leave?' Then said Odysseus,—for he chanced to be near,—'Yea, boy, this award of theirs is just; I saved the arms and their master at his need.' Then straightway, in my fury, I began to hurl all manner of taunts at him, and spared not one, if I was indeed to be robbed of my arms by him. At this point,—stung by the abuse, though not prone to wrath,—he answered,—'Thou wast not here with us, but absent from thy duty.380 And since thou must talk so saucily, thou shalt never carry those arms back to Scyros.'
Thus upbraided, thus insulted, I sail for home, despoiled of mine own by that worst offspring of an evil breed, Odysseus. And yet he, I think, is less to blame than the rulers. For an army, like a city, hangs wholly on its leaders; and when men do lawless deeds, 'tis the counsel of their teachers that corrupts them. My tale is told; and may the foe of the Atreidae have the favour390 of Heaven, as he hath mine!
str. Ch. Goddess of the hills, all-fostering Earth, mother of Zeus most high, thou through whose realm the great Pactolus rolls golden sands,—there also, dread Mother, I called upon thy name, when all the insults of the Atreidae were being heaped upon this man,—when they were giving his sire's armour, that peerless marvel, to the son of Lartius—hear it, thou immortal one,400 who ridest on bull-slaughtering lions!
