Odysseus arrives on Phaeacia in almost animal state:  he is exhausted, naked, crusted with sea-brine, his hands scraped raw by coral, nestled in a drift of leaves--

“as a man will bury his glowing brand in black ashes,

off on a lonely farmstead, no neighbors near,

to keep a spark alive…” (B.5, 540-2)

 

The image is wild and lonely.  Athena bestows one of her trademark sleeps on the “storm-tossed” adventurer, and this sleep in many ways marks the turning point in his story.  From this point forward his fortunes begin to rise.  Awaiting him on awakening will be the first step on the road home; to human society, to Ithaca, to his family, and to himself.

             With Phaeacia, Athena has brought him to a veritable civilization finishing school.  We learn that the Phaeacians migrated to this particular land to remove themselves from the savagery of the nearby Cyclops; now they live in a kingdom so well-ordered that it almost takes on the air of a fairy kingdom.  We’re only allowed to see all this at Odysseus’ pace, however; Athena as usual hopskotches ahead to prepare his path.

            His guide will be the unwed princess Nausicaa.  As she does with Penelope, Athena communicates with her through the apparition of an  “almost-Nausicaa”, a fellow girl.  The excuse she uses to rouse her has a distinctly social purpose:

“…Nausicaa,

how could your mother bear a careless girl like you?

Look at your fine clothes, lying here neglected—

With your marriage not far off,

The day you should be decked in all your glory

And offer elegant dress to those who form your escort.

That’s how a bride’s good name goes out across the world

And it brings her father and queenly mother joy.  Come…

…you won’t stay unwed long.  The noblest men

in the country court you now, all Phaeacians

just like you, Phaeacia-born and raised.”  (B.6, 27-39, emphasis mine)

 

Athena produces several effects with one speech.  The first is, of course, to simply get Nausicaa in the physical vicinity of Odysseus.  The second is to prime her to think of marriage, and the third, to emphasize the claustrophobic closeness of all her suitors—all Phaeacians / just like you[1].  In one fell swoop, and without so much as a glance exchanged between them, she has introduced Odysseus as a potential husband to Nausicaa.  As with the plan she announces to Telemachus, we know that this one is also to be left unfinished, with Odysseus launching back to Ithaca, and Nausicaa left behind to those selfsame suitors. 

            With Telemachus, the false plan is used to give him an increased sense of his own agency, his ability to plan, choose, and adapt to circumstance as it arrives.  With Odysseus, it is to get him as close to an actual social role as she can.  It’s not enough for him to be an honored stranger—it is more helpful for his rehabilitation if he is treated as a potential family member.  Nausicaa is both a princess and a virgin, and as such both an available and appropriate candidate for partnership.  She’s not a solitary temptress but a bride-to-be, surrounded by station and family.

            Why have Nausicaa come to Odysseus first?  Why not introduce her as a marriage interest when he arrives at the Phaeacian court—something Athena, with her ready kit of invisible mists, disguises, and mentalist tricks, could very easily arrange?  Like most of Athena’s executive decisions, there are several layers of implication neatly filed the one on top of the other.  First:  the Odyssey maintains a rather strict hierarchy among its characters.  Even its erstwhile commoners, Eumaeus and Eurykleia, have highborn backgrounds.  Neither Odysseus nor Telemachus have extended interactions with any person who is not of aristocratic or immortal origin.  (For that matter, as we’ve seen, the two are only nominally separated camps.)  So, as we’ve already noticed, the princess of the court is an ideal contact to bring him back to his proper level among the aristocratic population.

            Second, and more practically:   a beautiful girl is one of the least likely figures to excite alarm in a very shellshocked Odysseus.  Instead she provokes supplication, coupled with open humility in regards to his rather fearsome appearance.  He can immediately recognize her as a creature of some beauty and refinement (whether mortal or immortal), and is forced to recognize his own wildness in contrast.

            Third:   It establishes Nausicaa and Odysseus as a couple outside the structure of Phaeacian society, with a particular bond the details of which both keep secret from her parents.  This trust between them calls to mind the confidential trust between Penelope and Odysseus that we see on their reunion night.  We know he is a man who shares genuine intimacy with his wife, and who values her circumspection and craft, and his encounter with Nausicaa rekindles a spark of this relationship. 

            Lastly, it duplicates one of the Odyssey’s most persistent images:  the hero following behind the goddess, who lights his way.  Nausicaa is human, but she is also leading him back into human company.

            Having climbed this mountain of implications, we can move on to the actual encounter.  Nausicaa and her maids are preparing to leave the streamside, and once again “clear-eyed Pallas thought of what came next.” (B.6, 124)  Their ball is thrown wild, and the girls’ disappointed cries wake Odysseus.  His reaction shows just how long it has been since he encountered real human company:

“He sat up with a start, puzzling, his heart pounding:

‘Man of misery, whose land have I lit on now?

What are they here—violent, savage, lawless?

or friendly to strangers, god-fearing men?

