Odysseus at the palace of Alcinous

Odysseus, hidden by a mist Athena has thrown around him, walks alone into the palace of King Alcinous and Queen Arete. The palace is dazzling — bronze walls, golden doors, silver dogs guarding the threshold, an orchard outside that bears fruit in every season. He throws himself at the queen's knees in the formal gesture of supplication, and the mist lifts. The court is astonished. Alcinous orders him fed and seated, and after the meal asks who he is. Odysseus tells them only what he has just been through — Calypso's island, the storm, the shore — but does not yet say his name.

Arete, the queen, recognizes the clothes he is wearing as her own daughter's. She asks how he came by them. Odysseus explains, carefully, in a way that protects Nausicaa from any awkwardness — the ball, the laundry, the offer of help, the walk into town a few paces apart. The court is impressed by the answer. Alcinous, half-jokingly, offers him his daughter and a palace; if he prefers to go home, that too can be arranged — the Phaeacians have magical ships that travel without rowers, that read their passengers' minds and steer themselves.

It is the most generous offer made to anyone in the poem. Odysseus says only that he wants to go home, and goes to bed in clean linen for the first time in years. The Phaeacians are the gold standard of hospitality the rest of the poem will measure everyone else against — a magical island where a stranger in rags is treated as if he might be a god, because the law of xenia says he might be. They are also, for Odysseus, the bridge between the supernatural world he has been wandering in and the home he has not yet seen.