Odyssey 5.301 · Book 5, lines 301–305
The prophecy comes true
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Odysseus — ἥ μʼ ἔφατʼ ἐν πόντῳ, πρὶν πατρίδα γαῖαν ἱκέσθαι, ἄλγεʼ ἀναπλήσειν· τὰ δὲ δὴ νῦν πάντα τελεῖται. οἵοισιν νεφέεσσι περιστέφει οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν Ζεύς, ἐτάραξε δὲ πόντον, ἐπισπέρχουσι δʼ ἄελλαι παντοίων ἀνέμων. νῦν μοι σῶς αἰπὺς ὄλεθρος.
She foretold to me, there on the sea, before I reached my native land, that I would fill up my measure of griefs; and now all this is coming to pass. With what storm-clouds Zeus wreathes round the wide heaven, and he has stirred the sea, and the blasts of winds of every kind press hard upon me. Now for me sheer destruction is sure.
Word by word
The setting
Odysseus, eighteen days out from Calypso's island, has just seen Poseidon raise a storm against his raft. Here he ends his lament by remembering the nymph's warning — that he would suffer at sea before reaching home — as the sky and sea break over him.
A note on this passage
Odysseus finishes recalling Calypso's warning — that he would suffer his fill of pain at sea before ever reaching home — and watches it come true in real time. Zeus packs the sky with cloud, churns the water, and looses winds from every quarter. The prophecy and the storm arrive in the same breath.
This is the hero's first extended speech in the poem, and it is not defiance but a kind of grim bookkeeping. 'Now all of it is being fulfilled' — τελεῖται, present tense, as if he were reading off a ledger. Odysseus meets disaster by naming it accurately; the mind that will outlast the sea is already at work, sorting what is happening from what he can do about it.
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