Odyssey 5.441 · Book 5, lines 441–444
The mouth of the river
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ἀλλʼ ὅτε δὴ ποταμοῖο κατὰ στόμα καλλιρόοιο ἷξε νέων, τῇ δή οἱ ἐείσατο χῶρος ἄριστος, λεῖος πετράων, καὶ ἐπὶ σκέπας ἦν ἀνέμοιο, ἔγνω δὲ προρέοντα καὶ εὔξατο ὃν κατὰ θυμόν·
But when at last he came, swimming, to the mouth of a fair-flowing river, the ground there seemed to him the best, smooth and free of rocks, and there was shelter from the wind. He knew the god flowing forth, and prayed in his own heart:
Word by word
The setting
His search is answered. Swimming on, Odysseus reaches the mouth of a river — smooth, rock-free, sheltered from the wind — and understands that a god flows there. He prays.
A note on this passage
The landscape turns merciful for the first time. After pages of rock and surf, Homer gives four lines of relief: a river-mouth, smooth ground, no stones, a windbreak. The place is described exactly as a swimmer's body would judge it — what will not kill me, where can I get out.
Odysseus 'knew the one flowing forth' — he recognized the river itself as a god, and prayed. In this world every river has its deity, and courtesy to it is survival. Even ragged and half-drowned, he does the socially precise thing: he asks leave to come ashore. His first act on possibly saving ground is not to grab it but to petition for it.
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