361–63 Odysseus is a very wise commander. He could simply have picked the four men he wanted to have as his assistants, but in a situation so desperate he probably reasoned that it was more important for morale to have the eight cast lots.
361 eye: Singular (see 113–24, above).
366–68 That the rams come into the cave tonight, as opposed to the previous night (see 259–60), is essential to the plot. At times Homer may seem sublimely indifferent to details, but more often than not he is in complete control. To make Odysseus himself comment on the great good fortune of this unexpected development is brilliant, in part because he cannot explain why it happened. That it might be “a god’s bidding” (368) is a good reminder of Odysseus’ un-Kyklopean piety, and, in particular, of the care taken of him by Athena, to whom Odysseus had prayed (344). She is not presented here as helping openly, but, then again, we are listening to Odysseus, not the omniscient epic narrator, and some kind of epiphany would have been required for Odysseus to be aware of her assistance.
378–83 Odysseus speaks as if all is lost. Now that he knows how horrid the Kyklops is, there is no hope of escape, and, he says, no need for the wine. He consciously does not flatter Polyphêmos, which might under the present circumstances arouse suspicions that the drink was poisoned, suspicions even the less-than-clever Polyphêmos might have entertained. The calculation works, and Polyphêmos quaffs the drink.
394ff. Odysseus, having sized up his opponent’s intelligence (low) and wanting to make a joke at least he can enjoy, claims that his name is Outis [366], virtually indistinguishable from ou tis, “no one” (as we believe ancient Greek was spoken, there would have been a difference of tone accent on the first syllable only). Likewise, Fitzgerald presents “nobody” in the slightly disguised form “Nohbdy.” This prepares the ground for two verbal jokes, the first fairly sophomoric. The first comes when the other Kyklops understand Outis as ou tis (“Nohbdy” as “nobody,” 446), which emerges from the fact that, according to the standard substitution of mê for ou in certain grammatical contexts, ou tis becomes me tis [410]. (This joke is anticipated in the “noman” of line 440.) This syntactical replacement lays the groundwork for a more sophisticated pun: as ou tis is to Outis, mê tis is to mêtis or “cunning intelligence,” Odysseus’ defining characteristic. Lest this pun escape the notice of his audience, Homer quite pointedly has Odysseus use the word mêtis right away [414] (represented in the translation by “deceived,” 452), and, again, in the accusative case, mêtin [422] (“wits,” 460).
400 Nohbdy’s my meat: Or “I will eat nobody last” [369]. Indeed: he will eat no one else at all.
402–19 his great head lolling to one side: Another detail which may seem to be a merely descriptive decoration but is in fact crucial. Given Polyphêmos’ size, Odysseus and his men could hardly have put out the giant’s eye if he were on his back with his face pointing straight up (and obviously not if he were facedown). As it is, however, Polyphêmos’ position permits them to be on the ground and run straight forward with their pole (see 414–16). A number of ancient depictions survive.
This clear picture becomes a little confused in 417–19, which seems to describe a vertical orientation with Odysseus above, his men below. The simplest solution is to recall that this is a simile: the major point of comparison is simply that Odysseus and his men twirl the pike just as shipwrights and their helpers do; the absolute and relative positions of Odysseus/master craftsman, on the one hand, and comrades/helpers, on the other, need not harmonize.
438 Polyphêmos: The name occurs for the first time in this book here (see 113–24, above). Odysseus learns it only because he hears the other Kyklops use it, although it is not clear whether or not Polyphêmos was concealing his name from Odysseus the way Odysseus had concealed his from the giant. Likewise, Odysseus will also learn from this exchange the name of Polyphêmos’ father (448–49).
440, 446, 452 No man, nobody, deceived: See 394, above.
460 wits and tactics: dolous kai mêtin [422] (see 394, above).
464 dark violet: See IV. 146, above.
487–93 That Polyphêmos is aware of the abnormal behavior of the largest ram provides a moment of concern to the audience, as no doubt it did to Odysseus himself. Will the plot turn and involve further dangers and complications, requiring further deceptions? Having so often twisted his plot, Homer can achieve nearly the same effect here by merely presenting the possibility of a twist.
