Odyssey 8.357 · Book 8, lines 357–358
Hephaestus yields to Poseidon's word
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τὸν δʼ ἠμείβετʼ ἔπειτα περικλυτὸς ἀμφιγυήεις·
Hephaestus — οὐκ ἔστʼ οὐδὲ ἔοικε τεὸν ἔπος ἀρνήσασθαι.
And then answered him the far-famed god of both arms: It cannot be, nor is it seemly, to refuse your word.
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The setting
Poseidon has pledged to pay Ares' debt himself should the war-god flee. Hephaestus gives his answer.
A note on this passage
Hephaestus yields at once. Poseidon's word, he says, cannot be refused — it is neither possible nor seemly to say no. With that the knot of the negotiation unties, and the smith agrees to open his trap.
What settles it is not justice but rank and courtesy. The wronged party has made his case and won it on logic, yet in the end he defers, because a great god has given his word and a request from such a quarter is not declined. The resolution is social, the way disputes in the poem's human world are so often social: honor and face decide where argument leaves off.
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