Odyssey 10.8 · Book 10, lines 8–12
The unending feast
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οἱ δʼ αἰεὶ παρὰ πατρὶ φίλῳ καὶ μητέρι κεδνῇ δαίνυνται, παρὰ δέ σφιν ὀνείατα μυρία κεῖται, κνισῆεν δέ τε δῶμα περιστεναχίζεται αὐλῇ ἤματα· νύκτας δʼ αὖτε παρʼ αἰδοίῃς ἀλόχοισιν εὕδουσʼ ἔν τε τάπησι καὶ ἐν τρητοῖσι λέχεσσι.
And they always feast beside their dear father and devoted mother; and beside them countless dainties lie ready, and the house steams with savour, resounding through the court by day. But by night in turn beside their honoured wives they sleep, on blankets and in corded beds.
Word by word
The setting
The household's daily round: the grown children dine beside their parents by day, the hall thick with the savour of roasting meat, and each son sleeps by his wife at night.
A note on this passage
The camera stays on the household: parents and grown children feasting together all day, the hall loud with the smell of roasting meat, countless good things always laid out, and each son asleep by his wife at night. It is plenty without a shadow.
This is Homer's picture of a house that works — the flourishing home, abundant and self-renewing. Set beside the poem's frame it stings: on Ithaca a crowd of suitors is eating exactly such a house to the bone, and the feasting that means health here is the very thing killing Odysseus's home. The same verb, δαίνυνται, holds both.
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