Week 01, Homer's Odyssey

General Notes on Greek Culture and Homer’s The Odyssey.

One of the best short introductions I’ve ever heard concerning ancient Greek culture is the rather Nietzschean one I heard years ago from Martin Schwab of UC Irvine. He asks us to consider Fragment 42 by Sappho: “Eros seizes and shakes my very soul / Like the wind on the mountain shaking ancient oaks” (Ἔρος δαὖτ' ἐτί ναξεν ἔμοι φρένας, / ἄνεμος κατ' ὄρος δρύσιν ἐμπέσων). “Eros,” the God of love, is treated as a personalized agent, not just as a physiological passion. There is constant interaction between such external agents and the human individual.

The speaker can respond to what is being done to her. Eros comes from without and is a force to be reckoned with, but Sappho’s speaker can show her mettle by the way she actively embraces this power rather than shrinking from its potentially destructive effects. Similarly, in Greek tragedies, protagonists can position themselves with respect to whatever catastrophe the gods or other human beings (as well as their own mistakes) have set in motion. With a mixture of joy and anxiety, Sappho’s speaker stands on the hillside prepared to be shaken, though not uprooted. A well-rooted persona, she lets herself be shaken; she contributes to the unfolding event because she is strong enough to let herself be overcome. The Greeks admire strength, then, both in the sense of physical valor and in the sense of remaining open to the extremes of experience. Odysseus exemplifies such openness, and nowhere is this quality more evident than in Books 9-12, in which the hero recounts his long story of adventure to the nobility and citizens of Phaeacia, where he has found dry land after the dreadful raft-wreck that he suffers upon leaving Calypso’s enchanting island. The poet’s imperative is to send Odysseus home to re-establish his sovereignty in his native kingdom of Ithaca, but these four books betray how difficult that task is: the worldly-wise, resourceful Odysseus, always the accomplished talker, seems to relish his experiences at least as much as any intended outcomes, and he warms to the polite demand that (like a good guest) he should render an account of himself to those who have graciously extended him their hospitality. I’ll move on to some observations about Books 9-12, but first, here is some further introductory material about The Odyssey as a whole:

The consensus is that around 750-720 BCE, The Odyssey (a later text than The Iliad) was written down in complete form. The earliest surviving full manuscript is that of Laurentianus, 10 th-11th century CE, although fragments of the text exist from the 3rd century BCE, when there were several versions in circulation, including a commonly accepted or “vulgate” edition. Our text is probably the vulgate as corrected by the Alexandrian scholars of the third century BCE and later corrupted somewhat by successive copyists.

The storylines of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey take us back another 500 years, to 1250-1225 BCE (the late Bronze Age), which some historians believe culminated in a war between the Greeks (then called Achaeans) and the inhabitants of Troy, in modern Turkey. What were these “Achaeans” like? Well, around 2000 BCE, Indo-European people entered southern Greece , and encountered an already well-developed Minoan culture. The Myceneans or Achaeans overcame and yet borrowed from Minoan culture. Then came (perhaps) the warlike sailing expedition to Troy , in which the Achaean host proved victorious. Around 1200 BCE the glorious palace-centered lifestyle of the Mycenaean civilization collapsed during a period of invasion, and a Dark Age spanning from 1150 BCE to 750 BCE set in, during time which a people called the Dorians swept down into Greece and settled. But by around 800 BCE, the population had begun to grow, and half a century after that the city-state form of governance began to take hold in Greece. That emergence coincides roughly with the date of composition for Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. So Homer’s time was one in which a so-called Dark Age had just begun to lift and a more settled and prosperous order was on the way. The way he describes Greek life perhaps owes more to his own day than to the glorious past in which his heroes lived and acted.

It is impossible to say exactly who “Homer” was. Was he in fact the glorious blind bard of tradition, or an entire series of authors? As Homer’s best modern translator Robert Fagles says, whatever the truth may be and some middling stylistic/narratival discrepancies aside, the texts we have certainly read like the products of a single master storyteller. Experts say some parts of the two epics are older than others, and of course the written texts come from a long oral tradition in which episodes may have been recounted in their own right. Perhaps what we now have is a “stitched-together” masterpiece woven by someone who knew all the stories and their interrelations. Writing was rather new in Homer’s time since the Greeks developed their alphabet (which they seem to have adapted from the Phoenicians) around 800 BCE. It may be that our “Homer” is an artist who decided to take advantage of the new invention to set down the material that was the basis for his art.

Homer’s poetry was meant to be heard, not read. I will read some of the original to give you a sense of its rhythm and sound. I like Fagles’ translation because I find in his version the four qualities that Victorian classicist Matthew Arnold identified as Homeric: rapidity, directness of idea and diction, and nobility. It sounds great when recited aloud. Homer impels us forward with great ease, maintaining our interest—he doesn’t dawdle (unless we expect the terseness of modern newspaper articles) or become pompous or needlessly complex, and he even describes ordinary things with such appropriateness that, as Arnold might say, his descriptions don’t break the text’s overall “nobility” of expression and subject. Homer is resourceful like his hero, Odysseus—never at a loss to find the right way to respond to his subject or situation. Since the genre we are dealing with here is epic, what are its key qualities, and how does The Odyssey show them?

1. The hero is of high standing, and usually of national significance. Odysseus is king of Ithaca , a Greek island and its mainland surroundings. He’s also something of a Greek “everyman”—the type of strong, wily character that Greeks everywhere admired.

2. Homer’s subject is heroic deeds, battles, and long journeys. For example, the Iliad is about the ten-year Trojan War; the Odyssey deals with the ten-year wanderings and homecoming of Odysseus after the Trojan War and with the maturing of his son, Telemachus, into a young man worthy to take his father’s place. The story in both epics begins in medias res (in the middle of things). By the time the Odyssey begins, the ten-year Trojan War has ended with a Greek victory and Odysseus has been wandering still another ten years; he is now ready to return to Ithaca and re-establish his authority there. The poet refers as necessary to the previous twenty years’ events, and makes Odysseus recount his own wanderings to his temporary hosts in Phaeacia. ( The Odyssey’s immediate action, by the way, takes place over approximately 40 days.)

3. Epic verse is elevated and heroic in tone, but not “pompous.” We often find epic similes likening human things to divine or grand things. Epic heroes are generally “godlike” rather than merely mortal in ability and lineage. The ocean that causes Odysseus so much heartache is not just any drab ocean, it’s an oinopos pontos—a “winedark sea,” the province of Poseidon and many nymphs. And when the sun sets, Homer’s verse often memorializes this everyday event by inserting a variant of the lovely stock phrase, “the sun sank, and the roads of the world grew dark” (3.557 Fagles; 497 Perseus online Greek edition: δύσετ ότ' ἠέλιος σκιόωντό τε πᾶσαι ἀγυιαί).

4. The action involves both humans and gods. In the Odyssey, humans like Odysseus, the gods on Mount Olympus , and the underworld realm of Hades all have dealings with one another.

5. The setting is world-wide, or even cosmic, in scale. Many of the places mentioned in The Odyssey are probably real, but some—the further west one goes—are obviously mythical.

