The <I>Odyssey</I>

by Homer

  3.190 Philoktetes. Although Nestor does not mention it, this warrior had been left to die by his fellow Greeks on an island off the coast of Troy because his festering wound from a snake-bite stank and his cries of pain disrupted the besieging army. Odysseus, in the company of Neoptolemos, brought him back to Troy at the end of the war when it became clear that only the great bow of Herakles, which had been passed down to Philoktetes, could ensure the destruction of the city. The tragedy Philoktetes by Sophocles paints Odysseus as a conniving and cynical rhetorician who, on their joint mission, manipulates his innocent and heroic younger companion, Neoptolemos, and even tries to get the bow while abandoning its owner. We need not assume that this version was current earlier in the tradition; if it was, Nestor’s mention of the hero to the son of Odysseus would be an impolitic slip. In fact, from another lost epic, the Little Iliad, it appears that Odysseus first brought Neoptolemos to Troy from the island of Skuros after the return of Philoktetes.

  3.221 openly friendly. When the Iliad describes divine aid to warriors in the battle before Troy, gods are usually in disguise. Akhilleus is warned by Athene (book 1) and Diomedes gets direct instruction from her (book 5); Odysseus does not seem particularly favored, although Diomedes (Il. 23.782) notes that Athene “stands beside and aids Odysseus, as before, like a mother.”

  3.251 Was Menelaos away. For the tale of Agamemnon’s murder to be convincing, his brother must not have been available to ward off death. In the next book we hear from Menelaos himself the cause for his absence. Here, the extended telling of the violent death of Agamemnon serves once more to focus the audience on the similarities as well as crucial differences between the situation in which Telemakhos finds himself and that of the dead hero’s son Orestes. The story has already achieved mythic status, but could present a dangerously inexact precedent if the son of Odysseus is unwary.

  3.267 A poet was close by. Why choose a poet to keep an eye on Klutaimnestre? It may be that we glimpse an archaic role for poetry, as keeper of civic order through the public praise of just people and blame for wrongdoers. Such a social function for poetry is attested for ancient Sparte (see Plutarch, Life of Lykourgos) and seems to underly the genre of iambos (blame, satire, and invective verse) as practiced by archaic poets like Archilochus and Hipponax (seventh and sixth centuries B.C.). Comparative evidence from modern Africa and medieval Ireland suggests such a controlling role as well.

  3.287 Maleia’s / heights. This is the same dangerous cape at the southeast of the Peloponnese where Odysseus by his own account was blown off course to the land of the Lotos-eaters (9.81).

  3.313 don’t wander far. What began as an implicit exhortation to act like Orestes (see lines 197–200) ends with the suggestion to avoid acting like Menelaos. The parallel is so inexact that we may wonder whether the poet intends to characterize Nestor as declining in intellectual powers. For neither Menelaos nor Agamemnon ultimately stayed away from home on purpose, nor was Menelaos’s wealth ever threatened. Indeed, as we shall see in the next book, his haul of goods from Egypt and elsewhere has enriched him enormously.

  3.378 Tritogeneia. Meaning either “third-born” or “truly born” this epithet, exclusively applied to Athene, is obscure in origin but must allude to her birth from Zeus and her consequent role as the legitimate executor of his plans. Her departure in bird form recalls the similar scene in book 1 (lines 319–23) that first made Telemakhos aware that he had been speaking to a goddess. Nestor makes the epiphany more public and overtly connects it to Athene’s protection of Odysseus, thus furthering the theme of “paternity disclosed.” As Telemakhos comes more to resemble his father, Odysseus comes closer to home.

  3.394 Aigis. The Aigis is a magical goat-skin, resembling a tasseled shield, with which Zeus (and sometimes Athene) protects one side and terrifies the other in the midst of battle—hence the English phrase “under the aegis of.”

  3.446 heifer’s / hairs. The cutting off of a heifer’s hairs and throwing them in a fire is a symbolic act dedicating the animal to the god and indicating a life is about to depart. In the realm of Greek religious ritual it is connected with the gesture of cutting human hair at marked moments (initiation, marriage, lament for the dead). The passage as a whole is a greatly expanded instance of the recurrent type-scene of sacrifice and meal preparation. In this context, it might carry resonances of initiation ceremonies for Telemakhos, now coming of age, which could explain the poetic urge to make it so extended.

