evidence for reading nései instead of anései in Od. XVIII.256-266

evidence for contention that Odysseus’ voyage home is a passage through darkness to light, made in the company of one whose presence reflects the original role of nóos

analysis of the release of Malampus – ékfuge kêra, he “escaped death,” a phrase similar to phúgomen thánaton

evidence for contention that Odysseus’ voyage home is passage through darkness to light

comparison of the diction hormaínōn ḗ ken thánaton phúgoi êken halṓēi to the proposed reconstruction of line tō ouk oȋd’ ḗ kén me nései theòs êken halṓō (Od. XVIII.265). Strongly supports the substitution of nései for anései in Od. XVIII.256-266

Now that Odysseus is back home in Ithaca, it is time for his son Telemachus to return home as well. The goddess Athena now travels to Sparta, where she will initiate the return of Telemachus back home to Ithaca.

Detail from a fresco found at Hagia Triadha in Crete. Reconstruction by Mark Cameron, p. 96 of the catalogue Fresco: A Passport into the Past. Minoan Crete through the eyes of Mark Cameron. 1999. Catalogue curated by Doniert Evely. Athens: British School at Athens; and N. P. Goulandris Foundation, Museum of Cycladic Art. Reproduced with the permission of the British School at Athens. BSA Archive: Mark Cameron Personal Papers: CAM 1.

See further details in the comment on O.08.061; also in the comment on I.03.059.

Here as also at O.15.253, it is said explicitly that the hero Amphiaraos died in the war of the Seven against Thebes. See also the note on O.15.253 (details in BA 204). (What follows is epitomized from H24H 15§34.) In the myth about the death of Amphiaraos as retold by Pausanias (1.34.2), the hero is riding back home on his war chariot after the defeat of the Seven against Thebes, when suddenly the earth opens up underneath and swallows him—together with his speeding chariot and horses and all—and, at the spot where this engulfment happened, there is a hieron, ‘sacred space’, where worshippers of the hero come to consult him, though Pausanias reports that there is some disagreement about matching the place of the ritual consultations with the actual place of the mythical engulfment. In any case, I propose that the engulfment of Amphiaraos by the earth signals not only his death but also his subsequent return from death as a cult hero. Here at O.15.247 and at O.15.253, the death of Amphiaraos after the expedition against Thebes is made explicit, though this death is only implicit in the references to the engulfment of the same hero as narrated in the songs of Pindar: Olympian 6.14; Nemean 9.24-27, 10.8-9. The poetic reticence we see in Pindar’s songs about mentioning the actual death of Amphiaraos at the moment of his engulfment by the earth is a sign, I also propose, of a keen awareness about the subsequent resurrection of the hero (BA 154, 204).

The morphology of this name Polupheídēs can be interpreted as meaning ‘having parsimony in many different ways’ or ‘... many times’.

Here at O.15.250–251, Ēōs the goddess of the dawn abducts the beautiful young hero Kleitos by way of ‘snatching’ him away, as expressed by the verb harpazein ‘snatch, seize’. The picturing of such an abduction is part of an overall mythological complex that I analyzed in some detail in GMP 242–245. I epitomize that analysis in what follows:

Part 1. Here is an inventory of verbs expressing the abduction of beautiful heroes by divinities:

A. Ēōs abducts Kleitos, here at O.15.250: hḗrpasen ‘snatched’

B. Ēōs abducts Tithōnos, Hymn to Aphrodite 218; hḗrpasen ‘snatched’ (on Ēōs and Tithōnos, see already the comment at O.05.001–002)

