Odyssey 6.278 · Book 6, lines 278–281
Castaway or a god come down
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ἦ τινά που πλαγχθέντα κομίσσατο ἧς ἀπὸ νηὸς ἀνδρῶν τηλεδαπῶν, ἐπεὶ οὔ τινες ἐγγύθεν εἰσίν· ἤ τίς οἱ εὐξαμένῃ πολυάρητος θεὸς ἦλθεν οὐρανόθεν καταβάς, ἕξει δέ μιν ἤματα πάντα.
'Either some wanderer, perhaps, she has taken in from his own ship, a man from far countries, since none are near — or some god, much-prayed-for, has come to her as she prayed, come down from heaven, and will keep her all her days.'
Word by word
The setting
The imagined gossip continues, guessing at who the stranger could be. Scheria lies far from other lands, so the townsman offers two explanations for a man appearing beside the princess.
A note on this passage
The invented gossip runs through his two theories: a castaway she picked up off some ship, or a god come down from heaven in answer to her prayers, who will stay and keep her. The second guess is flung out half in mockery — as if a girl would pray a husband down from the sky.
The irony sits just under the surface. The stranger really is a castaway off a wrecked ship, and Athena really has been managing this meeting from above. The townsman's sarcasm brushes past two truths at once. Homer often lets an ordinary voice say more than it knows; here the joke about a heaven-sent man is closer to the machinery of the poem than the speaker could dream.
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