Odyssey 3.281 · Book 3, lines 281–285
The helmsman's due
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πηδάλιον μετὰ χερσὶ θεούσης νηὸς ἔχοντα, Φρόντιν Ὀνητορίδην, ὃς ἐκαίνυτο φῦλʼ ἀνθρώπων νῆα κυβερνῆσαι, ὁπότε σπέρχοιεν ἄελλαι. ὣς ὁ μὲν ἔνθα κατέσχετʼ, ἐπειγόμενός περ ὁδοῖο, ὄφρʼ ἕταρον θάπτοι καὶ ἐπὶ κτέρεα κτερίσειεν.
holding the steering-oar in his hands as the ship ran on — Phrontis, son of Onetor, who surpassed the tribes of men at steering a ship, whenever the storm-winds raged. So he stayed there, though eager for his journey, that he might bury his comrade and pay him the funeral honors.
Word by word
The setting
The steersman Apollo has just killed is named and eulogized: Phrontis son of Onetor, the finest helmsman alive in a storm, struck down with the rudder still in his hands. For his sake Menelaus halts his whole voyage to bury him.
A note on this passage
The dead helmsman gets a hero's obituary. Phrontis son of Onetor was the best steersman among men when a gale was up, and he died with the steering-oar in his hands. For his sake Menelaus, desperate as he was to get home, put in to shore and stopped his whole voyage to bury him and give him his rites.
The pause is the point. A king in a hurry halts for a dead subordinate, because the unburied dead are intolerable — owed κτέρεα, the funeral honors, before anything else can proceed. It is the same law the poem keeps circling: comrades who go into the sea unmourned, suitors who will one day lie unburied. Here, at least, the debt to the dead is paid in full.
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