Xenia

Xenia The concept of Xenia in Homer’s Odyssey The concept of “xenia”, described in Homer’s Odyssey as the guest-host relationship played a dominant part in ancient Greece. According to what they believed, the guest-host relationship was based on the idea that courtesy would be reciprocal from host and guest. The different ways that Telemachos and Odysseus are treated throughout their journeys displays the positive and negative types of xenia. The Odyssey begins 20 years after Odysseus has left Ithaca. Ten of those years he spent fighting in the Trojan War. The remaining years he attempts to go back home to Ithaca, but his journey becomes quite difficult since Poseidon becomes Odysseus persecutor, just as Athene is firmly established as his protector. In one of his numerous journeys Odysseus meets the Phaiakians who receive him with warm hospitality without having to ask for his name first. “This is not the better way, nor is it fitting that the stranger should sit on the ground beside the hearth, in the ashes…But come, raise the stranger up and seat him on a silver studded chair and tell your heralds to mix in more wine for us…And xenia, odysseus, telemachos, relationship, odyssey, guest-host, concept, lines, hospitality, homer’s, book, years, way, stranger, own, others, one, house, guest, go, first, before, back, without, ways, war, trojan, treated, took, suitors, phaiakians, nonsense, negative, men, journeys