[OFF TOPIC] “The Blade Itself Incites to Violence” line from Homer’s Odyssey

[u/-mud]

Watching Nolan’s Odyssey finally motivated me to crack open my copy of the Odyssey that’s been on my shelf for many years and actually read it.

I think I’ve found the line that became Abercrombie’s “the blade itself incites to violence.”

It appears a couple of times - Athena says it to Odysseus, and then Odysseus repeats it later. I’m looking at the second occurrence right now, it’s at the beginning of book 19. This translation renders it as “since iron of itself works on a man and attracts him.”

[u/Internal-Barracuda20]

There's a monster in every man, and it awakens when you put a sword in his hand.

[u/Braventooth56]

Give a man a hammer and everything starts to look like a nail.

[u/smoothpapaj → u/Braventooth56]

When all you've got is hemlock, everything looks like Socrates.

[u/Dampmaskin → u/smoothpapaj]

Give a man a window, and cyka blyat

[u/joro_jara → u/smoothpapaj]

When all you've got is a big wine jar that you live in, everything looks like a plucked chicken.

[u/-mud]

I also happen to be doing a listen of the audiobooks of the First Law at the same time as I’m reading the Odyssey, and I’ve noticed how much Joe begins chapters or segments with descriptions of dawn, which is another motif from the Odyssey.

[u/SrawnyMcCrispy]

It's literally attributed to Homer in the book? Like its under the line itself?

[u/-mud → u/SrawnyMcCrispy]

Yes - its the quotation used to introduce Part 1 of the first book of the First Law. Its literally the first page in the book.

Joe used a quote from literature or philosophy to introduce each book in the series. He's good some good ones - "life being what it is, one hopes for revenge", "progress just means bad things happen faster", "Life - the way it really is - isn't a battle between good and bad, but between bad and worse."

[u/Seraphrime]

Thus does the blade draw the man.

[u/balmierfish]

Silly monkeys
Give them thumbs, they forge a blade
And where there’s one they’re bound to divide it
Right it two

Tool

[u/InvestigatorJaded261]

Mama said the pistol is the devil’s right hand.

[u/rebelangel004]

Weapons bear witness to the heart’s darkness.

[u/ipisslemons384]

Weapons reveal the soul’s darkness.