Sunday, March 13, 2016

What are three epic similes from part III of The Odyssey?

From Robert Fagles' translation of The Odyssey, in Book 16, lines 19-23, Eumaeus' reunion with Telemachus is compared to a father's welcoming home his son after a ten-year absence abroad: "As a father, brimming with love, welcomes home/ his darling only son in a warm embrace--/what pain he's borne for him and him alone!--/home now, in the tenth year from far abroad, so the loyal swineherd hugged the beaming prince...."


In Book 22, lines 316-24, Odysseus and his men are described as they attack the panicked suitors: "The attackers struck like eagles, crook-clawed, hook-beaked,/swooping down from a mountain ridge to harry smaller birds/that skim across the flatland cringing under the clouds/but the eagles plunge in fury, rip their lives out--hopeless,/never a chance of flight or rescue--and people love the sport--/so the attackers routed suitors headlong down the hall,/wheeling into the slaughter, slashing left and right/and grisly screams broke from skulls cracked open--/the whole floor awash with blood."


Also in Book 22, lines 408-414, the dead suitors are described: "But he [Odysseus] found them one and all in blood and dust.../great hauls of them down and out like fish that fishermen/drag from the churning gray surf in looped and coiling nets/and fling ashore on a sweeping hook of beach--some noble catch--/heaped on the sand, twitching, lusting for fresh salt sea/But the Sungod hammers down and burns their lives out.../so the suitors lay in heaps, corpse covering corpse."

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