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Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing, sooner than war.

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How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!

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And when long years and seasons wheeling brought around that point of time ordained for him to make his passage homeward, trials and dangers, even so,...more

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In youth and beauty, wisdom is but rare!

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But now, as it is, sorrows, unending sorrows must surge within your heart as well—for your own son’s death. Never again will you embrace him stiding h...more

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Let him submit to me! Only the god of death is so relentless, Death submits to no one—so mortals hate him most of all the gods. Let him bow down to me...more

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…but there they lay, sprawled across the field, craved far more by the vultures than by wives.

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…There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover’s whisper, irresistible—magic to make the sanest man go mad.

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You, you insolent brazen bitch—you really dare to shake that monstrous spear in Father’s face?

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Like a girl, a baby running after her mother, begging to be picked up, and she tugs on her skirts, holding her back as she tries to hurry off—all tear...more

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You, why are you so afraid of war and slaughter? Even if all the rest of us drop and die around you, grappling for the ships, you’d run no risk of dea...more

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And his good wife will tear her cheeks in grief, his sons are orphans and he, soaking the soil red with his own blood, he rots away himself—more birds...more

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…and they limp and halt, they’re all wrinkled, drawn, they squint to the side, can’t look you in the eyes, and always bent on duty, trudging after Rui...more

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But they could neither of them persuade me, for there is nothing dearer to a man than his own country and his parents, and however splendid a home he ...more

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Come then, put away your sword in its sheath, and let us two go up into my bed so that, lying together in the bed of love, we may then have faith and ...more