Hospitium In The Odyssey Essay

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The Role of Hospitium in The Odyssey Hospitium, or Xenia, also called the guest right, was a Greek philosophy that required that all guests were to be given generous welcomes by their hosts, either with wine, gifts, or food. In Greek Society, Hospitium must be practiced by both the guest and the host. If these laws were not followed, the wrongdoing party would risk antagonizing Zeus, the protector of travelers. Besides the guest’s guidelines, there were also the host’s guidelines, which are to make sure the guest’s needs are met. Here we see that in the Odyssey, our perspective of the moral quality of the characters in the story directly coincides with their abidance or rejection of Hospitium. The fine line between the guest’s rights and the host’s duty has a major influence on Odysseus’ and Telemachus’ journey in the Odyssey. Odysseus traveled ten years after the war in Troy to get back to his family. During the journey, Odysseus met wealthy kings, seductive nymphs, monsters, and strange creatures. All of these creatures, in some way, were expected to be hospitable to the guests, but in Odysseus’ journey this was not always the case. The first observance of Hospitium, or the lack of it, is the suitors in Odysseus’ household. “While they continue to bleed my household white. Soon--you wait-- they’ll grind me down as well” (1.292). In this quote, Telemachus is talking to Mentor about the suitors taking all of the supplies in his house, and he cannot do anything to …show more content…

Aeolus, the master of the winds was very hospitable and even gave a gift to Odysseus. “he denied me nothing, he went about my passage” (15.21). In this part of the book, Odysseus goes to a humane area where Odysseus and his crew are greeted with compassion. But, in turn, Odysseus’ crew squanders this magnificent gift due to their greed, not honoring Hospitium by misusing the gift of a god and making Aeolus reject their demand for another bag of

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