Odyssey 8.219 · Book 8, lines 219–222
Only Philoctetes bettered me
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οἶος δή με Φιλοκτήτης ἀπεκαίνυτο τόξῳ δήμῳ ἔνι Τρώων, ὅτε τοξαζοίμεθʼ Ἀχαιοί. τῶν δʼ ἄλλων ἐμέ φημι πολὺ προφερέστερον εἶναι, ὅσσοι νῦν βροτοί εἰσιν ἐπὶ χθονὶ σῖτον ἔδοντες.
Only Philoctetes surpassed me with the bow in the land of the Trojans, when we Achaeans shot. But of all the rest I declare that I am far superior — of all who now are mortals upon the earth, eating bread.
Word by word
The setting
Odysseus qualifies his archery boast with a single exception from the Trojan War, then re-asserts his supremacy over all living men.
A note on this passage
Odysseus grants one man his better: Philoctetes, the archer who carried Heracles's bow to Troy. It is a careful boast — large but not reckless, naming a true master so the claim keeps its credit. Then he widens it again: of all men now alive and eating bread, he is far the best.
The phrase ‘who eat bread’ is the old Homeric way of saying ‘mortal’ — bread-eaters, as against the gods who live on nectar. It quietly fixes the limit of the boast in the same breath that makes it: Odysseus claims to outshoot every living man, and, remembering Eurytus, will refuse in the next lines to measure himself against the dead or the gods.
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