Odyssey 8.544 · Book 8, lines 544–547
A guest stands in a brother's place
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εἵνεκα γὰρ ξείνοιο τάδʼ αἰδοίοιο τέτυκται, πομπὴ καὶ φίλα δῶρα, τά οἱ δίδομεν φιλέοντες. ἀντὶ κασιγνήτου ξεῖνός θʼ ἱκέτης τε τέτυκται ἀνέρι, ὅς τʼ ὀλίγον περ ἐπιψαύῃ πραπίδεσσι.
For it is for the sake of a revered guest these things are provided— the convoy and dear gifts, which we give him in friendship. A guest and a suppliant stands in a brother's place to a man who has even a little touch with his wits.
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The setting
Still speaking, Alcinous explains why the Phaeacians lavish convoy and gifts on the stranger: a guest is sacred. A suppliant and guest, he says, stands to any man of sense in the place of a brother.
A note on this passage
This is the ethic of xenia stated outright. The convoy home and the gifts are owed to the guest as a guest — a revered guest — not earned by anything he has done. Hospitality here is law, not private generosity, and it is offered before the host has learned so much as the man's name.
The claim that a guest and suppliant counts in place of a brother, to anyone with a grain of sense, makes kinship a thing a man extends rather than only inherits. It measures a person by how he treats the stranger at his door — the very test the poem springs later on the Cyclops, who eats his guests, and on the suitors, who devour a host's house from within.
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