Odyssey 5.424 · Book 5, lines 424–427
The wave and the rugged shore
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ἧος ὁ ταῦθʼ ὥρμαινε κατὰ φρένα καὶ κατὰ θυμόν, τόφρα δέ μιν μέγα κῦμα φέρε τρηχεῖαν ἐπʼ ἀκτήν. ἔνθα κʼ ἀπὸ ῥινοὺς δρύφθη, σὺν δʼ ὀστέʼ ἀράχθη, εἰ μὴ ἐπὶ φρεσὶ θῆκε θεά, γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη·
While he pondered this in his mind and in his heart, meanwhile a great wave bore him toward the rugged shore. There his skin would have been stripped off, and his bones crushed together, had not the goddess, grey-eyed Athena, put a thought in his mind:
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The setting
The narration resumes. While Odysseus turns his fears over, the sea decides for him: a great wave sweeps him toward a jagged coast where he would have been torn apart — until Athena steps in.
A note on this passage
Two lines of inward debate are cut off by one line of force: the wave simply carries him where it wants, onto rock. Homer then shows what nearly happened — skin flayed, bones smashed together — before telling us it was prevented. The near-death is made vivid first, the rescue second.
The save is small and mental. Athena does not still the sea or lift him clear; she 'puts it in his mind' to seize the rock. Divine help in the Odyssey is often exactly this — a timely thought, a clearing of the head — and it works only because Odysseus is the kind of man who can act on it. Grey-eyed Athena and much-enduring Odysseus are a partnership of wits.
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