The lyre Demodocus carries doesn’t know what it’s doing. The bard plays the popular tale — the great war, the heroes that fell, the horse Odysseus built that ended a city that had held ten years. The hall is rapt. Odysseus is breaking. Each name a man he fought beside. Each victory a field of the dead. The lyre is the engine of kleos, the machine that turns suffering into song. From the singer’s side the song is craft. From the man it happens to, it’s the smell of pine and sweat in the dark belly of the horse, his own voice telling the men to hold. The lyre keeps playing. He keeps weeping. Eventually he stands up and tells the room who he is.
Demodocus's Lyre
The blind Phaeacian bard's instrument. He sings the war at Troy and the wooden horse, not knowing the man who built it is sitting at the table weeping.