Odyssey 8.489 · Book 8, lines 489–491
You sing the Achaeans' doom truly
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λίην γὰρ κατὰ κόσμον Ἀχαιῶν οἶτον ἀείδεις, ὅσσʼ ἔρξαν τʼ ἔπαθόν τε καὶ ὅσσʼ ἐμόγησαν Ἀχαιοί, ὥς τέ που ἢ αὐτὸς παρεὼν ἢ ἄλλου ἀκούσας.
For exceedingly well, in due order, you sing the doom of the Achaeans — all that they did and suffered and all that the Achaeans toiled through — as though somehow you had been present yourself, or heard it from another.
Word by word
The setting
Odysseus, still speaking, gives the ground of his praise: Demodocus sings the fate of the Greeks at Troy so exactly that he might have witnessed it himself.
A note on this passage
The compliment turns specific. What Odysseus admires is order and accuracy: Demodocus sings the Greeks' suffering at Troy 'in due measure,' as if he had stood there himself or had it from an eyewitness. It is the standard Greek test of good narration — did it happen this way?
The undercurrent is that Odysseus is the eyewitness. He knows to the last detail whether the song is true, because he did and suffered these things. The bard sings blind and secondhand what one listener lived; the praise 'as though you were there' is spoken by the one man in the hall who was. Homer sets the eyewitness and the inspired singer side by side and quietly asks which knowledge is the surer.
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