"ὣς ἔφασαν, βουλὴ δὲ κακὴ νίκησεν ἑταίρων·

ἀσκὸν μὲν λῦσαν, ἄνεμοι δ᾽ ἐκ πάντες ὄρουσαν.

τοὺς δ᾽ αἶψ᾽ ἁρπάξασα φέρεν πόντονδε θύελλα

κλαίοντας, γαίης ἄπο πατρίδος. αὐτὰρ ἐγώ γε

ἐγρόμενος κατὰ θυμὸν ἀμύμονα μερμήριξα,50

ἠὲ πεσὼν ἐκ νηὸς ἀποφθίμην ἐνὶ πόντῳ,

ἦ ἀκέων τλαίην καὶ ἔτι ζωοῖσι μετείην.

ἀλλ᾽ ἔτλην καὶ ἔμεινα, καλυψάμενος δ᾽ ἐνὶ νηὶ

κείμην. αἱ δ᾽ ἐφέροντο κακῇ ἀνέμοιο θυέλλῃ

αὖτις ἐπ᾽ Αἰολίην νῆσον, στενάχοντο δ᾽ ἑταῖροι.55

ἔνθα δ᾽ ἐπ᾽ ἠπείρου βῆμεν καὶ ἀφυσσάμεθ᾽ ὕδωρ,

αἶψα δὲ δεῖπνον ἕλοντο θοῇς παρὰ νηυσὶν ἑταῖροι.

αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ σίτοιό τ᾽ ἐπασσάμεθ᾽ ἠδὲ ποτῆτος,

δὴ τότ᾽ ἐγὼ κήρυκά τ᾽ ὀπασσάμενος καὶ ἑταῖρον

βῆν εἰς Αἰόλου κλυτὰ δώματα· τὸν δ᾽ ἐκίχανον60

δαινύμενον παρὰ ᾗ τ᾽ ἀλόχῳ καὶ οἷσι τέκεσσιν.

ἐλθόντες δ᾽ ἐς δῶμα παρὰ σταθμοῖσιν ἐπ᾽ οὐδοῦ

ἑζόμεθ᾽· οἱ δ᾽ ἀνὰ θυμὸν ἐθάμβεον ἔκ τ᾽ ἐρέοντο·

‘πῶς ἦλθες, Ὀδυσεῦ; τίς τοι κακὸς ἔχραε δαίμων;

ἦ μέν σ᾽ ἐνδυκέως ἀπεπέμπομεν, ὄφρ᾽ ἀφίκοιο65

πατρίδα σὴν καὶ δῶμα καὶ εἴ πού τοι φίλον ἐστίν.’

ὣς φάσαν, αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ μετεφώνεον ἀχνύμενος κῆρ·

ἄασάν μ᾽ ἕταροί τε κακοὶ πρὸς τοῖσί τε ὕπνος

σχέτλιος. ἀλλ᾽ ἀκέσασθε, φίλοι: δύναμις γὰρ ἐν ὑμῖν.

ὣς ἐφάμην μαλακοῖσι καθαπτόμενος ἐπέεσσιν,70

οἱ δ᾽ ἄνεῳ ἐγένοντο: πατὴρ δ᾽ ἠμείβετο μύθῳ·

‘ἔρρ᾽ ἐκ νήσου θᾶσσον, ἐλέγχιστε ζωόντων·

οὐ γάρ μοι θέμις ἐστὶ κομιζέμεν οὐδ᾽ ἀποπέμπειν

ἄνδρα τόν, ὅς κε θεοῖσιν ἀπέχθηται μακάρεσσιν·

ἔρρε, ἐπεὶ ἄρα θεοῖσιν ἀπεχθόμενος τόδ᾽ ἱκάνεις.’75

ὣς εἰπὼν ἀπέπεμπε δόμων βαρέα στενάχοντα.

ἔνθεν δὲ προτέρω πλέομεν ἀκαχήμενοι ἦτορ.

τείρετο δ᾽ ἀνδρῶν θυμὸς ὑπ᾽ εἰρεσίης ἀλεγεινῆς

ἡμετέρῃ ματίῃ, ἐπεὶ οὐκέτι φαίνετο πομπή.

ἑξῆμαρ μὲν ὁμῶς πλέομεν νύκτας τε καὶ ἦμαρ,80

ἑβδομάτῃ δ᾽ ἱκόμεσθα Λάμου αἰπὺ πτολίεθρον,

Τηλέπυλον Λαιστρυγονίην, ὅθι ποιμένα ποιμὴν

ἠπύει εἰσελάων, ὁ δέ τ᾽ ἐξελάων ὑπακούει.

