Chapter summary
At dawn, Alcinous and Odysseus go to the assembly of the Phaeacians, in the square by the ships. Athena, with the appearance of Alcinous's herald, goes through the city calling each man to meet the stranger, because she wants Odysseus's return. In the assembly she pours grace over his head and shoulders and makes him look taller and stronger, so that the Phaeacians will love him, fear him, and respect him, and so that he will win the trials they will propose. Alcinous speaks: he does not know the name of the stranger, who arrived begging for an escort, and it is the custom of the house that no one wait long for one. He orders a new ship launched into the sea with fifty-two chosen young men, calls the kings to the feast in the palace, and asks that they bring the aoidos Demodocus, whom the god gave the song to delight as the spirit moves him.
The ship is made ready and anchored offshore, the palace fills with people, and Alcinous sacrifices twelve sheep, eight pigs, and two oxen. The herald brings Demodocus, whom the Muse loved above the others and gave both good and evil: she took his sight and gave him sweet song. After the banquet, the Muse moves the aoidos to sing the quarrel of Odysseus and Achilles at a feast of the gods, while Agamemnon rejoiced to see the best of the Achaeans quarrel, because Apollo had prophesied to him at Delphi that this would mark the beginning of the ruin of Trojans and Danaans. Odysseus pulls the purple cloak over his head and weeps, ashamed before the Phaeacians; when the aoidos stops, he wipes away his tears and makes a libation, and when the noble Phaeacians, delighted, ask that the song begin again, he covers himself once more and groans. Only Alcinous, sitting beside him, notices and hears him groan.
Alcinous then proposes going out to the trials, so that the guest can tell at home how the Phaeacians surpass others in boxing, wrestling, leaping, and running. The young men compete: Clytoneus wins the race, Euryalus the wrestling, Amphialus the leap, Elatreus the discus, and Laodamas, the king's son, the boxing. After the contest, Laodamas tells his companions to ask the stranger whether he knows any event, because his body is strong and only many troubles have worn him down, and nothing, he says, breaks a man more than the sea. Euryalus agrees and tells Laodamas to invite him. Laodamas invites him, saying there is no greater glory for a man than the one won with feet and hands, and that he should banish his sorrows. Odysseus refuses: he has more cares than desire for contests, and he is there as a suppliant, waiting for his return. Euryalus insults him, saying he does not look like an athlete but like the captain of merchants, attentive to cargo and profit. Odysseus fixes him with a look and answers that Euryalus is handsome and empty of judgment, that the gods do not give the same gifts to everyone, and that he, offended, will prove himself. He takes a disc larger and heavier than the Phaeacians' and hurls it beyond all the marks, and the Phaeacians crouch in fright. Athena, in the form of a man, marks the spot and tells him that even a blind man would recognize it, and Odysseus, relieved to find a friend in the field, challenges the Phaeacians to any event except Laodamas, the host's son. He says he is good with the bow, that only Philoctetes surpassed him at Troy, that he does not want to measure himself against Heracles or Eurytus, who was killed by Apollo for challenging him, that he throws the spear farther than another shoots an arrow, and that he fears only the race, because the sea has weakened him.
Alcinous is the only one who answers, while the others keep silent. He says the guest speaks well, that he wants to show his virtue because he was angered by the insult, and asks that when he is at home at table with his wife and children he remember that the Phaeacians are not great at boxing or wrestling, but at racing, at ships, at the lyre, at dance, at clothes, at warm baths, and at the bed. He has the best dancers dance and brings the lyre to Demodocus. Odysseus admires the brilliance of the young men's feet. The aoidos sings the love of Ares and Aphrodite: Helios sees the two together in the house of Hephaestus and tells the husband; Hephaestus, wounded, forges fine, invisible chains in his smithy, spreads them over the bed, and pretends to leave for Lemnos; Ares comes, Aphrodite agrees to lie with him, and the two are caught without being able to move. Helios, who was keeping watch, warns Hephaestus, who returns, shouts to the gods to come and see the ridiculous and intolerable deed, and says he will free them only when Zeus returns the bridal gifts he paid for his shameless daughter. The male gods come running (the goddesses stay home, out of modesty) and laugh; one of them says the slow has caught the swift. Apollo asks Hermes whether he would accept being caught that way to sleep with Aphrodite, and Hermes answers yes, even with three times as many chains. Only Poseidon does not laugh and asks Hephaestus to free Ares, promising to pay the debt if Ares flees without paying; Hephaestus, unable to refuse him, frees the two. Ares flees to Thrace, Aphrodite to Cyprus, where the Graces bathe her. Odysseus and the Phaeacians delight in hearing it.
