Odyssey 6.118 · Book 6, lines 118–120
‘To what land have I come now?’
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ἑζόμενος δʼ ὥρμαινε κατὰ φρένα καὶ κατὰ θυμόν· ὤ μοι ἐγώ, τέων αὖτε βροτῶν ἐς γαῖαν ἱκάνω; ἦ ῥʼ οἵ γʼ ὑβρισταί τε καὶ ἄγριοι οὐδὲ δίκαιοι,
and sitting up he pondered in mind and heart: Ah, wretched me, to the land of what mortals have I now come again? Surely they are violent and wild and unjust,
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The setting
The girls' shout has woken Odysseus where he slept, naked and salt-crusted, under the olive scrub. He sits up and begins to reason his way through his fear. His words break off unfinished, continuing past this passage.
A note on this passage
Odysseus wakes to voices and, before he has seen anything, runs his mind over the danger: whose country is this — are they savage and lawless, or god-fearing and kind to strangers? He sits up and talks himself through it, the wary reflex of a man who has landed on too many unknown shores.
This is a set question in the Odyssey; he asks a version of it each time he washes up somewhere new. Underneath it is the world's one law of survival, xenia — whether strangers are given guest-welcome or destroyed. The comedy is in the gap the reader can see and he cannot: he braces for wild men, and what actually found him is a girl and her maids at their laundry.
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Odyssey 6.118 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/6.118/