8.385-432

Euryalus responds with a handsome apology and gives Odysseus a decorated sword. As the sun sets, the gifts from the other kings come pouring in to be placed at Arete’s feet. Before the feast, the stranger is to have a bath. Suitably refreshed, he can then survey his gifts (including a golden cup from the king), enjoy his dinner, and hear another song from Demodocus. The naked sailor has come a long way since he washed up on the beach.

We have noted the ways in which the events in Book 8 foreshadow Odysseus’s trials to come in Ithaka, but this part of the episode also has antecedents from earlier in the poem. The impressive queen, the generous king, a feast for a visiting stranger, complete with lavish gifts, all echo the visit of Telemachus to Sparta. Early in that episode, Menelaus’ memories of Odysseus stir weeping in Telemachus, who covers his face in embarrassment and draws the king’s attention. Helen then identifies him as Odysseus’s son, completing the familiar pattern (4.113–54; see also essay on Book 9.82–115). After dinner, Helen drugs the wine to blunt the melancholy feelings that are raised as both king and queen reminisce about Odysseus. The stories continue the next morning, when Menelaus remembers being trapped by adverse winds in Egypt on the way home from Troy, the intervention of a friendly nymph who directs him to her father Proteus, and the latter’s prophecy about Menelaus’s future fate.

Telemachus’ adventures in Sparta form the foundation for a web of recurring interconnected narrative patterns that will inform the rest of the poem. Homer uses the link between weeping and recognition, as we have seen, to build expectations in us, which he can fulfill or postpone, manipulating the pace of the story to suit his dramatic purposes. In Telemachus’s case, weeping into his cloak in response to stories about his father leads promptly to Helen identifying him as Odysseus’ son. The poet will draw on the energy from that pattern in the present episode soon. Likewise, the long story that Menelaus tells right after Helen identifies Telemachus, about his struggle to get home after Troy and in particular his captivity in Egypt, foreshadows the analogous but much longer story of Odysseus, which will follow the revelation of his own identity in Books 9 through 12.

While Arete’s servants prepare a bath for Odysseus, the queen brings out a decorated chest from her bedroom. She packs it with the many gifts that she, Alkinous, and the Phaeacian citizens have brought for their departing guest. She does not, however, seal the chest, but invites the hero to do so, saying that he must see to the security of his wealth personally. The queen has come to see the once bedraggled stranger as someone capable of managing wealth, another sign of his rise in status. Odysseus goes to work, and we hear that he uses a knot he learned from Circe, whom the hero has encountered earlier in the chronology of the story, but we will not meet until Book 10. Odysseus is delighted to finally step into the tub, since he hasn’t had a decent bath since he left Calypso’s island, where he was looked after “like a god” (453). The issue here is not just cleanliness, since he has in fact bathed on the beach, but rather status. He is about to get the treatment that marks him as a hero, something he has been working toward ever since he arrived.

Bathed, anointed, and dressed in fine robes, Odysseus sets out to join the other men drinking wine. At this point, Nausicaa suddenly reappears:

          Ναυσικάα δὲ θεῶν ἄπο κάλλος ἔχουσα
στῆ ῥα παρὰ σταθμὸν τέγεος πύκα ποιητοῖο,
θαύμαζεν δ᾽ Ὀδυσῆα ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖσιν ὁρῶσα,
καί μιν φωνήσασ᾽ ἔπεα πτερόεντα προσηύδα·
"χαῖρε, ξεῖν᾽, ἵνα καί ποτ᾽ ἐὼν ἐν πατρίδι γαίῃ
μνήσῃ ἐμεῦ, ὅτι μοι πρώτῃ ζωάγρι᾽ ὀφέλλεις."

          Nausicaa, graced with beauty from the gods,
stood by the pillar that supported the roof,
and gazing at Odysseus, was amazed;
addressing him, she spoke winged words:
“Goodbye, stranger, and when you are back home,
think of me, the first one to save your life."

