Odyssey 1.421 · Book 1, lines 421–424
The suitors go home to bed
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οἱ δʼ εἰς ὀρχηστύν τε καὶ ἱμερόεσσαν ἀοιδὴν τρεψάμενοι τέρποντο, μένον δʼ ἐπὶ ἕσπερον ἐλθεῖν. τοῖσι δὲ τερπομένοισι μέλας ἐπὶ ἕσπερος ἦλθε· δὴ τότε κακκείοντες ἔβαν οἶκόνδε ἕκαστος.
And they, turning to dance and lovely song, took their pleasure, and waited for evening to come. And as they took their pleasure, dark evening came upon them; then, longing for their beds, they went off each to his own house.
Word by word
The setting
The assembly and feast are over. The suitors — the young men crowding Odysseus's house, courting Penelope and devouring his stores — spend the evening as they always do, then scatter to their own homes for the night.
A note on this passage
The suitors' evening ends the way every evening in this house has ended: dancing, song, and then, when the dark comes on, each man home to his own bed. Homer marks the passing of time with one of his most serene formulas — μέλας ἕσπερος, ‘dark evening,’ arriving on schedule.
The calm is the point. This is the settled daily rhythm of men eating another man's household alive, and the poem gives it the same untroubled clockwork it gives any nightfall. Notice too what the line does to the camera: the crowd disperses, ‘each to his own house,’ and the hall empties — so that the next line can close on the one person left awake in it.
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