Odyssey 9.411 · Book 9, lines 411–414
The name and the flawless cunning
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The other Cyclopes — νοῦσον γʼ οὔ πως ἔστι Διὸς μεγάλου ἀλέασθαι, ἀλλὰ σύ γʼ εὔχεο πατρὶ Ποσειδάωνι ἄνακτι.
Odysseus — ὣς ἄρʼ ἔφαν ἀπιόντες, ἐμὸν δʼ ἐγέλασσε φίλον κῆρ, ὡς ὄνομʼ ἐξαπάτησεν ἐμὸν καὶ μῆτις ἀμύμων.
there is no way to escape the sickness of great Zeus; but you, for your part, pray to your father the lord Poseidon. So then they spoke as they went off; and my dear heart laughed within me, how my name and my flawless cunning had utterly deceived them.
Word by word
The setting
The neighbour Cyclopes draw the wrong conclusion and leave; Odysseus, listening, savours the trick — and Homer names the pun outright.
A note on this passage
The neighbours reason it out and go. If no one is forcing you, they say, then the sickness must come from Zeus, and there is no escaping that — pray to your father Poseidon. They walk off, and inside the cave Odysseus's heart laughs: the name has worked.
Then the poet says the quiet part aloud. His name (ὄνομα) and his ‘flawless cunning’ (μῆτις ἀμύμων) deceived them together — and Οὖτις, the name, sounds like μῆτις, the cunning. This is Homer certifying his own pun: the joke is his, the alias built to echo the very faculty, μῆτις, that makes Odysseus πολύμητις, ‘the man of many wiles.’ English can carry ‘Nobody’; it cannot carry that ‘Nobody’ rhymes with ‘cunning.’
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