The <I>Odyssey</I>

by Homer

  5.121 chose her Orion. Like the Tithonos story (see 5.1 above), here is an example for mortals of the dangers of getting too close to goddesses. In one version, Artemis, jealous that Dawn had Orion (a half-mortal son of Poseidon) as lover, shot him with her arrows. He was thereafter elevated to be a constellation. Not much is known of Iasion, whose intercourse with Demeter is reminiscent of agricultural fertility ritual. He played some role in the mysteries of the goddess at Eleusis near Athens. Significantly, Kalupso fails to grasp the force of her own tales and instead of seeing what message they contain for a mortal, views these events only as indications of divine jealousy.

  5.153 a pleasure / no longer. Kalupso, a nymph, is one of the innumerable lesser divinities inhabiting the Greek landscape. A Greek audience would have heard ominous overtones in the nymph’s very name, since a nearly identical word, with one slight pitch variation, means “I will hide” or “I will bury.” Ancient (and modern) Greek superstition holds that contact with nymphs can make men crazy—a condition called “nympholepsy.” When we first see Odysseus in the poem, he has been living for seven years with Kalupso on her island, unwilling to accept her offer of immortality, yet unable to sail home. Odysseus, although he could choose not to die, wants only to go back to Ithaka. To the nymph’s mind, his yearning to choose pain and mortality instead of her is senseless. Yet Odysseus is simply choosing the defining features of what it is to be human. Perhaps he also remembers the unfortunate fates of other men who got involved with goddesses (see above). Even when Kalupso has finally given him a way to leave, Odysseus suspects a divine trick (lines 173–79).

  5.185 Stux’s water. The underworld river, with a name related to the word for “hate,” Stux was also the supreme oath witness for gods. In other sources, the name is that of a divinity, daughter of Okeanos, the cosmic river. The Theogony of Hesiod (contemporary with the Odyssey) says that gods who violate this oath must go one year without nectar and ambrosia and endure nine years of exile from Mount Olumpus.

  5.195 He sat in the chair. A subtle poetic indication of the affinity between trickster god and cunning human hero. Later in the poem (19.397–98) we learn that Hermes taught the art of thievery to Autolukos, the maternal grandfather of Odysseus. At the same time, the two types of food laid out here—immortal for the nymph, and human for the “death-bound” Odysseus—draw attention to the gulf between the man and the gods.

  5.243 he cut down trees. Craftiness and craftsmanship are related aspects of the “cunning intelligence” (mêtis) attributed constantly to this hero by his regular epithet polumêtis. His excellent survival skills might raise questions about why he has not already crafted a boat to escape Kalupso’s island. Has she up to this time hidden the required bronze tools? The construction involved is more like that of a ship than a raft (as the simile also implies), since Odysseus fits together wooden planks rather than lashing together timber.

  5.272 watching the Pleiades. This is the only Homeric reference to navigation by stars. Greeks used Ursa Major (the Great Bear, or Wagon) as a guide, while Phoenician sailors relied for orientation toward the north on the more accurate Ursa Minor. The general direction taken by Odysseus here is easterly. The islands of Kalupso, Kirke, and the Kuklops are vaguely positioned, generically described, and probably meant to be fantasy locations. This has not stopped scholars and adventurers from making claims about the geography of the Odyssey, according to which his various ports of call range from Corfu to Malta to the Hebrides. The craze for pinning down and rationalizing myth in this way had begun already in later antiquity.

  5.283 Solumoi Mountains. These mountains were located in Lycia, a region of what is now southwest Turkey. The gods are credited with supernatural powers of sight.

  5.306 Danaans. This is one of three commonly used names for the Greeks in Homeric epic, the others being Akhaians (see line 311) and Argives. No special distinctions can be detected among the terms. In this storm scene, famously imitated by the Roman poet Virgil (Aeneid 1.94–141), Odysseus expresses the crux of his dilemma: death at sea means loss of any public glory, whereas death in battle could be observed and commemorated, leading to a place for the deceased in epic verse.

  5.321 his clothes. A suspicious person, as Odysseus seems to be (cf. lines 174–76 and 357), might conjecture that this was Kalupso’s intent in giving Odysseus fine clothes; or it could be that her divine unawareness of human realities (like drowning) is once more hinted at. The episode at this point revolves around whether Odysseus should abandon the (male) clothing given by one goddess in exchange for the (female) veil of another. Changes of clothes and even transvestism at Greek transition rituals (such as initiations) are well known symbolic markers.

