Odyssey 7.241 · Book 7, lines 241–243
It is hard to tell all my woes
Read the full text in our reader
ἀργαλέον, βασίλεια, διηνεκέως ἀγορεῦσαι κήδεʼ, ἐπεί μοι πολλὰ δόσαν θεοὶ Οὐρανίωνες· τοῦτο δέ τοι ἐρέω ὅ μʼ ἀνείρεαι ἠδὲ μεταλλᾷς.
It is hard, O queen, to tell in full my woes, since the heavenly gods gave me many; but this I will tell you, what you ask me and inquire.
Word by word
The setting
Odysseus has just been asked by Queen Arete who he is and where he got his clothes. He begins his reply — not with his name, but with a careful preface: his sorrows are too many to recount in full, yet he will answer what she asks.
A note on this passage
Arete has asked the stranger a pointed question — who he is, and where his clothes came from. Odysseus answers like the storyteller he is, with a modest preface first: his griefs are so many that to lay them all out in order would be a hard labour; but he will tell her the one thing she asked.
The move is pure tact. He neither refuses nor overwhelms; he narrows the vast catalogue of his wanderings down to a single answerable point. It is the same controlled intelligence that governs the whole speech — a man measuring exactly how much of himself to give a room of strangers.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 7.241 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 7.241 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/7.241/