ξεῖνός εἰμι· σκοτεινὸν ἀπέχων ψόγον, | ὕδατος ὥτε ῥοὰς φίλον ἐς ἄνδρ’ ἄγων | κλέος ἐτήτυμον αἰνέσω
I am a guest [xenos]. Keeping away dark blame [psogos] and bringing genuine [etētumon] glory-of-song [kleos], like streams of water, to a man who is near and dear [philos], I will praise [= verb aineîn] him.
A xenos ‘guest’ is someone who is bound by the ties of reciprocity between guest and host, and this reciprocity is signaled here by the adjective philos ‘near and dear’, N.7.62, as applied to the host. A host needs to feel obliged by his own sense of moral nobility to treat even a stranger as a guest: that is how the word xenos needs to mean ‘stranger’ as a prelude, as it were, to the meaning ‘guest’. A stranger is presumed by his host to become a guest—unless something goes wrong in the ritualized process of hosting. Such ties that bind are presupposed to exist between poet and patron. Here the collective voice of the performance re-enacts the voice of the poet as he speaks to his patron. As the laudator addresses the laudandus, he claims control over a kleos ‘glory of song’ that is etētumon ‘genuine’. The epithet etētumon ‘genuine’ highlights the truth-value of local traditions grounded in ritual. By way of simile, the directing of kleos as the ‘glory’ of song from the laudator toward the laudandus is being compared here to releasing a flow of water to activate the vitality of plantlife. And the patron, as the laudandus, is philos ‘near and dear’ not only to the poet as the laudator whom he hosts as his special guest but also to all others who attend his hosting, since they are becoming interconnected to the patron and to the poet and to each other: we see here poetic communication by way of community.