The Odyssey Achilles Quotes

and when they’d put aside desire for food and drink,
the Muse inspired the bard
to sing the famous deeds of fighting heroes –
the song whose fame had reached the skies those days:
The Strife Between Odysseus and Achilles, Peleus’ Son…
how once at the gods’ lavish feast the captains clashed
in a savage war of words, while Agamemnon, lord of armies,
rejoiced at heart that Achaea’s bravest men were battling so.

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 8, lines 85-92. The Muse goddess inspires Demodocus to sing a song about the glorious deeds of battle heroes during the Phaeacian welcome for Odysseus. But the song tells of the quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles, with Agamemnon happy to see the best of the Achaeans quarreling. This will upset Odysseus.

"But you, Achilles,
there’s not a man in the world more blest than you –
there never has been, never will be one.
Time was, when you were alive, we Argives
honored you as a god, and now down here, I see,
you lord it over the dead in all your power.
So grieve no more at dying, great Achilles."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 11, lines 547-553. Odysseus tries to provide comfort to the great warrior and hero of the Trojan war, Achilles. Odysseus envies the glory that Achilles won on the battlefield, telling him in a simile that his countrymen honored him like a god.

"No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus!
By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man –
some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive –
than rule down here over all the breathless dead."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 11, lines 555-558. Here we have some of the most famous words in The Odyssey, spoken by the ghost of a regretful and disconsolate Achilles, who died in the Trojan War. Achilles rejects Odysseus’ view that a glorious death like his at Troy is to be envied, instead he is envious of Odysseus for being alive. He would rather be a poor farmer barely scraping a living, than lording it over the ghosts in the House of Death, he asserts. A poor life is better than a glorious death, according to the hero, who now regrets that he squandered life in pursuit of glory and an early death. Achilles’ words overturn on its head the ancient Greek concept of kleos, meaning eternal fame, often achieved by dying violent and dramatic deaths on the field of battle.

"If only you had died your death in the full flush
of the glory you had mastered – died on Trojan soil!
Then all united Achaea would have raised your tomb
and you’d have won your son great fame for years to come.
Not so. You were fated to die a wretched death."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 24, lines 32-36. Achilles expresses the glorification of heroic combat when he says this to Agamemnon in the underworld. He tells Agamemnon that if only he had died while fighting in Troy, he would have had a much more glorious death. Instead fate marked him out for a "wretched death." This is a reference to King Agamemnon’s murder by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus after he returned from the Trojan war.

"For seventeen days unbroken, days and nights
we mourned you – immortal gods and mortal men.
At the eighteenth dawn we gave you to the flames
and slaughtered around your body droves of fat sheep
and shambling longhorn cattle, and you were burned
in the garments of the gods and laved with soothing oils
and honey running sweet, and a long cortege of Argive heroes
paraded in review, in battle armor round your blazing pyre,
men in chariots, men on foot – a resounding roar went up."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 24, lines 68-76. In this passage the ghost of King Agamemnon is recounting to Achilles in the underworld how the great hero was honored in death. Achilles’ funeral was a very big deal, as gods and humans mourned him for seventeen days. For his cremation on the eighteenth, large number of cattle and sheep were slaughtered. The Greek hero was burned in garments from the gods while a cortege of Argive heroes paraded in full armor to honor him.

"Your mother gave us a gold two-handled urn,
a gift from Dionysus, she said,
a masterwork of the famous Smith, the god of fire.
Your white bones rest in that, my brilliant Achilles,
mixed with the bones of dead Patroclus, Menoetius’ son,
apart from those of Antilochus, whom you treasured
more than all other comrades once Patroclus died.
Over your bones we reared a grand, noble tomb –
devoted veterans all, Achaea’s combat forces –
high on its jutting headland over the Hellespont’s
broad reach, a landmark glimpsed from far out at sea
by men of our own day and men of days to come.
And then
your mother, begging the gods for priceless trophies,
set them out in the ring for all our champions.
You in your day have witnessed funeral games
for many heroes, games to honor the death of kings,
when young men cinch their belts, tense to win some prize –
but if you’d laid eyes on these it would have thrilled your heart,
magnificent trophies the goddess, glistening-footed Thetis,
held out in your honor."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 24, lines 80-99. In the underworld Agamemnon describes the funeral of Achilles in detail. He tells Achilles’ ghost how the Argives paid him great honor after his death. Achilles’ mother the goddess Thetis provided a gold urn and after burning his corpse his bones were mixed in it with those of Patroclus and Antilochus. Over his bones a great tomb was built, which could be seen from afar and for generations to come.
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