Odyssey 2.174 · Book 2, lines 174–176
The twentieth year, and the man no one knows
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φῆν κακὰ πολλὰ παθόντʼ, ὀλέσαντʼ ἄπο πάντας ἑταίρους, ἄγνωστον πάντεσσιν ἐεικοστῷ ἐνιαυτῷ οἴκαδʼ ἐλεύσεσθαι· τὰ δὲ δὴ νῦν πάντα τελεῖται.
I said that, suffering many evils, having lost all his companions, unknown to all, in the twentieth year he would come home; and now all these things are being fulfilled.
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The setting
Halitherses finishes recalling his old prophecy to Odysseus and turns it on the present moment.
A note on this passage
The seer completes the old prophecy: Odysseus would come home only after losing everything — his men, even his own recognizability — reaching Ithaca in the twentieth year. Then he pins it to now: all of it is coming true.
The count is deliberately exact — the twentieth year, ten at Troy and ten astray. And ἄγνωστον, ‘unknown,’ names in advance the disguised beggar who will walk his own halls unrecognized, the shape the whole back half of the poem takes. This is not a vague oracle; it forecasts the very manner of the return, down to the fact that no one will know him.
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Odyssey 2.174 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/2.174/