  4.5 son of Akhilleus. The reference is to Neoptolemos, whose safe homecoming was mentioned by Nestor in 3.189. The unusual double wedding with which this book begins makes a structural parallel with book 3, which began with a community feast. It might also remind the audience that Telemakhos himself is of an age to marry.

  4.11 Megapenthes. The name means “great grief” and must refer to the emotional state of the father, Menelaos, after Helen left him. Although a son out of wedlock by a slave woman, the young man apparently receives all the privileges of the royal house and marries well.

  4.64 hardly be low-born. Homeric epic embodies aristocratic values as regards breeding. Menelaos assumes that because Telemakhos and Peisistratos are handsome they must be sons of kings—hardly a democratic notion.

  4.81 wandered often and suffered. These phrases (and those at lines 267–68) recall the poem’s description of Odysseus’s journeys (1.1–4). Menelaos, however, undertook his voyages to the lands east and south for the purpose of gain, unlike Odysseus, whose wanderings were not intentional. Of the peoples and places listed, only the Eremboi are obscure (and were even to ancient scholars). The others would have been known to Greeks at least as early as the seventh century B.C.

  4.107 Odysseus worked. Menelaos brings up the name without any prompting from Telemakhos, in contrast to the encounter with Nestor in the previous book, and even mentions the name of the youth who is seated before him. In a gesture that will be echoed by Odysseus among the Phaiakians, the young man covers his face with his purple cloak to hide his tears.

  4.122 resembling Artemis. This is ironic, if we think of Artemis as the virgin goddess, since Helen has been married at least three times (to Menelaos among the Greeks, then to Paris and Deiphobos among the Trojans). Also, her rich accessories and the indoor domestic setting contrast with the woods and mountains favored by the goddess. The Egyptian origin of her staff and basket hint at the larger story of Helen’s stay in that country. In a non-Homeric version (but one that may have been known to audiences), Helen never went to Troy. Instead, she was whisked away to Egypt, where she spent the duration of the war while Greeks and Trojans battled over a fake Helen, a phantom eidôlon created by Here. The story was told by Stesichorus (sixth century B.C.) and later dramatized in Euripides’ Helen. In the epic version, Helen was delayed with her husband in Egypt by lack of favoring winds on their way back from Troy.

  4.145 my own shame. Throughout this episode, Helen blames herself for deserting her husband. Whether or not she is sincere, the rhetoric fits with what she says several times in the Iliad (3.180, 404; 6.344, 356).

  4.188 son of the Dawn-Goddess. The reference is to Memnon. See note to 3.112. The mention of Dawn a few lines later (194–95) increases the pathos of this brief scene, as one can imagine Peisistratos being reminded of the death of Antilokhos at each day’s sunrise.

  4.220 a drug in the wine. Helen’s uncanny abilities have already been hinted at when she recognizes Telemakhos without prompting (line 143), in contrast to her husband’s bluff lack of awareness. They will gain more prominence in the story to come about her trickery at Troy (lines 274–79). Her adeptness at drug administration parallels the skills of Kirke, although the poet stresses that Helen’s Egyptian imports are “quite useful and helpful.” The anesthetic effect of this potion, which can even counter the pain of watching violence against kin, seems intended to erase the sad memories just evoked rather than to prepare the guests for more war stories.

  4.232 Paieon’s the Healer. Later a title for Ap
ollo in his healing role, this was originally a separate divinity, possibly of Mycenaean date, whose function was doctoring. The name is related to paian, a song of thanks and praise used in rituals of healing and purification (cf. the English “paean”).

  4.239 relish a story. In her own story, Helen pictures herself as a loyal Greek, who once aided Odysseus when he slipped into Troy as a spy. The (lost) epic Little Iliad attributed to the poet Lesches is said to have included an episode like this as a preliminary to Odysseus’s stealing of the Palladium (a sacred statue of Athene, without which Troy would be vulnerable). Noticeably, Helen assigns herself a key role in her own narration. She also uses it to testify to her abiding regret while at Troy (lines 260–64). The details (Odysseus in disguise, recognition by a woman who washes him) will be repeated in the scene in book 19 in which the nurse Eurukleia, bathing the beggar/Odysseus, notices his identifying scar.

