by Homer
12.223 I never told them. Odysseus, trickster and master mariner, has made a strategic decision in keeping secret that which he knows about the fate of his crew. In later Greek literature, especially in tragic dramas such as the Philoctetes and Ajax of Sophocles, the secretive and deceptive tendencies of Odysseus make him a less than admirable character, even an emblem of amoral action. In Homer, however, there is no hint that his concealments are wrong.
12.338 honeyed sleep. At key moments, as when his crew opened the bag of winds, Odysseus falls asleep. Structurally within the Odyssey, this motif plays the same role as the absence of a god: compare the way in which the plot was put in motion in book 1 when Poseidon is away with the Ethiopians, or Hephaistos’s absence as part of the adultery story of book 8. Presence and consciousness, within the Odyssey, are important partners. That this connection is deep within the culture, not just the poetry, may be reflected in the etymological connection between the word for consciousness or mind (noos) and the word for safe return to one’s home (nostos). Odysseus, in enacting the latter, also embodies the former.
12.357 tender greens. The sacrifice to which the mutinous Eurulokhos leads the crew is marked out as irregular by several details. In proper ritual terms, barley was placed before the sacrificial animals and scattered on their heads; here, they must make do with leaves (which are properly used in very different rituals). Wine, too, is lacking (line 362), so the men use water. Finally, the victims belong to a god already, and so are hardly in the proper realm for devoting to the gods. In sum, this meal represents an antisacrifice. The horrid crawling of hides and mooing of the meat (lines 395–96) vividly express the inversion.
12.383 light up the dead. The gods work like powerful factional politicians, threatening to withdraw their favors from the other gods if their wishes are not met. The sun-god’s promise to descend to the house of Aides means that crops will not grow on earth (see the stress in line 386 on “grain-giving farmland”). Without crops, there is no sacrifice, and the gods ultimately lose the worship of mortals. In this regard, the threat is exactly that made by the grain-goddess Demeter against the other Olumpians when her daughter Persephoneia was abducted by the lord of the underworld. As then, Zeus gives in to the wishes of the offended party.
12.439 a man stands up. The poet’s choice of similes sometimes relies on the juxtaposition of crisis, once-only moments in the narrative with orderly, regularly recurring moments from normal life. To express the length of time Odysseus clung to the tree looming over the abyss, a snapshot of civic life is given. The image of a judge arising at dusk recalls the role of archaic kings in resolving disputes. Psychologically, the technique is precisely apt, since those who have survived crises most often report that their minds, at the times of keenest danger, went back to the events of everyday living. The image curiously brings to mind the description by Odysseus’s mother of the way in which Telemakhos dines, like a judge (11.186). Perhaps flashing through the hero’s mind is the memory of his son, and this is voiced by his later narration—after all, the simile is part of Odysseus’s own poetic retelling of events.
13.13–14 a cauldron / and large tripod. The Phaiakians are to provide Odysseus with a swift and safe return to his own island after loading him with fantastic gifts. These include the sort of valuable items that we know were actually exchanged among aristocrats in the Greek archaic period (ca. 800–500 B.C.). Some of the items, such as bronze cauldrons, were in addition frequently dedicated to the gods at prestigious sanctuaries like Delphi and Olumpia, where Greeks from every city-state could see them displayed and hear about their donors. There is an overlap in this scene between two other cultural scenarios: that of gifting a bard for his performance and that of endowing an honored guest. For the Phaiakians, Odysseus has acted both roles. There may be a further hint, to a contemporary external audience, that good narrators—like Odysseus in the poem and the actual poet who is performing—are worth rewarding well.
13.103 a charming cave. Archaeologists have found many caves throughout Greece with dedications to the goat-god Pan and to the nymphs. One such site, with dedicatory objects, was discovered on Ithaka in the 1930s by members of the British School at Athens. The elaborate description offered here may reflect local knowledge of a religious site. In later antiquity, this passage was subjected to detailed allegorical interpretation by the Neo-Platonic philosopher Porphyry (ca. A.D. 232–306), who saw the cave as an image of the universe, with nymphs representing souls and men as bodies.
