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against godlike Odysseus and did not relent
until he reached his native land.

                                                    But at that moment,
Poseidon was among the Ethiopians,
a long way off, those same Ethiopians,
the most remote of people, who live divided                                                          30
in two different groups, one where Hyperion goes down,
the other where he rises. Poseidon went there
to receive a sacrificial offering to him—
bulls and rams—and was sitting at a banquet,
enjoying himself. But other gods had gathered
in the great hall of Olympian Zeus. Among them all,
the father of gods and men was first to speak.
In his heart he was remembering royal Aegisthus,
whom Orestes, Agamemnon's famous son,
had killed. With him in mind, Zeus addressed the gods:                                     40

            “It's disgraceful how these humans blame the gods.
            They say their tribulations come from us,
            when they themselves, through their own foolishness,
            bring hardships which are not decreed by fate.
            Now there's Aegisthus, who took for himself
            t he wife of Agamemnon, Atreus' son,
            and then murdered him, once the man came home.
            None of that was set by fate. Aegisthus knew
            his acts would bring about his total ruin.
            We'd sent Hermes earlier to speak to him.                                                  50
            The keen-eyed killer of Argus told him
            not to slay the man or seduce his wife,
            for Orestes would avenge the son of Atreus,
            once he grew up and longed for his own land.

¹. . . had killed: Aegisthus had seduced Agamemnon's wife while the latter was in Troy and, when he returned from the war, the two lovers killed Agamemnon and took control of Argos. Orestes, who was away at the time, came back to Argos in disguise and avenged his father. This famous story is referred to a number of times in the Odyssey (the account in Book 3 is the most detailed).

². . . keen-eyed killer of Argus: Hermes, Zeus's divine son, killed the monster Argus, whom Hera had told to guard the goddess Io to prevent her getting into sexual mischief with Zeus.