Odyssey 10.161 · Book 10, lines 161–163
The kill — through the spine
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τὸν δʼ ἐγὼ ἐκβαίνοντα κατʼ ἄκνηστιν μέσα νῶτα πλῆξα· τὸ δʼ ἀντικρὺ δόρυ χάλκεον ἐξεπέρησε, κὰδ δʼ ἔπεσʼ ἐν κονίῃσι μακών, ἀπὸ δʼ ἔπτατο θυμός.
As it came out I struck it on the spine, through the middle of the back; the bronze spear drove straight through, and it fell in the dust with a bellow, and its spirit flew away.
Word by word
The setting
The stag steps down into the open on its way to the river. Odysseus, spear in hand, is waiting.
A note on this passage
The kill, told in three fast strokes. Odysseus spears the stag through the backbone as it steps out; the bronze passes clean through; the animal drops into the dust with a cry, and its life is gone. The Greek is almost all verbs — struck, drove through, fell, flew — and the whole thing is over in a breath.
The last word is thymos, the very word Homer uses for a human soul or life-breath. The stag does not merely die; its thymos ‘flies off,’ the same image the poem uses when warriors fall at Troy. For one line the hunted deer and the fighting man are granted the same inner life, the same thing that leaves.
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