  5.333 Ino. One of the daughters of the mortal Kadmos of Thebes, her story would have been well known. Because she acted as nursemaid for the infant Dionusos, Ino and her husband Athamas were driven mad by Here, and she leapt into the sea at Corinth with her child Melikertes (Honey-cutter). The gods transformed her and she was renamed “White Goddess” (Leukothee). Apparently a divinity that protected sailors, the goddess was worshiped in temples throughout Greece. Her role here recalls the magical female helpmate of many folktales.

  5.394 As welcome a sight. A densely meaningful simile in which roles seem reversed. In reality, Odysseus is the father whose safety has been uppermost in the mind of his child. Yet here he is implicitly compared to the children who welcome a father’s return to health after a dangerous illness. The view of solid land is thus focalized, emotionally, through the view of someone like Telemakhos rather than Odysseus—an artful way of reminding us of the subject of the last four books. Such reverse similes occur with increasing frequency as the poem proceeds.

  5.422 Amphitrite. Amphitrite was a daughter of the sea-god Nereus and a wife of Poseidon; her name is sometimes used simply as a synonym for “sea.”

  5.437 foresight. This gift of Athene (who is after all daughter of Mêtis, “cunning intelligence”) consists in using indirection and counterintuitive action. In this case, swimming away from the shore and diagonally outward saves Odysseus.

  5.474 So he pondered. A recurrent type-scene in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, particularly associated with Odysseus, this dilemma soliloquy, often addressed to the character’s “spirit,” externalizes the narrative choices that the poet himself has in his repertoire. By convention, the second option mentioned is chosen as “the better.”

  5.477 olive and wild thorn. The combination of cultivated and natural vegetation might be taken to symbolize the dual character of Odysseus, who is, until his return, somewhere between the wild and the tame, raw and cooked, beast and man. His likeness to a lion (as he meets Nausikaa in book 6) and his clinging to the ram in the Kuklops’s cave reiterate this impression, imagistically. The eventual return to civilization, home, and long-desired hearth is foreshadowed in the comparison of the sleeping Odysseus to a firebrand (line 488).

  6.5 close to the overprevailing Kuklops. The initial proximity of the Phaiakians to the Kuklops seems like an inessential detail until we hear Odysseus’s story in book 9 of his encounter with the same “overprevailing” clan. Whether or not he knows this bit of local history, it helps his chances of befriending the Phaiakians when he makes them believe that he and they have a common enemy.

  6.9 He walled their city. These typical tasks of the founder of a colony would have been familiar, as Greek city-states in the eighth century B.C. had begun a rapid overseas expansion into areas as far west as Marseilles and as far east as the Black Sea.

  6.11 Aides’ / house. Aides’ house is more familiar as the house of Hades, god of the underworld. The Greek word was thought to be related to an adjective meaning “unseen” (cf. the English “hell” from a root meaning “covered over”).

  6.25 so careless. Out of all the possible ways of introducing us to Nausikaa, the poet chose to show her neglecting the dirty laundry lying around her room. It is one of the naturalistic details in this poem that rings familiar: even i
n Homeric times, teenagers had messy rooms. But the topic of clothing has wider social ramifications. As Athene (in dream form) tells the girl, she’ll soon be married, and people expect to see a well-dressed wedding party. This vignette brilliantly sets the mood for the episode to follow. Since we know that Nausikaa is just ripe for marriage, though no suitor is specified, her encounter with Odysseus, who washes up near the laundry pools, takes on overtones of erotic potential.

  6.57 My dear Dad. The Greek uses a term (pappa) similar in tone. Critics even in later antiquity complained that a princess would not do laundry, let alone drive her own cart (based on their notions of royal privileges). More interesting is the characterization. Nausikaa disguises her motives for going to the washing-place, saying her father and brothers need clean clothes, and thereby stressing present familial obligation, whereas the real prompting of Athene’s call stressed the potential connection to a new family, by way of marriage. The moment is charged with the erotic overtones of the latter possibility when she meets Odysseus, whom several will subsequently identify as a good choice for husband. In another artful touch, the poet shows how the girl’s father sees through her mild deception and “sensed it all.”

