Odyssey 4.82 · Book 4, lines 82–86
Eight years, and the horned lambs of Libya
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ἠγαγόμην ἐν νηυσὶ καὶ ὀγδοάτῳ ἔτει ἦλθον, Κύπρον Φοινίκην τε καὶ Αἰγυπτίους ἐπαληθείς, Αἰθίοπάς θʼ ἱκόμην καὶ Σιδονίους καὶ Ἐρεμβοὺς καὶ Λιβύην, ἵνα τʼ ἄρνες ἄφαρ κεραοὶ τελέθουσι. τρὶς γὰρ τίκτει μῆλα τελεσφόρον εἰς ἐνιαυτόν.
I brought it home in my ships, and came back in the eighth year, wandering to Cyprus, Phoenicia, the Egyptians, reaching the Aethiopians, the Sidonians and Erembi, and Libya, where lambs are born horned at once — for thrice a year the flocks bear young, in the full year's round.
Word by word
The setting
Menelaus lists the far places his homeward voyage from Troy dragged him through — Cyprus, Phoenicia, Egypt, the Aethiopians, Sidon, the mysterious Erembi, and Libya. Everywhere he gathered the wealth Telemachus admires; and Libya he singles out for a marvel, a land so rich its lambs are born already horned and its flocks breed three times a year.
A note on this passage
The catalogue of wanderings does two things at once: it accounts for the treasure and it maps the edges of the known world. Eight years to come home, by way of Egypt and Phoenicia and lands at the rim of Greek knowledge. Then a traveller's marvel — Libya, where lambs come horned from the womb and the ewes bear three times over in a single year.
The number is the sting under the wonders. Eight years — the same span of exile that shapes the whole poem — and Menelaus names it lightly, in passing, as the price of his gold. He does not yet say the worst of it, but the next lines will: while he drifted rich and late across the south, the thing that mattered was happening at home. The wandering that filled his ships was emptying his brother's house.
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