C. Ēōs abducts Orion, O.05.121: héleto ‘seized’

D. Ēōs abducts Kephalos, Euripides Hippolytus 455: an-hḗrpasen ‘snatched up’

E. Aphrodite abducts Phaethon (son of Kephalos), Hesiod Theogony 990: anereipsaménē ‘snatching up’.

Part 2. I draw attention here to a parallelism found in another case of abduction, where Zeus abducts Ganymedes. The parallelism is explicit in the Hymn to Aphrodite, where Aphrodite herself mentions the abduction of Ganymedes by Zeus at lines 202-217 and the abduction of Tithonos by Ēōs at lines 218-238 as precedents for her own seduction of the beautiful hero Anchises. In the Iliad, we find a further detail about the myth of Ganymedes: the gods abduct him for Zeus ‘on account of his beauty, so that he may be with the immortals’, I.20.235 (κάλλεος εἵνεκα οἷο, ἵν’ ἀθανάτοισι μετείη). So also here at O.15.250–251: when Ēōs abducts Kleitos, it is for the same reason: ‘on account of his beauty, so that he may be with the immortals’ (κάλλεος εἵνεκα οἷο, ἵν’ ἀθανάτοισι μετείη). These thematic parallelisms of Ganymedes/Tithōnos and Ganymedes/Kleitos are relevant to the fact that the verb used in the Iliad to describe how the gods abducted Ganymedes is an-ēreípsanto ‘snatched up’, I.20.234. This verb an-ēreípsanto, used here as an aorist indicative, corresponds to the aorist participle an-ereipsaménē ‘snatching up’, which designates how Aphrodite abducted the beautiful hero Phaethon (son of Kephalos) in Hesiod Theogony 990. But how are we to imagine this divine action of ‘snatching up’ a beautiful hero? The answer to this question is signaled at line 208 of the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, where the verb that is used to describe the abduction of Ganymedes is an-hḗrpase ‘snatched up’, line 208—and where the subject of the verb is áella ‘gust of wind’. The verb an-hḗrpase ‘snatched up’ at line 208 is coextensive with hḗrpase at line 202—where the subject of this verb is specifically Zeus himself, to be contrasted with the more general theoí ‘gods’, subject of anēreípsanto ‘snatched up’ at I.20.234. Not only in the case of an-ēreípsanto ‘snatched up’ with reference to the abduction of Ganymedes at I.20.234 but also in every other Homeric case of an-ēreípsanto ‘snatched up’, the subject of this verb refers to gusts of wind. In such contexts, we can see that thúella ‘gust of wind’ can be used as a synonym of áella ‘gust of wind’. When Penelope bewails the unknown fate of the absent Telemachus, she says that it was thúellai ‘gusts of wind’ that an-ēreípsanto ‘snatched up’ her son, O.04.727. Further, when Telemachus bewails the unknown fate of the absent Odysseus, he says that it was hárpuiai ‘snatching winds, Harpies’ that an-ēreípsanto ‘snatched up’ his absent father, O.01.241. The same expression is used when Eumaios bewails the unknown fate of the absent Odysseus, O.14.371. In general, the meaning of thúella ‘gust of wind’ is coextensive with the meaning of hárpuia ‘snatching wind, Harpy’: see the comments at O.20.061–080, where we find the combination of thuéllai ‘gusts of wind’ with an-hélonto ‘seized’ at O.20.066. Comparable is the combination of Ēṓs with héleto ‘seized’ at O.05.121—where Ēōs the goddess of the dawn abducts Orion. In the context of O.20.061–080, as highlighted in the comments on those lines, the combination of thuéllai ‘gusts of wind’ with an-hélonto ‘seized’ at O.20.066 is then restated at O.20.077 by way combining hárpuiai ‘snatching winds, Harpies’ with an-ēreípsanto ‘snatched up’. By now I have accounted for all the Homeric attestations of anēreípsanto ‘snatched up’ as also for the solitary Hesiodic attestation of anereipsaménē ‘snatching up’.

Part 3. As for hárpuia ‘snatching wind, Harpy’, the only other Homeric attestation besides those already surveyed in Part 2 is in the Iliad. At I.16.149–151, we see that a hárpuia ‘Harpy’ by the name of Podárgē, meaning ‘swift of foot’, was the mother of Xanthos and Balios, horses of Achilles, while the father of these horses was Zephyros the West Wind. In this connection, we may consider the Hesiodic description of the hárpuiai ‘snatching winds’ or ‘Harpies’, two in number, in Theogony 267–269: one is named Aellṓ, line 267, from áella ‘gust of wind’, and the other, Ōkupétē, the one who is ‘swiftly flying’, line 267. In short, the epic attestations of hárpuia betray a regular association with wind. Furthermore, this noun hárpuia may be formally connected with the verb transmitted as anēreípsanto ‘snatched up’ and anereipsaménē ‘snatching up’ in Homeric and Hesiodic diction respectively, as surveyed in Part 2: a decisive piece of evidence is a variant of hárpuia, shaped arepuîa (ἀρεπυῖα), attested in the Etymologicum Magnum (138.21) and on a vase inscription from Aegina (dual αρεπυια, see DELG under ῞Αρπυια).

