Odyssey 7.121 · Book 7, lines 121–124
Grape upon grape: the ever-bearing vineyard
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αὐτὰρ ἐπὶ σταφυλῇ σταφυλή, σῦκον δʼ ἐπὶ σύκῳ. ἔνθα δέ οἱ πολύκαρπος ἀλωὴ ἐρρίζωται, τῆς ἕτερον μὲν θειλόπεδον λευρῷ ἐνὶ χώρῳ τέρσεται ἠελίῳ, ἑτέρας δʼ ἄρα τε τρυγόωσιν,
And grape upon grape, and fig upon fig; there his rich-fruited vineyard is rooted, of which one part a drying-floor on level ground dries in the sun, while others they gather,
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The setting
Odysseus, still hidden, is taking in the wonders of Alcinous's palace grounds. The poet has been cataloguing the ever-bearing orchard; here the fruit piles up — grape on grape, fig on fig — and the vineyard begins its round of ripening.
A note on this passage
The poet is still listing the palace garden, and the list itself is the marvel: grape ripens on grape, fig on fig, and the vineyard runs through every stage of ripening at once. Nothing here is out of season; the ground simply keeps giving.
The undercurrent is that this is a garden no real farmer ever worked. In the human world grapes come once a year, and the drying-floor, the picking, and the treading fall months apart. Homer sets them all going in a single breath — the sign that Scheria is a threshold place, a step outside ordinary time on the way back to the ordinary hardship of Ithaca.
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