So they stood aside and went and told Nausicaa.  Meanwhile (I am translating closely), “Minerva made him look taller and stronger than before; she gave him some more hair on the top of his head, and made it flow down in curls most beautifully; in fact she glorified him about the head and shoulders as a cunning workman who has studied under Vulcan or Minerva enriches a fine piece of plate by gilding it.”

Again I argue that I am reading a description of as it were a prehistoric Mr. Knightley by a not less prehistoric Jane Austen—­ with this difference that I believe Nausicaa is quietly laughing at her hero and sees through him, whereas Jane Austen takes Mr. Knightley seriously.

“Hush, my pretty maids,” exclaimed Nausicaa as soon as she saw Ulysses coming back with his hair curled, “hush, for I want to say something.  I believe the gods in heaven have sent this man here.  There is something very remarkable about him.  When I first saw him I thought him quite plain and commonplace, and now I consider him one of the handsomest men I ever saw in my life.  I should like my future husband [who, it is plain, then, is not yet decided upon] to be just such another as he is, if he would only stay here, and not want to go away.  However, give him something to eat and drink.”

Nausicaa now says they must be starting homeward; so she tells Ulysses that she will drive on first herself, but that he is to follow after her with the maids.  She does not want to be seen coming into the town with him; and then follows another passage which clearly shows that for all the talk she has made about getting married she has no present intention of changing her name.

“‘I am afraid,’ she says, ’of the gossip and scandal which may be set on foot about me behind my back, for there are some very ill-natured people in the town, and some low fellow, if he met us, might say, ’Who is this fine-looking stranger who is going about with Nausicaa?  Where did she pick him up?  I suppose she is going to marry him, or perhaps he is some shipwrecked sailor from foreign parts; or has some god come down from heaven in answer to her prayers, and she is going to live with him?  It would be a good thing if she would take herself off and find a husband somewhere else, for she will not look at one of the many excellent young Phaeacians who are in love with her’; and I could not complain, for I should myself think ill of any girl whom I saw going about with men unknown to her father and mother, and without having been married to him in the face of all the world.’”

This passage could never have been written by the local bard, who was in great measure dependent on Nausicaa’s family; he would never speak thus of his patron’s daughter; either the passage is Nausicaa’s apology for herself, written by herself, or it is pure invention, and this last, considering the close adherence to the actual topography of Trapani on the Sicilian Coast, and a great deal else that I cannot lay before you here, appears to me improbable.