Laudator Temporis Acti

Homer, Iliad 4.158-162 (tr. A.T. Murray):

Yet in no wise is an oath of none effect and the blood of lambs
and drink-offerings of unmixed wine and the hand-clasps, wherein we put our trust.
For even if for the moment the Olympian vouchsafeth not fulfilment,
yet late and at length doth he fulfil them, and with a heavy price do men make atonement,
even with their own heads and their wives and their children.

οὐ μέν πως ἅλιον πέλει ὅρκιον αἷμά τε ἀρνῶν
σπονδαί τ᾽ ἄκρητοι καὶ δεξιαί, ᾗς ἐπέπιθμεν.
εἴ περ γάρ τε καὶ αὐτίκ' Ὀλύμπιος οὐκ ἐτέλεσσεν,        160
ἔκ τε καὶ ὀψὲ τελεῖ, σύν τε μεγάλῳ ἀπέτισαν
σὺν σφῇσιν κεφαλῇσι γυναιξί τε καὶ τεκέεσσιν.

G.S. Kirk ad loc.:

158-9 The oath itself, the blood of the sacrificial lambs and the libations were not in vain: these are the main ritual acts which sealed the compact. The libations were described at 3.295f; on their being 'unmixed' see on 3.269-70 init. As for δεξιαί, they are usually taken as 'trustworthy right hands', metaphorical perhaps since no handshakes were mentioned in book 3 (or indeed at Aulis — for 159 = 2.341). bT took δεξιαί as an epithet of the libations, but 'unmixed and favourable' would be an odd connexion, and there are other difficulties too.

160-2 A solemn and moving profession of faith, proverbial in tone and language (with the gnomic or generalizing τε in protasis and apodosis (εἴ περ γάρ τε . . . ἔκ τε) as well as the gnomic aorist ἀπέτισαν, which by themselves disqualify Zenodotus' attempt, Arn/A, to make the text apply to the Trojans specifically). The solemnity is increased by the accurate accretion of particles and conjunctions: εἴ περ γάρ τε καὶ αὐτίκ' ... ('for even if, indeed, he has not immediately...') and ἔκ τε καὶ ὀψὲ τελεῖ ('he will fulfil them completely, even if late...'). τελεῖ is future rather than present, a relatively recent (i.e. Homeric or shortly before) contraction in either case.

They will pay, when they do, σύν ... μεγάλῳ, 'together with a great (price)' — or great evil according to bT: their own heads (i.e. lives) and their wives and children. What this might entail was described in the curse on breakers of the oath at 3.300f., 'may their brains flow on the ground like this wine, theirs and their children's, and may their wives be subjected to other men', on which see on 3.297-301. This is the first general statement in Greek literature of the powerful dogma that Zeus always exacts vengeance in the end, and that it may spread into the transgressor's family. Agamemnon stops just short of saying that a man might die unpunished himself, but that then his descendants will suffer, a refinement developed in Solon and Aeschylus — see also Hesiod, Erga 282-5, Parker, Miasma 201 and H. Lloyd-Jones, The Justice of Zeus² (Berkeley 1983) 7f., 37, 44.