Odyssey 6.209 · Book 6, lines 209–210
Food, drink, and a bath
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ἀλλὰ δότʼ, ἀμφίπολοι, ξείνῳ βρῶσίν τε πόσιν τε, λούσατέ τʼ ἐν ποταμῷ, ὅθʼ ἐπὶ σκέπας ἔστʼ ἀνέμοιο.
But give the stranger, my handmaids, food and drink, and wash him in the river, where there is shelter from the wind.
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The setting
Having invoked the sacred duty to strangers, Nausicaa gives her maids their concrete orders — the last lines of her speech to them.
A note on this passage
Nausicaa ends her speech with three plain orders: give the stranger food, give him drink, and bathe him in the river where the bank breaks the wind. The great law of hospitality comes down to earth as a meal and a wash.
The bath matters most. Scrubbing the brine and wreckage off Odysseus is the first act of making him a man again, and it sets up the transformation to come, when Athena pours grace over his cleaned limbs. There is tact in the order, too: she sends her maids to wash him, keeping her own distance from a naked stranger — and picks the sheltered spot, a practical kindness folded into a command.
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