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