The Odyssey Loyalty Quotes

"But break off this song –
the unendurable song that always rends the heart inside me…
the unforgettable grief, it wounds me most of all!
How I long for my husband – alive in memory, always,
that great man."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 1, 391-396. Penelope asks the bard Phemius to stop singing "The Achaeans’ Journey Home from Troy" because it upsets her. The song about her husband Odysseus stirs up "unforgettable grief" about being parted from him. Even though she hasn’t seen Odysseus for twenty years, the faithful Penelope still longs for him and awaits his return. Penelope’s devotion to her husband and his memory is the most striking example of the major theme of loyalty in Homer’s epic.

"Then, when the wheeling seasons brought the fourth year on,
one of her women, in on the queen’s secret, told the truth
and we caught her in the act – unweaving her gorgeous web.
So she finished it off. Against her will. We forced her."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 2, lines 119-122. Antinous tells Telemachus how Penelope’s clever plan to fool the suitors is betrayed by one of her servants. The queen cleverly holds off remarriage by pretending to weave a shoud on her loom for the eventual funeral of her father-in-law. The deception goes on for three years, until the suitors learn from one of the disloyal women servants that Penelope is unweaving the shoud every night.

A wail of grief –
and his fond old nurse burst out in protest, sobbing:
"Why, dear child, what craziness got into your head?
Why bent on rambling over the face of the earth? –
a darling only son! Your father’s worlds away,
god’s own Odysseus, dead in some strange land.
And these brutes here, just wait, the moment you’re gone
they’ll all be scheming against you."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 2, lines 399-401. Eurycleia pleads with Telemachus not to sail to Pylos in search of information about his missing father. She predicts – correctly – that as soon as he is gone the suitors will be scheming against him. This foreshadows the suitors’ plot to kill Telemachus. The passage also shows the great love Telemachus’ old nurse has for him and her loyalty to his family.

"No man alive could rival Zeus, dear boys,
with his everlasting palace and possessions.
But among men, I must say, few if any
could rival me in riches. Believe me,
much I suffered, many a mile I roved to haul
such treasures home in my ships.
…But while I roamed those lands, amassing a fortune,
a stranger killed my brother, blind to the danger, duped blind –
thanks to the cunning of his cursed, murderous queen!
So I rule all this wealth with no great joy.
…Well, would to god I’d stayed right here in my own house
with a third of all that wealth and they were still alive,
all who died on the wide plain of Troy those years ago,
far from the stallion-land of Argos."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 4, lines 87-92, 100-103, 108-111. Menelaus admits that he is a rich man, having amassed many treasures during his voyages to different lands. But he confesses to visitors Telemachus and Pisistratus that it brings him no great joy. For while he roamed these lands, his brother King Agamemnon was killed, thanks to the treachery of his disloyal and cunning queen. Menelaus wishes he had stayed at home, with far less wealth, and that all those who died at Troy were still alive.

"Ah great goddess
…don’t be angry with me,
please. All that you say is true, how well I know.
Look at my wise Penelope. She falls far short of you,
your beauty, stature. She is mortal after all
and you, you never age or die…
Nevertheless I long – I pine, all my days –
to travel home and see the dawn of my return.
And if a god will wreck me yet again on the wine-dark sea,
I can bear that too, with a spirit tempered to endure.
Much have I suffered, labored long and hard by now
in the waves and wars. Add this to the total –
bring the trial on!"

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 5, lines 236-246. In the tug of war for Odysseus’ heart, it is Penelope who wins over Calypso. Odysseus declines the goddess’ offer to stay with her and be immortal. This shows how powerful a woman Penelope is. Odysseus longs to be back home with her in Ithaca, no matter what trials he faces along the way. Ultimately his loyalty to family and homeland is more important than anything Calypso can offer.

Even as he spoke
the sun set and the darkness swept the earth.
And now, withdrawing into the cavern’s deep recesses,
long in each other’s arms they lost themselves in love.

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 5, lines 246-249. After seven years trapped on Calypso’s island as her sex-slave, the goddess-nymph and enchantress has agreed to free Odysseus. But fascinatingly Odysseus willingly beds Calypso one more time before he sails away on the raft she allowed him to build. Is he not being disloyal to Penelope here?

