Odyssey 4.435 · Book 4, lines 435–437
Four fresh seal-skins
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τόφρα δʼ ἄρʼ ἥ γʼ ὑποδῦσα θαλάσσης εὐρέα κόλπον τέσσαρα φωκάων ἐκ πόντου δέρματʼ ἔνεικε· πάντα δʼ ἔσαν νεόδαρτα· δόλον δʼ ἐπεμήδετο πατρί.
Meanwhile she, plunging beneath the wide gulf of the sea, brought from the deep four seal-skins; all were newly flayed. She was devising a trick against her father.
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The setting
While Menelaus prays, Eidothea slips back into the water and returns with the disguise for the ambush: the skins of four seals, freshly stripped. The trick is aimed at her own father, Proteus.
A note on this passage
Eidothea fetches the props. She dives, comes up with four freshly stripped seal-hides, and the poem states her purpose flatly: she is contriving a δόλος, a trick, against her own father.
The undercurrent is that word δόλος and the family it names. Guile is the Odyssey's signature virtue — it is how Odysseus takes Troy and how he will retake his house — and here it is turned by a daughter against a god. The disguise is grotesque, men hidden inside the reeking skins of butchered animals, and it is her invention. Even a sea-nymph, in this poem, wins by cunning; and she wins against her own blood.
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