Odyssey 5.464 · Book 5, lines 464–465
He takes counsel with his own heart
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ὀχθήσας δʼ ἄρα εἶπε πρὸς ὃν μεγαλήτορα θυμόν·
Odysseus — ὤ μοι ἐγώ, τί πάθω; τί νύ μοι μήκιστα γένηται;
Then, vexed, he spoke to his own great-hearted spirit: Ah, woe is me — what am I to suffer? What now in the end will become of me?
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The setting
The type-scene of a hero deliberating with his θυμός (spirit). Odysseus, safe but exposed on an unknown shore as night falls, weighs what to do.
A note on this passage
The rescue over, the poet turns Odysseus inward. The line that opens the speech is a fixed formula — 'vexed, he spoke to his own great-hearted spirit' — and it marks a very Odyssean habit: he does not cry out to the gods but debates with himself.
The doubled question is real fear, not rhetoric. Safe on land, he immediately sees the next danger and asks what is now to become of him. This is the mind the whole poem runs on: the man who, even flat in the mud, keeps calculating. Homer calls the spirit he addresses μεγαλήτωρ, 'great-hearted' — the standard warrior epithet — but here that great heart is not charging an enemy; it is a lonely council of one, weighing how to survive the night.
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