![[Literae]](/images/literae.jpg)
poetry, prose, and other strings of words · 1993 - 2003
For those who blame God for their troubles
December 9, 1995
I have this to say to all of those who blame God for their misery:
Men are so quick to blame the gods: they say
that we devise their misery. But they
themselves—in their depravity—design
grief greater than the griefs that fate assigns.
So did Aegisthus act when he transgressed
the boundaries that fate and reason set.
He took the lawful wife of Agamemnon;
and when the son of Atreus had come back,
Aegisthus murdered him—although he knew
how steep was that descent. For we'd sent Hermes,
our swiftest, our most keen-eyed emissary,
to warn against that murder and adultery:
'Orestes will avenge his father when,
his manhood come, he claims his rightful land.'
Hermes had warned him as one warns a friend.
And yet Aegisthus' will could not be swayed.
Now, in one stroke, all that he owes is paid.
Thus spake Zues. (lines 43 to 60 of Homer's Odyssey)