Odyssey 10.84 · Book 10, lines 84–86
Where night and day nearly touch
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ἔνθα κʼ ἄυπνος ἀνὴρ δοιοὺς ἐξήρατο μισθούς, τὸν μὲν βουκολέων, τὸν δʼ ἄργυφα μῆλα νομεύων· ἐγγὺς γὰρ νυκτός τε καὶ ἤματός εἰσι κέλευθοι.
There a sleepless man could earn double wages, one herding cattle, the other pasturing silver-white sheep; for the paths of night and day are close together.
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The setting
Homer explains the marvel of the Laestrygonian land: night barely falls, so a man who never slept could earn a herdsman's wage twice over, working cattle by 'night' and sheep by day. The paths of the two lie close.
A note on this passage
A single vivid economic fact stands in for a whole strange geography: here you could draw two wages in one round of the sky, because the dark is so brief. The image is concrete and workaday — a herdsman's double shift — not a cosmological lecture.
Under the wonder sits a hint of danger the reader will only feel in hindsight. A land where the sun scarcely sleeps is a land at the world's rim, past the ordinary order of things; and the very sleeplessness the line praises is what will doom the crew, whose ships lie open through a night that never darkens enough to hide them. Homer offers the marvel first, and lets the menace arrive later.
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