Phemius

In Homer, Phemius is the household bard, a man whose job is to make music for whoever sits at the high table. Under the suitors that means singing for thieves. When the slaughter starts he throws himself at Odysseus’s knees and pleads: he sang because he had no choice, he is god-taught, killing a poet is bad luck, and Telemachus backs him up. Odysseus spares him. He’s a small grace note in the original about who is and isn’t responsible for serving evil under duress. The retelling cuts him, probably because the bard role is already filled by Demodocus on Phaeacia, and Phemius would sit awkwardly in the same hall as the suitors without earning his own scene. The slaughter in this version stays binary: the guilty die, the loyal stand. Phemius’s gray middle, the man who sang what he was told because he had to eat, doesn’t fit. A clean cut.