502 There is further wordplay in the concluding phrase of Polyphêmos’ address to his ram: in Greek, something like “that good-for-no-thing Nohbdy” [outidanos Outis, 460]. (Only a line away, and hardly unintended by the poet, is “the floor” (501) [in the dative case, oudeï, 459, like another word for “no one,” oudeis].
519ff. Odysseus cannot resist letting Polyphêmos know that he has been bested. At first it seems a good lesson in piety (522–23), but having spoken at all turns out to have its risks when the Kyklops lobs huge rock masses in the direction of the ship, Odysseus’ call having revealed its location. However, despite the warning of his crew (535ff., for once much wiser than their captain), Odysseus reveals his identity (551–52). This, of course, is the means by which the poet of The Odyssey motivates Poseidon’s wrath (after Polyphêmos’ curse, 569–71). This show of pride ends up extending Odysseus’ wanderings and proves fatal for all his companions. Odysseus’ claim to be acting as the agent of Zeus Xenios and the other gods (523) appears not to be borne out by the plot at all (on Zeus Xenios, see III.377, above).
537–45 Fitzgerald creates five voices to do what the Greek presents as one coherent speech [494–99], which neatly demonstrates some of the differences between ancient epic and modern narrative conventions. It is not that Fitzgerald invents something that is not there; it is simply that Homer conveys the idea more indirectly. He concludes the introduction (535–36) to the sailors’ words with a directive: “each in a different way” [allothen alios, 493]. This licenses Fitzgerald’s solution. Working in print, he can use quotation marks; the reader, who is familiar with this convention, understands how speakers change on the basis of punctuation alone (for other examples, see XVIII.87–90 and 140–45).
Homer tells his audience that the sailors are all pleading in different ways, then presents a speech that sums up and represents the range of arguments and sentiments in a conventional, if not strictly realistic, manner. And yet there is something more behind the differences of technique and convention: it is not epic style, and not epic thinking, to attribute speech to anonymous characters. If someone, even a lowly swineherd, is to speak, he must be presented with a name and perhaps even a patronymic. Fitzgerald and his readers share more democratic assumptions: we are prepared to attend to voices we know are simply those of “sailors.”
554 the weird: Fate. Polyphêmos’ recollection of the oracle is a surprising turn in the narrative. (Since the oracle had foretold the loss of his eye, we might wonder why Polyphêmos didn’t assume his assailant was Odysseus as soon as he had been blinded. But then again, Polyphêmos is no rocket scientist.) That Odysseus is the subject of Polyphêmos’ oracle might have been particularly interesting for the Phaiákians, over whom the doom of another oracle hangs. Although this bothered ancient commentators, neither Homer nor Odysseus and the Phaiákians seem to be disturbed (see VIII.604–11, above).
558 for time to come: See I.266–67, above.
573 The god of earthquake could not heal you there!: It has been argued that the irreverance of this understatement, which verges on blasphemy, is the cause of the sea god’s enmity toward Odysseus. Certainly, the economy of the passage supports this interpretation, for immediately following Odysseus’ words, Polyphêmos formulates his prayer/curse (the word is the same in Greek, arê in Homer’s Ionic, although it does not appear in this passage). Polyphêmos calls on Poseidon, and Poseidon hears him. However, it is important to note that Odysseus has already said that he wishes he could have killed Polyphêmos. The Greek behind 573 [525] is q
uite unambiguously an extension of his wish that Polyphêmos were in Hades and beyond help from his divine father. That once dead, Polyphêmos could not have his vision restored, much less be revived, is accepted Homeric theology (compare Athena’s testimony at III.254–56, and see III.247ff., above).
A more fundamental point is that Homeric gods do not need a crime of blasphemy to justify their enmity. Poseidon could just have well have pursued Odysseus simply for blinding his son; he had done harm to one of Poseidon’s philoi and thus made himself hateful to the god. No excuse was necessary to follow the standard dictum: help your friends and harm your enemies. As we will learn in Book XI from the shade of the seer Teirêsias, Poseidon’s anger in fact is due simply to Odysseus’ blinding of Polyphêmos (XI. 116–17); Athena will say the same thing (XIII.431).
