#neêniêi andri eoikôs prôton hypênêtêi; touper chariestatê hêbê.#[28] A plant of moly is in his hand; and this will be the antidote to Circe's philter. Odysseus's sword and strong will must do the rest. When Circe has once found her match, we are astonished at the _bonhomie_ which she displays. The game is over. There remains nothing but graceful hospitality on her part--elegant banquets, delicious baths, soft beds, the restoration of the ship's crew to their proper shape, and a store of useful advice for the future. "There all the days, for a whole year, we sat feasting and drinking honeyed wine; but when the year was full, and the seasons had gone round, moon waning after moon, and the long days were finished, my dear comrades called on me by name, and spake once more of home." One more female figure from the _Odyssey_ remains as yet untouched; and this is the most beautiful of all. Nausicaa has no legendary charm; she is neither mystic goddess nor weird woman, nor is hers the dignity of wifehood. She is simply the most perfect maiden, the purest, freshest, lightest-hearted girl of Greek romance. Odysseus passes straight from the solitary island of Ogygia, where elm and poplar and cypress overshadow Calypso's cavern, into the company of this real woman. It is like coming from a land of dreams into a dewy garden when the sun has risen: the waves through which he has fared upon his raft have wrought for him, as it were, a rough reincarnation into the realities of human life. For the sea-brine is the source of vigor; and into the deep he has cast, together with Calypso's raiment, all memory of her. Nausicaa was asleep in her Phæacian chamber when Athene, mindful of Odysseus's need, came down and warned her in a dream that she should bestir herself and wash her clothes against her marriage-day. When the damsel woke, she went straight to her father, Alcinous, and begged him to provide a horse and mules. Like a prudent girl, she said nothing of her marriage, but spoke of the cares of the household. Her five brothers, she said, the two wedded and the other three in the bloom of youth, want shining raiment for the dance, and her duty it is to see that the clothes are always ready. Alcinous knew in his heart what she really meant, but he answered her with no unseemly jest. Only he promised a cart and a pair of mules; and her mother gave her food to eat, and wine in a skin, and a golden cruse of oil, that she and her maidens might spend a pleasant morning by the sea-beach, and bathe and anoint themselves, when their clothes-washing was finished.