Odyssey 5.365 · Book 5, lines 365–367
Poseidon raises the wave
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ἧος ὁ ταῦθʼ ὥρμαινε κατὰ φρένα καὶ κατὰ θυμόν, ὦρσε δʼ ἐπὶ μέγα κῦμα Ποσειδάων ἐνοσίχθων, δεινόν τʼ ἀργαλέον τε, κατηρεφές, ἤλασε δʼ αὐτόν.
While he pondered this in his mind and heart, Poseidon the earth-shaker raised against him a great wave, terrible and grievous, arching over him, and drove it upon him.
Word by word
The setting
Odysseus has just resolved to ride out the storm on his raft as long as it holds. The narrative now cuts from his thought to the god who is watching — and acting.
A note on this passage
The timing is exact and cruel: the very moment Odysseus finishes reasoning out how to survive, the god answers with the one thing his plan cannot survive. The line pairs his private deliberation with Poseidon's public act — a man's calculation set against a god's power, and the god moves first.
The wave is built up with three heavy words — terrible, grievous, arching over — before the verb that drives it down. Homer lets the swell tower in the sentence the way it towers over the raft, κατηρεφές naming a wave curved into a roof above him. The earth-shaker's title does its quiet work here: the god who cracks the ground now cracks the sea, and the epithet is not decoration but the exact force in play.
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