Odyssey 5.125 · Book 5, lines 125–128
Demeter and Iasion — the second example
Read the full text in our reader
ὣς δʼ ὁπότʼ Ἰασίωνι ἐυπλόκαμος Δημήτηρ, ᾧ θυμῷ εἴξασα, μίγη φιλότητι καὶ εὐνῇ νειῷ ἔνι τριπόλῳ· οὐδὲ δὴν ἦεν ἄπυστος Ζεύς, ὅς μιν κατέπεφνε βαλὼν ἀργῆτι κεραυνῷ.
And so, when lovely-haired Demeter, yielding to her heart, lay in love and the bed with Iasion, in a thrice-ploughed fallow field — not for long was Zeus unaware, who slew him with a cast of the blazing thunderbolt.
Word by word
The setting
Calypso's second precedent. Demeter, goddess of grain, took the mortal Iasion as her lover in a ploughed field; Zeus, learning of it, struck Iasion down with a thunderbolt.
A note on this passage
The second case, matched to the first. Demeter, goddess of the grain, lay with the mortal Iasion in a ploughed field — a fertility union as old as farming — and Zeus killed him with a thunderbolt as soon as he learned of it. Two goddesses, two dead mortal lovers.
The setting does quiet work. The thrice-ploughed fallow field is where Demeter belongs; her love and her power over the crops are the same thing. Homer sets the killing in the furrow itself, so the punishment falls exactly where the goddess is most herself. Calypso, naming it, is measuring her own case against a divine pattern of loving and losing.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 5.125 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 5.125 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/5.125/