by Homer
1.105 Mentes. The gods often assume human disguise as they go about their missions on earth. This disguise is significant because the name of the lord of the Taphians means “reminder” (as does the name Mentor, another of Athene’s roles, and the word from which the English noun comes). The root on which Mentes is built occurs also in “strength” (menos) as well as “memory” (mnêmosunê)—precisely the qualities Athene has promised to impart to Telemakhos. The collocation of strength and memory is interesting in itself: menos appears to be the special will to survive that comes from recalling kin and obligations.
1.189 the old war-chief. One of the many difficulties for understanding the social and political situation on Ithaka is the status of Laertes, father of Odysseus. If his son is absent, why is he not king? Was he ever? If so, how did Odysseus assume the throne before leaving? And why does Laertes seem to live in poverty far from the palace? Apart from the rather cavalier manner in which Homeric poetry mixes together historical or social details (see Introduction, “History and the Odyssey”), this characterization must generally reflect the poet’s desire to make Laertes powerless and pitiable—and therefore render the return of his son all the more joyous and eventful.
1.215 My Mother tells me. The theme of paternity opens and closes the poem. In book 24, the last person to be reunited with Odysseus is his own father Laertes. The slight tone of doubt in the words of Telemakhos here reminds the audience that the return of Odysseus is not just a story of his own heroic success and reestablishment within a proper social sphere. It is also the means to confirm his son’s identity. Until then, Telemakhos, as the child of an absent father, often manifests the mixture of shyness and overcompensating behavior associated with that status.
1.291 Raise a mound. Telemakhos is to construct a cenotaph for the presumed-dead Odysseus and arrange his mother’s new marriage. The following advice—to kill the suitors—assumes that even if Penelopeia were to acquire a second husband they would still be a problem. It may be that the model tale of Orestes, constantly held up to Telemakhos as an example, has led Athene/Mentes to make an analogy (suitors = Aigisthos; see line 43) that is otherwise unlikely.
1.337 Phemios, many other songs. This passage and a stretch of book 8 concerning Demodokos are the primary Homeric depictions of poets at work. The bard is a singer, who accompanies himself on a stringed instrument (the phorminx) that resembles a lyre. His repertoire apparently includes any number of tales of heroes and gods, so that an audience (Penelopeia here) can request its preferred songs. The notion that songs are “charming” was taken literally: the power of human performance in Homer is implicitly like that of the Sirens or the Muses, able to exert a fascination on its audience. Since Phemios has been performing during the entire conversation between Telemakhos and Athene, it seems that he also provides a sort of background music to the feasts of the suitors. Of course, they in particular want to hear the stories of how the other Greek heroes came home, because that song-cycle pointedly cannot speak of Odysseus, whose fate at this stage is unknown, and whom they would prefer to obliterate from bardic memory. Telemakhos’s spirited speech to his mother sounds like a serious anticensorship plea, but we should probably not take this at face value. His defense of the newest poetry is appropriate for his youth, yet the poem has already pointed out his own inexperience, and his remark about ruling the house (line 359) is obviously an empty boast.
1.412 sensible answer. A regular adjective describing Telemakhos is “sensible, prudent” (pepnumenos). In the Greek, the word applies to the youth, not the reply; the translator has made the slight adjustment here for emphasis. The growing subtlety and awareness on the part of Telemakhos, even in the first book of the poem, is marked not only by the recurrent epithet but by his way of revealing to the dangerous suitors here only half the truth concerning Athene’s visit. His new and mature stature makes an interesting juxtaposition with the final scene of the book (lines 425–44), where Telemakhos seems to revert to being a child, put to bed by his nurse.
2.7 to assembly. This Ithakan institution resembles a council of nobles, similar to the elite gatherings of Greek commanders in the Iliad, yet in a village setting. The ruling house—here represented by Telemakhos—apparently has the right to call its meetings, but not exclusively (see lines 28–29). There is no hint that the gathering has voting rights or any independent power of action, although a general assembly (ekklêsia) where individuals had free speech was to become the hallmark of Athenian democracy after the late sixth century B.C. Much as we may wish to, it is unwise to use this passage as a source for political history. Not only is the date of the poem’s composition unknown (see Introduction, “Poem and Poet”); the assembly and its procedures may be an archaism, the Homeric poet’s way of imagining institutions well before his time, perhaps tinged with details of his own era.