580–85 For the sake of the whole epic, Homer has Polyphêmos pronounce a second choice: if fate guarantees Odysseus’ homecoming, then may it be late and solitary.
605–7 Zeus disdained my offering: Odysseus is speaking from his current state of knowledge, inferring backward. There was probably no sign of disdain at the time. The remark is of a piece with his characteristic piety. (See 59–60, above.)
BOOK X
The Grace of the Witch
4 an isle adrift upon the sea: The idea of the floating island fascinated the Greeks; according to legend, the very well known Delos, with its shrine holy to Apollo, had been floating before it was anchored.
8 gave girls to boys: In this fairy-tale kingdom, the two groups of siblings are of equal number, which works perfectly for the marriage of all the sisters to their brothers. With the continued presence of all his children at daily feasting, Aiolos is the fantasy image of a father in The Odyssey. (For both more fairy-tale and realistic elements of this episode, see 22–29, below.)
17–18 the return of the Akhaians: Strictly, Odysseus would at this point have known little about the nostoi of any other of the Akhaians. Homer is no pedant, and no one in his audience would have gotten stuck on this point.
22–29 The bag of winds with all of them tied up and only one (at first) let out—the favorable west-wind—is one version of a traditional motif. Another example, developed somewhat differently, is Pandora’s box, so-called because Pandora (literally “all gifts”) opened this box, releasing all woes into the world. She managed to slam it shut in time to retain only one item—hope.
Denys Page cites examples of “rain-makers and wind-controllers in primitive societies” as well as “professional wind-sellers” in a variety of cultures, arguing that some were familiar to the Greeks. He claims that Homer’s audience would not see this aspect of the Aiolos episode as the stuff of fairy tale at all (Folktales in Homer’s Odyssey, pp. 73–78). But what is realistic as “primitive magic” can be cast into a shape that has recognizably traditional elements (threes, prohibitions violated with disastrous consequences, and so on). Here is a brief story also quoted by Page:
In Siseby on the Schlei dwelt a woman skilled in sorcery, who could turn the wind round. The herring-fishermen of Schleswig often used to land there. On one occasion they wanted to return to Schleswig, but the wind was in the west. So they asked the woman to turn the wind round. She said she would, in return for a plate of fish; so the fishermen offered her herrings, perch, bream, and pike, these being all the fish they had. Thereupon she gave them a cloth with three knots, and said that they could open the first and second knots, but must not open the third till they reached land. The fishermen spread their sails, although the wind was still in the west; but the moment the oldest member of the company opened the first knot, a fair wind came from the east. He opened the second knot, and a strong wind came upon them, and they reached their town at high speed. And now they were curious to know what would happen if they opened the third knot too: they had hardly done so, when a terrible hurricane fell upon them from the west; they had to jump into the water in a hurry, to drag their ship to the beach.
(Müllenhoff as excerpted in Page, Folktales, 77)
57 a quick finish: That even the ever-resourceful Odysseus considers suicide suggests how deep his despair is at this point. His moments of despair are coming more frequently as his travels continue (see 552–53).
82–85 Aiolos’ response does not constitute a breach of hospitality or of the rights of suppliants. It was proper for a host to refuse to aid someone who was hated by the gods. Underlying this was the belief that those being punished by the gods were foul or stained, and that the miasma with which they were infected could be contagious. Has Odysseus forgotten the listening Phaiákians?
93–97 In that land…: This seems to be a clear reference to long summer days in far northern European latitudes. While there may not be any well-informed geographical knowledge behind the description of Odysseus’ travels that would permit us to identify the “real” locations of these way stations, there is every reason to believe that Homer could have heard reports of the midnight sun from traders and incorporated them into his description of a fantastic land. Amber from northern Europe reached the Mediterranean as early as the Iron Age and found its way into Mycenaean shaft-graves (c. 1700 B.C.E.). The first recorded Greek sea voyage to Scandinavia is that of Pytheas (c. 325 B.C.E.).
