Odyssey 8.162 · Book 8, lines 162–165
The insult finished; the dark look
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ἀρχὸς ναυτάων οἵ τε πρηκτῆρες ἔασιν, φόρτου τε μνήμων καὶ ἐπίσκοπος ᾖσιν ὁδαίων κερδέων θʼ ἁρπαλέων· οὐδʼ ἀθλητῆρι ἔοικας. τὸν δʼ ἄρʼ ὑπόδρα ἰδὼν προσέφη πολύμητις Ὀδυσσεύς·
a captain of sailors who are traders, mindful of cargo, and one who keeps watch over wares and greedily-grasped gains. Nor do you look like an athlete. Then, gazing at him with a dark look, resourceful Odysseus spoke:
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The setting
Euryalus completes his taunt, casting the stranger as a grasping merchant rather than an athlete. The stinging answer is about to come.
A note on this passage
Euryalus drives the insult home: the stranger is a profit-minded skipper, not a sportsman — one who counts freight and grabs at gain, with nothing of the athlete about him. The narrator then swings to the reply with a charged formula: Odysseus looks at him from under his brows.
ὑπόδρα ἰδών, ‘glaring from under the brows,’ is a fixed Homeric signal, and it never introduces a mild answer — it is the look that precedes a cutting rebuke, worn elsewhere by Achilles and by Odysseus himself. The suppliant who a moment ago ‘sat longing for home’ now glowers; the insult has found the one nerve, pride, that the disguise cannot keep still.
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