Odyssey 4.615 · Book 4, lines 615–619
The silver bowl of Hephaestus
Read the full text in our reader
δώσω τοι κρητῆρα τετυγμένον· ἀργύρεος δὲ ἔστιν ἅπας, χρυσῷ δʼ ἐπὶ χείλεα κεκράανται, ἔργον δʼ Ἡφαίστοιο. πόρεν δέ ἑ Φαίδιμος ἥρως, Σιδονίων βασιλεύς, ὅθʼ ἑὸς δόμος ἀμφεκάλυψε κεῖσέ με νοστήσαντα· τεῒν δʼ ἐθέλω τόδʼ ὀπάσσαι.
I will give you a well-wrought mixing-bowl: all of silver, its rims finished with gold, the work of Hephaestus. The hero Phaedimus gave it to me, king of the Sidonians, when his house sheltered me on my return there; and this I wish to bestow on you.
Word by word
The setting
Menelaus names the gift: a silver mixing-bowl with a gold rim, made by the god Hephaestus, which the Sidonian king Phaedimus had given him during his own wanderings home.
A note on this passage
Menelaus names the thing precisely: a silver krater, its lip inlaid with gold, and — the crowning claim — made by Hephaestus himself. He then gives its history: it came to him from Phaedimus, king of Sidon, who hosted him on his own long way home from Troy.
The gift carries two things beside its metal. First, a whole story of xenia: it is a guest-gift passed on as a guest-gift, the currency by which noble houses stay bound across the sea. Second, Menelaus's own nostos is folded into it — he won it while wandering, and the reader has just heard how hard that wandering was. The finest object in the house is a souvenir of being far from home.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 4.615 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
From the Great Library
You are reading a page of the Odyssey — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Odyssey 4.615 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/4.615/