Sing, goddess, of Achilles' ruinous anger
Which brought ten thousand pains to the Achaeans,
And cast the souls of many stalwart heroes
To Hades, and their bodies to the dogs
And birds of prey.
The Iliad
First lines, Book 1. |
Over the wine-dark sea.
The Iliad
Book 1. |
Winged words.
The Iliad
Book 1. |
Nothing can be revoked or said in vain
nor unfulfilled if I should nod my head.
The Iliad
Zeus explains the absolute power of his
will to Thetis, mother of Achilles, Book 1. |
With them went Athena, holding her goatskin-tippet, precious,
unfading, incorruptible, with a hundred dangling tassels of
solid gold, neatly braided, worth each a hundred oxen. Through
the host she passed, dazzling them with the vision, and filling
each heart with courage to wage war implacable and unceasing.
In a moment war became sweeter to them than to sail back safely
to their own native land.
The Iliad
Book 2. |
One came to the war all over gold, like a girl. Poor fool!
it did not save him from cruel death.
The Iliad
Book 2. |
Thick as autumnal leaves, or driving sand,
The moving squadrons blacken all the strand.
The Iliad
Book 2. |
Paris, you handsome, woman-mad deceiver,
you shouldn't have been born, or killed unmarried.
I wish you had - it would have been far better
Than having you our shame, whom all suspect,
Or having the long-haired Acheans laugh
When you appear as champion-champion beauty -
But have no strength, nor character, nor courage.
The Iliad
Hector rebukes his brother for lack of
honor, Book 3. |
It is no cause for anger that the Trojans and the well-greaved
Achaeans have suffered for so long over such a woman: she is
wondrously like the immortal goddesses to look upon.
The Iliad
Of Helen, Book 3. |
Gods! How the son degenerates from the sire!
The Iliad
Book 4. |
But loud clamorous cries resounded throughout the Trojan host:
for they had not one speech and one language, but a confusion
of tongues, since they were called from many lands. They were
like a huge flock of ewes innumerable standing in a wide farmyard
to be milked, which bleat without ceasing as they hear the cries
of their lambs.
The Iliad
Book 4. |
Son of Atreus, what manner of speech has escaped the barrier
of your teeth?
The Iliad
Book 4. |
The generation of men is like that of leaves. The wind scatters
one year's leaves on the ground, but the forest burgeons and
and puts out others, as the season of spring comes round. So
it is with men: on generation grows on, and another is passing
away.
The Iliad
Book 6. |
Always to be best, and to be distinguished above the rest.
The Iliad
Book 6. |
She was smiling through her tears.
The Iliad
Of Andromache, Book 6. |
No man, against my fate, sends me to Hades'.
And as for fate, I'm sure no man escapes it,
Neither a good nor bad man, once he's born.
The Iliad
Hector, saying farewell to his wife, Book
6 . |
Victory passes back and forth between men.
The Iliad
Book 6. |
Inflaming wine, pernicious to mankind,
Unnerves the limbs, and dulls the noble mind.
The Iliad
Book 6. |
’T is man’s to fight, but Heaven’s to give
success.
The Iliad
Book 6. |
Short is my date, but deathless my renown.
The Iliad
Book 9. |
Clanless, lawless, homeless is he who is in love with civil
war, that brutal ferocious thing.
The Iliad
Book 9. |
A generous friendship no cold medium knows,
Burns with one love, with one resentment glows.
The Iliad
Book 9. |
Injustice, swift, erect, and unconfin’d,
Sweeps the wide earth, and tramples o’er mankind.
The Iliad
Book 9. |
Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides
one thing in his heart and speaks another.
The Iliad
Book 9. |
But why must the Argives fight
the Trojans? Why did Atreus' son assemble
and bring us? Wasn't it for Helen's sake?
Are Atreus' sons the only men
who love their wives?
The Iliad
Achilles, questioning motives for Trojan
war as Odysseus tries to bring him back to the fighting, Book
9. |
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