An evil doom of some god was my undoing, and measureless wine.
[ἆσέ με δαίμονος αἶσα κακὴ καὶ ἀθέσφατος οἶνος.]
Homer (fl. 7th-8th C. BC) Greek author
The Odyssey [Ὀδύσσεια], Book 11, l. 61 (11.61) [Elpenor] (c. 700 BC) [tr. Murray (1919)]
(Source)
Odysseus first encounter in the Underworld is the shade of his comrade Elpenor, whose body had been left on Circe's island. This is Elpenor's explanation of his death (10.552-560). Drunk with his crew mates, he climbed a ladder to the roof of Circe's palace to sleep it off. When he heard his friends preparing to leave, he either fell from or forgot about using the ladder, plummeting to his ignominious death.
(Source (Greek)). Alternate translations:
In Circe’s house, the spite some spirit did bear,
And the unspeakable good liquor there,
Hath been my bane.
[tr. Chapman (1616)]
I had come along with th’ bark,
But that the Devil and excess of wine
Made me to fall, and break my neck i’ th’ dark.
[tr. Hobbes (1675), l. 54ff]
To hell my doom I owe,
Demons accursed, dire ministers of woe!
My feet, through wine unfaithful to their weight,
Betray'd me tumbling from a towery height.
[tr. Pope (1725)]
Fool’d by some dæmon and the intemp’rate bowl.
[tr. Cowper (1792), ll. 69-70]
I died
By stroke of fate and the dread fumes of wine.
[tr. Worsley (1861), st. 9]
Ill fate destroyed me, and unstinted wine!
[tr. Bigge-Wither (1869)]
An evil doom of some god was my bane, and wine out of measure.
[tr. Butcher/Lang (1879)]
God's doom and wine unstinted on me the bane hath brought.
[tr. Morris (1887)]
Heaven's cruel doom destroyed me, and excess of wine.
[tr. Palmer (1891)]
It was all bad luck, and my own unspeakable drunkenness.
[tr. Butler (1898)]
It was all bad luck of a daimôn, and my own unspeakable drunkenness.
[tr. Butler (1898), rev. Power/Nagy (1900)]
It was all bad luck of a superhuman force [daimōn], and my own unspeakable drunkenness.
[tr. Butler (1898), rev. Kim/McCray/Nagy/Power (2018)]
The harsh burden of some God sealed my doom, together with my own unspeakable excess in wine.
[tr. Lawrence (1932)]
It was the malice of some evil power that was my undoing, and all the wine I swilled before I went to sleep in Circe’s palace.
[tr. Rieu (1946)]
Bad luck shadowed me, and no kindly power;
ignoble death I drank with so much wine.
[tr. Fitzgerald (1961)]
The evil will of the spirit and the wild wine bewildered me.
[tr. Lattimore (1965)]
My undoing lay
in some god sending down my dismal fate
and in too much sweet wine.
[tr. Mandelbaum (1990)]
The doom of an angry god, and god knows how much wine --
they were my ruin, captain.
[tr. Fagles (1996)]
Bad luck and too much wine undid me.
[tr. Lombardo (2000)]
The malicious decree of some god and too much wine were my undoing.
[tr. DCH Rieu (2002)]
It was a god-sent evil destiny that ruined me, and too much wine.
[tr. Verity (2016)]
But I had bad luck from some god, and too much wine befuddled me.
[tr. Wilson (2017)]
Some god's ill-will undid me -- that, and too much wine!
[tr. Green (2018)]
Some fatal deity
has brought me down -- that and too much wine.
[tr. Johnston (2019)]
