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BOOK XIII.

THE ARRIVAL OF ULYSSES IN ITHACA.

Ulysses takes his leave of Alcinoüs and Arete, and embarks in the evening. Next morning the ship arrives at Ithaca; where the sailors, as Ulysses is yet sleeping, lay him on the shore with all his treasures. On their re- turn, Neptune changes their ship into a rock. In the mean time, Ulysses awaking, knows not his native Ithaca, by reason of a mist which Pallas had cast round him. He breaks into loud lamentations; till the god- dess appearing to him in the form of a shepherd, discovers the country to him, and points out the particular places. He then tells a feigned story of his adventures, upon which she manifests herself, and they consult together on the measures to be taken to destroy the suitors. To conceal his return, and disguise his person the more effectually, she changes him into the figure of an old beggar.

HE ceas'd; but left so pleasing on their ear

His voice, that listening still they seem'd to hear.

A pause of silence hush'd the shady rooms:

The grateful conference then the king resumes:

Alcinoüs

'Whatever toils the great Ulysses pass'd,
5

'Beneath this happy roof they end at last;

'No longer now from shore to shore to roam,

'Smooth seas and gentle winds invite him home.

'But hear me, princes! whom these walls enclose,

'For whom my chanter sings, and goblet flows
10

'With wine unmix'd (an honour due to age,

'To cheer the grave, and warm the poet's rage,)

'Though labour'd gold, and many a dazzling vest

'Lie heap'd already for our godlike guest:

'Without new treasures let him not remove,
15

'Large, and expressive of the public love:

'Each peer a tripod, each a vase bestow,

'A general tribute, which the state shall owe.'

This sentence pleas'd: then all their steps address'd

To separate mansions, and retired to rest.

Now did the rosy-finger'd morn arise,

And shed her sacred light along the skies.

Down to the haven and the ships in haste

They bore the treasures, and in safety plac'd.

The king himself the vases ranged with care;

Then bade his followers to the feast repair.

A victim ox beneath the sacred hand

Of great Alcinoüs falls, and stains the sand.

To Jove th' Eternal, (power above all powers!

Who wings the winds, and darkens heaven with showers,)

The flames ascend: till evening they prolong

The rites, more sacred made by heavenly song:

For in the midst, with public honours graced,

Thy lyre, divine Demodocus! was placed.

All, but Ulysses, heard with fix'd delight:

He sate, and ey'd the sun, and wish'd the night:

Slow seem'd the sun to move, the hours to roll,

His native home deep-imaged in his soul.

As the tir'd ploughman spent with stubborn toil,

Whose oxen long have torn the furrow'd soil,

Sees with delight the sun's declining ray,

When home with feeble knees he bends his way

To late repast, (the day's hard labour done,)

So to Ulysses welcome set the sun;

Then instant to Alcinoüs and the rest

(The Scherian¹ states) he turn'd, and thus address'd:

Ulysses
47

'O thou, the first in merit and command!

'And you the peers and princes of the land!

'May every joy be yours! nor this the least,

'When due libation shall have crown'd the feast,
50

'Safe to my home to send your happy guest.

'Complete are now the bounties you have given,

'Be all those bounties but confirm'd by Heaven!

'So may I find, when all my wanderings cease,

'My consort blameless, and my friends in peace.
55

'On you be every bliss; and every day,

'In home-felt joys, delighted roll away:

'Yourselves, your wives, your long-descending race,

'May every god enrich with every grace!

'Sure fix'd on virtue may your nation stand,
60

'And public evil never touch the land!'

His words well weigh'd, the general voice approv'd

Benign, and instant his dismission mov'd.

The monarch to Pontonoüs gave the sign,

To fill the goblet high with rosy wine:

Alcinoüs

'Great Jove the Father first' (he cried) 'implore;

'Then send the stranger to his native shore.'

The luscious wine th' obedient herald brought;

Around the mansion flow'd the purple draught;

Each from his seat to each immortal pours,

Whom glory circles in the Olympian bowers.

Ulysses sole with air majestic stands,

The bowl presenting to Aretè's hands;

Then thus: 'O queen, farewell! be still possess'd

'Of dear remembrance, blessing still and bless'd!

'Till age and death shall gently call thee hence,

'(Sure fate of every mortal excellence!)

'Farewell! and joys successive ever spring

'To thee, to thine, the people and the king!'

Thus he: then parting prints the sandy shore

To the fair port: a herald march'd before,

Sent by Alcinoüs; of Aretè's train

Three chosen maids attend him to the main:

This does a tunic and white vest convey,

A various casket that, of rich inlay,

And bread and wine the third. The cheerful mates

Safe in the hollow poop dispose the cates:

Upon the deck soft painted robes they spread,

With linen cover'd, for the hero's bed.

He climb'd the lofty stern; then gently press'd

The swelling couch, and lay compos'd to rest.

Now placed in order, the Phaeacian train

Their cables loose, and launch into the main:

At once they bend, and strike their equal oars,

And leave the sinking hills and lessening shores.

While on the deck the chief in silence lies,

And pleasing slumbers steal upon his eyes.

As fiery coursers in the rapid race

Urged by fierce drivers through the dusty space,

Toss their high heads, and scour along the plain;

100

So mounts the bounding vessel o'er the main.

Back to the stern the parted billows flow,

And the black ocean foams and roars below.

Thus with spread sails the winged galley flies;

Less swift an eagle cuts the liquid skies;

105

Divine Ulysses was her sacred load,

A man in wisdom equal to a god!

Much danger, long and mighty toils he bore,

In storms by sea, and combats on the shore:

All which soft sleep now banish'd from his breast,

110

Wrapp'd in a pleasing, deep, and death-like rest.

But when the morning-star with early ray²

Flam'd in the front of heaven, and promis'd day;

Like distant clouds the mariner descries

Fair Ithaca's emerging hills arise.

115

Far from the town a spacious port appears,

Sacred to Phorcys' power, whose name it bears:³

Two craggy rocks, projecting to the main,

The roaring wind's tempestuous rage restrain,

Within, the waves in softer murmurs glide,

120

And ships secure without their halsers ride.

High at the head a branching olive grows,

And crowns the pointed cliffs with shady boughs.

Beneath, a gloomy grotto's cool recess

Delights the Nereids of the neighbouring seas,

125

Where bowls and urns were form'd of living stone,

And massy beams in native marble shone:

On which the labours of the nymphs were roll'd,

Their webs divine of purple mix'd with gold.

Within the cave the clustering bees attend

130

Their waxen works, or from the roof depend.

Perpetual waters o'er the pavement glide;

Two marble doors⁴ unfold on either side;

Sacred the south, by which the gods descend;

But mortals enter at the northern end.

135

Thither they bent, and haul'd their ship to land;

(The crooked keel divides the yellow sand;)

Ulysses sleeping on his couch they bore,⁵

And gently placed him on the rocky shore.

His treasures next, Alcinoüs' gifts, they laid

140

In the wild olive's unfrequented shade,

Secure from theft; then launch'd the bark again,

Resum'd their oars, and measur'd back the main.⁶

Nor yet forgot old Ocean's dread Supreme,

The vengeance vow'd for eyeless Polypheme.

145

Before the throne of mighty Jove he stood;

And sought the secret counsels of the god.

Neptune

'Shall then no more, O sire of gods! be mine

'The rights and honours of a power divine?

'Scorn'd e'en by man, and (oh severe disgrace!)
150

'By soft Phaeacians, my degenerate race!

'Against yon destin'd head in vain I swore,

'And menaced vengeance, ere he reach'd his shore;

'To reach his natal shore was thy decree;

'Mild I obey'd, for who shall war with thee?
155

'Behold him landed, careless and asleep,

'From all th' eluded dangers of the deep;

'Lo where he lies, amidst a shining store

'Of brass, rich garments, and refulgent ore;

'And bears triumphant to his native isle
160

'A prize more worth than Ilion's noble spoil.'

139

To whom the Father of th' immortal powers,

Who swells the clouds, and gladdens earth with showers:

Jove

'Can mighty Neptune thus of man complain?

'Neptune, tremendous o'er the boundless main!
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'Rever'd and awful e'en in heaven's abodes,

'Ancient and great! a god above the gods!

'If that low race offend thy power divine,

'(Weak, daring creatures!) is not vengeance thine?

'Go then, the guilty at thy will chastise.'
170

He said. The shaker of the earth replies:

Neptune

'This then I doom: to fix the gallant ship

'A mark of vengeance on the sable deep;

'To warn the thoughtless self-confiding train,

'No more unlicens'd thus to brave the main.
175

'Full in their port a shady hill shall rise,

'If such thy will.'—' We will it,' Jove replies.

Jove

'E'en when with transport, blackening all the strand,

'The swarming people hail their ship to land,

'Fix her for ever, a memorial stone:
180

'Still let her seem to sail, and seem alone.

'The trembling crowds shall see the sudden shade

'Of whelming mountains overhang their head!'

With that the god whose earthquakes rock the ground

Fierce to Phaeacia cross'd the vast profound.

185

Swift as a swallow sweeps the liquid way,

The winged pinnace shot along the sea.

The god arrests her with a sudden stroke,

And roots her down an everlasting rock.

Aghast the Scherians stand in deep surprise;

190

All press to speak, all question with their eyes.

What hands unseen the rapid bark restrain?

'And yet it swims, or seems to swim, the main!'

Thus they, unconscious of the deed divine:

Till great Alcinoüs, rising, own'd the sign.

195

Alcinoüs

'Behold the long-predestin'd day!' (he cries;)

'O certain faith of ancient prophecies!

'These ears have heard my royal sire disclose

'A dreadful story, big with future woes:

'How, mov'd with wrath, that careless we convey
200

'Promiscuous every guest to every bay,

'Stern Neptune raged; and how by his command

'Firm rooted in the surge a ship should stand,

'(A monument of wrath;) and mound on mound

'Should hide our walls, or whelm beneath the ground.
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'The Fates have follow'd as declar'd the seer:

'Be humbled, nations! and your monarch hear.

'No more unlicens'd brave the deeps, no more

'With every stranger pass from shore to shore:

'On angry Neptune now for mercy call;
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'To his high name let twelve black oxen fall.

'So may the god reverse his purpos'd will,

'Nor o'er our city hang the dreadful hill.'⁷

184

The monarch spoke: they trembled and obey'd,

Forth on the sands the victim oxen led:

215

The gather'd tribes before the altars stand,

And chiefs and rulers, a majestic band.

The king of ocean all the tribes implore;

The blazing altars redden all the shore.

Meanwhile Ulysses in his country lay,

220

Releas'd from sleep, and round him might survey

The solitary shore and rolling sea.

Yet had his mind through tedious absence lost

The dear resemblance of his native coast.

Besides, Minerva, to secure her care

225

Diffus'd around a veil of thicken'd air.

For so the gods ordain'd, to keep unseen

His royal person from his friends and queen:

Till the proud suitors for their crimes afford

An ample vengeance to their injur'd lord.

230

Now all the land another prospect bore,

Another port appear'd, another shore.

And long-continued ways, and winding floods,

And unknown mountains, crown'd with unknown woods.

Pensive and slow, with sudden grief oppress'd,

235

The king arose, and beat his careful breast,

Cast a long look o'er all the coast and main,

And sought, around, his native realm in vain:

Then with erected eyes stood fix'd in woe,

And, as he spoke, the tears began to flow:

240

Ulysses

'Ye Gods,' (he cried,) 'upon what barren coast,

'In what new region, is Ulysses toss'd?

'Possess'd by wild barbarians, fierce in arms?

'Or men whose bosom tender pity warms?

'Where shall this treasure now in safety lie?
245

'And whither, whither its sad owner fly?

'Ah why did I Alcinoüs' grace implore?

'Ah why forsake Phaeacia's happy shore?

'Some juster prince perhaps had entertain'd,

'And safe restor'd me to my native land.
250

'Is this the promis'd, long-expected coast,

'And this the faith Phaeacia's rulers boast?

'O righteous gods! of all the great, how few

'Are just to Heaven, and to their promise true!

'But he, the power to whose all-seeing eyes
255

'The deeds of men appear without disguise,

''Tis his alone t' avenge the wrongs I bear:

'For still th' oppress'd are his peculiar care.

'To count these presents, and from thence to prove

'Their faith,⁸ is mine: the rest belongs to Jove.'
260

217

Then on the sands he rang'd his wealthy store,

The gold, the vests, the tripods number'd o'er:

All these he found; but still, in error lost,

Disconsolate he wanders on the coast,

Sighs for his country, and laments again

265

To the deaf rocks, and hoarse resounding main.

When lo! the guardian goddess of the wise,

Celestial Pallas, stood before his eyes;

In show a youthful swain, of form divine,

Who seem'd descended from some princely line.