6. The story is comic, not tragic; that is, although there may be a great deal of violence and suffering, the hero is successful in his exploits and upholds the values of his culture. In a tragedy, the story begins with the hero at the height of power, and then comes a fall that the hero deserves because of his or her “hubris,” or arrogation of inappropriate powers.

7. The poet-narrator is objective and does not interpose himself between us and the story. Homer doesn’t leap out of the poem and start telling us about himself, or even about the fictional “narrator.” In the Odyssey there are, however, some interesting references to “bards” and to weaving and singing—actions that we may take as referring to the craft and significance of poetry.

8. Epic is designed to carry out a cultural task: as Martin Schwab of UC Irvine says, an epic is a long poem that participates in and tries to affect the civilization it describes. This is certainly true of great works such as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, and Milton ’s Paradise Lost. Just to take the last-mentioned example, it’s clear that Milton wants to place the failure of the Puritan cause he supported against the British monarchy in the broad context of human error, both political and personal. In The Odyssey, while Homer pays tribute to Greek wanderlust and openness to experience of all kinds, he seems determined to suffuse the difficult, post-heroic era in which he and his hearers/readers live with the resourceful valor of an earlier heroic age (circa 1250 BCE). Odysseus, a worldly adventurer and warrior who has relations with gods and demigods, must return home to make order in the small-scale domestic setting of his native Ithaca.

Line-by-Line Notes on Homer’s Odyssey, Books 1-12.

Book 1

1-12. The invocation tells us a good deal: it emphasizes “polytropos” (many-mannered, resourceful) Odysseus’ struggle, his courage, wiliness and wanderlust (openness to experience and knowledge of all kinds) as well as his loyalty to comrades. The poet makes a point of the solitariness of the homecoming, too: Odysseus strove to save his crew members, but he couldn’t: Atasthaliē or recklessness governed their actions, and you can’t save people when they behave that way. The word has connotations of self-delusion, blindness, infatuation, and consequent ruin. It involves a failure to see things as they are, a failure to observe proper boundaries of situational conduct. The last lines of the invocation suggest, too, that the poet invokes the god to help him reconnect his audience to the ancient heroic values: in Fagles’ fine translation of “eipe kai h U min” as “speak for our time, too,” this prayer is evident. And of course, the poet claims to be directly inspired by one of the muses on Mount Helicon, of which there were nine.

13-112. Next we go to the perspective of the gods in council. They are always entertaining—the high seriousness sometimes imputed to Homeric epic often dissolves into humor when the poet starts singing about the Olympians: they sound more like the cast of Hercules in New York than a pluralistic substitute for the ineffable Yahweh of Hebrew Scripture or the magnificent Allah of the Koran. What are the dynamics of Olympian power? Well, Athena clearly knows how to manipulate her “all-powerful” father. Zeus may have lightning at his command, but he has to be a smooth politician to control this group of headstrong immortals, his wife Hera foremost among them. There’s a need for compromise and even some deception. Zeus could assert himself all the time, but he would have no peace if he did: the gods have their own motivations and their favorites, their alliances and their dislikes. Poseidon is away at the moment, which gives Athena her chance to promote Odysseus’s success. Zeus’s mind turns to the ingratitude of mortals, and he dredges up the bad example of Aegisthus, who disobeyed the gods’ advice and acted against Agamemnon, with disastrous results. Zeus has it in for mortals who blame the gods for their own mistakes. Humans, he says, are responsible for what they do. By way of contrast with Aegisthus, Orestes is an important model for Telemachus, while Agamemnon and Clytemnestra are reverse models for Odysseus and Penelope. The mention of these significant characters in Greek myth tells us that while The Odyssey is very different from The Iliad, the story it tells is by no means mere adventurism: it is a bloody tale that ends with slaughter and purification of the house of Odysseus, and does not shrink from the violence necessary to the revival of heroic values in a weakened domestic order.

113-238. Athena makes her way down to Ithaca, where she appears to Telemachus disguised as Mentes, Lord of the sea-faring Taphians. The goddess is a fearless and frank liar, one who would do justice to Oscar Wilde’s praise of that art in “The Decay of Lying.” No wonder Plato banished Homeric poetry from his model Republic—the epic poet’s shape-shifting, deceiving gods unsettled his desire for truth and order as the cornerstones of human life. In any event, Athena is offering up a prophecy to Telemachus because the young man isn’t yet able to look far enough beyond the domestic scene on his own—he hasn’t grown into his heroic role as the man who will help Odysseus finish his battle and then, we may presume succeed him. (T U los + mach U , when put together, signify roughly “battle finisher.”) So as Mentes, she claims to have heard that Odysseus is alive and on his way home.

At line 178, we are introduced to the bard Phemius, who is rudely constrained to play his lyre and sing for the suitors, to whom we are now introduced. Phemius is of course a figure with whom Homer would have identified strongly, and there’s pathos in the man’s suffering this indignity at the hands of reckless fools. Later we find that he is singing about the Trojan War to great effect—a high subject that the suitors are hardly worthy of hearing about, and one that greatly affects Queen Penelope even as it seems entirely appropriate to Telemachus.

How are the suitors first presented to us? They are arrogant men, idlers. Atasthaliē rules in Odysseus’ absence. There is a kind of wildness proper to men, to be sure. That’s something we learn when we listen to Odysseus’ adventures, registering his mistakes and his victories. But the suitors betray the wrong kind of wildness, one that amounts only to a lack of self-discipline. They have high opinions of themselves, but they haven’t done anything to earn high reputation. (Simply being born a prince isn’t enough to guaranty one’s worthiness—even ancient Greek kings were more like chieftains than modern absolutist monarchs.) They are parasites feeding off of Odysseus’ reputation and estate. They disrespect old bonds and loyalties and disregard any sense of propriety; there is no continuity in such low opportunists. By contrast, Telemachus is sharp-eyed and self-controlled, anxious to be the best host he can for Athena in her disguise as Mentes.

239-351. Athena will inspire Telemachus to learn what he needs to know; she will urge him to go out to meet with knowledge of his heroic father and gain some reputation of his own by making the trip. The domestic world must go out of itself to find itself. It must seek regeneration and order from heroic values and actions. They are the foundation stone of the domestic order or oikos. Athena offers Telemachus a coherent plan of action: he should call an assembly of Ithaca’s lords, make his case to them, and announce his plan to set sail in search of his father. Whether or not Odysseus is alive, the suitors must be dealt with, driven from the house. If Odysseus is gone forever, Telemachus himself must do the hard work himself—sending his mother back to her father’s house, he would have to defend his right to rule. Athena sets forth Orestes, avenger of his father Agamemnon, as a model son. This hero of the much later Aeschylan trilogy should remind us that restoration involves heavy costs: in Aeschylus’ version, Orestes is pursued by the Furies and is only absolved by a difficult trial carried out by Apollo and Athena. Killing even wicked men like the suitors implies the possibility of a perpetual blood feud and requires tending to the rites of purification: indeed, The Odyssey ends on an ominous note, with the hero having to purify his blood-soaked palace after he kills not only the suitors but the maids who gave in to them and took on strange loyalties, and in Book 24 Odysseus is nearly overwhelmed by the angry relatives of the men he killed. The Nietzschean interpretation of the Greeks holds up well: no civilization without violence, no order without at U , no Apollo without Dionysus.

