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The Odyssey Justice Quotes Page 1
Citations follow this format: (Book.Line). We used Richmond Lattimore's translation. Very conveniently, Lattimore’s English edition follows the Greek exactly line-for-line.
| Quote #1 (Telemachos:) ‘[…] fear also the gods’ anger, lest they, astonished by evil actions, turn against you. I supplicate you, by Zeus the Olympian and by Themis who breaks up the assemblies of men and calls them in session: let be, my friends, and leave me alone with my bitter sorrow to waste away; unless my noble father Odysseus at some time in anger did evil to the strong-greaved Achaians, for which angry with me in revenge you do me evil in setting these on me.’ (2.66-74) |
Telemachos, despite his youth, has a clear understanding of the way justice works: if one is god-fearing and shows it through the proper behavior, he will be rewarded. The suitors, in dishonoring the house of Odysseus, are also dishonoring the gods, and risk having the gods turn against them.
| Quote #2 (Telemachos:) ‘Antinoös, I cannot thrust the mother who bore me, who raised me, out of the house against her will. My father, alive or dead, is elsewhere in the world. It will be hard to pay back Ikarios, if willingly I dismiss my mother. I will suffer some evil from her father, and the spirit will give me more yet, for my mother will call down her furies upon me as she goes out of the house, and I shall have the people’s resentment.’ (2.130-137) |
Telemachos’s refusal to banish his mother is accompanied not by a rash or emotional response, but rather by a logical reasoning grounded in his understanding of justice. The Prince’s later claim that he is not trained in public speaking seems unnecessarily humble.
| Quote #3 (Polyphemos, in Odysseus’s tale:) ‘“Hear me, Poseidon, who circle the earth, dark-haired. If truly I am your son, and you acknowledge yourself as my father, grant that Odysseus, sacker of cities, son of Laertes, who makes his home in Ithaka, may never reach that home; but if it is decided that he shall see his own people, and come home to his strong-founded house and to his own country, let him come late, in bad case, with the loss of all his companions, in someone else’s ship, and find troubles in his household.” ‘So he spoke in prayer, and the dark-haired god heard him.’ (9.528-536) |
Wounded Polyphemos believes that he is asking merely for justice. True, Odysseus wounded him, but not before Polyphemos violated Zeus’s laws of hospitality. Whether or not Odysseus’s prolonged suffering is "just" is up for debate.
