Homer Odyssey 13.256

Samuel Butler (Translator)

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Odyssey. Homer. Samuel Butler (Translator). London. 1900 (?).

Current edition Perseus

Odyssey (English) (Homer. The Odyssey: rendered into English prose for the use of those who cannot read the original. Butler, Samuel, 1835-1902, translator. Revised by Timothy Power and Gregory Nagy. London: A.C. Fifield, 1900.)

Editions (1)
Ὀδύσσεια Perseus (Homer. The Odyssey, Volume 1-2. Murray, A. T. (Augustus Taber), editor. London: William Heinmann; New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1919.) — 13.250 focus
Translations (8)
Odyssey Perseus (Homer. The Odyssey, Volume 1-2. Murray, A. T. (Augustus Taber), translator. London: William Heinmann; New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1919.) — 13.250 focus
English (Butler, rev. Nagy et al., 2020) (OCR draft) Experimental (English (Butler, rev. Nagy et al., 2020)) — 13.250 focus
Resourceful great Odysseus was glad at finding himself, as Athena told him, in his own country, and he began to answer, but he did not speak the truth [ alēthēs], and made up a lying story [255] in the instinctive wiliness of his mind [ noos].
English (William Cullen Bryant, 1873) (OCR draft) Experimental (English (William Cullen Bryant, 1873)) — 13.250 focus
English (Alexander Pope, 1726, ed. Watson, 1858) (OCR draft) Experimental (English (Alexander Pope, 1726, ed. Watson, 1858)) — 13.250 focus
English (Thomas Hobbes, 1667, ed. Molesworth 1843) (OCR draft) Experimental (English (Thomas Hobbes, 1667, ed. Molesworth 1843)) — 13.250 focus
These words unto Ulysses were great joy.
And to the Goddess then he answered:
(Falsely; on fables keeping still his hold,
As one that always plots hath in his head):
235
I have, said he, of Ithaca been told,
Far hence in Crete, and now am thither come
With these my goods; but leaving to my child
About as much as I brought out from home;
And here I am alone, a man exil'd.
240
For of Idomeneus I kill'd the son,
Orsilochus, for swiftness of his feet
So excellent, there was not any one
That could out-run him in the isle of Crete.
Because I had refused a command
245
Under his father at the siege of Troy,
And would command ray own, he took in hand
To have depriv'd me of my share o' th' prey,
Which to my dangers and my deeds was due.
For which, by night, with one companion,
250
Near the highway, I with my spear him slew,
And in the dark escaped when I had done.
And to Phœnicia by sea I went;
And hired with a good part of my prey
To Pylus or to Elis to be sent.
255
But adverse winds forc'd us another way.
And wandering, there arrived in the night.
And straight into this port we brought the bark,
Ne'er thought of food, though very well we might,
But went ashore, and lay down in the dark,
260
And there I slept. The mariners meanwhile
Take out my goods and lay them on the shore,
And back unto Sidonia they sail,
And after that I never saw them more.
English (George Chapman, 1667, ed. Hooper 1857) (OCR draft) Experimental (English (George Chapman, 1667, ed. Hooper 1857)) — 13.250 focus
English (William Cowper, 1791, ed. Southey) (OCR draft) Experimental (English (William Cowper, 1791, ed. Southey)) — 13.250 focus
English (H. B. Cotterill, 1911) (OCR draft) Experimental (English (H. B. Cotterill, 1911)) — 13 focus

New Alexandria Commentaries

Gregory Nagy

The storytelling of Odysseus has come to an end, and he will now be sent home to Ithaca by his hosts, Alkinoos and the Phaeacians. Sailing through the night in a ship provided by king Alkinoos, Odysseus is in a deep sleep, which is compared to death itself. At the precise moment when the ship reaches the shores of his homeland, Ithaca, Odysseus will ‘come to’, experiencing a mystical return to light and life.

draft js image error“Ulysses Asleep Laid on his Own Coast by the Phaeacian Sailors” (1805). John Flaxman (English, 1755–1826). Purchased as part of the Oppé Collection with assistance from the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund 1996. Image via the Tate.

