Odyssey 7.222 · Book 7, lines 222–225
Only let me see Ithaca, then die
Read the full text in our reader
ὑμεῖς δʼ ὀτρύνεσθαι ἅμʼ ἠοῖ φαινομένηφιν, ὥς κʼ ἐμὲ τὸν δύστηνον ἐμῆς ἐπιβήσετε πάτρης· καί περ πολλὰ παθόντα· ἰδόντα με καὶ λίποι αἰὼν κτῆσιν ἐμήν, δμῶάς τε καὶ ὑψερεφὲς μέγα δῶμα.
But you, bestir yourselves at the showing of dawn, so that you may set me, wretched as I am, upon my own native land, and though I have suffered much; and once I have seen my possessions, my slaves and the great high-roofed house — may life leave me.
Word by word
The setting
Odysseus closes his appeal by asking the Phaeacians to launch him homeward at daybreak. He asks for one thing above survival itself: to reach his own land and look on his house.
A note on this passage
The request becomes concrete and urgent: rouse the crew at dawn and put him ashore in his own country. Then comes the startling clause — once he has seen his possessions, his slaves, his great roofed house, let life leave him. He asks to arrive more than he asks to live.
The undercurrent is the whole poem's definition of a life. What Odysseus names is not glory or revenge but property and household — the ordered world of home, νόστος made of walls and people. To an audience that knows the suitors are eating that house alive, the wish to ‘see it and then die’ lands hard: he does not yet know whether there will be anything left to see.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 7.222 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 7.222 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/7.222/