Chapter summary
Odysseus sleeps, overcome with weariness, in the wood where the previous book left him. Athena goes to the city of the Phaeacians, a people who once lived in Hyperia, near the Cyclopes, and were plundered by them because they were stronger. Nausithous brought them out of there and settled them in Scheria, far from other men, where he raised walls, houses, and temples and divided the fields; now he has died, and the one who reigns is Alcinous. The goddess wants Odysseus to return home, and she goes to the room of Nausicaa, the king's daughter, who sleeps with two maidservants beside the door. She takes the form of Dymas's daughter, a seafarer's daughter and a girlfriend of the same age, and reproaches her: how could her mother have borne her so careless? Her shining clothes lie unattended, and her wedding is near, when she will have to dress well and give clothing to the bridal procession; from this comes good repute, which gladdens her father and mother. She proposes that they wash everything at dawn and that she help her, reminds her that the best Phaeacians already court her, and tells her to ask her father for the wagon and mules, because the washing places are far away. Then she returns to Olympus.
Nausicaa wakes amazed by the dream and goes to tell her parents. Her mother spins purple wool by the hearth, surrounded by maids; her father is about to leave for the council of the kings. She asks him for the wagon with household reasons: the clothes are dirty, it is fitting for him to be clean at the council, and her five brothers, two married and three unmarried, want clean clothes for the dances. She does not name the wedding, out of modesty, but her father perceives everything and agrees. The servants prepare the wagon; her mother puts food and wine in a basket, in a goatskin flask, and gives her daughter oil in a golden flask for the bath. Nausicaa takes the whip and the reins, and the maids follow on foot.
At the river they unyoke the mules to graze, tread the clothes in the pools, spread everything on the shore, bathe, eat, and wait for the sun to dry what they have washed. Then they play ball, and Nausicaa leads the song, compared by the narrator to Artemis among the nymphs. When she is about to return home, Athena sets another move in motion: she wants Odysseus to wake and see the girl who will lead him to the city. The princess throws the ball to a maid, misses, and the ball falls into the eddy; the maids cry out, and Odysseus wakes.
Seated, not knowing where he is, he asks the question by which he measures peoples: will they be proud, savage, and unjust, or hospitable and god-fearing? From the girls' cries he imagines nymphs or people who speak, and he decides to see with his own eyes. He comes out of the wood naked, covering himself with a leafy branch, and advances like a lion driven by hunger toward the herd; necessity forces him to show himself to the girls. Battered by the salt, he frightens the maids, who flee along the beach; only Nausicaa stays, because Athena put courage in her breast. Odysseus weighs whether to embrace the girl's knees, as a suppliant does, or to speak from afar, and he chooses to speak from afar, so that she will not be angry.
The speech is sweet and calculated. He asks whether she is a goddess or a mortal; if a goddess, she seems to him like Artemis; if a mortal, happy her parents and brothers, and happier still whoever takes her home. He says he has never seen anything like her, only a young palm tree beside the altar of Apollo at Delos, and that he fears to touch her knees, for a harsh grief weighs on him. He tells how yesterday, after twenty days, he escaped the sea coming from the island of Ogygia, that he knows no one there, and that he asks for the city and a rag to cover himself; he wishes her a home, a husband, and harmony, for nothing is better than a husband and wife thinking together. Nausicaa replies that he does not seem bad or foolish; Zeus apportions fortune to the good and the bad, and he must bear his own; since he has come to their city, he will lack neither clothing nor what is owed to a suppliant. She tells him the name of her people and of her father. She calls back the maids who fled: no hostile man reaches the Phaeacians, who are dear to the gods and live at the edge of the world, apart from others; this is an unfortunate wanderer whom they must care for, because strangers and beggars come from Zeus. She orders that he be given food, drink, and a bath.
Odysseus asks that the maids withdraw, for he is ashamed to undress before young women; he washes off the salt, anoints himself, and puts on the clothes the princess gave him. Athena makes him taller and stronger, lets his curls fall, and pours grace over his head and shoulders. Nausicaa sees him like this and tells the maids that he did not come against the will of the gods; he seemed to her an ordinary man before, and now he seems a god, and she wishes that such a husband might stay there. She orders him fed, and he eats eagerly, after many days of fasting.
She folds the clothes, yokes the mules, and calls the guest. She tells him to follow the wagon and the maids across the fields, while she goes ahead; she describes the city, with its two harbors, the agora by the temple of Poseidon, and the ships drawn up on dry land, for the Phaeacians do not care for bow and quiver, only for masts, oars, and ships. She fears the slander of an insolent people: they will say she brought home a foreign husband, scorning the local suitors, and she herself would blame a girl who walked with a man without a public marriage. Therefore she tells him to wait in the grove of Athena, at the distance of a shout from the city, until she reaches her father's palace; then he should ask for the house of Alcinous, which any child can point out, cross the hall, and embrace the knees of the queen, who spins beside the hearth, next to the king's throne. If the queen is favorable to him, there is hope of seeing his own again. She departs, regulating the mules' pace so that the maids and the guest can follow.
At sunset they reach the grove. Odysseus prays to Athena: let her hear him now, since she did not hear him when Poseidon was tearing him apart, and let the Phaeacians receive him with friendship and pity. The goddess hears him but does not appear, out of respect for her paternal uncle, who rages against Odysseus until he reaches his homeland.
Analysis
The book moves by a plan of Athena, but each step is taken by a person with reasons of their own: Nausicaa washes clothes because the wedding is coming, Odysseus leaves the wood because necessity compels him, and the maids flee because they fear a naked man. The goddess acts at the edges, with a dream, a badly thrown ball, courage placed in a girl's breast, and grace poured over the hero. The rest is people deciding, and what they decide is the question Odysseus asked: proud or hospitable?
The answer comes from a girl, and the book shows its cost. Nausicaa applies the law that every stranger comes from Zeus, and at once finds herself between the rule and her reputation: she desires a husband like him and fears what they will say if she is seen with him. The hero arrives nameless, naked, and without goods, and it is the clothing, the bath, and Athena's grace that give him back the bearing of someone worthy of being received. The book ends without Athena in sight, because Poseidon still pursues him.
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