Odyssey 1.123 · Book 1, lines 123–125

Telemachus's first words in the poem are the guest-code stated whole in two lines: welcome, stranger; you will be treated as a friend; eat first — then tell us what you need. No name is asked. Identity and business wait, by rule, until the guest has been fed. He leads; Pallas Athena follows into the house whose crisis she has come to end.

χαῖρε, ξεῖνε is the poem's ethical touchstone. Feed first, ask later will separate every host in the Odyssey — Nestor, Menelaus, the swineherd Eumaeus all honor it; the Cyclops asks his questions first and feeds on the guests themselves. That the boy's very first utterance is the formula done perfectly tells us who he is: his father's son in the one currency this poem counts. And the first person he ever welcomes is a god — the code's premise, that any stranger might be more than they seem, is literally true at his first attempt.

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