270

A graceful robe her slender body dress'd;

Around her shoulders flew the waving vest;

Her decent hand a shining javelin bore,

And painted sandals on her feet she wore.

To whom the king: 'Whoe'er of human race

275

'Thou art, that wander'st in this desert place,

'With joy to thee, as to some god, I bend,

'To thee my treasures and myself commend.

'O tell a wretch in exile doom'd to stray,

'What air I breathe, what country I survey?

280

'The fruitful continent's extremest bound,

'Or some fair isle which Neptune's arms surround?'

Minerva

'From what far clime,' (said she,) 'remote from fame,

'Arriv'st thou here, a stranger to our name?

'Thou seest an island, not to those unknown
285

'Whose hills are brighten'd by the rising sun,

'Nor those that placed beneath his utmost reign

'Behold him sinking in the western main.

'The rugged soil allows no level space

'For flying chariots, or the rapid race;
290

'Yet, not ungrateful to the peasant's pain,

'Suffices fulness to the swelling grain:

'The loaded trees their various fruits produce,

'And clustering grapes afford a generous juice;

'Woods crown our mountains, and in every grove
295

'The bounding goats and frisking heifers rove:

'Soft rains and kindly dews refresh the field,

'And rising springs eternal verdure yield:

'Ev'n to those shores is Ithaca renown'd,

'Where Troy's majestic ruins strew the ground.'
300

250

At this, the chief with transport was possess'd;

His panting heart exulted in his breast:

Yet, well dissembling his untimely joys,

And veiling truth in plausible disguise,

Thus, with an air sincere, in fiction bold,

305

His ready tale th' inventive hero told:

Ulysses

'Oft have I heard in Crete this island's name;

'For 'twas from Crete, my native soil, I came,

'Self-banish'd thence. I sail'd before the wind,

'And left my children and my friends behind.
310

'From fierce Idomeneus' revenge I flew,

'Whose son, the swift Orsilochus, I slew:

'(With brutal force he seiz'd my Trojan prey,

'Due to the toils of many a bloody day.)

'Unseen I 'scaped, and, favour'd by the night,
315

'In a Phœnician vessel took my flight,

'For Pyle or Elis bound: but tempests toss'd

'And raging billows drove us on your coast.

'In dead of night an unknown port we gain'd,

'Spent with fatigue, and slept secure on land.
320

'But ere the rosy morn renew'd the day,

'While in th' embrace of pleasing sleep I lay,

'Sudden, invited by auspicious gales,

'They land my goods, and hoist their flying sails.

'Abandon'd here, my fortune I deplore,
325

'A hapless exile on a foreign shore.'

287

Thus while he spoke, the blue-eyed maid began

With pleasing smiles to view the godlike man:

Then chang'd her form: and now, divinely bright,

Jove's heavenly daughter stood confess'd to sight:

330

Like a fair virgin in her beauty's bloom,

Skill'd in th' illustrious labours of the loom.

Minerva

'O still the same Ulysses!' (she rejoin'd,)

'In useful craft successfully refin'd!

'Artful in speech, in action, and in mind!
335

'Sufficed it not, that, thy long labours pass'd,

'Secure thou seest thy native shores at last?

'But this to me? who, like thyself, excel

'In arts of counsel, and dissembling well;

'To me? whose wit exceeds the powers divine,
340

'No less than mortals are surpass'd by thine.

'Know'st thou not me? who made thy life my care,

'Through ten years' wandering, and through ten years' war,

'Who taught thee arts, Alcinoüs to persuade,

'To raise his wonder, and engage his aid;
345

'And now appear, thy treasures to protect,

'Conceal thy person, thy designs direct,

'And tell what more thou must from Fate expect;

'Domestic woes far heavier to be borne!

'The pride of fools, and slaves' insulting scorn!
350

'But thou be silent, nor reveal thy state;

'Yield to the force of unresisted Fate,

'And bear unmov'd the wrongs of base mankind,

'The last, and hardest, conquest of the mind.'

Ulysses

'Goddess of wisdom!' (Ithacus replies,)
355

'He who discerns thee must be truly wise,

'So seldom view'd, and ever in disguise!

'When the bold Argives led their warring powers

'Against proud Ilion's well-defended towers,

'Ulysses was thy care, celestial maid!
360

'Graced with thy sight, and favour'd with thy aid.

'But when the Trojan piles in ashes lay,

'And bound for Greece we plough'd the watery way,

'Our fleet dispers'd and driven from coast to coast,

'Thy sacred presence from that hour I lost;
365

'Till I beheld thy radiant form once more,

'And heard thy counsels on Phaeacia's shore.

'But, by th' almighty author of thy race,

'Tell me, oh tell, is this my native place?

'For much I fear, long tracts of land and sea
370

'Divide this coast from distant Ithaca;

'The sweet delusion kindly you impose,

'To soothe my hopes, and mitigate my woes.'⁹

329

Thus he. The blue-ey'd goddess thus replies:

Minerva

'How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!
375

'Who, vers'd in fortune, fear the flattering show,

'And taste not half the bliss the gods bestow.

'The more shall Pallas aid thy just desires,

'And guard the wisdom which herself inspires.

'Others, long absent from their native place,
380

'Straight seek their home, and fly with eager pace

'To their wives' arms, and children's dear embrace.

'Not thus Ulysses: he decrees to prove

'His subjects' faith, and queen's suspected love;

'Who mourn'd her lord twice ten revolving years,
385

'And wastes the days in grief, the nights in tears.

'But Pallas knew (thy friends and navy lost)

'Once more 'twas given thee to behold thy coast:

'Yet how could I with adverse Fate engage,

'And mighty Neptune's unrelenting rage?
390

'Now lift thy longing eyes, while I restore

'The pleasing prospect of thy native shore.

'Behold the port of Phorcys! fenced around

'With rocky mountains, and with olives crown'd.

'Behold the gloomy grot! whose cool recess
395

'Delights the Nereids of the neighbouring seas:

'Whose now neglected altars, in thy reign,

'Blush'd with the blood of sheep and oxen slain.

'Behold! where Neritus the clouds divides,

'And shakes the waving forests on his sides.'
400

So spake the goddess, and the prospect clear'd;

The mists dispers'd, and all the coast appear'd.

The king with joy confess'd his place of birth,

And on his knees salutes his mother earth:

Then, with his suppliant hands upheld in air,

405

Thus to the sea-green sisters sends his prayer:

Ulysses

'All hail! ye virgin daughters of the main!

'Ye streams, beyond my hopes beheld again!

'To you once more your own Ulysses bows;

'Attend his transports, and receive his vows!
410

'If Jove prolong my days, and Pallas crown

'The growing virtues of my youthful son,

'To you shall rites divine be ever paid,

'And grateful offerings on your altars laid.'

Minerva

Thus then Minerva: 'From that anxious breast
415

'Dismiss those cares, and leave to heaven the rest.

'Our task be now thy treasur'd stores to save,

'Deep in the close recesses of the cave:

'Then future means consult.'

366

She spoke, and trod

The shady grot, that brighten'd with the god.¹⁰

420

The closest caverns of the grot she sought;

The gold, the brass, the robes, Ulysses brought;

These in the secret gloom the chief dispos'd;

The entrance with a rock the goddess clos'd.

Now, seated in the olive's sacred shade,

425

Confer the hero and the martial maid.

The goddess of the azure eyes began:

Minerva

'Son of Laërtes! much-experienced man!

'The suitor-train thy earliest care demand,

'Of that luxurious race to rid the land:
430

'Three years thy house their lawless rule has seen,

'And proud addresses to the matchless queen.

'But she thy absence mourns from day to day,

'And inly bleeds, and silent wastes away:

'Elusive of the bridal hour, she gives
435

'Fond hopes to all, and all with hopes deceives.'

Ulysses

To this Ulysses: 'O celestial maid!

'Prais'd be thy counsel, and thy timely aid:

'Else had I seen my native walls in vain,

'Like great Atrides, just restor'd and slain.
440

'Vouchsafe the means of vengeance to debate,

'And plan with all thy arts the scene of fate.

'Then, then be present, and my soul inspire,

'As when we wrapp'd Troy's heaven-built walls in fire.

'Though leagued against me hundred heroes stand,
445

'Hundreds shall fall, if Pallas aid my hand.'

Minerva

She answer'd: 'In the dreadful day of fight

'Know I am with thee, strong in all my might.

'If thou but equal to thyself be found,

'What gasping numbers then shall press the ground!¹¹
450

'What human victims stain the feastful floor!

'How wide the pavements float with guilty gore!

"It fits thee now to wear a dark disguise,

'And secret walk unknown to mortal eyes.

'For this, my hand shall wither every grace,
455

'And every elegance of form and face;

'O'er thy smooth skin a bark of wrinkles spread,

'Turn hoar the auburn honours of thy head;

'Disfigure every limb with coarse attire,

'And in thy eyes extinguish all the fire;
460

'Add all the wants and the decays of life;

'Estrange thee from thy own; thy son, thy wife:

'From the loathed object every sight shall turn,

'And the blind suitors their destruction scorn.

'Go first the master of thy herds to find,
465

'True to his charge, a loyal swain and kind:¹²

'For thee he sighs; and to the royal heir

'And chaste Penelope extends his care.

'At the Coracian rock he now resides,¹³

'Where Arethusa's sable water glides;
470

'The sable water and the copious mast

'Swell the fat herd; luxuriant, large repast!

'With him rest peaceful in the rural cell,

'And all you ask his faithful tongue shall tell.

'Me into other realms my cares convey,
475

'To Sparta, still with female beauty gay:

'For know, to Sparta thy lov'd offspring came,

'To learn thy fortunes from the voice of Fame.'

416

At this the father, with a father's care:

Ulysses

'Must he too suffer? he, O goddess! bear
480

'Of wanderings and of woes a wretched share?

'Through the wild ocean plough the dangerous way,

'And leave his fortunes and his house a prey?

'Why would'st not thou, O all-enlighten'd mind!

'Inform him certain, and protect him, kind?'
485

Minerva

To whom Minerva: 'Be thy soul at rest:

'And know, whatever Heaven ordains is best.

'To fame I sent him, to acquire renown;

'To other regions is his virtue known:

'Secure he sits, near great Atrides placed:
490

'With friendships strengthen'd, and with honours graced.

'But lo! an ambush waits his passage o'er;

'Fierce foes insidious intercept the shore:

'In vain; far sooner all the murderous brood

'This injur'd land shall fatten with their blood.'
495

She spake, then touch'd him with her powerful wand:

The skin shrunk up, and wither'd at her hand:

A swift old age o'er all his members spread;

A sudden frost was sprinkled on his head;

Nor longer in the heavy eye-ball shined

500

The glance divine, forth-beaming from the mind.

His robe, which spots indelible besmear,

In rags dishonest flutters with the air:

A stag's torn hide is lapp'd around his reins;

A rugged staff his trembling hand sustains;

505

And at his side a wretched scrip was hung,

Wide-patch'd, and knotted to a twisted thong.

So look'd the chief, so mov'd; to mortal eyes

Object uncouth! a man of miseries!

While Pallas, cleaving the wide fields of air,

510

To Sparta flies, Telemachus her care.

Odyssey. Homer. London. 1858.

Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.

Current edition Experimental

English (Alexander Pope, 1726, ed. Watson, 1858) (OCR draft) (English) (English (Alexander Pope, 1726, ed. Watson, 1858))

Provisional text from uncorrected OCR; expect errors.

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.) — 13.1 focus

ὣς ἔφαθʼ, οἱ δʼ ἄρα πάντες ἀκὴν ἐγένοντο σιωπῇ,

κηληθμῷ δʼ ἔσχοντο κατὰ μέγαρα σκιόεντα.

τὸν δʼ αὖτʼ Ἀλκίνοος ἀπαμείβετο φώνησέν τε·

ὦ Ὀδυσεῦ, ἐπεὶ ἵκευ ἐμὸν ποτὶ χαλκοβατὲς δῶ,

ὑψερεφές, τῷ σʼ οὔ τι παλιμπλαγχθέντα γʼ ὀΐω

ἂψ ἀπονοστήσειν, εἰ καὶ μάλα πολλὰ πέπονθας.

ὑμέων δʼ ἀνδρὶ ἑκάστῳ ἐφιέμενος τάδε εἴρω,

ὅσσοι ἐνὶ μεγάροισι γερούσιον αἴθοπα οἶνον

αἰεὶ πίνετʼ ἐμοῖσιν, ἀκουάζεσθε δʼ ἀοιδοῦ.

