Odyssey 9.319 · Book 9, lines 319–324
The club like a ship's mast
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Κύκλωπος γὰρ ἔκειτο μέγα ῥόπαλον παρὰ σηκῷ, χλωρὸν ἐλαΐνεον· τὸ μὲν ἔκταμεν, ὄφρα φοροίη αὐανθέν. τὸ μὲν ἄμμες ἐίσκομεν εἰσορόωντες ὅσσον θʼ ἱστὸν νηὸς ἐεικοσόροιο μελαίνης, φορτίδος εὐρείης, ἥ τʼ ἐκπεράᾳ μέγα λαῖτμα· τόσσον ἔην μῆκος, τόσσον πάχος εἰσοράασθαι.
For there lay the Cyclops's great club beside the pen, green olive-wood, which he had cut so that he might carry it once dried. Looking at it we likened it to the mast of a ship, black and twenty-oared, a broad merchantman that crosses the great gulf: so great it was in length, so great in thickness to behold.
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The setting
The plan takes shape around a weapon already at hand: the Cyclops's own staff, lying by the sheep-pen.
A note on this passage
The weapon presents itself: a huge staff of green olive-wood lying by the sheep-pen, which the Cyclops had cut to carry once it seasoned. Sizing it up, the men compare it to the mast of a broad, twenty-oared merchant ship — that long, that thick.
The simile does exact work. Homer measures the club against a seagoing mast, the very thing that carries men home across the deep; the yardstick of the nostos becomes the yardstick of the escape. And the wood is olive — Athena's tree. The goddess Odysseus has just prayed to is already present in the raw material of his plan, waiting to be cut down to size.
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