Odyssey 4.104 · Book 4, lines 104–106
One man above all the dead
Read the full text in our reader
τῶν πάντων οὐ τόσσον ὀδύρομαι, ἀχνύμενός περ, ὡς ἑνός, ὅς τέ μοι ὕπνον ἀπεχθαίρει καὶ ἐδωδὴν μνωομένῳ, ἐπεὶ οὔ τις Ἀχαιῶν τόσσʼ ἐμόγησεν,
Yet for all of these I mourn not so much, grieved though I am, as for one, who makes sleep and food hateful to me whenever I remember him, since no Achaean toiled so much,
Word by word
The setting
Out of all the fallen, Menelaus singles out the one whose loss he feels most — though he has not yet spoken the name to his guests.
A note on this passage
The speech narrows from ‘all of them’ to a single man, whose memory spoils sleep and food alike. Menelaus builds toward the name without saying it: no Achaean, he insists, toiled as this one did.
The listening reader already knows who is meant, and so does the boy across the table. The unnamed ‘one’ is Odysseus, and his own son is hearing his father praised as the greatest sufferer of the war. The recognition is being quietly loaded before anyone has spoken the name.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 4.104 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
From the Great Library
You are reading a page of the Odyssey — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Odyssey 4.104 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/4.104/