Odyssey 7.103 · Book 7, lines 103–107
The fifty serving-women
Read the full text in our reader
πεντήκοντα δέ οἱ δμωαὶ κατὰ δῶμα γυναῖκες αἱ μὲν ἀλετρεύουσι μύλῃς ἔπι μήλοπα καρπόν, αἱ δʼ ἱστοὺς ὑφόωσι καὶ ἠλάκατα στρωφῶσιν ἥμεναι, οἷά τε φύλλα μακεδνῆς αἰγείροιο· καιρουσσέων δʼ ὀθονέων ἀπολείβεται ὑγρὸν ἔλαιον.
And his fifty handmaid women throughout the house — some grind at the millstones the apple-yellow grain, others weave the webs and twirl the yarn as they sit, like leaves of a tall poplar; and from the close-woven linens the liquid oil trickles down.
Word by word
The setting
The poem turns from the furnishings to the household's labour. Fifty slave-women work in the palace: some grinding grain at the mills, others weaving and spinning — as busy and bright, Homer says, as poplar leaves stirring.
A note on this passage
Fifty women keep the house running, split between two tasks: grinding the ripe grain at the mills and working the loom and distaff. The simile of poplar leaves catches the constant small motion of many hands, and the last image — oil sliding off the tightly woven cloth — makes the fabric so dense it seems to sweat.
Here the note begun two lines earlier lands fully: behind the gold and the ease is labour, and the labour is slaves'. Homer counts them plainly, fifty, without comment. The wonder of Phaeacia is real, but the poem does not hide the human engine under it. The shimmering cloth on the seats and the oil-bright linen are the output of these unnamed workers.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 7.103 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 7.103 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/7.103/