Odyssey 9.22 · Book 9, lines 22–24
Neriton, and the islands around
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Νήριτον εἰνοσίφυλλον, ἀριπρεπές· ἀμφὶ δὲ νῆσοι πολλαὶ ναιετάουσι μάλα σχεδὸν ἀλλήλῃσι, Δουλίχιόν τε Σάμη τε καὶ ὑλήεσσα Ζάκυνθος.
Neriton, trembling with leaves, conspicuous; and around it lie many islands, very close to one another, Doulichion and Same and wooded Zacynthus.
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The setting
Odysseus keeps describing his homeland: its mountain and the neighboring islands of his realm. The catalogue of names is brief but precise — the map a man carries of the place he longs for.
A note on this passage
The description of Ithaca widens to its neighbors: Mount Neriton with its shivering leaves, and the ring of islands close by — Doulichion, Same, wooded Zacynthus. It is a small, exact map, spoken from memory.
The tenderness is in the detail. A man who has lost his home names each piece of it, and the one full epithet he spends is on the mountain's trembling foliage — a whole hillside of moving leaves caught in a single word. This is not a stranger's geography lesson but a homesick king counting over what is his.
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