Odyssey 9.211 · Book 9, lines 211–215
The wine, and a proud heart's foreboding
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θεσπεσίη· τότʼ ἂν οὔ τοι ἀποσχέσθαι φίλον ἦεν. τοῦ φέρον ἐμπλήσας ἀσκὸν μέγαν, ἐν δὲ καὶ ᾖα κωρύκῳ· αὐτίκα γάρ μοι ὀίσατο θυμὸς ἀγήνωρ ἄνδρʼ ἐπελεύσεσθαι μεγάλην ἐπιειμένον ἀλκήν, ἄγριον, οὔτε δίκας ἐὺ εἰδότα οὔτε θέμιστας.
[It was] divine; then it was no pleasure to hold back from it. Of this I carried a great skin filled to the brim, and provisions too in a leather sack; for at once my proud heart foreboded to me that a man would approach, clothed in great might — a savage, who knew well neither judgments nor ordinances.
Word by word
The setting
Odysseus has just described Maron's wondrous wine, given to him at Ismarus. Here he packs a great skin of it and provisions before setting out for the Cyclops's cave — because his fighting instinct already warns him of the lawless creature he is about to meet.
A note on this passage
The lines close the wine-story and open the trap. The wine is so overpowering that no one could bear to keep from it; Odysseus fills a skin of it and takes food besides. Then the reason surfaces: his bold heart foresaw an encounter with a huge, savage man who knew neither right nor law.
The undercurrent is foresight arming itself. Odysseus does not yet know it is the wine that will save them, but the poem lets his instinct pack the very weapon the cunning will later use. The phrase 'knowing neither judgments nor laws' measures the Cyclops against the whole Greek order of things — the same civic words, δίκη and θέμις, the poem uses for human community — and sets him outside it before we have even seen him.
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