352-506. Telemachus is impressed with the plan “Mentes” has suggested, and makes up his mind to go through with it. Phemius recounts the Acheaens’ long trip home, moving Penelope to tears. Telemachus’ response to art seems the more proper one, even in we moderns may find his behavior towards his mother ungenerous: one function of art (which Virgil exploits well in The Aeneid, by the way) is to recount the litany of one’s struggles. The storyteller’s art can no doubt be treated as a danger, a potential trap for the undisciplined and unwary, but there are times when it’s necessary for a hero to hear or recount—and thereby take command over—his own past sufferings, or in this case the sufferings of his father and his father’s comrades. So Telemachus professes his desire that Phemius should keep right on singing about the Greeks’ long and tortured voyage home. He consigns Penelope to what seems to be a woman’s proper sphere—that of the weaver’s distaff and loom, the domestic scene.

Book 2

1-289. The assembly is called, and both Telemachus and the suitors make their case. The young prince’s two grievances are first, the loss of his father, and second, the insolent wasting of his house by unworthy men pursuing Penelope and the power that goes with her. His anguished announcement of the first grievance may seem unrealistic to us—as if the island’s people didn’t know Odysseus was gone, but of course in Homer’s day the government wasn’t exactly omnipresent in ordinary people’s lives. (There was no “bureaucracy” in 720 BCE, much less 1250 BCE, when the story is apparently set.) Well, there’s not much the best men of Ithaca can do at this point, but at least Telemachus will have a ship for his troubles, and some rowers to make it go. Antinous in particular distinguishes himself as an arrant rogue, contemptuous of Telemachus and conniving against the boy’s success. From 95-142, Antinous explains to the assembly why he and the other suitors have some cause for impatience: it seems that for more than three years, Penelope played a trick on the whole group, buying time with the claim that she needed to weave a shroud for Odysseus’s father Laertes, only to unweave by night all the work she had done during the day. We aren’t told exactly what pattern or scene she is weaving, but there’s a strong sense that the action itself is bound up with her grief over the loss of Odysseus in the aftermath of war. (In The Iliad, Homer cleverly makes Helen of Sparta weave scenes of the very war she helped cause.) This is an instance in which the dangerous deferral or delay sometimes implied by the act of weaving (a metaphor for the process of artistic creation) turns out to be beneficial and justified. Penelope shows herself a fitting wife for “polymUtis Odysseus,” that cunning man of many skills. But we can also see the suitors’ view: Ithaca has had no ruler for twenty years, and Penelope’s stubborn loyalty to a man who is probably long dead (so far as anybody knows) seems to them irresponsible and disrespectful of their claims. But the preponderance of sentiment is against these reckless men, who show no regard for the guest-host relations that were so important in ancient Greek culture, while Penelope stands behind the dynastic principle.

290-477. Athena helps Telemachus along with his plans, making sure he has a ship and some excellent rowers. The youth shows considerable restraint in dealing with the suitors, who are up to their usual swaggering. We meet the faithful maid Eurycleia, too, as she tends to Telemachus. Athena puts the suitors to sleep—this happens fairly often in Homer’s epics, it seems: the gods have power to make people fall asleep, bestowing and blunting consciousness as they see fit. The book ends on a seafaring note, with the ship “plunging” through the dark sea all night and on to daybreak. Homer’s descriptions of the seas and the lore and tackle of ships is always worthwhile.

Book 3

1-112. Telemachus arrives at Pylos and addresses old Nestor. He is clearly anxious about the encounter since it’s his first real “stepping out” on the princely stage—he must address a wise old king and friend of his father, and summons the courage to do it. Athena (as Mentor) tells him that some of the right words will come from the gods, and some from within himself. Around line 80, Nestor asks if the two are pirates, without a touch of animosity—apparently, being a pirate wasn’t much stigmatized in Homer’s day: it was probably a common thing among seafaring peoples. Telemachus frames his quest as one of putting an end to uncertainty about Odysseus’ story: he wants at least to know what kind of end his father met.

113-227. Nestor replies, telling the young man that Odysseus’ strategic abilities always outshone everyone else’s; his words may be an oblique allusion to the famous “Wooden Horse” strategy that finally brought the Trojans down after nine years of indecisive military struggles. What went wrong as the victorious Greeks departed Troy? Nestor again alludes to something that Homer’s audience probably knew well: the story of Athena’s wrath against the Achaeans. It seems that Locrian Aias raped the Trojan prophetess Cassandra as she clung to a statue of Athena in the goddess’ precincts. He took refuge at a shrine and the Greeks failed to make him pay for his crime, so Athena stirred up trouble between Agamemnon and Menelaus, then destroyed part of the Greek fleet on its return voyage. Agamemnon stayed behind to appease Athena, but Menelaus, Nestor, and Odysseus set sail. Not surprisingly, Odysseus decided to turn back. For the first of two times in this book, Nestor brings up the dreadful end of Agamemnon and the revenge accomplished by his son Orestes.

228-87. Telemachus and Nestor discuss Odysseus, and Nestor offers hope, though nothing certain—he emphasizes Athena’s great love for Odysseus, and a conjecture that perhaps he will return home after all. Telemachus annoys Athena (disguised as Mentor) when he seems to despair of such a return. Next the prince asks about Agamemnon’s death.

288-379. Nestor tells the story that would, with some variations, later become the stuff of The Oresteia—how Agamemnon was murdered upon his return home. Menelaus was away at the time and so couldn’t help his brother, and in this version, a bard whom the king had ordered to watch over Clytemnestra was spirited away by Aegisthus. But Orestes returned from exile and took revenge for his father Agamemnon.

380-557. Nestor’s court entertains Athena and Telemachus, and the goddess departs, turning into an eagle right in front of them all. They sacrifice a heifer to her and have a feast. Nestor’s daughter Polycaste bathes Telemachus, and then he and Nestor’s son Pisistratus set off in a chariot for Phere and then Sparta, where Menelaus rules. What has been the purpose of this book? Nestor has recounted a part of Odysseus’ story to Telemachus, and the young man, with a little help from Athena (as Mentor), has established a connection with Nestor, a hero of the Trojan War.

Book 4

1-84. Telemachus and Pisistratus arrive in Sparta, and Telemachus is amazed at the wealth of the kingdom.

85-133. Menelaus seems genuinely sorrowful about Odysseus—he says at this point that he can’t offer much aside from a testament to the man’s character. Later in the book, we will get more specific information from Menelaus.

134-243. Helen recognizes Telemachus’ resemblance to Odysseus, which indeed Menelaus had noted too, though silently. Pisistratus makes the affirmation official, telling everyone present that Telemachus is in fact Odysseus’ son. More musing on what might have been is another test for Telemachus, who must confront the possibility that his father will never return.

