Odyssey 4.97 · Book 4, lines 97–99
‘Would I had a third — and they were alive’
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ὧν ὄφελον τριτάτην περ ἔχων ἐν δώμασι μοῖραν ναίειν, οἱ δʼ ἄνδρες σόοι ἔμμεναι, οἳ τότʼ ὄλοντο Τροίῃ ἐν εὐρείῃ ἑκὰς Ἄργεος ἱπποβότοιο.
Would that I held but a third part of it, dwelling in my halls, and that those men were safe who then perished in wide Troy, far from horse-pasturing Argos.
Word by word
The setting
Menelaus wishes his riches away: he would trade two-thirds of everything he owns to undo the war's death-toll among his comrades.
A note on this passage
The wish is exact. He would keep only a third of his wealth if the men who died at Troy could be alive again. Grief, not greed, sits at the center of the rich man's house.
‘Far from horse-pasturing Argos’ lets the ache settle into a fixed epithet. The standing phrase for the good horse-country of home becomes a measure of distance: the men lie dead in wide Troy, as far as can be from the fields that bred them. Homer lets the formula carry the homesickness.
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