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Homer on Veterans Day

← All quotes by Homer

18 quotes

Without a sign his sword the brave man draws,
And asks no omen but his country's cause.

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

It is not right to exult over slain men.

He serves me most who serves his country best.

And for our country 'tis a bliss to die.

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.

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.

O friends, be men; so act that none may feel
Ashamed to meet the eyes of other men.
Think each one of his children and his wife,
His home, his parents, living yet or dead.
For them, the absent ones, I supplicate,
And bid you rally here, and scorn to fly.

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.

O friends, be men, and let your hearts be strong,
And let no warrior in the heat of fight
Do what may bring him shame in others' eyes;
For more of those who shrink from shame are safe
Than fall in battle, while with those who flee
Is neither glory nor reprieve from death.

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.