2.20 his last meal. This is one of the few details in the narrative that give outside confirmation of the tale Odysseus tells in books 9 through 12. Most of what we learn about his encounters with the Kuklops and other strange hosts comes only in the hero’s personal, perhaps exaggerated, narration. The split among the sons of Aiguptios (one son a suitor, another a crew member, two farmers) suggests workers at three levels of social activity: kingship (as the winning suitor will be Penelopeia’s consort), war (with Odysseus at Troy), and agriculture. The French comparative mythologist Georges Dumézil (see Bibliography) has argued that such a “trifunctional” social configuration, seen in ancient Roman, Greek, Indic, Iranian, and Celtic civilizations, goes back to the early Indo-European cultural period (ca. 3000 B.C.) before these groups of people speaking related languages spread to their later historical homelands.
2.77 pressing my own case. Ancient Greek legal systems, even in the Classical period (500–300 B.C.), had no public prosecutors or lawyers. The necessity to recover one’s own goods, preferably by persuasion, meant eloquence was prized, and eventually in the fifth century B.C., formally taught as rhetoric. The system was also dependent on a highly developed sense of shame: wrongdoers would not want to be denounced publicly. Early Greece has been called a “shame culture” as opposed to a “guilt culture” because its ethical, religious, and legal institutions seem to emphasize proper behavior in public rather than an internalized sense of sin. In such an environment, getting caught in the wrong is worse than the actual deed. Certain traits of Odysseus’s behavior—his lies and tricks, for example—have to be evaluated in this light.
2.80 throwing the scepter. This scene inevitably recalls the passage in book 1 of the Iliad (lines 233–45) where another young warrior, Akhilleus, histrionically throws down the scepter (the sign of the right to speak in assembly) with an oath that he will not fight for the Greeks since he has been deprived of his rightful war-prize. Akhilleus makes a powerful speech, full of high rhetoric, and refrains from crying. If an audience did know both passages, the differences between the Iliad scene and this one are as significant as the resemblances: Telemakhos is clearly less mature and less rhetorically creative. If one poet was not responsible for composing both the Iliad and the Odyssey, it is nevertheless not necessary to suppose that an Odyssey poet copied an Iliadic scene or vice versa. Rather, the composers of either poem might have drawn independently on a conventional gesture and its description in the irrecoverably lost poetic tradition.
2.104 So every day at the huge loom. The story of the web is told in pieces throughout the poem in recollections by various characters (here, by the most hateful of the suitors, Antinoos; later by Penelopeia herself). If not for the traitorous serving women, the rather obtuse suitors would never have caught on to the trick, it seems. The motif of weaving is connected in this poem with female intelligence and cunning. Both Kalupso and Kirke, the divine nymphs, work the loom. Athene, the goddess of craft, is also the crafty weaver of plans and ruses. The trick of Laertes’ shroud, woven and unwoven, not only characterizes the wife of Odysseus from the start as being his equal in strategic intelligence. Antinoos takes it
as an aspect of what puts this woman above the famous wives of past heroes (lines 119–21). The image also harmonizes with an essential ambiguity on Ithaka: is Odysseus alive or dead? Penelopeia, even after she ceases to weave and undo her work, retains the mental habit of going back and forth between these options.
2.135 fearsome Avengers. The Erinus, or Furies, were horrific female divinities who hounded anyone guilty of crimes against kin. Often, they carried out the final curse of the victim. They originated at the beginning of the world, from drops of blood that fell to earth when Kronos castrated his father, Ouranos. In the Eumenides of Aeschylus (458 B.C.), Orestes is pursued relentlessly by the Furies roused by his revenge killing of Klutaimnestre, his mother. As Telemakhos has explicitly been compared to Orestes already in book 1, his mention of these avenging spirits is significant, in drawing attention to the contrast in fates: he will not hurt his mother, just as she will remain faithful to his father.
