Odyssey 4.335 · Book 4, lines 335–340
The hind, the lion, and the empty lair
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ὡς δʼ ὁπότʼ ἐν ξυλόχῳ ἔλαφος κρατεροῖο λέοντος νεβροὺς κοιμήσασα νεηγενέας γαλαθηνοὺς κνημοὺς ἐξερέῃσι καὶ ἄγκεα ποιήεντα βοσκομένη, ὁ δʼ ἔπειτα ἑὴν εἰσήλυθεν εὐνήν, ἀμφοτέροισι δὲ τοῖσιν ἀεικέα πότμον ἐφῆκεν, ὣς Ὀδυσεὺς κείνοισιν ἀεικέα πότμον ἐφήσει.
And as when a hind in the thicket of a mighty lion, having laid to sleep her newborn suckling fawns, ranges over the glens and grassy dells, grazing — but then he comes into his own lair, and looses a grievous doom upon them both; so will Odysseus loose a grievous doom upon those men.
Word by word
The setting
Menelaus turns his anger into a simile. A hind beds her newborn fawns in a lion's thicket and strays off to graze; the lion comes home and looses death on both. So, he says, Odysseus will fall upon the suitors.
A note on this passage
The simile is a small, complete story. A deer beds her newborn fawns in the very lair of a lion and wanders off to graze the glens; the lion comes home and looses death on both. The picture is domestic and terrible at once, and its point is spelled out: so will Odysseus loose doom on the suitors.
The undercurrent is who is who. The suitors are not the lion but the trespassing fawns — helpless, doomed, in the wrong place. Odysseus is the master returning to his own bed, the lion to its own lair (εὐνή, the very word just used of the marriage-bed). The simile makes the killing feel less like violence than like the natural order snapping shut on those who forgot it.
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