The Odyssey

And the goddess, grey-eyed Athene, answered him, saying: 'O

father, our father Cronides, throned in the highest; that

man assuredly lies in a death that is his due; so perish

likewise all who work such deeds! But my heart is rent for

wise Odysseus, the hapless one, who far from his friends

this long while suffereth affliction in a sea-girt isle,

where is the navel of the sea, a woodland isle, and

therein a goddess hath her habitation, the daughter of the

wizard Atlas, who knows the depths of every sea, and

himself upholds the tall pillars which keep earth and sky

asunder. His daughter it is that holds the hapless man in

sorrow: and ever with soft and guileful tales she is

wooing him to forgetfulness of Ithaca. But Odysseus

yearning to see if it were but the smoke leap upwards from

his own land, hath a desire to die. As for thee, thine

heart regardeth it not at all, Olympian! What! Did not

Odysseus by the ships of the Argives make thee free

offering of sacrifice in the wide Trojan land? Wherefore

wast thou then so wroth with him, O Zeus?'

Dettagli