"Help yourselves to food, and welcome! Once you've dined we'll ask who you are."Book 4, page 126, line 68, The Odyssey
Hospitality seems to be a very significant issue that arises whenever a stranger is welcomed into one's household. Most evidently, food is the preliminary way to welcome a visitor since this is shown when Telemachus reaches the palaces of Menelaus and Nestor. Homer repeats a phrase again and again to show that the need for food is no longer necessary; "and when they'd put aside desire for food and drink," on pages 82, 109, 122, and 126.
This level of welcome is unheard of in our society but in their time, it seems as though it was expected from a host. Even in Ithica where the suitors are showing an abundant lacking of dike, they show that they expect hospitality by helping themselves to the crops and meat of the land.
This quote does an excellent job at displaying how key hospitality is to their society.
This makes me wonder what our society would be like if we still valued hospitality to the same degree. Would we be more civilized? Less? What defines civilized? Is it hospitality?
ReplyDeleteHomer repeats the theme of hospitality, like Hunter said, over and over and it makes it a key theme to this story and their culture. Would the story be different if hospitality wasn't as important? Who knows...
If we were to value it as much as the ancient Greeks I believe our society would be very different. I can't communicate how exactly but it is just this feeling that we would be completely different, transformed.
The food is an important thing because not only does it show you are "civilized" but it also changes the personalities of those you are giving it to. For example, even today when a friend comes over I make sure I give them some food and or/drinks, and ask there parents if they want any as well. It helps them interpret my personality and my attitude. Those who give are seen as proper and kind people who care about others, and that was major back then as well as now. That is what civilized is, isn't it?
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