Odyssey 10.140 · Book 10, lines 140–143
Two days on the shore
Read the full text in our reader
ἔνθα δʼ ἐπʼ ἀκτῆς νηὶ κατηγαγόμεσθα σιωπῇ ναύλοχον ἐς λιμένα, καί τις θεὸς ἡγεμόνευεν. ἔνθα τότʼ ἐκβάντες δύο τʼ ἤματα καὶ δύο νύκτας κείμεθʼ ὁμοῦ καμάτῳ τε καὶ ἄλγεσι θυμὸν ἔδοντες.
There, onto the shore, we put in with our ship in silence, into the ship-sheltering harbor, and some god was guiding us in. There then we disembarked, and for two days and two nights we lay together, eating our hearts with weariness and pains.
Word by word
The setting
The ship slips into the sheltered harbor of Aeaea. The survivors, wrung out, collapse on the beach.
A note on this passage
A quiet landfall after the horror. They ease the ship into a natural harbor without a word, and Homer gives the credit to "some god" rather than to seamanship. Ashore, the men do nothing for two days and two nights but lie where they fell, spent with exhaustion and grief.
The undercurrent runs in two small phrases. σιωπῇ, "in silence," is the wariness of men who have learned what strange coasts cost — no shouting, no bold landing party like the one that woke the Cyclops. And θυμὸν ἔδοντες, "eating their hearts," sets grief as a thing that consumes from inside, held against the cannibal feast they have just escaped: nearly eaten, they now eat themselves with sorrow. The poem lets the survivors simply stop, and grieve, before the next danger begins.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 10.140 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 10.140 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/10.140/