Odyssey 8.571 · Book 8, lines 571–576
Tell me your wanderings
Read the full text in our reader
ἤ κʼ ἀτέλεστʼ εἴη, ὥς οἱ φίλον ἔπλετο θυμῷ· ἀλλʼ ἄγε μοι τόδε εἰπὲ καὶ ἀτρεκέως κατάλεξον, ὅππῃ ἀπεπλάγχθης τε καὶ ἅς τινας ἵκεο χώρας ἀνθρώπων, αὐτούς τε πόλιάς τʼ ἐὺ ναιετοώσας, ἠμὲν ὅσοι χαλεποί τε καὶ ἄγριοι οὐδὲ δίκαιοι, οἵ τε φιλόξεινοι, καί σφιν νόος ἐστὶ θεουδής.
Or it might be unfulfilled, as it proved dear to him in his heart. But come, tell me this and recount truly: where you were driven astray, and to what lands of men you reached, both the people themselves and their well-peopled cities, both those who are harsh and wild nor just, and those who love strangers, and whose mind is god-fearing.
Word by word
The setting
Alcinous is finishing his address to the still-unnamed stranger. He has just recalled Poseidon's old threat against a Phaeacian ship, and now turns from that to the real request: an account of where the guest has been driven, and among what peoples — the cruel and the kind.
A note on this passage
Alcinous sets up the whole second half of the poem. He asks the guest, plainly, to say where his wanderings carried him and what human lands he touched — sorting them at once into two kinds, the savage and lawless against the hospitable and god-fearing. That division is the moral map the coming tale will be measured against.
The undercurrent is xenia, guest-friendship, made into a test. A people's worth is fixed here by one question: how do they treat a stranger? The Phaeacians, feasting a castaway they do not yet know, are quietly grading themselves as they ask — and the Cyclops, the first host in the story to come, will fail the test by eating his guests.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 8.571 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
From the Great Library
You are reading a page of the Odyssey — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Odyssey 8.571 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/8.571/