Odyssey 9.51 · Book 9, lines 51–55
The Cicones come thick as spring leaves
Read the full text in our reader
ἦλθον ἔπειθʼ ὅσα φύλλα καὶ ἄνθεα γίγνεται ὥρῃ, ἠέριοι· τότε δή ῥα κακὴ Διὸς αἶσα παρέστη ἡμῖν αἰνομόροισιν, ἵνʼ ἄλγεα πολλὰ πάθοιμεν. στησάμενοι δʼ ἐμάχοντο μάχην παρὰ νηυσὶ θοῇσι, βάλλον δʼ ἀλλήλους χαλκήρεσιν ἐγχείῃσιν.
They came then, as many as the leaves and flowers that spring up in season, at morning; then the evil doom of Zeus stood beside us, ill-fated men, that we might suffer many woes. Drawing up in ranks they fought the battle beside the swift ships, and struck one another with bronze-tipped spears.
Word by word
The setting
The inland Cicones arrive in force at dawn. Homer measures their number with a battle-simile of spring foliage, then frames the fight as the doom of Zeus falling on Odysseus's men beside their beached ships.
A note on this passage
The counter-attack lands. The Cicones come as thick as the leaves and flowers of spring; the evil doom of Zeus takes its stand beside the ships; the two sides draw up and hurl bronze spears at one another on the beach.
The leaf-simile is borrowed from the language of the Iliad, and it marks the turn: what began as a raid is now a real battle against a real army. Notice how the disaster is named. It is Zeus's αἶσα, his allotted doom, that stands by them — the crew's folly and the god's portion folded into one cause, so that the loss is at once their own fault and their fate.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 9.51 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
From the Great Library
You are reading a page of the Odyssey — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Odyssey 9.51 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/9.51/