2.159 reading the dark signs. Greeks believed in omens, whether from animal behavior (especially that of birds), celestial phenomena like eclipses, dream visions, the appearance of entrails after animal sacrifice, or overheard voices. Yet no fixed meanings were attached to particular signs. Interpreters, like the seer Halitherses, made their own readings through a sort of analogy—sometimes seemingly inexact—with the current situation they faced. Although we hear that Zeus himself sent the eagles (his favored bird), their unusual flight and fight provide no obvious clue for the resulting interpretation, that Odysseus is on the verge of a vengeful return. The refusal of an arrogant character (here, Eurumakhos) to heed a prophet foreshadows his eventual punishment, a motif later exploited by Sophocles in his tragedies Oedipus the King (ca. 424 B.C.) and Antigone (ca. 440 B.C.).
2.234 kind as a father. In the analogy by Mentor, Odysseus is the “father” of his people, who fail, for their part, to pay him respect. Telemakhos, by implication, is the only good son. The comparison of king to father made sense especially in a palace-centered economy, as in the Minoan or Mycenaean periods (see Introduction, “History and the Odyssey”), where the prosperity of one man ensured that of the entire community, and his failure or death diminished all. The problem, in Mentor’s view, stems from a communal loss of memory. In the terms of the Odyssey, this represents a rejection of the very function of poetry, to keep the past alive.
2.260 Telemakhos walked apart. Here is another touch reminiscent of Akhilleus in the Iliad, who paces the beach (Il.1.350) while calling on his sea-nymph mother Thetis for aid. Athene responds here, both a mother figure (given her gender and the Iliad resonances) and a father figure (since she appears in the guise of Mentor, described at line 226 as entrusted with the house of Odysseus). Her words stress the almost mystical link between Telemakhos and Odysseus, whose power (menos) will enable the son to succeed, provided Telemakhos can act like his absent father.
2.329 poisons. Ephure, a town in western Greece, was mentioned by Athene/Mentes at 1.259 as the place where Odysseus had once unsuccessfully sought poison for his bronze-tipped arrows. The anonymous suitor who speaks these lines may imply that Telemakhos shares what was viewed as a less-than-honorable propensity for chemical warfare. The technique of quoting several remarks at a time from unspecified sources is used by the poet to voice crowd reactions.
2.362 words with a feathery swiftness. The common Homeric phrase epea pteroenta, which introduces commands or polite requests, has been interpreted since ancient times as either “winged words” (like birds) or “words like arrows” (with feather-fletched ends). McCrorie perfectly captures both possibilities in this translation.
2.382 thought of a new plan. The goddess Athene essentially takes over the narrative plotting of the poet, bringing about in short order the manning of the ship, the suitors’ sleep, the summoning of Telemakhos, embarkation, and a following wind. It is not accidental that weaving—the domain of Athene—was also a metaphor for poetic craft in ancient Greek. Storytelling, like that by the poet or Odysseus, requires the careful combination of various strands back and forth through time.
2.424 hoisting the fir-wood mast. This passage describing a ship setting off is a frequently recurring type-scene in the Odyssey. Such blocks of repeated lines make it easier for oral poets to compose while performing, but also lend a reassuring sense of proper and efficient behavior. The rhythm of Homeric epic flows from the switching between such familiar scenes and speeches that usually embody new, plot-advancing information. Type-scenes, finally, create the impression of a world governed by everyday rituals—eating, dressing, hosting, preparing for sleep—that are natural and noble in their simplicity.
3.5 Men were offering. The sacrifice scene that Telemakhos and his crew encounter at Pulos is the most elaborate and detailed of any in Homeric epic. The distribution and numbers—one bull for each assembly of 500—recall the systems in place throughout Greece in historical times, according to which social hierarchy and solidarity are maintained through the distribution of sacrificial meats at citywide feasts. Within each group, standing could be marked by the awarding of the best parts of the animal to the citizens with most prestige. For the poetic purposes of this epic, the harmonious, centrally organized feasting at Pulos provides a stark contrast to the suitors’ selfish slaughter of Odysseus’s flocks and herds. This may be the first truly functioning society that Telemakhos has ever seen.