Part 4. On the basis of these surveys in Parts 1–3, we can see how beautiful young heroes like Kleitos, Tithōnos, Orion, Kephalos, Phaethon, and Ganymedes were abducted: in the poetic imagination, they were snatched away by gusts of wind. The imagery is most explicit in the story of Ganymedes. The immediate agent of the abduction is a gust of wind, and the father of Ganymedes does not know what happened to his son after the áella ‘gust of wind’ ‘snatched [him] up’, an-ḗrpase, as we read at line 208 of the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. We should observe, however, that the ultimate agent is Zeus himself, who is the subject of the verb hḗrpasen ‘snatched’ designating the abduction of Ganymedes at line 203 of the Hymn to Aphrodite. As compensation for the abduction of Ganymedes, Zeus eventually gives to the boy’s father a team of wondrous horses, lines 210-211, who are described as aellópodes ‘having gusts of wind as their feet’, line 217 (ἀελλοπόδεσσιν). In this instance, both the action of taking and the action of giving in return center on the element of wind. But now, after having ascertained how such heroes were abducted, we may still ask where they were taken. In some cases, we can see that the outcome is positive, as when Ganymedes is taken to Olympus. In other cases, however, where a crossing of the cosmic river Ōkeanos is involved, the outcome may be either positive or negative. A case in point is a complicated passage at O.20.061–080, which I will analyze when I reach my comment on those lines, though I highlight already here a relevant detail. When Penelope wishes for a gust of wind to snatch her up and drop her into the Ōkeanos, O.20.063–065, the immediate agent is a thúella ‘gust of wind’, O.20.063, though the ultimate agents are the gods themselves, O.20.079. This linking of the Ōkeanos at O.20.063–065 with the wished-for abduction of Penelope by gusts of wind is relevant to what we read at I.16.149–151: it is on the banks of this cosmic river Ōkeanos that the hárpuia ‘Harpy’ named Podárgē ‘swift of foot’ gave birth to the wind-horses of Achilles. See the comment at Part 3 above. I note also that a variant reading for Ὠκεανοῖο ‘Ōkeanos’ at I.16.151 is Ἠριδανοῖο ‘Ēridanos’. The cosmic river Ēridanos as a mythological variant of the cosmic river Ōkeanos’: see the comment on O.19.320.

Here as also at O.15.247, it is said explicitly that the hero Amphiaraos died in the war of the Seven against Thebes. For details, see the note on O.15.247 (further details in BA 204).

Besides the anchor comment on endukéōs ‘continuously, uninterruptedly’ at O.07.256, see also the comment on O.14.063.

The parallelism of biē ‘force, violence, strength’ with hubris ‘outrage’ here at O.15.329 shows that the first word, as applied to the suitors of Penelope, is to be interpreted in a strictly negative sense.

Syntactically, the premise here reinforces the probability of the wish. See also the comment on O.14.440–441.

Besides the anchor comment on endukéōs ‘continuously, uninterruptedly’ at O.07.256, see also the comment on O.14.063.

