Odyssey 3.86 · Book 3, lines 86–90
His death, made unknown by Zeus
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ἄλλους μὲν γὰρ πάντας, ὅσοι Τρωσὶν πολέμιζον, πευθόμεθʼ, ἧχι ἕκαστος ἀπώλετο λυγρῷ ὀλέθρῳ, κείνου δʼ αὖ καὶ ὄλεθρον ἀπευθέα θῆκε Κρονίων. οὐ γάρ τις δύναται σάφα εἰπέμεν ὁππόθʼ ὄλωλεν, εἴθʼ ὅ γʼ ἐπʼ ἠπείρου δάμη ἀνδράσι δυσμενέεσσιν,
For all the others, as many as warred with Troy, we have learned where each perished in woeful ruin; but of that one even his death the son of Cronos has made unknown. For no one is able to say clearly where he perished, whether he was brought down on the mainland by hostile men,
Word by word
The setting
Telemachus draws the cruel contrast: of every other man who fought at Troy, the manner of death is known — but Odysseus alone has vanished without word. Zeus himself, he says, has hidden his end; no one can say even where he died.
A note on this passage
Telemachus ends on the wound itself. Every other man who fought at Troy has a known death — we have learned, he says, where each one fell. Only his father has no such report: Zeus has made even the fact of Odysseus's death unlearnable. No one can say for certain where he died, on the mainland by enemy hands or (the sentence runs on) at sea.
The dread here is very Greek. What torments the house is not that Odysseus is dead but that no word comes — a death with no report is a death with no κλέος, the exact opposite of the fame the boy has just said he seeks. To vanish unheard-of is, to this world, the bleakest end of all. And over it hangs the irony the audience carries: the death Zeus has made unlearnable is one that has not happened. There is nothing to hear because the man is alive.
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