Odyssey 6.91 · Book 6, lines 91–95
The washing at the river-mouth
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εἵματα χερσὶν ἕλοντο καὶ ἐσφόρεον μέλαν ὕδωρ, στεῖβον δʼ ἐν βόθροισι θοῶς ἔριδα προφέρουσαι. αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ πλῦνάν τε κάθηράν τε ῥύπα πάντα, ἑξείης πέτασαν παρὰ θῖνʼ ἁλός, ἧχι μάλιστα λάιγγας ποτὶ χέρσον ἀποπλύνεσκε θάλασσα.
They took the clothes in their hands and carried them into the dark water, and trod them briskly in the trenches, vying in rivalry. But when they had washed and cleansed away all the dirt, they spread them out in rows along the sea's shore, where the sea washed the pebbles cleanest against the dry land.
Word by word
The setting
Nausicaa and her maids have driven the mule-cart down to the washing-pools at the river where it meets the sea. Here they do the household laundry.
A note on this passage
The washing is done in plain, exact steps: the girls carry the linen down into the water, tread it in the stone-cut trenches the way one treads grapes, race each other at the work, then lay each piece out along the shingle to dry. Homer counts the motions like someone who has watched them done.
The quiet marvel is the ordinariness. A princess and her maids at the riverside, knees wet, competing at laundry — this is the poem that will also show monsters and the dead. The epic bends its full attention to household work and gives it the same careful verbs, and that levelling is much of Book 6's charm.
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