The Odyssey 4.465–470

‘Thou knowest, old man—why dost thou seek to put me off with this question?—how long a time I am pent in this isle, and can find no sign of deliverance, and my heart grows faint within me. But do thou tell me—for the gods know all things—who of the immortals fetters me here, and has hindered me from my path, and tell me of my return, how I may go over the teeming deep.’ “So I spoke, and he straightway made answer, and said: ‘Nay, surely thou oughtest to have made fair offerings to Zeus and the other gods before embarking, that with greatest speed thou mightest have come to thy country, sailing over the wine-dark sea.