Odyssey 7.37 · Book 7, lines 37–42
Hidden in Athena's mist
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ὣς ἄρα φωνήσασʼ ἡγήσατο Παλλὰς Ἀθήνη καρπαλίμως· ὁ δʼ ἔπειτα μετʼ ἴχνια βαῖνε θεοῖο. τὸν δʼ ἄρα Φαίηκες ναυσικλυτοὶ οὐκ ἐνόησαν ἐρχόμενον κατὰ ἄστυ διὰ σφέας· οὐ γὰρ Ἀθήνη εἴα ἐυπλόκαμος, δεινὴ θεός, ἥ ῥά οἱ ἀχλὺν θεσπεσίην κατέχευε φίλα φρονέουσʼ ἐνὶ θυμῷ.
So having spoken, Pallas Athena led the way swiftly; and he then walked after the footsteps of the goddess. The Phaeacians, famed for their ships, did not notice him as he came through the city among them; for fair-tressed Athena, the dread goddess, did not allow it, she who had poured upon him a wondrous mist, with kind intent in her heart.
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The setting
Having given her directions, Athena leads Odysseus toward the town. To keep the insular Phaeacians from stopping the stranger, she screens him from their sight with a divine mist.
A note on this passage
The disguised goddess leads and Odysseus follows in her footsteps; she wraps him in a divine mist so that the ship-famed Phaeacians, passing him in their own streets, never see him at all. It is protection, not menace, Athena shielding her man through a strange town until he reaches the one door that matters.
The mist is the poem's favorite kind of divine help: not a thunderbolt but a smoothing of the way. Athena does for Odysseus what she has done all along, clearing obstacles, buying time, keeping him unremarkable until the right moment to be seen. 'With kind intent in her heart' names the whole relationship in a phrase; the cleverest mortal and the cleverest goddess understand each other, and she moves ahead of him the way a plan moves ahead of its doing.
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