Odyssey 7.195 · Book 7, lines 195–198
What the Spinners spun at birth
Read the full text in our reader
μηδέ τι μεσσηγύς γε κακὸν καὶ πῆμα πάθῃσι, πρίν γε τὸν ἧς γαίης ἐπιβήμεναι· ἔνθα δʼ ἔπειτα πείσεται, ἅσσα οἱ αἶσα κατὰ κλῶθές τε βαρεῖαι γιγνομένῳ νήσαντο λίνῳ, ὅτε μιν τέκε μήτηρ.
and may not suffer any evil or woe in between, before he sets foot on his own land; and there thereafter he will suffer whatever Fate and the heavy Spinners spun for him with their thread at his birth, when his mother bore him.
Word by word
The setting
Alcinous finishes the thought about the stranger's return: a safe convoy will bring him home unharmed — and there he will meet only whatever fate was spun into his thread on the day he was born.
A note on this passage
Alcinous promises a passage so safe the stranger will meet no harm on the way, not until he stands on his own soil. Then he adds the one limit even Phaeacian power respects: once home, the man will suffer whatever Fate and the heavy Spinners spun into his thread at his birth.
The undercurrent is the reach and the edge of hospitality. The Phaeacians can guarantee the road; they cannot touch the destiny waiting at the end of it. Homer names the Fates as spinners at the cradle — the thread measured out the day the mother gives birth — and sets that older, heavier machinery beside the king's generous plans. Even a fairy-tale kingdom stops where the loom of fate begins.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 7.195 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 7.195 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/7.195/