Odyssey 6.115 · Book 6, lines 115–117
The stray ball, and the shout
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σφαῖραν ἔπειτʼ ἔρριψε μετʼ ἀμφίπολον βασίλεια· ἀμφιπόλου μὲν ἅμαρτε, βαθείῃ δʼ ἔμβαλε δίνῃ· αἱ δʼ ἐπὶ μακρὸν ἄυσαν· ὁ δʼ ἔγρετο δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς,
Then the princess threw the ball toward a handmaid, but missed the handmaid and cast it into a deep eddy; and they cried out aloud. And noble Odysseus awoke,
Word by word
The setting
Athena has just resolved to wake Odysseus. Now she works it, invisibly, through the game itself.
A note on this passage
Nausicaa throws to one of her maids, misses, and the ball drops into a deep swirl of the river; the girls shriek, and the noise wakes the sleeping Odysseus. Three short clauses, and the plot pivots.
The hinge is tiny on purpose. Athena's grand design from the lines just before comes down to a wide throw and a splash — the smallest possible accident. Homer does not even say outright that the goddess nudged the ball; he lets the missed catch sit there, ordinary, and trusts the reader who was just shown the plan to feel the god's hand in it. The whole homecoming turns on a girls' game gone slightly wrong.
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