εἵματα μὲν δὴ ξείνῳ ἐϋξέστῃ ἐνὶ χηλῷ

κεῖται καὶ χρυσὸς πολυδαίδαλος ἄλλα τε πάντα

δῶρʼ, ὅσα Φαιήκων βουληφόροι ἐνθάδʼ ἔνεικαν·

ἀλλʼ ἄγε οἱ δῶμεν τρίποδα μέγαν ἠδὲ λέβητα

ἀνδρακάς· ἡμεῖς δʼ αὖτε ἀγειρόμενοι κατὰ δῆμον

τισόμεθʼ· ἀργαλέον γὰρ ἕνα προικὸς χαρίσασθαι.

ὣς ἔφατʼ Ἀλκίνοος, τοῖσιν δʼ ἐπιήνδανε μῦθος.

οἱ μὲν κακκείοντες ἔβαν οἶκόνδε ἕκαστος,

ἦμος δʼ ἠριγένεια φάνη ῥοδοδάκτυλος Ἠώς,

νῆάδʼ ἐπεσσεύοντο, φέρον δʼ εὐήνορα χαλκόν.

καὶ τὰ μὲν εὖ κατέθηχʼ ἱερὸν μένος Ἀλκινόοιο,

αὐτὸς ἰὼν διὰ νηὸς ὑπὸ ζυγά, μή τινʼ ἑταίρων

βλάπτοι ἐλαυνόντων, ὁπότε σπερχοίατʼ ἐρετμοῖς.

οἱ δʼ εἰς Ἀλκινόοιο κίον καὶ δαῖτʼ ἀλέγυνον.

τοῖσι δὲ βοῦν ἱέρευσʼ ἱερὸν μένος Ἀλκινόοιο

Ζηνὶ κελαινεφέϊ Κρονίδῃ, ὃς πᾶσιν ἀνάσσει.

μῆρα δὲ κήαντες δαίνυντʼ ἐρικυδέα δαῖτα

τερπόμενοι· μετὰ δέ σφιν ἐμέλπετο θεῖος ἀοιδός,

Δημόδοκος, λαοῖσι τετιμένος. αὐτὰρ Ὀδυσσεὺς

πολλὰ πρὸς ἠέλιον κεφαλὴν τρέπε παμφανόωντα,

δῦναι ἐπειγόμενος· δὴ γὰρ μενέαινε νέεσθαι.

ὡς δʼ ὅτʼ ἀνὴρ δόρποιο λιλαίεται, ᾧ τε πανῆμαρ

νειὸν ἀνʼ ἕλκητον βόε οἴνοπε πηκτὸν ἄροτρον·

ἀσπασίως δʼ ἄρα τῷ κατέδυ φάος ἠελίοιο

δόρπον ἐποίχεσθαι, βλάβεται δέ τε γούνατʼ ἰόντι·

ὣς Ὀδυσῆʼ ἀσπαστὸν ἔδυ φάος ἠελίοιο.

αἶψα δὲ Φαιήκεσσι φιληρέτμοισι μετηύδα,

Ἀλκινόῳ δὲ μάλιστα πιφαυσκόμενος φάτο μῦθον·

Ἀλκίνοε κρεῖον, πάντων ἀριδείκετε λαῶν,

πέμπετέ με σπείσαντες ἀπήμονα, χαίρετε δʼ αὐτοί·

ἤδη γὰρ τετέλεσται ἅ μοι φίλος ἤθελε θυμός,

πομπὴ καὶ φίλα δῶρα, τά μοι θεοὶ Οὐρανίωνες

ὄλβια ποιήσειαν· ἀμύμονα δʼ οἴκοι ἄκοιτιν

νοστήσας εὕροιμι σὺν ἀρτεμέεσσι φίλοισιν.

ὑμεῖς δʼ αὖθι μένοντες ἐϋφραίνοιτε γυναῖκας

κουριδίας καὶ τέκνα· θεοὶ δʼ ἀρετὴν ὀπάσειαν

παντοίην, καὶ μή τι κακὸν μεταδήμιον εἴη.

ὣς ἔφαθʼ, οἱ δʼ ἄρα πάντες ἐπῄνεον ἠδʼ ἐκέλευον

πεμπέμεναι τὸν ξεῖνον, ἐπεὶ κατὰ μοῖραν ἔειπεν.

καὶ τότε κήρυκα προσέφη μένος Ἀλκινόοιο·

Ποντόνοε, κρητῆρα κερασσάμενος μέθυ νεῖμον

πᾶσιν ἀνὰ μέγαρον, ὄφρʼ εὐξάμενοι Διὶ πατρὶ

τὸν ξεῖνον πέμπωμεν ἑὴν ἐς πατρίδα γαῖαν.

ὣς φάτο, Ποντόνοος δὲ μελίφρονα οἶνον ἐκίρνα,

νώμησεν δʼ ἄρα πᾶσιν ἐπισταδόν· οἱ δὲ θεοῖσιν

ἔσπεισαν μακάρεσσι, τοὶ οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἔχουσιν,

αὐτόθεν ἐξ ἑδρέων. ἀνὰ δʼ ἵστατο δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς,

Ἀρήτῃ δʼ ἐν χειρὶ τίθει δέπας ἀμφικύπελλον,

καί μιν φωνήσας ἔπεα πτερόεντα προσηύδα·

χαῖρέ μοι, ὦ βασίλεια, διαμπερές, εἰς ὅ κε γῆρας

ἔλθῃ καὶ θάνατος, τά τʼ ἐπʼ ἀνθρώποισι πέλονται.

αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ νέομαι· σὺ δὲ τέρπεο τῷδʼ ἐνὶ οἴκῳ

παισί τε καὶ λαοῖσι καὶ Ἀλκινόῳ βασιλῆϊ.

ὣς εἰπὼν ὑπὲρ οὐδὸν ἐβήσετο δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς,

τῷ δʼ ἅμα κήρυκα προΐει μένος Ἀλκινόοιο,

ἡγεῖσθαι ἐπὶ νῆα θοὴν καὶ θῖνα θαλάσσης·

Ἀρήτη δʼ ἄρα οἱ δμῳὰς ἅμʼ ἔπεμπε γυναῖκας,

τὴν μὲν φᾶρος ἔχουσαν ἐϋπλυνὲς ἠδὲ χιτῶνα,

τὴν δʼ ἑτέρην χηλὸν πυκινὴν ἅμʼ ὄπασσε κομίζειν·

ἡ δʼ ἄλλη σῖτόν τʼ ἔφερεν καὶ οἶνον ἐρυθρόν.

αὐτὰρ ἐπεί ῥʼ ἐπὶ νῆα κατήλυθον ἠδὲ θάλασσαν,

αἶψα τά γʼ ἐν νηῒ γλαφυρῇ πομπῆες ἀγαυοὶ

δεξάμενοι κατέθεντο, πόσιν καὶ βρῶσιν ἅπασαν·

κὰδ δʼ ἄρʼ Ὀδυσσῆϊ στόρεσαν ῥῆγός τε λίνον τε

νηὸς ἐπʼ ἰκριόφιν γλαφυρῆς, ἵνα νήγρετον εὕδοι,

πρυμνῆς· ἂν δὲ καὶ αὐτὸς ἐβήσετο καὶ κατέλεκτο

σιγῇ· τοὶ δὲ καθῖζον ἐπὶ κληῗσιν ἕκαστοι

κόσμῳ, πεῖσμα δʼ ἔλυσαν ἀπὸ τρητοῖο λίθοιο.

εὖθʼ οἱ ἀνακλινθέντες ἀνερρίπτουν ἅλα πηδῷ,

καὶ τῷ νήδυμος ὕπνος ἐπὶ βλεφάροισιν ἔπιπτε,

νήγρετος, ἥδιστος, θανάτῳ ἄγχιστα ἐοικώς.

ἡ δʼ, ὥς τʼ ἐν πεδίῳ τετράοροι ἄρσενες ἵπποι,

πάντες ἅμʼ ὁρμηθέντες ὑπὸ πληγῇσιν ἱμάσθλης,

ὑψόσʼ ἀειρόμενοι ῥίμφα πρήσσουσι κέλευθον,

ὣς ἄρα τῆς πρύμνη μὲν ἀείρετο, κῦμα δʼ ὄπισθε

πορφύρεον μέγα θῦε πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης.

ἡ δὲ μάλʼ ἀσφαλέως θέεν ἔμπεδον· οὐδέ κεν ἴρηξ

κίρκος ὁμαρτήσειεν, ἐλαφρότατος πετεηνῶν.

ὣς ἡ ῥίμφα θέουσα θαλάσσης κύματʼ ἔταμνεν,

ἄνδρα φέρουσα θεοῖς ἐναλίγκια μήδεʼ ἔχοντα·

ὃς πρὶν μὲν μάλα πολλὰ πάθʼ ἄλγεα ὃν κατὰ θυμὸν

ἀνδρῶν τε πτολέμους ἀλεγεινά τε κύματα πείρων,

δὴ τότε γʼ ἀτρέμας εὗδε, λελασμένος ὅσσʼ ἐπεπόνθει.

εὖτʼ ἀστὴρ ὑπερέσχε φαάντατος, ὅς τε μάλιστα

ἔρχεται ἀγγέλλων φάος Ἠοῦς ἠριγενείης,

τῆμος δὴ νήσῳ προσεπίλνατο ποντοπόρος νηῦς.

Φόρκυνος δέ τίς ἐστι λιμήν, ἁλίοιο γέροντος,

ἐν δήμῳ Ἰθάκης· δύο δὲ προβλῆτες ἐν αὐτῷ

ἀκταὶ ἀπορρῶγες, λιμένος ποτιπεπτηυῖαι,

αἵ τʼ ἀνέμων σκεπόωσι δυσαήων μέγα κῦμα

ἔκτοθεν· ἔντοσθεν δέ τʼ ἄνευ δεσμοῖο μένουσι

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νῆες ἐΰσσελμοι, ὅτʼ ἂν ὅρμου μέτρον ἵκωνται.

αὐτὰρ ἐπὶ κρατὸς λιμένος τανύφυλλος ἐλαίη,

ἀγχόθι δʼ αὐτῆς ἄντρον ἐπήρατον ἠεροειδές,

ἱρὸν νυμφάων αἳ νηϊάδες καλέονται.

ἐν δὲ κρητῆρές τε καὶ ἀμφιφορῆες ἔασιν

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λάϊνοι· ἔνθα δʼ ἔπειτα τιθαιβώσσουσι μέλισσαι.

ἐν δʼ ἱστοὶ λίθεοι περιμήκεες, ἔνθα τε νύμφαι

φάρεʼ ὑφαίνουσιν ἁλιπόρφυρα, θαῦμα ἰδέσθαι·

ἐν δʼ ὕδατʼ ἀενάοντα. δύω δέ τέ οἱ θύραι εἰσίν,

αἱ μὲν πρὸς Βορέαο καταιβαταὶ ἀνθρώποισιν,

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αἱ δʼ αὖ πρὸς Νότου εἰσὶ θεώτεραι· οὐδέ τι κείνῃ

ἄνδρες ἐσέρχονται, ἀλλʼ ἀθανάτων ὁδός ἐστιν.

ἔνθʼ οἵ γʼ εἰσέλασαν, πρὶν εἰδότες· ἡ μὲν ἔπειτα

ἠπείρῳ ἐπέκελσεν, ὅσον τʼ ἐπὶ ἥμισυ πάσης,

σπερχομένη· τοῖον γὰρ ἐπείγετο χέρσʼ ἐρετάων·

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οἱ δʼ ἐκ νηὸς βάντες ἐϋζύγου ἤπειρόνδε

πρῶτον Ὀδυσσῆα γλαφυρῆς ἐκ νηὸς ἄειραν

αὐτῷ σύν τε λίνῳ καὶ ῥήγεϊ σιγαλόεντι,

κὰδ δʼ ἄρʼ ἐπὶ ψαμάθῳ ἔθεσαν δεδμημένον ὕπνῳ,

ἐκ δὲ κτήματʼ ἄειραν, ἅ οἱ Φαίηκες ἀγαυοὶ

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ὤπασαν οἴκαδʼ ἰόντι διὰ μεγάθυμον Ἀθήνην.

καὶ τὰ μὲν οὖν παρὰ πυθμένʼ ἐλαίης ἀθρόα θῆκαν

ἐκτὸς ὁδοῦ, μή πώς τις ὁδιτάων ἀνθρώπων,

πρίν γʼ Ὀδυσῆʼ ἔγρεσθαι, ἐπελθὼν δηλήσαιτο·

αὐτοὶ δʼ αὖτʼ οἶκόνδε πάλιν κίον. οὐδʼ ἐνοσίχθων

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λήθετʼ ἀπειλάων, τὰς ἀντιθέῳ Ὀδυσῆϊ

πρῶτον ἐπηπείλησε, Διὸς δʼ ἐξείρετο βουλήν·

Ζεῦ πάτερ, οὐκέτʼ ἐγώ γε μετʼ ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσι

τιμήεις ἔσομαι, ὅτε με βροτοὶ οὔ τι τίουσιν,

Φαίηκες, τοί πέρ τοι ἐμῆς ἔξ εἰσι γενέθλης.

