by Homer
18.321 Melantho. Her brother, the similarly named Melanthios (“Blackened”), has already accosted Odysseus (book 17). The further motif here, of an ungrateful young person raised in the house, makes a contrast with the story of Eumaios and recalls what Penelopeia has revealed about Antinoos’s upbringing. Melantho’s terror at Odysseus’s violent verbal response can only please an audience. Naturally, given what we hear about her relations with Eurumakhos (line 325), that suitor now takes the opportunity to mock Odysseus and to aim a footstool at him.
18.410 biting their lips. Telemakhos has gained full rhetorical ability with the assurance that the suitors’ doom is closing in. In recognition of his forcefulness, Amphinomos backs up the young man’s commands and disperses the unruly revelers.
19.33 Pallas Athene. The impressive display of god-sent light also plays on the notion, evident in the Greek, that “justice” (dikê) is a form of display, of “pointing out” (from the verb deiknumi). The “way of the Gods” (line 43) is literally illuminated for mortals who collaborate with them. Odysseus’s calm assurance that the divinity is at work characterizes him as the tried and true hero, in contrast to the anxious awe of his son at this miraculous light.
19.96 Eurunome. Like Melantho, she seems to be working in the hall all through the conversation between husband and wife. If there is to be a recognition scene, Odysseus is surely aware of disloyal onlookers like Melantho, and will avoid showing his identity. We can expect a form of coded communication between the couple as a result. On the other hand, it could be that Penelopeia (as the majority of critics still maintains) only has suspicions and is not yet aware that her husband is seated before her.
19.109 faultless king’s. Those in favor of a coded communication here argue that Odysseus’s indirect reply, with an elaborate praise and reference to kingship, is a way of pointing to his own true character. He is the king whose presence in the land will lead to renewal.
19.138 The shroud came first. In proof of her loyalty to her husband, Penelopeia recounts her famous ruse. Like the cunning Athene, she is renowned for her expertise at handicraft—specifically, weaving. This skill, emblematic of the good wife in Greek culture, enabled her to buy time and save herself from remarrying. She did so by a doubly cunning device: weaving alone involves craft, but unweaving—a contrary, seemingly useless act—turns out to be even craftier. And when the suitors after three years discovered the ruse, Penelopeia’s cunning rhetoric continued to put them off. A significant detail is that Penelopeia claimed to be weaving a shroud for Laertes: in other words, completion of the cloth would be a sign of impending death. Symbolically, this fatal image applies to Penelopeia’s own situation, for finishing the shroud would mean she has to give up hope that her first husband is alive, and take another. The further signs she mentions—her son’s maturity, her parents’ urging, and the suitors’ impatience—heighten the sense of crisis.
19.163 not from storied oak. This proverb apparently alludes to archaic beliefs that some humans (as well as nymphs) could come from features of the landscape or the earth itself.
19.172 Krete’s a lovely land. As the center of pre-Greek high culture in the area, this large island had already by Homeric times established a reputation for ancient traditional beliefs and a large, mixed population. Akhaians may designate Mycenaean-age Greek settlers while “Kretans from old times” seems to refer to pre-Greek inhabitants (the so-called Minoans). The “three clear strains” of the Dorians were the traditional three tribal groups into which this more recent set of Greek-speaking settlers divided. Pelasgians were thought to be another group of pre-Greek inhabitants, whose identity remains unknown. Knosos, now a major tourist site, has been excavated by the British since 1900; it was the site of a vast palace complex connected with the stories of the labyrinth and of mythical King Minos (hence “Minoan” was the name given by discoverer Arthur Evans to the civilization).
19.183 Aithon. After boasting of a prestigious genealogy, going back to Zeus, Odysseus calls himself “Blazing” (an epithet applied to both fire and hunger). The name of his true island, Ithaka, probably comes from the same root.
19.188 Amnisos. Another pre-Greek site from the Minoan age (ca. 1600 B.C.) on Krete. Eileithuie was a goddess of childbirth worshiped there.
