Odyssey 4.354 · Book 4, lines 354–357
An island called Pharos
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νῆσος ἔπειτά τις ἔστι πολυκλύστῳ ἐνὶ πόντῳ Αἰγύπτου προπάροιθε, Φάρον δέ ἑ κικλήσκουσι, τόσσον ἄνευθʼ ὅσσον τε πανημερίη γλαφυρὴ νηῦς ἤνυσεν, ᾗ λιγὺς οὖρος ἐπιπνείῃσιν ὄπισθεν·
There is, moreover, a certain island in the surging sea, off Egypt — Pharos they call it — as far away as a hollow ship makes in a whole day, when a shrill wind blows behind her.
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The setting
Menelaus sets the scene of his ordeal: the island of Pharos, lying in the sea off the mouth of the Nile, a day's sail out for a ship with a good following wind.
A note on this passage
Pure scene-setting, done as seamanship. There is an island, Pharos, out in the surging sea off Egypt, as far from shore as a hollow ship covers in a full day with a fresh wind astern. The measure of distance is a sailor's, reckoned by a day's run rather than in stades.
The undercurrent is how the poem builds a place. Homer gives no myth here, only water, wind, and a ship's honest day of work — the exact, practical world that will make the coming marvel of Proteus, the shape-shifting god, land the harder when it breaks into it. The plainer the map, the stranger the wonder it holds.
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