by Homer
10.135 Aiaie. The name sounds like a Greek interjection of woe, aiai, found in later tragedies. The brother of Kirke, Aietes (line 137), lived in another land by this name, located on the east coast of the Black Sea and known to Greeks as the home of his daughter, the witchlike Medea, with whom Ieson eloped when he journeyed there to retrieve the Golden Fleece (see the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodius, third century B.C.). Like her niece, Kirke, too, has hints of the sorceress, such as knowledge of baneful drugs (lines 236–37).
10.212 Mountain wolves and lions. Odysseus subtly blends in his narration details that he could only have learned later, even though he tells the tale suspensefully stage by stage, with a minimum of background exposition. Although he does not make it plain, the possibility remains open that the stag he had shot just before was either one of the drugged animals of the nymph, or worse, a transformed human (see line 433). In a lighter vein: the simile in line 217 provides the earliest reference in literature to the institution of the doggy-bag.
10.226 a great loom. Kirke, Kalupso, and Penelopeia are all presented as expert weavers. Skill with cloth production was also a sign of cunning intelligence (mêtis), and it is no accident that Athene’s sphere of influence includes being patron of such crafts as weaving and ship-building.
10.292 this helpful plant. Odysseus has not yet learned what happened to his crew members, as Eurulokhos, the leader of the expedition inland, noticed only that the men had vanished once inside Kirke’s house. Hermes fills Odysseus in and provides him with a protective plant, called molu in the language of the gods. (We do not learn the human word for the plant, which, from its description, some have argued was garlic.) Several times in Homeric poetry, more often in the Iliad, the gods’ terms for various objects are juxtaposed with human words. After analysis, the divine words most often prove to be items of high poetic diction.
10.350 born of surrounding groves. In ancient Greek belief, nymphs inhabited mountains, rivers, springs, and certain trees. According to some sources, the life spans of tree-nymphs were related to the length of time the trees lived.
10.410 The way young calves. Through the simile, the men who had not been transformed appear as animals, just after the ones who actually were have been turned back into humans. Odysseus becomes, once more, a female figure (the mother of calves, in the simile) and then something like the embodiment of his island, for the men welcome him as they would “the city and land of their fathers.”
10.472 Remember the land. In contrast to his later years on the island of Kalupso, when he wanted to leave but could not, Odysseus has to be reminded to continue his voyage. The roles are also reversed from the usual scenario, in which Odysseus must call the crew back to duty (as in the land of the Lotos-eaters). The ultimate danger is that the hero will forget his goal. Coming soon after the description of Eurulokhos’s angry refusal to obey Odysseus, these lines indicate a growing uneasiness among the crew, which will later lead to full-blown disobedience.
10.491 Aides’ household. More familiar as Hades, the name of the god of the underworld was thought to mean “the Unseen One.” His wife, Persephoneia (or Persephone), was abducted by him when she was a young maiden. The story of the grief this caused her mother, the goddess Demeter, and of the bargain that allowed her daughter to revisit the land above for part of each year, is told in the early Greek Hymn to Demeter. Teiresies, as the prophet of Thebes, confronted Oedipus, his king, with his unwitting crimes of parricide and incest (see the tragedy of Sophocles, Oedipus the King). In other myths, he was said to have been changed once into a woman, then back again, and thus knew all that either sex could. That only he of all the dead retains consciousness indicates the depth of his intelligence and the special regard in which he was held.
10.511 deep Okeanos. Imagined as a river encircling the known world (hence the English “ocean”), this fed all the other rivers of the world. The streams in the underworld have fearsome names: Stux (Hatred); Kokutos (Bewailed); Akheron (Groaning); Puriphlegethon (Fire-Burning).
10.518 libations. The practices described were performed at Greek gravesites at set times to commemorate the deceased and “feed” the spirit, so as to prevent it from being angered. The sacrifice of a black ram and ewe matches the rites performed at the graves of those thought to be heroes. As a form of communication with the dead, Odysseus’s actions will prove to be successful: the ghosts of the departed will gather around to drink the blood from the pit he has made. But Teiresies in book 11 oddly enough never does give the explicit sailing directions that Kirke mentions here.
