Odyssey 1.35 · Book 1, lines 35–39
The warning Aegisthus ignored
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Zeus — ὡς καὶ νῦν Αἴγισθος ὑπὲρ μόρον Ἀτρεΐδαο γῆμʼ ἄλοχον μνηστήν, τὸν δʼ ἔκτανε νοστήσαντα, εἰδὼς αἰπὺν ὄλεθρον, ἐπεὶ πρό οἱ εἴπομεν ἡμεῖς, Ἑρμείαν πέμψαντες ἐύσκοπον ἀργεϊφόντην, μήτʼ αὐτὸν κτείνειν μήτε μνάασθαι ἄκοιτιν·
So even now Aegisthus, beyond his lot, married the wedded wife of Atreides, and killed the man on his return, though he knew the sheer ruin of it — for we ourselves warned him beforehand, sending Hermes, the keen-eyed slayer of Argus, neither to kill the man nor to woo his wife.
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The setting
Zeus is speaking to the assembled gods on Olympus, mid-speech, still brooding on Aegisthus — who seized Agamemnon's wife and throne and murdered the returning king, and was killed in turn by Agamemnon's son Orestes. Here Zeus presses his point: the crime went ahead against an explicit warning carried by Hermes.
A note on this passage
Zeus is still on the case of Aegisthus, the example he opened with. Aegisthus took Agamemnon's wife and cut the king down when he came home — and did it knowing the ruin it would bring, because the gods had sent Hermes ahead with an explicit warning: do not kill the man, do not court the wife.
The point is the warning. Heaven did not spring the doom on Aegisthus; it put the whole truth in his hands first and let him choose. This is Zeus's proof that men add to their own grief — the crime was informed, deliberate, forewarned. And the Agamemnon story is being held up on purpose: it is the dark mirror of Odysseus's own house, a king coming home to a wife and a usurper, that the poem keeps setting beside Ithaca.
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