Outcast from kindred, law, and hearth is he
Whose soul delights in fierce, internal strife.
That truthfulness is honorable and the contrary to be avoided (I. ix. 312):—
Him as the gates of hell my soul abhors
Where outward speech his secret thought belies.
And (O. xviii. 168):—
Who speak friendly with their lips, but imagine evil in the
latter end.
Households are chiefly well ordered when the wife does not make a fuss over the undeclared plans of her husband nor without his counsel undertakes to do any thing. Both he shows in the person of Hera; the former he attributes to Zeus as speaker (I. i. 545):—
Expect not Juno, all my mind to know.
And the latter Hera herself speaks (I. xiv. 310):—
Lest it displease thee, if, to thee unknown,
I sought the Ocean's deeply flowing stream,
There is a custom among all people for those who go to a war or who are in danger to send some message to their families. Our poet was familiar with this custom. For Andromache, bewailing Hector, says (I. xxiv. 743):—