Odyssey 5.308 · Book 5, lines 308–312
Better to have died at Troy
Read the full text in our reader
ὡς δὴ ἐγώ γʼ ὄφελον θανέειν καὶ πότμον ἐπισπεῖν ἤματι τῷ ὅτε μοι πλεῖστοι χαλκήρεα δοῦρα Τρῶες ἐπέρριψαν περὶ Πηλεΐωνι θανόντι. τῷ κʼ ἔλαχον κτερέων, καί μευ κλέος ἦγον Ἀχαιοί· νῦν δέ λευγαλέῳ θανάτῳ εἵμαρτο ἁλῶναι.
Would that I had died myself and met my doom on that day when the most Trojans hurled at me their bronze-tipped spears over dead Achilles. Then I would have won funeral honours, and the Achaeans would have carried my fame; but now I am fated to be caught by a wretched death.
Word by word
The setting
Odysseus spells out his wish: to have fallen in battle over the corpse of Achilles (the son of Peleus), which would have won him burial and lasting fame — unlike the anonymous death at sea now facing him.
A note on this passage
The wish becomes explicit: he would rather have died at Troy, on the day the Trojans hurled their spears over Achilles' fallen body. Then, he says, he would have had a proper burial and the Achaeans would have carried his name; instead he is fated to drown, caught by a 'wretched death.'
The contrast is between two kinds of death, and underneath it, two kinds of memory. A death 'over the son of Peleus' would have set him in the war's greatest scene and earned him funeral rites — κτέρεα, the physical anchor of remembrance. Drowning leaves no body, no grave, no witness. The verb εἵμαρτο, 'it was allotted,' hands the outcome to fate: not what he would choose, only what has been measured out for him.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 5.308 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 5.308 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/5.308/