Odyssey 5.244 · Book 5, lines 244–248
He hews, planes, bores, and pegs the timbers
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εἴκοσι δʼ ἔκβαλε πάντα, πελέκκησεν δʼ ἄρα χαλκῷ, ξέσσε δʼ ἐπισταμένως καὶ ἐπὶ στάθμην ἴθυνεν. τόφρα δʼ ἔνεικε τέρετρα Καλυψώ, δῖα θεάων· τέτρηνεν δʼ ἄρα πάντα καὶ ἥρμοσεν ἀλλήλοισιν, γόμφοισιν δʼ ἄρα τήν γε καὶ ἁρμονίῃσιν ἄρασσεν.
Twenty in all he felled, then trimmed them with the bronze, planed them skilfully and trued them to the line. Meanwhile Calypso, shining among goddesses, brought him augers; and he bored them all and fitted them to one another, and with pegs and fastenings he hammered it together.
Word by word
The setting
Odysseus has felled the tall timber Calypso showed him. These lines follow the raft's construction in close, technical detail — trimming, smoothing, boring, fitting — with the goddess herself bringing the tools he needs.
A note on this passage
The lines read like a shipwright's manual: twenty trees down, trimmed with the axe, planed smooth, straightened to the chalk-line, bored, fitted, and driven together with pegs and joints. Calypso keeps supplying what the work needs — now the augers. It is a full account of a craft, given step by ordered step.
What the detail insists on is competence. The chalk-line and the word ‘skilfully’ mark a builder who measures and trues, not one who lashes logs in a panic; the raft is being joined like a real hull. And a goddess is fetching his tools — the divine reduced, for once, to a carpenter's mate. Odysseus's genius in this poem is very often just this: knowing how a thing is properly made.
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