Laudator Temporis Acti

Homer, Odyssey 20.201-203 (tr. Richmond Lattimore):

Father Zeus, no god beside is more baleful than you are.
You have no pity on men, once you yourself have created
them; you bring them into misfortune and dismal sufferings.

Ζεῦ πάτερ, οὔ τις σεῖο θεῶν ὀλοώτερος ἄλλος·
οὐκ ἐλεαίρεις ἄνδρας, ἐπὴν δὴ γείνεαι αὐτός,
μισγέμεναι κακότητι καὶ ἄλγεσι λευγαλέοισιν.

Joseph Russo ad loc.:

201-3. Zeus ‘begets’ (γείνεαι) men metaphorically, as in the stock formula that calls him πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε, ‘father of men and gods’. But more may be implied by the combination of ὀλοώτερος and γείνεαι both said of the chief deity. W. Burkert (personal corresp., 1 Nov. 1989) suggests that this may be the first Greek testimony for the antithesis γίγνεσθαι-ὄλλυσθαι, and finds in the Greek wording an echo of a proverbial expression ‘do not destroy what you have created’, addressed to a chief divinity in a number of Mesopotamian and Old Testament texts: Enuma Elish 1,45 (Tiamat to her husband Apsu), ‘Why should we, what we have created, destroy?’; ‘Enlil, my master, do not destroy what you have created’ in a Babylonian fable (W.G. Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature (Oxford, 1960), 190-1); Job 10:8 (Job to Yahweh), ‘Your hands have formed and made me; and yet you do destroy me’; Psalms 138:8, ‘What your hands have made, do not forsake’.

203. μισγέμεναι: the infinitive is governed by οὐκ ἐλεαίρεις, with the sense ‘you don’t pity men their mixing with ill fortune and dreadful suffering’. ἄνδρας is first object of ἐλεαίρεις and then subject of μισγέμεναι.