243-342. While the hosts and guests feast, the always clever Helen slips them a happy drug to make them forget their cares for a while and set aside the burdens of heroic memory. She recounts a fine story about Odysseus’ infiltration of the Trojan citadel, and explains that after she recognized him, he swore her to secrecy and revealed to her the Greek strategy. Helen says that by now, her heart and thoughts had returned to allegiance with the Greeks and her Spartan husband Menelaus. Menelaus fills in the story further, showing both a strong, diplomatic appreciation for his magic-wielding, storied wife’s value to him and a commitment to truth: he recalls that when Odysseus’ wooden horse was brought into the city, Helen seems to have been possessed by some “dark power” (308) to try to expose the Greek warriors within the belly of the horse. The trick didn’t work, but it’s an eerie detail nonetheless. The poet’s representation of Helen’s identity shows an awareness of a model much different from that of loyal Penelope, or even, for that matter, from Odysseus, “man of twists and turns.” With Helen, we must not expect a movement from concealment to revelation of a rock-solid set of qualities; it seems that this woman with a “face that launched a thousand ships” is inherently ambivalent: she is both a royal woman of substance and a vessel of the gods’ desire: she is even harder to get hold of, perhaps, than Proteus, the old man of the sea with whom Menelaus wrestled during his adventures at sea. But Helen is useful to Menelaus, and their interaction is a model of spousal and political diplomacy rather than a straightforward love match dependent on personal loyalty.

Helen’s part in the Trojan War deserves some mention. “The Judgment of Paris” was a beauty contest between Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena, all of whom wanted the golden apple tossed out by Eris and addressed “to the fairest” because she wasn’t invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis. The visiting Trojan prince Paris was swayed in Aphrodite’s favor because she promised him the beautiful Helen in marriage, and his “abduction” of her and passage with her to Troy is the immediate cause of the Trojan War. Aphrodite may then have possessed Helen with a kind of madness to make her run away with Paris. Helen’s outraged husband Menelaus, King of Sparta summoned a composite Greek army to send against Troy, and the great war is said to have lasted ten years. (See http://www.theoi.com/Olympios/JudgementParis.html.)

343-390. Telemachus is asked to explain why he has come to visit, and he does so, offering the same reason he gave Nestor: to find out what has happened to his father. Menelaus expresses outrage at the situation in Ithaca; it seems that Sparta is now something of a model of amity, and what happened between Menelaus and Helen is all in the past now. The king promises to tell Telemachus all about his own adventures and the knowledge he gained from them.

391-477. Menelaus relates how Proteus’ daughter Eidothea helped him devise a plan to seize the shape-shifting god and get the truth about which gods have it in for him and how he can make his way home.

478-641. Menelaus now speaks more directly of his encounter with Proteus and what he learned from it. Direction and knowledge must be seized, even if with divine prompting, and Proteus doesn’t make it easy: he turns into a lion, a snake, a panther, a boar, a torrent of water, a tree. But at least he coughs up the dispiriting truth that Menelaus will have to return to Egypt and propitiate the gods. The other thing Menelaus wants to know is what happened to his old comrades after they departed from Troy? Ajax died on the way home, and Agamemnon, of course, met his fate shortly after returning home. Most important of all the news, at least from Telemachus’ point of view, is that Odysseus has been a captive on Calypso’s island—Proteus says he saw the man in that very situation. Finally, Menelaus is promised a ticket to Elysian Fields rather than an ordinary death and an uncertain afterlife. In spite of himself, Proteus has become an agent in the service of Menelaus’ attempt to re-establish his kingdom against the dishonor sent his way by Paris and the Trojans.

642-702. The king entreats Telemachus to stay a while longer, but Telemachus is eager to make his way back home, fortified with hope for Odysseus’ return.

703-59. Antinous and the other suitors are alarmed when they realize that Telemachus has slipped out of their grasp and gone on a voyage just as he said he would. They plot to murder him before he can make it safely back to shore.

760-953. Penelope, learns of Telemachus’ departure from the herald Medon (who overheard the suitors) and is grief-stricken. Eurycleia admits that she helped Telemachus get away without Penelope’s knowledge, but comforts the queen all the same. As Penelope sleeps, Athena sends a phantom in the shape of the queen’s sister Iphthime, who promises her that Telemachus will return. But the phantom will give no reply when Penelope asks about Odysseus. The suitors lie in wait at Asteris, waiting for Telemachus to fall into their trap.

Book 5

1-46. In council, Athena again reminds Zeus about Odysseus and Telemachus, and Zeus sends the messenger god Hermes down to Ogygia where he will order Calypso to let her captive of seven years go. The hero will suffer twenty days on the raft he makes with Calypso’s help, but then he will reach the shores of Phaeacia. (Some researchers say that this mythical place aligns well with Corfu, an island offshore from modern Albania north of Greece, while others place it far off in the Atlantic Ocean.) In the 40-day time frame of The Odyssey, this book covers days 7-31, during which time Odysseus builds his raft, sails, is wrecked, and drifts at sea.

47-164. Hermes reaches Calypso’s cavern on Ogygia, and is amazed at what he sees: he comes upon the goddess singing in a wondrous voice as she weaves at her loom, while the scent of scented wood drifts across the island, springs bubble and flow, lush grapes grow on the vines, violet and parsley-speckled meadows surround the area, and sea-birds roost around the cave. Calypso’s name is derived from the Greek verb kalypto, “I cover, veil, or hide.” And she has indeed been shielding Odysseus, isolating him from his heroic task for seven long years much against his desires, which turn homeward now more than ever. The goddess might be said to be a figure for the great power of nature and its processes, but also for the power of sensuality in isolation from the larger world of heroic action and responsibility. This power, of course, is often gendered female in Homeric epic. Hermes informs Calypso of Zeus’ determination, which sparks the goddess’ ire, prompting her to accuse the male Olympians of petty jealousy over the exploits of their female counterparts. Calypso, it seems, is a proto-feminist among the immortals. Still, she knows better than to go against Zeus almighty, so she promises to advise Odysseus on how to build the raft he will need for his voyage home, and in the end she offers him provisions, clothing, and a favorable wind at his back.

165-251. Calypso informs Odysseus about what she has been ordered to do, and finds that he doesn’t trust her. She must swear an oath not to do him any harm. That her heart isn’t in this venture shows clearly in the comparison she makes between herself and the merely human Penelope, but Odysseus sees through Calypso’s rhetoric and welcomes the troubles she warns him is to come at sea. After one last night of lovemaking, these two must turn to the preparations for Odysseus’ venture, and then part ways.

252-365. Homer describes with precision the work that must be done to build a seaworthy raft: its sound construction and the provisions that must be brought aboard. All of this labor takes around four days, and at last the craft is launched. Poseidon, however, is determined to stir up as much trouble as possible, even though he knows it won’t stop Odysseus from reaching Phaeacia. Odysseus is stricken with fear at the great storm’s winds and waves, and soon his raft is swamped and destroyed by the gale’s force. The heavy clothes Calypso had given him now come close to “covering” him up once and for all.

366-428. Odysseus clings to the remains of his raft, drifting helplessly in the open sea (always a terror to the ancients since they tried to hug the coast in their sailing ventures). But again divine intervention comes to Odysseus’ aid, this time in the form of Ino, once the mortal daughter of Cadmus and Queen of Thebes, but now an immortal. She offers Odysseus a scarf or veil (kr U demnon ) to protect him from the storm’s worst effects, telling him to get rid of the clothing given him by Calypso. Odysseus doesn’t quite believe Ino’s plan for him to let go of his raft is best, and he clings to a plank of his shattered raft for as long as he can. Athena quells the tempest.

