Odyssey 8.326 · Book 8, lines 326–330
Unquenchable laughter, and a proverb
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ἄσβεστος δʼ ἄρʼ ἐνῶρτο γέλως μακάρεσσι θεοῖσι τέχνας εἰσορόωσι πολύφρονος Ἡφαίστοιο. ὧδε δέ τις εἴπεσκεν ἰδὼν ἐς πλησίον ἄλλον· οὐκ ἀρετᾷ κακὰ ἔργα· κιχάνει τοι βραδὺς ὠκύν, ὡς καὶ νῦν Ἥφαιστος ἐὼν βραδὺς εἷλεν Ἄρηα
And unquenchable laughter arose then among the blessed gods, as they gazed on the craft of clever Hephaestus. And thus one would say, looking at his neighbor: Bad deeds do not prosper; the slow catches the swift, you see, as even now Hephaestus, slow as he is, has caught Ares.
Word by word
The setting
The gods, gathered at Hephaestus's door, look on the trapped lovers. This is the closing of the song's comic peak.
A note on this passage
The scene delivers its laugh. 'Unquenchable' laughter breaks out among the gods at the sight of Hephaestus's cunning device, and one of them turns to his neighbor with the moral: bad deeds do not prosper; the slow catches the swift — as the slow smith has just caught the war-god.
The laughter is the famous ἄσβεστος γέλως, the same 'unquenchable' laughter the Iliad gives the gods; here it crowns a comedy, not a cruelty. And the throwaway proverb hands the least likely god a real win: craft over speed, the maker over the fighter. It is a small Odyssean creed, spoken on Olympus — the one caught by force takes his revenge by wit.
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