11.8 Goddess who spoke like a woman. The adjective audêessa, “having a human voice,” has been applied several times to Kirke and Kalupso in the poem. It draws attention to the prophetic qualities these divinities share, for when a god takes on a human voice or disguise it is usually to warn or direct mortals. Poised at the beginning of the descent to the underworld, this brief description of Kirke reminds us that Odysseus’s goal is to obtain knowledge from the ghost of the Theban seer Teiresies.
11.14 Kimmerian people. Later Greek tradition placed this people in the Crimea. Already in antiquity there were disputes about their true location, as well as the spelling and meaning of the name. Here, the poet uses them essentially as a marker of the farthest reaches of the flat earth (perhaps to the north, given their constant “haze and cloud”). Note that there is no actual descent to an underworld, unlike similar scenes in Virgil’s Aeneid or the Babylonian Gilgamesh.
11.51 my war-friend, Elpenor. At the end of the previous episode, this companion had fallen from the roof of Kirke’s house after a drunken sleep. Instantaneously, his spirit came to the land of the dead, while Odysseus was still sailing there. His pleas that the Greeks bury him properly reflect the ancient belief that spirits of the dead could not rest until their survivors had performed the necessary funeral rituals. In later stories, such spirits were said to linger on the far side of the river Stux, unable to take Kharon’s ferry across until care had been taken of their bodies.
11.105 if only you check your spirits. Teiresies poses as the final challenge to self-control the cattle of the sun-god. From the first few verses of the Odyssey, the audience already knows that the crew will fail this test. The further foreshadowing here readies us for the second half of the poem, Odysseus’s lone return to Ithaka that will end in the total slaughter of the suitors. More surprising are the seer’s detailed instructions (line 121ff.) about the ultimate journey the hero must take. Folklorists have found parallels in mariners’ tales from many regions for the story of a sailor who retires to a place that is as far from the sea as one can travel. Here, the spot will be recognizable when the inhabitants mistake the sailor’s oar for an agricultural implement. The image of Odysseus’s reconciliation, the shrine he will build to his foe Poseidon, not accidentally matches the way a sailor’s own tomb would look (compare the request of Elpenor at line 77). Although this passage predicts a gentle death “from the salt sea,” another popular epic, the Telegony (now lost except for a plot summary) recounted the hero’s death at the hands of Telegonos, an illegitimate son by Kirke. This happened on the shore of Ithaka, when the son, invading the island, unknowingly attacked his own father, and stabbed him with the spine of a sea-turtle (thus causing a death “from the sea”).
11.181 Your wife has waited. For the first time, Odysseus hears news of his immediate family, including his faithful Penelopeia, son Telemakhos, and father Laertes. His father’s behavior speaks of deep depression, an affecting vignette as wrenching as his mother’s claim that she died from missing him. Apparently, Antikleia did not live long enough to learn of the suitors’ occupation. Her account of Telemakhos presents some chronological problems, as her description of his social life makes him sound older than he would have been at her death. But the poetic intent may be to parallel the upcoming story Odysseus tells to the spirit of Akhilleus about that hero’s successful son.
11.224 back to your wife and tell her. With these words, Antikle
ia makes way for the so-called Catalogue of Women. Her phrasing seems to indicate that the parade of famous females has an educational value for women alive. We need to remember that Arete, the powerful queen, and Nausikaa, her daughter, are prominent among the Phaiakian listeners to this tale. Odysseus chooses to begin his narration by telling about the famous women he met because he wants to please the women in his own audience. At the same time, it could be that the poet of the Odyssey here plays to a mixed audience of his own.
11.235 Turo. Turo was the grandmother of Nestor, who can thus trace his ancestry to Poseidon. Aiolos in line 237 is not the same as the wind-god. Aison (line 259) was the father of Ieson, who was sent to fetch the Golden Fleece by his uncle, Pelies (line 254).
11.260 Antiope. Like Turo, Antiope was a woman connected with the great heroes and city-founders of an earlier generation. Amphion and Zethos, her sons, were said to have constructed the walls of Thebes by magically moving stones through their musicmaking. Homeric epic carefully avoids mention of such more exotic mythical motifs when it comes to stories of heroic saga.
