Odyssey 6.175 · Book 6, lines 175–177
Queen, pity me — you I reached first
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ἀλλά, ἄνασσʼ, ἐλέαιρε· σὲ γὰρ κακὰ πολλὰ μογήσας ἐς πρώτην ἱκόμην, τῶν δʼ ἄλλων οὔ τινα οἶδα ἀνθρώπων, οἳ τήνδε πόλιν καὶ γαῖαν ἔχουσιν.
But, queen, have pity; for it is to you that I, after suffering many evils, have come first, and of the others I know not one of the men who hold this city and this land.
Word by word
The setting
The plea reaches its core request. Odysseus calls Nausicaa 'queen,' asks outright for pity, and presses the one claim a castaway has: she is the very first person he has met, and he knows no one else in this whole land.
A note on this passage
The whole speech has been building to this plain imperative: have pity. He lifts her with the address 'queen' and then lays out his single, unanswerable claim — she is the first human being he has reached, and he has no one else. In a world run on guest-friendship, being first makes her responsible.
The argument is shrewd because it hands her the initiative and the honor at once. He does not demand; he points out that chance, or a god, has made her his one door into this land. To refuse would be to fail the stranger the gods sent her — and Nausicaa, who has already stood her ground while her maids fled, is exactly the person to feel the weight of that.
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