Odyssey 10.121 · Book 10, lines 121–124
Speared like fish
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οἵ ῥʼ ἀπὸ πετράων ἀνδραχθέσι χερμαδίοισιν βάλλον· ἄφαρ δὲ κακὸς κόναβος κατὰ νῆας ὀρώρει ἀνδρῶν τʼ ὀλλυμένων νηῶν θʼ ἅμα ἀγνυμενάων· ἰχθῦς δʼ ὣς πείροντες ἀτερπέα δαῖτα φέροντο.
And from the crags they kept hurling man-crushing boulders; and at once a grim din arose across the ships, of men perishing and ships shattered together; and spearing them like fish they bore off a joyless feast.
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The setting
Odysseus's fleet is trapped in the narrow harbor of the Laestrygonians, giant cannibals. From the cliffs above they crush the ships with boulders and spear the men struggling in the water.
A note on this passage
The massacre in the harbor, told in sound and image. Boulders come down from the cliffs, the ships splinter, and over the water rises one grim din — the noise of men dying and hulls breaking at the same instant. Then the giants gather the bodies, spearing them the way a fisherman strings his catch.
The weight is in one phrase: ἀτερπέα δαῖτα, a "joyless feast." The δαίς everywhere else in the poem is the shared meal, the very emblem of hospitality and human order. Here it is inverted into cannibalism, and the men are no longer guests or even warriors but fish, a catch borne off to be eaten. Homer measures the horror by how far it falls from the feast.
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