The correct answer is odysseus’s men “bent steady to the oars” (homer 79). According MLA Handbook (8th ed.), an in-text citation should include the author’s (or authors’) last name(s) and the page number(s) of the quotation, paraphrase, or summary you are citing. It also establishes that there should be no punctuation between the author’s last name and the page number, and that the period should come after the in-text citation, not before it. In this case, the author is Homer, and the citation was taken from page 79 of Homer’s book; consequently, the correct format is Odysseus’s men “bent steady to the oars” (Homer 79).
