TFBT: Come to a Most (Pitiable) Miserable End.

It is summer in Southeast Alaska.  Our seasonal employees arrived last week.  We are teaching them the dangers of the Last Frontier.  Yesterday we discussed whether you can swim to shore (in a life vest) from a sinking boat before hypothermia drags you down and drowns you.  Got me to thinking about Odysseus swimming with Leukothea’s scarf (Odyssey 5).  I vaguely recall him thinking it would have been better if he'd died at Troy.  

Recently at the Kosmos Society we had a great conversation with visiting scholars about “Exchanges in the Odyssey’s Underworld”  Even more vaguely I recall from that discussion Agamemnon saying something similar.  

 So I visited the wonderful collection of Ancient Greek texts posted by the Center for Hellenic Studies and the Kosmos Society and searched the Homeric epics.  Here is what I found; 

“Come to a most pitiable (miserable) end.” (Iliad 21.281, Odyssey 5.312 and Odyssey 24.34

Of course the full sentences look a little different, but all are lamenting a bad ending to someone’s life;

 νῦν δέ με λευγαλέῳ θανάτῳ εἵμαρτο ἁλῶναι  Iliad 21.281

whereas now it seems that I shall come to a most pitiable end,

νῦν δέ λευγαλέῳ θανάτῳ εἵμαρτο  ἁλῶναι. Odyssey 5.312

but now it seems that I shall come to a most pitiable end.

νῦν δ᾽ ἄρα σ᾽ οἰκτίστῳ θανάτῳ εἵμαρτο ἁλῶναι. Odyssey 24.34

 whereas it has now been your lot to come to a most miserable end.”

In Iliad 21.281 the speaker is Achilles.  The River Scamander, choked with the bodies of Trojan soldiers has jumped his banks and Lord Xanthus is trying is hardest to kill our hero.    In Odyssey 5.312 Odysseus is within sight of Phaeancia put exhausted after several days in the sea and unable to swim against the current of the Phaeancian River even with Leukothea’s scarf.  The scene Odyssey 24.34 is Achilles consoling Agamemnon in Hades over his miserable ending.  Agamemnon changed the topic rapidly.  

Beside the similarity of the English translation, I noticed some other similarity. In all three scenes the specific “miserable end” is drowning.    If the river god of the Scamander slays Achilles it is by drowning.  If the river god of Phaeanica doesn’t still his current, Odysseus will drown.  And I am sure the multiple stab wounds didn’t help much but is it reasonable to assume that   “drowning” was the technical cause of Agamemnon’s death in his bath tub.  

So in these cases the most miserable end is drowning.