BOOK III. XXIV. 12-17
earth, but of moving now to one place and now to another, at one time under the pressure of certain needs, and at another merely for the sake of the spectacle.
Now it was something of this sort which fell to the lot of Odysseus:
Many the men whose towns he beheld, and he learned of their temper.[1]
And even before his time it was the fortune of Heracles to traverse the entire inhabited world,
Seeing the wanton behaviour of men and the lawful,[2]
casting forth the one and clearing the world of it, and introducing the other in its place. Yet how many friends do you suppose he had in Thebes, in Argos, in Athens, and how many new friends he made on his rounds, seeing that he was even in the habit of marrying when he saw fit, and begetting children, and deserting his children, without either groaning or yearning for them, or as though leaving them to be orphans?[3] 15It was because he knew that no human being is an orphan, but all men have ever and constantly the Father, who cares for them. Why, to him it was no mere story which he had heard, that Zeus is father of men, for he always thought of Him as his own father, and called Him so, and in all that he did he looked to Him. Wherefore he had the power to live happily in every place. But it is impossible that happiness, and yearning for what is not present, should ever be united. For happiness
- ↑ Homer, Odyssey, I. 3.
- ↑ Homer, Odyssey, XVII. 487 (slightly modified).
- ↑ This is about the most drastic bit of idealisation of the Heracles myths which the Stoics, for whom Heracles was a kind of Arthurian knight, ever achieved. The comic poets naturally presented this aspect of his career in a somewhat different light.
