by Homer
8.76 They had quarreled. This scene captures the praise from the bardlike hero Odysseus for a fellow tale-teller. It also clues us in to an otherwise latent motif, that of a past conflict between Akhilleus (the hero of the Iliad) and Odysseus. The incident is not attested in any other source. Odysseus and Akhilleus once exchanged harsh words at the start of the expedition to Troy. It appears that Agamemnon had sought the divine guidance of Apollo at his shrine in Delphi (Putho, line 81) and was told, in typically ambiguous fashion, that Troy was to fall after the “best of the Akhaians” quarreled. Interpreting as the significant event this minor squabble between his two subordinate commanders, Agamemnon was glad, not realizing that his own disastrous struggle with Akhilleus was what the god foretold. In book 9 of the Iliad, we see hints of a traditional rivalry between the heroes of the two major Homeric epics; similar hints emerge in the underworld scene of the Odyssey (book 11).
8.111 Akroneus rose. The Phaiakians bear names that reflect their seamanship. In the order they occur here, these are Bowsprit, Swift-sea, Oar-driver, Sailor, Stern-man, Shore-man, Rower, Open-sea, Bow-man, Runner, Embarker, Sea-girt, son of Many-ships and grandson of Shipwright, and Broad-sea, son of Ship-caster.
8.147 So long as a man is alive. The high value set on athletic competition parallels the rise of international festivals in the eighth to sixth centuries B.C. featuring sporting events at centers such as Olumpia, Delphi, Nemea, and Athens. The elaborate poetry of Pindar (ca. 518–438 B.C.), who was commissioned by victors to praise their success, crystalizes this attitude, according to which athletics was the main alternative to war when it came to winning fame in the Greek world. That Odysseus views the games as less serious matters suggests a social consciousness similar to that expressed by later poets (such as Xenophanes, sixth century B.C.) who questioned the adulation for athletes at the expense of civic virtue. Eurualos’s insult—calling Odysseus a cargo trader—sounds like the denigration of merchants voiced by some aristocratic factions in the Greek archaic age.
8.215 about polished bows. The first hint of his identity comes from Odysseus at this point in connection with his favored weapon. Now the Phaiakians will know that their guest is a Trojan War veteran and expert bowman. So central was this manner of attack to the character of Odysseus that his son was called “Telemakhos”—“Far-fighter”—in commemoration of the archer’s role, which was to fight from the rear in battle formation. The skill of Odysseus at shooting arrows will figure most prominently in his final victory over the suitors. Philoktetes (line 219), the only better bowman, was abandoned by the Greeks soon after they reached Troy, because his festering wound from a snakebite and cries of pain disturbed their rites. Troy was fated to be taken with his bow, which once belonged to Herakles. The story of Odysseus’s devious plan to retrieve it is told in Sophocles’ Philoktetes.
8.266 a delightful / song. At a break in athletic contests, the bard plays and sings to accompany some expert young dancers who perform before the all-male audience. His subject is the illicit love between the war-god Ares and Aphrodite, wife of the divine smith Hephaistos. It is a story of mêtis—the highly prized “cunning intelligence” of the Greeks—winning against might. Although lame and slow, Hephaistos is so skilled at his craft that he can fashion invisible chains to ensnare the adulterous couple in bed. The tale’s bawdy treatment of a faithless wife counterpoints the larger narrative about Penelopeia, while the victory of mêtis described here foreshadows Odysseus’s eventual success against the suitors, as well as Penelopeia’s skill at crafting another type of disappearing web.
8.352 how could I bind you. This may be an early reference to something resembling the later legal institution of bail bond. Hephaistos’s concern may allude to the watery nature of the god. The typical legal recourse of binding an offender and bringing him to justice would not work if Ares defaulted and the slippery Poseidon was left to go pay the security for him, by offering his own body.
8.363 Paphos. Paphos was a city on the island of Kupros famous for its shrines to the goddess of love. It is the setting for several famous myths connected with her, such as that of Pygmalion, the sculptor whose prayers Aphrodite answered when she made a beautiful statue he was obsessed with turn into a real woman.