11.266 Alkmene. Zeus came to her in the guise of her own husband Amphitruon shortly before the warrior returned from battle and rejoined his wife. The double intercourse produced twins: Herakles the son of Zeus and Iphiklos the son of the mortal husband.
11.269 Megare. First in a series of wives of Herakles, in some versions she was killed by her husband in a fit of madness sent by a jealous Here. Such unflattering or tragic details are often not mentioned by Homeric epic.
11.271 Epikaste. Epikaste is a variation on the better known name for his mother, Jocasta (as in Sophocles’ drama Oedipus the King, ca. 424 B.C.). This brief description of the infamous deeds apparently assumes that Oidipus continued to rule at Thebes after his mother’s death. There is no mention of his self-blinding or exile.
11.287 Pero. Pero is singled out perhaps because the story of courtship and hardship offers some parallels to the tale of Penelopeia. The fuller version of this elliptical story will be told in 15.225–56.
11.298 Lede (also spelled Leda). She was taken by Zeus in the form of a swan and bore Helen and Klutaimnestre—two women deeply involved in the Trojan saga but not alluded to here. Kastor and Poludeukes are also called the Dioskuroi “Zeus sons” (in Latin, Castor and Pollux, the Gemini). After Kastor was killed in combat, the pair were given alternate mortality, each one coming alive every other day.
11.310 Orion. Orion was a mythical hunter who was made into a constellation after being killed by Artemis, the divine huntress (see lines 572–75 below). The gigantic youths Otos and Ephialtes, who planned to put Mount Pelion, in the region of Thessaly, atop Mount Ossa in order to scale Olumpos, were a continuing example of hubris punished.
11.321 Phaidre. She and Ariadne were both daughters of Minos, at least in later legend. Theseus, the hero of Athens, either forgot or abandoned Ariadne after benefiting from her aid to escape from the labyrinth on Krete. He took Phaidre as wife years later; an unrequited passion for her stepson Hippolutos led her to hang herself.
11.321 Prokris. Prokris, an Athenian princess, was married to Kephalos, who once tested her fidelity by seducing her in disguise, and later accidentally killed her with his javelin.
11.326 Klumene. Klumene is an obscure figure, perhaps wife of the hero Phulakos.
11.326 Maira. Maira was a nymph devoted to Artemis, who slew her after the girl broke a vow of chastity.
11.326 Eriphule. Eriphule was the wife of Amphiaraos. She was bribed by Poluneikes the son of Oedipus to persuade her husband to join his war against Thebes.
11.328 I cannot name them all. When he breaks off abruptly and announces it is time for bed, Odysseus is urged by the audience to continue and shift to the story of Greek heroes he met in the underworld. Because his decision to resume comes immediately after the royal listeners promise more gifts (lines 336–53), it is reasonable to imagine that the trickster Odysseus has held the most interesting portion of his heroic tale in reserve precisely to create audience demand. The practice occurs in actual song-sessions in other oral traditions. This is one more reminder that the familiar Odyssey adventure stories all occur in a one-night-only command performance by Odysseus in the king’s court. Like many a singer, he could embellish and time his adventures to suit his rapt audience.
11.409 Aigisthos caused my death. Aigisthos was the cousin of Agamemnon and Menelaos, a son of Thuestes, whose brother Atreus, during a vendetta, once served him his own children as a meal. Aigisthos survived and took vengeance by seducing Klutaimnestre, Agamemnon’s wife, while the latter was at Troy. The adulterous couple then plotted the chieftain’s murder, killing also Kassandre, the Trojan princess and prophetess whom Agamemnon had brought home as a captive. Agamemnon, in his advice not to trust a woman, nevertheless makes an exception regarding Penelopeia, who is described as the polar opposite of his own treacherous spouse (lines 445–46).
11.461 My godlike Orestes. Although neither Agamemnon nor Odysseus knows it, the son returned from his foster home to take vengeance for his father’s death by killing his mother and her lover Aigisthos. The story has been alluded to several times in the early part of the poem by those wishing to persuade Telemakhos to take action against the suitors.
