Hubris

The Greek word doesn’t translate cleanly. Not just pride. Pride that crosses a god’s line. Odysseus has just blinded the Cyclops, gotten his men out under the bellies of rams, and rowed clear of the rocks. The trick worked. He should sail. Instead he stands at the stern and shouts back to the bleeding monster on the cliff: tell them Odysseus, son of Laertes, of Ithaca, blinded you. The name is the gift Polyphemus needed. The Cyclops calls his father Poseidon, and Poseidon hears. From that point on the sea is closed against him. Hubris in this book is not a generic moral failing. It is one specific shouted sentence on one specific beach, and it costs ten years.