Odyssey 9.64 · Book 9, lines 64–66
Calling the dead three times by name
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οὐδʼ ἄρα μοι προτέρω νῆες κίον ἀμφιέλισσαι, πρίν τινα τῶν δειλῶν ἑτάρων τρὶς ἕκαστον ἀῦσαι, οἳ θάνον ἐν πεδίῳ Κικόνων ὕπο δῃωθέντες.
Nor, as it happened, did my curved ships go on any further for me, before I had called aloud, three times over, to each one of my poor comrades who had died on the plain, cut down at the Cicones' hands.
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The setting
Odysseus will not leave the shore until he has performed the rite of thrice-calling the dead — crying out each fallen man's name before the ships sail, so the ghost can follow the fleet home.
A note on this passage
Homer pauses the retreat for a rite. The ships cannot move on until Odysseus has cried out, three times each, the name of every comrade killed on the Cicones' plain. It is the formal calling of the dead — a summons to each ghost to follow the ship rather than be left in enemy ground.
The gesture measures the cost of the raid in a way a plain body-count could not. These were living men with names, and the leader owes each of them this last shout. The verb δῃωθέντες, 'cut down,' is the language of the battlefield: the same men who a moment ago were drunk and looting on the beach die as soldiers, and Odysseus counts them as such.
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