Quite apart from such considerations, the descent of the suitors’ ghosts to the lower world has already been foreseen in the terrifying vision that comes to Theoclymenus in the great hall in Book 20: “Ghosts, look, thronging the entrance, thronging the court, / go trooping down to the world of death and darkness!” (ref). And Plato, who lived long before Aristarchus, quoted the Greek lines 6–9 of Book 24 in the Republic:
[and the ghosts trailed after with high thin cries]
as bats cry in the depths of a dark haunted cavern,
shrilling, flittering, wild when one drops from the chain —
slipped from the rock face, while the rest cling tight . . .
So with their high thin cries the ghosts flocked now . . .
(ref)
Like Aristarchus, he proposes to suppress them, but not because he thinks Homer did not write them —on the contrary. It is one of a list of passages Plato objects to because they will sap the morale of young men training for battle. “We shall ask Homer . . . to forgive us if we delete all passages of this kind. It is not because they are bad poetry . . . in fact the better they are as poetry . . . the less suitable they are for an audience of boys and men on whom freedom places the obligation to fear slavery more than death.”
The long scene in which Odysseus reveals his identity to his father has been roundly condemned by many modern critics. The last of his autobiographical fictions, the skillfully crafted tale he tells Laertes has been described as a “bizarre plan,” as “pointless cruelty” and as a product of Odysseus’ “habit of distrust.” There is of course no question of real distrust; he has nothing to fear from Laertes, as he might have suspected he had from Penelope. But all these judgments should be assessed in the light not only of the difficult psychological situation Odysseus is faced with but also of Homer’s imperatives as a narrative poet.
The last half of the Odyssey is a drama of identity disguised and revealed, a series of artful variations on the recognition scene. The first, and in some ways the strangest, of these scenes occurs in the first half of the poem, when Odysseus, waiting for the prophet Tiresias to appear, sees the ghost of his mother, Anticleia, who had still been alive when he left for Troy. He bursts into tears, but following Circe’s instructions to the letter, he will not allow her to drink the sacrificial blood that would give her a semblance of life until he has heard from Tiresias. During the prophet’s long speech the ghost of Anticleia sits there in silence, making no sound, showing no emotion. But once she is allowed to drink the blood, memory returns. “She knew me at once,” says Odysseus, “and wailed out in grief” (ref). Back on Ithaca, he reveals his identity to his son, but since this involves his transformation by Athena from a ragged beggar to a magnificently dressed and handsome man, Telemachus at first (like Penelope later) is reluctant to accept him as Odysseus and thinks that he must be a god. The next recognition is one Odysseus had not planned on and that might have aroused suspicions, but his old dog Argos, recognizing his master after twenty years, is too feeble to approach him and can do no more than let his ears droop and wag his tail and then die. The next recognition, Eurycleia’s discovery of the scar, might have disrupted his plans, but he forces her to keep silent. Just before the climactic moment when he gets his hands on the bow, he reveals his identity to Eumaeus and the shepherd Philoetius, enlisting them on his side, and the next revelation is also his initiative: after killing Antinous, he tells the suitors who he is and what will happen to them. “You dogs! you never imagined I’d return from Troy — / . . . your doom is sealed!” (ref). Penelope, in her turn, is unable to accept the revelation of his identity, but after he passes her test she clasps him joyfully in her arms. Only the recognition by Laertes remains.
It comes as no surprise. Not only does Odysseus tell Penelope of his intention to confront his father, but Laertes’ overwhelming grief for his missing son and his withdrawal from society have been described in harrowing detail by Athena-Mentes, Anticleia and Eumaeus. The theme has been building to a climax, and something more than a simple declaration and joyful acceptance is required by the laws of storytelling. The poet’s dilemma is in fact reflected in the text, put in the mouth of Odysseus. Catching sight of his father, “a man worn down with years, his heart racked with sorrow” (ref), Odysseus
halted under a branching pear-tree, paused and wept.
