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The Odyssey Piety Quotes Page 5
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 #13 (Odysseus:) ‘Then I went away along the island in order to pray to the gods, if any of them might show me some course to sail on, but when, crossing the isle, I had left my companions behind, I washed my hands, where there was a place sheltered from the wind, and prayed to all the gods whose hold is Olympos; but what they did was to shed a sweet sleep on my eyelids […].’ (12.333-338) |
Then again…
| Quote #14 (Odysseus:) ‘You dogs, you never thought I would any more come back from the land of Troy, and because of that you despoiled my household, and forcibly took my serving women to sleep beside you, and sought to win my wife while I was still alive, fearing neither the immortal gods who hold the wide heaven, nor any resentment sprung from men to be yours in the future. Now upon you all the terms of destruction are fastened.’ (22.35-41) |
Odysseus cites the suitors’ crime as one not only of incivility, but of impiety as well.
| Quote #15 (Odysseus:) ‘Keep your joy in your heart, old dame; stop, do not raise up the cry. It is not piety to glory so over slain men. These were destroyed by the doom of the gods and their own hard actions […].’ (22.411-413) |
We learn that it is impious to rejoice at the death of others, even if those others were jerks that totally got what was coming to them. Compare this older, wiser Odysseus to the man who taunted Polyphemos from his departing ship.