Here again, as at O.11.179, it is said that whoever succeeds in marrying Penelope would surely qualify as ‘the best of the Achaeans’.

comparison of variant formulas with eukhetasthai for eukhomai in formulas with enjambed, present tense, sacral eukhesthai, in the context of analyzing Allen’s text of I.08.526

example of where xeinos de toi eukhomai einai is used to justify asking a host for a special favor

in a list of eukhesthai einai + social relationship (xeinos, hiketēs)

in a list of examples of absolute use of eukhesthai to report prayers, this verse as a case in point about the abundance of finite verbs in the indicative that characterizes the sub-genre of narratives or ritual scenes, and analysis of this verse as a transformation of a ritual narrative formula

analysis of this verse as a transformation of a ritual narrative formula containing eukhesthai and spendein, restricted to sacral contexts

in a list of examples of absolute use of eukhesthai to report prayers (ritual narrative formulas)

comparison of the diction hormaínōn ḗ ken thánaton phúgoi êken halṓēi to the proposed reconstruction of line tō ouk oȋd’ ḗ kén me nései theòs êken halṓō (Od. XVIII.265). Strongly supports the substitution of nései for anései in Od. XVIII.256-266

Odysseus is about to make a speech that is introduced by the narrator with the same words as the last speech he had made, the one at the end of Rhapsody 14: both are described as subōteō peirētizōn “testing the swineherd” (14.459=15.304). The “testing” seems to mean forcing Eumaios to choose between two alternatives: in Rhapsody 15, the narrator says that the goal of Odysseus’ speech is either that Eumaios sustain his ‘continuous affection’ (15.305, endukeōs phileoi)[1] for Odysseus and ask him to remain on the pig farm, or instead that he urge Odysseus to take off for the city (15.305-306). In Rhapsody 14, on a dark, rainy, and windy night, Odysseus wants to force Eumaios, again as a sign of his affection for him (14.461), to slip off his own cloak and give it to him, so that he can sleep warm and tight, or to urge one of his men to do so. For a beggar clothed in rags to wangle a cloak and a tunic from someone higher up on the social scale is really asking a lot. The usual request of a beggar is for a cup of wine and a piece of bread,[2] so rather than, “Buddy, can you spare a dime?” it’s more like, “Buddy, can you spare a fur coat?” In fact, Eumaios had predicted (14.131-132) that the disguised Odysseus would gin up any tale he could to get such clothing, so Odysseus’ attempt to do so has an elaborate prologue that suggests self-assertion (and almost self-identification), along with apologizing, for the brazen story he is about to tell, but he goes ahead with it anyway.[3]

Here in Rhapsody 15, Odysseus makes no apology for what he is about to say, but perhaps he should have. To force Eumaios to invite him to stay longer, he reports the contrary, a decision to leave the pig farm in the morning and go into the city, to beg some food and drink, to give Penelope a message, and to interact with the suitors. The next eight lines (15.317-324) conclude his speech, as follows:

I would immediately work [root dra- ‘do, work’] well among them, whatever they want.

I will speak out to you, so understand and listen:

Because of Hermes diaktoros[4], who awards favor

And superior renown to the deeds of all human beings,

When it comes to ‘working-ness’ [abstract noun derived from root dra-] no other mortal could compete with me

In heaping up fire the good way and splitting dry logs,

In divvying up the meat and roasting it and pouring wine,

The kinds of things that lesser men work at alongside [compound verb from root dra-] the nobles.

So the beggar is touting exceptional skills bestowed upon him by the god Hermes. But why the ones listed, and why with three forms of the verb dra- ‘do’? The words that I have highlighted in bold are all derivatives of the verbal root dra- that means ‘do’, a common verb in Classical (post-Homeric) Greek meaning ‘do/act’ as well as ‘perform a ritual act,’ but a decidedly rare word in Homer. In fact, each of the forms of it in Odysseus' speech occurs only here in all of Homeric epic. The ancient commentators on Homeric poetry say that all three forms in Odysseus’ speech refer to slave/servant behavior, translating the verb ‘serve,’ which would make its meaning in Homer unique, since the verb never occurs in later sources with that sense. The only frequent form of this root in Homeric Greek, the agent noun drēst-ēr/-eira, ‘one who does/works’ or ‘one who performs ritual acts,’ actually occurs five times in the Odyssey, always in the plural, apparently to designate women or men who are in fact servants or slaves. An examination of its usage, however, reveals that it always designates persons, slaves or not, who are performing ritual activities associated with the treatment of guests. It is also used once of males attached to the household of Odysseus who carry out the splitting of word (mentioned by Odysseus above, see also below) alongside the women preparing for the ritual treatment of guests (20.160).

