Odyssey 4.199 · Book 4, lines 199–202
My brother died too
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καὶ γὰρ ἐμὸς τέθνηκεν ἀδελφεός, οὔ τι κάκιστος Ἀργείων· μέλλεις δὲ σὺ ἴδμεναι· οὐ γὰρ ἐγώ γε ἤντησʼ οὐδὲ ἴδον· περὶ δʼ ἄλλων φασὶ γενέσθαι Ἀντίλοχον, πέρι μὲν θείειν ταχὺν ἠδὲ μαχητήν.
For even my own brother is dead, by no means the worst of the Argives; and you yourself must know him; for I myself neither met nor saw him, but they say that Antilochus was beyond all others, swift in running and a warrior.
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The setting
Peisistratus grounds his counsel in his own loss. His brother is dead — Antilochus, killed at Troy. He admits he never met the man himself, being too young, but knows him by reputation: outstanding among the Argives, a swift runner and a fighter.
A note on this passage
Peisistratus makes his counsel personal and earns the right to give it. His own brother lies dead at Troy — no lesser man than the best of the Argives — so he speaks about grief from inside it, not above it. Yet he adds a striking admission: he never met Antilochus himself, having been too young when the army sailed. He knows his own brother only by report.
The quiet loss here is a generation's. Peisistratus mourns a man he cannot picture, taking the family's grief on trust — ‘they say he was swift, a fighter.’ It is the war's long shadow: sons left at home who inherit the mourning without the memory. His restraint about grief is the harder for coming from someone whose loss is real yet secondhand.
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