13.125–26 Poseidon / recalled the threats. Thanks to the advocacy of Athene, her favorite hero, Odysseus, has made it home. But now the clash of divine interests comes to a crisis point. It emerges that just treatment of Odysseus by the gods hinges on their own very human concerns, like the craving for honor. To Poseidon’s complaint that he loses status because people do not see Odysseus suffering enough, Zeus responds with smooth reassurances. Poseidon cautiously avoids further direct attacks on Odysseus. Instead, he vents his anger and saves face at the same time by quite literally petrifying the Phaiakians, turning their ship to stone. Underlying such depictions of divine deal-making in Homeric epic one can discern a serious attempt on the part of Greeks to explain why bad things happen to good people. The shaping of justice in such a world depends on theological assumptions: that there is more than one powerful god, and that the gods act like honor-obsessed Greek heroes.
13.194 everything looked quite strange. Dropped off in the night on an island he does not yet know, Odysseus suspects that his Phaiakian escorts misled him (lines 209–12). Typically practical-minded, he sets out to count his possessions to see whether he has been robbed. Athene, disguised as a young shepherd, comes along to reveal the name of his latest landfall—Ithaka. The idealized natural abundance she describes (lines 244–47) fits the mood of the narrative at this precise moment—to the eyes of Odysseus, there can be no richer, more lovely place. The one feature regularly noted as lacking on Ithaka—room for horses—marks out its king as somehow different from aristocratic, horse-breeding mainlanders. Like the island, Odysseus is more humble.
13.255 his brain was a wizard’s. Even at the moment he lands back on Ithaka, after twenty years, the wily Odysseus still makes up protective fictions. To the young shepherd (actually Athene), he describes himself as a Trojan War veteran and fugitive murderer of a son of Idomeneus (known from the Iliad as a wartime companion of the hero). Some details recall the adventures he has just been through. The “shepherd” in reply (lines 291–310) not only reveals her identity but also aptly expresses her frank admiration for the mêtis (cunning intelligence) that Odysseus possesses, so much like her own. There is, in fact, a touch of one-upsmanship in her reminder that even Odysseus could not penetrate her disguise this time. A significant aspect of cunning emerges in the plan she begins to weave: namely, temporary passivity in the face of suffering, a quiet endurance that hoodwinks the enemy and pays off in the end.
13.325–26 no, it’s some other / land. After Athene reveals herself, the wary hero continues to keep up his guard, questioning whether this unfamiliar-looking island is in fact his home. His caution—a function of his mêtis—seems to make the goddess value him more. Theirs, unlike other pairings in Greek myth, can never be a love relationship (as Athene is forever virgin, a parthenos). But in its intimacy, this encounter comes close. Goddess and hero are intellectual equals, two of a kind. As Athene compliments Odysseus and asserts her unwavering confidence, she has to address the awkward fact that she was absent for the past ten years of his wanderings. The explanation that she could not fight Poseidon rings somewhat false (since mêtis normally beats force). There could be here, as at several other points in the poem, a hint that Athene has been antagonistic to Odysseus, precisely because his mêtis equals hers.
13.397 I’ll make you unknown. Odysseus must remain incognito, at least until he determines the loyalty of his family and former supporters. Under the guidance of his patroness Athene, Odysseus will make his way, first, to
the hut of his aged retainer, the swineherd Eumaios. His question about his son—whether Telemakhos, too, should “suffer pain while others devour his resources”—shows an awareness that his son’s fate echoes and depends on his own. Athene’s reply reminds the audience that the entire plot has been her devising and that Telemakhos, thanks to her, will win fame by his own voyage to the mainland.
14.6 a handsome place. The descriptions of the palaces of Menelaos, Aiolos, and Alkinoos, and the homes of Kirke and Kalupso, have all highlighted their status as near divinities. We might have expected, by contrast, that the humble keeper of Odysseus’s hogs would live in a hovel, but instead he has built a solid and comfortable homestead. His natural nobility and good breeding become apparent as the poem progresses; in fact, he turns out to be a king’s son, kidnapped when young. The rituals of hospitality are meticulously observed by him, all the more meaningfully since he has so little to give. His regular epithet dios (“shining; glorious; godlike”), otherwise reserved for heroes, points to the regard in which he is held by his master and his important role in the story of the return. That the Odyssey can produce sympathy for such characters, in spite of their low social standing, is a mark of its broad humanity.
