Summary
Athena, disguised as a girl carrying a pitcher, guides Odysseus into the city under a protective mist and warns him that the Phaeacians are not welcoming to outsiders.
The palace is described at length: bronze walls, golden doors, gold and silver dogs made by Hephaestus, an orchard where fruit never fails in any season.
Odysseus enters, the mist dissolves, and he supplicates Arete at the hearth. The court sits in silence until an elder rebukes them for leaving a suppliant on the ground.
Arete recognises the clothes she made. Odysseus accounts for them, tells of Calypso and of his voyage and shipwreck, but does not give his name. Alcinous offers him his daughter and a home, and promises conveyance whatever he chooses.
Narrative function
Establishes the Phaeacians as the poem's benchmark of hospitality, against which every other reception in the poem is measured.
Greek concepts in this book
- xenia
- Guest-friendship performed correctly and completely, including conveyance home — the pompē that the Phaeacians uniquely provide.
- pompē
- Escort, conveyance. The specific Phaeacian gift, and the one that finally ends the wandering.
Connections to other books
Book 9 · Book 10 · Book 11 · Book 12
The Phaeacian court is the audience for the entire first-person narrative of the wanderings.
Book 13
Their conveyance of Odysseus draws Poseidon's anger and their ship is turned to stone on its return.
Source notes
Arete's unusual prominence — a queen supplicated in preference to the king — has been discussed since antiquity and has no clear parallel elsewhere in Homer.
Reading it responsibly
Scheria is a utopia with an edge. The Phaeacians are hospitable to a fault, rich beyond ordinary measure, and under a standing prophecy that their conveyance of strangers will one day be punished. The poem gives its ideal of hospitality a cost, and then charges it.