Odyssey 5.249 · Book 5, lines 249–251
As broad as a cargo hull
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ὅσσον τίς τʼ ἔδαφος νηὸς τορνώσεται ἀνὴρ φορτίδος εὐρείης, ἐὺ εἰδὼς τεκτοσυνάων, τόσσον ἔπʼ εὐρεῖαν σχεδίην ποιήσατʼ Ὀδυσσεύς.
As broad as a man marks out the curving floor of a ship — a broad merchant vessel — one well skilled in the joiner's craft: so broad a raft did Odysseus make.
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The setting
A simile interrupts the building to give the raft's scale. Homer often pauses on a made thing to measure it against the wider world of human work — here, the beam of a merchant ship.
A note on this passage
A size-simile: the raft comes out as broad as the rounded floor a shipwright lays down for a wide merchant ship. Homer measures the improvised craft against a real, working hull, and the comparison turns on one thing — the skill of a man who knows joinery.
Most Odyssey similes reach outward, to lions or snowfall or a grieving widow. This one stays inside the same world as the scene it describes: craft compared to craft. For a moment Odysseus is folded into an anonymous type, ‘a man well skilled,’ the nameless expert shipwright. The effect is a quiet dignity — the lone survivor's raft granted the proportions and the competence of a merchantman.
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