Odyssey 10.64 · Book 10, lines 64–66
“What evil god assailed you?”
Read the full text in our reader
Aeolus's household — πῶς ἦλθες, Ὀδυσεῦ; τίς τοι κακὸς ἔχραε δαίμων; ἦ μέν σʼ ἐνδυκέως ἀπεπέμπομεν ὄφρʼ ἀφίκοιο πατρίδα σὴν καὶ δῶμα καὶ εἴ πού τοι φίλον ἐστίν.
How did you come, Odysseus? What evil god assailed you? Surely we sent you off kindly, so that you might reach your fatherland and home, and whatever is dear to you.
Word by word
The setting
Aeolus's family — the twelve children who share his feast — question the returned Odysseus. They had sped him home with a fair wind and a gift; his reappearance can only mean that something has gone wrong with heaven.
A note on this passage
The question is warm and bewildered. They still speak to him as a friend, name him by name, and remind him that they had done everything right: a kind send-off, a wind for home. Their first guess is a god — for what else could undo so careful a gift?
And they guess correctly, without knowing how. Their word δαίμων names exactly the frame the poem lives in: a man's fortune is the work of unseen powers. But the reader knows the truth is smaller and worse — no god struck here, only sleep and a crew's greed. The pious explanation misses the human one, and that gap is the bitterness Odysseus is about to answer.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 10.64 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
From the Great Library
You are reading a page of the Odyssey — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Odyssey 10.64 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/10.64/