All 17 Uses of
torment
in
The Odyssey
- But my heart breaks for Odysseus,
that seasoned veteran cursed by fate so long—
far from his loved ones still, he suffers torments
off on a wave-washed island rising at the center of the seas.†p. 79.2torments = causes great mental or physical suffering
- So long as she persists in tormenting us,
quick to exploit the gifts Athena gave her—
a skilled hand for elegant work, a fine mind
and subtle wiles too—we've never heard the like,
not even in old stories sung of all Achaea's
well-coifed queens who graced the years gone by:
Mycenae crowned with garlands, Tyro and Alcmena ...
Not one could equal Penelope for intrigue
but in this case she intrigued beyond all limits.†p. 97.1tormenting = causing great mental or physical suffering
- Zeus has given me torment—
me above all the others born and bred in my day.†p. 147.6torment = to cause or to experience great mental or physical suffering
- Her mind in torment, wheeling
like some lion at bay, dreading gangs of hunters
closing their cunning ring around him for the finish.†p. 149.8
- You tell me to lay to rest the grief and tears
that overwhelm me now, torment me, heart and soul?†p. 150.6
- She pitied Odysseus, tossed, tormented so—
she broke from the waves like a shearwater on the wing,
lit on the wreck and asked him kindly, "Ah poor man,
why is the god of earthquakes so dead set against you?†p. 162.9tormented = caused great mental or physical suffering
- Joy ...warm as the joy that children feel
when they see their father's life dawn again,
one who's lain on a sickbed racked with torment,
wasting away, slowly, under some angry power's onslaught—
then what joy when the gods deliver him from his pains!†p. 164.9torment = to cause or to experience great mental or physical suffering
- Now some power has tossed me here,
doubtless to suffer still more torments on your shores.†p. 173.9 *torments = causes great mental or physical suffering
- Seeing the man go down, dying, gasping for breath,
she clings for dear life, screams and shrills—
but the victors, just behind her,
digging spear-butts into her back and shoulders,
drag her off in bondage, yoked to hard labor, pain,
and the most heartbreaking torment wastes her cheeks.†p. 208.6torment = to cause or to experience great mental or physical suffering
- Their master now,
heaving in torment, felt the back of each animal
halting before him here, but the idiot never sensed
my men were trussed up under their thick fleecy ribs.†p. 225.4
- Son of Zeus that I was, my torments never ended,
forced to slave for a man not half the man I was:
he saddled me with the worst heartbreaking labors.†p. 269.9torments = causes great mental or physical suffering
- .
And the ship like a four-horse team careering down the plain,
all breaking as one with the whiplash cracking smartly,
leaping with hoofs high to run the course in no time—
so the stern hove high and plunged with the seething rollers
crashing dark in her wake as on she surged, unwavering,
never flagging, no, not even a darting hawk,
the quickest thing on wings, could keep her pace
as on she ran, cutting the swells at top speed,
bearing a man endowed with the gods' own wisdom,
one who had suffered twenty years of torment, sick at heart,
cleaving his way through wars of men and pounding waves at sea
but now he slept in peace, the memory of his struggles
laid to rest.†p. 289.5torment = to cause or to experience great mental or physical suffering
- Now my life is torment ...
look at the griefs some god has loosed against me!†p. 384.1
- Now my life is torment ...
look at the griefs some god has loosed against me!†p. 394.7
- Joy and torment gripped her heart at once,
tears rushed to her eyes—voice choked in her throat
she reached for Odysseus' chin and whispered quickly,
"Yes, yes!†p. 405.7
- Even grief is bearable, true, when someone weeps
through the days, sobbing, heart convulsed with pain
yet embraced by sleep all night—sweet oblivion, sleep
dissolving all, the good and the bad, once it seals our eyes—
but even my dreams torment me, sent by wicked spirits.†p. 413.3
- You in our house, weeping over my journey home,
fraught with storms and torment, true, and I,
pinned down in pain by Zeus and other gods,
for all my desire, blocked from reaching home.†p. 466.9