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καὶ γὰρ νῦν Ὀδυσῆʼ ἐφάμην κακὰ πολλὰ παθόντα

οἴκαδʼ ἐλεύσεσθαι· νόστον δέ οἱ οὔ ποτʼ ἀπηύρων

πάγχυ, ἐπεὶ σὺ πρῶτον ὑπέσχεο καὶ κατένευσας.

οἱ δʼ εὕδοντʼ ἐν νηῒ θοῇ ἐπὶ πόντον ἄγοντες

κάτθεσαν εἰν Ἰθάκῃ, ἔδοσαν δέ οἱ ἄσπετα δῶρα,

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χαλκόν τε χρυσόν τε ἅλις ἐσθῆτά θʼ ὑφαντήν,

πόλλʼ, ὅσʼ ἂν οὐδέ ποτε Τροίης ἐξήρατʼ Ὀδυσσεύς,

εἴ περ ἀπήμων ἦλθε, λαχὼν ἀπὸ ληΐδος αἶσαν.

τὸν δʼ ἀπαμειβόμενος προσέφη νεφεληγερέτα Ζεύς·

ὢ πόποι, ἐννοσίγαιʼ εὐρυσθενές, οἷον ἔειπες.

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οὔ τί σʼ ἀτιμάζουσι θεοί· χαλεπὸν δέ κεν εἴη

πρεσβύτατον καὶ ἄριστον ἀτιμίῃσιν ἰάλλειν.

ἀνδρῶν δʼ εἴ πέρ τίς σε βίῃ καὶ κάρτεϊ εἴκων

οὔ τι τίει. σοὶ δʼ ἐστὶ καὶ ἐξοπίσω τίσις αἰεί.

ἔρξον ὅπως ἐθέλεις καί τοι φίλον ἔπλετο θυμῷ.

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τὸν δʼ ἠμείβετʼ ἔπειτα Ποσειδάων ἐνοσίχθων·

αἶψά κʼ ἐγὼν ἔρξαιμι, κελαινεφές, ὡς ἀγορεύεις·

ἀλλὰ σὸν αἰεὶ θυμὸν ὀπίζομαι ἠδʼ ἀλεείνω.

νῦν αὖ Φαιήκων ἐθέλω περικαλλέα νῆα,

ἐκ πομπῆς ἀνιοῦσαν, ἐν ἠεροειδέϊ πόντῳ

150

ῥαῖσαι, ἵνʼ ἤδη σχῶνται, ἀπολλήξωσι δὲ πομπῆς

ἀνθρώπων, μέγα δέ σφιν ὄρος πόλει ἀμφικαλύψαι.

τὸν δʼ ἀπαμειβόμενος προσέφη νεφεληγερέτα Ζεύς·

ὢ πέπον, ὡς μὲν ἐμῷ θυμῷ δοκεῖ εἶναι ἄριστα,

ὁππότε κεν δὴ πάντες ἐλαυνομένην προΐδωνται

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λαοὶ ἀπὸ πτόλιος, θεῖναι λίθον ἐγγύθι γαίης

νηῒ θοῇ ἴκελον, ἵνα θαυμάζωσιν ἅπαντες

ἄνθρωποι, μέγα δέ σφιν ὄρος πόλει ἀμφικαλύψαι.

αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ τό γʼ ἄκουσε Ποσειδάων ἐνοσίχθων,

βῆ ῥʼ ἴμεν ἐς Σχερίην, ὅθι Φαίηκες γεγάασιν.

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ἔνθʼ ἔμενʼ· ἡ δὲ μάλα σχεδὸν ἤλυθε ποντοπόρος νηῦς

ῥίμφα διωκομένη· τῆς δὲ σχεδὸν ἦλθʼ ἐνοσίχθων,

ὅς μιν λᾶαν ἔθηκε καὶ ἐρρίζωσεν ἔνερθε

χειρὶ καταπρηνεῖ ἐλάσας· ὁ δὲ νόσφι βεβήκει.

οἱ δὲ πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἔπεα πτερόεντʼ ἀγόρευον

165

Φαίηκες δολιχήρετμοι, ναυσίκλυτοι ἄνδρες.

ὧδε δέ τις εἴπεσκεν ἰδὼν ἐς πλησίον ἄλλον·

ὤ μοι, τίς δὴ νῆα θοὴν ἐπέδησʼ ἐνὶ πόντῳ

οἴκαδʼ ἐλαυνομένην; καὶ δὴ προὐφαίνετο πᾶσα.

ὣς ἄρα τις εἴπεσκε· τὰ δʼ οὐκ ἴσαν ὡς ἐτέτυκτο.

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τοῖσιν δʼ Ἀλκίνοος ἀγορήσατο καὶ μετέειπεν·

ὢ πόποι, ἦ μάλα δή με παλαίφατα θέσφαθʼ ἱκάνει

πατρὸς ἐμοῦ, ὃς ἔφασκε Ποσειδάωνʼ ἀγάσασθαι

ἡμῖν, οὕνεκα πομποὶ ἀπήμονές εἰμεν ἁπάντων.

φῆ ποτὲ Φαιήκων ἀνδρῶν περικαλλέα, νῆα,

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ἐκ πομπῆς ἀνιοῦσαν, ἐν ἠεροειδέϊ πόντῳ

ῥαισέμεναι, μέγα δʼ ἧμιν ὄρος πόλει ἀμφικαλύψειν.

ὣς ἀγόρευʼ ὁ γέρων· τὰ δὲ δὴ νῦν πάντα τελεῖται.

ἀλλʼ ἄγεθʼ, ὡς ἂν ἐγὼ εἴπω, πειθώμεθα πάντες·

πομπῆς μὲν παύσασθε βροτῶν, ὅτε κέν τις ἵκηται

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ἡμέτερον προτὶ ἄστυ· Ποσειδάωνι δὲ ταύρους

δώδεκα κεκριμένους ἱερεύσομεν, αἴ κʼ ἐλεήσῃ,

μηδʼ ἡμῖν περίμηκες ὄρος πόλει ἀμφικαλύψῃ.

ὣς ἔφαθʼ, οἱ δʼ ἔδεισαν, ἑτοιμάσσαντο δὲ ταύρους.

ὣς οἱ μέν ῥʼ εὔχοντο Ποσειδάωνι ἄνακτι

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δήμου Φαιήκων ἡγήτορες ἠδὲ μέδοντες,

ἑσταότες περὶ βωμόν. ὁ δʼ ἔγρετο δῖος Ὀδυσσεὺς

εὕδων ἐν γαίῃ πατρωΐῃ, οὐδέ μιν ἔγνω,

ἤδη δὴν ἀπεών· περὶ γὰρ θεὸς ἠέρα χεῦε

Παλλὰς Ἀθηναίη, κούρη Διός, ὄφρα μιν αὐτὸν

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ἄγνωστον τεύξειεν ἕκαστά τε μυθήσαιτο,

μή μιν πρὶν ἄλοχος γνοίη ἀστοί τε φίλοι τε,

πρὶν πᾶσαν μνηστῆρας ὑπερβασίην ἀποτῖσαι.

τοὔνεκʼ ἄρʼ ἀλλοειδέα φαινέσκετο πάντα ἄνακτι,

ἀτραπιτοί τε διηνεκέες λιμένες τε πάνορμοι

195

πέτραι τʼ ἠλίβατοι καὶ δένδρεα τηλεθόωντα.

στῆ δʼ ἄρʼ ἀναΐξας καί ῥʼ εἴσιδε πατρίδα γαῖαν·

ᾤμωξέν τʼ ἄρ ἔπειτα καὶ ὣ πεπλήγετο μηρὼ

χερσὶ καταπρηνέσσʼ, ὀλοφυρόμενος δʼ ἔπος ηὔδα·

ὤ μοι ἐγώ, τέων αὖτε βροτῶν ἐς γαῖαν ἱκάνω;

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ἦ ῥʼ οἵ γʼ ὑβρισταί τε καὶ ἄγριοι οὐδὲ δίκαιοι,

ἦε φιλόξεινοι, καί σφιν νόος ἐστὶ θεουδής;

πῇ δὴ χρήματα πολλὰ φέρω τάδε; πῇ τε καὶ αὐτὸς

πλάζομαι; αἴθʼ ὄφελον μεῖναι παρὰ Φαιήκεσσιν

αὐτοῦ· ἐγὼ δέ κεν ἄλλον ὑπερμενέων βασιλήων

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ἐξικόμην, ὅς κέν μʼ ἐφίλει καὶ ἔπεμπε νέεσθαι.

νῦν δʼ οὔτʼ ἄρ πῃ θέσθαι ἐπίσταμαι, οὐδὲ μὲν αὐτοῦ

καλλείψω, μή πώς μοι ἕλωρ ἄλλοισι γένηται.

ὢ πόποι, οὐκ ἄρα πάντα νοήμονες οὐδὲ δίκαιοι

ἦσαν Φαιήκων ἡγήτορες ἠδὲ μέδοντες,

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οἵ μʼ εἰς ἄλλην γαῖαν ἀπήγαγον, ἦ τέ μʼ ἔφαντο

ἄξειν εἰς Ἰθάκην εὐδείελον, οὐδʼ ἐτέλεσσαν.

Ζεὺς σφέας τίσαιτο ἱκετήσιος, ὅς τε καὶ ἄλλους

ἀνθρώπους ἐφορᾷ καὶ τίνυται ὅς τις ἁμάρτῃ.

ἀλλʼ ἄγε δὴ τὰ χρήματʼ ἀριθμήσω καὶ ἴδωμαι,

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μή τί μοι οἴχωνται κοίλης ἐπὶ νηὸς ἄγοντες.

ὣς εἰπὼν τρίποδας περικαλλέας ἠδὲ λέβητας

ἠρίθμει καὶ χρυσὸν ὑφαντά τε εἵματα καλά.

τῶν μὲν ἄρʼ οὔ τι πόθει· ὁ δʼ ὀδύρετο πατρίδα γαῖαν

ἑρπύζων παρὰ θῖνα πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης,

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πόλλʼ ὀλοφυρόμενος. σχεδόθεν δέ οἱ ἦλθεν Ἀθήνη,

ἀνδρὶ δέμας εἰκυῖα νέῳ, ἐπιβώτορι μήλων,

παναπάλῳ, οἷοί τε ἀνάκτων παῖδες ἔασι,

δίπτυχον ἀμφʼ ὤμοισιν ἔχουσʼ εὐεργέα λώπην·

ποσσὶ δʼ ὑπὸ λιπαροῖσι πέδιλʼ ἔχε, χερσὶ δʼ ἄκοντα.

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τὴν δʼ Ὀδυσεὺς γήθησεν ἰδὼν καὶ ἐναντίος ἦλθε,

καί μιν φωνήσας ἔπεα πτερόεντα προσηύδα·

ὦ φίλʼ, ἐπεί σε πρῶτα κιχάνω τῷδʼ ἐνὶ χώρῳ,

χαῖρέ τε καὶ μή μοί τι κακῷ νόῳ ἀντιβολήσαις,

ἀλλὰ σάω μὲν ταῦτα, σάω δʼ ἐμέ· σοὶ γὰρ ἐγώ γε

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εὔχομαι ὥς τε θεῷ καί σευ φίλα γούναθʼ ἱκάνω.

καί μοι τοῦτʼ ἀγόρευσον ἐτήτυμον, ὄφρʼ ἐῢ εἰδῶ·

τίς γῆ, τίς δῆμος, τίνες ἀνέρες ἐγγεγάασιν;

ἦ πού τις νήσων εὐδείελος, ἦέ τις ἀκτὴ

κεῖθʼ ἁλὶ κεκλιμένη ἐριβώλακος ἠπείροιο;

235

τὸν δʼ αὖτε προσέειπε θεὰ γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη·

νήπιός εἰς, ὦ ξεῖνʼ, ἢ τηλόθεν εἰλήλουθας,

εἰ δὴ τήνδε τε γαῖαν ἀνείρεαι. οὐδέ τι λίην

οὕτω νώνυμός ἐστιν· ἴσασι δέ μιν μάλα πολλοί,

ἠμὲν ὅσοι ναίουσι πρὸς ἠῶ τʼ ἠέλιόν τε,

240

ἠδʼ ὅσσοι μετόπισθε ποτὶ ζόφον ἠερόεντα.

