Odyssey 8.514 · Book 8, lines 514–518
The city sacked; Odysseus at Deiphobus's door
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ἤειδεν δʼ ὡς ἄστυ διέπραθον υἷες Ἀχαιῶν ἱππόθεν ἐκχύμενοι, κοῖλον λόχον ἐκπρολιπόντες. ἄλλον δʼ ἄλλῃ ἄειδε πόλιν κεραϊζέμεν αἰπήν, αὐτὰρ Ὀδυσσῆα προτὶ δώματα Δηιφόβοιο βήμεναι, ἠύτʼ Ἄρηα σὺν ἀντιθέῳ Μενελάῳ.
And he sang how the sons of the Achaeans sacked the city, pouring forth from the horse, having left the hollow ambush. He sang how one man in one place, another in another, ravaged the steep city; but Odysseus went to the house of Deiphobus, like Ares, with godlike Menelaus.
Word by word
The setting
The song's second movement: the Greeks burst from the horse by night and destroy Troy. Demodocus sings the sack in scattered scenes, then fixes on one — Odysseus and Menelaus storming the house of Deiphobus, the Trojan who took Helen after Paris died.
A note on this passage
The bard shifts from fate to action. The Greeks pour out of the horse, leave the hollow trap behind, and the city burns. Homer does not narrate the sack in sequence; he says the singer sang it ‘one man here, another there,’ each champion at his own doorway.
Then the song narrows to a single door: Odysseus and Menelaus at the house of Deiphobus, who had married Helen after Paris fell. The simile ‘like Ares with godlike Menelaus’ pairs the two men with the most personal claim on Helen's recovery, and arms the raid with the war-god's name — the poem's highest register for a killing.
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