Odyssey 5.95 · Book 5, lines 95–96
Fed, the messenger turns to answer
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αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ δείπνησε καὶ ἤραρε θυμὸν ἐδωδῇ, καὶ τότε δή μιν ἔπεσσιν ἀμειβόμενος προσέειπεν·
But when he had dined and satisfied his heart with food, then indeed, answering her with words, he addressed her:
Word by word
The setting
The feast closes. Only when a Homeric guest has eaten does he state why he has come — and only then does Calypso get her answer.
A note on this passage
Two lines of transition. The eating is done; the messenger closes the meal and opens his mouth. The formula ‘answering with words he addressed her’ is one of the poem's commonest hinges between action and speech.
The small point worth catching is the sequence the verse insists on. He speaks only after he is fed and content — the guest discharges his errand from inside the host's kindness, not before it. The delay is not idleness but manners, and it makes what he is about to say — that she must lose the man she loves — land as a breach opened from within her own hospitality.
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