19.215 testing you closely. A match for her cunning husband, Penelopeia wants proof that the stranger has in fact hosted Odysseus some years ago. She thus provides the opportunity for Odysseus to recount in exquisite detail the very clothing he was wearing twenty years before, as also the look of the trusty companion he had with him. If she at this point realizes that only Odysseus himself would know such signs, Penelopeia does an expert job of concealing her recognition, even going so far as to assert that she will never again see her husband (line 257ff.).
19.271 The man’s close by. The beggar’s insistence might be taken as a signal that “close by” means “here” and the reference to the Thesprotians—where he himself has just come from—could prompt the equation of beggar and hero. Odysseus even reveals his own recent adventures with the Phaiakians, imputing them to the “Odysseus” who is to come. His mention of the matchless schemes of the trickster might, finally, be meant as reassurance to his wife that he is now in control.
19.346 an older handmaid. Rejecting Penelopeia’s offer of a more comfortable bed, he accepts the idea of a footbath, but only if given by a hard-worn woman. The choosing of Eurukleia by the queen is made with explicit acknowledgment that this maid had been Odysseus’s nurse. Penelopeia’s comments (line 358ff.) on the likeness of the beggar to her husband, in terms of his projected aging, at least heighten the suspense, if they are not already a signal that she knows he is Odysseus. The nurse’s apostrophe at line 363 to her (supposedly absent) master pours on more irony.
19.390 thinking ‘the scar.’ It is difficult to imagine that the man who plans every move simply forgot that his mark of identity could be discovered in this manner. As with the rest of the scene, motivations remain intriguingly obscure. Did Odysseus intend that his old nurse recognize him? Or did Penelopeia select her for the job of footwashing knowing that this might reveal who the stranger is? Like a trapdoor in the narrative, the mention of the scar triggers a long flashback to explain how Odysseus came to bear this mark, in the course of which we learn the familial roots of his cunning and the significance of the hero’s name.
19.394 Parnesos. Parnesos was the well-known mountain behind Apollo’s temple at Delphi. The Hymn to Hermes (ca. sixth century B.C.), which tells the story of the cooperation and exchange between Apollo and his newborn half brother Hermes, may be a clue to the connection of Autolukos (“Real Wolf”) and this locale. Hermes, god of communication, trade, and thievery, possesses the sort of cunning intelligence that is a necessary complement (in Greek terms) to the authoritative power of Zeus and his older son Apollo. As we hear at this point the maternal grandfather of Odysseus and the one who actually named him learned the arts of “swearing and stealing” directly from Hermes. By swearing, the poet means the art of making false oaths: so Odysseus’s skillful tale-telling runs in the family. The translator faithfully preserves what is a pun in the original Greek—the similarity between the verb form “being the object of anger” (odussamenos) and the name Odysseus. In the terms of the poem, the hero is “at odds” with gods and mortals, yet survives despite (or because of) this antipathy.
19.452 Odysseus caught him. The boar-hunt at his grandfather’s marked the young man’s first kill, an important, almost Faulknerian, initiatory moment. It is significant for our appreciation of Odysseus’s character that the childhood naming scene is telescoped in this flashback with the vignette of coming of age, over both of which the Hermes-figure, Autolukos presides. A further interesting detail: the thicket from which the boar lunges (lines 439–43) is described exactly as was the shelter that kept Odysseus safe on Skherie just after his final shipwreck (5.478–85), hinting at a link between heroic identity (a scar from his first boar) and ultimate survival
(salvation by concealment).
19.479 shifted her thoughts. The queen fails to notice the flurry of activity. In a simpler epic, the scar would have led to outright recognition and the reunion of the long-separated couple. The Odyssey poet’s sense of realistic detail and consistency of character, however, demands that all precautions be taken and all steps described before the final resolution. Odysseus still needs the element of surprise to overcome 108 men: letting his nurse tell Penelopeia now would risk spreading the news, especially if other maid-servants, like the disloyal Melantho, are still in the vicinity. Gagging and threatening the old woman, Odysseus resembles the man who once engineered the successful Trojan Horse ambush by muzzling the companion who would cry out (see 4.287–88).
