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Statue of Zeus
Statue of Zeus Zeus, the chief deity in the Greek pantheon, was also the enforcer of the ancient custom of hospitality.

xenia

ancient Greek custom
Also known as: guest-friendship, ritualized friendship
Written by
Gitanjali Roy
Gitanjali Roy is deputy managing editor, Encyclopaedia Britannica. She has over two decades of editorial experience across digital and broadcast media.
Gitanjali Roy
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Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
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What is Zeus’s law in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey?

xenia, ancient Greek custom of hospitality, regarded as a sacred duty and inviolable moral code. Xenia was a vital component in ancient Greek civilization’s social structure as well as in its political and economic matrix. It was necessitated by the fragmented nature of ancient Greece as a collection of city-states and island kingdoms, and it played an essential role in diplomacy and trade relations.

Zeus’s law

The concept of xenia demanded that food, shelter, and protection be offered to guests, travelers, and strangers without requiring them to reveal their identity or purpose. Those offered hospitality were expected to reciprocate by treating their host with courtesy. Xenia was believed to be enforced by Zeus, the chief deity in the Greek pantheon, in his role as Zeus Xenios (“Zeus of Hospitality”), and it was rooted in the belief that gods habitually assumed human form. Hosts who ignored their social obligations risked divine wrath in the event that the stranger they failed to honor was revealed to be a god in disguise.

Xenia in Greek mythology

The Greek flood myth is one of the foremost demonstrations of the rewards of honoring xenia. Philemon and Baucis, a pious Phrygian couple, hospitably received the disguised Zeus and Hermes after their richer neighbors had refused to do so. Philemon and Baucis were consequently saved from a flood that drowned the rest of their country. In Homer’s Odyssey, xenia was upheld by the king of the Phaeacians, Alcinous, who entertained the shipwrecked Odysseus and provided him with comforts as well as a ship in which to sail home to Ithaca. The swineherd Eumaeus also honored xenia by extending hospitality to the disguised Odysseus when he returned to Ithaca after an absence of 20 years.

Gavin Hamilton: Paris Abducting Helen (1782–84)
Gavin Hamilton: Paris Abducting Helen (1782–84)Paris Abducting Helen by Scottish painter Gavin Hamilton. Found in the collection of the State A Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.

The tragic consequences of gross violations of xenia are perhaps best illustrated by the Trojan prince Paris, who repaid the hospitality of the Spartan king Menelaus by eloping with Menelaus’s wife, Helen, thus triggering the Trojan War. In the Odyssey, the Cyclops Polyphemus devoured some of Odysseus’s companions when they sheltered in his cave, and he was eventually blinded by Odysseus. Transgressions against xenia were committed in Ithaca during Odysseus’s absence by the 108 suitors of his wife, Penelope. Led by Antinous, they plundered Odysseus’s household, pressured Penelope to marry one of them, and plotted to kill Odysseus’s son, Telemachus. Antinous shocked even the other suitors by insulting and assaulting an elderly beggar; when the beggar revealed himself as Odysseus and slew the suitors, Antinous was the first to die.

Gitanjali Roy