Odyssey 8.519 · Book 8, lines 519–522
The bard sings on; Odysseus melts into tears
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κεῖθι δὴ αἰνότατον πόλεμον φάτο τολμήσαντα νικῆσαι καὶ ἔπειτα διὰ μεγάθυμον Ἀθήνην. ταῦτʼ ἄρʼ ἀοιδὸς ἄειδε περικλυτός· αὐτὰρ Ὀδυσσεὺς τήκετο, δάκρυ δʼ ἔδευεν ὑπὸ βλεφάροισι παρειάς.
There, indeed, he told that Odysseus, daring the most dreadful war, conquered — and thereafter through great-hearted Athena. These things, then, the far-famed bard sang; but Odysseus melted, and a tear wet his cheeks beneath his eyelids.
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The setting
The close of Demodocus's Wooden Horse song: he sings Odysseus's victory at the house of Deiphobus, won with Athena's help. As the whole hall listens to his own legend, Odysseus dissolves.
A note on this passage
The song reaches its climax — Odysseus surviving the worst of the fighting, carried through by Athena — and then the frame returns. ‘These things the famous bard sang.’ Against that public triumph Homer sets one private body: Odysseus melting, a tear soaking his cheeks under his lids.
The verb τήκετο is literally ‘he was melting,’ the word for snow going to water or wax to the flame. The hero the song calls unbreakable is, at that moment, coming apart. And the tear is hidden ‘beneath his eyelids’ — the first sign that this weeping is something he is trying to keep from the room, which sets up all that follows.
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