Odyssey 4.571 · Book 4, lines 571–575
Down to the ships, a brooding heart
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Menelaus — αὐτὰρ ἐγὼν ἐπὶ νῆας ἅμʼ ἀντιθέοις ἑτάροισιν ἤια, πολλὰ δέ μοι κραδίη πόρφυρε κιόντι. αὐτὰρ ἐπεί ῥʼ ἐπὶ νῆα κατήλθομεν ἠδὲ θάλασσαν, δόρπον θʼ ὁπλισάμεσθʼ, ἐπί τʼ ἤλυθεν ἀμβροσίη νύξ, δὴ τότε κοιμήθημεν ἐπὶ ῥηγμῖνι θαλάσσης.
But I went to the ships with godlike comrades, and my heart brooded much as I went. But when we came down to the ship and the sea, we readied our supper, and ambrosial night came on, and then we slept on the breaking surf of the sea.
Word by word
The setting
Menelaus is nearing the end of his long tale to Telemachus at Sparta — his return from Egypt after wrestling Proteus. He speaks in the first person of leaving the god's shore and rejoining his crew.
A note on this passage
Menelaus winds down his tale with a plain sailor's log: the walk to the ships, the last supper on the sand, sleep by the water, and at dawn the launch. After Proteus and the marvels, the poem returns him to the ordinary rhythm of a crew getting home. The grandeur is over; the labor remains.
The quiet note is the heart that will not settle. πόρφυρε — the verb Homer uses for a sea heaving before a storm — is turned inward: his mind surges dark as he walks. He has just been told the price of his return and the deaths of better men. The calm of the beach and the churn of the man lie side by side in one line.
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