Debating, head and heart, what should he do now?
Kiss and embrace his father, pour out the long tale — . . .
or probe him first and test him every way?
(ref)
Like his hero, Homer decides on the second alternative.
But the choice makes sense also in terms of the persons involved. Laertes is a man to whose burden of old age has been added the loss of his only son —missing in action, no word of when, where, how or even if he died. Laertes has become a hermit, never coming into town, Athena-Mentes says in the opening book of the poem, suffering as he drags himself along the slope of his vineyard. Anticleia, his dead wife, rounds out the picture of his renunciation of civilized life: he sleeps with slaves in the ashes by the fire in winter and on fallen leaves in the summer, nursing his overwhelming grief. Eumaeus tells Odysseus that the old man prays for death as he grieves for his son and his wife, and that his reaction to the news that Telemachus has sailed off to Pylos is to refuse food and drink.
Clearly this is a case that calls for careful handling if Laertes is to be extracted from the prison of grief and self-humiliation in which he has closed himself off from the world. What Odysseus does is to bring him back to consciousness of his own dignity as a man and a king before making any mention of his son. The first part of his long, adroitly structured speech consists of what Homer calls “reproachful words.” The adjective kertomiois is usually translated as “bantering” or “mocking,” and it does often carry that meaning, but from what follows here it clearly in this case means “reproachful,” as its cognate noun does in the first book of the Iliad (line 539 in the Greek), where it describes Hera’s angry accusation that Zeus is, as usual, conspiring against her.
Odysseus’ reproaches are far from gentle. He takes note of Laertes’ patched and miserable garments, his fieldhand’s leather shin guards and gloves, his goatskin cap. Though he starts by commending him on his work, and pays him the compliment of detecting the lineaments of royalty under his sordid appearance, he ends the first part of his speech with a question deliberately phrased for its shock effect: “whose slave are you? whose orchard are you tending?” (ref). Nothing could more swiftly bring Laertes to a realization of the degraded condition into which he has allowed himself to fall, and Odysseus now asks another question — whether he is indeed in Ithaca. For he once befriended and helped a man from Ithaca, the son of Laertes. “By posing questions, awaking memories, and stirring long-repressed feelings,” Heubeck writes in his masterly commentary on Book 24 (III, p. 390), “Odysseus forces his father not only to answer the questions put, but to ask questions in return, and so, step by step, to emerge from his self-inflicted isolation and apathy.” Finally, told that the man he is talking to is Odysseus in person, he asks for a sign and is given not only the scar that Eurycleia recognized but Odysseus’ enumeration of the trees his father had given him when he was a little boy —“thirteen pear, ten apple trees / and forty figs” (ref). Laertes flings his arms around his long-lost son and the two of them go off to the farmhouse to join Telemachus.
There is little more to be told. The fathers of some of the dead suitors —in spite of Medon’s caution that he had seen a god helping Odysseus in the fighting and old Halitherses’ reminder that they were themselves to blame for not restraining their sons —arm and set out, led by Eupithes, Antinous’ father, to exact vengeance from Odysseus and his party. Only one man is killed: Eupithes, at the hand of a Laertes rejuvenated by Athena. The goddess puts an end to the fighting and then, in the shape of Mentor, administers oaths to both sides as a guarantee of reconciliation and peace.
The poem
ends here, but like the Iliad, it has already charted the future of its hero. Achilles has been told by his mother, Thetis, that his death will come soon after Hector’s, but he will not renounce his passionate resolve to avenge Patroclus’ death. As he prepares to take Lycaon’s life, he foresees the end of his own —“There will come a dawn or sunset or high noon / when a man will take my life in battle too” (21.125–6). In the Odyssey the hero’s death is foretold by Tiresias in the underworld. After he has killed the suitors, Tiresias tells him, he must make his peace with the god Poseidon by traveling inland, carrying an oar on his shoulder, until he reaches a people utterly ignorant of the sea and ships. When one of them asks him why he is carrying a winnowing fan on his shoulder, he is to fix the oar in the ground and make an extraordinary sacrifice —a bull, a ram and a boar —to Poseidon. Once returned home, he is to sacrifice to all the Olympian gods in turn. “And at last your own death,” says Tiresias,
“will steal upon you . . .
a gentle, painless death, far from the sea it comes
to take you down, borne down with the years in ripe old age
with all your people there in blessed peace around you.”
