Odyssey

To this you answered, O swineherd Eumaios, "Stranger, though a still poorer man should come here, it would not be right for me to insult him, for all strangers and beggars are from Zeus. You must take what you can get and be thankful, for servants live in fear when they have young lords for their masters; and this is my misfortune now, for heaven has hindered the return [ nostos ] of him who would have been always good to me and given me something of my own - a house, a piece of land, a good looking wife, and all else that a liberal master allows a servant who has worked hard for him, and whose labor the gods have prospered as they have mine in the situation which I hold. If my master had grown old here he would have done great things by me, but he is gone, and I wish that Helen's whole race were utterly destroyed, for she has been the death of many a good man. It was this matter that took my master to Ilion , the land of noble steeds, to fight the Trojans in the cause of king Agamemnon."

OdysseyBook 14, Line 55Samuel ButlerEnglishVerse permalinkRead in Book 14

HomerProseID odyssey-odyssey-butler-en-prose-14-55