Odyssey 8.204 · Book 8, lines 204–210
I take on all of you but one
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τῶν δʼ ἄλλων ὅτινα κραδίη θυμός τε κελεύει, δεῦρʼ ἄγε πειρηθήτω, ἐπεί μʼ ἐχολώσατε λίην, ἢ πὺξ ἠὲ πάλῃ ἢ καὶ ποσίν, οὔ τι μεγαίρω, πάντων Φαιήκων, πλήν γʼ αὐτοῦ Λαοδάμαντος. ξεῖνος γάρ μοι ὅδʼ ἐστί· τίς ἂν φιλέοντι μάχοιτο; ἄφρων δὴ κεῖνός γε καὶ οὐτιδανὸς πέλει ἀνήρ, ὅς τις ξεινοδόκῳ ἔριδα προφέρηται ἀέθλων
And of the rest, whomever heart and spirit bid, come here, let him make trial, since you angered me too much, whether in boxing or in wrestling or even on foot, I grudge nothing, of all the Phaeacians, except only Laodamas himself. For this one is my guest-friend; who would fight with one he loves? Senseless indeed is that man, and worthless too, whoever offers to his host strife of contests.
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The setting
Warmed up and needled, Odysseus throws the games wide open: let any Phaeacian who dares take him on — boxing, wrestling, running — all of them but one.
A note on this passage
Let any of the rest whose heart bids him come and try, Odysseus says — in boxing, wrestling, or the footrace; he grudges no one, any Phaeacian save Laodamas alone. Laodamas is his host, and who would fight a friend? Only a fool, he adds, picks a quarrel with the man who has taken him in.
The one exception is the point. Odysseus, himself a guest, will not lift a hand against his host — the ξεινοδόκος bound to him by guest-friendship — and the man he spares is Alcinous's own son. In a poem whose disasters all spring from broken hospitality, the hero draws his line exactly where the sacred code draws it. Even the insult he throws — οὐτιδανός, 'worthless' — is built on οὔτις, 'nobody,' the very name he will one day give the Cyclops.
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