ABSTRACT
The social institution of guest-friendship forms part of the material with which Homer works. In the action of the Odyssey it is one of the most important themes and occurs many times over. The situation which calls for guest-friendship is always this, that a stranger arrives at the entrance of a house and has to be received. This situation is bound to occur frequently in the Odyssey, since Telemachus is travelling in strange places in Books 3 and 4, Odysseus in Books 5 to 12, and Odysseus comes to the hut of Eumaeus and then to the Ithacan palace as a stranger in the second half of the epic.