8.392 clean mantle and tunic. When Odysseus reached Skherie, the land of the Phaiakians, his reentry to civilized life was marked by Nausikaa’s compassionate act of lending him her brothers’ clothes. Though his identity is still unknown to the girl’s royal parents, Odysseus has shown such rare decorum that they treat him as a special guest. His wardrobe benefits, with the addition of thirteen new cloaks and tunics, gifts of the king and local nobles. Clothing in Homer often comes with stories about its origins. Therefore, as well as marking the new status of Odysseus, these gifts of the Phaiakians are surely meant to advertise their own grandiose hospitality. The hero is bound to transmit their fame, whenever someone later asks him where he obtained such beautiful outfits. The bronze sword from Eurualos (symbol of the youth’s apology) and the golden goblet of Alkinoos will play a similar commemorative role.
8.448 a crafty knot. Such an unusual detail provides a sense of depth and verisimilitude, assuring the audience in advance that the adventures Odysseus is about to relate really occurred. His motive for quickly doing as Arete suggests will become clear when we hear later of how his crew once undid an easier knot tying up a bag of winds, with disastrous results.
8.475 carving a slab. Odysseus lavishly praises the bard again, honors him by presenting him the best cut of roast pork, and commissions a song-performance. He calls for a famous story in which Odysseus himself had a major role, the building of the Trojan Horse. In return, he promises to spread the bard’s fame if the tale is told well. In the appreciative comments here, we see the value that Homeric characters place on truth and realism in narrative. These are precisely the qualities that the outer narrative, the Odyssey itself, foregrounds for its own listeners, even in its most fantastic episodes.
8.518 Deiphobos’s house. After the death of Paris in the last year of the war, this Trojan noble took Helen as bride. Sprung from their hiding place in the Horse, Odysseus and Menelaos—Helen’s true husband—head first for the place where they might recover the woman for whose sake they had fought so long. The remarkable simile that follows (lines 523–30) compares Odysseus himself, as he weeps hearing the story, to a woman captured in war. This is not the only time the hero becomes assimilated to a long-suffering female figure. His reunion with Penelopeia in book 23 features another “reverse-gender” comparison. Through such subtle poetic overtones, Odysseus and his wife are brought ever closer, at least in the audience’s minds, as the poem progresses.
8.580 so a song would arise. Here a poet’s theological perspective is put into the mouth of the Phaiakian king: the Trojan War was divinely arranged to provide entertainment for later generations. As with the gift of song-making given to Demodokos in compensation for blindness, there is a sense that the beautiful heritage of epic poetry, arising from strife and ruin, somehow redeems and transforms the suffering of the past. For the Phaiakians, the story about Odysseus is as distant as any enjoyable fiction. But for the hero himself, the poet’s rendition causes something like a flashback to combat. Significantly, it is Odysseus’s tears—not martial or athletic prowess—that lead to revealing his identity.
9.25 My island is lower. This description has puzzled readers since antiquity, as a traveler finds Ithaka to be just as high as nearby islands and certainly farther east—that is, closer to “Dawn and the Sun-God” (line 26) than Same (modern Kephalonia). The objections, of course, assume that the Homeric Ithaka is the same as the island today called Ithaki or Thiaki; a few scholars have played with the idea that ancient Ithaka was in fact the modern Leukada or Kephalonia. (Doulikhion, in line 24, has never been identified.) Two considerations may help reconcile poetic description with reality. First, Ithaka lies off the northeast coast of the much larger Kephalonia, and its working harbors are in fac
t farther north than those on the big island. Thus, when one sails from the Peloponnese (the path intended by Odysseus and actually taken by Telemakhos), the port seems farther off and “well out to sea.” If “Dawn and the Sun-God” is a combination expressing “southeast” rather than simply “east,” the line is even more accurate. Second, we should take the description as expressing poetic character more than sailors’ directions. Odysseus himself “lies apart” from any group, and often lies low; he is “rough” (line 27), but ultimately good for his young man, Telemakhos. Island matches king.
