Odyssey 3.148 · Book 3, lines 148–150
The host splits in two
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ὣς τὼ μὲν χαλεποῖσιν ἀμειβομένω ἐπέεσσιν ἕστασαν· οἱ δʼ ἀνόρουσαν ἐυκνήμιδες Ἀχαιοὶ ἠχῇ θεσπεσίῃ, δίχα δέ σφισιν ἥνδανε βουλή.
So the two of them stood exchanging harsh words; but the well-greaved Achaeans sprang up with a tremendous din, and their counsel was split in two.
Word by word
The setting
The quarrel breaks fully open: the commanders trade insults, and the whole army takes sides, tearing itself into two factions.
A note on this passage
The quarrel ends the way it began — as noise. The two brothers stand trading bitter words, and the whole army leaps to its feet in an uproar, taking sides. The last word is δίχα: their counsel divided in two.
The picture completes the scene's logic. The divided leaders make a divided host; the ordered army that stormed Troy dissolves, on the very beach of victory, into a shouting mob. The epithet ‘well-greaved,’ a formula for disciplined warriors in the Iliad, now frames men breaking ranks. That single word δίχα is where the scattered homecomings begin — the split here is the source of all the separate, doomed voyages Nestor is about to trace.
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Odyssey 3.148 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/3.148/