Odyssey 10.460 · Book 10, lines 460–462
Circe: eat and drink till your spirit comes back
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ἀλλʼ ἄγετʼ ἐσθίετε βρώμην καὶ πίνετε οἶνον, εἰς ὅ κεν αὖτις θυμὸν ἐνὶ στήθεσσι λάβητε, οἷον ὅτε πρώτιστον ἐλείπετε πατρίδα γαῖαν
But come now, eat food and drink wine, until you take your spirit back again in your breasts, such as when first of all you left your native land,
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The setting
Circe continues her speech to Odysseus and his men, urging them to feast until they recover the courage they had when they first sailed from home.
A note on this passage
Circe prescribes the cure for exhaustion: eat, drink, and let the thymos — the spirit, the drive to live — return to the chest where Homeric feeling lives. She measures the goal against the men they were when they first set out.
The recovery she names is physical and psychological at once. The thymos is not a metaphor here; it is the seat of nerve and appetite that fear and grief have drained. Her care is real, but she also binds them to her table — the feast that restores them is the same feast that will hold them a year.
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