Listen:  shouting, echoing round me—women, girls—

or the nymphs who haunt the rugged mountaintops…

Or am I really close to people who speak my language?” (B.6, 130-7)

 

Odysseus covers his nakedness with an olive branch—a flash of social modesty revived by the possibility these young girls offer.  But a fig leaf does not a civilized man make, and the next passage describes him in frankly bestial terms, as a lion on the hunt---

“whose hunger drives him on to go for flocks,

even to raid the best-defended homestead.

So Odysseus moved out…

About to mingle with all those lovely girls,

naked now as he was, for the need drove him on,

A terrible sight, all crusted, cake with brine—

They scattered in panic down the jutting beaches.”  (B.6, 146-52)

 

Odysseus is a wild creature whose presence is not just foreign to civilization, but downright dangerous.  Luckily for Odysseus, Athena is still on watch and, while the other girls conveniently flutter away, Nausicaa is braced against the fearsome sight of this wild man.  Like Ino’s scarf, this is another instance where Athena softens a negative circumstance so that another character’s actions can perceptibly come to the fore.  Odysseus does not disappoint—in a single instant, all the disused gears and pistons of his mind explode into action:

“Should he fling his arms around her knees, the young beauty,

plead for help, or stand back, plead with a winning word,

beg her to lead him to the town and lend him clothing?

This was the better way, he thought.  Plead now

With a subtle, winning word and stand well back,

Don’t clasp her knees, the girl might bridle, yes.

He launched in at once, endearing, sly, and suave:

‘Here I am at your mercy, princess—

are you a goddess or a mortal?’”  (B.6, 156-164)

 

So his language centers are very well-intact, as he demonstrates with the ensuing torrent of compliments, comparisons, explanations, and requests.  The bent of his mind towards home and family, and the possible association of these things with Nausicaa, comes out in full force towards the end of his monologue:

“And may the good gods give you all your heart desires:

husband, and house, and lasting harmony too.

No finer, greater gift in the world than that…

When man and woman possess their home, two minds,

two hearts that work as one.”  (B.6, 198-202)

 

He has not managed to even get off his knees yet, but he has already gone from being a rampaging lion to a domestic-wellwisher.  Things continue at the same promising pace as  Nausicaa quiets this almost manic speechifying with her calm response (“it’s Olympian Zeus who hands our fortunes out”), and gives him food, bathing oil, and clothing.  After one last profession of social modesty from Odysseus, shooing the girls away from his naked bath, Athena gifts him with one of her glamours:

“As a master craftsman washes

gold over beaten silver—a man the god of fire

and Queen Athena trained in every fine technique—

and finishes off his latest effort, handsome work,

so she lavished splendor over his head and shoulders now.”  (B.6,

 

This is a lovely image not just for this single act, but for her mission towards Odysseus as a whole, a careful and lavish re-crafting of a treasured object.  The effect is immediate—Nausicaa practically wilts into the arms of her maids, whispering “Ah, if only a man like that were called my husband, / lived right here, pleased to stay forever…” (B.6, 270-1). 

            This arrangement, of course, is not going to be easily achieved in the given circumstances, which Nausicaa quickly realizes.  It should be clear by now that another one of Athena’s reasons for choosing Nausicaa is her capacity for swift thinking, coupled with an impressive stockpile of common sense, features which again echo Penelope.  She swiftly works her way around the taboo of an unchaperoned encounter between a “shipwrecked stray” and an unwed virgin, and the more political problem of a liaison between a foreigner and the local princess.  Having given him express instructions on how to enter the good graces of the royal family, she leads him to wait in Pallas’ sacred grove while she returns alone.

            We inevitably start to worry that Athena has set up Nausicaa for a wrenching disappointment.  Like Penelope, though, she is made of strong stuff:  for all her apparent hopes of keeping Odysseus, her concluding words to him are about his return home.

“If only the queen will take you to her heart,

then there’s hope that you will see your loved ones,

reach your own grand house, your native land at last.”  (B.6, 343-5)

 

The double entendre is that she may as well be speaking about Athena, given where Odysseus has just been deposited.  Odysseus seems to catch the hint, and for the first time appeals directly to his former patroness:

“Hear me, daughter of Zeus whose shield is thunder—

tireless one, Athena!  Now hear my prayer at last,

for you never heard me then, when I was shattered,

when the famous god of earthquakes wrecked my craft.

Grant that here among the Phaeacian people

I may find some mercy and some love!”  (B.6, 355-360)

 

Athena keeps a cautious silence, unwilling to appear to him for fear of Poseidon’s reaction.  Why?  We know that Poseidon is restrained from doing Odysseus permanent harm, and that Athena has Zeus’ sanction. 

            The reason is that her agenda for Odysseus on Phaeacia has only just begun with this complicated encounter.  This agenda is best served by staying under Poseidon’s radar; both to hold off his prophesied rage against the Phaeacians as long as possible, and to allow Odysseus to recultivate his human gifts on his own.  Over the next series of events, she will aid his position in Phaeacian society in a variety of subtle ways, but Odysseus will be ultimately responsible for his own reentry into human company.  Athena can lacquer Odysseus with a thousand marvelous glamours, but she cannot so easily transform his core.