9.40 Ismaros. Ismaros was a town in Thrace. We are not yet in mythical territory. The Kikones were allies of the Trojans, so that Odysseus’s piracy could be taken as intentional harassment of the enemy. The casual summary of killing, looting, and stealing women, however, is disturbing and reveals yet another side of the warrior. The failure of the crew to obey Odysseus rather than see to their own pleasures will be repeated several times in the adventures, culminating in their eating of the sun-god’s cattle.
9.81 from Kuthereia, rounding Maleia. The point of Maleia, at the tip of the easternmost promontory of the Peloponnese, was notoriously difficult for sailors to round. Ideally, Odysseus would have approached Kuthereia, an island to the southwest of the point and then sailed northwest, skirting the mainland. After this location, all the places he lands lie in mythical territory. The Lotos-eaters’ land (line 84) might represent a region of North Africa; the location of the Kuklops is even more vague.
9.84 their food is a flower. The various strange peoples Odysseus encounters are marked by un-Greek cuisine, whether narcotic plants or human flesh. The lotos may have been a poppy. His desire to find out what “bread-eating” people live in the area (line 89) expresses the Greek norm: civilized folk raise grain crops, which implies use of domestic animals, sacrifice, and the proper rituals toward the gods. The Kuklops have crops but no agricultural labor (line 109) and thus no notion of work and suffering—fundamental to Greek ideas about what mortal life entails.
9.112 They don’t make laws. The essentials of Greek life are defined by this list of what the Kuklops lack. Civic activity—assemblies, taking counsel—is seen as an advance on rough individualism, and a sign of caring for one another. The island of wild goats that Odysseus goes on to describe (line 116ff.) further crystalizes the differences. Kuklops have no ships or interest in colonizing fertile territory.
9.174 to find and test those people. Odysseus in the course of his journeys poses a test for the social groups he encounters, prompting either just behavior—epitomized by hospitality—or its opposite. This role continues when he reaches Ithaka in disguise and experiences the injustice of the suitors. As in many Greek and Roman myths, the unknown stranger, who is sometimes a god in disguise, can inflict punishment on those who fail to welcome him. The tales thus reinforce an essential ethical system, based on the mutual justice of xenia (“guest-friendship”), through which strangers are treated as potential future hosts and vice-versa. Zeus, the God of guests (line 270), oversaw the correct working of this reciprocity.
9.229 I wanted to see the man. Often, it is the intellectual curiosity of Odysseus that lands the crew in trouble. The choice here—whether to steal or participate in a potential guest-gift exchange—contrasts two modes of life (piracy versus aristocratic economy) and two kinds of character (trickster versus forthright hero). His crew does not even consider the first alternative. As the episode unfolds, Odysseus will be seen to switch tactics in order to survive.
9.283 The Earth-Shaker Poseidon. The audience has known since the start of the poem (1.68) that the sea-god fathered this Kuklops, but Odysseus is unaware of the fact. The Giant’s disdain of Zeus (line 275) can be related to his confidence in his own ancestry, as son of Zeus’s brother. Immediately on hearing that Poseidon has battered the Greeks, the Kuklops undertakes to finish the job (line 287ff.), without any provocation. His sudden and barbaric cannibalism makes an eerie contrast with his meticulous cheese- and milk-making rituals throughout the scene.
9.353 wine. Even though the Kuklops seems to know about wine (line 358), he prefers milk, nor does Odysseus cut this drink with the usual proportion of twenty parts water (see line 209)—taking into account the Giant’s bulk.
9.366 My name is No-one. Apart from setting up the punchline at the end of the episode (line 408), this stratagem also expresses the trickster-hero’s ability to blend into the landscape, reducing himself to nothing (as he will in his beggar disguise later, in Ithaka). It comes halfway between the revelation that he is a Greek, one of famous Agamemnon’s men (line 263), and the full (in retrospect, foolish) declaration of his identity to the Kuklops (line 504). The Greek for “No-one” is ou tis, which in certain syntactical constructions changes to mê tis—a near homonym for the noun mêtis, “cunning intelligence.” Allegorical interpreters who read the Odyssey as a story of self-discovery mark this speech as a significant turning point in the hero’s quest, the moment when confrontation with vast danger forces him to realize both his smallness and the extent of his resourcefulness.
