Odyssey 5.461 · Book 5, lines 461–463
The veil returns; he kisses the earth
Read the full text in our reader
ἂψ δʼ ἔφερεν μέγα κῦμα κατὰ ῥόον, αἶψα δʼ ἄρʼ Ἰνὼ δέξατο χερσὶ φίλῃσιν· ὁ δʼ ἐκ ποταμοῖο λιασθεὶς σχοίνῳ ὑπεκλίνθη, κύσε δὲ ζείδωρον ἄρουραν.
And a great wave bore it back down the current, and quickly then Ino received it in her own dear hands; but he, out of the river slipping away, sank down beneath the reeds, and kissed the grain-giving earth.
Word by word
The setting
The rescue closes. The veil Odysseus has cast off is carried back to its owner, and the exhausted man pulls clear of the river onto solid ground.
A note on this passage
Two motions run at once. The veil floats back downstream and Ino's own hands take it up — the loan repaid, the goddess withdrawing from the story. Meanwhile Odysseus drags himself out of the river, drops into the reeds, and kisses the ground.
That kiss is the homecoming theme in miniature. He is not on Ithaca; Scheria is one more strange coast. But the earth itself — ζείδωρος ἄρουρα, the grain-giving ground of settled human life — is what he has been starved of on Calypso's island and in the empty sea. The epithet quietly opposes two worlds: the barren immortality Calypso offered, and the mortal soil that feeds men and that Odysseus, choosing to stay a man, chose. He kisses land, any land, because land is life on human terms.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 5.461 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 5.461 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/5.461/