Odyssey 8.457–62

Note that the princess is not accompanied by handmaidens, as we would expect of a young woman in the presence of men (see essay on Book 6.127–61). Instead, the poet imagines her standing at the edge of the hall, perhaps looking shyly from behind the pillar. Homer reminds us of the first meeting on the beach, where Nausicaa was also alone, without her maidens, who had fled in fear of the scruffy stranger. But much has changed since then. The precocious young princess who boldly confronted the naked man, drawing on her regal status to hold her ground, now defers to the handsome hero, shyly reminding him of their meeting. Then she could dream of marrying him, but now he has emerged as someone striding by out of her reach.

These verses offer a charming coda to the relationship that began so tentatively on the beach, a fleeting echo of the verses in Book 7 that rounded off the initial encounter between Nausicaa and the stranger (7.1–13; see also essay on Book 7.1–36). The dynamic of the relationship has changed, and the differences are instructive. Nausicaa seems less assertive, but her status in the Phaeacian kingdom has not changed. Rather, it is Odysseus who has evolved in her eyes from the helpless mendicant to a handsome, confident man. This latter persona comes through clearly in his answer to Nausicaa, generous in acknowledging her role in helping him on his way. The changes in Odysseus reflect the last stage of the narrative pattern that began with him naked and anonymous on the beach, a stranger who had to prove himself to the locals, building leverage until he can safely reassume his heroic persona. That last step has been dangled before us since the beginning of Book 6. Though the plot has been idling since Book 7 (186–206), this stasis does not mean that what happens on Scheria is unimportant to the poem’s thematic structure. On the contrary, what we witness is the creation of Odysseus as we are to know him in this story. Many stories about Odysseus would no doubt have been circulating when the Odyssey first appeared in something like the form we have now, and some in Homer’s audience would have preconceived ideas about his character. But the hero of this poem comes into being for us through its verses, whatever other versions might have been available. And that figure, part famous hero, part anonymous wanderer, first comes into sharp focus for us on Scheria.

Odysseus’s new status is marked in various ways as the evening draws near, the queen deferring to his expertise in sealing the chest with its precious contents, Nausicaa’s coy deference to the rehabilitated stranger, and perhaps most striking, his uneventful bath. There is evidence elsewhere in the poem that being bathed can make a man vulnerable. Helen gets Odysseus, who is disguised as a beggar, to let his guard down and reveal his secrets after she bathes him in Troy (4.235–64); Nausicaa wants to have her maidens bathe the hero on the beach, but he demurs, saying he does not want the girls to see him; after he emerges from washing, Athena thinks it necessary to enhance his attractiveness, which has a noticeable effect on the young princess (6.224–45); after he returns to Ithaka, again disguised as a beggar, Odysseus nearly lets himself be recognized when his old nurse washes his feet (19.467–502); finally, Athena feels the need once more to enhance Odysseus’s looks after he emerges from bathing once the suitors are dead (23.152–62). Given the presence of this recurring theme, we might expect that Odysseus’s bath would bring the need for another intervention by Athena, but he needs no such protection now. Instead, his allure leaves Nausicaa in awe of him.

The stranger seems to be at the peak of his powers. So much so that the poet throws in apparently offhand references to Circe and Calypso, two powerful females who hold the hero in their power elsewhere in the poem. Neither they, nor Nausicaa, once herself a potential detaining woman for Odysseus, can delay his march toward heroic authenticity. Now we are more eager than ever for his triumph, which Homer has pointed toward in so many ways since he arrived among the Phaeacians. All that remains is the final step, for him to be recognized as Odysseus, but the poet will make us wait just a little longer.

Further Reading

Anderson, W.S. 1958. “Calypso and Elysium.” Classical Journal 54: 2–11.

Clarke, H. “Telemachus and the Telemachia.” American Journal of Philology 84: 129–145.

Olson, D. 1989. “The Stories of Helen and Menelaus (Od. 4.240-89) and the Return of Odysseus.” American Journal of Philology 110: 387–394.

Pedrick, V. 1988. “The Hospitality of Noble Women in the Odyssey.” Helios 15: 85–104.