Hospitality In The Odyssey Essay

As in today’s society we know the word “Hospitality” means to entertain and care for your guest, visitors, or strangers. When a person is treating someone to hospitality they go out there way to make sure that the person or group of people that they are treating is well taken care of and is comfortable. But that is just one way of expressing and showing hospitality, there are many other ways to describe the word to in different types of settings. Like In Homer’s poem The Odyssey Hospitality also known as Xenia is a code that they use where they give soldiers a break from their journeys and get away from troubles. But because of it being so important if this code was broken they would be punished by the Gods.

An example of hospitality shown in book 3 where Telemachus goes off to find out about his father,

Menelaus shows him great hospitality before they even distinguish his characteristics. As Telemachus and Nestor’s son arrive at Menelaus castle one of his retainers spots them and runs to Menelaus for instructions, and ask should he admit them or send them on to another estate. But Menelaus insults him and calls him and idiot and says “Do you think I’d have ever made it home from Troy if I’d been refused hospitality?” Which if he did there was probably a great chance that he would have been punished by the gods for not accepting the hospitality that he was offered.

Another example is when Odysseus and his crew goes to the Cyclops home and they were welcome in an unwanted way they attack the Cyclops and Odysseus blinds him and gets himself into deeper trouble.

But being that the Cyclops is Poseidon son he gets infuriated an caused more problems for Odysseus and his crew.

Thought Odysseus and Telemachus travels, we can easily see how strangers are greeted and treated them upon their appearance to a new place. It seems as if strangers invited them in for a dinner, showered and were given hand-outs and luxuries, and then asked who they were and what their dealing was. The people of the Greek Society didn’t show hospitality out of the kindness of their heats, but they did it for the Gods.

Hospitality then was basically like a test that the Gods put the people through to see if they would treat a total strangers and beggars like they are Gods. And by doing this they know not to mistreat or mistakenly treat a God different, just if so a God were to show up at their door step as a complete stranger. But host’s asks the strangers to pray to the Gods for them for their happiness as in return for their hospitality that they

gave.

But we come to ask our self is hospitality as conventional now like it was in Homer’s time? It seems as if we modern people do show hospitality towards each other but in a diverse way than in Homeric times. It is not necessary for us to provide shelter, food, and protection to a stranger that arrives at your door step. This is because we now have hotels and restaurants everywhere an individual can go.
So overall hospitality in Homers poem The Odyssey is just a code of conduct that everyone must follow or they will have to fear the wrath of the God’s. This is why they purposely put people through test to see how they would treat a total stranger and if they didn’t show them great hospitality they would more and likely treat a God the same way.