By contrast, the land of the Laistrygonês may be far to the east, the home of the Dawn, thus (poetically) depicted as a land of never-failing light. The strangeness of this world is further emphasized by the “workaholic” fantasy Odysseus spins. The Greeks well appreciated the fact that night gives respite from the labors and cares of the day. In a poem frequently imitated (though now fragmentary), the seventh-century-B.C.E. Spartan poet Alkman described all of nature, from the mountain peaks to the depths of the sea, asleep in peaceful rest (Lyrica Graeca Selecta, ed. D. Page, frag. 34).
99–107 Some scholars have suggested that Homer is depicting a Scandinavian fjord, and this could serve as a good description of one. (Going further down this road, lines 106–7 might be a reference to ice [leukê galênê, 94, could be rendered “white calm”] and line 94 perhaps even a yodeling herdsmen’s call.) Such a fjord would have been “curious” to the Greeks, and the description may suggest that the harborage is in some way remarkable and noteworthy (the adjective in line 99 literally means “famous” [kluton, 87]). Again (see 93–97, above) we must remember that while the poet may be incorporating elements that at several removes go back to a traveler who saw a Scandinavian coastline, neither Homer nor his audience would have the geographical apparatus to put this on a map. Indeed, they had no concept of “Europe” comparable to our own. The problems of literalization are well exemplified in the equation of “white calm” with “ice”: the Greeks could not possibly have envisioned a sea frozen over with Odysseus sailing through it.
108–10 My own black ship …: The separate moorage of Odysseus’ own ship will prove important (see 133ff., below).
117–20 It was no doubt quite common, in life as in literature, for travelers heading toward a settlement to meet someone coming out to fetch water (Jacob and Rachel at the well in Genesis 29:2–11, or when Athena appears before Odysseus as the young Phaiákian girl with a “water jug,” VII.23). However, although Odysseus’ party encounters the king’s daughter, as he had encountered Nausikaa in Phaiákia, things will turn out rather differently here.
123 waved her hand: She must have answered the questions asked in line 122, for there is no other way for Odysseus to have learned the name of the people or their king. (There is also a possibility of some narrative negligence; see 534, below, with further references.)
125–28 The gigantic Laistrygon couple recall the giants in “Jack and the Beanstalk.” Here the husband, Antiphatês, (at least) is the man-eater. We wouldn’t speak of The Odyssey as being a “source” or “influence” in such a case, but of “analogues” or “folk-tale types.” Such tales have wide distribution, and in the mouths of skilled tale-tellers they have infinite power to undergo transformation. They may even be generated anew or reconst
ituted from common motifs according to a deep structure or pattern (i.e., archetype).
129–38 The cannibalistic, giant, rock-lobbing Laistrygonês are another incarnation of many of the story elements Homer presented in the tale of the Kyklops (Book IX). But instead of criticizing this as mere repetition, it is more appropriate, given Homeric techniques, to appreciate it as theme and variation. The same critique has been made (and the same defense should be mounted) in the case of Kalypso (Book V) and Kirkê, whom we are about to meet (149ff.).
132ff. All but Odysseus’ ship, fortunately moored farthest out to sea, are destroyed. Now we see that lines 108–10 were not merely descriptive but preparatory and functional. Likewise, the fjordlike formation of the harbor (see 99–107, above) is best explained functionally: such an anchorage beneath the cliffs permits the rock-lobbing Laistrygonês to demolish multiple ships and provides the narrator a dramatic and economical way to dispatch most of Odysseus’ companions and all but one of his ships in one fell swoop, a move that the narrative shape of The Odyssey requires. Note that the variation in topography and placement of ships makes this a very different episode from Polyphêmos’ rock throwing at IX.524–92.
167–69 So I took counsel with myself: After the last episode, Odysseus proceeds more cautiously.
A Guide to the Odyssey: A Commentary on the English Translation of Robert Fitzgerald Page 22