Odyssey 4.87 · Book 4, lines 87–90
Plenty abroad, and the sentence that breaks
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ἔνθα μὲν οὔτε ἄναξ ἐπιδευὴς οὔτε τι ποιμὴν τυροῦ καὶ κρειῶν οὐδὲ γλυκεροῖο γάλακτος, ἀλλʼ αἰεὶ παρέχουσιν ἐπηετανὸν γάλα θῆσθαι. ἧος ἐγὼ περὶ κεῖνα πολὺν βίοτον συναγείρων
There neither lord nor any shepherd goes short of cheese and meat, nor sweet milk; but they always yield milk to draw in unfailing plenty. And while I roamed those lands, gathering much livelihood,
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The setting
Menelaus finishes describing the southern lands' plenty — where masters and shepherds alike always have cheese, meat, and milk in abundance — and turns back to himself: while he was amassing that wealth abroad, something was happening at home. The sentence breaks off here, on the word ‘gathering,’ and the next lines will spring the trap.
A note on this passage
The marvel of Libya finishes on pure abundance: nobody there, lord or herdsman, ever wants for cheese or meat or milk; the flocks give without stint, all year round. Then Menelaus swings the sentence back to himself and his gathering of wealth — and the poem cuts him off mid-clause, ‘while I was gathering much livelihood…’
That broken sentence is the hinge of the whole speech. The abundance abroad is about to be set against a catastrophe at home: even as Menelaus grew rich among strangers, his brother Agamemnon was being cut down by the man in his own house. The Agamemnon-story shadows the Odyssey from its first scene, and here it surfaces inside Menelaus's own boast. The wealth he is proud of is the very absence that let the murder happen; Sparta's plenty and Mycenae's blood are the two halves of one sentence.
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