(ref)
THE SPELLING AND PRONUNCIATION OF HOMERIC NAMES
Though the English spelling of ancient Greek names faces modern poet-translators with some difficult problems, it was not a problem at all for Shakespeare, Milton, Pope and Tennyson. Except in the case of names that had through constant use been fully Anglicized —Hector, Helen, Troy —the poets used Latin equivalents of the Greek names, which they found in the poems of Virgil and Ovid that they read in school. These are the forms we also are familiar with, from our reading of English poets through the centuries: Circe, Scylla, Sirens.
Recent poet-translators have tried to get closer to the original Greek and have transliterated the Greek names directly, not through the medium of their Latin adaptations. One translator, for example, presents his readers with Kirkê, Skylla and the Seirênês. Another shares several of these spellings but will strike a compromise at times —Circe, Skylla. All translators compromise when it comes to such fully naturalized forms as Helen, Trojans and Argives (Helenê, Trôes and Argeioi in the Greek), and they also retreat from strict transliteration in cases like Odysseus (Odusseus), Priam (Priamos) and Thrace (Thrêikê).
This is an area in which no one can claim perfect consistency: we too offer a compromise. Its basis, however, is a return to the traditional practice of generations of English poets —the use of Latinate spellings except for those names that have become, in their purely English forms, familiar in our mouths as household words.
Rigid adherence to this rule would of course make unacceptable demands: it would impose, for instance, Minerva instead of Athena, Ulysses for Odysseus, Jupiter or Jove for Zeus. We have preferred the Greek names, but transliterated them on Latin principles: Hêrê, for example, is Hera in this translation; Athênê is Athena. Elsewhere we have replaced the letter k with c and substituted the ending us for the Greek os in the names of persons (Patroklos becomes Patroclus). When, however, a personal name ends in ros preceded by a consonant, we have used the Latin ending er: Pisander for Peisandros. The Greek diphthongs ai and oi are represented by the Latin diphthongs ae and oe (Achaean for Akhaian, Euboea for Euboia).
This conventional Latinate spelling of the names has a traditional pronunciation system, one that corresponds with neither the Greek nor the Latin sounds. Perhaps “system” is not the best word for it, since it is full of inconsistencies. But it is the pronunciation English poets have used for centuries, the sounds they heard mentally as they composed and that they confidently expected their readers to hear in their turn. Since there seems to be no similar convention for the English pronunciation of modern transliterated Greek —is the h sounded in Akhilleus? is Diomedes pronounced dee-oh-may’-days or dee-oh-mee’-deez? —we have thought it best to work with pronunciation that Keats and Shelley would have recognized.
As in Achilles (a-kil’-eez), ch is pronounced like k throughout. The consonants c and g are hard (as in “cake” and “gun”) before a —Acastus (a-kas’-tus), Agamemnon (a-ga-mem’-non); before o —Leucothea ( lew-ko’-the-a), Gorgon (gor’-gon); before u —Autolycus (aw-to’-li-kus); and before other consonants —Patroclus (pa-tro’-klus), Cauconians (kaw-kho’-ni-unz). They are soft (as in “cinder” and “George”) before e —Circe (sir’-see), Geraestus (je-ree’-stus); before i —Cicones (si-koh’-neez), and before y — Cyclops (seye’-klops), Gyrae (jeye’-ree). The final combinations cia and gia produce sha —Phaeacia (fee-ay’-sha) —and ja —Ortygia (or-ti’-ja) — respectively. There are, however, cases in which the pronunciation of the consonants does not conform to these rules. One of the names of the Greeks, for instance —Argives —is pronounced with a hard g (ar’-geyevz, not ar’-jeyevz), by analogy with the town of Argos.
