Unit 5: Vocabulary from Readings 3

To paleontologists today, the large hole in the center of the skull suggests a pronounced trunk.

“The idea that mythology explains the natural world is an old idea,” said Thomas Strasser, an archaeologist at California State University, Sacramento, who has done extensive work in Crete.

Fassoulas is in charge of the museum’s paleontology division, and oversaw the excavation.

Many herbivores, including the elephants of today, are exceptionally strong swimmers.

Low she sang
in her beguiling voice

Dear friends, no need for stealth

Thus to assuage the nations of the dead
I pledged these rites, then slashed the lamb and ewe,
letting their black blood stream into the wellpit.

But anguish lies ahead;
the god who thunders on the land prepares it,
not to be shaken from your track, implacable,
in rancor for the son whose eye you blinded.

But anguish lies ahead;
the god who thunders on the land prepares it,
not to be shaken from your track, implacable,
in rancor for the son whose eye you blinded.

under strange sail shall you come home, to find
your own house filled with trouble: insolent men
eating your livestock as they court your lady.

But scarcely had that island
faded in blue air than I saw smoke
and white water, with sound of waves in tumult—
a sound the men heard, and it terrified them.

Old shipmates,
our stores are in the ship’s hold, food and drink;
the cattle here are not for our provision,
or we pay dearly for it.

Now on the shore Eurylochus
made his insidious plea

Restitution or penalty they shall pay—
and pay in full

Telemachus with his clear candor said...

Lithe and young she made him,
ruddy with sun, his jawline clean, the beard
no longer grew upon his chin.

Then Zeus thundered
overhead, one loud crack for a sign.
And Odysseus laughed within him that the son
of crooked-minded Cronus had flung that omen down.

In that revelry amid his throng of friends
who would imagine a single foe—though a strong foe indeed—
could dare to bring death’s pain on him and darkness on his eyes?

Odysseus glowered under his black brows

Think of gold infused
on silver by a craftsman, whose fine art
Hephaestus taught him, or Athena: one
whose work moves to delight: just so she lavished
beauty over Odysseus’ head and shoulders.

Who else in the world
would keep aloof as you do from her husband
if he returned to her from years of trouble,
cast on his land in the twentieth year?

I planed them all,
inlaid them all with silver, gold and ivory,
and stretched a bed between—a pliant web
of oxhide thongs dyed crimson.

I armed myself
long ago against the frauds of men,
imposters who might come—and all those many
whose underhanded ways bring evil on!

Few men can keep alive through a big surf
to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches
in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind