Odyssey 10.361 · Book 10, lines 361–363
The bath washes the weariness away
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ἔς ῥʼ ἀσάμινθον ἕσασα λόʼ ἐκ τρίποδος μεγάλοιο, θυμῆρες κεράσασα, κατὰ κρατός τε καὶ ὤμων, ὄφρα μοι ἐκ κάματον θυμοφθόρον εἵλετο γυίων.
Setting me in the bath, she washed me from the great cauldron, tempering it to a pleasant warmth, over my head and shoulders, until she took from my limbs the spirit-destroying weariness.
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The setting
Odysseus is telling the Phaeacians how he came to Circe's hall. Having broken her spell with Hermes' herb and forced her to swear an oath, he is now her guest; her handmaids prepare a bath for him.
A note on this passage
An attendant in Circe's house bathes Odysseus, washing warm water over his head and shoulders from a great cauldron, until the killing weariness leaves his limbs. It is the ordinary care given to a guest, rendered in slow, exact detail.
This is the epic bath type-scene, a fixed ritual of hospitality. The care is real, and that is the unease: the same house that turned his men into swine now tends his body like an honored friend. Comfort and danger sit in the one room, and the poem lets the comfort be genuine.
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