ἦ τοι μὲν τρηχεῖα καὶ οὐχ ἱππήλατός ἐστιν,

οὐδὲ λίην λυπρή, ἀτὰρ οὐδʼ εὐρεῖα τέτυκται.

ἐν μὲν γάρ οἱ σῖτος ἀθέσφατος, ἐν δέ τε οἶνος

γίγνεται· αἰεὶ δʼ ὄμβρος ἔχει τεθαλυῖά τʼ ἐέρση·

245

αἰγίβοτος δʼ ἀγαθὴ καὶ βούβοτος· ἔστι μὲν ὕλη

παντοίη, ἐν δʼ ἀρδμοὶ ἐπηετανοὶ παρέασι.

τῷ τοι, ξεῖνʼ, Ἰθάκης γε καὶ ἐς Τροίην ὄνομʼ ἵκει,

τήν περ τηλοῦ φασὶν Ἀχαιΐδος ἔμμεναι αἴης.

ὣς φάτο, γήθησεν δὲ πολύτλας δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς,

250

χαίρων ᾗ γαίῃ πατρωΐῃ, ὥς οἱ ἔειπε

Παλλὰς Ἀθηναίη, κούρη Διὸς, αἰγιόχοιο·

καί μιν φωνήσας ἔπεα πτερόεντα προσηύδα·

οὐδʼ ὅ γʼ ἀληθέα εἶπε, πάλιν δʼ ὅ γε λάζετο μῦθον,

αἰεὶ ἐνὶ στήθεσσι νόον πολυκερδέα νωμῶν·

255

πυνθανόμην Ἰθάκης γε καὶ ἐν Κρήτῃ εὐρείῃ,

τηλοῦ ὑπὲρ πόντου· νῦν δʼ εἰλήλουθα καὶ αὐτὸς

χρήμασι σὺν τοίσδεσσι· λιπὼν δʼ ἔτι παισὶ τοσαῦτα

φεύγω, ἐπεὶ φίλον υἷα κατέκτανον Ἰδομενῆος,

Ὀρσίλοχον πόδας ὠκύν, ὃς ἐν Κρήτῃ εὐρείῃ

260

ἀνέρας ἀλφηστὰς νίκα ταχέεσσι πόδεσσιν,

οὕνεκά με στερέσαι τῆς ληΐδος ἤθελε πάσης

Τρωϊάδος, τῆς εἵνεκʼ ἐγὼ πάθον ἄλγεα θυμῷ,

ἀνδρῶν τε πτολέμους ἀλεγεινά τε κύματα πείρων,

οὕνεκʼ ἄρʼ οὐχ ᾧ πατρὶ χαριζόμενος θεράπευον

265

δήμῳ ἔνι Τρώων, ἀλλʼ ἄλλων ἦρχον ἑταίρων.

τὸν μὲν ἐγὼ κατιόντα βάλον χαλκήρεϊ δουρὶ

ἀγρόθεν, ἐγγὺς ὁδοῖο λοχησάμενος σὺν ἑταίρῳ·

νὺξ δὲ μάλα δνοφερὴ κάτεχʼ οὐρανόν, οὐδέ τις ἡμέας

ἀνθρώπων ἐνόησε, λάθον δέ ἑ θυμὸν ἀπούρας.

270

αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ δὴ τόν γε κατέκτανον ὀξέϊ χαλκῷ,

αὐτίκʼ ἐγὼν ἐπὶ νῆα κιὼν Φοίνικας ἀγαυοὺς

ἐλλισάμην, καί σφιν μενοεικέα ληΐδα δῶκα·

τούς μʼ ἐκέλευσα Πύλονδε καταστῆσαι καὶ ἐφέσσαι

ἢ εἰς Ἤλιδα δῖαν, ὅθι κρατέουσιν Ἐπειοί.

275

ἀλλʼ ἦ τοι σφέας κεῖθεν ἀπώσατο ἲς ἀνέμοιο

πόλλʼ ἀεκαζομένους, οὐδʼ ἤθελον ἐξαπατῆσαι.

κεῖθεν δὲ πλαγχθέντες ἱκάνομεν ἐνθάδε νυκτός.

σπουδῇ δʼ ἐς λιμένα προερέσσαμεν, οὐδέ τις ἡμῖν

δόρπου μνῆστις ἔην, μάλα περ χατέουσιν ἑλέσθαι,

280

ἀλλʼ αὔτως ἀποβάντες ἐκείμεθα νηὸς ἅπαντες.

ἔνθʼ ἐμὲ μὲν γλυκὺς ὕπνος ἐπήλυθε κεκμηῶτα,

οἱ δὲ χρήματʼ ἐμὰ γλαφυρῆς ἐκ νηὸς ἑλόντες

κάτθεσαν, ἔνθα περ αὐτὸς ἐπὶ ψαμάθοισιν ἐκείμην.

οἱ δʼ ἐς Σιδονίην εὖ ναιομένην ἀναβάντες

285

ᾤχοντʼ· αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ λιπόμην ἀκαχήμενος ἦτορ.

ὣς φάτο, μείδησεν δὲ θεὰ γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη,

χειρί τέ μιν κατέρεξε· δέμας δʼ ἤϊκτο γυναικὶ

καλῇ τε μεγάλῃ τε καὶ ἀγλαὰ ἔργα ἰδυίῃ·

καί μιν φωνήσασʼ ἔπεα πτερόεντα προσηύδα·

290

κερδαλέος κʼ εἴη καὶ ἐπίκλοπος ὅς σε παρέλθοι

ἐν πάντεσσι δόλοισι, καὶ εἰ θεὸς ἀντιάσειε.

σχέτλιε, ποικιλομῆτα, δόλων ἆτʼ, οὐκ ἄρʼ ἔμελλες,

οὐδʼ ἐν σῇ περ ἐὼν γαίῃ, λήξειν ἀπατάων

μύθων τε κλοπίων, οἵ τοι πεδόθεν φίλοι εἰσίν.

295

ἀλλʼ ἄγε, μηκέτι ταῦτα λεγώμεθα, εἰδότες ἄμφω

κέρδεʼ, ἐπεὶ σὺ μέν ἐσσι βροτῶν ὄχʼ ἄριστος ἁπάντων

βουλῇ καὶ μύθοισιν, ἐγὼ δʼ ἐν πᾶσι θεοῖσι

μήτι τε κλέομαι καὶ κέρδεσιν· οὐδὲ σύ γʼ ἔγνως

Παλλάδʼ Ἀθηναίην, κούρην Διός, ἥ τέ τοι αἰεὶ

300

ἐν πάντεσσι πόνοισι παρίσταμαι ἠδὲ φυλάσσω,

καὶ δέ σε Φαιήκεσσι φίλον πάντεσσιν ἔθηκα,

νῦν αὖ δεῦρʼ ἱκόμην, ἵνα τοι σὺν μῆτιν ὑφήνω

χρήματά τε κρύψω, ὅσα τοι Φαίηκες ἀγαυοὶ

ὤπασαν οἴκαδʼ ἰόντι ἐμῇ βουλῇ τε νόῳ τε,

305

εἴπω θʼ ὅσσα τοι αἶσα δόμοις ἔνι ποιητοῖσι

κήδεʼ ἀνασχέσθαι· σὺ δὲ τετλάμεναι καὶ ἀνάγκῃ,

μηδέ τῳ ἐκφάσθαι μήτʼ ἀνδρῶν μήτε γυναικῶν,

πάντων, οὕνεκʼ ἄρʼ ἦλθες ἀλώμενος, ἀλλὰ σιωπῇ

πάσχειν ἄλγεα πολλά, βίας ὑποδέγμενος ἀνδρῶν.

310

τὴν δʼ ἀπαμειβόμενος προσέφη πολύμητις Ὀδυσσεύς·

ἀργαλέον σε, θεά, γνῶναι βροτῷ ἀντιάσαντι,

καὶ μάλʼ ἐπισταμένῳ· σὲ γὰρ αὐτὴν παντὶ ἐΐσκεις.

τοῦτο δʼ ἐγὼν εὖ οἶδʼ, ὅτι μοι πάρος ἠπίη ἦσθα,

ἧος ἐνὶ Τροίῃ πολεμίζομεν υἷες Ἀχαιῶν.

315

αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ Πριάμοιο πόλιν διεπέρσαμεν αἰπήν,

βῆμεν δʼ ἐν νήεσσι, θεὸς δʼ ἐκέδασσεν Ἀχαιούς,

οὔ σέ γʼ ἔπειτα ἴδον, κούρη Διός, οὐδʼ ἐνόησα

νηὸς ἐμῆς ἐπιβᾶσαν, ὅπως τί μοι ἄλγος ἀλάλκοις.

ἀλλʼ αἰεὶ φρεσὶν ᾗσιν ἔχων δεδαϊγμένον ἦτορ

320

ἠλώμην, ἧός με θεοὶ κακότητος ἔλυσαν·

πρίν γʼ ὅτε Φαιήκων ἀνδρῶν ἐν πίονι δήμῳ

θάρσυνάς τε ἔπεσσι καὶ ἐς πόλιν ἤγαγες αὐτή.

νῦν δέ σε πρὸς πατρὸς γουνάζομαι—οὐ γὰρ ὀΐω

ἥκειν εἰς Ἰθάκην εὐδείελον, ἀλλά τινʼ ἄλλην

325

γαῖαν ἀναστρέφομαι· σὲ δὲ κερτομέουσαν ὀΐω

ταῦτʼ ἀγορευέμεναι, ἵνʼ ἐμὰς φρένας ἠπεροπεύσῃς—

εἰπέ μοι εἰ ἐτεόν γε φίλην ἐς πατρίδʼ ἱκάνω.

τὸν δʼ ἠμείβετʼ ἔπειτα θεὰ γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη·

αἰεί τοι τοιοῦτον ἐνὶ στήθεσσι νόημα·

330

τῷ σε καὶ οὐ δύναμαι προλιπεῖν δύστηνον ἐόντα,

οὕνεκʼ ἐπητής ἐσσι καὶ ἀγχίνοος καὶ ἐχέφρων.

ἀσπασίως γάρ κʼ ἄλλος ἀνὴρ ἀλαλήμενος ἐλθὼν

ἵετʼ ἐνὶ μεγάροις ἰδέειν παῖδάς τʼ ἄλοχόν τε·

σοὶ δʼ οὔ πω φίλον ἐστὶ δαήμεναι οὐδὲ πυθέσθαι,

335

πρίν γʼ ἔτι σῆς ἀλόχου πειρήσεαι, ἥ τέ τοι αὔτως

ἧσται ἐνὶ μεγάροισιν, ὀϊζυραὶ δέ οἱ αἰεὶ

φθίνουσιν νύκτες τε καὶ ἤματα δάκρυ χεούσῃ.

αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ τὸ μὲν οὔ ποτʼ ἀπίστεον, ἀλλʼ ἐνὶ θυμῷ

ᾔδεʼ, ὃ νοστήσεις ὀλέσας ἄπο πάντας ἑταίρους·

340

ἀλλά τοι οὐκ ἐθέλησα Ποσειδάωνι μάχεσθαι

πατροκασιγνήτῳ, ὅς τοι κότον ἔνθετο θυμῷ,

χωόμενος ὅτι οἱ υἱὸν φίλον ἐξαλάωσας.

ἀλλʼ ἄγε τοι δείξω Ἰθάκης ἕδος, ὄφρα πεποίθῃς.

Φόρκυνος μὲν ὅδʼ ἐστὶ λιμήν, ἁλίοιο γέροντος,

345

ἥδε δʼ ἐπὶ κρατὸς λιμένος τανύφυλλος ἐλαίη·

ἀγχόθι δʼ αὐτῆς ἄντρον ἐπήρατον ἠεροειδές,

ἱρὸν νυμφάων, αἳ νηϊάδες καλέονται·

τοῦτο δέ τοι σπέος ἐστὶ κατηρεφές, ἔνθα σὺ πολλὰς

ἔρδεσκες νύμφῃσι τεληέσσας ἑκατόμβας·

350

τοῦτο δὲ Νήριτόν ἐστιν ὄρος καταειμένον ὕλῃ.

ὣς εἰποῦσα θεὰ σκέδασʼ ἠέρα, εἴσατο δὲ χθών·

γήθησέν τʼ ἄρʼ ἔπειτα πολύτλας δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς,

χαίρων ᾗ γαίῃ, κύσε δὲ ζείδωρον ἄρουραν.

