Odyssey 9.219 · Book 9, lines 219–223
Cheeses and pens
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ταρσοὶ μὲν τυρῶν βρῖθον, στείνοντο δὲ σηκοὶ ἀρνῶν ἠδʼ ἐρίφων· διακεκριμέναι δὲ ἕκασται ἔρχατο, χωρὶς μὲν πρόγονοι, χωρὶς δὲ μέτασσαι, χωρὶς δʼ αὖθʼ ἕρσαι. ναῖον δʼ ὀρῷ ἄγγεα πάντα, γαυλοί τε σκαφίδες τε, τετυγμένα, τοῖς ἐνάμελγεν.
The racks were laden with cheeses, and the pens were crowded with lambs and kids, each kind kept apart, penned — the firstlings apart, the middlings apart, and apart again the newborns. All the vessels swam with whey — the pails and bowls, well-made, into which he milked.
Word by word
The setting
Inside the cave the men take in the Cyclops's dairy: racks of drying cheese, pens of young animals sorted by age, and vessels full of whey. This is the household of a herdsman, not a monster's lair.
A note on this passage
A careful inventory of a working dairy. The cheeses weigh down their racks; the pens are packed with lambs and kids, sorted into three ages — firstlings, middlings, newborns; the pails and bowls brim with whey. Everything is orderly, made by hand, and kept in its place.
The undercurrent is the shock of ordinary competence. The Cyclops will prove lawless and man-eating, yet his home is the tidy operation of a skilled shepherd — the animals graded, the vessels 'well-made.' Homer lets the domestic detail stand undramatized, so the horror to come lands against a background of homely order rather than of squalor. The threefold 'apart… apart… apart' even has the lulling rhythm of a well-run farm.
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