Odyssey 7.303 · Book 7, lines 303–307
Do not blame the blameless girl
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Odysseus — ἥρως, μή τοι τοὔνεκʼ ἀμύμονα νείκεε κούρην· ἡ μὲν γάρ μʼ ἐκέλευε σὺν ἀμφιπόλοισιν ἕπεσθαι, ἀλλʼ ἐγὼ οὐκ ἔθελον δείσας αἰσχυνόμενός τε, μή πως καὶ σοὶ θυμὸς ἐπισκύσσαιτο ἰδόντι· δύσζηλοι γάρ τʼ εἰμὲν ἐπὶ χθονὶ φῦλʼ ἀνθρώπων.
My lord, do not chide the blameless girl for that reason; for she bade me to follow with her handmaids, but I was not willing, out of fear and shame, lest your heart too should take offense at the sight; for jealous are we, the tribes of men upon the earth.
Word by word
The setting
Odysseus answers the king's gentle reproach of Nausicaa. He shields the girl and takes the fault onto himself, explaining why he did not walk into the city at her side.
A note on this passage
Odysseus defends Nausicaa head-on: do not chide the blameless girl for this. She did tell him to follow with her maids; the refusal was his own, out of fear and shame — he did not want Alcinous to see the stranger arriving in his daughter's company and read it wrongly.
The closing line gives the tactic away: ‘for jealous are we, the tribes of men upon the earth.’ He excuses himself by an appeal to how all people feel, sparing both the girl and the king any pointed charge. It is diplomacy built as a general truth — the survivor's habit of never letting a fact point at any single person.
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