"What kind of daimôn has possessed you? Hold your peace, and listen to better men than yourself. You are a coward and no warrior; you are nobody either in fight or council; we cannot all be kings; it is not well that there should be many masters; one man must be supreme -
one king to whom the son of scheming Kronos has given the scepter and divine laws to rule over you all." Thus masterfully did he go about among the host, and the people hurried back to the council from their tents and ships with a sound as the thunder of surf when it comes crashing down upon the shore,
and all the sea [pontos] is in an uproar. The rest now took their seats and kept to their own several places, but Thersites still went on wagging his unbridled tongue - a man of many words, and those unseemly; a monger of sedition, a railer against all who were in authority [kosmos], who cared not what he said,
so that he might set the Achaeans in a laugh. He was the ugliest man of all those that came before Troy - bandy-legged, lame of one foot, with his two shoulders rounded and hunched over his chest. His head ran up to a point, but there was little hair on the top of it.
Achilles and Odysseus hated him worst of all, for it was with them that he was most wont to wrangle; now, however, with a shrill squeaky voice he began heaping his abuse on Agamemnon. The Achaeans were angry and disgusted, yet none the less he kept on brawling and bawling at the son of Atreus.
"Agamemnon," he cried, "what ails you now, and what more do you want? Your tents are filled with bronze and with fair women, for whenever we take a town we give you the pick of them. Would you have yet more gold,
which some Trojan is to give you as a ransom for his son, when I or another Achaean has taken him prisoner? or is it some young girl to hide and lie with? It is not well that you, the ruler of the Achaeans, should bring them into such misery.
Weakling cowards, women rather than men, let us sail home, and leave this man here at Troy to stew in his own prizes of honor, and discover whether we were of any service to him or no. Achilles is a much better man than he is, and see how he has treated him -
Homer. The Iliad of Homer. Rendered into English prose for the use of those who cannot read the original. Samuel Butler. Longmans, Green and Co. 39 Paternoster Row, London. New York and Bombay. 1898 (?).
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