11.543 the ghost of Aias (also spelled Ajax). The tale told in the play Ajax by Sophocles and other versions has this warrior, second only to Akhilleus, driven to temporary insanity after losing the contest for the glorious armor of the dead hero. Believing that Odysseus and the sons of Atreus had cheated him, he attacked their tents at night, but Athene deflected his rage onto some nearby flocks. Aias, after coming to his senses, killed himself out of shame. He refuses to speak to Odysseus out of continuing resentment.
11.568 Minos. The Kretan king was said to have communicated regularly with his father Zeus in constructing the laws for his people. He thus became a symbol of just dealing. Tituos (line 576) by contrast was famous for his injustice, having attempted to rape Leto, the mother of Apollo and Artemis. The following examples of bad behavior were known for stealing the gods’ food (Tantalos) and gossiping about Zeus’s love affairs (Sisuphos); “sin” in this context means offenses against divinities, rather than failure to adhere to a moral code.
11.602 a phantom. Since Greeks believed Herakles had been taken up to be with the gods on Olumpos after his fiery death on Mount Oita, the poet is careful to say that his spirit is not really in the underworld. But his presence, even in phantom form, makes a good story, as he was the only other hero to journey to Aides’ house and return successfully.
11.634 Gorgo. A monstrous figure meant to terrify one into silence. In later sources, a woman named Medusa, one of three Gorgo sisters, is decapitated by the hero Perseus before she can turn him to stone with her baleful stare. Why Persephoneia, queen of the underworld, would send the head to Odysseus is unclear. It may perhaps be a polite way of saying that there is no more to say.
12.14 stele. A stele is a standing stone for marking a gravesite. Many inscribed stones from the sixth century B.C. and later still survive. Alphabetic writing was known in Greece in the eighth century B.C., the earliest period to which the poems can be dated on other grounds, but the Homeric poems never make indisputable reference to writing of any kind. If this particular stele bore an inscription, the poet has omitted the fact. The epics also tend toward archaizing, suppressing references to more recent technologies and events in the interest of recreating the world of the twelfth century B.C.
12.39 Seirenes. The Sirens are never said to lure men to their deaths, nor is shipwreck involved: passers-by are drawn into the danger of staying forever through their own desire to hear the voices of these divine singers. Neither are they represented in the poem as bird-women, in contrast to the early Greek artistic tradition, which often portrays Sirens and Sphinxes (similar enigmatic singers). The meadow (line 45) is a common symbol for the typical place of sexual seduction in Greek poetry. It may be that the Sirens were a Near Eastern importation
, from cultures in which they were known as goddesses of death.
12.60 Amphitrite. Amphitrite was the wife of Poseidon. The Plangktai, or Clashing Rocks, also figured prominently in the stories of Ieson’s journey to find the Golden Fleece. Some scholars have seen in the voyages of Odysseus a poetic attempt to include and outdo earlier Argonaut traditions. At line 70, the poem makes explicit reference to the ship of Ieson (line 72), the Argo, as the only vessel to have made it through the moving rocks.
12.81 Erebos. Erebos is the dark; it is also another name for the west.
12.85 Skulla. The name is related to a word for puppy and both may derive from a verb meaning “to tear, rip up.” Like most terrors of Greek myth, this being is conceived of as female. She acts like a giant squid that half hides in an opening in the rock face.
12.104 Kharubdis. Another female monster, she is indistinguishable from the whirlpool she creates. The choice is between losing the entire ship and its crew to her, or having six men be snatched up for each of Skulla’s six mouths, on the other side of the narrow strait.
12.132 Nymphs. The nymphs have appropriate names: Lampetie is “shining” (origin of the English “lamp”); Phaethousa is “illuminating”; Huperion, another name for the sungod, means “he who goes above”; Neaira, their mother, simply means “youthful.”
12.184 Here, well-known Odysseus. The content of the Siren-song appeals directly to the hero’s sense of self-worth: it is nothing less than his own story, since they sing about the Trojan War, which he was able to conclude by his ruse of the Horse. The statement that their performance will be a source of both knowledge and pleasure makes an apt summary of the goals of most Greek poetry of the archaic and Classical periods: its instructional value for audiences is always stressed. Some have seen in the topic they choose to sing a reference to Iliad traditions, in which case Odysseus, by resisting their lure and still hearing the song, goes that tradition one better, just as he has surpassed Akhilleus by getting both fame and a homecoming.