Odyssey 7.112 · Book 7, lines 112–116
The orchard of Alcinous
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ἔκτοσθεν δʼ αὐλῆς μέγας ὄρχατος ἄγχι θυράων τετράγυος· περὶ δʼ ἕρκος ἐλήλαται ἀμφοτέρωθεν. ἔνθα δὲ δένδρεα μακρὰ πεφύκασι τηλεθόωντα, ὄγχναι καὶ ῥοιαὶ καὶ μηλέαι ἀγλαόκαρποι συκέαι τε γλυκεραὶ καὶ ἐλαῖαι τηλεθόωσαι.
Outside the courtyard, near the gates, a great orchard of four acres; and around it a hedge is run on both sides. There tall trees grow, flourishing — pears and pomegranates and apple trees with splendid fruit, and sweet figs and flourishing olives.
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The setting
The tour moves outdoors. Beyond the courtyard wall, hard by the gates, lies the famous garden of Alcinous — four acres, hedged all round, planted with fruit trees that never stop bearing.
A note on this passage
The setting opens out to the garden, measured and enclosed: four acres, a hedge run right around it. Then the trees are named in a quick, glad list — pear, pomegranate, apple, fig, olive — each tagged as bright with fruit or in full leaf. The catalogue itself feels like abundance, one good thing after another.
This is the most famous garden in Greek poetry, and its wonder is that it keeps no season. The word τηλεθόωντα, "flourishing," frames the list at both ends, and the next lines will make the miracle explicit. Phaeacia is the last of Odysseus's fairy-tale stops, a place where the earth gives without pause — the opposite of the hungry, seasonal world he is sailing back to.
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