My heart within me laughed.
The suitors seeing the beggar laying on the ground (O. xviii. 100):—
But the proud wooers threw up their hands, and cried outright
for laughter.
But in more trivial matters the difference of moderation appears. Odysseus though loving his wife, and seeing her lamenting on his account, contains himself (O. xix. 211):—
His eyes kept steadfast between his eyelids as it were
horn or iron.
But the suitors who were in love with her when they saw her (O. xviii. 212):—
And straightways the knees of the wooers were loosened, and
their hearts were enchanted with love, and each one uttered
a prayer that he might be her bedfellow.
Such is the poet's treatment of the powers and passions of the soul.
Although there are various things said by the philosophers about the chief end of virtue and happiness, it is agreed by all that virtue of the soul is the greatest of goods. But the Stoics consider that virtue by itself is sufficient for happiness, taking the cue from the Homeric poems in which he has made the wisest and most prudent man on account of virtue despising trouble and disregarding pleasure. As to the first point in this way (O. iv. 242):—
Now all of them I could not tell or number, so many as were
the adventures of the patient Odysseus. He bruised himself
with unseemly stripes and cast a sorry covering over his
shoulders, and in the fashion of a servant he went into the
wide-wayed city of the foemen.