"Odysseus – don’t flare up at me now, not you,
always the most understanding man alive!
The gods, it was the gods who sent us sorrow –
they grudged us both a life in each other’s arms
from the heady zest of youth to the stoop of old age.
But don’t fault me, angry with me now because I failed,
at the first glimpse, to greet you, hold you, so…
In my heart of hearts I always cringed with fear
some fraud might come, beguile me with his talk;
the world is full of the sort."
– Homer
The Odyssey, Book 23, lines 235-244. This passage highlights the theme of fate, as Penelope asks her husband not to be angry for testing him to determine if he really was Odysseus. She says that the gods fated them with a life of separation and sorrow and she always feared that a deceiver would come along and charm her with words.