In Book XXII of the Odyssey, Odysseus has just finished massacring the suitors and is “in the thick of slaughtered corpses, splattered with bloody filth like a lion that’s devoured some ox of the field and lopes home, covered with blood.” His old nursemaid looks upon the carnage - the deaths of the men who’ve made her life hell for years - and lets out a cry of triumph. Odysseus admonishes her, “No cries of triumph now. It’s unholy to glory over the bodies of the dead.”
Then he asks her to find all of the maids (i.e., the slaves) in the household who slept with the suitors over the years, so he can have them hanged.
(Quotes are from the Robert Fagles translation, but the lines are different in the Greek; there the center of the scene is at XXII.415.)
In Book XXII of the Odyssey, Odysseus has just finished massacring the suitors and is “in the thick of slaughtered corpses, splattered with bloody filth like a lion that’s devoured some ox of the field and lopes home, covered with blood.” His old nursemaid looks upon the carnage - the deaths of the men who’ve made her life hell for years - and lets out a cry of triumph. Odysseus admonishes her, “No cries of triumph now. It’s unholy to glory over the bodies of the dead.”
Then he asks her to find all of the maids (i.e., the slaves) in the household who slept with the suitors over the years, so he can have them hanged.
(Quotes are from the Robert Fagles translation, but the lines are different in the Greek; there the center of the scene is at XXII.415.)
Edit - Name caught in slur filter