Odyssey 6.218 · Book 6, lines 218–222
“Stand off — I will not bathe before you”
Read the full text in our reader
Odysseus — ἀμφίπολοι, στῆθʼ οὕτω ἀπόπροθεν, ὄφρʼ ἐγὼ αὐτὸς ἅλμην ὤμοιιν ἀπολούσομαι, ἀμφὶ δʼ ἐλαίῳ χρίσομαι· ἦ γὰρ δηρὸν ἀπὸ χροός ἐστιν ἀλοιφή. ἄντην δʼ οὐκ ἂν ἐγώ γε λοέσσομαι· αἰδέομαι γὰρ γυμνοῦσθαι κούρῃσιν ἐυπλοκάμοισι μετελθών.
Handmaids, stand off there at a distance, while I myself wash the brine from my shoulders, and anoint myself with oil; for, long now, the oil has been far from my skin. But I will not bathe openly; for I feel shame to be naked, come among the girls with lovely tresses.
Word by word
The setting
His first words to the maids. Naked and filthy, Odysseus asks them to withdraw so that he can wash himself in private — and declines to be bathed in the open by young girls.
A note on this passage
Odysseus's first words to his rescuers are a request for privacy. Send the maids off; he will scrub the sea-crust from his own shoulders and rub himself with oil, which his skin has gone without for a long, hard while. He will not strip and wash in the open before young women.
The force of the moment is his tact. Naked, filthy, wholly dependent on strangers, he still governs the scene through courtesy rather than need. His shame (αἰδώς) guards the girls' propriety as much as his own dignity — and it quietly declines the ordinary guest-bath, in which women wash the visitor. The much-enduring man shows his command not in force but in delicacy, and it is exactly this that will keep winning him a welcome.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 6.218 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
From the Great Library
You are reading a page of the Odyssey — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Odyssey 6.218 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/6.218/