Odyssey 10.466 · Book 10, lines 466–468
A whole year of feasting
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ὣς ἔφαθʼ, ἡμῖν δʼ αὖτʼ ἐπεπείθετο θυμὸς ἀγήνωρ. ἔνθα μὲν ἤματα πάντα τελεσφόρον εἰς ἐνιαυτὸν ἥμεθα δαινύμενοι κρέα τʼ ἄσπετα καὶ μέθυ ἡδύ·
So she spoke, and in us in turn our proud spirit was won over. There, indeed, for all the days a full year, we sat feasting on boundless meat and sweet mellow wine.
Word by word
The setting
The formula that closes a speech — 'so she spoke, and our proud spirit was won over' — leads into a year passing. Odysseus and his men stay with Circe, feasting.
A note on this passage
The speech-closing formula gives way to a single unbroken year. The 'proud spirit' that was drained is now won over, and the men settle into Circe's endless feast of meat and sweet wine.
Homer lets the whole year pass in two lines. There is no adventure inside it, no scene — only the fact of ease, stated once. That flatness is deliberate: the same 'proud spirit' that fights monsters is here simply persuaded to stay, and the poem's engine of homecoming quietly stalls for a full turn of the seasons.
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