19.518 Pandareos’s daughter. Aedon (her name means “nightingale”), daughter of the king of Krete, married Zethos, king of Thebes, but was jealous that her new sister-in-law Niobe had more children. Attempting to kill one of them at night, she mistakenly slew her own son, Itus (or Itulos), and was transformed into a bird. The myth explains the bird’s mournful song. (It did not bother the Greeks that it is actually the male nightingale that sings.) Although Penelopeia makes this comparison to express her own variability (cf. lines 521 and 524), the theme of a son’s (potential) death is also relevant to what Telemakhos has just gone through. It is psychologically apt that he weighs on the mother’s mind, as it is characteristic that she projects onto her son (her own?) desire that she marry and go off (line 533ff.).
19.535 explain it. Penelopeia might invite his interpretation simply because she has already noticed the beggar’s cleverness, or, if she suspects his identity, might be fishing for further confirmation through his response to her enigmatic dream. As critics have noted, the symbolism is actually interpreted within the dream itself: the eagle that killed her geese announces that he is her husband (line 549). We need not assume that her grief at the death of the geese indicates unconscious desire for the suitors’ presence, as her mourning for them occurs in the dream before the explanation. Odysseus asserts the truth of the internal explanation, but Penelopeia (line 560ff.), either uncertain or still concealing her real intuitions, resorts to another mythic allusion, the gates of horn and ivory, in denying truth to her dream. Etymological puns connect “ivory” (elephas) with “deceive” (elephairomai) and “horn” (keras) with “fulfill” (kraino). Those who think the entire interview has been a coded communication point out that it is precisely now, after Odysseus’s reassuring “interpretation” asserting his own presence back in Ithaka, that Penelopeia decides on the marriage-test, the contest with the arrows and axes (lines 572–78).
20.14 the way a dog will growl. In the similes that follow we hear echoes of recent scenes in the narrative, much in the way that dreams reconfigure the real events of the day. The protective dog recalls Argos, the aged hound of Odysseus, while the stomach packed with blood (lines 25–26) brings to mind the beggar’s reward for defeating Iros (18.44–45). Such poetic touches create the sense that narrator and hero are working within the same frame of reference, or even that the narrator is like the hero (just as Odysseus was like the narrator, for books 9 through 12).
20.30 Athene came to him. Odysseus agonizes about how to kill the 108 suitors who boss around his servants, have their way with the housemaids, and eat up all his livelihood. In the midst of his doubt and anxiety, the goddess Athene appears to him, in a remarkably beautiful epiphany all the more noteworthy for its depiction of the tender, protective care of a goddess for a mortal, a moment that would not be out of place in the devotional literature of medieval Christianity. Yet Athene, bringer of light, is here promising her hero something more than religious comfort. The virgin goddess will see to it that Odysseus and his small band of retainers execute a merciless slaughter.
20.66 Pandareos’s daughters. This is the same king mentioned in 19.518; in another version, his three daughters (Aedon, Merope, and Kleothera) were swept away because their father had offended the gods. The point of the allusion seems to lie in its emotional resonance: Penelopeia’s own experiences have meant she can identify both with the loneliness of the orphaned girls (now) and their good fortune (as when she was with Odysseus). In addition, her impending remarriage strikes her as worse than death, and the thought of young girls spirited away before their weddings is, in a paradoxical way, consoling. The motif as death-as-marriage (or the inverse) structures the myth of Persephone and occurs throughout Greek tragedy.
20.303 upbraiding Ktesippos. This is the third time within a few episodes that a suitor has aimed an object at Odysseus, but the only time Telemakhos has responded with such a threat. The growing confidence of the young man emerges in his speech. Looking back on his life, Telemakhos remarks on his previous inability to fight, then asserts he is now ready to die, repeating exactly what Odysseus, still unrecognized, had said to him earlier (16.106–11).
20.346 to laugh wildly. The bizarre, divinely induced laughter signals the loss of control and imminent destruction of the guilty. If good order goes with justice in the early Greek worldview, then men whose laughs are like tears of mourning and whose food is bloodied and inedible are the image of chaos. Theoklumenos, the seer who has traveled with Telemakhos, sees into the future within the space of the same banquet room, where these men will die.
