Odyssey 6.313 · Book 6, lines 313–315
If her heart is kind
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εἴ κέν τοι κείνη γε φίλα φρονέῃσʼ ἐνὶ θυμῷ, ἐλπωρή τοι ἔπειτα φίλους τʼ ἰδέειν καὶ ἱκέσθαι οἶκον ἐυκτίμενον καὶ σὴν ἐς πατρίδα γαῖαν.
If she is minded kindly toward you in her heart, then there is hope for you to see your friends and to reach your well-built home, and your native land.
Word by word
The setting
Nausicaa closes her speech to Odysseus with the condition and the promise: win Arete's goodwill and the whole homecoming follows — friends, house, and fatherland.
A note on this passage
The last words of her speech make the stakes plain and place them all with the queen. If Arete feels kindly toward him, everything he longs for opens up: his friends, his own good house, the soil of home. The condition is single, and it is a woman's heart.
The naming climbs deliberately — friends, then house, then fatherland — from people to walls to earth, the widening circles of a return. Nausicaa does not promise the homecoming outright; she says there is 'hope,' elpore, the honest word. She has done what she can and will not overstate it. The rest turns on whether an old queen, met once as a stranger, decides to care.
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