Odyssey 3.286 · Book 3, lines 286–290
Zeus looses the storm at Malea
Read the full text in our reader
ἀλλʼ ὅτε δὴ καὶ κεῖνος ἰὼν ἐπὶ οἴνοπα πόντον ἐν νηυσὶ γλαφυρῇσι Μαλειάων ὄρος αἰπὺ ἷξε θέων, τότε δὴ στυγερὴν ὁδὸν εὐρύοπα Ζεὺς ἐφράσατο, λιγέων δʼ ἀνέμων ἐπʼ ἀυτμένα χεῦε, κύματά τε τροφέοντο πελώρια, ἶσα ὄρεσσιν.
But when he too, sailing over the wine-dark sea in his hollow ships, reached the steep height of Malea in his running, then far-thundering Zeus devised a hateful passage: he poured upon them the blast of shrill winds, and the waves swelled monstrous, high as the mountains.
Word by word
The setting
Menelaus, delayed at Sunium to bury his steersman, sails on and comes to Cape Malea, the treacherous southern tip of the Peloponnese that every returning ship dreaded. There Zeus raises a storm against him.
A note on this passage
The sea-story turns hard. Menelaus rounds Sunium and stands off Cape Malea — the great southern corner of the Peloponnese, the point every homebound ship feared — when Zeus lays a hateful road on him. The god pours out a gale, and the swell rises as high as mountains.
The undercurrent is how a storm enters Homer: not as weather but as a decision. Zeus 'devised' the passage and 'poured' the winds; the sea is the instrument of a will. The same divine machinery that grants a homecoming can bend it at the last headland — a quiet reminder, set inside Nestor's reassuring tale, that no return is safe until it is finished.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 3.286 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 3.286 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/3.286/