14.56 My guest. His words to Odysseus perfectly sum up the religious reasons for guest-friendship. Yet there is irony as well in this short speech: if the man he is hosting, Odysseus, had only stayed home, Eumaios would not be living in such reduced circumstances. The hero’s absence has disrupted the whole social order, leading to the suitors’ notorious abuses—the opposite of the kind swineherd’s heartfelt hospitality.
14.100 twelve herds of cattle. This full listing of the master’s stock in herds and cattle, followed by the information about the suitors’ depredations, calls to mind the cattle of the sun-god incident (book 12). Just as Helios, the sun-god, punished those who stole and slaughtered his oxen, so Odysseus, like an avenging divinity, will bring the unruly suitors to ruin.
14.161 this very month. This is the first in a series of increasingly specific and insistent prophecies in the second half of the poem. Ironically, the prophecy has already been fulfilled and comes from Odysseus himself. The time between the waning and waxing of moons seems to have coincided with a local festival of Apollo, the archer-god, an appropriate emblem for Odysseus as avenger.
14.182 Arkeisios’s bloodline. Arkeisios was the father of an only son, Laertes, who was father in turn of one son, Odysseus. Telemakhos is the latest of the line.
14.199 broad island of Krete. Odysseus tells a tale of hard luck, describing how he spent years as an insatiably roving warrior from Krete, then went off to the Trojan War, and ended up kidnapped and shipwrecked. In another version of this tale, told to the suitors, he adds the detail that he was nearly enslaved on Kupros. Penelopeia hears from him yet another version, in which the beggar (her husband in disguise) pretends to have welcomed Odysseus years ago on Krete. The localization of these tales is significant, because it is probable that already audiences knew the traditional saying “All Kretans are liars.” It is as if Odysseus, by claiming to come from that island, advertises the fictionality of his biographical digressions. At the same time, a subtle narrative joke has been constructed for the poet’s own audience: after hearing Odysseus narrate his own adventure story for a good stretch of the poem (books 9 through 12), we are now made to see that the hero can lie expertly when he wants to. Why should we believe any of his tales? But then again, even the Muses, goddesses of poetic craft, are credited by early Greek poetry with this skill. In Hesiod’s Theogony, a poem about the origins of the world, the Muses pay the poet a divine visit and inform him, “We know how to tell many falsehoods like true things, and also know how to tell the truth—when we want to.” It is not accidental that the first of these Hesiodic lines from the Muses’ declaration is used by the Homeric poet in book 19 to describe Odysseus’s storytelling. Not only is the hero like the poet; he is like the poet’s divine source of inspiration, a font of inventions.
14.263 ravaged handsome fields. The incident and description recall Odysseus’s own raid on the Kikones of Thrace (9.39–61). In this fiction, however, he represents himself as a suppliant of the enemy king. Gestures of submission on the battlefield—a strategy he says Zeus inspired—caused the Egyptian king to pity him and take him under protection. In addition, the local nobles gave him gifts over the next seven years. As he sketches this ideal reception from his past, Odysseus in this speech probably hints that his hard-up present state deserves similar treatment. Every speech in the Odyssey depends on the poetic context for its full resonance. When Odysseus, in his beggar’s disguise, tells this fictionalized life story to Eumaios, the swineherd, we should suspect that the details are not accidental. In this case, they bring up the topic once more of guest-friendship (xenia).
14.288 a man arrived from Phoinikia. The unflattering picture Odysseus paints in this speech of these seagoing traders contrasts with the helpful role he assigns them in other, later tales he tells. Eumaios, we will soon learn, was kidnapped by Phoinikians. Odysseus, as his former master, no doubt knows this detail already and therefore wins the sympathy of his audience by making the Phoinikians the villains within his story.
14.308 like cormorants. This detail and several of the following match the final shipwreck of Odysseus’s crew, as he narrated it in 12.417ff.
