Odyssey 2.361 · Book 2, lines 361–366
The nurse cries out
Read the full text in our reader
ὣς φάτο, κώκυσεν δὲ φίλη τροφὸς Εὐρύκλεια, καί ῥʼ ὀλοφυρομένη ἔπεα πτερόεντα προσηύδα·
Eurycleia — τίπτε δέ τοι, φίλε τέκνον, ἐνὶ φρεσὶ τοῦτο νόημα ἔπλετο; πῇ δʼ ἐθέλεις ἰέναι πολλὴν ἐπὶ γαῖαν μοῦνος ἐὼν ἀγαπητός; ὁ δʼ ὤλετο τηλόθι πάτρης διογενὴς Ὀδυσεὺς ἀλλογνώτῳ ἐνὶ δήμῳ.
So he spoke, and the dear nurse Eurycleia wailed aloud, and lamenting she spoke winged words: Why, dear child, has this thought arisen for you in your heart? Where do you wish to go over the wide earth, an only son and beloved? And Zeus-born Odysseus has perished far from his fatherland, in a land of strangers.
Word by word
The setting
Telemachus has just told the old nurse Eurycleia to draw provisions for a secret voyage. She is the woman who reared him — and reared his father before him. She breaks into grief.
A note on this passage
The nurse answers a practical order with a cry. She was told to pack wine and meal; she hears a boy proposing to sail off alone, and the first sound out of her is a wail. Her objection is not tactical but familial: you are the only son, the beloved one, and your father is already lost overseas — do not make me lose you the same way.
Underneath runs the theme of the house emptied by the sea. Odysseus went out over the water and never came back; Eurycleia measures Telemachus's plan against that wound. To her the wide earth is not adventure but the distance that swallowed the father, and the son is about to step into it.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 2.361 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 2.361 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/2.361/