Odyssey 9.331 · Book 9, lines 331–335
The lots for the stake
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αὐτὰρ τοὺς ἄλλους κλήρῳ πεπαλάσθαι ἄνωγον, ὅς τις τολμήσειεν ἐμοὶ σὺν μοχλὸν ἀείρας τρῖψαι ἐν ὀφθαλμῷ, ὅτε τὸν γλυκὺς ὕπνος ἱκάνοι. οἱ δʼ ἔλαχον τοὺς ἄν κε καὶ ἤθελον αὐτὸς ἑλέσθαι, τέσσαρες, αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ πέμπτος μετὰ τοῖσιν ἐλέγμην.
But I bade the rest cast lots — which of them would dare, lifting the stake with me, to grind it in his eye when sweet sleep should come over him. And they drew by lot the very ones I myself would have wished to choose — four of them, and I, the fifth, was numbered among them.
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The setting
Odysseus has hidden the great olive stake and hardened its point in the fire. Now, inside the sealed cave, he must choose which of his men will help him drive it into the sleeping giant's single eye. He leaves it to the lot.
A note on this passage
The plan is set and the danger shared out by lot. Odysseus will not simply command four men to the most terrible task; he lets chance pick them, and the lot falls on exactly the four he would have chosen himself. He counts himself the fifth, at the head of the deed he devised.
Under the practical detail runs the ethic of a leader who does not spare himself. The casting of lots is fairness, but it is also how a captain shares a risk he cannot order another to take alone. That he is 'the fifth,' numbered among them rather than standing apart, is the quiet answer to the recklessness that first brought them into the cave.
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