Odyssey 10.431 · Book 10, lines 431–433
Why walk back into the trap?
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Eurylochus — ἆ δειλοί, πόσʼ ἴμεν; τί κακῶν ἱμείρετε τούτων; Κίρκης ἐς μέγαρον καταβήμεναι, ἥ κεν ἅπαντας ἢ σῦς ἠὲ λύκους ποιήσεται ἠὲ λέοντας,
Ah, wretches, where are we going? Why do you crave these evils — to go down into Circe's hall, who would make us all either swine or wolves or lions,
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Eurylochus alone refuses to return to Circe. His scouting party had been drugged and turned to swine; he escaped to warn Odysseus. Now he pleads with the crew not to go down to her house.
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Eurylochus puts it to the crew as a plain question: why crave this ruin? To go down to Circe's hall is to be turned, like the others, into swine or wolves or lions.
His fear is exact, not superstition — he argues from what he saw. And the animals he names are the very beasts that prowl and fawn at her door: they were men once. He calls the crew “wretches,” the word for those who let danger master them, and aims the reproach straight at their willingness to obey.
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