previous next
But Zeus, son of Cronos, brought all to naught—so, I ween, was his good pleasure— [425] who sent me forth with roaming pirates to go to Egypt, a far voyage, that I might meet my ruin; and in the river Aegyptus I moored my curved ships. Then verily I bade my trusty comrades to remain there by the ships and to guard the ships, [430] and I sent out scouts to go to places of outlook. But my comrades, yielding to wantonness and led on by their own might, straightway set about wasting the fair fields of the men of Egypt; and they carried off the women and little children, and slew the men; and the cry came quickly to the city. [435] Then, hearing the shouting, the people came forth at break of day, and the whole plain was filled with footmen and chariots and the flashing of bronze. And Zeus, who hurls the thunderbolt, cast an evil panic upon my comrades, and none had courage to take his stand and face the foe; for evil surrounded us on every side. [440] So then they slew many of us with the sharp bronze, and others they led up to their city alive, to work for them perforce. But they gave me to a friend who met them to take to Cyprus, even to Dmetor, son of Iasus, who ruled mightily over Cyprus; and from thence am I now come hither, sore distressed.” [445] Then Antinous answered him, and said: “What god has brought this bane hither to trouble our feast? Stand off yonder in the midst, away from my table, lest thou come presently to a bitter Egypt and a bitter Cyprus, seeing that thou art a bold and shameless beggar. [450] Thou comest up to every man in turn, and they give recklessly; for there is no restraint or scruple in giving freely of another's goods, since each man has plenty beside him.” Then Odysseus of many wiles drew back, and said to him: “Lo, now, it seems that thou at least hast not wits to match thy beauty. [455] Thou wouldest not out of thine own substance give even a grain of salt to thy suppliant, thou who now, when sitting at another's table, hadst not the heart to take of the bread and give me aught. Yet here lies plenty at thy hand.” So he spoke, and Antinous waxed the more wroth at heart, and with an angry glance from beneath his brows spoke to him winged words: [460] “Now verily, methinks, thou shalt no more go forth from the hall in seemly fashion, since thou dost even utter words of reviling.”

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Greek (1919)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Egypt (Egypt) (4)
Cyprus (Cyprus) (3)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide References (1 total)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: