Odyssey 8.292 · Book 8, lines 292–294
“Come, my dear — he has gone”
Read the full text in our reader
Ares — δεῦρο, φίλη, λέκτρονδε τραπείομεν εὐνηθέντες· οὐ γὰρ ἔθʼ Ἥφαιστος μεταδήμιος, ἀλλά που ἤδη οἴχεται ἐς Λῆμνον μετὰ Σίντιας ἀγριοφώνους.
Come, my dear, to bed let us take delight, lying down; for Hephaestus is no longer at home, but by now, I suppose, he has gone off to Lemnos, among the wild-voiced Sintians.
Word by word
The setting
Ares makes his move in three lines: an invitation to bed, and the reassurance that the husband is safely away on Lemnos among its rough-tongued people, the Sintians.
A note on this passage
Ares's whole seduction is one confident, wrong sentence. Come to bed, he says; Hephaestus is not at home — he's off to Lemnos, among the wild-voiced Sintians. The invitation and the alibi are delivered as settled fact, and the lovers act on it.
The undercurrent is dramatic irony at full stretch. The reader has just watched the smith rig the net and only pretend to leave; every word Ares speaks to prove the coast is clear is walking him deeper into the trap. “He has gone off to Lemnos” is exactly what Hephaestus wanted him to believe — the seducer quoting, without knowing it, the script his victim wrote.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 8.292 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 8.292 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/8.292/