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Here at O.13.256–286 we see the first example of “Cretan lies” told by Odysseus in the context of his re-entry into the kingdom of Ithaca. The concept of “Cretan lies” was introduced in the anchor comment at O.01.284–286 on a Cretan Odyssey.

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The goddess here formally declares to Odysseus her support for the hero, which leads ultimately to his success in his final confrontation with the suitors. But there is an undercurrent of antagonism between the goddess and the hero, insofar as they are both exponents of mētis ‘mind, intelligence’. Here it is Athena who boasts of her own poetic glory for possessing qualities of mētis ‘mind, intelligence’, O.13.299.

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Leonard Muellner

When Odysseus arrives back in Ithaka in Odyssey 13, he encounters Athene in the shape of young shepherd. After Odysseus lies to her about his identity, Athene reacts with a smile and another transformation:\r\n\r\nὣς φάτο, μείδησεν δὲ θεὰ γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη,\r\n\r\nχειρί τέ μιν κατέρεξε· δέμας δ' ἤϊκτο γυναικὶ\r\n\r\nκαλῇ τε μεγάλῃ τε καὶ ἀγλαὰ ἔργα ἰδυίῃ·\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nSo he spoke, and the goddess gray-eyed Athene smiled,\r\n\r\nand she stroke him with her hand. And she took on the shape of a woman\r\n\r\nbeautiful and tall and skilled in beautiful handiworks,\r\n\r\nand speaking to him she addressed him in winged words.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nSome scholars have interpreted this transformation as the goddess revealing herself to the hero in her true form (e.g., Stanford 1948, ad 13.289; Heubeck 1988-1992, ad 13.288), but as Pucci argues, it is unlikely that Odysseus sees the goddess as she really is (Pucci 1986:7-28). The diction of the passage makes clear that Athene’s appearance “in the shape of a beautiful woman” is as much a disguise as the others she adopts elsewhere: as the poet tells us, “she took on (ἤϊκτο) the shape of a woman.”\r\n\r\nThe formulaic language to describe the goddess’ reaction and transformation has both erotic and maternal connotations. The formula “and she/he stroked him/her with her/his hand” appears seven times in Homeric epic, always to describe intimate moments between mother and child or between lovers. In the Iliad, the phrase is mostly used to described mother and child (1.361, 5.372, 23.127) and once of husband and wife (6.484-5). In the Odyssey the phrase occurs two other times: Menelaos smiles and strokes Telemachos in a fatherly manner (4.610), and there is perhaps a maternal aspect to Athene’s concern for Odysseus, but the encounter is not without sexual undercurrents, which are also present in the only other Odyssean instance of the phrase, which involves Kalypso smiling and stroking Odysseus (5.180-1).\r\n\r\nWhen Athene strokes Odysseus, the erotic tenor of her gesture is made evident in both her physical transformation and the conversation that follows, which centers on the like-mindedness of the goddess and the hero, a quality Odysseus praises as the basis of a good marriage (Odyssey 6.183). Athene chooses an appearance that is particularly appropriate to this moment of intimacy between goddess and her mortal protégé: the shape of a seductive woman, beautiful and skilled at handiworks, or in short and as the Greek gunê also denotes, a perfect wife endowed with the most desirable qualities. The encounter between goddess and hero in Odyssey 8 is thus replete with motifs—an encounter with a beautiful female divinity in the countryside, a shrine of the nymphs—usually associated with stories of love between goddesses and men, and Odysseus in this scene is depicted as the notional lover of the goddess, or as a nympholept (numpholeptos).\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nReferences\r\n\r\nHeubeck, A. et al. 1998-1992. A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey. Volume 2. Books 9-16. Oxford.\r\n\r\nPache, C. 2011. ‘A Moment’s Ornament’: The Poetics of Nympholepsy in Ancient Greece. Oxford.\r\n\r\nPucci, P. 1986. “Les figures de la Mêtis dans l’Odyssée.” Mètis 1:7-28.\r\n\r\nStanford, W.B. 1948. Homer. Odyssey XIII-XXIV. Edited with Introduction and Commentary. London.

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analysis of Athena’s reminding of Hermes in O.13.221ff.

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