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Updated: May 31, 2025
Their sport was accompanied by dance and song, and as they chased the flying ball, keeping time with hand and foot and voice, they seemed like a choir of mountain nymphs, led by Artemis, when she goes forth to the chase, in the wild valleys of Arcady or Lacedæmon. Tallest and fairest of them all was Nausicaä, who led the sport, moving like a queen among her vassals.
“To the Peiræus to inspect the new tackling of the Nausicaä. You will join us?” “Unfortunately I argue a case before the King Archon.” “Be as eloquent as in your last speech. Do you know, Cimon declares I am disloyal too, and that you will soon be prosecuting me?” “Avert it, gods! What do you mean?”
His spiritual subjection to them was indeed not so absolute; but as regards their own personal character, it was only because you could not have followed me so easily, that I did not take the Greek women instead of Shakespeare's; and instance, for chief ideal types of human beauty and faith, the simple mother's and wife's heart of Andromache; the divine, yet rejected wisdom of Cassandra; the playful kindness and simple princess-life of happy Nausicaa; the housewifely calm of that of Penelope, with its watch upon the sea; the ever patient, fearless, hopelessly devoted piety of the sister, and daughter, in Antigone; the bowing down of Iphigenia, lamb-like and silent; and finally, the expectation of the resurrection, made clear to the soul of the Greeks in the return from her grave of that Alcestis, who, to save her husband, had passed calmly through the bitterness of death.
But the girl Nausicaa, as she sleeps in her "carved chamber," is "like the immortals in form and face;" and two handmaidens who sleep on each side of the polished door "have beauty from the Graces."
And finally on the poop by the captain stood the “governor,”—knotted, grizzled, and keen,—the man whose touch upon the heavy steering oars might give the Nausicaä life or destruction when the ships charged beak to beak. “The trireme is ready, admiral,” reported Ameinias, as Themistocles came up leisurely from the stern-cabin.
They glided past the scores of black triremes swinging lazily at anchor. Twice they pulled around the proudest of the fleet,—the Nausicaä, the gift of Hermippus to the state, a princely gift even in days when every Athenian put his all at the public service. She would be Themistocles’s flag-ship.
When they reached the cultivated lands outside the walls she drew up, and addressed Odysseus thus: "Stranger, I may not go with thee further, for I fear the envious tongues of the citizens, who will point the finger at us and say: 'See what a tall and handsome stranger Nausicaä hath brought with her! some seafaring man whom she hath brought with her to be her husband, since she despises the men of her own nation. And this will be a reproach unto me.
Then Nausicaa gathered her maids together and they brought the soiled garments of the household to the wagon. And her mother, so that Nausicaa and her maids might eat while they were from home, put in a basket filled with dainties and a skin of wine. Also she gave them a jar of olive-oil so that they might rub themselves with oil when bathing in the river. Young Nausicaa herself drove the wagon.
Then they took their seats, Nausicaä grasped the reins, and they went off at a sharp trot towards the riverside. After a pleasant drive, they came to the place where stood a row of cisterns on the river's bank. There they unharnessed the mules, and left them to crop the sweet clover in the water-meadows.
Startled by her dream, Nausicaa awakes, and goes to find her parents One by the hearth sat, with the maids around, And on the skeins of yarn, sea-purpled, spent Her morning toil. Him to the council bound, Called by the honoured kings, just going forth she found.
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