"They gaze on her as a god,
saluting her warmly on her walks through town.
She lacks nothing in good sense and judgment –
she can dissolve quarrels, even among men,
whoever wins her sympathies.
If only our queen will take you to her heart,
then there’s hope that you will see your loved ones,
reach your high-roofed house, your native land at last."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 7, lines 82-89. Athena gives Odysseus some important advice about Arete, queen of the Phaeacians. Arete has the loyalty of all the people, she reveals, as she uses a simile to compare her to a god. If Odysseus can win the queen to his side, then he has hopes of reaching his homeland and family, she tells him.

"the gods cast me up on Ogygia, Calypso’s island,
home of the dangerous nymph with glossy braids,
and the goddess took me in in all her kindness,
welcomed me warmly, cherished me, even vowed
to make me immortal, ageless, all my days –
but she never won the heart inside me, never."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 7, lines 292-297. Odysseus’ unshakable loyalty to his homeland is spelled out when he tells Arete the story of his time on Calypso’s island. Despite spending seven years on Ogygia, Calypso never won his heart, it remained in Ithaca. She even tempted him with the prize of immortality if he would be her husband, but he resisted that.

A rippling prelude –
now the bard struck up an irresistible song:
The Love of Ares and Aphrodite Crowned with Flowers…
how the two had first made love in Hephaestus’ mansion,
all in secret. Ares had showered her with gifts
and showered Hephaestus’ marriage bed with shame
but a messenger ran to tell the god of fire –
Helios, lord of the sun, who’d spied the couple
lost in each other’s arms and making love.

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 8, lines 300-308. Demodocus plays a song about a betrayed husband Hephaestus, and the adulterous love affair between his wife Aphrodite with Ares. Hephaestus is god of fire and smiths, Aphrodite goddess of sexual love and Ares god of war. The bard’s tale will end with Hephaestus trapping the lovers in his marriage bed, bound in chains forged by the divine smith. There are certain parallels between the story and the situation of Penelope and the suitors. But there is one distinct difference: Aphrodite is the archetypal unfaithful wife, while Penelope is exemplary of wifely fidelity. They are two different examples of female power.

"Look how limping Hephaestus conquers War,
the quickest of all the gods who rule Olympus!"
"The cripple wins by craft."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 8, lines 373-375. The gods laugh and cry out at the end of the bard Demodocus’ story, when crippled god of fire Hephaestus finds wife Aphrodite and lover and god of war Ares in his marriage bed. Hephaestus cleverly traps the pair with "cunning chains" which he forged so they "could not move a limb or lift a finger." This act of divine justice foreshadows how Odysseus will lay a trap for Penelope’s suitors and inflict a surprise defeat on them.

"True enough,
Calypso the lustrous goddess tried to hold me back,
deep in her arching caverns, craving me for a husband.
So did Circe, holding me just as warmly in her halls,
the bewitching queen of Aeaea keen to have me too.
But they never won the heart inside me, never."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 9, lines 32-37. Odysseus tells Alcinous that beautiful goddesses like Calypso and Circe tried to seduce him to stay with them. But he didn’t succumb to their temptations, he reveals, because his heart always yearned for home and family.

"Circe –
how could any man in his right mind endure
the taste of food and drink before he’d freed
his comrades-in-arms and looked them in the eyes?
If you, you really want me to eat and drink,
set them free, all my beloved comrades –
let me feast my eyes."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 10, lines 422-428. When Circe lays on a lavish feast of food and wine for Odysseus, he refuses to eat it. He demands that she first free his men, who have been turned into pigs by the sorceress. Odysseus shows commendable loyalty and good leadership here.

"Poor fools, where are we running now?
Why are we tempting fate? –
why stumble blindly down to Circe’s halls?
She’ll turn us all into pigs or wolves or lions
made to guard that palace of hers – by force, I tell you –
just as the Cyclops trapped our comrades in his lair
with hotheaded Odysseus right beside them all –
thanks to this man’s rashness they died too!"

