Odyssey 5.380 · Book 5, lines 380–382
Poseidon departs; Athena steps in
Read the full text in our reader
ὣς ἄρα φωνήσας ἵμασεν καλλίτριχας ἵππους, ἵκετο δʼ εἰς Αἰγάς, ὅθι οἱ κλυτὰ δώματʼ ἔασιν. αὐτὰρ Ἀθηναίη κούρη Διὸς ἄλλʼ ἐνόησεν.
So speaking, he lashed his fair-maned horses and came to Aegae, where his glorious halls stand. But Athena, daughter of Zeus, planned otherwise.
Word by word
The setting
His curse spoken, Poseidon drives his chariot off to Aegae, one of his cult-seats, where his undersea palace lies. With the sea-god gone, his old adversary Athena is free to act for Odysseus.
A note on this passage
A clean scene-change built on a single word: but. Poseidon exits in full divine grandeur — the whipped horses, the glorious halls — and the moment his back is turned the sentence pivots to Athena, who 'planned other things.' The poem uses the god's departure the way it used his feast among the Aethiopians in Book 1: the persecutor must leave the room before help can come.
The pattern is the deep structure of the whole epic. Odysseus survives in the gaps of divine attention, protected by one god exactly when another looks away. Athena's ἄλλʼ ἐνόησεν — 'she thought otherwise' — quietly sets the two divine wills against each other with the man's life between them. His rescue is not his own doing here but the swing of a balance he cannot see.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 5.380 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
From the Great Library
You are reading a page of the Odyssey — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Odyssey 5.380 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/5.380/