Odyssey 6.328 · Book 6, lines 328–331
Athena hears, but keeps her distance
Read the full text in our reader
ὣς ἔφατʼ εὐχόμενος, τοῦ δʼ ἔκλυε Παλλὰς Ἀθήνη. αὐτῷ δʼ οὔ πω φαίνετʼ ἐναντίη· αἴδετο γάρ ῥα πατροκασίγνητον· ὁ δʼ ἐπιζαφελῶς μενέαινεν ἀντιθέῳ Ὀδυσῆι πάρος ἣν γαῖαν ἱκέσθαι.
So he spoke in prayer, and Pallas Athena heard him. But she did not yet appear to him face to face, for she stood in awe of her father's brother; he raged furiously against godlike Odysseus until he should reach his own land.
Word by word
The setting
The close of Book 6. Athena hears the prayer but does not show herself, out of deference to Poseidon — her uncle — whose rage against Odysseus is not yet spent.
A note on this passage
The book ends on a held breath. Athena hears the prayer — the poem says so plainly — but she will not yet appear to Odysseus in the open, because she defers to Poseidon, her father's brother, whose fury is still hot. So the help arrives, but veiled; the goddess works from behind a curtain of family tact.
The last line returns, deliberately, to the note the poem sounded at the very start: Poseidon raging until Odysseus reaches his own land. Book 6 closes exactly where Book 1 opened, on the sea-god's grudge and the one condition that ends it — home. Even a goddess bows to the older god's anger for now, and the reader is reminded that Odysseus, safe on Phaeacian soil, is still not yet home.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 6.328 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 6.328 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/6.328/