The vowels vary in pronunciation, sometimes but not always according to the length of the Latin (or Greek) syllable, and the reader will have to find guidance in the rhythm of the English line or consult the Pronouncing Glossary at the back of the volume. Final e is always sounded long: Hebe (hee’-bee); final es is pronounced eez, as in Achilles. In other positions, the letter e may represent the sound heard in sneeze or that heard in pet. The letter i may sound as in “bit” or “bite”: Antinous ( an-ti’-no-us) or Atrides (a-treye’-deez). The two sounds are also found for y — Cythera (si-thee’-ra) or Cyprus (seye’-prus) —while o is pronounced as in Olympus (o-lim’-pus) or Dodona (doh-doh’-na). In this spelling system, u except in the ending us and in combination with other vowels (see below) is always long, since it represents the Greek diphthong ou. But it may be pronounced either you as in “dew” —Dulichion (dew-li’-ki-on) —or oo as in “glue” —Arethusa (a-re-thoo’-sa).
The diphthongs oe and ae are both pronounced ee —Achaeans ( a-kee’-unz), Oenops (ee’-nops). The combination aer does not produce a diphthong: Laertes (lay-ur’-teez); in cases where these letters are sounded separately, a dieresis is used: Phaëthusa (fay-e-thoo’-sa). The diphthong au is pronounced aw —Nausicaa (naw-si’-kay-a) —but in name endings, Menelaus, for example, it is not a diphthong, and the vowels are pronounced separately (me-ne-lay’-us). Since his name is familiar to the English reader, we have thought it unnecessary to use the dieresis in such cases. The ending ous is similar: Pirithous (peye-ri’-tho-us). The ending eus is sounded like yoos —Odysseus (o-dis’-yoos), except in the case of the name of one river —Alpheus (al-fee’-us) —and one Phaeacian elder, Echeneus (e-ken-ee’-us).
All other vowel combinations are pronounced not as diphthongs but as separate vowels. Double o is pronounced o-oh: Thoosa (tho-oh’-sa). Similarly, oi is treated not as a diphthong but as two separate sounds — Oicles (oh-ik’-leez). The sequence ei, however, is pronounced eye, as in the feminine name ending eia: Anticleia (an-ti-kleye’-a), Eurycleia ( yoo-ri-kleye’-a) and other names as well; the constellation called the Pleiades (pleye’-a-deez) and the sea-nymph Eidothea (eye-do’-the-a); but Deiphobus (dee-i’-fo-bus) is an exception.
Obviously we cannot claim complete consistency even within the limits we have imposed on the system. Where no Latin form exists, as in the case of Poseidon, we have used the transliterated Greek, traditionally pronounced po-seye’-don (not po-see’-i-don). But we can claim to have reduced the unsightly dieresis to a minor factor and to have given the reader who comes to Homer for the first time a guide to pronunciation that will stand him or her in good stead when reading other poets who mention Greek names. We have also provided a Pronouncing Glossary of all the proper names in the text, which indicates stress and English vowel length.
HOMER:
THE
ODYSSEY
BOOK ONE
Athena Inspires the Prince
1 Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
2 driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
3 the hallowed heights of Troy.
&nbs
p; 4 Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds,
many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea,
6 fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home.
But he could not save them from disaster, hard as he strove —
the recklessness of their own ways destroyed them all,
the blind fools, they devoured the cattle of the Sun
10 and the Sungod wiped from sight the day of their return.
11 Launch out on his story, Muse, daughter of Zeus,
start from where you will —sing for our time too.
By now,
all the survivors, all who avoided headlong death
were safe at home, escaped the wars and waves.
But one man alone . . .
16 his heart set on his wife and his return —Calypso,
The Odyssey(Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) Page 9