The shore: that immeasurable fringe that will exist as long as sea and land do. At waterfronts, we relish gently splashing waters at the edge of glassy expanses, where powerful currents move unfathomable volumes at speed. At waterfronts, we dread waves stirred by the wind and coming at an inexorable beat from invisible distances.

The shore has always evoked deep emotions of detachment, exposure and homecoming for our terrestrial selves seeking at sea adventure, betterment, power, profit and sustenance. No surprise that the arts, science, technology and accounts of everyday endeavours have devoted to it words and numbers beyond survey. Here, we turn to some literature come down to us from Greek antiquity and to a little physics held in common with those predecessors. Scrolling documents that survived history will tell us of some who feared shipwrecks and longed for a safe return; and of others who wondered how waves deliver the motion harvested from the wind to the land. In the shore we will recognise a fascination for instability in deed and in metaphor; the quests for shelter from harm and for sound knowledge; and perpetual laughter that language has forgotten.

Searching for connections that could still be with us across the ages is a fourfold challenge, however. Ahead lie words liable to uncertainty of provenance; meanings of a disappeared language; meanings that modern minds might reluctantly embrace in mismatching words; and a world of events that has kept on boggling minds ever since.

Dear reader, fear not. The occasional text in Greek script, always in parentheses, can be passed over. The translations are few and my own. Stock physics primarily conveys the belief that rules of nature have stood while humankind has been making sense of it one way or another. Would you dissent from that belief, then what remains will speak of the unchanged drive to navigate the world around us and decide what to do with it.

Who would run voluntarily across so endlessly much salty water?
(τίς δ’ ἂν ἑκὼν τοσσόνδε διαδράμοι ἁλμυρὸν ὕδωρ ἄσπετον)
– from the Odyssey

Let’s first do a fast rewind of 2,800 years or more. No hearing or eyesight support for the elderly, no wristwatches, no thermometers, no electricity, no engines, no plastics, no paracetamol, no three-day weather forecast – and many more such privations for us moderns. Iron was to rise above bronze, though. And, in the teeth of technological poverty, memories were by and large better trained than ours. Let’s look at Odysseus’ celebrated homecoming.

Photo by Jens Aber/Unsplash

Being a collective work, the verses of the Odyssey kept alive in the oral tradition much know-how and many cautionary tales about surviving in the world. Most of its fifth book is about sailing heavy seas and making landfall safely. Six marine scenes glimpse the stakes of sailing away and back as that culture felt them. As happens between Poseidon and Odysseus, the lord of the seas hates a sailor.

On Zeus’ injunction, the nymph Calypso reluctantly lets a homesick Odysseus go. She provides him with prime raw materials to build a raft, sustenance and fine clothes for the journey, some loving parting, and a fair tailwind. Odysseus equips his raft craftily with plentiful features, including a railing of shrubs to fence off the wave splash. Wide awake at sea for a row of uneventful days, he eventually makes sight of land. And all hell on the water breaks loose.

Odysseus spots land on the horizon once again from the crest of a helping wave

The wayward immortal gets at the homesick mortal. Poseidon, just returned from a leisurely stay in Africa, is angered at having been sidestepped when his fellow gods cleared Odysseus’ homeward route. He excites winds and waves from all quarters, generating what we would call a multiple cross sea, a serious difficulty even for modern vessels. A few big waves impart mighty blows. A garlanded warrior, Odysseus dourly rates as despicable the death by drowning decreed upon him (νῦν δέ με λευγαλέῳ θανάτῳ εἵμαρτο ἁλῶναι).

There is benevolence in the divine, though. Moved by pity, the sea-goddess Ino offers Odysseus a sacred cloth that will protect him from fatigue and fear like a magical life jacket. Conditions apply: he must undress first, jump overboard and return the cloth once safe on dry land. After another wave shatters Odysseus’ raft and reluctance, the swimming begins. Conveniently, Poseidon withdraws, appeased by so much of Odysseus’ distress. Athena, Odysseus’ patroness, gives a forward direction to the waves by shutting down all winds but one: ‘she stirred up the stiff northern wind and the waves broke ahead’ (ὦρσε δ’ ἐπὶ κραιπνὸν βορέην, πρὸ δ ὲ κύματ’ ἔαξεν). The wind eventually settles and Odysseus spots land on the horizon once again from the crest of a helping wave. At last the storm is over, but things are not going swimmingly yet.

The nearing of the shore is the next predicament. Odysseus hears the roar of the waves crashing on a jagged promontory. To no avail does he seek ways to set foot on dry land (νῆχε δ’ ἐπειγόμενος ποσὶν ἠπείρου ἐπιβῆναι) and wade out of the grey sea (ἔκβασις οὔ πῃ φαίνεθ’ ἁλὸς πολιοῖο θύραζε). The seabed around the cliffs is too deep to stand on both feet (οὔ πως ἔστι πόδεσσι | στήμεναι ἀμφοτέροισι καὶ ἐκφυγέειν κακότητα). Specifically, he longs for some approach that is harboured and stricken by waves either parallel to the shore or obliquely aslant, the translation depending on subtleties that will challenge us later (ἤν που ἐφεύρω | ἠϊόνας τε παραπλῆγας λιμένας τε θαλάσσης). While he ponders his odds against the cliffs and against Poseidon’s ocean-riding monsters and storms, a treacherous billow dashes him against a rock. He manages to cling to it but the backwash drags him harshly to the open sea again.

Photo by Jens Aber/Unsplash

Odysseus starts over. He swims out along the shore to avoid being snatched by the billows again (νῆχε παρέξ, ἐς γαῖαν ὁρώμενος, εἴ που ἐφεύροι | ἠϊόνας τε παραπλῆγας λιμένας τε θαλάσσης). He then senses the stream of a river, and the approach looks free from rocks and is sheltered from the wind. His prayer for admittance to safety is heard by the river-god:

So Odysseus swims into the river mouth without overpowering its stream, an exhausting effort, similar to swimming against a rip current.

At long last, naked, battered, bruised, swollen and gasping, Odysseus crawls on all fours onto dry land. He duly returns Ino’s cloth by dropping it into the river, and kisses the ground. Only after finding cover from the nightly chill and wild beasts can he fall asleep with the blessing of Athena. While his odyssey continues for 19 more books, we stay by the word choices of Book 5 in search of insights into seas and shores.

Several words denoted the sea. Thálassa (θάλασσα) was the sea both generically as well as, prosaically, the water bunging up one’s airways. Pélagos (πέλαγος) and póntos (πόντος) were specifically the open high sea. Háls (salt, ἅλς) and hygrá (the moist, ὑγρά) were generic names by association. The sea of Odyssey 5 is barren (atrýgetos, ἀτρύγετος) but also abounding in fish (ichthyóeis, ἰχθυόεις); divine (dîos, δῖος); frightening and tormenting (deinós, δεινός; argaléos, ἀργαλέος); grey, or perhaps hoary owing to foam streaks (poliós,........

© Aeon