Sunday, October 20, 2019
Take Heart
Homer, Iliad 10.383 (Odysseus to Dolon; tr. Peter Green):
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Take heart, remove the idea of death from your mind!Bryan Hainsworth ad loc.:
θάρσει, μηδέ τί τοι θάνατος καταθύμιος ἔστω.
Odysseus' reassurance of the wretched Dolon seems at first reading a pleasant return to the conventions of war that prevailed before the opening of the Iliad, when Akhilleus habitually took prisoners and allowed them to be ransomed (11.104-6, 21.100-2).But a short time later (10.455-457), Diomedes slaughters Dolon.
