Odyssey 4.65 · Book 4, lines 65–67
The host's own portion
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ὣς φάτο, καί σφιν νῶτα βοὸς παρὰ πίονα θῆκεν ὄπτʼ ἐν χερσὶν ἑλών, τά ῥά οἱ γέρα πάρθεσαν αὐτῷ. οἱ δʼ ἐπʼ ὀνείαθʼ ἑτοῖμα προκείμενα χεῖρας ἴαλλον.
So he spoke, and set before them the fat ox-chine, taking it up roasted in his hands — that honour-portion set beside him for himself. And they put forth their hands to the good cheer lying ready before them.
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The setting
Menelaus has finished speaking. Now the poem shows his courtesy in action: with his own hands he serves the guests the choicest cut — the roasted chine of beef that had been set before him as the guest-of-honour's portion.
A note on this passage
A small, telling gesture. The chine — the long cut along the backbone — was the choicest portion, and it had been laid before Menelaus himself as the mark of his rank. He passes it straight to his guests, honouring the strangers above himself, and the meal begins.
The line quietly measures the man. In a poem obsessed with how hosts treat guests — the suitors devouring Odysseus's house at one end, the Cyclops eating his visitors at the other — here is xenia done right: the finest thing on the table handed to a stranger whose name the host does not yet know. Generosity, in Homer, is a test, and Menelaus passes it without thinking.
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