429-540. In the end, when Odysseus is almost dashed against the rocks, he must swim for shore as Ino had advised, and at last he reaches the mouth of a river, prays to the river’s god, and is able to make it to shore. Exhausted, Odysseus releases his scarf into the river, where it is snatched up by Ino, and he kisses the earth. He still fears for his life, with destruction potentially coming either from a deadly chill or from predatory animals, but is able to reason his way towards the right approach. Shelter is near at hand in the form of a nice bed of leaves between a cultivated and a wild olive tree, and with these Odysseus protects himself from weather and predators.

Book 6

1-52. Athena spies Nausicaa, daughter of King Alcinous, and decides that the girl is worthy to serve as the agent of Odysseus’ return from storm and wilderness to civilized life. This plan set in motion, Athena goes back to Olympus.

53-121. Nausicaa charmingly coaxes her father into giving her a wagon to cart the laundry down to the washing pools, where she stands taller and more gracefully than her maids.

122-276. Odysseus is awakened by the girls’ ball game, and at first doesn’t know how he should introduce himself to these young women—he is a sorry sight, caked with brine and not at all attired, much less properly. Besides, who are these people—are their parents civilized or violent and hostile to strangers? Odysseus covers himself with foliage and tactfully introduces himself at a distance, praising the beauty of Nausicaa and comparing her to a lithe palm slip he once saw in Delos. She responds with characteristic poise and regard for the gods and suppliants’ rights, and informs Odysseus that he has come to utopian-seeming Phaeacia, a far-away land that fears no assaults from abroad and in fact welcomes strangers. Nausicaa orders the maids to give the stranger the materials he needs to bathe and anoint himself, and Athena makes Odysseus taller and more handsome than ever—so much so that the princess wishes that she might have such a man as a husband. Offered food and drink, the stranger accepts. At 252, we are told that Odysseus puts on the clothes left on shore for him by the princess. She has given him an appropriate “covering” for his nakedness, in contrast to the false kind of covering practiced by Odysseus’ captor Calypso. The donning of this appropriate cover marks Odysseus’ return to the civilized world of mortals, and although the stranger himself intimates that he would be ashamed of being seen naked by a group of young girls, the moment really isn’t so much about shame as it is about the significance of the re-entry just described. Clothes don’t mark sexual shame in Homeric culture; they indicate civilized status and, in some cases, social rank. To be fully human is by no means to be au naturel; artifice, of which woven garments are one instance, is natural to human beings, we might say. As a unit, Books 5 and 6 have described a process of treacherous covering or detainment, then a stripping bare and partial reclothing at sea (Ino’s veil or scarf replacing Calypso’s dangerously heavy clothes), a covering-up with the elements of nature (the bed of leaves at the end of Book 5), and finally, the receipt of a new and fully “civilized” garment for Odysseus’ entry into the palace of Phaeacia.

277-365. It occurs to Nausicaa that it would be more modest if she and the maids made their way back to the palace first, and then their guest sought out Arētē on his own and cast himself upon her mercy. It will not do, she thinks, to be seen sauntering into town with some strange man—the islander’s available young men will think she disrespects them. Odysseus agrees, and when the girls are gone he prays to Athena that he may find favor with the Phaeacians. She will grant the prayer, though not too openly since Poseidon’s wrath at the man is not to be dismissed lightly. Here, at least, Odysseus won’t have to fight to establish civility—that struggle can wait until he reaches Ithaca.

The gods don’t bother to help unworthy people. Nausicaa gets Athena’s help, but she is a worthy young woman. Also, not a shame culture; she bathes O.

Book 7

1-89. Nausicaa arrives in the palace of Alcinous first, and Athena shrouds Odysseus in mist to keep him safe from prying eyes as he makes his way there, too. She appears to him in the form of a little girl, and leads the way. Her advice is to play the suppliant with Arete first, not the king. The queen is apparently the daughter of Rhexenor, brother of Alcinous and son of Nausithous. As with many names in Homer, the derivation indicates quality: ar U t U means “excellence.”

90-156. When Odysseus stands before the threshold of Alcinous’ palace, we are told, “a rush of feelings stirred within his heart” (95). In Book 17, Odysseus will again be a “stranger at the gate,” but the gate will be his own. The Phaeacian episode as a whole is vital since after twenty years Odysseus is returning to civilization, to a well-ordered kingdom whose state of cultivatedness contrasts with the wildness of Circe, Calypso, Polyphemus, the Lestrygonians, and of course the suitors wasting his house on Ithaca. As he stands before the palace, it is appropriate that the moment should be an emotional one for him. And as the epic narrator describes the productive weavers and the fine, cultivated gardens of King Alcinous, it’s easy to see the contrast first with Calypso’s weaving and the wild, enfolding luxuriousness of her environs. Alcinous’ architecture and his orchards mark his land as one in which humans attain the closest thing to permanence possible.

157-242. Odysseus does as he was told by Athena, clasping the ankles of Queen Arete and claiming the status of a suppliant. Everyone seems spellbound, and the elder Echeneus finds it necessary to talk some host-sense into them. Alcinous rouses himself to raise the stranger and greet him with some much-needed refreshment, which is the appropriate thing for a good host to do. The King decrees that the next day will see a call to assembly, a sacrifice, and then a decision as to how best to help the stranger reach his destination safely. At this point, they don’t know whether Odysseus is mortal and therefore subject to the fates, or close kin to the gods, or perhaps even a god in disguise. The Phaeacians claim close kinship with the gods, and all is yet to be determined about this latest visitor.

243-341. Odysseus disabuses the company of any comparison between himself and the gods, proclaiming that he is only a suffering mortal, one “saddled down with sorrow” who could use a good meal. The meal once served, it’s time to ask him who he is; Arete has noticed that the stranger is wearing clothes that she and her servants have woven, and this sparks her curiosity. Odysseus decides to tell at least a part of his story, one that may satisfy the Queen’s curiosity but that keeps his real identity hidden for the time being. He tells his hosts about the seven years he spent with Calypso on Ogygia and then the eighteen days he spent on the stormy seas before making it to shore and the hospitality of Nausicaa and her maids.

342-97. Alcinous begins to find fault with his daughter for failing to escort the stranger, but Odysseus wards off this line of thinking, and says it stems from tact and modesty, not neglect. The king agrees and promises his solitary guest safe passage home with his renowned sailing men. A bed is prepared, and Odysseus settles down to sleep.

Book 8

1-71. Alcinous and others head towards the meeting grounds, and Athena, in disguise, urges the citizens on. A sacrifice is offered.

72-126. Demodocus’ sings his first of three songs in this book, this time about the quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles, which Agamemnon apparently took for a good omen. The song affects Odysseus deeply, a fact that only Alcinous notes.

