Odyssey 1.65 · Book 1, lines 65–67
How could I forget Odysseus?
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Zeus — πῶς ἂν ἔπειτʼ Ὀδυσῆος ἐγὼ θείοιο λαθοίμην, ὃς περὶ μὲν νόον ἐστὶ βροτῶν, περὶ δʼ ἱρὰ θεοῖσιν ἀθανάτοισιν ἔδωκε, τοὶ οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἔχουσιν;
How could I then forget godlike Odysseus, who is beyond mortals in mind, and beyond others gave sacrifices to the gods, the immortals who hold the wide heaven?
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The setting
In the council on Olympus, Zeus is already speaking, answering the charge that heaven has abandoned Odysseus. He turns to the one mortal no god could overlook — the wisest and most pious of men.
A note on this passage
Zeus answers the charge that heaven has abandoned Odysseus by turning it around: how could he forget the one man who outstripped mortals in wisdom and outdid them in sacrifice? The hero is defined by two things at once — his mind and his piety.
The undercurrent is the honor economy the gods run on. Odysseus is owed because he gave: the sacrifices are a debt the immortals are bound to honor. Zeus is moved less by pity than by a reckoning — and the poem quietly frames divine favor as an exchange, not a gift freely given.
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