Odyssey 1.428 · Book 1, lines 428–432
The nurse Eurycleia, bought for twenty oxen
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τῷ δʼ ἄρʼ ἅμʼ αἰθομένας δαΐδας φέρε κεδνὰ ἰδυῖα Εὐρύκλειʼ Ὦπος θυγάτηρ Πεισηνορίδαο, τήν ποτε Λαέρτης πρίατο κτεάτεσσιν ἑοῖσιν πρωθήβην ἔτʼ ἐοῦσαν ἐεικοσάβοια δʼ ἔδωκεν, ἶσα δέ μιν κεδνῇ ἀλόχῳ τίεν ἐν μεγάροισιν,
And along with him, bearing blazing torches, went trusty, knowing Eurycleia, daughter of Ops, Peisenor's son — whom once Laertes had bought with his own wealth, when she was still in her first youth, and gave twenty oxen for her; and he honored her equally with his faithful wife in the halls,
Word by word
The setting
As Telemachus goes up to bed, his childhood nurse lights his way. Homer pauses to give her history: Eurycleia, bought long ago by Laertes — Odysseus's father — and treated with unusual honor in the house.
A note on this passage
A servant lights the way, and the poem stops to tell her whole life. Eurycleia is named with a full pedigree — daughter of Ops, Peisenor's son — bought by old Laertes, Odysseus's father, for the price of twenty oxen when she was a girl.
The lines hold two economies in one breath. She was purchased, and her worth is stated in cattle, the Homeric unit of value; and yet Laertes ‘honored her equally with his wife.’ Homer lavishes this genealogy on a torch-bearer the way he lavishes it on kings — a sign that in this poem loyalty is nobility, and the faithful nurse belongs among the people who matter.
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