127-265. The games begin, and Broadsea denigrates the stranger’s sporting ability. Odysseus responds straightforwardly to Broadsea’s insults, yet he is civilized in his opposition, marshalling his words and actions to the best effect. Perhaps he is “warming up” for his later trials at home, where much tact will be required when he is busy sizing up how best to deal with the suitors. In the end, Broadsea is merely a harmless young blade; he doesn’t pose the kind of threat that the suitors will, especially with King Alcinous standing by to keep things from getting out of hand.

266-413. Alcinous responds to Broadsea’s challenge by praising Odysseus’ spirited words, and he praises as well his own island’s seafaring skills and its dancers. The king calls for the bard Demodocus again, who sings a comic song about the adulterous affair of Ares and Aphrodite and how they were tripped up by Hephaestus.

414-83. More dancing follows, and then gifts flow and Broadsea makes amends with a fine sword, which Odysseus cordially accepts.

484-526. Arete orders a bath prepared for Odysseus, and Nausicaa reminds him that she played a key role in saving his life when he washed ashore in Phaeacia.

527-657. Odysseus rewards Demodocus and asks that he sing about the stratagem of the wooden horse, treacherous gift that brought down Troy. That Odysseus asks specifically for this tale marks the significance of Demodocus’ art for him: the lays he recounts constitute another test for Odysseus; they are an important first means by which he sums up the value of his adventures and puts them firmly behind him. He must look at them almost as if they had happened to another, even though they are of course intimately meaningful to him. Odysseus weeps as the story of his own clever campaign-ending trick is recounted, and Alcinous, noticing the stranger’s tears, orders the bard to stop. He tells Odysseus about Poseidon’s alleged wrath at the Phaeacians because they have for so long given safe conveyance to travelers, and at last asks his guest to reveal his identity. He says sagely that the gods are always “spinning threads of death” for men, and “all to make a song for those to come.”

Book 9

Readers of The Odyssey know that Odysseus is a resourceful character who can size up other people and situations and find a way out of a tight spot. He is self-possessed enough to know when to conceal or dissemble his intentions and identity, and when to speak and act directly. This is a man who knows when to talk and when to act; his actions, words, and thoughts (insofar as we are granted access to his thoughts) nearly always seem to be appropriate and consonant with one another. He responds with courage to the situations that fate, the gods, and his own passions confront him with. Odysseus, then, is the ideal Greek—not perfect, perhaps, but always worthy of emulation. The subject of Book 9 is the interaction between Odysseus and crew and the Cyclops Polyphemus. How does Odysseus get his men in trouble and out of it? The men would prefer to steal their dinner and run, but not their captain. He is insatiably curious—a quality for which the narrator by no means condemns him throughout The Odyssey, but one that he will have to restrain if he is to regain his old status as King of Ithaca.

12-32. At this point, Odysseus’ task as storyteller to the Phaeacians parallels that of the narrator throughout the epic: to arrange the past in such a way as to make some order emerge, to derive some lesson from it all. Words are a vehicle for expression, but they are also a medium of self-restraint (taming, containing); they help us put our experiences into order and renew our acquaintance with priorities.

33-41. Odysseus admits the great power of Circe and Calypso, but insists that they never really stole his heart since “nothing is as sweet as a man’s own country” (38). The very names of these two witches derive from the Greek for, respectively, “circle” (but the word for “hawk” is very similar) and “to cover ( kalypto).

44-70. Odysseus and his men encounter the Cicones. The Greeks dally, slaughtering sheep and drinking too much, and the Cicones band together to drive Odysseus’ men to a rather ignominious retreat. The problem isn’t that they sacked the place—Odysseus actually seems proud of his decision to do so, and such action is evidently nothing new for him (piracy wasn’t a dishonorable trade, in the ancient Greeks’ view—at least not until Classical times). The problem is that they don’t know when to move on. In light of the task they must still accomplish (the homecoming), their behavior is no longer heroic, and mutiny is the logical result. Many an ancient battle was surely lost after it was won simply because the weary, ill-remunerated troops couldn’t resist stopping to plunder what they had taken by the sword.

93-117. It seems that marijuana-like “calm-down” narcotics have been around forever, to judge from this episode. According to the Wikipedia entry on the Lotophagoi (Lotos-Eaters), the plant is most likely a North African variety called “ ziziphus lotus, a relative of the jujube.” According to Homer’s fanciful episode, the lotus plant induces forgetfulness—of family and homeland, heroic quests and high words, everything. It quenches desire for everything but the lotus itself, and for sleep. Odysseus hurries his men back to their ships in the face of such danger, and indeed he hurries past the tale itself as he tells it to the Phaeacians. If we want more, we will have to look to Tennyson’s modern poem, The Lotos-Eaters, where the “brother Mariners” sing in a dilatory stupor about their resentment of the gods and of the “toil” that is the lot of human beings.

118-259. Now it’s on to the main event—Odysseus’ encounter with the Cyclops Polyphemus. This giant lives a life of pastoral ease, and cares nothing for the laws of hospitality. That kind of life (or something even easier) was what the crew wanted when they came into contact with the lotus plant, but such a life isn’t for men of action. Law and labor are the mainstays of mortal life. Driven by Odysseus’ curiosity, the Greeks behave in a rather un-guestlike way towards Polyphemus, and for once the men seem wise in their preference for simply making off with some of the delicious cheeses to which they’ve been helping themselves.

260-316. Soon enough, Polyphemus returns from his herding, only to find that strangers have taken up residence in his home. The giant turns out to be no better a host than the Greeks are guests, and we find him (a son of Poseidon, apparently) mocking the power of Zeus, god of suppliants. He flatly rejects Odysseus’ attempts at civil conversation, and wants only to find out where the men’s ship is so he can destroy it.

316-411. At this juncture, Odysseus is forced to work up a clever scheme, and his best means is Polyphemus’ tree-length wooden staff, which the Greek crew must sharpen and harden by fire while the giant bolts down six men. Οὖτις ἐμοί γ ' ὄνομα : Οὖτιν δέ με κικλήσκουσι / μήτηρ ἠδὲ πατὴρ ἠδ ' ἄλλοι πάντες ἑταῖροι’ (“Nobody is my name: Nobody—that’s what my mother, my father, and all my comrades call me.” Perseus 9.366-67), says Odysseus, making the best of a bad situation. The brute Polyphemus has little command of linguistic subtlety, so the captain’s wordplay (along some extreme but carefully timed violence) is an appropriate way to defeat this uncivilized brute.

412-528. The hideous scheme of blinding the one-eyed Polyphemus pays off, but still Odysseus and his men must do some high-quality feigning to make it out of the cave alive: they pretend to be the giant’s sheep, and the trick works.

529-630. The danger really should be past by now, but Odysseus’ recklessness nearly gets him killed along with his entire crew. He just can’t resist the opportunity to deepen Polyphemus’ psychological wound: he declares his proper name, Odysseus. This exuberance will, of course, cost him dearly, as it gives Poseidon all the more reason to be angry with him. It commonly happens in Greek literature that a character’s most admirable trait (whether exercised too strongly or not, as it is here) is what gets him or her in trouble. Odysseus’ daring is admirable, but it is also reckless. The pre-Classical Greeks aren’t much given to praising restraint for restraint’s sake or defining virtue as the mean between extremes (as Aristotle would later do), but knowing when to keep one’s name to oneself is something Odysseus really needed to do at this point, and he has failed to do it.

