Odyssey 2.424 · Book 2, lines 424–426
They raise the mast and spread the white sail
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ἱστὸν δʼ εἰλάτινον κοίλης ἔντοσθε μεσόδμης στῆσαν ἀείραντες, κατὰ δὲ προτόνοισιν ἔδησαν, ἕλκον δʼ ἱστία λευκὰ ἐυστρέπτοισι βοεῦσιν.
They lifted up the fir mast and set it within the hollow mast-box, and made it fast with the forestays; and they hauled up the white sail with well-twisted braces of ox-hide.
Word by word
The setting
The crew set to work rigging the ship. The sequence is the fixed epic order of getting under sail: step the mast, stay it, hoist the sail.
A note on this passage
Pure seamanship, told in exact order: the fir mast is lifted and stepped into its box amidships, stayed upright with the forestays, and then the white sail is hauled up on twisted ox-hide braces. Every term is technical and concrete — mast-box, forestay, brace.
The undercurrent is the calm authority of the type-scene. This same rigging sequence recurs across epic in nearly the same words, and its unhurried competence does quiet work here: the boy who could barely hold an assembly at the book's start now has a ship under sail and men who move together at his word. The formula lends his first command the weight of something done rightly.
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Odyssey 2.424 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/2.424/