The Odysseys of Homer, together with the shorter poems

Chapter 74: To Thestor’s Son[1] inquisitive about the Causes of Things

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About This Book

The epic follows a resourceful hero's prolonged voyage home after a great war, presenting episodic adventures involving sea passages, enchanted islands, perilous monsters, and divine interventions. Parallel strands depict the struggle at his household with intrusive suitors and the family members who await his return, while themes of cunning, loyalty, hospitality, identity, and fate are explored. Composed in twenty-four books and accompanied by shorter hymns and poems, the work moves between vivid narrative set pieces and reflective passages on human conduct and the gods' influence.

To Thestor’s Son [1] inquisitive about the Causes of Things

Thestorides! of all the skills unknown
To errant mortals, there remains not one
Of more inscrutable affair to find
Than is the true state of a human mind.

[1] Homer intimated, in this his answer to Thestorides, a will to have him learn the knowledge of himself, before he inquired so curiously the causes of other things. And from hence had the great peripatetic, Themistius, his most grave epiphoneme, Anima quæ seipsam ignorat, quid sciret ipsa de aliis? And, therefore, according to Aristotle, advises all philosophical students to begin with that study.