Odyssey 4.620 · Book 4, lines 620–624
The feast fills the hall
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ὣς οἱ μὲν τοιαῦτα πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἀγόρευον, δαιτυμόνες δʼ ἐς δώματʼ ἴσαν θείου βασιλῆος. οἱ δʼ ἦγον μὲν μῆλα, φέρον δʼ ἐυήνορα οἶνον· σῖτον δέ σφʼ ἄλοχοι καλλικρήδεμνοι ἔπεμπον. ὣς οἱ μὲν περὶ δεῖπνον ἐνὶ μεγάροισι πένοντο.
So they spoke such things to one another, while the banqueters came into the divine king's house. They drove sheep, and carried heartening wine; and their fair-veiled wives sent bread. So they busied themselves about the meal in the halls.
Word by word
The setting
The exchange between the two men closes, and the poem turns to the household around them: guests arriving, servants bringing sheep and wine, wives sending bread, the whole hall busy with the feast.
A note on this passage
A calm scene-change. The two men's talk is bracketed off — 'so they spoke' — and the camera pulls back to the working household: guests arriving, sheep led in, wine and bread brought, everyone busy with the coming feast. It is the ordinary machinery of a great house at its best.
The ease is the point, because of what comes next. This is a feast supplied and served as it should be, in a king's ordered hall. The poem is about to cut, on the very word 'feast,' to another hall entirely — Odysseus's — where the eating is theft and the household is being consumed from within. The contrast is set up here, quietly, before the knife-turn.
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