Odyssey 1.3 · Book 1, lines 3–5
What he saw, what he suffered
Read the full text in our reader
πολλῶν δʼ ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νόον ἔγνω, πολλὰ δʼ ὅ γʼ ἐν πόντῳ πάθεν ἄλγεα ὃν κατὰ θυμόν, ἀρνύμενος ἥν τε ψυχὴν καὶ νόστον ἑταίρων.
Many were the men whose cities he saw and whose mind he came to know; and many were the pains he suffered at sea in his own heart, striving to win his own life and the homecoming of his companions.
Word by word
The setting
The invocation continues. Before any episode, the poet gives the shape of the whole journey: cities and minds learned, pains endured at sea, and the one thing he could not win — the safe return of the men who sailed with him.
A note on this passage
The proem measures the man by what he took in and what it cost. He saw cities and learned minds — knowledge is the reward of the wandering — but every clause of gain is shadowed by a clause of pain: ‘many’ cities, ‘many’ griefs, the same word weighed on both sides.
The one thing set apart is the last. He strove for two things — his own life and his companions’ return — and the grammar quietly tells us he will win only the first. nóstos, homecoming, is the word the whole poem turns on; here it is already attached to men who will not have one. The Odyssey names its survivor and its dead in the same breath.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 1.3 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 1.3 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/1.3/