Book 10

17ff. Odysseus tells his war adventures to good effect, and recounts how he stayed a month with Aeolus, god of the winds. The god gives him a bag of favorable wind, but on the tenth day of sailing, Odysseus’ resentful crew open the bag, supposing that it contains riches they deserve as well as their captain. The crew are remarkably inconsistent and very much driven by their passions: this time it isn’t fear that spurs them on, it’s their resentment of an obviously superior man’s privileges.

62ff. Aeolus rebuffs Odysseus when he returns with a plea for yet a second bag of winds. As so often in ancient literature, bad luck is considered a mark of shame—an unlucky person is like someone with a deadly contagious disease, and is to be shunned. It’s hard to see how Odysseus’ crew really deserve any help at this point: they’ve been disloyal. (Of course, one might question Odysseus’ decision not to tell the crew what was in the bag—he doesn’t seem to trust them, perhaps with good reason.)

115ff. Odysseus’ scouts meet the daughter of Lestrygonian King Antiphates, but soon thereafter the Lestrygonians eat two of Odysseus’ men, and he rows away with only his own ship and crew—the rest having been destroyed by huge rocks. This is what their abuse of Aeolus’ magical gift has brought them to: they have been reduced to barely sufficient human toil.

148ff. Odysseus and his men reach Aeaea, where the goddess Circe dwells. She is the daughter of the Sun and Perse. Odysseus kills a stag to feed his men, and tries to cheer them up.

243ff. Circe, the first of the two nymphs with whom Odysseus must contend, is presented to us as an enchanting songstress and spinner of webs: Κίρκης δ ' ἔνδον ἄκουον ἀειδούσης ὀπὶκαλῇ, / ἱστὸν ἐποιχομ ένης μέγαν ἄμβροτον, οἷα θεάων / λεπτά τε καὶ χαρίεντα καὶ ἀγλαὰ ἔργα πέλονται. τοῖσι δὲ μύθων ἦρχε Πολίτης ὄρχαμος ἀνδρῶν, / ὅς μοι κήδιστος ἑτάρων ἦν κεδνότατός τε …. 10.221-25, Perseus. Fagles translates these lines well as “deep inside they heard her singing, lifting / her spellbinding voice as she glided back and forth / at her great immortal loom, her enchanting web / a shimmering glory only goddesses can weave” (10.242-45). This passage might be compared to the slightly fuller vignette of Calypso in 5.65-84, Fagles translation.) Circe’s name Κίρκη may be derived from the Greek noun kirkis (“circle”), which would be an appropriate connotation because she hinders Odysseus, threatening to trap him in an inappropriately comfortable , carefree “domestic” situation when he still has heroic work to do. Circe first draws the captain’s men (Eurylochus excepted) into her charmed circle, making them forget their quest to return home, and then turns them into swine. It makes sense to suppose that the pig is Circe’s choice for Odysseus’ crew because pigs, while intelligent, are traditionally represented as easily led by desire—they wallow and feed happily, oblivious to the fact that they are being fattened to satisfy their captors’ appetite.

302ff. Odysseus, with a gift of moly from Hermes to protect him (Wikipedia describes moly as “a magic herb with a black root and white blossoms”), goes forward to confront Circe and her magic spells. This herb does what it’s supposed to do, and Odysseus remains as he is. Or at least, he remains the same in outward form. Circe has another kind of magic—the power of sex—that will work on this recalcitrant man over time. In any case, the men are returned to their original form.

472ff. Eurylochus, still afraid of Circe’s tricks, resists Odysseus’ decision to bring all his men back to the goddess’ halls. But the captain gives in to luxury and his host’s voluptuousness, and his men must remind him that it’s time to go. Sometimes for the Greeks, “giving in” to the power of sexual impulses is a mark of strength (as in the Sappho poem I’ve used, or as in William Blake’s grand line from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, “Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained”), but things don’t play out that way in this instance. At 506-12, Circe claims that she is offering the men a chance to recuperate and recover their strength before setting sail again. But an entire year passes, and when the men finally convince Odysseus to depart, Circe springs the information upon him that a trip to the Underworld will be necessary.

553ff. Circe gives specific directions to Odysseus on how to reach Hades: he must enact the proper rituals to enter this third of the three realms and wrest from it the knowledge he needs. Odysseus must go to Persephone’s sacred grove and to the “House of Death,” which seems to represent Hades itself, or the entrance point to that realm. At a certain sacred spot, Odysseus must pour libations of milk, honey, wine, and water, sprinkle barley, and vow to sacrifice to the dead generally and to Tiresias specifically when he returns home to Ithaca. The book ends on a sour note when the foolish Elpenor, besotted with wine, falls off the roof of Circe’s palace to his death.

Book 11

What attitude will Odysseus adopt towards the trip he must make to Hades and towards the shades he meets when he arrives there? The conclusion of this episode is chilling, and repays consideration: the shades crowd around Odysseus, terrifying even his stout spirit. One way to view Book 11 is to say that it shows Odysseus trying to gain the knowledge he needs and to maintain perspective in the midst of what threatens to overwhelm him. His trip to the Underworld is a severe trial as well as an opportunity to learn and satisfy his heroic curiosity. We recall that the three realms ( Olympus , Earth, and Hades) must remain distinct but in communication with one another. Those communications aren’t always easy—a point that Aeschylus reinforces later in The Oresteia. Hades has powers and prerogatives of its own—its presiding god is, after all, one of Zeus’ siblings, along with Poseidon and Hera.

65ff: The dead are commanded by Odysseus, but they in turn exert a strong influence upon him; they have their own demands to make. Even the drunkard Elpenor, who fell off the roof of Circe’s palace, implores Odysseus to observe the proper cremation and burial rites. A Greek owed this to the dead; it helped to put a cap on a person’s life, and made his transition to the Underworld go smoothly. But Tiresias makes a prophecy about Odysseus extending beyond the epic. How is Odysseus to take this? Does it round off his own life?

95ff: Gender is a main theme in Book 11: Odysseus’ mother Anticleia is dear to him, but he won’t speak to her until he fulfills his main mission, which is to get the knowledge and guidance he needs from Tiresias. Anticleia reinforces Odysseus’ desire to return home—in this way, like many of the dead, she participates as well as communicates with those still in the land of the living. And her account of what it’s like to live in Hades makes the affairs of the living seem all the more attractive. Hades isn’t really a place you want to dwell in or upon, so it must be that what we do on earth is of the greatest importance.

After Anticleia, Persephone sends Odysseus a catalog of famous royal wives and daughters. Of course Odysseus’ goal is to get home to Penelope, and even Agamemnon later admits that she, at least, is trustworthy, but even so this book shows some real concern for maintaining proper boundaries around the action proper to the male and female gender. The Greeks like strong women and can admire a transgressor like the still living Clytemnestra, but at the same time she must be taken down for her “male” actions because they are not permissible for a woman. (A point I draw from Martin Schwab of UC Irvine.) So the women Odysseus meets both in Hades and elsewhere represent a threat to his success—in the epic’s second half, it isn’t Penelope, much as he may test her, who causes the trouble; it’s those strumpets the palace maids, carrying on with the suitors.