  6.102 looking like Artemis. The huntress goddess, daughter of Leto (see line 106), was also the divinity who presided over the initiation of girls into womanhood. At shrine sites such as Brauron, east of Athens, young girls regularly spent months in service to the goddess. Their activities, as represented in surviving vase paintings, statues, and inscriptions, included athletic competitions and organized choral dancing. The scene here, with competition (in washing, no less), ball-playing, and group leader Nausikaa, inevitably calls to mind the ritual institutions of Artemis. Teugeton is the mountainrange near Sparte and Erumanthos is in Arcadia, in the center of the Peloponnese.

  6.130 like a mountain lion. In light of the previous simile, the comparison of Odysseus to a lion makes an interesting contrast. Although we might view him as a beastly threat to the virginal girl on the beach, his likeness to the lion implies through image that Nausikaa (who is like Artemis the huntress) will have a sort of power over him. Naked and helpless, lion-like Odysseus ironically at this juncture is in the hands of a young woman.

  6.149 I clasp your knees. The supplication gesture is purely in words, since we have just heard that he refrains from touching the girl in order not to alarm her. Odysseus’s subsequent speech is a model of decorum and rhetorical art. Not only does he open the practical question of her divine or human status; he takes the opportunity to elaborate this into a flattering compliment to the girl’s beauty. In addition, he delicately broaches the topic of her engagement and makes clear his own status as a veteran warrior and leader of men. Soon, with the help of Athene, he will appear to Nausikaa as the ideal type of husband (line 244ff.).

  6.181–82 closeness of two good / minds. In Greek one noun expresses the concept: homophrosunê (literally, “like-mindedness”). This general statement applies perfectly to the case of Odysseus and his thoughtful wife Penelopeia, who will together prove a “sting” to their rivals. Such an explicit praise of marriage as the meeting of true minds is rarely found in ancient literature.

  6.273 Their talk is disgraceful. Nausikaa’s worries about rumor fit the evidence from archaic Greece concerning the social effect of praise and blame. The poetry of this period called iambos (from which “iambic” meter is named) comprises stylized expressions of blame, invective, and abuse. Marriage and engagement feature among the topics of iambos attributed to Archilochus of Paros (seventh century B.C.). The jealous commentary of the sailors, as Nausikaa imagines it, focuses on the way in which she is thought to prefer another man instead of her island suitors—surely another reminder of the situation of Penelopeia back on Ithaka. At the same time, Nausikaa uses this imagined conversation to express indirectly the wish that someone like Odysseus could be her husband. Her father (7.313–15) explicitly wishes for the hero as son-in-law.

  6.305 my Mother. Arete, the queen, appears to have power even over the king on Skherie. This has been taken as a relic of an earlier cultural stage of matriarchy, with the mythical Phaiakians preserving a system that a few scholars believe may have preceded the patriarchal social structures of archaic Greece. Hard evidence of matriarchy (apart from myths) is lacking, however, for any stage of Greek civilization. Arete’s prominence here is more likely due to the narrator’s desire to juxtapose her situation with that of Penelopeia, and to motivate the long Catalogue of Women passage in the upcoming underworld description of book 11, for which Arete will be in the audience.

  7.56 Nausithoos first. Athene, posing as a young girl, provides the background to the royal house. That the great-grandfather of the current king once ruled the Giants is surprising, as these were commonly depicted as the enemies of the Olumpian gods. It is also worth noting that the Phaiakian house traces its roots to Poseidon, the god whom Odysseus will describe to them as his personal nemesis. That he can persuade the god’s descendants to help him may be as much a matter of his own charm and rhetorical ability as it is of Phaiakian hospitality.

  7.74 she settles quarrels. In other passages, this is an ability attributed to kings in assemblies. The Theogony of Hesiod (roughly contemporary with Homeric poetry) mentions the resolution of disputes as one of the tasks that an ideal ruler carries out.

