Xenia as a Rite of Passage in the Odyssey
Xenia as a Rite of Passage in the Odyssey

Summary/Abstract: The primary focus of this paper, then, is the examination of several of the Odyssey’s xenia scenes and their connection with divine justice within the social and literary context of the rite of passage. In the course of this survey, we will see that the xenia rite serves as a means of identifying recipients of divine punishment in the Odyssey—that is, those who fail to abide by the proper norms of behavior in the course of a hospitality episode soon meet with a significant reversal of fortune or (most commonly) with a violent death. There are several possible reasons for the importance of the xenia rite in the poem, ranging from the abstract importance of modeling and reinforcing behavioral norms, which are crucial to a functioning society, to the more practical need for an institution like xenia in a place like Iron Age Greece, the predominant historical setting for the Homeric poems,4 where communities were small and scattered, travel difficult and uncertain, and the safety of travelers far from guaranteed. In both of these respects, xenia scenes in the Odyssey serve a significant social function, and their blending of the mundane with the fantastical would have made the poem both more relatable and entertaining to its ancient Greek audience while also communicating ideals about the nature of social custom and divine law. But within the context of the Odyssey itself, the formulaic nature of the xenia rite in the poem helps to establish consistent expectations for behavior from guests and hosts, and the violation of those expectations is met with similarly consistent punishment, which means that much of the poem’s internal logic for the application of divine justice seems to center around the behavioral norms of xenia.

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