Odyssey 10.550 · Book 10, lines 550–553
A certain Elpenor
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ὣς ἐφάμην, τοῖσιν δʼ ἐπεπείθετο θυμὸς ἀγήνωρ. οὐδὲ μὲν οὐδʼ ἔνθεν περ ἀπήμονας ἦγον ἑταίρους. Ἐλπήνωρ δέ τις ἔσκε νεώτατος, οὔτε τι λίην ἄλκιμος ἐν πολέμῳ οὔτε φρεσὶν ᾗσιν ἀρηρώς·
So I spoke, and their proud heart was persuaded. Yet not even from there did I lead my comrades unharmed. There was a certain Elpenor, the youngest, not very brave in war nor sound in his wits;
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The setting
The crew agree to sail. Then Odysseus, narrating, pauses to name one man who will not leave the island alive — Elpenor, the youngest, no fighter and no thinker.
A note on this passage
The men agree, and then the narrator's voice turns aside. The line that they were not led from there unharmed is a formula of loss, and it announces a death before the death has happened. Then Elpenor is named: youngest, no great soldier, no great mind.
The obituary comes before the event, which is the epic's habitual way with minor deaths. The poem tells you a man is doomed, then shows you how. Elpenor is given a name only at the moment he is marked to lose it. The faint dispraise, not brave and not clever, is not cruelty but honesty; his end will owe nothing to heroism and everything to being ordinary.
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