When it comes to the actions that Odysseus in his testing speech describes himself as the unrivaled master of, thanks to the patronage of Hermes, they are, like the guest rituals, also ritual acts, and he specifies that they are things done by ‘lesser’ men ‘alongside’ the nobility — how much ‘lesser’ is not clear, especially given the word ‘alongside.’ All are activities related to the ritual sacrifice and cooking of pastoral animals: the preparation of a fire, the cooking of meat, its division into fair shares, and the pouring of wine over the roasting meat or to consume along with it. The brief mention of splitting wood for the male drēstēres in Odysseus’ palace at 20.160 must be preparatory to lighting a fire and cooking meat. In the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, all the activities that the disguised Odysseus describes himself as expert in, with the exception of pouring wine, are actually ascribed to Hermes himself. [1]

As the Hellenistic Homeric scholar Aristarchus understood,[2] the traditional function of the person called a kērux ‘herald, attendant’ helps to clarify Odysseus’ speech. Hermes is the god of heralds, who carry an emblem of his. In the Iliad, heralds are high-status, sacrosanct persons who convey messages and persons across social and, in the god’s case, cosmic boundaries. In the Odyssey that status also includes the ritual activities around the preparation of the sacrificial meal, an activity that happens to cross cosmic boundaries. Penelope describes such kērukes ‘heralds’ in 19.135 not as slaves but as dēmioergoi ‘men who work in the district’, skilled, itinerant workers of various kinds, like healers and singers (interestingly, kārú-, the exact cognate in Sanskrit of Greek kērux, means 'singer, poet'). The upshot is that the beggar Odysseus is describing himself as having just such skills, and to an unrivalled degree, so there is no need to translate the forms of the verb dra- in his speech as anything other than ‘do/work a ritual activity,’ not ‘do a servant’s work.’

Eumaios, however is horrified by Odysseus’ speech touting the unrivalled ritual skills he could perform for the suitors. He asks Odysseus (15.327-334) if he just wants to die, since the violence and the hubris of the suitors is infamous. “They don’t have sub-workers (root dra- again) like you,” he says, “they have young people wearing tunics and cloaks, with glistening heads and beautiful faces, who work under (root dra-) them, their tables brimming with bread, meat, and wine.” So don’t go into the town, stay with me, he says, and when Telemakhos comes, “he will give you a cloak and a tunic and send you off wherever you wish to go.” In this response, Eumaios twice uses a new dra- compound, hupo-dra- ‘do/work under (the suitors)’ to describe the position that Odysseus is aiming to have, whereas Odysseus had used the form para-dra- ‘do/work alongside,’ portraying himself and the work as higher-ranking than Eumaios does. The difference between ‘under’ and ‘alongside’ may be small, but the repeated, exceptional use of dra- and its derivatives in Odysseus’ speech hints at a coded message, in which the difference in wording bespeaks the actual status of Odysseus, who is in truth more than a peer to the suitors.[3] That is the kind of detail that, like an Easter-egg in computer-code, the Odyssey can playfully insert in its narrative for the delight of a tuned-in external audience. Such tricks are also typical of Odysseus’ lies, in that they tell a deeper truth, but only to those in the know, like the name he gives himself in the Cyclops episode (both ‘no one’ and ‘cunning’), or the story in the speech parallel to this one in Rhapsody 14 about the night raid he went on with Odysseus, when he forgot to wear a cloak.[4]

Footnotes

[1] See also Homeric Hymn to Hermes 108-133, where Hermes himself performs just such a sacrifice of his brother Apollo’s cattle.

[2] Dindorf 1885: II 614 on 15.319: the comment is on the words ‘because of Hermes’, and it says ‘because [he is a] herald (kērux).’ For the ascription of such a comment to Aristarchus, see E. Dickey 2007: p. 122, §4.1.44.

[3] On the concept of ainos ‘coded message,’ see Verdenius 1962: 389 and Nagy 1999: 237-242, 12§17-12§21, citing Jakobson 1960.

