Odyssey 9.481 · Book 9, lines 481–484
The mountain-peak falls just short
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ἧκε δʼ ἀπορρήξας κορυφὴν ὄρεος μεγάλοιο, κὰδ δʼ ἔβαλε προπάροιθε νεὸς κυανοπρῴροιο τυτθόν, ἐδεύησεν δʼ οἰήιον ἄκρον ἱκέσθαι, ἐκλύσθη δὲ θάλασσα κατερχομένης ὑπὸ πέτρης·
He let fly, breaking off the peak of a great mountain, and cast it down just before the dark-prowed ship, by a little; it fell short of reaching the rudder's very tip; and the sea surged up beneath the rock as it came down.
Word by word
The setting
Odysseus and his men have rowed clear of the Cyclops's harbour after blinding Polyphemus. Now, enraged, the giant hurls a piece of the mountain after the sound of the ship.
A note on this passage
The escape is not over. From the shore the blinded giant tears off a whole mountain-peak and throws it; the poem measures the miss in a single word, τυτθόν — 'by a little' — and the boulder drops just past the rudder, raising a wave that all but shoves the ship back to land.
The undercurrent is scale. A man's whole survival now hangs on a few feet of sea and the blind aim of a creature who can uproot a summit. Homer keeps the accounting exact — the tip of the steering-oar, a little — so that the reader feels how thin the margin is between the clever escape and being crushed at the very edge of getting away.
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