Odyssey 8.577 · Book 8, lines 577–580
That there be a song for men to come
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εἰπὲ δʼ ὅ τι κλαίεις καὶ ὀδύρεαι ἔνδοθι θυμῷ Ἀργείων Δαναῶν ἠδʼ Ἰλίου οἶτον ἀκούων. τὸν δὲ θεοὶ μὲν τεῦξαν, ἐπεκλώσαντο δʼ ὄλεθρον ἀνθρώποις, ἵνα ᾖσι καὶ ἐσσομένοισιν ἀοιδή.
And tell why you weep and lament within your heart, hearing the doom of the Argive Danaans and of Ilium. And this the gods wrought, and spun destruction for men, so that there might be a song even for those to come.
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The setting
Still Alcinous, pressing the one thing he cannot explain: why the stranger keeps weeping at Demodocus's song of Troy. Then he gives the epic's own account of why such things happen — the gods make them, so that there will be something to sing.
A note on this passage
Alcinous puts the question the whole scene has been circling: why does the guest weep, hidden in his cloak, whenever the doom of the Greeks at Troy is sung? Then he answers a larger question no one asked — the gods spun that ruin for men on purpose, so that it might become a song for people not yet born.
The undercurrent is the poem talking about itself. The suffering at Troy exists, Alcinous says, to be sung — which is exactly what Demodocus is doing, and exactly what the Odyssey is doing now. But the man it consoles as future song is sitting in the room, still inside the grief, and the theory of poetry that comforts the Phaeacians is unbearable to the one who lived it.
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