Odyssey 7.86 · Book 7, lines 86–90
The bronze house of Alcinous
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χάλκεοι μὲν γὰρ τοῖχοι ἐληλέδατʼ ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα, ἐς μυχὸν ἐξ οὐδοῦ, περὶ δὲ θριγκὸς κυάνοιο· χρύσειαι δὲ θύραι πυκινὸν δόμον ἐντὸς ἔεργον· σταθμοὶ δʼ ἀργύρεοι ἐν χαλκέῳ ἕστασαν οὐδῷ, ἀργύρεον δʼ ἐφʼ ὑπερθύριον, χρυσέη δὲ κορώνη.
For bronze walls ran this way and that, from the threshold to the inmost recess, and around a frieze of dark enamel; and golden doors closed in the well-built house within; and doorposts of silver stood on the bronze threshold, and silver was the lintel above, and golden the door-ring.
Word by word
The setting
Odysseus, still on the threshold, takes in the palace of Alcinous: bronze walls, a frieze of blue enamel, golden doors, silver doorposts and lintel, a golden door-ring. A house out of fairy-tale.
A note on this passage
Pure wonder, catalogued. The walls are bronze, running the length of the hall from threshold to inner room, topped by a frieze of dark-blue enamel; the doors are gold, the posts and lintel silver, the door-ring gold. The poem inventories the palace the way it inventories armor, piece by gleaming piece.
The undercurrent is what such a house means. This is not a Greek king's hall but the home of the Phaeacians, a charmed people at the edge of the world, and the metals say so: gold and silver and bronze heaped past any real economy. The abundance marks Scheria as a threshold between the fairy-tale of the wanderings and the hard, human Ithaca to come — a last enchanted place before the poem turns for home.
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