Scheria (Σχερίη) — Land of the Phaeacians

The Location of Scheria

Scheria is the mythic island of the Phaeacian people, the first human society that Odysseus encounters after leaving Calypso's island of Ogygia. Its location is deliberately vague and otherworldly. Homer places it far out in the western sea, beyond the known world, near the streams of the great Ocean that encircles the earth. It is a liminal space — a borderland between the mythic wilderness of the wanderings (Books 9–12, recounted retrospectively) and the familiar human world of Ithaca.

The journey from Ogygia to Scheria, and then from Scheria to Ithaca, marks the narrative and geographic pivot of the entire epic. Odysseus, having suffered and survived the horrors of Polyphemus, Circe, Scylla, and Charybdis, arrives at Scheria as a naked, shipwrecked castaway. It is from Scheria that he will be carried home to Ithaca, the last stage of his nostos.

The Phaeacian People

The Phaeacians are not quite like other humans. They are descended from Poseidon himself — their first king, Nausithous, was the son of the sea god by a mortal woman, Periboea. They live close to the gods, who appear to them openly at feasts and sacrifices, without disguise. Their ships are magical: they are steered by thought alone, without need of a pilot or a rudder, and they know every city and every land in the world, even beneath the mist and the darkness of the night.

Scheria is, in effect, a Homeric utopia. It is a land of perfect order, perfect prosperity, and perfect hospitality — the reverse of the world of the Cyclops, where there is no law, no assembly, no ships, and no community. The Phaeacians have laws, assemblies, shipbuilding, agriculture, gardens, games, and poetry. They are everything that civilization, in Homer's view, should be.

King Alcinous and Queen Arete

The royal family of Scheria embodies the island's ideal character. King Alcinous is wise, generous, and urbane. He rules the Phaeacians with the counsel of twelve elders. When Odysseus arrives — first at the palace, then as a guest at the feast — Alcinous does not hesitate to offer him passage home, even before learning his name or his story. He is the perfect Homeric king.

But the real power behind the throne is Queen Arete, Alcinous's wife. Arete is "revered as she is among the Phaeacian women, like none other on earth" (Od. 7.66-67). She is the daughter of Alcinous's brother, making her both the king's wife and his niece, a pattern of consanguineous marriage that reinforces the closeness of the royal line. She is also the person to whom Odysseus must first supplicate — not Alcinous, but Arete. Nausicaa explicitly instructs Odysseus: "If she is minded to be gracious, then you may hope to see your friends, and come to your own country, and to the house where you were born" (Od. 6.313-315). Arete's wisdom and authority set her apart as one of the most formidable female figures in the epic, second only to Athena herself.

Nausicaa and the Meeting by the River

The first Phaeacian that Odysseus meets is Nausicaa, the young daughter of Alcinous and Arete. In Book 6, Athena inspires her to go down to the river with her maids to wash the royal laundry. There, as the maidens play with a ball after their work, Odysseus emerges from the bushes where he has been sleeping — naked, caked with salt, terrifying. All the maids flee except Nausicaa, who stands her ground.

The scene between Nausicaa and Odysseus is one of the most tender and delicately written episodes in the Odyssey. Nausicaa gives him clothes, feeds him, directs him to the palace, and — in a moment of quiet poignancy — says that she wishes a husband like him could be found for her. Odysseus, ever the diplomat, prays that the gods will grant her everything she desires: a husband, a home, and concord. But Nausicaa remains in Scheria when Odysseus leaves. She is a brief moment of possibility — a road not taken — on the journey back to Penelope.

The Gardens, the Games, and the Ships

Scheria is described in terms that border on the magical. The gardens of Alcinous, just outside the palace gates, are a paradise of perpetual fruitfulness: pear trees, pomegranates, apple trees, sweet figs, and luxuriant olives, whose fruit never withers or fails, summer and winter alike. The wind from the west keeps the fruit always ripening. The palace itself has doors of bronze and a threshold of silver, and inside, servants stand in golden statues holding torches.

In Book 8, the Phaeacians hold athletic contests in Odysseus's honor: running, wrestling, jumping, boxing, and discus. They challenge him to compete, and when he is insulted by Euryalus, he takes up a discus and throws it farther than anyone else — a reminder, even in this peaceful utopia, of the physical prowess that makes him Odysseus. The day ends with the songs of Demodocus, the blind bard of the Phaeacians, whose singing of the Trojan War moves Odysseus to tears and finally compels him to reveal his identity and tell the story of his wanderings.

It is from Scheria, then, that the whole center of the Odyssey unfolds as a flashback — Books 9 through 12, the tale of the Cyclops, the Lotus-eaters, Circe, the Underworld, Scylla and Charybdis, the cattle of the Sun. Scheria is the frame that holds the wild heart of the poem. And when the tale is done, the Phaeacians load Odysseus onto one of their magical ships, heap him with treasure, and send him home to Ithaca as he sleeps, never to wake again in the land of the perfect hosts.