Agamemnon Makes His Threat (1.172-87)

τὸν δ' ἠμείβετ' ἔπειτα ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν Ἀγαμέμνων:
φεῦγε μάλ' εἴ τοι θυμὸς ἐπέσσυται, οὐδέ σ' ἔγωγε
λίσσομαι εἵνεκ' ἐμεῖο μένειν: πάρ' ἔμοιγε καὶ ἄλλοι
οἵ κέ με τιμήσουσι, μάλιστα δὲ μητίετα Ζεύς. [175]
ἔχθιστος δέ μοί ἐσσι διοτρεφέων βασιλήων:
αἰεὶ γάρ τοι ἔρις τε φίλη πόλεμοί τε μάχαι τε:
εἰ μάλα καρτερός ἐσσι, θεός που σοὶ τό γ' ἔδωκεν:
οἴκαδ' ἰὼν σὺν νηυσί τε σῇς καὶ σοῖς ἑτάροισι
Μυρμιδόνεσσιν ἄνασσε, σέθεν δ' ἐγὼ οὐκ ἀλεγίζω, [180]
οὐδ' ὄθομαι κοτέοντος: ἀπειλήσω δέ τοι ὧδε:
ὡς ἔμ' ἀφαιρεῖται Χρυσηί̈δα Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων,
τὴν μὲν ἐγὼ σὺν νηί̈ τ' ἐμῇ καὶ ἐμοῖς ἑτάροισι
πέμψω, ἐγὼ δέ κ' ἄγω Βρισηί̈δα καλλιπάρῃον
αὐτὸς ἰὼν κλισίην δὲ τὸ σὸν γέρας ὄφρ' ἐὺ̈ εἰδῇς [185]
ὅσσον φέρτερός εἰμι σέθεν, στυγέῃ δὲ καὶ ἄλλος
ἶσον ἐμοὶ φάσθαι καὶ ὁμοιωθήμεναι ἄντην.


Translation:

Then the lord of men, Agamemnon, answered him:

Fly for home by all means, if that’s what your heart urges!
I for one won’t beg you to stay for my sake. There are
many others who’ll honor me—most of all Zeus the counselor.
You I hate the most of all the heroes Zeus nourishes.
Strife, war, combat—these are always what’s dear to you.
So what if you are so strong? The gods, perhaps, made you that way.
Go home with your ships and your men and
lord it over the Myrmidons. I don’t give a damn about you—
your anger means nothing to me. But I promise you this:
since Phoebus Apollo is taking Chryseis away from me,
I will send her using my own ship and my own men,
but I will come to your camp and lead lovelycheeked Briseis
away myself—your own prize—so that you may clearly witness
how much better I am than you. And thus will any other man fear
to declare himself my equal and openly compare himself to me.


Comments:
As any student of Greek knows, the particles are the biggest mystery. These are the small intensifiers and qualifiers that are sprinkled throughout most sentences: ge, de, oun, ara, toi, and so on. They have, as Smyth puts it in his Greek Grammar, a “logical or emotional (rhetorical) value” (p. 631, paragraph 2771). They are difficult to translate because they have no straightforward denotative meaning; rather, they nudge the tone of the sentence in different directions. Basically, they are like ancient emoticons.

In today’s passage, for example, there is Agamemnon’s declaration οὐδέ σ' ἔγωγε λίσσομαι. . . which translated without any attention to the particles gives “I will not beg you.” The particle ge, however, greatly intensifies the pronoun ego, “I” (the mere presence of the pronoun is already a slight intensification since in Greek the pronoun need not be included—it is already implied in the verb ending). So what’s the sense of ge here? In part, Agamemnon is limiting the declaration to himself; he is saying “I at least . . .”; but he is also underscoring the decisive, settled quality of his judgment. If we were to draw it all the way out it would be something like “There’s no way I, at least, am going to beg you to remain here for my sake.” But this is too much, so I’ve gone with the more simple : “I for one won’t beg you to stay for my sake.”

Translating the particles is challenging but fun. I think of them as giving me some extra license to convey what I feel to be the emotional quality of the passage.