Starvation as Moral Solvent

The wind has held them on Thrinacia for weeks. The stores are gone. The men have started chewing leather. Eurylochus stands up and says what nobody else will say: any death is faster and cleaner than this. Better to slaughter one of the Sun’s cattle and meet the lightning than to lie here drying out. The argument is morally wrong and physically irresistible. It is also the book’s clearest examination of what extreme hunger does to oaths. Sworn on his life means something while the body is fed. Once the body is starving, the oath becomes paperwork. Teilo doesn’t moralize the moment. He shows the men eat and lets the cost arrive on the next page.