Odyssey 9.187 · Book 9, lines 187–192
A man like a mountain
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ἔνθα δʼ ἀνὴρ ἐνίαυε πελώριος, ὅς ῥα τὰ μῆλα οἶος ποιμαίνεσκεν ἀπόπροθεν· οὐδὲ μετʼ ἄλλους πωλεῖτʼ, ἀλλʼ ἀπάνευθεν ἐὼν ἀθεμίστια ᾔδη. καὶ γὰρ θαῦμʼ ἐτέτυκτο πελώριον, οὐδὲ ἐῴκει ἀνδρί γε σιτοφάγῳ, ἀλλὰ ῥίῳ ὑλήεντι ὑψηλῶν ὀρέων, ὅ τε φαίνεται οἶον ἀπʼ ἄλλων.
There a monstrous man made his lodging, who alone would shepherd the flocks far off; nor did he go among others, but keeping apart he knew only lawless ways. For indeed he was fashioned a monstrous marvel, and did not resemble a bread-eating man, but rather a wooded peak of high mountains, that stands out alone, apart from the rest.
Word by word
The setting
The dweller in the cave. Before the Cyclops is seen doing anything, Homer takes his measure: solitary, gigantic, and — the loaded word — lawless.
A note on this passage
A giant herdsman lives there alone, pasturing his flocks apart and mixing with no one. He is a monstrous thing to look at, unlike any bread-eating man, more like a forested mountain-peak standing off by itself. The whole portrait is of separation and size.
The key word is ἀθεμίστια, 'lawless' — literally 'having no θέμις,' no share in the settled order that binds hosts to guests and men to assemblies. His solitude (οἶος, ἀπάνευθεν) is not just geography but a refusal of that order; he lives outside it as a mountain lives outside the fields. Homer files the charge in a single adjective, long before Polyphemus proves it by eating his guests. The terror is less the bulk than the lawlessness.
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