Odyssey 10.418 · Book 10, lines 418–420
As glad as if we had reached Ithaca
Read the full text in our reader
καί μʼ ὀλοφυρόμενοι ἔπεα πτερόεντα προσηύδων·
The crew — σοὶ μὲν νοστήσαντι, διοτρεφές, ὣς ἐχάρημεν, ὡς εἴ τʼ εἰς Ἰθάκην ἀφικοίμεθα πατρίδα γαῖαν·
And lamenting they spoke to me winged words: For you, come home, o god-nurtured one, we rejoiced so, as if we had come to Ithaca, our native land.
Word by word
The setting
The crew at the ship, who had given Odysseus up for lost, find their words. Their greeting says the reunion feels like the homecoming they have not yet had.
A note on this passage
The men put the feeling into speech, and it matches what the narrator has just said of their hearts: your return, they tell him, gladdened us as if we had reached Ithaca itself. Grief and joy are still tangled — they speak the welcome ‘lamenting.’
The undercurrent is the gap the men do not see. They measure their happiness against a homecoming that has not happened and, for most of them, never will — the crew of this ship is doomed to die before Ithaca. Homer lets them name the true goal, νόστος, the return home, in the very breath where they mistake a reunion with their captain for it. The reader hears the shadow the men cannot.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 10.418 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 10.418 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/10.418/