Table of Contents
Scheria is the island home of the Phaeacians in Homer’s Odyssey. It is a paradise, cut off from the rest of the world. Its people are known for their hospitality, their skill at sea and their close ties to the gods.
Features of Scheria
Scheria is a remote and peaceful island, far from other human societies. Its isolation marks it as a place of myth.
It lies at the edge of the known world. That puts it on the border between the human and the divine.
The island is green and fertile. Its gardens, orchards and vineyards bear fruit all year. This plenty reflects its tie to the gods and the peaceful nature of the Phaeacians.
The palace of King Alcinous is richly decorated with gold and silver. Enchanted dogs made by the god Hephaestus guard its grounds.
The Phaeacians are descendants of Poseidon. They are peaceful, skilled sailors. They avoid conflict and give their time to pleasure and refinement.
Their king, Alcinous, and their queen, Arete, are famous for their wisdom and hospitality. Princess Nausicaa is central to the story. She helps Odysseus after his shipwreck.
No one builds ships or navigates like the Phaeacians. Their ships are magical. They need no helmsmen and travel as fast as thought.
This skill at sea shows the favor of the gods and their bond with Poseidon.
Scheria in the Odyssey
Odysseus washes ashore on Scheria after his shipwreck. Princess Nausicaa finds him while she is washing clothes by the river.
Nausicaa sends him to her parents’ palace. There he is warmly received and given food, clothing and entertainment.
The Phaeacians live out the Greek value of xenia (hospitality). They welcome Odysseus without hesitation. They give him gifts and listen to his stories.
Alcinous gives Odysseus a ship and a crew to take him home to Ithaca. This is the last stage of his journey.
Scheria is a stop between the fantastic adventures of Odysseus’ wanderings and his return to real life in Ithaca.
It is a moment of rest and divine favor. Here the story turns on hospitality and human kindness.
Scheria vs Schwerta
“Suddenly Golden ships appeared in the sky. The strangers said their home was called Schwerta, a powerful empire made up of many planets. And they also say that both worlds, that of our Former Masters and the earth itself, meet one another every 6,000 years. Then the Gods return.”
The Chronicle of Akakor (1971)
Ships that know the thoughts of men
A post on X by Jason Wilde sent me back to Book 8 of the Odyssey. He pointed to the Phaeacian ships. I had read the passage before, but I had never read it as a description of technology.
King Alcinous asks Odysseus for his name and his home. He needs them, he says, because of how his ships work. The passage is Odyssey 8.555 to 563 in the Greek. I quote the translation by Samuel Butler (1900), which is in the public domain. You can read it on Project Gutenberg.
"For the Phaeacians have no pilots; their vessels have no rudders as those of other nations have, but the ships themselves understand what it is that we are thinking about and want; they know all the cities and countries in the whole world, and can traverse the sea just as well even when it is covered with mist and cloud, so that there is no danger of being wrecked or coming to any harm."
Homer, Odyssey 8, tr. Samuel Butler (1900)
A pilot here is a helmsman, the man who steers. A rudder is the steering oar at the stern. The Phaeacian ships have neither.
Read it slowly. The ships read the thoughts of the crew. They hold a map of every city in the world. They sail blind through fog and never wreck.
Today I would call that a self-steering vessel with a thought interface and a built-in chart. Homer had no words for that. He had “the ships themselves understand”.
Self-moving tripods and golden handmaids
Homer describes this kind of thing more than once. In Book 18 of the Iliad, Thetis visits Hephaestus, the smith god, in his bronze house. I quote Butler’s translation of 1898, on Project Gutenberg. The tripods are Iliad 18.373 to 377 in the Greek.
"...for he was making twenty tripods that were to stand by the wall of his house, and he set wheels of gold under them all that they might go of their own selves to the assemblies of the gods, and come back again—marvels indeed to see."
Homer, Iliad 18, tr. Samuel Butler (1898)
A tripod was a three-legged bronze stand for a cauldron. The Greek word Homer uses for “of their own selves” is automatoi. It is the root of our word “automatic”.
A few lines later, at Iliad 18.417 to 420, Hephaestus walks to the door with his helpers.
"There were golden handmaids also who worked for him, and were like real young women, with sense and reason, voice also and strength, and all the learning of the immortals."
Homer, Iliad 18, tr. Samuel Butler (1898)
These golden women move, speak, think and know what the gods know. To me that reads like a memory of robots.
The same smith god made the gold and silver dogs that guard the palace of Alcinous on Scheria. So the Phaeacian island and Hephaestus’s workshop belong to one world of made, moving things.
Sons of Poseidon
The Phaeacians are not ordinary people in Homer. Their royal line goes back to Poseidon, whom Butler calls by his Roman name Neptune. Athena tells Odysseus in Book 7.
"They both descend originally from Neptune, who was father to Nausithous by Periboea, a woman of great beauty."
Homer, Odyssey 7, tr. Samuel Butler (1900)
Poseidon is also the god of Atlantis in Plato. He is the father of its first king, Atlas. More on Poseidon.
Jürgen Spanuth took this further. On my review of Atlantis: The Mystery Unravelled I describe how his book ends its case with “Homer’s Phaeacians as a memory of that island”, the royal island of Atlantis that he placed in the North Sea.
On my page on The Phaeacians and Phoenicians I write that “Plato positions Atlantis as a powerful civilization that rivaled these ‘ancient Greeks.’”
Put together, the picture is this. A seafaring people descended from Poseidon live on a remote island. Their ships steer themselves by thought. The god who works for their king builds machines that move on their own. If Scheria is a memory of Atlantis, then these may be memories of Atlantean technology. I collect more of those accounts on Atlantis: Technology.