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 10, lines 475-482. When Odysseus goes to lead his men to Circe’s palace, Eurylochus tries to hold them back from going. In a "mutinous ourburst," Odysseus’ second-in-command questions why they are tempting fate and warns that Circe will turn them into animals. He calls on the rest to stop listening to the Odysseus whose rashness led to their comrades being killed in the Cyclops’ laid.

And there we sat at ease,
day in, day out, till a year had run its course,
feasting on sides of meat and drafts of heady wine…
But then, when the year was gone and the seasons wheeled by
and the months waned and the long days came round again,
my loyal comrades took me aside and prodded,
"Captain, this is madness!
High time you thought of your own home at last,
if it really is your fate to make it back alive
and reach your well-built house and native land."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 10, lines 514-523. Odysseus is so seduced by the opulent life he enjoys with beautiful enchantress Circe, that after a year of living together as husband and wife, his homesick men have to beg him to leave her and head back home. This speaks of a certain disloyalty to his wife Penelope, who has been fighting off suitors back home in Ithaca.

"Aegisthus hatched my doom and my destruction,
he killed me, he with my own accursed wife…
he invited me to his palace, sat me down to feast
then cut me down as a man cuts down some ox at the trough!
So I died – a wretched, ignominious death – and round me
all my comrades killed, no mercy, one after another,
just like white-tusked boars
butchered in some rich lord of power’s halls
for a wedding, banquet or groaning public feast."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 11, lines 462-470. Odysseus meets many people in the underworld. One of his most poignant encounters is with Agamemnon’s ghost. When Odysseus asks the great general how he met his end, Agamemnon tells how his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus invited him to a feast, then killed him. He describes it as an ignoble death, comparing it in a simile to a man cutting down an ox at a trough of food. The story of Clytemnestra’s cheating and treachery stand in contrast to Penelope’s loyalty and fidelity to her husband during his twenty year absence.

"But the death-cry of Cassandra, Priam’s daughter –
the most pitiful thing I heard! My treacherous queen,
Clytemnestra, killed her over my body, yes, and I,
lifting my fists, beat them down on the ground,
dying, dying, writhing around the sword.
But she, that whore, she turned her back on me,
well on my way to Death – she even lacked the heart
to seal my eyes with her hand or close my jaws."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 11, lines 476-483. The ghost of Agamemnon tells Odysseus that his treacherous wife Clytemnestra killed Trojan princess Cassandra over his body as he lay dying. While Penelope stands as a symbol of loyalty in the epic poem, Clytemnestra is the very opposite. After helping her lover kill her husband, she then cut down Cassandra, lover of Agamemnon.

"So,
there’s nothing more deadly, bestial than a woman
set on works like these – what a monstrous thing
she plotted, slaughtered her own lawful husband!
Why, I expected, at least, some welcome home
from all my children, all my household slaves
when I came sailing back again…But she –
the queen hell-bent on outrage – bathes in shame
not only herself but the whole breed of womankind,
even the honest ones to come, forever down the years!"

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 11, lines 483-492. Agamemnon’s ghost goes on a rant against women, believing that his wife Clytemnestra’s treacherous behavior stains the reputation of women everywhere. Agamemnon describes how his homecoming from the Trojan war was met, not with the expected warm welcome, but a plot by his wife to kill him.

"I tell you this – bear it in mind, you must –
when you reach your homeland steer your ship
into port in secret, never out in the open…
the time for trusting women’s gone forever!"

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 11, lines 515-518. The ghost of Agamemnon advises Odysseus to sail home into Ithaca in secret and not to tell his wife. Agamemnon doesn’t want the same thing to happen to Odysseus as happened him. Agamemnon arrived home to a treacherous wife plotting to kill him and Odysseus doesn’t know if Penelope will welcome him and still be loyal to him.

"You’re a hard man, Odysseus. Your fighting spirit’s
stronger than ours, your stamina never fails.
You must be made of iron head to foot. Look,
your crew’s half-dead with labor, starved for sleep,
and you forbid us to set foot on land, this island here,
washed by the waves, where we might catch a decent meal again."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 12, lines 302-307. Odysseus’ second-in-command Eurylochus is a disloyal troublemaker and has "mutiny on his mind" in making this speech. He persuades Odysseus to put to shore for rest and a "decent meal" on god Helios’ island of the Sun. This is despite warnings by Tiresias and Circe to Odysseus that "the worst disaster" will befall them if they harm the sun god’s sheep and cattle.

