Odyssey 4.791 · Book 4, lines 791–794
The lion at bay — and sleep
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ὅσσα δὲ μερμήριξε λέων ἀνδρῶν ἐν ὁμίλῳ δείσας, ὁππότε μιν δόλιον περὶ κύκλον ἄγωσι, τόσσα μιν ὁρμαίνουσαν ἐπήλυθε νήδυμος ὕπνος· εὗδε δʼ ἀνακλινθεῖσα, λύθεν δέ οἱ ἅψεα πάντα.
And as a lion broods in fear, in a press of men, as they draw a crafty ring about him, so much did she ponder when sweet sleep came over her; she slept, sinking back, and all her limbs were loosened.
Word by word
The setting
Penelope's whirl of anxious thought is caught in a simile before sleep finally takes her. The 'crafty ring' of the simile's hunters echoes the ambush the suitors have just laid.
A note on this passage
A single simile carries her from waking dread to sleep. Her crowding thoughts are measured against a lion's — a beast ringed by a band of hunters closing a trap around it, holding still in fear. Then, mid-thought, sweet sleep comes over her, she sinks back, and her limbs go slack. The 'loosening of limbs' is Homer's usual phrase for sleep and for death alike.
The striking thing is who gets the lion. The predator image, normally reserved for warriors on the attack, is given to a grieving woman lying still — and it casts her as the cornered one, not the hunter. And the ring the hunters draw is δόλιον, 'crafty,' the very word for a trap: the simile's snare quietly rhymes with the real ambush the suitors have set for her son.
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