Odyssey 1.324 · Book 1, lines 324–327
The bard sings the bitter homecoming
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αὐτίκα δὲ μνηστῆρας ἐπῴχετο ἰσόθεος φώς. τοῖσι δʼ ἀοιδὸς ἄειδε περικλυτός, οἱ δὲ σιωπῇ ἥατʼ ἀκούοντες· ὁ δʼ Ἀχαιῶν νόστον ἄειδε λυγρόν, ὃν ἐκ Τροίης ἐπετείλατο Παλλὰς Ἀθήνη.
At once the godlike man went among the suitors. For them a renowned bard was singing, and they sat listening in silence; he was singing the Achaeans' bitter homecoming, which Pallas Athena had laid on them from Troy.
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The setting
With Athena gone, the poem returns to the hall, where the suitors are being entertained by Phemius the bard.
A note on this passage
The scene turns from the god's visit to the hall. Telemachus goes among the suitors, and a famous singer is performing for them: the Achaeans' bitter homecoming from Troy — the disastrous returns Athena herself had inflicted on the fleet. The suitors sit and listen in silence.
The undercurrent is a poem listening to itself. The Odyssey is a nostos-song, and here, inside it, a bard sings nostoi — the wretched returns of the other Greeks, the dark backdrop against which Odysseus's still-unfinished homecoming is measured. It is also the very song about to bring Penelope down the stairs: for her the theme is not entertainment but the open wound of the one return that has not come.
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