  4.271 I’ll tell you a task. Her husband’s story counterpoints Helen’s, as Menelaos recounts how she nearly betrayed the men within the Trojan Horse through a ventriloquism trick. Only the resolve of Odysseus kept his companions from calling out when Helen imitated their wives’ voices. The action of Helen has overtones of choral lamentation as practiced by women at funerals, except Helen here imitates all the voices. All told, Helen emerges as a dangerously clever beauty—and a useful one. Because he is, through her, a son-in-law of Zeus, Menelaos will spend eternity in the paradise of the Elusian Fields (see lines 563–69). Although the opposing stories told by Helen and Menelaos indicate some degree of domestic tension and unresolved animosity, the couple retire amicably to bed (line 305).

  4.343 Philomeleides wrestling. This is an episode otherwise unmentioned in the epics, but perhaps known to the audience. A later ancient source adds that this local king challenged all newcomers to wrestling and was put to death by Odysseus and Diomedes, who then made his tomb a place of refuge for strangers to the island. Lesbos (later home of the sixth-century lyric poets Sappho and Alcaeus) is located off the coast south of Troy.

  4.351 Gods kept me in Egypt. Menelaos tells what he learned from an encounter with the shape-shifting Old Man of the Sea, Proteus. In details his story resembles some adventures of Odysseus: a goddess taking pity (Athene in book 1); a meeting with a helpful female (see Nausikaa in book 6 and Leukothee in book 5); instruction on how to approach the helper’s parent (book 6); a crew afflicted with hunger (cf. the Island of the Sun in book 12); and a difficult path to obtain information from a prophet (cf. book 11, Teiresies). The motif of divine anger appeased by sacrifice telescopes two aspects of the stories about Odysseus, who is pursued by Poseidon but will eventually erect a shrine to the god (as Teiresies commands).

  4.496 Only two. An ancient epic that no longer survives, the Nostoi, apparently related the tales of the warriors here mentioned. Aias (the “lesser” Ajax) the son of Oileus tried to rape Kassandre at Athene’s altar during the sack of Troy and so incurred her wrath. Ironically, it is Poseidon who ultimately kills him for his hubristic boasts. Agamemnon’s fate has been brought up already by Zeus, Mentes, and Nestor. But, in typical Homeric fashion, new information is provided each time. We now learn details about the trap set by Aigisthos and the pitiable death at a feast. The stories Menelaos transmits from Proteus are not just background exposition, but have thematic relevance for the tale of Odysseus. Aias was drowned because “grand in his folly” he angered Poseidon; Odysseus, on the other hand, will survive because he keeps his cool intelligence under control. Agamemnon was murdered by his wife’s new lover; Odysseus, by contrast, will triumph because his wife remains true. In short, Odysseus will overcome the combined dangers, on sea and land, that individually destroyed these two former comrades.

  4.551 the third man. Telemakhos finally receives the information he has sought, although how current it is he cannot know. The audience, meanwhile, recognizes in the words of Proteus precisely the situation with which the poem began (1.13–15). The poet through such harmonizing of narrative with character speech, sometimes separated by long stretches of verse, leaves the impression that he sings the truth about a cohesive, actual world of events.

  4.563 Elusian / Fields. An alternative to the house of Aides (see book 11), this pleasant land seems reserved for favorites or relations of the gods. Other versions in Greek myth of the same ideal place, the White Island or the Isles of the Blessed, become afterlife homes for Akhilleus, Memnon, and at least some of the other heroes who fought at Thebes or Troy, as well as for Helen and Medea. It is clearly not the equivalent of heaven as a reward for good behavior. Yet Rhadamanthus (brother of the Kretan king Minos) is there, a man known from other sources as a judge over the dead, so that some distinctions may be made for admission to this pacific spot.

  4.601 I can’t take horses. Telemakhos shows yet another sign of maturity in his sensible refusal of what would be a useless, though expensive, gift and his polite excuse that he must not keep his crew waiting. The description of Ithaka emphasizes its human scale, a contrast to the nearly divine dwelling and extensive lands of Menelaos at Sparte. The stunning wine-bowl that Menelaos substitutes for his original offer is Phoenician ware, and an appropriate item for royal gift-exchanges. A number of examples of similar imported workmanship have been found at Greek sites, indicating that the circulation of such goods was more than poetic conceit. There is a mythical touch, on the other hand, in the notion that this and all truly exceptional metalwork in Homer descends from Hephaistos the smith.

