Odyssey 10.131 · Book 10, lines 131–134
Only my ship
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ἀσπασίως δʼ ἐς πόντον ἐπηρεφέας φύγε πέτρας νηῦς ἐμή· αὐτὰρ αἱ ἄλλαι ἀολλέες αὐτόθʼ ὄλοντο. ἔνθεν δὲ προτέρω πλέομεν ἀκαχήμενοι ἦτορ, ἄσμενοι ἐκ θανάτοιο, φίλους ὀλέσαντες ἑταίρους.
And gladly out to sea my ship escaped the overhanging rocks; but the others, all crowded together, perished there. From there we sailed onward, grieving at heart, glad out of death, having lost our dear companions.
Word by word
The setting
Odysseus's is the one ship to clear the harbor mouth. Eleven crews die on the spot; the survivors sail on.
A note on this passage
The tally of the disaster. One ship — his own — clears the overhanging rocks into open water; all the rest, penned together in the harbor, are destroyed where they lie. Eleven of twelve crews are gone in a few lines, and the survivors row away.
The undercurrent is the double emotion Homer sets side by side. ἀσπασίως and ἄσμενοι both mean "glad," and both frame men who have just watched hundreds of friends die: glad to be out of death, ἀκαχήμενοι ἦτορ, grieving in the heart, in the same breath. This is the survivor's exact double bind, and the poem states it without comment — relief and grief are not stages here but one condition, carried onward together.
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