Odyssey 9.161 · Book 9, lines 161–165
A day of feasting, and the wine of Ismarus
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ὣς τότε μὲν πρόπαν ἦμαρ ἐς ἠέλιον καταδύντα ἥμεθα δαινύμενοι κρέα τʼ ἄσπετα καὶ μέθυ ἡδύ· οὐ γάρ πω νηῶν ἐξέφθιτο οἶνος ἐρυθρός, ἀλλʼ ἐνέην· πολλὸν γὰρ ἐν ἀμφιφορεῦσιν ἕκαστοι ἠφύσαμεν Κικόνων. ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἑλόντες.
So then all the day, until the setting sun, we sat feasting on meat past telling and sweet wine. For not yet was the red wine from the ships used up; but there was still within, for each crew had drawn off great store in the jars of the Cicones, when they took their sacred citadel.
Word by word
The setting
With the goats taken, the crews feast the whole day. Odysseus notes that the wine has not run out — they had carried off great jars of it earlier, when they sacked the city of the Cicones at Ismarus, the raid that opened his wanderings.
A note on this passage
A single long day of eating and drinking, told plainly. The men sit from morning to sunset over roasted goat and sweet wine, and the store still holds because they had filled their jars at Ismarus, the Ciconian town they had stormed at the start of the return.
The undercurrent runs backward. This good wine is plunder, and the raid that supplied it had ended badly — the Cicones rallied and killed six men from every ship. The same word, ‘having taken the sacred citadel,’ that flavours this feast also names the first disaster of the homeward road. Homer lets the comfort quietly carry the memory of its cost.
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