Odyssey 1.332 · Book 1, lines 332–335
Veiled at the doorpost
Read the full text in our reader
ἡ δʼ ὅτε δὴ μνηστῆρας ἀφίκετο δῖα γυναικῶν, στῆ ῥα παρὰ σταθμὸν τέγεος πύκα ποιητοῖο, ἄντα παρειάων σχομένη λιπαρὰ κρήδεμνα· ἀμφίπολος δʼ ἄρα οἱ κεδνὴ ἑκάτερθε παρέστη.
And when she, shining among women, reached the suitors, she stood beside the doorpost of the well-built hall, holding her shining veil before her cheeks; and a trusty handmaid stood on either side of her.
Word by word
The setting
Penelope, having come down from the upper chamber, reaches the hall where the suitors are gathered.
A note on this passage
Penelope reaches the hall but does not enter it. She stops at the doorpost, at the edge of the room full of men, and holds her veil before her face; a maid stands on either hand. The scene freezes her at the threshold — present, seen, but shielded.
The undercurrent is the veil. Holding the κρήδεμνον before her cheeks is the gesture of a modest wife before strangers, but it is also self-defense: she screens herself from the suitors who want her, standing guarded between two attendants at the margin of her own hall. Homer's formula δῖα γυναικῶν, ‘shining among women,’ crowns a woman whose whole art in this poem will be to be looked at and to give nothing away.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 1.332 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
From the Great Library
You are reading a page of the Odyssey — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Odyssey 1.332 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/1.332/