Odyssey 9.407 · Book 9, lines 407–410
‘Nobody is killing me’
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τοὺς δʼ αὖτʼ ἐξ ἄντρου προσέφη κρατερὸς Πολύφημος·
Polyphemus — ὦ φίλοι, Οὖτίς με κτείνει δόλῳ οὐδὲ βίηφιν.
Odysseus — οἱ δʼ ἀπαμειβόμενοι ἔπεα πτερόεντʼ ἀγόρευον·
The other Cyclopes — εἰ μὲν δὴ μή τίς σε βιάζεται οἶον ἐόντα,
And to them in turn from the cave mighty Polyphemus answered: O friends, Nobody is killing me by guile, and not by force. And they, answering, spoke winged words: If indeed no one is forcing you, alone as you are —
Word by word
The setting
Polyphemus answers his neighbours from inside the cave — using the name Odysseus gave him, Οὖτις, ‘Nobody.’
A note on this passage
Here is the hinge of the whole episode. Asked who is hurting him, Polyphemus answers with the name he was given: ‘Nobody is killing me by guile, not by force.’ He means the man called Nobody. His neighbours hear only the ordinary words ‘nobody is killing me,’ and begin to reason from them.
The trick is untranslatable. Οὖτις, ‘Nobody,’ is all but identical to μή τις, ‘not anyone’ — the exact phrase the Cyclopes had just used. So the alarm ‘Nobody is hurting me’ reaches them as ‘no one is hurting him,’ and there is nothing to rescue. Behind that surface pun runs a second: Οὖτις chimes with μῆτις, ‘cunning.’ The false name is itself the craft, and it sounds like the word for craft.
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