  4.625 Suitors meanwhile. The shift in scene is rare within the space of one book of Homeric poetry. Here, it is done with cinematic dissolve effect, as we move from a feast in the palace at Sparte to the unruly feasting of the suitors in Ithaka.

  4.653 I saw Mentor. Another ironic moment, as Noemon (“The Clever One”) does a mental double-take. Perhaps he saw Mentor, or a god who looked like Mentor; but if so, Mentor, seen recently on Ithaka, was supposed to have gone to Pulos. Part of the appeal of the Odyssey is its attention to wry humor and to such vignettes.

  4.677 Medon the herald told her. The novelistic technique, overheard conversation, has been employed once before in this book (line 76). Its use here enables the poet to intensify the air of crisis by making the audience aware of the suitors’ plan to kill Telemakhos and then of his mother’s frightened reaction. Her subsequent speech to the serving women (line 722ff.) is marked by several conventions found in laments, including praise of the (presumed) deceased and rebuke for those who failed to prevent the disaster.

  4.762 Hear me. Penelopeia’s prayer takes the conventional form “if ever … then now,” as she reminds Athene of Odysseus’s previous sacrificial offerings in her honor. Mortal relations with the gods in Greek religion pivot on such contractual arrangements in which past favors are exchanged for present help. As in Roman religion, the principle governing prayer and sacrifice can be expressed in the formula do ut des (“I give in order that you give”).

  4.796 She made a figure. The phantasm or eidôlon of Penelopeia’s sister acts like other god-sent dreams in epic, to deliver messages and reassure the recipient. The further refusal of the image to answer Penelopeia’s questions about Odysseus reminds us of the dodges and shifts by Proteus before his revelations. Having declined “to be windy” (line 837) the eidôlon, oddly enough, then flies off to join “a night-wind’s breath” (line 839).

  5.1 by lordly Tithonos. Dawn’s mortal lover, a brother of Priam of Troy, was made immortal by the gods after his abduction by her, but continued to age until he shriveled up, as she forgot to beg that he be eternally young. At the stage of the relationship described in this opening line, Tithonos is apparently still desirable. But this cautionary exemplum about the harm that goddesses cause their lovers would have been known to an ancient audience. A version of it appears in the roughly contemporary Hymn to Aphrodite. It is completely appropriate to the situation of Odysseus with Kalupso in book 5—and the line is uniquely used here in the poem.

  5.5 Athene recalled and
counted. This conversation on Olumpus between Zeus and Athene recalls their earlier meeting as the Odyssey began. Critics in the nineteenth century wanted to cut one or the other scene. But important new points are in fact made in this repetition of the council motif. First, Athene elevates the fate of Odysseus into a test case for human behavior in time to come: if the just king is forgotten, why should any future king be kind? Second, the reply of Zeus takes into account what Athene has accomplished in the meantime, between books 1 and 5. By inspiring Telemakhos to take action, to sail to find news of his father, she has prompted his enemies, the suitors, to conspire in attempting his murder. Zeus knows his daughter’s cunning mind. He refers to this sequence of events as if it were an entrapment devised to make Odysseus’s eventual killing of the suitors all the more defensible. Of course, it is not beyond the Homeric gods to act this way, as combination prosecutors, advocates, and undercover provocateurs. It is part of their paradoxically “human” divine nature.

  5.43 Splendor of Argos. “Argeiphontês” is one of the many obscure epithets of Hermes. Another interpretation of the word is “Slayer of Argos.” In the first case, Argos is the territory of the eastern Peloponnese, or the city-state by that name, and the second part of the compound adjective is derived from phainein, “shine.” In the second, Argos is the name of a divine herdsman with one hundred eyes, charged with guarding Io, the paramour of Zeus, after she was turned into a heifer by a jealous Here. Argos was lulled to sleep and slain by Hermes, working for Zeus; Here placed his eyes in the tail of her favorite bird, the peacock.

  5.93 filled with ambrosia. Nectar is the drink and ambrosia the food of the gods. The latter means literally “immortality” while the former might have signified “going past death” according to some linguists. The gods, so much like humans in other ways, do not have blood in their veins but a clear substance called ikhôr. A Greek folk belief that red meat made red blood might underlie the notion. In later texts (such as Aristophanes’ play Birds), the gods are depicted as dependent on the savory smoke of burnt offerings, an idea that may explain Hermes’ remark at line 101 concerning a dearth of towns that could provide sacrifices.