Odyssey 4.529 · Book 4, lines 529–533
Aegisthus lays the ambush
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αὐτίκα δʼ Αἴγισθος δολίην ἐφράσσατο τέχνην· κρινάμενος κατὰ δῆμον ἐείκοσι φῶτας ἀρίστους εἷσε λόχον, ἑτέρωθι δʼ ἀνώγει δαῖτα πένεσθαι. αὐτὰρ ὁ βῆ καλέων Ἀγαμέμνονα, ποιμένα λαῶν ἵπποισιν καὶ ὄχεσφιν, ἀεικέα μερμηρίζων.
At once Aegisthus devised a cunning stratagem. Choosing out through the district twenty of the best men, he set them in ambush, and on the other side he bade a feast be made ready. Then he himself went to summon Agamemnon, shepherd of the people, with horses and chariots, brooding on unseemly deeds.
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The setting
Warned that Agamemnon has landed, Aegisthus moves fast: he picks his best fighters, hides them, orders a welcome-feast, and rides out to bring the king in himself.
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The plan snaps into motion. Aegisthus culls twenty of the district's best fighters, hides them, and orders a banquet laid on the other side of the hall — then rides out himself, with horses and chariots, to fetch the king home in style.
Every piece of this is the vocabulary of xenia, guest-friendship, run in reverse. The welcome-feast, the host who goes out to meet his guest and bring him in with honor — these are the sacred obligations a Greek owed a returning man, and Aegisthus counterfeits each one while ‘brooding on unseemly deeds.’ In this poem the corruption of hospitality is the gravest crime there is, and here it is staged as its own perfect opposite.
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