αὐτίκα δὲ νύμφῃς ἠρήσατο, χεῖρας ἀνασχών·

355

νύμφαι νηϊάδες, κοῦραι Διός, οὔ ποτʼ ἐγώ γε

ὄψεσθʼ ὔμμʼ ἐφάμην· νῦν δʼ εὐχωλῇς ἀγανῇσι

χαίρετʼ· ἀτὰρ καὶ δῶρα διδώσομεν, ὡς τὸ πάρος περ,

αἴ κεν ἐᾷ πρόφρων με Διὸς θυγάτηρ ἀγελείη

αὐτόν τε ζώειν καί μοι φίλον υἱὸν ἀέξῃ.

360

τὸν δʼ αὖτε προσέειπε θεὰ γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη·

θάρσει, μή τοι ταῦτα μετὰ φρεσὶ σῇσι μελόντων.

ἀλλὰ χρήματα μὲν μυχῷ ἄντρου θεσπεσίοιο

θείμεν αὐτίκα νῦν, ἵνα περ τάδε τοι σόα μίμνῃ·

αὐτοὶ δὲ φραζώμεθʼ ὅπως ὄχʼ ἄριστα γένηται.

365

ὣς εἰποῦσα θεὰ δῦνε σπέος ἠεροειδές,

μαιομένη κευθμῶνας ἀνὰ σπέος· αὐτὰρ Ὀδυσσεὺς

ἆσσον πάντʼ ἐφόρει, χρυσὸν καὶ ἀτειρέα χαλκὸν

εἵματά τʼ εὐποίητα, τά οἱ Φαίηκες ἔδωκαν.

καὶ τὰ μὲν εὖ κατέθηκε, λίθον δʼ ἐπέθηκε θύρῃσι

370

Παλλὰς Ἀθηναίη, κούρη Διὸς αἰγιόχοιο.

τὼ δὲ καθεζομένω ἱερῆς παρὰ πυθμένʼ ἐλαίης

φραζέσθην μνηστῆρσιν ὑπερφιάλοισιν ὄλεθρον.

τοῖσι δὲ μύθων ἦρχε θεὰ γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη·

διογενὲς Λαερτιάδη, πολυμήχανʼ Ὀδυσσεῦ,

375

φράζευ ὅπως μνηστῆρσιν ἀναιδέσι χεῖρας ἐφήσεις,

οἳ δή τοι τρίετες μέγαρον κάτα κοιρανέουσι,

μνώμενοι ἀντιθέην ἄλοχον καὶ ἕδνα διδόντες·

ἡ δὲ σὸν αἰεὶ νόστον ὀδυρομένη κατὰ θυμὸν

πάντας μέν ῥʼ ἔλπει καὶ ὑπίσχεται ἀνδρὶ ἑκάστῳ,

380

ἀγγελίας προϊεῖσα, νόος δέ οἱ ἄλλα μενοινᾷ.

τὴν δʼ ἀπαμειβόμενος προσέφη πολύμητις Ὀδυσσεύς·

ὢ πόποι, ἦ μάλα δὴ Ἀγαμέμνονος Ἀτρεΐδαο

φθίσεσθαι κακὸν οἶτον ἐνὶ μεγάροισιν ἔμελλον,

εἰ μή μοι σὺ ἕκαστα, θεά, κατὰ μοῖραν ἔειπες.

385

ἀλλʼ ἄγε μῆτιν ὕφηνον, ὅπως ἀποτίσομαι αὐτούς·

πὰρ δέ μοι αὐτὴ στῆθι, μένος πολυθαρσὲς ἐνεῖσα,

οἷον ὅτε Τροίης λύομεν λιπαρὰ κρήδεμνα.

αἴ κέ μοι ὣς μεμαυῖα παρασταίης, γλαυκῶπι,

καί κε τριηκοσίοισιν ἐγὼν ἄνδρεσσι μαχοίμην

390

σὺν σοί, πότνα θεά, ὅτε μοι πρόφρασσʼ ἐπαρήγοις.

τὸν δʼ ἠμείβετʼ ἔπειτα θεὰ γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη·

καὶ λίην τοι ἐγώ γε παρέσσομαι, οὐδέ με λήσεις,

ὁππότε κεν δὴ ταῦτα πενώμεθα· καί τινʼ ὀΐω

αἵματί τʼ ἐγκεφάλῳ τε παλαξέμεν ἄσπετον οὖδας

395

ἀνδρῶν μνηστήρων, οἵ τοι βίοτον κατέδουσιν.

ἀλλʼ ἄγε σʼ ἄγνωστον τεύξω πάντεσσι βροτοῖσι·

κάρψω μὲν χρόα καλὸν ἐνὶ γναμπτοῖσι μέλεσσι,

ξανθὰς δʼ ἐκ κεφαλῆς ὀλέσω τρίχας, ἀμφὶ δὲ λαῖφος

ἕσσω ὅ κε στυγέῃσιν ἰδὼν ἄνθρωπον ἔχοντα,

400

κνυζώσω δέ τοι ὄσσε πάρος περικαλλέʼ ἐόντε,

ὡς ἂν ἀεικέλιος πᾶσι μνηστῆρσι φανήῃς

σῇ τʼ ἀλόχῳ καὶ παιδί, τὸν ἐν μεγάροισιν ἔλειπες.

αὐτὸς δὲ πρώτιστα συβώτην εἰσαφικέσθαι,

ὅς τοι ὑῶν ἐπίουρος, ὁμῶς δέ τοι ἤπια οἶδε,

405

παῖδά τε σὸν φιλέει καὶ ἐχέφρονα Πηνελόπειαν.

δήεις τόν γε σύεσσι παρήμενον· αἱ δὲ νέμονται

πὰρ Κόρακος πέτρῃ ἐπί τε κρήνῃ Ἀρεθούσῃ,

ἔσθουσαι βάλανον μενοεικέα καὶ μέλαν ὕδωρ

πίνουσαι, τά θʼ ὕεσσι τρέφει τεθαλυῖαν ἀλοιφήν.

410

ἔνθα μένειν καὶ πάντα παρήμενος ἐξερέεσθαι,

ὄφρʼ ἂν ἐγὼν ἔλθω Σπάρτην ἐς καλλιγύναικα

Τηλέμαχον καλέουσα, τεὸν φίλον υἱόν, Ὀδυσσεῦ·

ὅς τοι ἐς εὐρύχορον Λακεδαίμονα πὰρ Μενέλαον

ᾤχετο πευσόμενος μετὰ σὸν κλέος, εἴ που ἔτʼ εἴης.

415

τὴν δʼ ἀπαμειβόμενος προσέφη πολύμητις Ὀδυσσεύς·

τίπτε τʼ ἄρʼ οὔ οἱ ἔειπες, ἐνὶ φρεσὶ πάντα ἰδυῖα;

ἦ ἵνα που καὶ κεῖνος ἀλώμενος ἄλγεα πάσχῃ

πόντον ἐπʼ ἀτρύγετον· βίοτον δέ οἱ ἄλλοι ἔδουσι;

τὸν δʼ ἠμείβετʼ ἔπειτα θεὰ γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη·

420

μὴ δή τοι κεῖνός γε λίην ἐνθύμιος ἔστω.

αὐτή μιν πόμπευον, ἵνα κλέος ἐσθλὸν ἄροιτο

κεῖσʼ ἐλθών· ἀτὰρ οὔ τινʼ ἔχει πόνον, ἀλλὰ ἕκηλος

ἧσται ἐν Ἀτρεΐδαο δόμοις, παρὰ δʼ ἄσπετα κεῖται.

ἦ μέν μιν λοχόωσι νέοι σὺν νηῒ μελαίνῃ,

425

ἱέμενοι κτεῖναι, πρὶν πατρίδα γαῖαν ἱκέσθαι·

ἀλλὰ τά γʼ οὐκ ὀΐω, πρὶν καί τινα γαῖα καθέξει

ἀνδρῶν μνηστήρων, οἵ τοι βίοτον κατέδουσιν.

ὣς ἄρα μιν φαμένη ῥάβδῳ ἐπεμάσσατʼ Ἀθήνη.

κάρψεν μὲν χρόα καλὸν ἐνὶ γναμπτοῖσι μέλεσσι,

430

ξανθὰς δʼ ἐκ κεφαλῆς ὄλεσε τρίχας, ἀμφὶ δὲ δέρμα

πάντεσσιν μελέεσσι παλαιοῦ θῆκε γέροντος,

κνύζωσεν δέ οἱ ὄσσε πάρος περικαλλέʼ ἐόντε·

ἀμφὶ δέ μιν ῥάκος ἄλλο κακὸν βάλεν ἠδὲ χιτῶνα,

ῥωγαλέα ῥυπόωντα, κακῷ μεμορυγμένα καπνῷ·

435

ἀμφὶ δέ μιν μέγα δέρμα ταχείης ἕσσʼ ἐλάφοιο,

ψιλόν· δῶκε δέ οἱ σκῆπτρον καὶ ἀεικέα πήρην,

πυκνὰ ῥωγαλέην· ἐν δὲ στρόφος ἦεν ἀορτήρ.

τώ γʼ ὣς βουλεύσαντε διέτμαγεν. ἡ μὲν ἔπειτα

ἐς Λακεδαίμονα δῖαν ἔβη μετὰ παῖδʼ Ὀδυσῆος.

440

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.) — 13.1 focus

1 So he spoke, and they were all hushed in silence, and were spellbound throughout the shadowy halls. And Alcinous again answered him, and said: “Odysseus, since thou hast come to my 5 high-roofed house with floor of brass, thou shalt not, methinks, be driven back, and return with baffled purpose, even though thou hast suffered much. And to each man of you that in my halls are ever wont to drink the flaming wine of the elders, and to listen to the minstrel, I speak, and give this charge. 10 Raiment for the stranger lies already stored in the polished chest, with gold curiously wrought and all the other gifts which the counsellors of the Phaeacians brought hither. But, come now, let us give him a great tripod and a cauldron, each man of us, and we in turn will gather the cost from among the people, 15 and repay ourselves. It were hard for one man to give freely, without requital.” So spake Alcinous, and his word was pleasing to them. They then went, each man to his house, to take their rest; but as soon as early Dawn appeared, the rosy-fingered, they hastened to the ship and brought the bronze, that gives strength to men. 20 And the strong and mighty Alcinous went himself throughout the ship, and carefully stowed the gifts beneath the benches, that they might not hinder any of the crew at their rowing, when they busily plied the oars. Then they went to the house of Alcinous, and prepared a feast. And for them the strong and mighty Alcinous sacrificed a bull 25 to Zeus, son of Cronos, god of the dark clouds, who is lord of all. Then, when they had burned the thigh-pieces, they feasted a glorious feast, and made merry, and among them the divine minstrel Demodocus, held in honor by the people, sang to the lyre. But Odysseus would ever turn his head toward the blazing sun, 30 eager to see it set, for verily he was eager to return home. And as a man longs for supper, for whom all day long a yoke of wine-dark oxen has drawn the jointed plough through fallow land, and gladly for him does the light of the sun sink, that he may busy him with his supper, and his knees grow weary as he goes; 35 even so gladly for Odysseus did the light of the sun sink. Straightway then he spoke among the Phaeacians, lovers of the oar, and to Alcinous above all he declared his word, and said: “Lord Alcinous, renowned above all men, pour libations now, and send ye me on my way in peace; and yourselves too—Farewell! 40 For now all that my heart desired has been brought to pass: a convoy, and gifts of friendship. May the gods of heaven bless them to me, and on my return may I find in my home my peerless wife with those I love unscathed; and may you again, remaining here, make glad 45 your wedded wives and children; and may the gods grant you prosperity of every sort, and may no evil come upon your people.”

So he spoke, and they all praised his words, and bade send the stranger on his way, since he had spoken fittingly. Then the mighty Alcinous spoke to the herald, saying: 50 “Pontonous, mix the bowl, and serve out wine to all in the hall, in order that, when we have made prayer to father Zeus, we may send forth the stranger to his own native land.” So he spoke, and Pontonous mixed the honey hearted wine and served out to all, coming up to each in turn; 55 and they poured libations to the blessed gods, who hold broad heaven, from where they sat. But goodly Odysseus arose, and placed in the hand of Arete the two-handled cup, and spoke, and addressed her with winged words: “Fare thee well, O queen, throughout all the years, till old age 60 and death come, which are the lot of mortals. As for me, I go my way, but do thou in this house have joy of thy children and thy people and Alcinous the king.” So the goodly Odysseus spake and passed over the threshold. And with him the mighty Alcinous sent forth a herald 65 to lead him to the swift ship and the shore of the sea. And Arete sent with him slave women, one bearing a newly washed cloak and a tunic, and another again she bade follow to bear the strong chest, and yet another bore bread and red wine. 70 But when they had come down to the ship and to the sea, straightway the lordly youths that were his escort took these things, and stowed them in the hollow ship, even all the food and drink. Then for Odysseus they spread a rug and a linen sheet on the deck of the hollow ship 75 at the stern, that he might sleep soundly; and he too went aboard, and laid him down in silence. Then they sat down on the benches, each in order, and loosed the hawser from the pierced stone. And as soon as they leaned back, and tossed the brine with their oarblades, sweet sleep fell upon his eyelids, 80 an unawakening sleep, most sweet, and most like to death. And as on a plain four yoked stallions spring forward all together beneath the strokes of the lash, and leaping on high swiftly accomplish their way, even so the stern of that ship leapt on high, and in her wake 85 the dark wave of the loud-sounding sea foamed mightily, and she sped safely and surely on her way; not even the circling hawk, the swiftest of winged things, could have kept pace with her. Thus she sped on swiftly and clove the waves of the sea, bearing a man the peer of the gods in counsel, 90 one who in time past had suffered many griefs at heart in passing through wars of men and the grievous waves; but now he slept in peace, forgetful of all that he had suffered.

