Odyssey 4.748 · Book 4, lines 748–750

The nurse gives the oath's other release-point: silence was to hold until Penelope herself noticed the absence and asked. Telemachus's aim, Eurycleia says, was to spare his mother the very grief now marring her — he did not want her tearing her fair skin with weeping. Then the old servant does what nurses do: she turns from confession to care, telling Penelope to wash and change.

The undercurrent is comfort offered as ritual. Grief in Homer is answered not with argument but with action — bathe, dress cleanly, then pray. Eurycleia redirects Penelope's helpless sorrow into the one thing that can still be done: an approach to the gods. The washing is both literal and a threshold, the body made clean to stand before Athena, and the scene bends from lament toward the prayer that will bring the goddess's comfort.

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