Odyssey 4.425 · Book 4, lines 425–427
She sinks; my heart heaves
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ὣς εἰποῦσʼ ὑπὸ πόντον ἐδύσετο κυμαίνοντα. αὐτὰρ ἐγὼν ἐπὶ νῆας, ὅθʼ ἕστασαν ἐν ψαμάθοισιν, ἤια· πολλὰ δέ μοι κραδίη πόρφυρε κιόντι.
So saying, she plunged beneath the surging sea. But I went to the ships, where they stood on the sands; and my heart churned greatly within me as I went.
Word by word
The setting
Menelaus, narrating to Telemachus, describes the sea-nymph's departure and his own return to camp. Eidothea has just finished telling him how to trap her father.
A note on this passage
The nymph vanishes into the water she came from, and Menelaus walks back to his beached ships alone with what she has told him. Two motions in three lines: a god going down, a man walking away and turning it over.
The undercurrent is a single verb. πόρφυρε, 'churned,' is the word Homer uses for a dark sea heaving before a storm; here it is Menelaus's heart. The sea he must cross and the trick he must play run together inside him. He has his plan, and it frightens him — grappling a god is not a thing a man walks toward lightly.
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