How Homer puts Time on Hold for Odysseus and Penelope—and for Us

After Odysseus kills all the suitors, washes off the blood, and reunites with Penelope in the marriage bed rooted in the living olive tree, Athena halts the horses of Dawn:

“Dawn with her rose-red fingers might have shone
upon their tears, if with her glinting eyes
Athena had not thought of one more thing.
She held back the night, and night lingered long
at the western edge of the earth, while in the east
she reined in Dawn of the golden throne at Ocean’s banks,
commanding her not to yoke the windswift team that brings men light,
Blaze and Aurora, the young colts that race the Morning on.” –Robert Fagles

A more literal translation reveals that while Fagles takes some license (there are, for example, no “tears” in the Greek), he correctly describes how Homer has Athena intervene and turn the marriage bed into a refuge from time itself.

ἦμος δ’ ἠριγένεια φάνη ῥοδοδάκτυλος Ἠώς,
And when early-born rosy-fingered Dawn appeared,

καί νύ κεν Ὀδυσσῆος πολυτλήμονος ἔκφυγε λέκτρον,
then indeed she would have passed beyond the bed of much-enduring Odysseus,

εἰ μὴ ἄρ’ ἄλλ’ ἐνόησε θεὰ γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη·
if indeed the grey-eyed goddess Athena had not devised another thing;

ἔσχεθεν μὲν μακρὸν νύκτα θεὰ θεῶν ἀδινὴν Ἠῶ,
she held back long Night, and Dawn, the goddess of the shining throne;

ἐν δ’ ἄρα πόντῳ ἔρυκε θοῶς ἵππους, οἵ οἱ φάος φέρεν,
and there in Ocean she restrained the swift horses that bear her light,

Λάμπον καὶ Φαέθονθ᾽, οἵ τ’ Ἠῶ φῶς φέρουσι βροτοῖσιν.
Lampos and Phaethon, who bring Dawn’s light to mortals.

One of the delights of the Greek text is Homer’s epithet for Dawn: ῥοδοδάκτυλος—literally, “rose-fingered.” Dawn’s first light becomes delicate rose-colored fingers stretching across the world. From this, one might even coin the English adjective rhododactylous.