Odyssey 9.299 · Book 9, lines 299–300
Odysseus reaches for his sword
Read the full text in our reader
τὸν μὲν ἐγὼ βούλευσα κατὰ μεγαλήτορα θυμὸν ἆσσον ἰών, ξίφος ὀξὺ ἐρυσσάμενος παρὰ μηροῦ,
Him I plotted against within my great-hearted spirit — going up closer, and drawing my sharp sword from beside my thigh,
Word by word
The setting
The giant sleeps. Odysseus, thinking it through, first has the obvious impulse — draw his sword, step close, and kill. The sentence breaks off here; the second thought that stops him comes next.
A note on this passage
The counter-move begins as the simplest one. Odysseus turns the problem over inside himself and reaches for the sword: step up to the sleeping giant and run him through. For a moment the answer looks like force.
The undercurrent is what the sentence does not yet say. It stops on a comma, mid-plan, because the plan is wrong — a dead Cyclops cannot roll back the great stone that seals the door, and they would die entombed. The pause is the hinge of the whole episode: the place where brute strength fails and Odysseus's real weapon, patience and trickery, has to take over.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 9.299 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
From the Great Library
You are reading a page of the Odyssey — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Odyssey 9.299 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/9.299/