413ff: Odysseus’ character and strength are plain to Arete and Alcinous. It seems that Odysseus’ strong character and clarity of mind lend authority to his fine tales. In that way his skill bespeaks or unfolds his heroic character. It isn’t only that he can spin a good story—any crafty beggar can do that, Alcinous implies. Odysseus exudes a sense of the close connection between action and words. Later in Greek history, Aristotle will say that the goal or end of life is action, and that by our actions we are happy or miserable. I suppose Homer would agree with that.

430ff: To drive home this point about action, I should say again that Odysseus sees his tales as steeling himself to grief and containing it within its proper boundaries. Grief should be a spur to action; it should be felt deeply, but it shouldn’t destroy the strong person who suffers its effects. The Sappho poem I quoted earlier is worth reiterating: “Eros seizes and shakes my very soul / Like the wind on the mountain / Shaking ancient oaks.” If the persona is well rooted, it may allow itself to be shaken by passion. Well, the Greeks liked to talk about these experiences, and it makes sense to say that telling and hearing tales of sorrow and hardship are themselves experiences. Engagement with words is experience and action, at least when someone like Odysseus is doing the talking. This way of taking language as experience is something that separates the men from the boys in Homer. It is a way of remaining open to experience. Another way to put this is that a Greek like Odysseus won’t fully separate art (i.e. tale-telling) from the other things that happen in life. Art is life experience; it is, as Kenneth Burke says, “equipment for living.”

431ff: Odysseus recounts Agamemnon’s anger and lamentation; there’s unfinished business in Argos . Where is Orestes? Odysseus doesn’t know. Here we have a shade calling for retribution from Hades. Orestes must avenge his father, whatever the cost in further retribution by the Furies. Agamemnon is angry at women—he starts sounding a bit like Hamlet at one point. But he isn’t saying that Penelope will rebel and join the Bad Girls’ Club. His concern probably is that not maintaining gender boundaries, not keeping genders within their proper sphere, will bring disaster to any kingdom. Gender is a principle that regulates action, it seems. (Consider the modern existentialist version of feminism as we may find it in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, where the author explains that men define themselves as “authentic” and active beings, while they define women as “inessential others” upon whose inessentiality men may prove themselves.) As mentioned earlier, a strong and active woman is admirable to Greek audiences, but she is also an object of fear and may well be subjected to punishment as a transgressor.

553ff: Achilles sets Odysseus right about Hades. It’s a shadowy place, not to be considered a place to rule perpetually with the same happiness and glory as on earth. Earth is the place to be. Achilles longs to hear how his son is doing. A child offers a more satisfying chance at immortality than Hades. Never mind what Satan says in Paradise Lost— it is not “better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.”

617ff: Great Ajax , like the other shades, “takes up an attitude” towards the living. Achilles did that too, in setting Odysseus right about the merits of the afterlife.

648ff: Odysseus’ desire to see more heroes comes to the fore. Heracles honors him with a comparison to himself—so much hard labor, a man of pain. It reminds me of how Dante makes Virgil honor him in Inferno.

End: the realms must remain distinct. Odysseus’ invasive interaction with Hades’ spirits threatens to overwhelm him, making him fear loss of command even in his own proper realm, earth. Interacting with the Powers is necessary and heroic, but it is dangerous, too. The intercommunication between realms does not mean that there’s an easy fit between them or that their respective prerogatives and claims upon us have all been settled to everyone’s satisfaction. Aeschylus will certainly point that out to us. When we get to him, ask yourself, “what is the place of the human in his drama?”

Book 12

Odysseus returns to Circe's island after his visit to Hades. This book separates the men from the boys; the crew is destroyed due to its atasthalia, reckless disregard for the gods. Book 12 is a fulcrum; Odysseus’ negotiating to return home has involved negotiating with actors in all three realms. His crew fails him at the end of the process, eating the Sun’s cattle, and only he has come through the trials.

22ff: The book shows concern for controlling the flow of information, for delineating what is proper to a hero and what constitutes mere recklessness. How to respond to experience? The crew is heedless, but Odysseus’ daring is generally more permeated with presence of mind and, sometimes, even with forethought (a quality he shares with that other great figure, Prometheus).

27ff: Circe’s attitude towards the men. Is she honest with them? The she-goddess treats Odysseus’ crew the way Agamemnon has said women should be treated: she tells them only part of the story, taking Odysseus aside to tell him all about the Sirens and about Scylla and Charybdis.

57ff: Odysseus will be allowed the maximum openness to experience because he is best prepared to “be shaken,” in the manner of the Sappho poem I quoted above. His desire is admirable, even if he must be restrained by his fellows, who are not his equals. Some people’s desires are stronger than others, and those desires will have their way—this is a point in the text where the strength of Odysseus’ desire is truly a mark of his excellence.

62ff: Scylla and Charybdis threaten catastrophe. It’s Odysseus’ choice and responsibility to take the consequences. And it’s a chance to measure up to his father Laertes, one of the Argonauts with Jason. They negotiated their way through the same trial. Odysseus keeps the knowledge of one of the killers to himself.

200ff: Here we meet the Sirens (a female noun, seiren). How much does Odysseus get to hear? More than we do? Or the same? Are they, in fact, saying anything that can be understood? Odysseus seems to be responding to a call, but I don’t believe he gets the actual knowledge, which is most likely forbidden to mortals, try though they may to discern it. These enchantresses take Odysseus to the limits of human endurance by their offer of omniscience. He braves them as a man, but in respect to the gods all is feminized. Even Odysseus can’t hear the whole story; he only hears the call to go beyond his limits.

243ff: Odysseus keeps the knowledge of Scylla to himself; he must restrain his crew from giving in to their weakness. We see a pattern of testing emerge: how much knowledge can a man take? Book 12 is a time of testing limits. And Odysseus’ retelling of this episode (along with everything else he tells them) to the Phaeacians also tests his limits of endurance—he must relive the painful experience of losing his crew to Scylla.

320ff: Eurylochus pleads weakness; the men are unheroic, and Odysseus makes them swear an oath. They are reckless because they don’t keep this oath when supplies run out. The belly is their god. But that’s not the case with Odysseus. The breaking of an oath threatens to confound the relationship between the realms; Helios complains to Zeus and says he will blaze in Hades, so Zeus has to promise he will strike Odysseus’ ship with lightning.

455: The ship is stripped bare (here the clothing/nakedness theme occurs again, as it did in the meeting between Odysseus and Princess Nausicaa at the beginning of Book 6), and it’s on to Ogygia, where Calypso abides. Odysseus says that he wouldn’t care to repeat that tale, which of course concludes with his landing on Phaeacian shores—it has been told, and told well. It’s time for him to make his way to Ithaca , with the aid of his hosts. In the grand sweep of The Odyssey, the hero hasn’t arrived at the end of his troubles and tests, but he will have reached a vital stage since from now until Book 24, his efforts will be made on his own kingdom’s rocky soil, not on the high seas or in exotic foreign lands.