Friend, let me put it in the plainest way.
My mother says I am his son; I know not
surely. Who has known his own engendering?
I wish at least I had some happy man
as father, growing old in his house–
but unknown death and silence are the fate
of him that, since you ask, they call my father.
– Homer, The Odyssey (Book I, Lines 258-264), translator Robert Fitzgerald
