Odyssey 6.275 · Book 6, lines 275–277
The imagined sneer in the street
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καί νύ τις ὧδʼ εἴπῃσι κακώτερος ἀντιβολήσας· τίς δʼ ὅδε Ναυσικάᾳ ἕπεται καλός τε μέγας τε ξεῖνος; ποῦ δέ μιν εὗρε; πόσις νύ οἱ ἔσσεται αὐτῇ.
And some baser man, meeting us, would say thus: 'Who is this handsome, tall stranger following Nausicaa? Where did she find him? Surely he will be a husband for her.'
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The setting
Nausicaa acts out the very gossip she fears: she quotes, word for word, the churl she imagines meeting them at the edge of town. It is her own invented voice for the crowd's malice.
A note on this passage
Nausicaa ventriloquizes her enemy. She stages an imaginary passerby — 'some baser man' — and gives him a full line of leering questions: who is he, where did she get him, is she marrying an outsider. The comedy is exact; anyone who has been young in a small town knows this voice.
Underneath the wit is a real social fact. A princess seen walking with an unknown handsome man is instantly a story, and the story is about marriage, because that is the only frame the town has for such a pairing. Nausicaa half-blushes into the joke: the fantasy husband she puts in the gossip's mouth is not one she would entirely disown.
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