Odyssey 8.289 · Book 8, lines 289–291
Ares takes her hand
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ἡ δὲ νέον παρὰ πατρὸς ἐρισθενέος Κρονίωνος ἐρχομένη κατʼ ἄρʼ ἕζεθʼ· ὁ δʼ εἴσω δώματος ᾔει, ἔν τʼ ἄρα οἱ φῦ χειρί, ἔπος τʼ ἔφατʼ ἔκ τʼ ὀνόμαζε·
And she, newly having come from her father, mighty son of Kronos, then sat down; and he was going within the house, and there to her clung by the hand, and spoke a word and called her by name:
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The setting
Aphrodite has just come home from a visit to her father, Zeus. She sits down; Ares enters the house, takes her hand, and speaks — the standard gesture and formula that open a wooing.
A note on this passage
The lovers meet in a few unhurried gestures. Aphrodite has newly come from her father's house and sits down; Ares steps inside, takes her by the hand, and calls her by name. The line “clung to her hand, spoke and named her” is a fixed formula of intimate address, laid down plainly.
The undercurrent is the ordinariness. Homer stages a divine adultery with the exact domestic choreography of any Homeric greeting — the clasped hand, the naming, the settling in. That flatness is the comedy's engine: the grander the machinery of gods, the funnier it is to watch them behave like a household caught in the middle of an idle afternoon.
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