Odyssey 6.149 · Book 6, lines 149–150
‘I beseech you, queen’ — the plea begins
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Odysseus — γουνοῦμαί σε, ἄνασσα· θεός νύ τις, ἦ βροτός ἐσσι; εἰ μέν τις θεός ἐσσι, τοὶ οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἔχουσιν,
I beseech you, queen — are you some god, or a mortal? If indeed you are a god, one of those who hold broad heaven,
Word by word
The setting
Odysseus opens his famous supplication. Rather than name a need, he begins with a question about who she even is — goddess or woman — the first move of the most admired speech in the poem.
A note on this passage
The great speech begins, and its first stroke is flattery raised to reverence. Odysseus does not ask for anything yet; he asks what she is. ‘I beseech you, queen — are you a god, or a mortal?’ He opens the door to treating her as divine, and then starts down that path: if you are a goddess, one of those who hold the wide heaven…
The tact is exquisite and deliberate. To a frightened girl he offers the most disarming thing a terrifying stranger can — awe, not demand. Calling her possibly a god both honors her and buys him time, and it sets up the comparison to Artemis he is about to make. This is the ‘cunning’ the narrator just warned us of, working in real time: the honeyed word that asks for nothing while asking for everything.
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Odyssey 6.149 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/6.149/