  7.80 she came to Marathon. Marathon is the site of the famous battle in which Greek forces led by the Athenians defeated a Persian invading force in 490 B.C. It is perhaps significant that the ruler Peisistratos, who played a role in organizing the festival recitation of Homeric poetry, returned to Athens from one of his several times of exile in the mid-sixth century B.C. via this town on the east coast of Attica, in which he had a body of supporters. His family seems to have traced its origin to the son of Nestor who bore the same name as the late tyrant (see book 3). The house of Erekhtheus, a mythical early king of Athens, was marked by a temple on the acropolis of the city. The latest building commemorating him on the spot—the “Erekhtheum” of 435 B.C.—is still largely intact.

  7.105 weave at looms. The king’s workforce recalls the economic setup of the great palatial centers of early Greece (1600–1200 B.C.) at Knosos on Krete and Thebes and Pulos on the mainland. Inscribed clay tablets from this period, in a prealphabetic writing system (called “Linear B”), were discovered in early-twentieth-century excavations at the palace sites and decoded only after 1952. They show evidence of large-scale woolworking as well as other domestic industries. Even the existence of cloth soaked with oil (apparently for waterproofing) has been confirmed by these earliest Greek documents. Such widespread expertise at the loom further marks Skherie as a place friendly to the craft-goddess Athene, and thus a suitable refuge for her favorite, Odysseus.

  7.153 in some ashes. Odysseus had taken the position of a suppliant, humbling himself by sitting in the ashes. At the same time, his place at the hearth makes a claim on the royal couple’s attention because it is the sacred center of the household, dedicated to the goddess Hestia, and a symbol of social and religious obligations toward strangers.

  7.197 the somber Spinners. The Fates (Moirai) defined an individual’s life through their cloth-working: Lakhesis (Apportioner) set the length, as of a thread; Klotho (Spinner) extended it; Atropos (Without a Turn) cut it off. The Greek world-picture at times placed the Fates above the power of Zeus, but at other times gave them a complementary or subordinate role. Often the degree of tragic emotion demanded by a particular narrative colored the individual author’s precise depiction of these forces.

  7.234 she knew the handsome tunic and mantle. Recognizing the clothes her daughter gave Odysseus, the queen wastes no time in asking pointed questions of her guest. As at Sparte, where Helen readily divined the identity of Telemakhos, the female member of the royal pair appears to be the more observant. The echoing of this motif provides yet another link-up between father and son as they make their separate journeys toward one another.

 
7.262–63 a message / from Zeus. This is a realistic detail. Although the poem’s audience knows the message came from Zeus via Hermes, it also knows that Odysseus was not privy to the information. Odysseus could therefore also entertain the idea that Kalupso simply changed her mind. The rest of his recollection in this book matches closely what we have heard from the narrator and thus reinforces our confidence in both hero and teller as mutually supporting witnesses.

  7.321 farther away than Euboia. The ancient audience would hear this with some amusement and wonder, since Euboia, a large island bordering the mainland to the east, was centrally located in the Greek world and an important departure point for those going to Asia Minor or the Cycladic islands. In the mirror-like fantasy world of the far-off Phaiakians, what is close to most Greeks represents an immense distance. The presence of the mythical judge Rhadamanthus and of Tituos there makes the island a multiform of the Isles of the Blessed or Elusium, happy otherworlds that Greek myth located at the edge of the known world (and which one would never dream of reaching in a single day’s sail). This interesting small detail thus reveals a poet capable of imagining the relativity of cultural myths and values.

  8.44 Demodokos. The bard’s name (meaning “welcomed-by-the-people”) signals his central role in the community. His “gift” of song is explained (line 64) as a compensation for his blindness. Since ancient times, audiences have understood Demodokos to be a portrait of Homer himself, who was traditionally represented as without sight. There are problems with taking this equation too literally: for one thing, we see Demodokos sing only short compositions (three in all)—nothing like the massive length of the Odyssey itself, which would have lasted approximately twenty-four hours even if performed at a fairly rapid rate. A combination of time periods may underlie the portrait of the singer of tales. Like Phemios, the Ithakan singer, he is apparently supported by an elite patron in a palace setting, as would be likely in the high Mycenaean period (1600–1200 B.C.). But his name indicates a status more akin to that of itinerant poets as known from later Greece and depicted in various ancient Lives of Homer (post-fifth century B.C.). The poet of the Odyssey may have resembled the latter while portraying in his poem an attractive fantasy about the former, the tenured palace jobs once available to bards.