6.1-47

The Phaeacians represent a different form of living from either what we have seen in Ithaka at the beginning of the poem or more recently on Calypso’s exotic island. Like the nymph, they live far away from others and seem to represent a liminal position on the divine/human continuum, but their benign existence moves Odysseus and us closer to a fully human community, another existential waystation on the journey to Ithaka. After his motionless sojourn with Calypso, Odysseus now goes into action, sizing up his new surroundings and plotting his return to heroic status. Although it’s the shortest book in the poem, Odyssey 6 is also among the richest in thematic material, introducing motifs that will recur and build in significance, laying the foundation for Odysseus’s triumphant return to power in Ithaka.

Having tucked Odysseus in under the twin olive bushes on the shore of Scheria, Athena now turns to the next part of her mission, to arrange a meeting with the Phaeacian princess, Nausicaa. But first, a short primer on the history and culture of the Phaeacians. They are, it seems, refugees of a sort, having escaped from the bullying of the “overbearing Cyclopes” (5). Their former home was Ὑπερείη “faraway place,” (4) and their flight from the Cyclopes did not take them any closer to other humans. Nausithoos, “Swift Boat,” brought them to Scheria and established a walled town with temples to the gods and divided up the land, a settled kingdom that Alkinoos now rules. Scheria thus joins Pylos, Sparta, and Ogygia as a foil for the troubled society in Ithaka we have glimpsed in the poem’s opening scenes.

As Odysseus makes his way home, he encounters many different modes of living, each with its own particular customs, ranging along a continuum from the atomistic enclaves of the Cyclopes to the sophisticated royal culture of the Spartans; from the divine solitudes of Circe and Calypso, enlivened only by the other forms of life these powerful beings control, to the incestuous realm of Aeolus with its high walls and mated siblings; from the xenophobic Laestrygonians to the alluring Sirens. And, of course, from the world of the living to the world of the dead. The poet of the Odyssey seems to have an almost anthropological interest in the varieties of human and non-human organization. This focus, articulated through the poet’s analogical use of repeated forms, ensures that by the time we return with the hero to Ithaka, the society there appears against a rich backdrop of possibilities. But more than that, since the places Odysseus visits often reflect the character of their inhabitants—lush Sparta as the home of the somewhat jaded king and queen, the rigidly controlled environs of Aeolus’s kingdom mirroring the king’s function as keeper of the winds, the magical landscape of Calypso reflecting her uncanny powers—the array of different cultures also supplies a context for Odysseus’s complex and sometimes contradictory character.

Athena’s encounter with Nausicaa is brimming with powerful symbols. The young princess has only a cameo role in the drama on Scheria, but who she is and what she says and does are crucial for our understanding not only of her but also, as we will see, of Penelope. Our first glimpse of her, snugly tucked away in her bedroom, speaks volumes if we know the poet’s traditional style. Her boudoir is richly ornamented, closed off by “shining doors.” She is herself “like the gods” in her beauty and stature. Outside the doorway are two handmaidens, their own beauty a gift from the Graces (15-19). The phrase θύραι … φαειναί (19) is associated in Homer and elsewhere in early Greek hexameter poetry with female sexuality (cf. Il. 14.169; Od. 10.230, 256, 312; Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 60, 236). When Circe opens the θύρας … φαεινὰς of her house to Odysseus’s hapless crewmen, it is a sexual invitation; when Eos closes the θύρας…φαεινὰς to her boudoir with Tithonus inside, that signals the end of their sex life. (See also Od. 5.192-227 essay.)

The hint of sexuality we might get from Nausicaa’s doorway is quickly dispelled by the presence of the two maidens flanking it. In Homeric epic, a series of recurring motifs is centered around the theme of “accompaniment.” For a Homeric male, to be flanked by retainers is a sign of his being in his proper status with the right authority. In Book 24 of the Iliad, when Achilles leaps to his feet to attend to Hector’s corpse at the behest of Priam, he is accompanied by two θεράποντες (Il. 24.572), one sign that he is taking up again the leadership role that he relinquished when he stormed out of the Greek camp after quarreling with Agamemnon (Il. 1.245–303). Homeric women, when they go out in public, must be accompanied by maidservants, a sign of their modesty and, for virgins, their chastity. When Penelope descends to talk to the suitors in Book 18, she has her two ἀμφίπολοι right beside her (18.307). We will see this motif at work later when Nausicaa first meets Odysseus on the beach. For now, the presence of the two ἀμφίπολοι (18) guarding her “shining doors” suggests that any latent sexuality is firmly under control.

