And so well does Demodocus sing the story of the horse that tears run down Odysseus’s cheeks and he groans heavily. Odysseus is more than keen to hear about his own heroic exploits. On the last leg of his return he is entertained by the Phaeacians on the island of Scheria (perhaps modern Corfu), where Odysseus, his identity unknown to his hosts, rather cheekily asks the local bard Demodocus to sing the story of the wooden horse, which Odysseus had used to hide the Greek soldiers and surprise the city of Troy.
It is very important in the Odyssey that the hero’s renown as the destroyer of Troy has quickly entered into the oral tradition of the world through which he travels. There is a strong element of the trickster figure about Homer’s Odysseus. All of Odysseus’s men are eventually killed, and he alone survives his return home, mostly because of his versatility and cleverness. Polyphemus is blinded but survives the attack and curses the voyage home of the Ithacans. He and his men enter into the cave of the Cyclops, get him drunk on some seriously potent wine, and then stick a large burning stake into his eye. The critical episode on the way home is Odysseus’s encounter with Polyphemus, a Cyclops and son of Poseidon (told in Book 9).
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