9.384 like a man with a drill-bit. The careful poetic presentation of the stabbing of the eye includes the detail that a green olive-wood stake has taken on a red glow (line 379). Folklorists, who have compared this episode with dozens of other attestations of the same motif worldwide, note that in almost all others, the stake is iron and thus naturally reddens. But the Odyssey dwells on the hero’s ability to transform nature. The further poetic resonances of the olive-tree in the poem are also relevant; it is associated with survival and with the goddess Athene, patron of the hero. Recall especially the sheltering tree at the end of book 5, under which Odysseus sleeps (like an ember under ashes), and the olive-tree construction of his marriage bed (book 23). As if to emphasize the admirable know-how of the Greeks, the similes clustering around this stabbing refer to ship-construction and bronze-working. Thus, the subduing of the Kuklops, on another level, represents a sense of Greek pride in the conquest of nature through technology.
9.447 My dear ram. This speech increases the suspense while adding a sympathetic touch, as the Kuklops projects onto his favorite animal what he thinks the ram must feel. Ironically, No-one is clinging to the underside of the ram even as the Kuklops laments that he cannot find his enemy. Our temporary feeling for the giant shepherd may be tempered by the final wish he makes, to console himself by spattering Odysseus’s brains.
9.501 Again I answered. Despite his crew’s warning, Odysseus risks destruction by taunting the Kuklops once more. From being No-one a short time before, he now emerges as the proud son of Laertes. But his urge to reveal his name and address—the natural heroic boast of a Greek fighting on the battlefield—in this post–Trojan War world only gets him into further trouble. The Kuklops can now direct his father’s wrath against a specific target, when he curses Odysseus to either die en route or arrive home alone.
9.509 Telemos. The name literally means “Far, son of Wide.” Although we might wonder why the Kuklops ever needed a seer, the detail provides a convenient way to express the ironic contrast between what was predicted—injury at the hands of a handsome, strong hero—and the ultimate arrival of the “no-good runt” Odysseus. The structural technique of ending an episode with mention of a prophecy and its fulfillment has already been seen at the end of book 8 (line 564ff.), when Alkinoos alluded to the old man Nausithoos’s foretelling of Poseidon’s anger against the Phaiakians.
10.7 wives to his own sons. The inbred nature of this family parallels the Kuklops’ social arrangements, with the un-Greek nature of the system expressed in terms of excessive self-reliance and a perverse individualism that does without connection to other clans or families.
10.51 whether to leap from the ship. Odysseus, in narrating his fleeting thoughts of suicide, does not say what brought him to the decision to “dumbly bear it all” and live, any more than he has ever said what motivates him to go home. This self-characterization fits with the image of a la
conic hero, cunning when it comes to revealing his own mind. By contrast, he is able to relate what his crew said to one another, although he was asleep when they opened the bag of winds (lines 34–45)—as if he knows intimately the minds of others.
10.72 worst of the living. The sudden shift in attitude, compared with his previous generosity, is appropriate for a god of the ever-shifting winds. Aiolos interprets as fate (being hated by the Gods) what was in fact human choice and accident (the crew’s resentful behavior). Throughout Homeric poetry, as in later Greek thought generally, the two explanations of events intertwine: the “will of the gods” often is another way of viewing outcomes that are of purely mortal origin.
10.86 the paths of night and day. This may reflect ancient knowledge about the shortness of summer nights in far northern climes, such as Scandinavia. Typically, Odysseus reacts to the scene with a practical, even profit-oriented thought. Just as he realized one could colonize the goat island near the Kuklops, so he notes that a man might double his wages in such latitudes as that of the Laistrugonians. These people present a number of similarities to the Kuklops of the previous book: gigantic and cannibalistic, they too hurl mountaintops to smash enemy ships. On the other hand, they have wooden constructions, a citadel, a king, and a palace, and the royal family has a normal-looking daughter (line 106). The motif of encountering a young princess at her tasks, near water, and being taken by her to the palace, inevitably recalls the meeting of Odysseus himself with Nausikaa. Is the hero elaborating his tale to the Phaiakians with half-fictionalized details from his recent experience on their island?