Odyssey 4.410 · Book 4, lines 410–413
He counts his seals like a shepherd
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πάντα δέ τοι ἐρέω ὀλοφώια τοῖο γέροντος. φώκας μέν τοι πρῶτον ἀριθμήσει καὶ ἔπεισιν· αὐτὰρ ἐπὴν πάσας πεμπάσσεται ἠδὲ ἴδηται, λέξεται ἐν μέσσῃσι νομεὺς ὣς πώεσι μήλων.
And I will tell you all the deadly wiles of that old man. First he will count the seals for you and go over them; but when he has told them all off by fives and seen them, he will lie down in their midst, like a herdsman among flocks of sheep.
Word by word
The setting
Eidothea warns of the danger inside the trap: before he sleeps, Proteus tallies his seals, so the disguised men risk being caught in the count.
A note on this passage
Here is the catch inside the catch. Before Proteus sleeps he numbers his seals, telling them off on his fingers one by one, and only then lies down among them. The four hidden men must survive that count without being noticed as intruders in the herd.
Homer tames the uncanny with a homely simile: the shape-shifting sea-god is 'like a herdsman among flocks of sheep.' The Odyssey keeps looking at its monsters through a shepherd's eyes — the Cyclops too is first of all a herder counting his flock. And the word for his tricks, ὀλοφώια, carries a shadow of destruction: these are not harmless games but death-tinged wiles, cousins to the δόλοι that mark Odysseus himself.
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