CHAPTER SEVEN

The Songs of Demodocus.--The Convoy Home.--The Mariners Transformed to
Stone.--The Young Shepherd.


When it was daylight, Alcinous caused it to be proclaimed by the heralds
about the town that there was come to the palace a stranger, shipwrecked
on their coast, that in mien and person resembled a god; and inviting all
the chief people of the city to come and do honour to the stranger.

The palace was quickly filled with guests, old and young, for whose cheer,
and to grace Ulysses more, Alcinous made a kingly feast with banquetings
and music. Then, Ulysses being seated at a table next the king and queen,
in all men's view, after they had feasted Alcinous ordered Demodocus, the
court-singer, to be called to sing some song of the deeds of heroes, to
charm the ear of his guest. Demodocus came and reached his harp, where it
hung between two pillars of silver; and then the blind singer, to whom, in
recompense of his lost sight, the muses had given an inward discernment, a
soul and a voice to excite the hearts of men and gods to delight, began in
grave and solemn strains to sing the glories of men highliest famed. He
chose a poem whose subject was The Stern Strife stirred up between Ulysses
and Great Achilles, as at a banquet sacred to the gods, in dreadful
language, they expressed their difference; while Agamemnon sat rejoiced in
soul to hear those Grecians jar; for the oracle in Pytho had told him that
the period of their wars in Troy should then be, when the kings of Greece,
anxious to arrive at the wished conclusion, should fall to strife, and