Odyssey 4.634 · Book 4, lines 634–637
The errand to Elis
Read the full text in our reader
νῆά μοι οἴχετʼ ἄγων· ἐμὲ δὲ χρεὼ γίγνεται αὐτῆς Ἤλιδʼ ἐς εὐρύχορον διαβήμεναι, ἔνθα μοι ἵπποι δώδεκα θήλειαι, ὑπὸ δʼ ἡμίονοι ταλαεργοὶ ἀδμῆτες· τῶν κέν τινʼ ἐλασσάμενος δαμασαίμην.
He has gone off leading my ship, and I have need of it to cross to spacious Elis, where I have twelve mares, and under the yoke hard-working unbroken mules; of these I would drive one off and break it in.
Word by word
The setting
Noemon explains why he needs the ship back: he has business across the water in Elis, where he keeps a working herd. His words confirm, almost in passing, that the ship really is gone.
A note on this passage
The detail is domestic and exact: twelve mares in Elis, mules still unbroken, a crossing to be made and an animal to be tamed. Homer lets Noemon talk like a landowner because that is what he is — a man of horses and errands, not of plots.
But the homely inventory does the plot's work. Every concrete word — the ship, the crossing, the waiting herd — nails down that Telemachus is really at sea, not loafing in the fields. The suitors will hear the mundane errand and take from it only the one thing that terrifies them.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 4.634 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
From the Great Library
You are reading a page of the Odyssey — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Odyssey 4.634 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/4.634/