6.162-210

So far, he has offered flattery without any underlying sexual suggestiveness, but now he inches closer: he would like to grasp her by the knees…but her radiance forbids it! His worshipful tone then points him toward the position he has been aiming at from the beginning, as a pitiful suppliant in need of help, at the feet of a gracious queen (ἄνασσ᾽, 175). After a brief recap of his travails since leaving Calypso’s island, he finally gets down to business: Could she spare some old rags and show him the way to town? In return, he offers his good wishes:

“σοὶ δὲ θεοὶ τόσα δοῖεν ὅσα φρεσὶ σῇσι μενοινᾷς,
ἄνδρα τε καὶ οἶκον, καὶ ὁμοφροσύνην ὀπάσειαν
ἐσθλήν· οὐ μὲν γὰρ τοῦ γε κρεῖσσον καὶ ἄρειον,
ἢ ὅθ᾽ ὁμοφρονέοντε νοήμασιν οἶκον ἔχητον
ἀνὴρ ἠδὲ γυνή· πόλλ᾽ ἄλγεα δυσμενέεσσι,
χάρματα δ᾽ εὐμενέτῃσι, μάλιστα δέ τ᾽ ἔκλυον αὐτοί.”

“May the gods grant whatever you wish for in your heart,
a husband and a home and sweet agreement in all things;
for nothing is stronger and better, than when
a man and woman keep a home together,
united in their thoughts, bringing much pain to their enemies
and joy to well-wishers; and they are in excellent repute.”

Odyssey 6.180–85

These verses resonate on more than one level. In the immediate context, they mark a return by Odysseus to one of his (and Athena’s) principal messages to the young princess: Time for you to find a husband; the stirrings you are feeling are quite appropriate as a prelude to assuming your proper place in society. Meanwhile, of course, the rugged—and scantily clad—stranger is sending other messages, to which the princess will soon show herself to be receptive. But beyond the present situation, this homily speaks to a larger theme in the poem, the yearning for home that drives the hero. Because we have witnessed the existential choice that Odysseus makes to leave the blissful, timeless life that Calypso offers and keep struggling to reach Penelope—who he admits is only mortal and inferior in beauty to the goddess—his words here take on an outsized importance. The bond he envisions for Nausicaa will turn out to be precisely what he finally wins back in Ithaka, and the key to its strength will be the quality of “thinking alike” that he and Penelope show us there. The entire Nausicaa episode provides a paradigm for the submerged courtship we will see in Books 18–23 as husband and wife, each working in his or her own way, find their way back to the bliss that Odysseus foretells here.

Nausicaa responds with some proverbial wisdom of her own, the gist of which is, “Stranger, you seem smart enough, so you know that Zeus gives out prosperity as he wishes, and mortals must do what they can with what they get. That goes for you.” The tone here fits a royal princess, not the giddy teenager who has just now been playing with her maids. She continues in this grown-up persona, noting that as a suppliant who has come to her town, Odysseus is entitled to her help. She tells him where he is and then introduces herself:

“εἰμὶ δ᾽ ἐγὼ θυγάτηρ μεγαλήτορος Ἀλκινόοιο,
τοῦ δ᾽ ἐκ Φαιήκων ἔχεται κάρτος τε βίη τε.”

“I am the daughter of greathearted Alkinous,
whose power and strength come from the Phaeacians.”

Odyssey 6.196–97

The form of her announcement is striking and unusual. The verb εἰμὶ appears in the first person singular only in two other places in the poem, when Athena in her disguise as Mentes reassures Telemachus that she will be a worthy helpmeet for him as he heads out on his journey to find out about Odysseus (2.286), and when Odysseus reveals his identity to the Phaiacians (9.19). In neither of these cases does ἐγὼ appear. These are not the words of a timid girl but the proud assertion of a princess, who identifies herself not by her proper name but by her place the royal family.

