Homeric Greek
ξενία
Xenia
xenia
Guest-friendship and the reciprocal, and sometimes broken, obligations of host and stranger.
Etymology
From ξένος (xenos): stranger, guest, host, foreigner. Xenia is the relation and the rite among those roles. It is not a modern word for the hospitality industry.
Historical usage
In the Odyssey, xenia is tested constantly: Polyphemus violates it; the Phaeacians fulfill it; the suitors devour a house from inside it.
A guest may be a god. That possibility structures caution and generosity, not a metaphor for everyone is special. Zeus Xenios is historically relevant as the god who watches the relation.
Later development
Anthropology of hospitality (Pitt-Rivers and others) and Derrida’s later hostipitality are other conversations. Do not back-read them into Homer as if he had attended the seminar.
Why it matters here
Xenia is a threshold practice: how a household receives what it does not yet know. The Phaeacian hall is one of its offices. The Cyclops’ cave is its negation. Reciprocity is not guaranteed.
Stories that hold this word
Relationship type is not optional
A word present in a source text is not the same as a later critical term applied to that story.
In the source text
The OdysseyTested in the poem: Phaeacia, the Cyclops, the suitors.
Related
In the source text
The Odyssey