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When Odysseus strings his bow, that none of the suitors beforehand have been able to string, he then plucks it like a harp, sounding a note. After that, Zeus gets involved, sending a thunderclap as a sign:

In the hushed hall it smote the suitors
and all their faces changed. Then Zeus thundered
overhead, one loud crack for a sign.
And Odysseus laughed within him that the son
of crooked-minded Kronos had flung that omen down.
The Odyssey, chapter 21: "The Test of the Bow", translation by Robert Fitzgerald (1961), lines 384–388

Why does Odysseus laugh at this sign? What's so funny here? Why is a laugh an appropriate response in this scenario (or is it)?

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This is 21.414:

γήθησέν τ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἔπειτα πολύτλας δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς

then rejoiced the long-suffering divine Odysseus

Homer. Odyssey 21.414. My translation.

A. T. Murray (1919) translates the line as "Then glad at heart was the much-enduring, goodly Odysseus". So Fitzgerald means that Odysseus laughed for joy (not for amusement) because he believed that Zeus would favour him in the impending battle with the suitors.

I think that this is a fairly unexceptional use of “laugh”, which can be used to describe several emotions: the OED lists ”joy, mirth, amusement, or derision”.

The line itself is formulaic—there is an identical line at 13.353, and very similar lines at 7.329, 8.199, 13.250, 18.281 and 24.504.

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    I’d add that Emily Wilson rendered it as “Odysseus, who had so long been waiting/ was glad to hear the signal from the son” (21.415–6). I’d forgotten that I have Fitzgerald for the Odyssey and Lattimore for the Iliad and not the other way around because I’d been hoping to give Lattimore’s usually more literal translation.
    – D. A. Hosek
    Commented Dec 2 at 21:07
  • I wonder why Murray chose to translate δῖος as ‘goodly’ rather than ‘godlike’ or ‘divine’ …
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Dec 3 at 13:51
  • @JanusBahsJacquet I can only guess that Murray thought that "divine" would be too strong a term for the straightforward register he had adopted for his translation. δῖος is applied to lots of people in the Odyssey (Nestor, Penelope, Orestes, Klytemnestra, Echephron, Memnon, Agamemnon, etc.) and while "divine" might be fine in an elevated or poetic translation, in Murray's plainer English it might feel excessive.
    – Gareth Rees
    Commented Dec 3 at 14:01
  • And, after all, "goodly" is just a new-fashioned version of "godly".
    – Lee Mosher
    Commented Dec 4 at 0:48

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