The air of command continues as she chides her handmaidens:

“στῆτέ μοι, ἀμφίπολοι· πόσε φεύγετε φῶτα ἰδοῦσαι;
ἦ μή πού τινα δυσμενέων φάσθ᾽ ἔμμεναι ἀνδρῶν;
οὐκ ἔσθ᾽ οὗτος ἀνὴρ διερὸς βροτὸς οὐδὲ γένηται,
ὅς κεν Φαιήκων ἀνδρῶν ἐς γαῖαν ἵκηται
δηιοτῆτα φέρων· μάλα γὰρ φίλοι ἀθανάτοισιν.
οἰκέομεν δ᾽ ἀπάνευθε πολυκλύστῳ ἐνὶ πόντῳ,
ἔσχατοι, οὐδέ τις ἄμμι βροτῶν ἐπιμίσγεται ἄλλος.
ἀλλ᾽ ὅδε τις δύστηνος ἀλώμενος ἐνθάδ᾽ ἱκάνει,
τὸν νῦν χρὴ κομέειν· πρὸς γὰρ Διός εἰσιν ἅπαντες
ξεῖνοί τε πτωχοί τε, δόσις δ᾽ ὀλίγη τε φίλη τε.
ἀλλὰ δότ᾽, ἀμφίπολοι, ξείνῳ βρῶσίν τε πόσιν τε,
λούσατέ τ᾽ ἐν ποταμῷ, ὅθ᾽ ἐπὶ σκέπας ἔστ᾽ ἀνέμοιο.”

“Stand still, girls. Where are you going, just because you’ve seen
a man? Surely you don’t think this is some enemy coming at us?
There is no man alive nor could there ever be,
who would come to the land of the Phaeacians
bringing an attack. For we are very dear to the immortals.
We live far from others on the much-eddying sea,
at the very edge, and no other mortal mixes with us.
But this wretched wanderer has arrived here,
and we ought to care for him, for Zeus protects
all strangers and wanderers, and the gift is small but precious.
So give food and drink to the stranger, girls,
And bathe him in the river, where there is shelter from the wind.”

Odyssey 6.199–210

Homer’s masterful characterization of Nausicaa continues. Her words, though addressed to the maidens, are full of signals for her guest. Unlike her flighty companions, she is not afraid of him. Rather, she assumes the role he has suggested for her, of the beneficent host. The charming but naive girl who was ashamed to admit to her father that she might be thinking about marriage is gone, replaced by someone more commanding. Whether this version poses a greater threat to Odysseus’s homecoming remains to be seen.

So arresting is the portrait of Nausicaa that we may miss the poet’s sleight of hand in modulating her passage from pre- to post-adolescence in such a brief stretch of narrative. His economical use of traditional materials in the first scene, the shining doors, the divine visitation, establishes the young princess’s position on the boundary between childhood and maturity as the Greeks understood these stages in a girl’s life. The dream and her reaction to it reveal submerged feelings that Athena stirs and Odysseus plays on. Nausicaa’s shyness with her father about her interest in marriage shows us the young, inexperienced part of her still dominant, but then her response to the stranger propels her into quite a different persona, of the regal princess, fully in possession of her feelings and ready to take charge of a potentially frightening situation.

The poet draws on the symbolic power of traditional material in his description of the washing party. The similes, of Artemis at the dance and Odysseus as hungry lion, the ambivalence of casting off the veils and Nausicaa’s solitary approach to the stranger, all send conflicting signals about the intentions on both sides of the encounter. The question of who is a threat to whom hangs in the air. The poet of Odyssey is a master of this kind of multilayered characterization, driven by a deft modulation between the surface of the story and the pull of underlying traditional symbols. We have seen it already in the figure of Calypso and it will surface again in Circe, coming to a crescendo in Penelope.

Further Reading

Thalmann, W. 1992. The Odyssey: An Epic of Return. New York: Twayne Publishers, 54–56.

Van Nortwick, T. 2008. The Unknown Odysseus: Alternate Worlds in Homer’s Odyssey. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 112–114.

———. 2008. Imagining Men: Ideals of Masculinity in Ancient Greek Culture. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 68–72.