Odyssey 6.61 · Book 6, lines 61–65
Nausicaa's tactful case
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Nausicaa — βουλὰς βουλεύειν καθαρὰ χροΐ εἵματʼ ἔχοντα. πέντε δέ τοι φίλοι υἷες ἐνὶ μεγάροις γεγάασιν, οἱ δύʼ ὀπυίοντες, τρεῖς δʼ ἠίθεοι θαλέθοντες· οἱ δʼ αἰεὶ ἐθέλουσι νεόπλυτα εἵματʼ ἔχοντες ἐς χορὸν ἔρχεσθαι· τὰ δʼ ἐμῇ φρενὶ πάντα μέμηλεν.
to deliberate counsels, wearing clean clothes on his body. And five dear sons are born to you in the halls: two of them married, three lusty bachelors; and they always wish, wearing fresh-washed clothes, to go to the dance; and all this is a care to my mind.
Word by word
The setting
Nausicaa has asked her father Alcinous, king of the Phaeacians, for the mule-wagon to go and wash the family's linen at the river. She closes her request here, giving every practical reason but the true one.
A note on this passage
Nausicaa finishes her case to her father with nothing but household practicality: he himself should go to the council in clean robes, and his five sons — two married, three still of dancing age — always want fresh clothes for the dance. Every reason she gives belongs to someone else.
The one thing she does not say is the true one. She is of an age to marry, and washing the household linen is the errand a bride's house runs. The poem lets her build an unimpeachable domestic argument around a wish she is too modest to speak aloud — and the reader hears the silence at its center.
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