Guest-friendship and the rules of hospitality.
Before any character in the Odyssey speaks, the poem shows us a house full of guests behaving like owners. Hospitality is the poem’s first and quickest test of character, and it stays that way to the end.
1.97–108 the suitors in the courtyard 1.104–113 the stranger at the door 1.113–135 the welcome 1.170–212 questions and the claimed bond 1.272–279 bath, gift and revelation
Have your Book 1 workbook open alongside this page. Quotations on this page give the workbook’s own line numbers.
Xenia is the Greek system of hospitality: how a stranger was received, and the lasting bond that receiving them created. In Homer it is one of the basic rules holding society together, and the gods enforce it.
It grew out of hard practical facts. There were no inns, no police and no way of sending word ahead, so a traveller depended entirely on whoever opened the door. Everyone travelled, to trade, to fight, to seek news or a marriage, so today’s host was tomorrow’s stranger and the rule protected everyone. And a stranger might be dangerous, or might be a god, which made treating every stranger well the only safe policy.
Common mistake. Xenia is a binding social and religious obligation, much stronger than politeness, with fixed rules on both sides, and the poem punishes those who break it.
Homeric welcomes follow a recognisable order, and the order matters. The stranger is fed before anyone asks who they are, which shows that hospitality is owed to any stranger and not only to people who turn out to be important. Book 1 supplies an example of almost every step.
Gifts are the part students most often underrate. A guest-gift is far more than a souvenir: it is the visible proof that a bond now exists between two households, it creates a debt, and it displays the host’s wealth as it travels with the guest. The best gift is one the guest can actually use and show, which is why Menelaus swaps horses for a silver bowl once Telemachus points out that Ithaca has no room for horses (Book 4).
The bond also outlives the people who made it: sons inherit their fathers’ guest-friends, which is exactly what Athene exploits when, as Mentes, she claims old friendship with Odysseus and Laertes. 1.178–212
Book 1 contains one complete, model hospitality scene and one long, continuing breach. Read them against each other.
The suitors sit on hides at the door, playing counters, while servants mix wine and carve meat for them.
Only Telemachus sees “Mentes” waiting. He is ashamed, goes straight to the guest and promises food before questions.
The spear goes in the rack, the guest is seated away from the suitors, and servants bring water, bread, meat and wine.
Telemachus asks who the guest is. “Mentes” gives a full account and claims an old friendship with Odysseus and Laertes.
Telemachus offers a bath and a keepsake. Athene asks to take the gift on her way back, then leaves like a bird.
She found the insolent Suitors sitting in front of the door on hides of oxen they themselves had slaughtered, playing with counters; their squires and pages were busy round them, some blending wine and water in the mixing-bowls, and others carving meat in lavish portions and wiping down the tables with sponges before they set them ready.
Book 1, workbook lines 97–102
This sets the standard of bad xenia before the audience has seen good xenia, so that everything Telemachus does next is measured against it.
The first to see her was Telemachus the godlike youth, who was sitting disconsolate among the Suitors … he caught sight of Athene and set off at once for the porch, ashamed that a stranger should be kept standing at the gates. He went straight up to his visitor, grasped his right hand, took his bronze spear and gave him cordial greetings. ‘Welcome, friend!’ he said. ‘You can tell us what has brought you here when you have had some food.’
Book 1, workbook lines 103–112
Once inside the lofty hall, he took her spear and put it by one of the great pillars in a wooden rack among the many spears of the patient Odysseus. He then conducted her to a beautiful carved chair, over which he spread a linen cloth, and seated her there with a stool for her feet. For himself he drew up an ornate easy-chair, well away from the crowd of Suitors, for fear that his guest might take offence at the uproar …
Book 1, workbook lines 113–120
A maid then brings water in a golden jug for washing, the housekeeper brings bread, and a steward serves meat and wine (workbook lines 123–130). Every step is done in the right order, for a guest Telemachus cannot identify. That is the point of the scene: he does it because the rule applies to everyone.
‘But tell me honestly who you are and where you come from. What is your native town? Who are your parents? And since you certainly cannot have come on foot, what kind of vessel brought you here? … is this your first visit to Ithaca, or has my father received you before – he used to entertain in our house just as often as he visited abroad.’
Book 1, workbook lines 151–157
“Mentes” replies with a trading voyage, a cargo of iron and a ship waiting in Rheithron Cove, and says that “the ties between [our families] go a long way back, as the old lord Laertes would tell you” (workbook lines 158–167). A stranger who can name a family connection is no longer really a stranger.
‘… stay a little longer so that you can bathe and refresh yourself. Then you can go to your ship in a happy frame of mind, taking with you as a keepsake from myself something precious and beautiful, the sort of present that one gives to a guest who has become a friend.’
‘No,’ said the bright-eyed goddess. ‘I am eager to be on my way; do not detain me now. As for the gift you kindly suggest, let me take it home with me on my way back. Make it the best you can find, and you won’t lose by the exchange.’
Book 1, workbook lines 270–277
Athene then vanishes “like a bird through a hole in the roof” (workbook line 279), and Telemachus realises that a god has been with him. He offered everything a host should, and the gift goes unclaimed only because the guest was never mortal. In this scene the possibility of theoxeny turns out to be true.
Antinous blames Penelope for the suitors’ long stay: she strung them along, so it is her fault they are still there. Notice the assumption underneath, that guests are entitled to stay until they get what they came for. That is the reverse of a guest’s duty to leave.
Worth knowing. Helen sits at the table. The Trojan War began when Paris, a guest in Menelaus’s house, left with his host’s wife. The greatest war in Greek memory started as a breach of xenia. The poem does not say so in Book 4; it expects you to know.
| Character | Role | Verdict | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Telemachus Bk 1 | Host | Good | Notices the stranger; full sequence in order; gift offered; all for a guest he cannot identify. |
| Telemachus Bks 3–4 | Guest | Good | Gracious, honest about who he is, tactful about gifts, does not overstay. |
| The suitors | Guests | Very bad | Uninvited, permanent, consuming the household, courting the host’s wife, plotting to kill his son. |
| Nestor | Host | Good | Feeds first, asks later; chariot, horses and escort on departure. |
| Menelaus | Host | Good | States the principle aloud; bath, feast, then questions; adapts the gift. |
| Eteoneus | Servant | Corrected | Hesitates over admitting strangers, so that Menelaus can give the right answer. |
| Paris remembered | Guest | Original breach | Left with his host’s wife; the war followed. |
Every act of good hospitality in Books 1–4 is placed against the suitors. They break every rule a guest is bound by, in the house of a man whose own hospitality was famous, and by Book 4 they are plotting to kill the host’s son, which is as far as a guest can go.
In a world where Zeus protects hosts and guests, they have put themselves outside divine protection. The eagle omen in Book 2 and the repeated promises of Odysseus’s return are the poem signalling, well in advance, that this will be punished.
Xenia therefore drives the plot of the poem: the second half, in which Odysseus returns and punishes the suitors, is the consequence of how they behave here.
These are positions, not facts. Decide how far the text supports each one, and mark your verdict.