21.14 Iphitos, Eurutos’s son. The flashback is thematically relevant in the context of guest-friendship and its abuse. Upon meeting in Messene (a region southwest of Sparte), Odysseus and this doomed hero had exchanged gifts of weaponry, as might be expected among aristocratic warriors. Later, Iphitos was murdered by Herakles, although a guest in the latter’s house. In a variation on the theme, Odysseus will slay uninvited and abusive “guests” in his own house with the very gift of Iphitos. Symbolically, at least, the earlier victim has revenge.
21.42 she came to the storeroom. Penelopeia’s great strength lies in her powerful memory. In this, she resembles the poet himself, a link that perhaps explains the narrator’s sympathy for the character. As she prepares for the marriage-contest that will decide her fate, the wife of Odysseus ventures into the storeroom to bring out his great bow. The sight and feel of it unleash overwhelming memories. Nor are we the only ones to sense her fine imagination in this vignette. Penelopeia herself seems to recognize her susceptibility to the past, and tells the suitors that even after a new marriage she will still dream of her old home (lines 78–79). Making her assertion all the more powerful is the poet’s technique here. The solid, finely carved dark interior of the storeroom has been depicted with the painterly care of a Dutch master, making tangible the house Penelopeia will lose and the enduring love it had sheltered.
21.123 He’d never seen them. The uncanny knowledge that Telemakhos has about how to set up the feat matches his inborn ability to accomplish his father’s feat of stringing the bow. For there is little doubt that he would have, had not Odysseus prevented it (line 129). The insistence on the continuity of heroic virtue gives rise to the interesting paradox that the only one worthy of winning Penelopeia in the contest of strength is her own son (as inheritor of his father’s skills). The Homeric poet leaves to the tellers of Oedipus myths any exploration of this theme, however. In pretending to be incapable, Telemakhos resembles his father all the more, disguising his true strength and purpose until the time is ripe.
21.186 Antinoos held off. Counterpointing the hints of impending doom (lines 98–100, 153–54) is the crescendo effect of the trial of the bow, with the stronger and better known leaders of the suitors reserved for the last. Just at the point where the poet might have turned to their attempt, he moves to the revelation of Odysseus to his servants (lines 207–25), thus cementing alliances for the final battle and allowing the hero to orchestrate the total destruction.
21.259 Who’d bend a bow. Although it seems a shooting contest would be entirely appropriate for a feast-day of Apollo, the archer-god, Antinoos uses the festivity as an excuse to delay the final test of his own strength, apparent
ly shaken at the failure of Eurumakhos. The mention of the god underlines the significance of Odysseus’s action: his role will match Apollo’s, just as his vengeance recalls that of the sun-god, Helios.
21.295 Wine once crazed. Dramatic irony arises from what we sense will be the fate of the speaker. Antinoos cites as a mythic exemplum for keeping order at a feast the well-known story of the Lapiths, a human clan whose king was Pirithoos (a companion of Theseus) and the Kentaurs, the hybrid horse-men of Thessaly in northeastern Greece. At the wedding of Pirithoos, the Kentaur Eurution tried to steal the bride; the resulting battle left many of his fellows dead. The story was represented as a human victory over forces of disorder, most prominently on the pediment of the temple of Zeus at Olumpia. In this sculptural group (large fragments of which survive) the central figure, an upright Apollo, effortlessly wards off the attacking beast-men. In the Odyssey passage, Antinoos, intent on taking the king’s woman, unwittingly plays the Kentaur figure while Odysseus will assume the ordering function of Apollo.
21.350 go to your room. Penelopeia has insisted that the beggar get the bow, leading the audience once more to suspect that this chance for Odysseus to participate in the contest was prearranged. If so, the reaction of Telemakhos might be a cover: he does not want to make his mother’s role obvious. At the same time, his words are appropriate, given the leaps in confidence that he has been making since Athene’s intervention in his life. The nearly identical wording of lines 352–53 and 1.358–59 forces the reminiscence of his earlier command to his mother, when she had wanted Phemios the bard to stop singing. As that episode marked the start of Telemakhos’s growth trajectory, so this signals the completion.