That drama of Nausicaa is lost; and if I dare say so of any play of Sophocles’, I scarce regret it. It is well, perhaps, that we have no second conception of the scene, to interfere with the simplicity, so grand, and yet so tender, of Homer’s idyllic episode. Nausicaa, it must be remembered, is the daughter of a king. But not of a king in the exclusive modern European or old Eastern sense. Her father, Alcinous, is simply primus inter pares among a community of merchants, who are called “kings” likewise; and Mayor for life—so to speak—of a new trading city, a nascent Genoa or Venice, on the shore of the Mediterranean. 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.” To her there enters, in the shape of some maiden friend, none less than Pallas Athené herself, intent on saving worthily her favourite, the shipwrecked Ulysses; and bids her in a dream go forth—and wash the clothes. {110} Nausicaa, wherefore doth thy mother bear Child so forgetful? This long time doth rest, Like lumber in the house, much raiment fair. Soon must thou wed, and be thyself well-drest, And find thy bridegroom raiment of the best. These are the things whence good repute is born, And praises that make glad a parent’s breast. Come, let us both go washing with the morn; So shalt thou have clothes becoming to be worn. Know that thy maidenhood is not for long, Whom the Phoeacian chiefs already woo, Lords of the land whence thou thyself art sprung. Soon as the shining dawn comes forth anew, For wain and mules thy noble father sue, Which to the place of washing shall convey Girdles and shawls and rugs of splendid hue, This for thyself were better than essay Thither to walk: the place is distant a long way. 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. And calling him, as she might now, Pappa phile, Dear Papa, asks for the mule-waggon: but it is her father’s and her five brothers’ clothes she fain would wash,— Ashamed to name her marriage to her father dear.