Odyssey 9.177 · Book 9, lines 177–180
Casting off for the Cyclopes' shore
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ὣς εἰπὼν ἀνὰ νηὸς ἔβην, ἐκέλευσα δʼ ἑταίρους αὐτούς τʼ ἀμβαίνειν ἀνά τε πρυμνήσια λῦσαι. οἱ δʼ αἶψʼ εἴσβαινον καὶ ἐπὶ κληῖσι καθῖζον, ἑξῆς δʼ ἑζόμενοι πολιὴν ἅλα τύπτον ἐρετμοῖς.
So saying, I went up onto the ship, and bade my companions themselves embark and loose the stern-cables. They quickly embarked and sat down at the thole-pins, and, seated in rows, they struck the grey sea with their oars.
Word by word
The setting
His plan announced, Odysseus boards his single ship with its crew, and they row off from the goat island toward the land of the Cyclopes.
A note on this passage
A short departure scene, built from the standard verbs of putting to sea: board, cast off the stern-cables, take the benches, strike the water. The men obey at once and the ship pulls away toward the mainland.
The undercurrent is the formula's calm. This same tidy launch-sequence recurs all through the poem, the settled routine of seamen who know their work. Here it carries them, briskly and without foreboding, straight toward the worst thing in the Odyssey. The steadiness of the ‘grey sea struck with oars’ is exactly what makes the coming cave so sudden.
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