Odyssey 6.130 · Book 6, lines 130–134
Like a mountain lion driven by hunger
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βῆ δʼ ἴμεν ὥς τε λέων ὀρεσίτροφος ἀλκὶ πεποιθώς, ὅς τʼ εἶσʼ ὑόμενος καὶ ἀήμενος, ἐν δέ οἱ ὄσσε δαίεται· αὐτὰρ ὁ βουσὶ μετέρχεται ἢ ὀίεσσιν ἠὲ μετʼ ἀγροτέρας ἐλάφους· κέλεται δέ ἑ γαστὴρ μήλων πειρήσοντα καὶ ἐς πυκινὸν δόμον ἐλθεῖν·
He set out to go like a mountain-bred lion trusting in his might, who goes out rained on and wind-blown, and his two eyes blaze within him; and he goes after the cattle or the sheep, or after the wild deer; and his belly bids him to make trial of the flocks and even to enter the well-fenced fold.
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The setting
Homer catches the moment of Odysseus's advance in a full epic simile: the naked man moving on the girls is likened to a starving hill-lion driven down out of the weather onto the flocks.
A note on this passage
The advance is given a simile, as great actions are. Odysseus stepping toward the girls becomes a mountain lion in foul weather — rain-soaked, wind-battered, eyes alight — driven by an empty belly to raid cattle, sheep or deer, and to risk the fenced farmstead itself. The likeness carries his need, his danger, and the fear he is about to cause.
But the comparison cuts two ways, and that is its art. The lion is a predator; the girls are the flock. For an instant the poem lets Odysseus look like a threat closing on the helpless — exactly what Nausicaa's maids will take him for. Yet the driving force named is not cruelty but hunger, γαστήρ, the belly: this is a starving man, not a killer, and the simile quietly asks us to hold both readings at once.
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