Odyssey 9.259 · Book 9, lines 259–262
Achaeans, blown off course from Troy
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Odysseus — ἡμεῖς τοι Τροίηθεν ἀποπλαγχθέντες Ἀχαιοὶ παντοίοις ἀνέμοισιν ὑπὲρ μέγα λαῖτμα θαλάσσης, οἴκαδε ἱέμενοι, ἄλλην ὁδὸν ἄλλα κέλευθα ἤλθομεν· οὕτω που Ζεὺς ἤθελε μητίσασθαι.
We are Achaeans, driven off course from Troy, you must know, by winds of every kind over the great gulf of the sea; longing for home, by another road, over other paths, we came. So, somehow, Zeus willed to contrive it.
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The setting
Odysseus replies as any returning Greek would: veterans of Troy, driven far from their route by storms, their wandering laid to the will of Zeus.
A note on this passage
The answer is true and careful. They are Achaeans homeward from Troy, scattered by every wind across the sea's great gulf, arrived here by no road they chose. He lays the detour to Zeus — the pious, ordinary way to explain a wreck.
The undercurrent is what he withholds. He gives Troy, gives Agamemnon's name next, gives the gods — everything but his own name, which he is keeping back. And the word for Zeus's willing, μητίσασθαι, 'to contrive,' is built from μῆτις, cunning: the very faculty Odysseus will use to survive this cave. He credits the god with the scheming even as he readies his own.
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