Odyssey 10.50 · Book 10, lines 50–52
Whether to drown, or endure
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ἐγρόμενος κατὰ θυμὸν ἀμύμονα μερμήριξα, ἠὲ πεσὼν ἐκ νηὸς ἀποφθίμην ἐνὶ πόντῳ, ἦ ἀκέων τλαίην καὶ ἔτι ζωοῖσι μετείην.
Waking, I pondered in my noble heart whether to fling myself from the ship and perish in the sea, or to endure in silence and still remain among the living.
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The setting
Odysseus wakes to find the winds loosed and his ship driven back out to sea, all hope of reaching Ithaca undone.
A note on this passage
Odysseus wakes to find the disaster done. His first impulse is despair: he weighs whether to throw himself overboard and drown, or to hold on and go on living.
The choice is the whole poem in miniature. To endure, tlēnai, is the verb that sets this hero apart from Achilles. Where the Iliad prizes the glory of dying young, the Odyssey prizes the harder thing, staying alive. He chooses to endure.
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