Odyssey 8.454 · Book 8, lines 454–456
Bathed, oiled, and dressed again
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τὸν δʼ ἐπεὶ οὖν δμῳαὶ λοῦσαν καὶ χρῖσαν ἐλαίῳ, ἀμφὶ δέ μιν χλαῖναν καλὴν βάλον ἠδὲ χιτῶνα, ἔκ ῥʼ ἀσαμίνθου βὰς ἄνδρας μέτα οἰνοποτῆρας
But when the handmaids had washed him and anointed with oil, and cast about him a fair cloak and a tunic, stepping out from the bath among the wine-drinking men —
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The setting
In the palace of Alcinous, king of the Phaeacians, the handmaids finish bathing the shipwrecked stranger — Odysseus, whom the household does not yet know by name — and dress him afresh before he returns to the feast.
A note on this passage
The bath type-scene runs to its close. The handmaids wash him, rub him with oil, and put a clean cloak and tunic on him — the fixed sequence by which epic restores a guest to himself. Then he turns back toward the drinking men.
The undercurrent is transformation. This is the same body that washed up naked and crusted with brine, begging a girl for a rag to cover it. The formula that dresses any guest is here re-clothing a castaway, and Athena is about to pour a god’s grace over him — so that the princess, seeing him next, will hardly know the man she found.
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