Homer’s Epigrams

Homer

Homer. Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns and Homerica. Evelyn-White, Hugh G. (Hugh Gerard), editor. London: William Heinmann; New York: The Macmillan Co., 1914.

  1. Strangers, a contrary wind has caught you:
  2. but even now take me aboard and you shall make your voyage.
  1. Another sort of pine shall bear a better fruit[*](The better fruit is apparently the iron smelted out in fires of pine-wood.)
  2. than you upon the heights of furrowed, windy Ida.
  3. For there shall mortal men get the iron that Ares loves
  4. so soon as the Cebrenians shall hold the land.
  1. Glaucus, watchman of flocks, a word will I put in your heart.
  2. First give the dogs their dinner at the courtyard gate,
  3. for this is well. The dog first hears
  4. a man approaching and the wild-beast coming to the fence.
  1. Goddess-nurse of the young,[*](Hecate: cp. Hesiod, Theogony, 450.) give ear to my prayer, and grant that this woman
  2. may reject the love-embrace of youth
  3. and dote on grey-haired old men
  4. whose powers are dulled, but whose hearts still desire.
  1. Children are a man’s crown, towers of a city;
  2. horses are the glory of a plain, and so are ships of the sea;
  3. wealth will make a house great, and reverend princes
  4. seated in assembly are a goodly sight for the folk to see.
  5. But a blazing fire makes a house look more comely upon a winter’s day,
  6. when the Son of Cronos sends down snow.