
thumb|The singer Phemius sings to the suitors. – Homer, Odyssey I. 325. Schwab, Legends of Classical Antiquity II. 208.|283x283pxIn Homer's epic poem the Odyssey, Phemius (; ), son of Terpes/Terpius, is an Ithacan poet who performs narrative songs in the house of the absent Odysseus.
thumb|The singer Phemius sings to the suitors. – Homer, Odyssey I. 325. Schwab, Legends of Classical Antiquity II. 208.|283x283pxIn Homer's epic poem the Odyssey, Phemius (; ), son of Terpes/Terpius, is an Ithacan poet who performs narrative songs in the house of the absent Odysseus.
== Mythology == Phemius's audience is made up largely of the suitors of Penelope, who live in the house while attempting to persuade her to marry one of them. In Book 1 of the poem, Phemius performs at their request a version of the theme The Return from Troy (a theme that actually existed as a written poem, probably at a slightly later date). The performance is heard by Penelope. The story distresses her, since it is a reminder that her own husband has still not returned, and she emerges from her room to ask Phemius to choose a less painful theme. The proposal is overruled by her son Telemachus, because he thinks that a singer shouldn't be forbidden to sing what his heart tells him to sing, and because it is Telemachus' right as householder to decide, not his mother's.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).