bring misery and pain, we have to bear our suffering with calm. Our mood depends on what Zeus sends each day. I once had what most people count as wealth, great riches. I committed many crimes, of violence, abuses of my power, abetted by my brothers and my father.140 No one should turn away from what is right; a man should quietly accept whatever the gods may give. I see how wickedly the suitors are behaving—wasting wealth and failing to respect the wife of one who soon will come back to his family and homeland. Very soon! May spirits guide you home, so you do not meet him when he comes. When he confronts the suitors in this hall there will be blood.”

On open roads they crossed the Ocean stream, went past the rock of Leucas and the gates of Helius the Sun, and skittered through the provinces of dreams, and soon arrived in fields of asphodel, the home of shadows who have been worn to weariness by life. They found Achilles’ ghost there, and Patroclus, and Ajax, the most handsome of the Greeks after unmatched Achilles. Agamemnon had just arrived to join them, in deep grief20 for his own death, and with him came the others killed by Aegisthus and his bodyguards. Achilles’ ghost spoke first. “O Agamemnon! Men used to say that out of all the heroes, Zeus, Lord of Lightning, favored you the most, because you had command of a great army in Troy where Greeks endured the pain of war. But death, which no man living can avoid, was destined to arrive at the wrong time. If only you had died at Troy and won30 the glory of your rank as a commander! All of the Greeks and allies would have built a tomb for you, and afterwards your son would have received great honor. As it is, it was your fate to die a dreadful death.”

The ghost of Agamemnon answered, “Lucky you, cunning Odysseus: you got yourself a wife of virtue—great Penelope. How principled she was, that she remembered her husband all those years! Her fame will live forever, and the deathless gods will make a poem to delight all those on earth about intelligent Penelope.200 Not like my wife—who murdered her own husband! Her story will be hateful; she will bring bad reputation to all other women, even the good ones.” So they spoke together, standing in Hades, hidden in the earth.