Odyssey 6.121 · Book 6, lines 121–126
Nymphs, or women? — the last of the musing
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Odysseus — ἦε φιλόξεινοι καί σφιν νόος ἐστὶ θεουδής; ὥς τέ με κουράων ἀμφήλυθε θῆλυς ἀυτή· νυμφάων, αἳ ἔχουσʼ ὀρέων αἰπεινὰ κάρηνα καὶ πηγὰς ποταμῶν καὶ πίσεα ποιήεντα. ἦ νύ που ἀνθρώπων εἰμὶ σχεδὸν αὐδηέντων; ἀλλʼ ἄγʼ ἐγὼν αὐτὸς πειρήσομαι ἠδὲ ἴδωμαι.
or are they hospitable, and is their mind god-fearing? A womanly cry of maidens rang round about me — of nymphs, who hold the steep mountain-peaks, the springs of rivers and the grassy meadows. Or am I perhaps near men of human speech? But come, I myself will make trial and see.
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The setting
Woken by the girls' shout, still hidden in the brush, Odysseus finishes weighing where the sea has thrown him: a wild land or a kind one, and whose voices these are. He resolves to stop guessing and look.
A note on this passage
Odysseus closes his soliloquy the way a shipwrecked man must: with a survey of the odds. Are these people lawless or god-fearing? Is the cry he half-heard the voice of mountain nymphs or of mortal women? He cannot tell, so he does the only useful thing — stops speculating and decides to test the matter himself.
The hesitation between nymphs and women is not idle. All through the poem Odysseus meets the female divine — Calypso, Circe, Athena — and here, for once, he guesses in the right direction: the girl he is about to meet is mortal, but the help she brings is arranged by a goddess. The instinct to ‘make trial myself’ is the very resourcefulness that keeps him alive.
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