Odyssey 10.80 · Book 10, lines 80–83
Six days' rowing to Telepylos
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ἑξῆμαρ μὲν ὁμῶς πλέομεν νύκτας τε καὶ ἦμαρ, ἑβδομάτῃ δʼ ἱκόμεσθα Λάμου αἰπὺ πτολίεθρον, Τηλέπυλον Λαιστρυγονίην, ὅθι ποιμένα ποιμὴν ἠπύει εἰσελάων ὁ δέ τʼ ἐξελάων ὑπακούει.
For six days alike we sailed on, nights and day; and on the seventh we reached Lamos's steep citadel, Telepylos of the Laestrygonians, where a herdsman calls to a herdsman as he drives in, and the other answers as he drives out.
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The setting
Six days and nights of unbroken rowing bring them to the land of the Laestrygonians and their city Telepylos. Homer notes a strange feature of the place: the nights are so short a sleepless man could work two shifts.
A note on this passage
The voyage is compressed into a number — six days, six nights, no rest — and then the poem slows to sketch the destination with a single homely image: one herdsman driving his flock home calls out, and another, driving his out, calls back. The picture is peaceful, pastoral, almost cosy.
That is the trap. The detail about the near-touching paths of night and day means the sun barely sets here — a marvel presented as folklore, a place at the edge of the world's ordinary rules. Homer paints the Laestrygonian land as calm and orderly right before it becomes the site of the worst slaughter in the wandering. The pastoral note is the poem baiting the reader's guard down.
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