Laudator Temporis Acti

Homer, Odyssey 5.394-399 (tr. Peter Green):

As most welcome appear to his children renewed signs of life
in a father who's laid on a sickbed, suffering agonies,        395
long wasting away, attacked by some hateful spirit,
but then, oh joy, the gods free him from his illness —
so welcome seemed to Odysseus the land and its forest,
and he swam on, longing to set foot on solid earth.

ὡς δ᾿ ὅτ᾿ ἂν ἀσπάσιος βίοτος παίδεσσι φανήῃ
πατρός, ὃς ἐν νούσῳ κεῖται κρατέρ᾿ ἄλγεα πάσχων,        395
δηρὸν τηκόμενος, στυγερὸς δέ οἱ ἔχραε δαίμων,
ἀσπάσιον δ᾿ ἄρα τόν γε θεοὶ κακότητος ἔλυσαν,
ὣς Ὀδυσῆ᾿ ἀσπαστὸν ἐείσατο γαῖα καὶ ὕλη,
νῆχε δ᾿ ἐπειγόμενος ποσὶν ἠπείρου ἐπιβῆναι.

Anthony J. Podlecki, "Some Odyssean Similes," Greece & Rome 18.1 (April, 1971) 81-90 (at 89):

As Fränkel observes in discussing this simile, 'homecoming, safety, and return to health are interchangeably compared'.¹ The detail of the sick father and his children puts us back in the context of Odysseus' return to Ithaca, and the yearning of Telemachus for his father: we see things from the children's viewpoint, and Odysseus' return — which is not yet — is, as it were, a return from mortal disease and the realm of death (Book ix) to health and life. There is a possibility, too, that the long wasting disease, κρατέρ᾿ ἄλγεα πάσχων | δηρὸν τηκόμενος, is meant to suggest one of the etymologies of Odysseus' name, 'man of sufferings'.<sup>2

1</sup> Die homerischen Gleichnisse, 95.

² Cf. Odysseus' own description of himself as πολύστονος (xix.118). For the etymology see Stanford's note on xix.407-9 with refs. there.