Odyssey 2.377 · Book 2, lines 377–380
The old woman swears
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ὣς ἄρʼ ἔφη, γρῆυς δὲ θεῶν μέγαν ὅρκον ἀπώμνυ. αὐτὰρ ἐπεί ῥʼ ὄμοσέν τε τελεύτησέν τε τὸν ὅρκον, αὐτίκʼ ἔπειτά οἱ οἶνον ἐν ἀμφιφορεῦσιν ἄφυσσεν, ἐν δέ οἱ ἄλφιτα χεῦεν ἐϋρραφέεσσι δοροῖσι.
So he spoke, and the old woman swore a great oath of the gods. But when she had sworn and completed the oath, at once thereupon she drew wine for him in amphorae, and poured barley-meal for him into well-sewn skins.
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The setting
Eurycleia yields. She binds herself with a formal oath by the gods, then turns from protest to practical service: drawing wine into jars and pouring barley-meal into leather bags for the voyage.
A note on this passage
The scene turns from feeling to logistics. Eurycleia's protest ends the instant she takes the oath; then Homer lets the eye rest on the ordinary gear of departure — jars filled with wine, leather bags packed with meal. The provisioning is told with the same care the poem gives to arming a warrior.
The quiet weight is in the oath itself. A nurse's loyalty is turned into a sacred bond, and it is the boy who imposes it: the household now runs partly on his word. And the loving hands that once fed him are now equipping him to leave — service and separation carried in the same two verbs.
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