But then, when supplies aboard had all run dry,
when the men turned to hunting, forced to range
for quarry with twisted hooks: for fish, birds,
anything they could lay their hands on –
hunger racked their bellies – I struck inland,
up the island, there to pray to the gods.
If only one might show me some way home!
Crossing into the heartland, clear of the crew,
I rinsed my hands in a sheltered spot, a windbreak,
but soon as I’d prayed to all the gods who rule Olympus,
down on my eyes they poured a sweet, sound sleep…
as Eurylochus opened up his fatal plan to friends.

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 12, lines 354-365. Odysseus falls asleep, allowing the mutinous Eurylochus to rally the starving ship’s crew to eat the sun god’s cattle. Odysseus blames the gods for making him fall asleep at the wrong time. The death of the crew is foreshadowed here, when Odysseus speaks of Eurylochus’ "fatal plan."

"Listen to me, my comrades, brothers in hardship.
All ways of dying are hateful to us poor mortals,
true, but to die of hunger, starve to death –
that’s the worst of all. So up with you now,
let’s drive off the pick of Helios’ sleek herds,
slaughter them to the gods who rule the skies up there.
If we ever make it home to Ithaca, native ground,
erect at once a glorious temple to the Sungod,
line the walls with hoards of dazzling gifts!
But if the Sun, inflamed for his longhorn cattle,
means to wreck our ship and the other gods pitch in –
I’d rather die at sea, with one deep gulp of death,
than die by inches on this desolate island here!"

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 12, lines 366-378. A storm has trapped Odysseus’ and his crew on Thrinacia for a month, the island where sun god Helios keeps his cattle. Odysseus’ men are hungry and their master is sleeping. So Eurylochus suggests to the men that they should eat Helios’ cattle – a fatal decision for them. This is despite numerous warnings by Odysseus. This passage foreshadows that all of the men – with the exception of Odysseus – will die at sea.

At once they drove off the Sungod’s finest cattle –
close at hand, not far from the blue-prowed ship they grazed,
those splendid beasts with their broad brows and curving horns.
Surrounding them in a ring, they lifted prayers to the gods,
plucking fresh green leaves from a tall oak for the rite.

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 12, lines 380-384. While Odysseus is asleep on the island of the sun god Helios, his crew are disloyal to him. The starving sailors slaughter and eat the Helios’ cattle, despite swearing an oath to Odysseus that they would not.

"Alcinous, majesty, shining among your island people,
make your libations, launch me safely on my way –
to one and all, farewell!
All is now made good, my heart’s desire,
your convoy home, your precious, loving gifts,
and may the gods of Olympus bless them for me!
May I find an unswerving wife when I reach home,
and loved ones hale, unharmed."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 13, lines 42-49. Odysseus’ ally King Alcinous helps him by providing him with a ship to sail home to Ithaca. Odysseus thanks Alcinous for the passage home and his generous gifts. He looks forward to being reunited with his unswervingly loyal wife Penelope when he reaches Ithaca. Loyalty is one of the most important virtues in Homer’s epic poem.

"Royal son of Laertes, Odysseus, old campaigner,
think how to lay your hands on all those brazen suitors,
lording it over your house now, three whole years,
courting your noble wife, offering gifts to win her.
But she, forever broken-hearted for your return,
builds up each man’s hopes –
dangling promises, dropping hints to each –
but all the while with something else in mind."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 13, lines 439-446. Athena tells Odysseus about the arrogant suitors who are plaguing his house and courting his wife. The goddess reveals that hearbroken Penelope stays loyal, keeping the suitors at bay, waiting for her husband’s return.

So up from the haven now Odysseus climbed a rugged path
through timber along high ground – Athena had shown the way –
to reach the swineherd’s place, that fine loyal man
who of all the household hands Odysseus ever had
cared the most for his master’s worldly goods.

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 14, lines 1-5. Book 14 is titled "The Loyal Swineherd" and this passage tells us how well the faithful Eumaeus takes care of his master Odysseus’ property while he is away. The swineherd is one of the epic poem’s most loyal characters.
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