Odyssey 6.191 · Book 6, lines 191–194
You shall lack nothing
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νῦν δʼ, ἐπεὶ ἡμετέρην τε πόλιν καὶ γαῖαν ἱκάνεις, οὔτʼ οὖν ἐσθῆτος δευήσεαι οὔτε τευ ἄλλου, ὧν ἐπέοιχʼ ἱκέτην ταλαπείριον ἀντιάσαντα. ἄστυ δέ τοι δείξω, ἐρέω δέ τοι οὔνομα λαῶν.
But now, since you have reached our city and land, you shall lack neither clothing nor anything else of what befits a sore-tried suppliant who has come to meet us. And I will show you the town, and tell you the people's name.
Word by word
The setting
Nausicaa has told the stranger that fortune comes from Zeus and must be borne. Now she promises the practical relief a host owes a suppliant who has reached her land.
A note on this passage
Nausicaa turns from consolation to action. Having placed his ruin in Zeus's hands, she now offers what a host owes: since he has reached her people's land, he will lack nothing a suppliant is due — and she will show him the town and name its folk.
This is xenia as working law, not sentiment. The suppliant, ἱκέτης, holds a claim the gods enforce, and ταλαπείριος — ‘sore-tried by much’ — is almost a rank a wanderer earns. Nausicaa moves in a single breath from the theology of suffering to its remedy: the guest-welcome that Greek society built to keep strangers alive.
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