Odyssey 10.98 · Book 10, lines 98–102
Only a thread of smoke
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ἔνθα μὲν οὔτε βοῶν οὔτʼ ἀνδρῶν φαίνετο ἔργα, καπνὸν δʼ οἶον ὁρῶμεν ἀπὸ χθονὸς ἀίσσοντα. δὴ τότʼ ἐγὼν ἑτάρους προΐειν πεύθεσθαι ἰόντας, οἵ τινες ἀνέρες εἶεν ἐπὶ χθονὶ σῖτον ἔδοντες, ἄνδρε δύω κρίνας, τρίτατον κήρυχʼ ἅμʼ ὀπάσσας.
There no works of oxen or of men appeared, only smoke we saw darting up from the land. Then I sent companions ahead to go and learn what men they were who eat bread upon the earth, picking two men and sending a third with them as herald.
Word by word
The setting
From the crag the land shows no farming, no herds, no work of human hands — only smoke rising in the distance. Odysseus sends a scouting party of three to learn who lives here and what they eat: two chosen men and a herald.
A note on this passage
The scene reads like ordinary scouting: no fields, no herds, just distant smoke, so send three men to find out who lives here. The question ‘what men they were who eat bread’ is the standard Homeric test of whether a people is civilized at all.
There is a grim irony folded into that question. The scouts are sent to ask whether these are bread-eating men — the mark of settled, civilized folk — and the answer, which the reader half-guesses, is that here the people eat men. The very formula for humanity is walking into a place where humanity has been inverted.
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