"Men are so quick to blame the gods: they say that we devise their misery. But they themselves- in their depravity- design grief greater than the griefs that fate assigns."

"The god of war is impartial: he hands out death to the man who hands out death."

"The tale of Achilles' wrath, and therefore the poem, ends only once the alienated hero is able to accept loss as an inevitable element in the shared life of mortals."

"Odysseus grabbed her throat with his right hand and told her he 'will not spare [her] when [he] kill[s] the rest, / the other slave women, although [she was] / [his] nurse'."

"The gods, likening themselves to all kinds of strangers, go in various disguises from city to city, observing the wrongdoing and the righteousness of men."