Now when that brightest of stars rose which ever comes to herald the light of early Dawn, 95 even then the seafaring ship drew near to the island. There is in the land of Ithaca a certain harbor of Phorcys, the old man of the sea, and at its mouth two projecting headlands sheer to seaward, but sloping down on the side toward the harbor. These keep back the great waves raised by heavy winds 100 without, but within the benched ships lie unmoored when they have reached the point of anchorage. At the head of the harbor is a long-leafed olive tree, and near it a pleasant, shadowy cave sacred to the nymphs that are called Naiads. 105 Therein are mixing bowls and jars of stone, and there too the bees store honey. And in the cave are long looms of stone, at which the nymphs weave webs of purple dye, a wonder to behold; and therein are also ever-flowing springs. Two doors there are to the cave, 110 one toward the North Wind , by which men go down, but that toward the South Wind is sacred, nor do men enter thereby; it is the way of the immortals. Here they rowed in, knowing the place of old; and the ship ran full half her length on the shore 115 in her swift course, at such pace was she driven by the arms of the rowers. Then they stepped forth from the benched ship upon the land, and first they lifted Odysseus out of the hollow ship, with the linen sheet and bright rug as they were, and laid him down on the sand, still overpowered by sleep. 120 And they lifted out the goods which the lordly Phaeacians had given him, as he set out for home, through the favour of great-hearted Athena. These they set all together by the trunk of the olive tree, out of the path, lest haply some wayfarer, before Odysseus awoke, might come upon them and spoil them. 125 Then they themselves returned home again. But the Shaker of the Earth did not forget the threats wherewith at the first he had threatened godlike Odysseus, and he thus enquired of the purpose of Zeus: “Father Zeus, no longer shall I, even I, be held in honor among the immortal gods, seeing that mortals honor me not a whit— 130 even the Phaeacians, who, thou knowest, are of my own lineage. For I but now declared that Odysseus should suffer many woes ere he reached his home, though I did not wholly rob him of his return when once thou hadst promised it and confirmed it with thy nod; yet in his sleep these men have borne him in a swift ship over the sea 135 and set him down in Ithaca , and have given him gifts past telling, stores of bronze and gold and woven raiment, more than Odysseus would ever have won for himself from Troy , if he had returned unscathed with his due share of the spoil.”

Then Zeus, the cloud-gatherer, answered him, and said: 140 “Ah me, thou shaker of the earth, wide of sway, what a thing hast thou said! The gods do thee no dishonor; hard indeed would it be to assail with dishonor our eldest and best. But as for men, if any one, yielding to his might and strength, fails to do thee honor in aught, thou mayest ever take vengeance, even thereafter. 145 Do as thou wilt, and as is thy good pleasure.” Then Poseidon, the earth-shaker, answered him: “Straightway should I have done as thou sayest, thou god of the dark clouds, but I ever dread and avoid thy wrath. But now I am minded to smite the fair ship of the Phaeacians, 150 as she comes back from his convoy on the misty deep, that hereafter they may desist and cease from giving convoy to men, and to fling a great mountain about their city.” Then Zeus, the cloud-gatherer, answered him and said: “Lazy one, hear what seems best in my sight. 155 When all the people are looking forth from the city upon her as she speeds on her way, then do thou turn her to stone hard by the land—a stone in the shape of a swift ship, that all men may marvel; and do thou fling a great mountain about their city.” Now when Poseidon, the earth-shaker, heard this 160 he went his way to Scheria , where the Phaeacians dwell, and there he waited. And she drew close to shore, the seafaring ship, speeding swiftly on her way. Then near her came the Earth-shaker and turned her to stone, and rooted her fast beneath by a blow of the flat of his hand, and then he was gone. 165 But they spoke winged words to one another, the Phaeacians of the long oars, men famed for their ships. And thus would one speak, with a glance at his neighbor: “Ah me, who has now bound our swift ship on the sea as she sped homeward? Lo, she was in plain sight.” 170 So would one of them speak, but they knew not how these things were to be. Then Alcinous addressed their company and said: “Lo now, verily the oracles of my father, uttered long ago, have come upon me. He was wont to say that Poseidon was wroth with us because we give safe convoy to all men. 175 He said that some day, as a beautiful ship of the Phaeacians was returning from a convoy over the misty deep, Poseidon would smite her, and would fling a great mountain about our town. So that old man spoke, and lo, now all this is being brought to pass. But now come, as I bid let us all obey. 180 Cease ye to give convoy to mortals, when anyone comes to our city, and let us sacrifice to Poseidon twelve choice bulls, if haply he may take pity, and not fling a lofty mountain about our town.”

So he spoke, and they were seized with fear and made ready the bulls. 185 Thus they were praying to the lord Poseidon, the leaders and counsellors of the land of the Phaeacians, as they stood about the altar, but Odysseus awoke out of his sleep in his native land. Yet he knew it not after his long absence, for about him the goddess had shed a mist, 190 even Pallas Athena, daughter of Zeus, that she might render him unknown, and tell him all things, so that his wife might not know him, nor his townsfolk, nor his friends, until the wooers had paid the full price of all their transgressions. Therefore all things seemed strange to their lord, 195 the long paths, the bays offering safe anchorage, the sheer cliffs, and the luxuriant trees. So he sprang up and stood and looked upon his native land, and then he groaned and smote both of his thighs with the flat of his hands, and mournfully spoke, and said: 200 “Woe is me, to the land of what mortals am I now come? Are they cruel, and wild, and unjust, or do they love strangers and fear the gods in their thoughts? Whither shall I bear all this wealth, or whither shall I myself go wandering on? Would that I had remained there among the Phaeacians, 205 and had then come to some other of the mighty kings, who would have entertained me and sent me on my homeward way. But now I know not where to bestow this wealth; yet here will I not leave it, lest haply it become the spoil of others to my cost. Out upon them; not wholly wise, it seems, nor just 210 were the leaders and counsellors of the Phaeacians who have brought me to a strange land. Verily they said that they would bring me to clear-seen Ithaca , but they have not made good their word. May Zeus, the suppliant's god, requite them, who watches over all men, and punishes him that sins. 215 But come, I will number the goods, and go over them, lest to my cost these men have carried off aught with them in the hollow ship.”

So he spake, and set him to count the beautiful tripods, and the cauldrons, and the gold, and the fair woven raiment, and of these he missed nothing. Then, mournfully longing for his native land, 220 he paced by the shore of the loud-sounding sea, uttering many a moan. And Athena drew near him in the form of a young man, a herdsman of sheep, one most delicate, as are the sons of princes. In a double fold about her shoulders she wore a well-wrought cloak, 225 and beneath her shining feet she had sandals, and in her hands a spear. Then Odysseus was glad at sight of her, and came to meet her, and he spoke, and addressed her with winged words: “Friend, since thou art the first to whom I have come in this land, hail to thee, and mayst thou meet me with no evil mind. 230 Nay, save this treasure, and save me; for to thee do I pray, as to a god, and am come to thy dear knees. And tell me this also truly, that I may know full well. What land, what people is this? What men dwell here? Is it some clear-seen island, or a shore 235 of the deep-soiled mainland that lies resting on the sea?” Then the goddess, flashing-eyed Athena, answered him: “A fool art thou, stranger, or art come from far, if indeed thou askest of this land. Surely it is no wise so nameless, but full many know it, 240 both all those who dwell toward the dawn and the sun, and all those that are behind toward the murky darkness. It is a rugged isle, not fit for driving horses, yet it is not utterly poor, though it be but narrow. Therein grows corn beyond measure, and the wine-grape as well, 245 and the rain never fails it, nor the rich dew. It is a good land for pasturing goats and kine; there are trees of every sort, and in it also pools for watering that fail not the year through. Therefore, stranger, the name of Ithaca has reached even to the land of Troy which, they say, is far from this land of Achaea.”

250 So she spake, and the much-enduring, goodly Odysseus was glad, and rejoiced in his land, the land of his fathers, as he heard the word of Pallas Athena, daughter of Zeus, who bears the aegis; and he spoke, and addressed her with winged words; yet he spoke not the truth, but checked the word ere it was uttered, 255 ever revolving in his breast thoughts of great cunning: “I heard of Ithaca , even in broad Crete , far over the sea; and now have I myself come hither with these my goods. And I left as much more with my children, when I fled the land, after I had slain the dear son of Idomeneus, 260 Orsilochus, swift of foot, who in broad Crete surpassed in fleetness all men that live by toil. Now he would have robbed me of all that booty of Troy , for which I had borne grief of heart, passing through wars of men and the grievous waves, 265 for that I would not shew favour to his father, and serve as his squire in the land of the Trojans, but commanded other men of my own. So I smote him with my bronze-tipped spear as he came home from the field, lying in wait for him with one of my men by the roadside. A dark night covered the heavens, and no 270 man was ware of us, but unseen I took away his life. Now when I had slain him with the sharp bronze, I went straightway to a ship, and made prayer to the lordly Phoenicians, giving them booty to satisfy their hearts. I bade them take me aboard and land me at Pylos , 275 or at goodly Elis , where the Epeans hold sway. Yet verily the force of the wind thrust them away from thence, sore against their will, nor did they purpose to play me false; but driven wandering from thence we came hither by night. With eager haste we rowed on into the harbor, nor had we any 280 thought of supper, sore as was our need of it, but even as we were we went forth from the ship and lay down, one and all. Then upon me came sweet sleep in my weariness, but they took my goods out of the hollow ship and set them where I myself lay on the sands. 285 And they went on board, and departed for the well-peopled land of Sidon ; but I was left here, my heart sore troubled.”

So he spoke, and the goddess, flashing-eyed Athena, smiled, and stroked him with her hand, and changed herself to the form of a woman, comely and tall, and skilled in glorious handiwork. 290 And she spoke, and addressed him with winged words: “Cunning must he be and knavish, who would go beyond thee in all manner of guile, aye, though it were a god that met thee. Bold man, crafty in counsel, insatiate in deceit, not even in thine own land, it seems, wast thou to cease from guile 295 and deceitful tales, which thou lovest from the bottom of thine heart. But come, let us no longer talk of this, being both well versed in craft, since thou art far the best of all men in counsel and in speech, and I among all the gods am famed for wisdom and craft. Yet thou didst not know 300 Pallas Athena, daughter of Zeus, even me, who ever stand by thy side, and guard thee in all toils. Aye, and I made thee beloved by all the Phaeacians. And now am I come hither to weave a plan with thee, and to hide all the treasure, which the lordly Phaeacians 305 gave thee by my counsel and will, when thou didst set out for home; and to tell thee all the measure of woe it is thy fate to fulfil in thy well-built house. But do thou be strong, for bear it thou must, and tell no man of them all nor any woman that thou hast come back from thy wanderings, but in silence 310 endure thy many griefs, and submit to the violence of men.” Then Odysseus of many wiles answered her, and said: “Hard is it, goddess, for a mortal man to know thee when he meets thee, how wise soever he be, for thou takest what shape thou wilt. But this I know well, that of old thou wast kindly toward me, 315 so long as we sons of the Achaeans were warring in the land of Troy . But after we had sacked the lofty city of Priam, and had gone away in our ships, and a god had scattered the Achaeans, never since then have I seen thee, daughter of Zeus, nor marked thee coming on board my ship, that thou mightest ward off sorrow from me. 320 Nay, I ever wandered on, bearing in my breast a stricken heart, till the gods delivered me from evil, even until in the rich land of the Phaeacians thou didst cheer me with thy words, and thyself lead me to their city. But now I beseech thee by thy father—for I think not 325 that I am come to clear-seen Ithaca ; nay, it is some other land over which I roam, and thou, methinks, dost speak thus in mockery to beguile my mind—tell me whether in very truth I am come to my dear native land.”

