Odyssey 5.402 · Book 5, lines 402–405
No harbor, only rock
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ῥόχθει γὰρ μέγα κῦμα ποτὶ ξερὸν ἠπείροιο δεινὸν ἐρευγόμενον, εἴλυτο δὲ πάνθʼ ἁλὸς ἄχνῃ· οὐ γὰρ ἔσαν λιμένες νηῶν ὄχοι, οὐδʼ ἐπιωγαί. ἀλλʼ ἀκταὶ προβλῆτες ἔσαν σπιλάδες τε πάγοι τε·
For the great wave roared against the dry land of the shore, belching up terribly, and all was shrouded in the sea's spray; for there were no harbors to hold ships, no sheltered roadsteads — only jutting headlands, reefs and crags.
Word by word
The setting
Odysseus hears the surf; the narrator now shows him — and us — the coast he is swimming toward.
A note on this passage
The reason for the booming, laid out flat. A huge wave keeps crashing on the dry rock and spewing back, until the whole coast is lost in blown spray. There is no harbour, no anchorage, no sheltered water of any kind — only headlands that jut into the sea and the reefs and crags at their feet.
The passage is built as pure catalogue of what is missing. Homer names the good things a sailor needs — harbours, moorings, roadsteads — only to strike each one out with a 'not' before listing what is actually there. The shore is described by its refusals, so that the rock reads less like geography than like a door shut in the swimmer's face.
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