Odyssey 10.348 · Book 10, lines 348–351
The four handmaids
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ἀμφίπολοι δʼ ἄρα τέως μὲν ἐνὶ μεγάροισι πένοντο τέσσαρες, αἵ οἱ δῶμα κάτα δρήστειραι ἔασι· γίγνονται δʼ ἄρα ταί γʼ ἔκ τε κρηνέων ἀπό τʼ ἀλσέων ἔκ θʼ ἱερῶν ποταμῶν, οἵ τʼ εἰς ἅλαδε προρέουσι.
Meanwhile four handmaids were busy in the halls, who are her servants throughout the house; and they are born from springs and from groves and from the sacred rivers which flow to the sea.
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The setting
With Odysseus and Circe gone to the inner chamber, the poem turns to her household. Four serving-women set the great hall in order — nymphs, the poem notes, born of the springs and rivers of the island.
A note on this passage
The narrative widens from the bedchamber to the working hall, where four maids ready the room. Homer pauses to tell us what they are: not slaves but nymphs, daughters of the island's springs, groves, and rivers.
The detail quietly re-frames Circe. Her house is not a human establishment with human servants but a place staffed by the powers of the land itself, water and wood given hands. Even in the ordinary business of laying out a meal, the reader is reminded that this is a goddess's dwelling, woven into the wild world it sits in.
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