14.316 Thesprotians. Thesprotia was Greek territory on the northwestern coast of the mainland, to the north of Ithaka and its neighboring islands. The scenario Odysseus describes—a royal child who finds him shipwrecked and leads him to the palace of a kindly king—copies the reality of his stay on Skherie among the Phaiakians.
14.327 Dodone. Dodone was a sanctuary dedicated to Zeus, in far northern Greek territory, near the city of Ioannina in Epiros, at which a sacred oak produced oracular responses through the rustling of its leaves. Priests of Zeus interpreted the oracles. The fictionalized version corresponds to Odysseus’s journey to the underworld to seek advice for his homecoming from Teiresies the seer. Odysseus cleverly represents himself as having heard of Odysseus’s trip to this site; such a visit may actually have figured within an alternative telling of the Odyssey, in some now lost version. Once again, the detail of near-kidnapping (line 340ff.) is meant to resonate with Eumaios’s own experience.
14.379 a man from Aitolia. Remarkably, the tale we have just heard Odysseus make up has been anticipated by another traveling beggar. This gives the impression that the hero in crafting his fictions is borrowing from a common store of motifs—connection with Krete and Idomeneus, accumulation of great wealth—already circulating about himself.
14.469 the time we set up an ambush. The beggar tells this story about Odysseus in order to ask indirectly for a cloak for himself in the present time. The recollection that he narrates, about a winter ambush at Troy, summons up Odysseus as an ingenious, sympathetic commander, who invents a military mission just to keep one of his men warm. As with tricksters in many folk traditions worldwide, Odysseus thereby brings about the useful distribution and recycling of basic material goods. The irony here is that the trickster’s present ingenuity in begging a cloak relies on telling a story about a trickster’s past deed involving clothes. At lines 131–32 Eumaios had slyly hinted about being aware that beggars made up stories to get favors from Penelopeia. He has also shown an unwillingness to be hoodwinked himself. Whether he finally has been conned, or simply appreciates a good tale, Eumaios relents and gives Odysseus a warm cloak—but only for the night. It will be Odysseus’s own son who will eventually clothe the beggar—an intriguing role reversal.
15.1 broad Lakedaimon. Athene goes to Sparte, in which we last saw Telemakhos at the palace of Menelaos in book 4. The juxtaposition of the arrival of Odysseus (book 13) and the departure of his son forces the audience to remark how similar the two are in thoughtfulness and strategic intelligence, even though they have been separated for twenty years. Athene’s warning that the mother of Telemakhos might marry and the
n forget about him puts Penelopeia’s character in a different light. From what the audience has already heard, this outcome appears unlikely, but enough doubt is cast here that we are sure to pay closer attention to her words and actions in the following books.
15.75 stay till I load your car. The artful juxtaposition of scenes of guest-friendship, from book 14 to book 15, also gives us the sense of aristocratic continuity—sons inherit their fathers’ friends; they gain their own wealth and reputation by maintaining such contacts. Ironically, in the case of Telemakhos, it is the imagined loss of his father Odysseus that has brought him into the circle of adult exchange relationships. In the view of the hearty and voluble husband of Helen, Telemakhos is now in a position to acquire excellent goods by making the circuit of guest-friends and accepting gifts all along the tour (lines 82–85). Though Telemakhos declines it, the offer gives a glimpse of the economic and social importance attached to this key Greek institution. The silver wine-bowl, a gift to Menelaos by a Phoinikian king (lines 117–18), and the robe woven by Helen (lines 126–27), will adorn Telemakhos’s own palace and bride when he comes to his full station in life.
15.160 a bird flew by. Omens from the flights of birds were common in all periods of Greek religion, but seem to have been subject to flexible interpretations by ordinary individuals. In this Greeks acted unlike the Romans with their elaborate science of augury and its strictly prescribed meanings, to be explained only by skilled professional priests. Menelaos delays in performing his interpretation of the sign (an eagle carrying off a goose) but the keen-witted Helen, as she had in book 4, anticipates him. Her interpretation relies on a contrast between far-off (eagle’s nest, Odysseus’s wanderings) and home (domestic goose), and reads the movement between these spaces as symbolic of the warrior’s return.