Odyssey 9.67 · Book 9, lines 67–69
Zeus the cloud-gatherer looses the North Wind
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νηυσὶ δʼ ἐπῶρσʼ ἄνεμον Βορέην νεφεληγερέτα Ζεὺς λαίλαπι θεσπεσίῃ, σὺν δὲ νεφέεσσι κάλυψε γαῖαν ὁμοῦ καὶ πόντον· ὀρώρει δʼ οὐρανόθεν νύξ.
And against the ships Zeus the cloud-gatherer roused the North Wind, with a prodigious storm-blast, and covered earth and sea alike with clouds; and night rushed down from heaven.
Word by word
The setting
The retreat is barely under way when the storm comes. Zeus, in his oldest weather-role, throws the wrath of the sky against the small fleet.
A note on this passage
The weather turns catastrophic in three lines. Zeus in his oldest role — νεφεληγερέτα, 'the cloud-gatherer' — throws the North Wind at the ships inside a supernatural squall, blots out land and sea together with cloud, and brings night down out of a daytime sky.
The formula does real work here. 'Cloud-gatherer' is Zeus's stock epithet, used in calm and storm alike, but the instant it lands the god is literally gathering the cloud that erases the world. And the darkness is not evening: night 'rushed down from heaven' at the wrong hour, the sign that this is divine weather, not ordinary bad luck — the first hint that something larger than the Cicones is now steering the voyage.
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