Odyssey 5.327 · Book 5, lines 327–330
Adrift like windblown thistles
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τὴν δʼ ἐφόρει μέγα κῦμα κατὰ ῥόον ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα. ὡς δʼ ὅτʼ ὀπωρινὸς Βορέης φορέῃσιν ἀκάνθας ἂμ πεδίον, πυκιναὶ δὲ πρὸς ἀλλήλῃσιν ἔχονται, ὣς τὴν ἂμ πέλαγος ἄνεμοι φέρον ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα·
The great wave bore the raft along the current, this way and that. As when the autumnal North Wind drives thistles over a plain, and close-packed they cling to one another, so over the deep the winds bore it this way and that.
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The setting
The wrecked raft, with Odysseus aboard, is swept back and forth by the storm. Homer marks the moment with a simile from the farmer's world — thistles driven across a plain by the autumn wind.
A note on this passage
The wave carries the raft along the current, tossing it back and forth. Then Homer reaches for a simile out of dry farmland: as the autumn North Wind drives dead thistles across a field and they clump close together, so the winds drive the raft this way and that across the open sea.
The comparison is deliberately small. A great hero adrift on the deep is likened to windblown weeds — light, rootless, entirely at the mercy of the air. The point is not grandeur but helplessness: the raft has no more will of its own than a dried thistle. Homer gauges the sea's power by how trivial it makes the thing it moves.
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