Odyssey 1.10 · Book 1, line 10
Begin where you will, goddess
Read the full text in our reader
τῶν ἁμόθεν γε, θεά, θύγατερ Διός, εἰπὲ καὶ ἡμῖν.
Of these things, goddess, daughter of Zeus, beginning from some point or other, tell us too.
Word by word
The setting
The invocation closes. Having sketched the whole story — the wandering, the lost crew — the poet hands it back to the Muse and asks her to begin the telling from whatever point she chooses.
A note on this passage
The proem ends where it began, with a command to speak — ἔννεπε at the start, εἰπέ here, bracketing the whole. The poet claims none of the tale as his own invention: it is the Muse's, a god's daughter's, and he asks only that it pass through him ‘to us too,’ as it has passed to singers before.
The quiet word is ἁμόθεν, ‘from some point.’ The story is too vast to have a natural beginning, so the poet leaves the entry to the goddess — and she will choose not the fall of Troy, nor even the hero, but a council on Olympus and a son at home in Ithaca. Where a story starts is already an interpretation; Homer hands that first choice to heaven.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 1.10 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
From the Great Library
You are reading a page of the Odyssey — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Odyssey 1.10 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/1.10/