Nausicaä ("Burner of Ships" in Greek) was the daughter of king Alkínoös ("Mighty Mind") of the Phaiacians, the grandson of sea god Poseidon and the nymph Korkyra, and his wife/niece Arete ("Virtue"), great-grandaughter of Poseidon and the giantess Periboea. After spending 7 years as the love slave of Kalypso ("Concealing the Knowledge") on Ogygia, he left the island on a raft and sailed eastwards. After 18 days at sea he spotted Scheria, the land of the Phaeacians. But, seeking vengeance against Odysseus for blinding his son Polyphemus the cyclops, Poseidon brought forth a 3-day storm, after which Odysseus washed upon the shore. Athena sent Nausicaä to wash her clothes on the beach with her handmaidens. The noise of their frolic awoke the exhausted Odysseus, who emerged from the forest clad only in thick leaves. Nausicaä gave him some of the laundry to wear and took him to the edge of the town. Athena cloaked him in a mist of invisibility to allow him to enter the throne room. After he won Arete's favor he was given a ship to take him home to Ithaca. Alkínoös instructed him to tell him "your country, nation, and city, that our ships may shape their purpose accordingly and take you there. For the Phaeacians have no pilots; their vessels have no rudders as those of other nations have, but the ships themselves understand what it is that we are thinking about and want; they know all the cities and countries in the whole world, and can traverse the sea just as well even when it is covered with mist and cloud, so that there is no danger of being wrecked or coming to any harm." When the ship returned to Scheria, to punish the Phaeacians for helping his enemy Poseidon "with one blow from the flat of his hand turned [the ship] into stone and rooted her to the sea bottom." According to Aristoteles and Diktus of Crete (the chronicler of the Trojan War), Odysseus' son Telemachus married Nausicaä and had a son named Ptoliporthus ("Destroyer of cities"). Because Nausicaä and her maids on the beach were the 1st literary characters described as playing with a ball, the 2nd century BCE hetaira/grammarian Agallis of Korkyra attributed to her the invention of ball games.
Nausicaä ("Burner of Ships" in Greek) was the daughter of king Alkínoös ("Mighty Mind") of the Phaiacians, the grandson of sea god Poseidon and the nymph Korkyra, and his wife/niece Arete ("Virtue"), great-grandaughter of Poseidon and the giantess Periboea. After spending 7 years as the love slave of Kalypso ("Concealing the Knowledge") on Ogygia, he left the island on a raft and sailed eastwards. After 18 days at sea he spotted Scheria, the land of the Phaeacians. But, seeking vengeance against Odysseus for blinding his son Polyphemus the cyclops, Poseidon brought forth a 3-day storm, after which Odysseus washed upon the shore. Athena sent Nausicaä to wash her clothes on the beach with her handmaidens. The noise of their frolic awoke the exhausted Odysseus, who emerged from the forest clad only in thick leaves. Nausicaä gave him some of the laundry to wear and took him to the edge of the town. Athena cloaked him in a mist of invisibility to allow him to enter the throne room. After he won Arete's favor he was given a ship to take him home to Ithaca. Alkínoös instructed him to tell him "your country, nation, and city, that our ships may shape their purpose accordingly and take you there. For the Phaeacians have no pilots; their vessels have no rudders as those of other nations have, but the ships themselves understand what it is that we are thinking about and want; they know all the cities and countries in the whole world, and can traverse the sea just as well even when it is covered with mist and cloud, so that there is no danger of being wrecked or coming to any harm." When the ship returned to Scheria, to punish the Phaeacians for helping his enemy Poseidon "with one blow from the flat of his hand turned [the ship] into stone and rooted her to the sea bottom." According to Aristoteles and Diktus of Crete (the chronicler of the Trojan War), Odysseus' son Telemachus married Nausicaä and had a son named Ptoliporthus ("Destroyer of cities"). Because Nausicaä and her maids on the beach were the 1st literary characters described as playing with a ball, the 2nd century BCE hetaira/grammarian Agallis of Korkyra attributed to her the invention of ball games.
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