Odyssey 6.1 · Book 6, lines 1–6
Athena leaves the sleeper for Scheria
Read the full text in our reader
ὣς ὁ μὲν ἔνθα καθεῦδε πολύτλας δῖος Ὀδυσσεὺς ὕπνῳ καὶ καμάτῳ ἀρημένος· αὐτὰρ Ἀθήνη βῆ ῥʼ ἐς Φαιήκων ἀνδρῶν δῆμόν τε πόλιν τε, οἳ πρὶν μέν ποτʼ ἔναιον ἐν εὐρυχόρῳ Ὑπερείῃ, ἀγχοῦ Κυκλώπων ἀνδρῶν ὑπερηνορεόντων, οἵ σφεας σινέσκοντο, βίηφι δὲ φέρτεροι ἦσαν.
So there he slept, much-enduring noble Odysseus, worn down by sleep and weariness; but Athena went to the land and city of the Phaeacian men, who once dwelt in spacious Hypereia, near the Cyclopes, overbearing men, who kept plundering them, and were stronger in force.
Word by word
The setting
Odysseus has washed ashore, exhausted, on the island of the Phaeacians and fallen asleep in a bed of leaves. The poem now turns from the sleeping hero to the goddess Athena, and sketches the history of the people whose land he has reached.
A note on this passage
Odysseus drops out of the poem for a moment — asleep in the leaves, named with his great formula, ‘much-enduring,’ just after the endurance that nearly killed him. The camera lifts to Athena, who leaves him to sleep and crosses to the Phaeacians' town. The lines then unspool the people's history: once they lived at Hypereia, hard by the Cyclopes, who raided them until they moved.
The undercurrent is the neighbor named. Before Odysseus reaches the one people who will finally ferry him home, the poem quietly sets the Cyclopes beside them — the very race whose son he blinded, the wound that set Poseidon raging. The Phaeacians' rescuers-to-be are defined by having fled the monster the hero provoked.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 6.1 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 6.1 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/6.1/