Odyssey 9.537 · Book 9, lines 537–540
The second boulder
Read the full text in our reader
αὐτὰρ ὅ γʼ ἐξαῦτις πολὺ μείζονα λᾶαν ἀείρας ἧκʼ ἐπιδινήσας, ἐπέρεισε δὲ ἶνʼ ἀπέλεθρον, κὰδʼ δʼ ἔβαλεν μετόπισθε νεὸς κυανοπρῴροιο τυτθόν, ἐδεύησεν δʼ οἰήιον ἄκρον ἱκέσθαι.
But he once more, lifting a far greater stone, hurled it, swinging it round, and put into it measureless force, and cast it down behind the dark-prowed ship by a little, and it just failed to reach the oar's tip.
Word by word
The setting
Prayer answered in the only way it can be for now, Polyphemus tears up an even bigger rock and hurls it after the ship — this time it lands just beyond the stern, a hair from the steering-oar.
A note on this passage
A single sentence of pure action closes the scene. The blind giant, guided only by sound, wrenches up a boulder even bigger than the last, winds his whole immeasurable strength into the throw, and hurls it after the fleeing ship. This time it falls just past the stern — a hand's breadth from the steering-oar that keeps the ship alive.
The near-miss is the point. The first rock drove the ship back to shore; had this one struck the oar, there is no steering, no escape, no Odyssey. The margin between the whole rest of the poem and its end is that gap of a few feet behind the stern. Homer measures the hero's survival not in triumph but in inches, and lets the reader feel how close the curse came to being granted on the spot.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 9.537 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 9.537 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/9.537/