Odyssey 5.361 · Book 5, lines 361–364
Endure while the timbers hold
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Odysseus — ὄφρʼ ἂν μέν κεν δούρατʼ ἐν ἁρμονίῃσιν ἀρήρῃ, τόφρʼ αὐτοῦ μενέω καὶ τλήσομαι ἄλγεα πάσχων· αὐτὰρ ἐπὴν δή μοι σχεδίην διὰ κῦμα τινάξῃ, νήξομʼ, ἐπεὶ οὐ μέν τι πάρα προνοῆσαι ἄμεινον.
As long as the timbers hold fast in their joinings, so long will I stay here and endure, suffering pains; but when the wave shatters my raft apart, I will swim, since there is nothing better to plan ahead.
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The setting
Odysseus is already at sea on the raft he built on Calypso's island. Poseidon, spying him on his eighteenth day of sailing, has begun to pile up a storm. Here, alone, Odysseus reasons out his plan of survival — a soliloquy spoken to his own heart.
A note on this passage
Odysseus does the plainest thing a sailor can do in a rising sea: he counts what he has and decides how long it will last. The raft holds; he stays. When it breaks, he swims. The whole plan is that short, and it is entirely a plan of endurance — the verb he chooses for himself, τλήσομαι, is the root of his standing title, the man who bears things.
Under the calm arithmetic is a mind refusing panic. He does not pray, curse, or hope for rescue; he ranks his options and finds nothing better to foresee. This is the practical intelligence the poem prizes in him — not daring but calculation held steady while the water climbs. The reader meets the hero first as a man talking sense to himself in danger.
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