ἔνθα κ᾽ ἄυπνος ἀνὴρ δοιοὺς ἐξήρατο μισθούς,

τὸν μὲν βουκολέων, τὸν δ᾽ ἄργυφα μῆλα νομεύων·85

ἐγγὺς γὰρ νυκτός τε καὶ ἤματός εἰσι κέλευθοι.

They are driven back to the Aeolian isle, where they are roughly received. Odysseus pleads with Aeolus to help only to be sent back on his way.

The Greeks are tantalizingly close to Ithaka—they can see people on the beach—when the crew’s lapse sends them careening away, back to the floating island of Aeolus. This disaster causes Odysseus to contemplate suicide:

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                                               αὐτὰρ ἐγώ γε
ἐγρόμενος κατὰ θυμὸν ἀμύμονα μερμήριξα,
ἠὲ πεσὼν ἐκ νηὸς ἀποφθίμην ἐνὶ πόντῳ,
ἦ ἀκέων τλαίην καὶ ἔτι ζωοῖσι μετείην.
ἀλλʼ ἔτλην καὶ ἔμεινα, καλυψάμενος δʼ ἐνὶ νηὶ
κείμην. αἱ δʼ ἐφέροντο κακῇ ἀνέμοιο θυέλλῃ
αὖτις ἐπʼ Αἰολίην νῆσον, στενάχοντο δʼ ἑταῖροι.                               

                                                 But waking
I pondered deeply in my blameless spirit,
whether to throw myself overboard and die in the sea
or hold out in silence and remain among the living.
I endured and waited, and covering myself
I lay in the ship. All of us were carried by an evil blast
of wind, back to the Aeolian island, while my companions groaned.

Odyssey 10.49–55

These verses take us back again to the Phaeacians. The hero’s grim resignation recalls his utter exhaustion as he washes up on the shore of Scheria. The participle καλυψάμενος (53) sounds the name of his would-be captor there, Calypso, and echoes both the brush with oblivion he undergoes after leaving her (5.335) and Athena’s tender compensating gesture as she tucks him in under the olive bush, ἀμφικαλύψας (5.493). Using a kind of poetic shorthand, Homer underscores Odysseus’s despair at coming so close to home, only to be denied by another failure to control his crew. As he sinks down into the bottom of the ship, he seems not only to emulate the erasure that Calypso threatens but also perhaps to sound a faint note of hope for his survival.

Bedraggled and disappointed, the Greeks end up on the floating island again. Odysseus’s plea for another chance receives a harsh response:
Away from this island, most hated of mortals!
It is not permitted for me to befriend or send on his way
a man who is hated by the blessed gods.
Out! Your return means you are hated by the gods.

Odyssey 10.72–75

The force of this rejection, from one who has so recently a genial host, is surprising. The Greeks have failed to follow Aeolus’s instructions, but why their seemingly minor offense would make Odysseus the “most infamous of men” is not clear. The exchange jolts us out of the cozy atmosphere of the first visit, reminding us that Aeolus is not just the friendly king of a pleasant, sheltered realm. He is also the steward of powerful natural forces, which must be properly channeled for human civilization to exist. The Greeks stumble into what looks during the first visit like a non-threatening domesticity, then return to see the familiarly human facade peeled back to reveal something much more elemental and frightening. The crew’s later lapse with the cattle of the sun will produce the same kind of outsized cosmic response, this time from Zeus.

A closer look has shown us that the Aeolus episode, a seemingly minor encounter, encapsulates major themes in the poem. Woven into a complex tapestry of similarity and contrast, the encounter reaches back toward the Phaeacians and forward toward the final episode in Odysseus’s narrative, the crew’s fatal misadventures with the cattle of the sun. Beginning as a cozy stopover after the frightening interlude with Polyphemus, the episode concludes with a glimpse at the cosmic foundations of human civilization; what starts as an apparently minor failure to observe the customs of hospitality changes before our eyes into an offense with much graver implications. This latter perspective, in turn, touches on the ever-shifting interplay between various polarities through which the poem as a whole is articulated: centripetal and centrifugal forces in the hero, vastly cosmic and intimately human dimensions, divine control and the vagaries of human will, the rigid hierarchy of heroic values and the everyday interactions of ordinary people.

