Odyssey 3.130 · Book 3, lines 130–135
Zeus plans a bitter homecoming
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αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ Πριάμοιο πόλιν διεπέρσαμεν αἰπήν, βῆμεν δʼ ἐν νήεσσι, θεὸς δʼ ἐκέδασσεν Ἀχαιούς, καὶ τότε δὴ Ζεὺς λυγρὸν ἐνὶ φρεσὶ μήδετο νόστον Ἀργείοις, ἐπεὶ οὔ τι νοήμονες οὐδὲ δίκαιοι πάντες ἔσαν· τῶ σφεων πολέες κακὸν οἶτον ἐπέσπον μήνιος ἐξ ὀλοῆς γλαυκώπιδος ὀβριμοπάτρης.
But when we had sacked Priam's steep city and gone aboard the ships, and a god scattered the Achaeans, then indeed Zeus devised in his heart a grievous return for the Argives; since they were not all wise, nor just. So many of them met an evil doom by the deadly wrath of the grey-eyed daughter of a mighty father.
Word by word
The setting
Nestor moves from the fall of Troy to the disaster that followed — the fleet scattered and the calamitous voyages home, the nostoi that killed so many Greeks.
A note on this passage
Nestor turns from the war to its ruinous aftermath. The city falls, the Greeks board their ships, and a god blows them apart. Zeus plans a bitter journey home for them, because the army was not, as a whole, wise or righteous — and so many died on the way, destroyed by the anger of Athena.
This is the poem's grimmest lesson stated flatly: victory is not homecoming. The nostos, the safe return, can be revoked. The wrath belongs to Athena — grey-eyed, mighty-fathered — provoked by the Greeks' sacrilege in the sack (the outrage of Ajax at her altar, which Nestor politely does not name). Her rage frames everything ahead, and quietly sets off the just survivor, Odysseus, from the many who did not deserve to reach shore.
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