So discreet
and attentive to appearance in all her actions was this admirable
princess.
Ulysses as he entered the city wondered to see its magnificence, its
markets, buildings, temples; its walls and rampires; its trade, and resort
of men; its harbours for shipping, which is the strength of the Phaeacian
state. But when he approached the palace, and beheld its riches, the
proportion of its architecture, its avenues, gardens, statues, fountains,
he stood rapt in admiration, and almost forgot his own condition in
surveying the flourishing estate of others; but recollecting himself, he
passed on boldly into the inner apartment, where the king and queen were
sitting at dinner with their peers, Nausicaa having prepared them for his
approach.
To them humbly kneeling, he made it his request that, since fortune had
cast him naked upon their shores, they would take him into their
protection, and grant him a conveyance by one of the ships of which their
great Phaeacian state had such good store, to carry him to his own
country. Having delivered his request, to grace it with more humility he
went and sat himself down upon the hearth among the ashes, as the custom
was in those days when any would make a petition to the throne.
He seemed a petitioner of so great state and of so superior a deportment
that Alcinous himself arose to do him honour, and causing him to leave
that abject station which he had assumed, placed him next to his throne,
upon a chair of state, and thus he spake to his peers:
"Lords and councillors of Phaeacia, ye see this man, who he is we know
not, that is come to us in the guise of a petitioner: he seems no mean
one; but whoever he is, it is fit, since the gods have cast him upon our
protection, that we grant him the rites of hospitality while he stays with
us, and at his departure a ship well manned to convey so worthy a
personage as he seems to be, in a manner suitable to his rank, to his own
country.
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