Odyssey 9.241 · Book 9, lines 241–243
The door-stone no wagons could move
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ὄβριμον· οὐκ ἂν τόν γε δύω καὶ εἴκοσʼ ἄμαξαι ἐσθλαὶ τετράκυκλοι ἀπʼ οὔδεος ὀχλίσσειαν· τόσσην ἠλίβατον πέτρην ἐπέθηκε θύρῃσιν.
— a mighty stone. Not even two and twenty good four-wheeled wagons could heave that stone up from the ground: such a towering rock he set in the doorway.
Word by word
The setting
Odysseus and twelve men are trapped in the Cyclops's cave. The giant Polyphemus has driven in his flocks and closed the mouth with a boulder — the stone that seals their fate.
A note on this passage
The lines measure the trap by its lid. Homer does not say the men are doomed; he weighs the stone — a rock two-and-twenty wagons could not stir — and lets the arithmetic carry the dread. The door is not locked; it is simply too heavy for any human strength.
The detail is also a promise about method. Force is ruled out in the same breath that names it: no team of wagons, no set of hands, will open this door. If the men leave, it will not be by strength but by wit — the poem quietly clears the board of every escape except the one Odysseus must invent.
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