Demodocus

chapter seven when it was daylight alcinous caused it to be proclaimed by the heralds about the town that there was come to the palace a stranger shipwrecked on their coast that in mien and person resembled a god and inviting all the chief people of the city to come and do honour to the stranger The palace was quickly filled with guests, old and young, for whose cheer and to grace Ulysses more, Alcinous made a kingly feast with banquetings and music.

Ulysses being seated at a table next the king and queen, in all men's view, after they had feasted, Alcinist ordered Demodocus, the court singer to be called, to sing some songs of the deeds of heroes, to charm the ear of his guest.

Demodocus came and reached his harp, where it hung between two pillars of silver.

And then the blind singer, to whom in recompense of his lost sight the muses had given an inward discernment, a soul and a voice to excite the hearts of men and gods to delight, began in grave and solemn strains to sing the glories of men highest famed.

He chose a poem whose subject was the stern strife stirred up between Ulysses and great Achilles, as at a banquet sacred to the gods in dreadful language, they expressed their difference, while Agamemnon sat rejoiced in soul to hear those Grecians jar.

For the oracle in Pytho had told him that the period of their wars in Troy should then be when the kings of Greece, anxious to arrive at the wished conclusion, should fall to strife and contend which must end the war, force or stratagem.

this brave contention he expressed so to the life in the very words which they both used in the quarrel as brought tears to the eyes of ulysses at the remembrance of past passage of his life and he held his large purple weed before his face to conceal it then craving a cup of wine he poured it out in secret libation to the gods who had put into the mind of demodocus unknowingly to him so much honour But when the moving poet began to tell of other occurrences where Ulysses had been present, the memory of his brave followers who had been with him in all difficulties, now swallowed up and lost in the ocean, and of those kings that had fought with him at Troy, some of whom were dead, some exiles like himself, forced itself so strongly upon his mind that forgetful where he was, he sobbed outright with passion, which yet he restrained, but not so cunningly, but so alcenous perceived it, and without taking notice of it to Ulysses, privately gave signs that domodocus should cease from his singing next followed dancing in the phaetian fashion when they would show respect to their guests which was succeeded by trials of skill games of strength running racing hurling of the coit mock fights hurling of the javelin shooting with the bow in some of which ulysses modestly challenging his entertainers performed such feats of strength and prowess as gave the admiring physicians fresh reason to imagine that he was either some god or hero of the race of the gods these solemn shows and pageants in honour of his guest king alcinous continued for the space of many days as if he could never be weary of showing courtesies to so worthy a stranger In all this time he never asked him his name, nor sought to know more of him than he of his own accord disclosed.

till on a day as they were seated feasting, after the feast was ended, Demodocus being called, as was the custom, to sing some grave matter, sang how Ulysses, on that night when Troy was fired, made dreadful proof of his valour, maintaining singly a combat against the whole household of Diphobus, to which the divine expressor gave both act and passion.

And when they had burnt the pieces of the thighs, they shared the glorious feast and made merry.

And among them harped the divine minstrel Demodocus, whom the people honored.

But Odysseus would never turn his head toward the splendor of the sun as one fain to hasten his setting.

for verily he was most eager to return.

All right.

One of my favorite, uh, lines or, or bits was, um, towards the, mm, towards the beginning I think, there was a festival or something and Demodocus comes.

Oh, and her dad is talking about, he's, he's criticizing, like, the idea that the Trojan War really took place based on, like, Helen, that they really pursued it because of Helen.

And then Nausicaa, uh, makes a...

In Homer's biased view, glory, kleos, is the highest prize that a hero can compete for.

Biased, I say, because an epic bard like Homer himself is the chief distributor of such glory.

Because the technical definition of glory in this context would be having your story sung by an epic bard.

And what is an epic bard really? Well, we're about to meet one in the next book.

They all go to bed, and Book Seven ends.

When you really break it down, there are not too many experiences we have today that the ancients just couldn't relate to.

And when they all get there, the king speaks up.

"All right, folks, this man here wants a ride home, and we're gonna give it to him.

And, um, he almost certainly lived during this age that they attribute it to.

And they also are, are like, it's possible that he might be a known historic blind bard named, uh, Demo- Demodocus.

[laughs]

Demodocus.

Yeah.

That's the hardest one, I think, out of this whole, whole, uh, article.

So-

Right.

So as part of the, you know, getting ready for the podcast, I sent you through a few excerpts from the poem, which I thought I'd ask you to read.

And so I wondered, could you read the one where, is it, Demodocus sings about the Trojan horse?

Yes.

So what happens is that Odysseus ends up on this island of Scaria, and there's a singer called Demodocus.

And Odysseus hears him sing and says, you sang beautifully, because he hears him sing in the sack of Troy.

And he says, but come, he says now, sing of the wooden horse, a pair spilt with Athena's help, the cunning trap that good Odysseus brought one day to the heights of Troy, filled with fighting men who laid the city waste.

Now, Theodotus himself is dead, and therefore he, at any rate, will not seek to stop him.

And there is Paralus, the son of Demodocus, who had a brother, Theges.

And Ademantus, the son of Ariston, whose brother Plato is present.

and Aeontodorus, who is the brother of Apollodorus, whom I also see.

Even the blindness, the one thing everybody knows about Homer, dissolves under inspection.

The Odyssey features a blind bard named Demodocus who sings at a royal court, and later Greeks seem to have read him as a self-portrait of Homer.

An early hymn to Apollo contains a passage where the singer describes himself as a blind man from rocky chios.

The historian Thucydides, a much more rigorous scholar than Herodotus, cited those lines as Homer's own words about himself.