Alcinous has Halius and Laodamas dance the ball dance, and Odysseus, astonished, praises them. Pleased, Alcinous says the guest seems wise to him and decides to give him the gifts of hospitality: each of the twelve kings will give a cloak, a tunic, and a talent of gold, and Euryalus must make amends for the insult with words and a gift, because he spoke beyond measure. Euryalus gives Odysseus a bronze sword with a silver hilt and an ivory scabbard, and asks that the harsh word be carried off by the storms, wishing him to see his wife and homeland again. Odysseus accepts and asks that the sword never be needed by him. At sunset the gifts are carried to the palace, and Alcinous asks Arete for a chest to store them and hot water for the bath, and offers the guest his own golden cup, so that he will remember him when he pours a libation to Zeus. Arete packs the gifts into the chest and tells Odysseus to close it himself, so that no one can cheat him on the road while he sleeps on the ship. Odysseus ties the lid with a complex knot that Circe had taught him. The housekeeper takes him to the bath, and he enjoys it, because he had not had a hot bath since he left Calypso. Dressed, he goes to the room where the men drink. Nausicaa, standing by the pillar, looks at him with admiration and bids him farewell, asking that he remember her, to whom he owes his life first. He replies that if Zeus lets him reach home, he will invoke her every day as a goddess, because she gave him life.
Odysseus sits beside Alcinous. He cuts a piece from the loin of a pig, of which most still remained, and has the herald take it to Demodocus, saying that aoidoi deserve honor from all men, because the Muse taught them the song. After the meal, he praises the singer, asks whether he learned from the Muse or from Apollo, and says he sings the fate of the Achaeans as if he had been there. Then he asks for the song of the wooden horse, which Epeius made with Athena and which Odysseus led up to the citadel full of men, and he promises to tell everyone that the god gave him the song if he sings it as it happened. Demodocus sings of the Achaeans burning their tents and sailing away, the men hidden in the horse with Odysseus in the Trojans' assembly place, their debate over breaking up the horse, throwing it from a cliff, or leaving it as an offering to the gods, and the decision to leave it, because it was fated that the city would die once it harbored the horse. He then sings the sack of Troy and says that Odysseus went, with Menelaus, to the house of Deiphobus and there won a terrible combat, with Athena's help. Odysseus melts into tears, and the poet compares him to a woman who weeps for her husband fallen in defense of the city and the children, while the enemies carry her off into slavery.
Only Alcinous notices again and orders the singer to stop: not everyone is pleased by the song, and the guest has not stopped groaning since he began. He reminds them that the feast, the escort, and the gifts were made because of the guest, that a suppliant and a guest are like a brother to one who has a little sense, and asks him to hide nothing more out of thoughts of gain: to say the name his mother, his father, and his neighbors give him, because no one is without a name, and to say the land, the people, and the city, so that the ships of the Phaeacians, which know men's thoughts and need no helmsman, may carry him. He then says that his father, Nausithous, used to say that Poseidon was angry with the Phaeacians for escorting everyone without harm, and that one day he would sink one of their ships on the return and cover the city with a great mountain; whether this will come to pass depends on the god. Finally he asks the guest to say where he went wrong, what peoples he saw, whether violent or hospitable, and why he weeps when he hears the fate of Troy, which the gods wove so that there would be song for those to come. He asks whether he lost a relative, a son-in-law or father-in-law, or a companion, because a sensible companion is in no way worse than a brother.
Analysis
The book turns around a name that Odysseus does not say. Alcinous declares that he does not know the guest's name (8.28), and everything that happens, the games, the gifts, the three songs, is done for a man without a name. What takes him out of anonymity is not speech but weeping: the songs of Demodocus corner him one after another, and the third, the one he himself asks for, exposes him before Alcinous. The poem makes the hero recognized by his own story before he says who he is.
Hospitality appears here in both its senses. Athena exalts the guest, Euryalus insults him, Alcinous makes amends with gifts, Euryalus with a sword, and Odysseus accepts, but closes the chest with Circe's knot. Gratitude and caution live together. In the middle of the song, while Odysseus takes his pleasure, the reader hears the story of a deceived husband who takes revenge by stratagem; the text does not say that he thinks of his own house, and the connection is left to the reader.
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