Odyssey 6.17 · Book 6, lines 17–19
Nausicaa asleep, the doors shut
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Ναυσικάα θυγάτηρ μεγαλήτορος Ἀλκινόοιο, πὰρ δὲ δύʼ ἀμφίπολοι, Χαρίτων ἄπο κάλλος ἔχουσαι, σταθμοῖιν ἑκάτερθε· θύραι δʼ ἐπέκειντο φαειναί.
Nausicaa, daughter of great-hearted Alcinous; and beside her two handmaids, having beauty from the Graces, one at either doorpost; and the shining doors were shut.
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The setting
The narrator completes the picture of the sleeping princess: Nausicaa, daughter of King Alcinous, with two beautiful handmaids stationed at the doorposts of her chamber, behind shining closed doors.
A note on this passage
Now the girl is named and set in place: Nausicaa, the king's daughter, a maid asleep at either doorpost, the polished doors drawn shut. A quiet, guarded tableau — a princess enclosed in the safest room of the house.
Even the two attendants have ‘beauty from the Graces’; the whole chamber glows with a charmed, borrowed loveliness. And the shut, shining doors quietly mark what this room is — the sealed inner space of an unmarried girl. Into that stillness a goddess is about to enter as a dream, and past it, soon, will come a naked stranger up from the sea.
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