Odyssey 6.232 · Book 6, lines 232–235
As a smith gilds silver
Read the full text in our reader
ὡς δʼ ὅτε τις χρυσὸν περιχεύεται ἀργύρῳ ἀνὴρ ἴδρις, ὃν Ἥφαιστος δέδαεν καὶ Παλλὰς Ἀθήνη τέχνην παντοίην, χαρίεντα δὲ ἔργα τελείει, ὣς ἄρα τῷ κατέχευε χάριν κεφαλῇ τε καὶ ὤμοις.
And as when a skilled man overlays gold on silver, one whom Hephaestus and Pallas Athena have taught craft of every kind, and he perfects graceful works — so she poured grace over him, on his head and shoulders.
Word by word
The setting
The poem stops to compare the goddess's work to a craftsman's. The comparison of a mortal beautified by a god to a metalworker overlaying silver with gold is one of the Odyssey's best-known similes.
A note on this passage
The transformation is given its famous image: a master metalworker laying gold over silver, a man schooled by Hephaestus and Athena themselves, who turns out work full of grace. As his skilled hands finish the metal, so Athena finishes Odysseus, pouring beauty over head and shoulders.
The simile quietly makes the miracle a craft rather than a conjuring — beauty as something worked, like plating on silver. And it names Athena on both sides at once: she is the goddess pouring grace here, and one of the two deities who taught the smith his art. She is the artisan and the art in the same breath, and χάρις, the word for the finished loveliness, is the same 'grace' that a fine object wears.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 6.232 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 6.232 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/6.232/