Games Proposed

9“Now that we all, to our content, have shared
The feast and heard the harp, whose notes so well
Suit with a liberal banquet, let us forth
And try our skill in games, that this our guest,
Returning to his country, may relate
How in the boxing and the wrestling match,
In leaping and in running, we excel.”

10He spoke, and went before; they followed him.
Then did the herald hang the clear-toned harp
Again on high, and taking by the hand
Demodocus, he led him from the place,
Guiding him in the way which just before
The princes of Phaeacia trod to see
The public games. Into the marketplace
They went; a vast innumerable crowd
Pressed after. Then did many a valiant youth
Arise —Acroneus and Ocyalus,
Elatreus, Nauteus, Prymneus, after whom
Upstood Anchialus, and by his side
Eretmeus, Ponteus, Proreus, Thoon, rose;
Anabasineus and Amphialus,
A son of Polyneius, Tecton’s son;
Then rose the son of Naubolus, like Ares
In warlike port, Euryalus by name,
And goodliest both in feature and in form
Of all Phaeacia’s sons save one alone,
Laodamas the faultless. Next three sons
Of King Alcinous rose: Laodamas,
Halius, and Clytoneius, like a god
In aspect. Some of these began the games,
Contending in the race. For them a course
Was marked from goal to goal. They darted forth
At once and swiftly, raising, as they ran,
The dust along the plain. The swiftest there
Was Clytoneius in the race. As far
As mules, in furrowing the fallow ground,
Gain on the steers, he ran before the rest,
And reached the crowd, and left them all behind.
Others in wrestling strove laboriously —
And here Euryalus excelled them all;
But in the leap Amphialus was first;
Elatreus flung the quoit with firmest hand;
And in the boxer’s art Laodamas,
The monarch’s valiant son, was conqueror.