Odyssey 5.291 · Book 5, lines 291–294
The trident goes up; night falls from heaven
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ὣς εἰπὼν σύναγεν νεφέλας, ἐτάραξε δὲ πόντον χερσὶ τρίαιναν ἑλών· πάσας δʼ ὀρόθυνεν ἀέλλας παντοίων ἀνέμων, σὺν δὲ νεφέεσσι κάλυψε γαῖαν ὁμοῦ καὶ πόντον· ὀρώρει δʼ οὐρανόθεν νύξ.
So saying, he gathered the clouds and churned the sea, seizing his trident in his hands; and he roused all the blasts of winds of every kind, and hid with clouds both land and sea alike; and night rushed down from the sky.
Word by word
The setting
Poseidon has just vowed to give Odysseus his fill of suffering before he reaches safety. Now he acts, raising his trident over the sea within sight of Scheria.
A note on this passage
The vow becomes weather in one motion. Poseidon lifts the trident, and the verbs pile up without pause — gathered, churned, roused, hid — until every wind of every quarter is loose at once and cloud swallows the sea and the land together. It is a god working not with an army but with the air.
The held detail is the last one: night rushed down from the sky. It should be day; Odysseus sighted the hills in daylight. The darkness is not evening but the storm itself blotting out heaven, an unmaking of the ordinary world. Homer lets the sentence end there, on a false night falling over a man who has not slept in eighteen days.
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