 

46  νίκησεν: “prevailed,” unaugmented aor.

46  ἑταίρων: modifying βουλὴ.

47  ἐκ: “out,” adverbial.

48  τοὺς: “them,” i.e., Odysseus’s companions.

48  φέρεν: = ἔφερεν, unaugmented impf.

49  γαίης ἄπο πατρίδος: ἀπὸ πατρίδος γαίης. Anastrophe (the preposition follows its noun, causing the accent on the preposition to fall back onto the first syllable).

50  ἐγρόμενος: "awakened," aor. mid. ptc. > ἐγείρω. The verb often implies waking up from sleep.

50  κατὰ θυμὸν ἀμύμονα: “in my blameless heart.”

51  ἠὲ ... / ἦ …: “whether … or …,” introducing alternative (disjunctive) indirect questions.

51  ἀποφθίμην ... / ... τλαίην … μετείην: optatives in secondary sequence.

52  ζωοῖσι μετείην: “I would be among the living,” dative with a compound verb.

53  καλυψάμενος: “covering myself.” The middle here is reflexive (Monro 8).

54  αἱ: the ships.

54  ἐφέροντο: "were borne along," pass.

57  δεῖπνον ἕλοντο: "partook of a meal" (Cunliffe αἱρέω II.5).

58  σίτοιό … ποτῆτος: partitive genitives with ἐπασσάμεθα > πατέομαι.

59  ὀπασσάμενος: in the middle the verb ὀπάζω means “to make (acc.) come along as a companion,” “to take (acc.) with one.”

60  δώματα: plural for singular (Monro 171).

61  ἧ̣ … οἷσι: "his," possessive adjectives.

62  σταθμοῖσιν: “doorposts” (or “door,” taking the plural for a singular).

63  ἀνὰ θυμὸν: “in their hearts,” distributive singular (Monro 170).

64  τοι: dative object of ἔχραε.

65  ὄφρα ἵκοιο: purpose clause with optative in secondary sequence.

66  πού: “anywhere (else).”

68  πρὸς τοῖσί τε: “and in addition to these (men),” i.e., Odysseus's companions.

69  ἀκέσασθε: "remedy (the situation)."

69  δύναμις: supply the verb ἐστί.

72  ἔρρ(ε): imperat.

72  θᾶσσον: "as quickly as possible."

73  οὐ … θέμις ἐστὶ: “it isn’t right…”

74  ἄνδρα τόν, ὅς: “a man, that man who….”

74  ὅς κε … ἀπέχθηται: present general conditional relative clause (indefinite relative clause).

74  ἀπέχθηται, “becomes hateful to,” subj. > ἀπέχθομαι, with the dative.

75  τόδ(ε): “here,” “to this place.”

76  δόμων: “from the house,” genitive of place from which (Smyth 1395).

76  στενάχοντα: understand as agreeing with με, the unexpressed object of ἀπέπεμπε.

77  ἀκαχήμενοι: “being troubled,” pf. mid. ptc. > ἀχέω (“to cause to grieve,” “to trouble”), treated as a present participle.

77  ἦτορ: accusative of respect.

78  ὑπ(ὸ): “on account of.”

79  ἡμετέρῃ ματίῃ: “because of our foolishness,” dative of cause.

79  ἐπεὶ: “since…,” explaining why they had to row.

79  πομπή: i.e., a favorable wind (the Zephyr provided by Aeolus in 10.25).

80  compare line 28.

80  ὁμῶς: "in the same way," that is, without stopping.

82  ὅθι ... / ... ὑπακούει: the shepherds pass and greet each other as one is bringing in his sheep and the other is driving his out into the field.

83  ὁ δε τ(ε): “and he” (i.e. the other shepherd). The τε is untranslatable (Monro 332; Smyth 2972).

84  κ(ε) … ἐξήρατο: “could have gained.” κε + aor. indicates past potential (Monro 324; Smyth 1784).

85  τὸν μὲν … τὸν δ᾽…: “one … the other …”

86  ἐγγὺς: “close together.” The implication may be that the working days are long and the nights short.

86  κέλευθοι: “courses,” “paths.” κέλευθος is usually used metaphorically.

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Suggested Citation

Thomas Van Nortwick and Rob Hardy, Homer: Odyssey 5–12. Carlisle, Pennsylvania: Dickinson College Commentaries, 2024. ISBN: 978-1-947822-17-7 https://dcc.dickinson.edu/ro/homer-odyssey/x-46-86