Odyssey 4.235 · Book 4, lines 235–237
A god gives good and evil as he will
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Helen — Ἀτρεΐδη Μενέλαε διοτρεφὲς ἠδὲ καὶ οἵδε ἀνδρῶν ἐσθλῶν παῖδες· ἀτὰρ θεὸς ἄλλοτε ἄλλῳ Ζεὺς ἀγαθόν τε κακόν τε διδοῖ· δύναται γὰρ ἅπαντα·
Son of Atreus, Menelaus, cherished by Zeus, and you too, sons of noble men — yet a god, Zeus, gives now to one, now to another, good and evil, for he can do all things.
Word by word
The setting
The wine is drugged; Helen begins to speak, addressing her husband Menelaus and the young guests, Telemachus among them.
A note on this passage
Helen opens with the courtesy of the hall: Menelaus by his father's name and title, the young men as sons of good fathers. Then she offers a maxim — Zeus gives good and evil to one man now, another later, because he is all-powerful. It is the ordinary piety that frames a Homeric speech.
But the piety leans in a useful direction. Of everyone at the table, Helen has the most reason to make fortune a matter of what a god hands out rather than what a person chooses. The saying quietly moves weight off human responsibility — and she is about to tell a story about herself at Troy in which her own choice is exactly the question.
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