Brendan’s Reviews > The Odyssey > Status Update

“Of mortal creatures, all that breathe and move, / earth bears none frailer than mankind. What man / believes in woe to come, so long as valor / and tough knees are supplied him by the gods? / But when the gods in bliss bring miseries on, / then willynilly, blindly, he ensures. / Our minds are as the days are, dark or bright, / blown over by the father of gods and men. / So I, too, in my time thought to be happy;

“Attend me quietly, be at your ease, / and drink your wine. These autumn nights are long, / ample for storytelling and for sleep. / … /

…we’ll drink on, you and I, / and ease our hearts of hardships we remember, / sharing old times. In later days a man / can find a charm in old adversity, / exile, and pain….”

Menelaus laments the toll of war on its survivors:

“How gladly I should live one third as rich / to have my friends back safe at home!—my friends / who died on Troy’s wide seaboard, far / from the grazing lands of Argos./ But as things are, nothing but grief is left me / for those companions. While I sit at home / sometimes hot tears come, and I revel in them, / or stop before the surfeit makes me shiver.”

Beginning the Odyssey again, this time in the Fitzgerald translation.

“My word, how mortals take the gods to task! / All their afflictions come from us, we hear. / And what of their own failings? Greed and folly / double the suffering in the lot of man.”

“Of all creatures that breathe and walk on the earth there is nothing / more helpless than a man is, of all that the earth fosters; / for he thinks that he will never suffer misfortune in future / days, while the gods grant him courage and his knees have spring / in them. But when the blessed gods bring sad days upon him, / against his will he must suffer it with enduring spirit.”