Odyssey 6.162 · Book 6, lines 162–165
The palm-shoot at Delos
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Δήλῳ δή ποτε τοῖον Ἀπόλλωνος παρὰ βωμῷ φοίνικος νέον ἔρνος ἀνερχόμενον ἐνόησα· ἦλθον γὰρ καὶ κεῖσε, πολὺς δέ μοι ἕσπετο λαός, τὴν ὁδὸν ᾗ δὴ μέλλεν ἐμοὶ κακὰ κήδεʼ ἔσεσθαι.
In Delos once, beside Apollo's altar, I noticed such a thing: a young shoot of a palm springing up. For I had come there too, and a great host followed me, on that road where bitter woes were to be mine.
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The setting
To justify his awe, Odysseus reaches for the one thing in his life that ever struck him the way she does. At Delos, the sacred island of Apollo, he once saw a young palm-tree shooting up beside the god's altar — and the memory stopped him just as she now does.
A note on this passage
The most famous simile of the book is small and exact. Only once, Odysseus says, has anything caught his eye the way she does: a slender young palm rising by Apollo's altar on Delos. He compares her not to a statue or a star but to a living thing, upright and new, still growing.
Then the memory darkens without warning. He had gone to Delos with a great following, on a journey that was to bring him grief. He does not explain, and Nausicaa cannot know what he means; the reader half-remembers the war and the long ruin behind him. The loveliest image in his mouth is bordered, on both sides, by the suffering that is his real subject.
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