What does “epi oinopa ponton” mean?
“Epi oinopa ponton” is Homer's Greek for “on the wine-dark sea”, one of the Odyssey's best-known phrases. Buck Mulligan quotes it in Episode 1 just after calling Dublin Bay “the snotgreen sea”, mixing Homer's grandeur with Dublin slang.
Edited by Aidan O'Leary · Last updated 30 October 2026
Where it appears
Episode 1, Telemachus. Buck Mulligan, admiring the bay from the tower and teasing Stephen about Greek.
The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea. Epi oinopa ponton. Ah, Dedalus, the Greeks!
What it means in plain English
Mulligan writes Greek words in Roman letters as he speaks them. He tells Stephen he must read the Greeks in the original, then shouts “Thalatta! Thalatta!”, “The sea! The sea!” from Xenophon.
The phrase is the first direct quotation from Homer in a novel named after Homer's hero.
Literary context
Scholars still argue what Homer meant by “wine-dark”: the colour of the sea at dusk, or the way it shines.
References
- Ulysses, Episode 1, “Telemachus”
- Homer, Odyssey
- Don Gifford with Robert J. Seidman, Ulysses Annotated (revised edition, 1988)
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Questions readers ask
Is “wine-dark sea” from the Odyssey?
Yes. The phrase appears many times in both the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Why does Mulligan quote Greek?
To show off, and to tease Stephen, who studied Latin rather than Greek.
Related terms
The snotgreen sea
“The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea.” is Buck Mulligan's crude, comic description of Dublin Bay in Episode 1. He is mocking the grand Homeric phrase for the sea, “wine-dark”, by replacing it with two very bodily Dublin words of his own.
The Odyssey
Homer's Odyssey is the ancient Greek epic of Odysseus (in Latin, Ulysses) and his ten-year voyage home from Troy. Joyce maps it onto one Dublin day: Bloom is Odysseus, Stephen is his son Telemachus, and Molly is his wife Penelope. Mulligan is the first to bring up the Greeks.
Homeric parallels
The loose mapping of Ulysses onto Homer's Odyssey, with each episode echoing a scene from the ancient poem.