A locked door is no challenge for Athena, who wafts into Nausicaa’s bedroom like a puff of wind. The psychic visitation that follows is a familiar event in Homeric poetry. The goddess assumes a nonthreatening disguise and nudges the sleeping princess toward acting on impulses that are usually understood in the world of the Homeric poems to be already present, however submerged, in Nausicaa’s mind. The scene type is flexible enough to cover various situations, with the divine visitor appearing as an eidolon, a kind of ghost (Il. 23.65–106), as an evil dream (Il. 2.5–34), as an anonymous woman in an easily penetrable disguise (Od. 20.30–53) or, as here, a trusted friend (Od. 4.796–807). The most important parallel, as we will see, is Athena’s elaborate visitation in Book 18 (158–205) where the goddess impels Penelope toward a fateful meeting with the suitors.

Interventions like Athena’s here are consistent with the Homeric practice of having the gods initiate significant human action. The meeting that the goddess is arranging will propel Odysseus toward the royal palace and eventually Ithaka. Nausicaa’s character and situation will resonate in various ways throughout the rest of the poem, forming a paradigm for the second courtship of Odysseus and Penelope, which must happen before the hero can finally retake possession of his kingdom. (See Introduction: Odysseus as Trickster and The Trickster Vanishes.) Finally, Nausicaa’s awakening sexuality is the foundation, as we will see, for the more complex reemergence of Penelope from her quiescent seclusion, unleashing the emotional energy that drives her decisions about the mysterious beggar. Tracing the afterlife of Nausicaa in the poem is a good way to observe Homer employing the full potential in his traditional style, seeding the ground with thematic material that will sprout and grow throughout the story.

Athena’s message is the same one that all such visitations are meant to deliver in one form or another: “Still sleeping? You have work to do!” In this case, the work will be in the service of Nausicaa’s coming of age as a young woman. Her marriage is not far off! She must look her best and cultivate a good reputation. The imperatives that her “friend” invokes here are social, attached to the proper role for a young woman in Greek society, sanctioned, as Athena assures her, by her mother (25). The other kinds of feelings that might be bubbling up in a young princess are left unsaid here, though they are clear enough to us: she is beginning to be curious about her emerging sexuality. Both the goddess and later Odysseus play on these latter impulses for their own purposes, as we will see. In the next scene, between Nausicaa and the brine-encrusted stranger, the poet will offer a brilliantly subtle portrait of a girl on the cusp of sexual awareness.

Her message delivered, the goddess wafts away:

ἡ μὲν ἄρ᾽ ὣς εἰποῦσ᾽ ἀπέβη γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη
Οὔλυμπόνδ᾽, ὅθι φασὶ θεῶν ἕδος ἀσφαλὲς αἰεὶ
ἔμμεναι. οὔτ᾽ ἀνέμοισι τινάσσεται οὔτε ποτ᾽ ὄμβρῳ
δεύεται οὔτε χιὼν ἐπιπίλναται, ἀλλὰ μάλ᾽ αἴθρη
πέπταται ἀνέφελος, λευκὴ δ᾽ ἐπιδέδρομεν αἴγλη·
τῷ ἔνι τέρπονται μάκαρες θεοὶ ἤματα πάντα.

Speaking thus, gray-eyed Athena went away
to Olympus, where the gods’ home stands unchanging,
forever. It is neither shaken by winds nor dampened
by rain, nor does snow ever pile up, but the bright air
spreads cloudless away, and the white light runs over it.
There the blessed gods take their pleasure every day.

Odyssey 6.41–46

Some Classical scholars have been suspicious of this passage, citing its scale and unusual vocabulary for describing the gods’ home. But this modulation of our perspective is normal for Homer, who likes to pull in close and then zoom away, speed up and slow down, to mark a shift between two modes of existence. When Zeus sends Hermes to liberate Odysseus from Calypso, the shift from the timeless world of Olympus to the nymph’s remote island is marked by the messenger god’s laborious donning of his sandals and long journey across the pathless deep. Here, the poet pulls our attention abruptly from the busy life of the young princess, pressed by the urgencies of time and circumstance, toward the magical static beauty of Olympus where the gods live at their unending ease. The sudden shift leaves us suspended in time and space, suddenly looking down at the polite rituals of Phaeacian society as if from a long distance, both physically and existentially. What conclusions we are to draw about the differences between these two venues is not obvious, only that each offers the chance to think about the other with some detachment.

Further Reading

Heubeck, A. Hainsworth, J. and S. West (ed.) 1989. A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, vol. I, Books I-VIII, 289–292. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nagler. M. 1974. Spontaneity and Tradition: The Oral Art of Homer, 64–76.Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Segal, C. 1962. “The Phaeacians and the Symbolism of Odysseus’ Return.” Arion 1: 17–64.

Tracy, S. 1990. The Story of the Odyssey, 38–39. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Van Nortwick, T. 1979. “Penelope and Nausicaa.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 109: 269–276.