Odyssey 9.34 · Book 9, lines 34–36
Nothing sweeter than one's own land
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ὣς οὐδὲν γλύκιον ἧς πατρίδος οὐδὲ τοκήων γίγνεται, εἴ περ καί τις ἀπόπροθι πίονα οἶκον γαίῃ ἐν ἀλλοδαπῇ ναίει ἀπάνευθε τοκήων.
So nothing sweeter comes to be than one's own fatherland, nor than parents, even if some man dwells far away in a rich house, in a foreign land, far from his parents.
Word by word
The setting
Having refused both Calypso and Circe, Odysseus draws the lesson aloud: for all a goddess or a rich foreign house can offer, home and parents outweigh it. The line became the ancient world's proverb of homesickness.
A note on this passage
Odysseus turns his refusal into a maxim: nothing is sweeter than your own country and your parents, not even a rich house in a wealthy foreign land. It is the plain moral he draws from having said no to two goddesses.
Placed where it is, the saying does double work. It explains a man who walked away from immortality, and it states the belief the whole poem is built on — that home is worth more than ease or safety. There is a shadow in it too: he speaks of parents and homeland to the very crew who will never see theirs again, dying far off in the tale he is about to tell.
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