Odyssey 4.767 · Book 4, lines 767–769
The goddess hears; the suitors clamor
Read the full text in our reader
ὣς εἰποῦσʼ ὀλόλυξε, θεὰ δέ οἱ ἔκλυεν ἀρῆς. μνηστῆρες δʼ ὁμάδησαν ἀνὰ μέγαρα σκιόεντα· ὧδε δέ τις εἴπεσκε νέων ὑπερηνορεόντων·
So having spoken she raised the ritual cry, and the goddess heard her prayer. But the suitors clamored throughout the shadowy halls, and thus one of the overweening youths would say:
Word by word
The setting
Penelope's prayer ends with the ritual cry that seals it, and Athena hears. The scene drops back to the suitors in Odysseus's hall, one of whom is about to speak of the ambush they have laid for Telemachus.
A note on this passage
Penelope's ritual cry goes up and is granted at once — Athena hears. The poem cuts immediately downstairs to the suitors, loud in the dim hall, one of them starting to speak. The answered prayer and the heedless noise are laid flush against each other.
The order of the lines is the meaning. We are told the goddess heard before the suitors say a word, so we watch them boast already knowing their petition-fight is lost to a power they never consulted. Even the fixed epithet works: they clamor in shadowy halls, and the shadow reads, just here, as the dark already gathering over the house.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 4.767 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 4.767 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/4.767/