Odyssey 6.7 · Book 6, lines 7–12
How Scheria was founded
Read the full text in our reader
ἔνθεν ἀναστήσας ἄγε Ναυσίθοος θεοειδής, εἷσεν δὲ Σχερίῃ, ἑκὰς ἀνδρῶν ἀλφηστάων, ἀμφὶ δὲ τεῖχος ἔλασσε πόλει, καὶ ἐδείματο οἴκους, καὶ νηοὺς ποίησε θεῶν, καὶ ἐδάσσατʼ ἀρούρας. ἀλλʼ ὁ μὲν ἤδη κηρὶ δαμεὶς Ἄϊδόσδε βεβήκει, Ἀλκίνοος δὲ τότʼ ἦρχε, θεῶν ἄπο μήδεα εἰδώς.
From there godlike Nausithous raised them up and led them away, and settled them in Scheria, far from bread-eating men; he drove a wall around the city, and built houses, and made temples of the gods, and divided the plough-lands. But he by now had gone down to Hades, struck down by doom; and Alcinous then ruled, knowing counsels from the gods.
Word by word
The setting
The narrator gives the Phaeacians' recent past. Nausithous, their founder-king, led them away from their old home near the violent Cyclopes and established their new city of Scheria. He is now dead, and his son Alcinous rules.
A note on this passage
A city's whole founding, told as a list of deeds. Nausithous led the Phaeacians out, set them in Scheria beyond ordinary men, ran a wall around the town, raised houses and temples, and shared out the farmland. Then a single line turns a generation: he is dead, gone down to Hades, and his son Alcinous reigns.
The catalogue is a colony-charter in miniature — wall, homes, temples of the gods, divided fields — the exact acts a Greek audience of the colonizing age would recognize as founding a city. The Phaeacians are half a fairy-tale people, but their origin is drawn from real Greek practice, which makes the wonderland feel like a place one could actually have sailed to.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 6.7 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 6.7 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/6.7/