3.23 I’m not yet trained. An important aspect of the education of Telemakhos in the first part of the poem, his growing rhetorical ability, is emphasized each time he makes a speech. The “close-packed speaking together” to which he refers represents the rhetorical ideal of densely argued and persuasively fluent speech—the very essence of Nestor’s own speech style. The word used for “speaking” is muthoi, plural of the word muthos, from which English “myth” is derived. Originally, this word designated a particular sort of speech: public, authoritative, usually performed at length, with full attention to detail (see Martin, 1989, in the Bibliography). From this type of personal, assertive speech-act, common in assemblies, and often based on genealogical or heroic precedents, the word came to cover fictions about the past—often self-serving “myths.”
3.34 they all came crowding. Here is another contrast with the situation on Ithaka; only Telemakhos of all the diners bothered to greet Athene/Mentes in 1.118. The emphasis here on the well-behaved Peisistratos (“he who persuades the army”), a son of Nestor, may be related to the later history of the epic. It is known that an Athenian tyrant of the same name, who traced his family origins to Pulos, had a role in organizing Homeric recitations in the later sixth century B.C. He may have influenced poets to compose episodes that placed his putative ancestors in a good light.
3.54 Promptly she prayed. The irony is not just that a god in disguise prays to a god, nor that Athene will fulfill her own prayer (line 62) but in the pair involved. Athene and Poseidon, in many traditional stories, are rivals. The tale of their contest to see who would name the city of Athens was well known. (Athene won when her gift of the olive-tree was favored over Poseidon’s spring of water.) And in the Odyssey, we have heard from the start that Athene’s actions to retrieve Odysseus depend on Poseidon’s temporary absence from the Olumpian scene. Odysseus has been pursued by the sea-god ever since he blinded Poseidon’s son, the Kuklops Poluphemos. Now the son of Odysseus offers homage to his father’s nemesis. Further ironies emerge in this episode when we learn below of the wrath of Athene.
3.92 approach your knees. The ritualized gesture for suppliants either on the battlefield or in such encounters as these was to grasp, with one hand, the knees of the person being asked for favors and, with the other, the beard. Some scholars believe that points of the body (chin, head, knee) were thought to contain nodes of power in ancient thought. On the practical level, such a gesture immobilizes the one beseeched. Apparently, a purely verbal reference to the action would often serve the purpose. Telemakhos here assumes the position of suppliant that his father will enact several times on his re
turn home.
3.112 Antilokhos. An early epic poem, the Aethiopis (now lost except for a brief plot summary in a later author), told how this young man was slain by the Ethiopian warrior Memnon at Troy, as he was trying to rescue his father Nestor from a tight spot in the battle. Akhilleus in revenge killed Memnon, the son of the goddess Dawn. The parallel story of Akhilleus’s slaying of Hektor in revenge for the death of his friend Patroklos may have been modeled on an early oral version of the Antilokhos story.
3.135 rage of the glow-eyed Goddess. It emerges that the first attempts at homecoming from Troy were complicated by Athene and Zeus, who had been angered by the sacrilegious behavior of some Greeks during the last hours of their sack of the city. Typically, the gods’ actions to punish mortals are aided by the humans’ own mistakes. There is a “double motivation” for bad things to happen. In this case, the quarrel between Agamemnon and his brother Menelaos is explicitly the result of Athene’s rage (line 136). Because the human emotions have been manipulated by the divine, mere human solutions cannot help. Even if Agamemnon stayed to make more sacrifices he could not have appeased her (line 146).
3.170 north of Khios. The choice of routes opposes a shorter sail, starting north of the large island of Khios off the Asia Minor coast, but without a safe haven along the way, to a longer sail south of Khios and then through the islands of the Cyclades, with plenty of harbors should need arise. Nestor and his followers risk the first option and land safely at the southern tip of Euboia, Geraistos (line 177).
3.189 son of Akhilleus. The reference here is to Neoptolemos, who took on the command of the Murmidon contingent from Thessaly after the death of his father at Troy. Akhilleus in the underworld asks Odysseus for news of this son and bounds away in joy when he is told of the young man’s excellence in fighting and speaking (11.510–37).