The polarity «host-guest»/«foreigner» in the Homeric Poems

Abstract

Contacts and interactions among distinct Greek communities and with the foreign world too are witnessed by de Homeric poetry. We look into the structure of these relationships through the contextual and comparative analysis of the numerous incidences of ξεῖνος, xeînos, in its double meaning of «host-guest» and «foreigner» — semantical values both implicit in its etymology — or of its derived, compound or synonymous terms.

Two distinct appearances of ‘hospitality’ are shown by this procedure: one of them, is restricted to the élites and is a form of mutual alliance; the other, at a more common level, rules the reception of who comes from outside in need of help. Examples of the first use are shown by both Homeric Poems, but only in the Odyssey we mainly find these terms applied with the second sense.

The later political and legal regulation of the foreign relations, as far as the póleis progressively assume attributions previously held by géne — the patriarcal families — is prefigured by signs of a kind of institutionalization of the ‘hospitality’, sporadically in the Illiad and more openly in the Odyssey.