Odyssey 6.291 · Book 6, lines 291–294
The poplar grove of Athena
Read the full text in our reader
δήεις ἀγλαὸν ἄλσος Ἀθήνης ἄγχι κελεύθου αἰγείρων· ἐν δὲ κρήνη νάει, ἀμφὶ δὲ λειμών· ἔνθα δὲ πατρὸς ἐμοῦ τέμενος τεθαλυῖά τʼ ἀλωή, τόσσον ἀπὸ πτόλιος, ὅσσον τε γέγωνε βοήσας.
You will find a splendid grove of Athena near the road, of poplars; within it a spring flows, and round about a meadow; there is my father's estate and a blooming orchard, as far from the city, as far as a shout carries.
Word by word
The setting
Nausicaa gives Odysseus the landmark where he is to wait: a grove sacred to Athena just off the road outside town, with a spring, a meadow, and her father's own estate — close enough to the city that a shout would carry.
A note on this passage
The directions turn into a small landscape. Nausicaa names a bright grove of Athena by the roadside — poplars, a running spring, a meadow, and her father's cultivated land — and fixes its distance from town by an old country measure: as far as a man's shout will carry. The place is exact, ordered, and green.
That it belongs to Athena is not idle scene-setting. The grove is the goddess's own precinct, and it is Athena who has shepherded Odysseus from the moment he washed ashore. Nausicaa, without knowing it, is sending him to wait in the ground of his hidden protector — the last quiet marker of the god's hand before he enters the city and the human trial of hospitality begins.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 6.291 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 6.291 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/6.291/