[4] That story is in fact qualified as an ainos; for more, see Muellner 1976 p. 97 n.43, https://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_MuellnerL.The_Meaning_of_Homeric_eukhomai.1976 and Dué and Ebbott 2010: commentary on Iliad 10.149, https://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Due_Ebbott.Iliad_10_and_the_Poetics_of_Ambush.2010; see also H. Roisman 1990, who argues that Eumaios and Odysseus recognize each other but without admitting it overtly to each other until the right time.

[1] For the meaning of endukeōs, see the comment on 7.256, G. Nagy, A Sampling of Comments on Odyssey Rhapsody 7, https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/a-sampling-of-comments-on-odyssey-rhapsody-7/ This formula is used to express strong affection between hosts and guests, including that between Odysseus and the goddess Kalypso, 7.256, which is erotic as well as emotional; it also implies correct ritual sequencing.

[2] For purnon kai kotulēn ‘bread and a cupful’ see 15.312, 17.12 and compare Iliad 22.494-495, where Hector’s orphaned son is imagined by his mother begging for a drink (again, kotulēn) that will not even moisten the roof of his mouth.

[3] On the nuances of the prologue and the whole speech, Muellner 1976: 96-97 =  http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_MuellnerL.The_Meaning_of_Homeric_eukhomai.1976.

[4] This epithet of Hermes, conventionally translated either ‘attendant’ or ‘messenger’, is the subject of a forthcoming article by Laura Massetti, who has published a new interpretation of another epithet of Hermes often associated with it, Argeiphontēs, in Massettti 2022. Her forthcoming work on diaktoros interprets it as meaning ‘whose brightness shines through the night,’ with parallels in Sanskrit to epithets of the fire god, Agni, for both names. The importance of the mastery of fire seems as relevant to this context as that of ‘attendant, ritual attendant’, which may be the surface meaning.

Bibliography

G. Dindorf, ed., Scholia Graeca in Homeri Odysseam, Oxford, 1855

E. Dickey, Ancient Greek Scholarship, New York, 2007

L. Massetti, L., “Hermes Ἀργεϊφόντης and Agni bhā́r̥jīka‑.” Indogermanische Forschungen 127/1, 2022, 131–50.

L. Muellner, The Meaning of Homeric ΕΥΧΟΜΑΙ Through its Formulas, Innsbruck, 1976 = https://chs.harvard.edu/book/muellner-leonard-the-meaning-of-homeric-eyxomai-through-its-formulas/

Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry, 2nd edition, Baltimore, 1999 = http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_NagyG.The_Best_of_the_Achaeans.1999

association of endukeōs with philein, in the context of the analysis of the language affirming the rules of reciprocal exchange in Achilles’ ransoming Hektor/receiving Priam (Zeus’ words), with particular comment on endukeōs

analysis of the attestations of eukhesthai + aorist infinitive and that there are no eukhesthai + infinitive formulas, and of the versatility of poetic technique to report prayers (invocation, grant of favor, request of favor)

analysis of the attestations of sacral eukhesthai in the present tense and comparison of variant formulas with eukhetasthai for eukhesthai in formulas with enjambed, present tense, sacral eukhesthai, and switch from Dii patri to Dii t’alloisin te theoisin attested with a variation of the || (short OR two shorts) euxamenos Dii patri # formula which uses epeukhesthai instead of eukhesthai and transformation of the formula with present tense of eukhesthai in I.08.526, in the context of analyzing Allen’s text at I.08.526 vs. Zenodotus’s version of the verse

in a list of passages with eukhesthai + infinitive (aorist)

comment on the contrast between eti and aiei in this passage

example of the pairing of question and answer regarding identity (between man and god) in Ancient Greek that matches the Avestan model

example of the pairing of question and answer regarding identity (between man and god) in Ancient Greek that matches the Avestan model

in a list of attestations of genos eukhesthai einai and its transformations

analysis of philotēs and timē going together with this passage as an example

association of endukeōs with philein, in the context of the analysis of the language affirming the rules of reciprocal exchange in Achilles’ ransoming Hektor/receiving Priam (Zeus’ words), with particular comment on endukeōs