Odyssey 1.16 · Book 1, lines 16–21
The year of return — and one god's rage
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ἀλλʼ ὅτε δὴ ἔτος ἦλθε περιπλομένων ἐνιαυτῶν, τῷ οἱ ἐπεκλώσαντο θεοὶ οἶκόνδε νέεσθαι εἰς Ἰθάκην, οὐδʼ ἔνθα πεφυγμένος ἦεν ἀέθλων καὶ μετὰ οἷσι φίλοισι. θεοὶ δʼ ἐλέαιρον ἅπαντες νόσφι Ποσειδάωνος· ὁ δʼ ἀσπερχὲς μενέαινεν ἀντιθέῳ Ὀδυσῆι πάρος ἣν γαῖαν ἱκέσθαι.
But when at last the year came, in the circling of the seasons, in which the gods had spun for him his return home to Ithaca, not even there was he escaped from his trials, even among his own dear ones. And the gods pitied him, all of them except Poseidon; he raged unceasingly at godlike Odysseus until he should reach his own land.
Word by word
The setting
The scene is set. The destined year has circled round: the gods have spun Odysseus's return to Ithaca. All of them pity the exile — except Poseidon, whose rage will burn until the hero touches home soil. And here, twenty lines in, the poem finally speaks his name.
A note on this passage
Time and fate open the scene. The year of return does not merely arrive — it comes round on the wheel of seasons, and the gods have spun it, the way the Fates spin thread. Yet the very sentence that grants the homecoming takes something back: not even in Ithaca will the trials end. The reader is told, before the story starts, that home is not the finish line.
The quiet event here is a name. For twenty lines the hero has been ‘the man.’ Now — ἀντιθέῳ Ὀδυσῆι — he is named at last, and in the dative: the object of a god's unceasing rage. To Greek ears the name itself hums with ὀδύσσομαι, ‘to be raged at.’ The poem withholds the name until it can define the life: Odysseus is the man the sea is angry with.
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