Source-groundedThe Odyssey
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Animal · Class

pigs in Agamemnon’s slaughter simile

Published entity metadata

Read-only identity and editorial metadata.

Canonical name
pigs in Agamemnon’s slaughter simile
Disambiguator
None
Kind
Animal
Scope
Class
Editorial note
No editorial note published.

Aliases

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No aliases recorded.

Location presence

Phase 6 currently covers 24 processed books.

0

No presence observations in the processed scope.

Claims

1
·Simile

Pigs killed for a feast provide part of Agamemnon’s simile for his murdered companions.

See evidence text
“my comrades were slain like sheep or pigs for the wedding breakfast, or picnic, or gorgeous banquet of some great nobleman”

Additional evidence

Evidence records not already represented by a claim.

1
·Simile
“slain like sheep or pigs”

Passage preview

Book 11 · Passage 36

‘‘Ulysses,’ he answered, ‘noble son of Laertes, I was not lost at sea in any storm of Neptune’s raising, nor did my foes despatch me upon the mainland, but Aegisthus and my wicked wife were the death of me between them. He asked me to his house, feasted me, and then butchered me most miserably as though I were a fat beast in a slaughter house, while all around me my comrades were slain like sheep or pigs for the wedding breakfast, or picnic, or gorgeous banquet of some great nobleman. You must have seen numbers of men killed either in a general engagement, or in single combat, but you never saw anything so truly pitiable as the way in which we fell in that cloister, with the mixing bowl and the loaded tables lying all about, and the ground reeking with our blood. I heard Priam’s daughter Cassandra scream as Clytemnestra killed her close beside me. I lay dying upon the earth with the sword in my body, and raised my hands to kill the slut of a murderess, but she slipped away from me; she would not even close my lips nor my eyes when I was dying, for there is nothing in this world so cruel and so shameless as a woman when she has fallen into such guilt as hers was. Fancy murdering her own husband! I thought I was going to be welcomed home by my children and my servants, but her abominable crime has brought disgrace on herself and all women who shall come after—even on the good ones.’