Odyssey 8.153 · Book 8, lines 153–157
‘My cares outweigh your games’
Read the full text in our reader
Odysseus — Λαοδάμα, τί με ταῦτα κελεύετε κερτομέοντες; κήδεά μοι καὶ μᾶλλον ἐνὶ φρεσὶν ἤ περ ἄεθλοι, ὃς πρὶν μὲν μάλα πολλὰ πάθον καὶ πολλὰ μόγησα, νῦν δὲ μεθʼ ὑμετέρῃ ἀγορῇ νόστοιο χατίζων ἧμαι, λισσόμενος βασιλῆά τε πάντα τε δῆμον.
Laodamas, why do you all urge me to this, mocking me? Sorrows are on my heart even more than games, I who before suffered very many things and toiled much, and now sit amid your assembly longing for my homecoming, begging both the king and all the people.
Word by word
The setting
Odysseus replies to Laodamas. Still unnamed among the Phaeacians, he is their suppliant guest, waiting only for the ship that will carry him home.
A note on this passage
Odysseus turns the invitation aside. He has no heart for games: cares weigh on him more than contests, and he sits among the Phaeacians as a suppliant, longing only for his return and begging king and people to grant it.
He answers a young man's sporting dare with the whole gravity of his hidden life. ‘Much I suffered and much I toiled’ is the poem's own formula for his ordeal, spoken here by the sufferer who still will not give his name. And he already hears an edge in the offer — κερτομέοντες, ‘mocking’ — so that the quarrel Euryalus is about to start is, to Odysseus, one he has half-felt coming.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 8.153 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 8.153 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/8.153/