Odyssey 2.321 · Book 2, lines 321–322
He pulls his hand free
Read the full text in our reader
ἦ ῥα καὶ ἐκ χειρὸς χεῖρα σπάσατʼ Ἀντινόοιο ῥεῖα;· μνηστῆρες δὲ δόμον κάτα δαῖτα πένοντο.
So he spoke, and snatched his own hand out of the hand of Antinous, lightly; and the suitors busied themselves with the feast throughout the house.
Word by word
The setting
The speech done, Telemachus answers Antinous's clasp with a gesture: he tears his hand loose. The scene then drops back to the suitors, unbothered, at their feast.
A note on this passage
The hand-clasp of the opening is answered. Antinous had taken Telemachus by the hand (2.302); now Telemachus pulls it free — the physical seal on the verbal refusal, the false φιλία rejected in the same coin it was offered.
The single word ῥεῖα, ‘easily,’ lets him win this small thing cleanly. But then the poem simply returns to the feast: the suitors go on ‘busying themselves’ with the meal, the house being eaten around him. His defiance has changed the gesture and changed nothing in the room. The large wrong continues while he wins the little one.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 2.321 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 2.321 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/2.321/