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Homer on Memorial Day

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15 quotes

He slept an iron sleep,—
Slain fighting for his country.

It is not right to exult over slain men.

And they die
An equal death,—the idler and the man
Of mighty deeds.

The chance of war
Is equal, and the slayer oft is slain.

On they moved, by Neptune led
With firm hand grasping his long-bladed sword
Keen as Jove's bolt.

It is not right to glory in the slain.

The sex is ever to a soldier kind.

Helenus, with his heavy Thracian blade
Smiting the temples of Deipyrus,
Dash'd off his helmet.

So ends the bloody business of the day.

Cursed is the man, and void of law and right,
Unworthy property, unworthy light,
Unfit for public rule, or private care,
That wretch, that monster, that delights in war:
Whose lust is murder, and whose horrid joy
To tear his country, and his kind destroy!

Iliad (-750)

Agamemnon caught the spear with his hand and drew it toward him furiously, like a lion, and snatched it out of the hand of Iphidamas, and smote his neck with the sword, and unstrung his limbs. So even there he fell, and slept a sleep of bronze most piteously.

Take thou thy arms and come with me,
For we must quit ourselves like men, and strive
To aid our cause, although we be but two.
Great is the strength of feeble arms combined,
And we can combat even with the brave.

The fighter
who is first of the two to get in a stroke at the other’s fair body,
to get through armor and dark blood and reach to the vitals,
to that man I will give this magnificent silver-nailed
sword of Thrace I stripped from the body of Asteropaios.

Deucalion next—he lanced his arm with a bronze-shod spear,
he spitted the Trojan through where the elbow-tendons grip
and there he stood, waiting Achilles, arm dangling heavy,
staring death in the face—and Achilles chopped his neck
and his sword sent head and helmet flying off together
and marrow bubbling up from the clean-cut neckbone.

Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing, sooner than of war.

Misattributed

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Homer (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.