Then the goddess, flashing-eyed Athena, answered him: 330 “Ever such is the thought in thy breast, and therefore it is that I cannot leave thee in thy sorrow, for thou art soft of speech, keen of wit, and prudent. Eagerly would another man on his return from wanderings have hastened to behold in his halls his children and his wife; 335 but thou art not yet minded to know or learn of aught, till thou hast furthermore proved thy wife, who abides as of old in her halls, and ever sorrowfully for her the nights and days wane, as she weeps. But as for me, I never doubted of this, but in my heart 340 knew it well, that thou wouldest come home after losing all thy comrades. Yet, thou must know, I was not minded to strive against Poseidon, my father's brother, who laid up wrath in his heart against thee, angered that thou didst blind his dear son. But come, I will shew thee the land of Ithaca , that thou mayest be sure. 345 This is the harbor of Phorcys, the old man of the sea, and here at the head of the harbor is the long-leafed olive tree, and near it is the pleasant, shadowy cave, sacred to the nymphs that are called Naiads. This, thou must know, is the vaulted cave in which thou 350 wast wont to offer to the nymphs many hecatombs that bring fulfillment; and yonder is Mount Neriton, clothed with its forests.” So spake the goddess, and scattered the mist, and the land appeared. Glad then was the much-enduring, goodly Odysseus, rejoicing in his own land, and he kissed the earth, the giver of grain. 355 And straightway he prayed to the nymphs with upstretched hands: “Ye Naiad Nymphs, daughters of Zeus, never did I think to behold you again, but now I hail you with loving prayers. Aye, and gifts too will I give, as aforetime, if the daughter of Zeus, she that drives the spoil, shall graciously grant me 360 to live, and shall bring to manhood my dear son.” Then the goddess, flashing-eyed Athena, answered him again: “Be of good cheer, and let not these things distress thy heart. But let us now forthwith set thy goods in the innermost recess of the wondrous cave, where they may abide for thee in safety, 365 and let us ourselves take thought how all may be far the best.”

So saying, the goddess entered the shadowy cave and searched out its hiding-places. And Odysseus brought all the treasure thither, the gold and the stubborn bronze and the finely-wrought raiment, which the Phaeacians gave him. 370 These things he carefully laid away, and Pallas Athena, daughter of Zeus, who bears the aegis, set a stone at the door. Then the two sat them down by the trunk of the sacred olive tree, and devised death for the insolent wooers. And the goddess, flashing-eyed Athena, was the first to speak, saying: 375 “Son of Laertes, sprung from Zeus, Odysseus of many devices, take thought how thou mayest put forth thy hands on the shameless wooers, who now for three years have been lording it in thy halls, wooing thy godlike wife, and offering wooers' gifts. And she, as she mournfully looks for thy coming, 380 offers hopes to all, and has promises for each man, sending them messages, but her mind is set on other things.” Then Odysseus of many wiles answered her, and said: “Lo now, of a surety I was like to have perished in my halls by the evil fate of Agamemnon, son of Atreus, 385 hadst not thou, goddess, duly told me all. But come, weave some plan by which I may requite them; and stand thyself by my side, and endue me with dauntless courage, even as when we loosed the bright diadem of Troy . Wouldest thou but stand by my side, thou flashing-eyed one, as eager as thou wast then, 390 I would fight even against three hundred men, with thee, mighty goddess, if with a ready heart thou wouldest give me aid.” Then the goddess, flashing-eyed Athena, answered him: “Yea verily, I will be with thee, and will not forget thee, when we are busied with this work; and methinks many a one 395 of the wooers that devour thy substance shall bespatter the vast earth with his blood and brains. But come, I will make thee unknown to all mortals. I will shrivel the fair skin on thy supple limbs, and destroy the flaxen hair from off thy head, and clothe thee in a ragged garment, 400 such that one would shudder to see a man clad therein. And I will dim thy two eyes that were before so beautiful, that thou mayest appear mean in the sight of all the wooers, and of thy wife, and of thy son, whom thou didst leave in thy halls. And for thyself, do thou go first of all 405 to the swineherd who keeps thy swine, and withal has a kindly heart towards thee, and loves thy son and constant Penelope. Thou wilt find him abiding by the swine, and they are feeding by the rock of Corax and the spring Arethusa, eating acorns to their heart's content and 410 drinking the black water, things which cause the rich flesh of swine to wax fat. There do thou stay, and sitting by his side question him of all things, while I go to Sparta , the land of fair women, to summon thence Telemachus, thy dear son, Odysseus, who went to spacious Lacedaemon to the house of Menelaus, 415 to seek tidings of thee, if thou wast still anywhere alive.”

Then Odysseus of many wiles answered her: “Why then, I pray thee, didst thou not tell him, thou whose mind knows all things? Nay, was it haply that he too might suffer woes, wandering over the unresting sea, and that others might devour his substance?” 420 Then the goddess, flashing-eyed Athena, answered him: “Nay verily, not for him be thy heart overmuch troubled. It was I that guided him, that he might win good report by going thither, and he has no toil, but sits in peace in the palace of the son of Atreus, and good cheer past telling is before him. 425 Truly young men in a black ship lie in wait for him, eager to slay him before he comes to his native land, but methinks this shall not be. Ere that shall the earth cover many a one of the wooers that devour thy substance.” So saying, Athena touched him with her wand. 430 She withered the fair flesh on his supple limbs, and destroyed the flaxen hair from off his head, and about all his limbs she put the skin of an aged old man. And she dimmed his two eyes that were before so beautiful, and clothed him in other raiment, 435 a vile ragged cloak and a tunic, tattered garments and foul, begrimed with filthy smoke. And about him she cast the great skin of a swift hind, stripped of the hair, and she gave him a staff, and a miserable wallet, full of holes, slung by a twisted cord. So when the two had thus taken counsel together, they parted; and thereupon the goddess 440 went to goodly Lacedaemon to fetch the son of Odysseus.

Odyssey Perseus (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.) — 13.1 focus

1 Thus did he speak, and they all held their peace throughout the covered room, enthralled by the charm of his story, till presently Alkinoos began to speak.

3 "Odysseus," said he, "now that you have reached my house I doubt not you will get home without further misadventure no matter how much you have suffered in the past. To you others, however, who come here night after night to drink my choicest wine and listen to my bard, I would insist as follows. Our guest has already packed up the clothes, wrought gold, and other valuables which you have brought for his acceptance; let us now, therefore, present him further, each one of us, with a large tripod and a cauldron. We will recoup ourselves by the levy of a general rate throughout the dêmos; for private individuals cannot be expected to bear the burden of such a handsome present."

16 Every one approved of this, and then they went home to bed each in his own abode. When the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared, they hurried down to the ship and brought their cauldrons with them. Alkinoos went on board and saw everything so securely stowed under the ship's benches that nothing could break adrift and injure the rowers. Then they went to the house of Alkinoos to get dinner, and he sacrificed a bull for them in honor of Zeus who is the lord of all. They set the meats to grill and made an excellent dinner, after which the inspired bard, Demodokos, who was a favorite with every one, sang to them; but Odysseus kept on turning his eyes towards the sun, as though to hasten his setting, for he was longing to be on his way. As one who has been all day ploughing a fallow field with a couple of oxen keeps thinking about his supper and is glad when night comes that he may go and get it, for it is all his legs can do to carry him, even so did Odysseus rejoice when the sun went down, and he at once said to the Phaeacians, addressing himself more particularly to King Alkinoos:

38 "Sir, and all of you, farewell. Make your drink-offerings and send me on my way rejoicing, for you have fulfilled my heart's desire by giving me an escort, and making me presents, which heaven grant that I may turn to good account [ olbios]; may I find my admirable wife living in peace among friends, and may you whom I leave behind me give satisfaction to your wives and children; may heaven grant you every good grace [ aretê], and may no evil thing come among your people."

47 Thus did he speak. His hearers all of them approved his saying and agreed that he should have his escort inasmuch as he had spoken reasonably. Alkinoos therefore said to his servant, "Pontonoos, mix some wine and hand it round to everybody, that we may offer a prayer to father Zeus, and speed our guest upon his way."

53 Pontonoos mixed the wine and handed it to every one in turn; the others each from his own seat made a drink-offering to the blessed gods that live in heaven, but Odysseus rose and placed the double cup in the hands of queen Arete.

59 "Farewell, queen," said he, "henceforward and for ever, till age and death, the common lot of humankind, lay their hands upon you. I now take my leave; be happy in this house with your children, your people, and with king Alkinoos."

63 As he spoke he crossed the threshold, and Alkinoos sent a man to conduct him to his ship and to the sea shore. Arete also sent some maid servants with him - one with a clean shirt and cloak, another to carry his strong-box, and a third with grain and wine. When they got to the water side the crew took these things and put them on board, with all the meat and drink; but for Odysseus they spread a rug and a linen sheet on deck that he might sleep soundly in the stern of the ship. Then he too went on board and lay down without a word, but the crew took every man his place in order [ kosmos] and loosed the hawser from the pierced stone to which it had been bound. Thereon, when they began rowing out to sea, Odysseus fell into a deep, sweet, and almost deathlike slumber.

81 The ship bounded forward on her way as a four in hand chariot flies over the course when the horses feel the whip. Her prow curved as it were the neck of a stallion, and a great wave of dark seething water boiled in her wake. She held steadily on her course, and even a falcon, swiftest of all birds, could not have kept pace with her. Thus, then, she cut her way through the water. carrying one who was as cunning as the gods, but who was now sleeping peacefully, forgetful of all that he had suffered both on the field of battle and by the waves of the weary sea.

93 When the bright star that heralds the approach of dawn began to show. the ship drew near to land. Now there is in the dêmos of Ithaca a haven of the Old One of the Sea, Phorkys, which lies between two points that break the line of the sea and shut the harbor in. These shelter it from the storms of wind and sea that rage outside, so that, when once within it, a ship may lie without being even moored. At the head of this harbor there is a large olive tree, and at no distance a fine overarching cavern sacred to the nymphs who are called Naiads. There are mixing-bowls within it and wine-jars of stone, and the bees hive there. Moreover, there are great looms of stone on which the nymphs weave their robes of sea purple - very curious to see - and at all times there is water within it. It has two entrances, one facing North by which mortals can go down into the cave, while the other comes from the South and is more mysterious; mortals cannot possibly get in by it, it is the way taken by the gods.

113 Into this harbor, then, they took their ship, for they knew the place, She had so much way upon her that she ran half her own length on to the shore; when, however, they had landed, the first thing they did was to lift Odysseus with his rug and linen sheet out of the ship, and lay him down upon the sand still fast asleep. Then they took out the presents which Athena had persuaded the Phaeacians to give him when he was setting out on his voyage homewards. They put these all together by the root of the olive tree, away from the road, for fear some passer by might come and steal them before Odysseus awoke; and then they made the best of their way home again.

125 But Poseidon did not forget the threats with which he had already threatened Odysseus, so he took counsel with Zeus. "Father Zeus," said he, "I shall no longer be held in any sort of respect among you gods, if mortals like the Phaeacians, who are my own flesh and blood, show such small regard for me. I said I would get Odysseus home when he had suffered sufficiently. I did not say that he should never have a homecoming [ nostos] at all, for I knew you had already nodded your head about it, and promised that he should do so; but now they have brought him over the sea in a ship fast asleep and have landed him in Ithaca after loading him with more magnificent presents of bronze, gold, and raiment than he would ever have brought back from Troy , if he had had his share of the spoil and got home without misadventure."

139 And Zeus answered, "What, O Lord of the Earthquake, are you talking about? The gods are by no means wanting in respect for you. It would be monstrous were they to insult one so old and honored as you are. As regards mortals, however, if any of them is indulging in insolence [ biê] and treating you disrespectfully, it will always rest with yourself to deal with him as you may think proper, so do just as you please."

146 "I should have done so at once," replied Poseidon, "if I were not anxious to avoid anything that might displease you; now, therefore, I should like to wreck the Phaeacian ship as it is returning from its escort. This will stop them from escorting people in future; and I should also like to envelop their city under a huge mountain."

153 "My good friend," answered Zeus, "I should recommend you at the very moment when the people from the city are watching the ship on her way, to turn it into a rock near the land and looking like a ship. This will astonish everybody, and you can then envelop their city under the mountain."

159 When earth-encircling Poseidon heard this he went to Scheria where the Phaeacians live, and stayed there till the ship, which was making rapid way, had got close-in. Then he went up to it, turned it into stone, and drove it down with the flat of his hand so as to root it in the ground. After this he went away.

165 The Phaeacians then began talking among themselves, and one would turn towards his neighbor, saying, "Who is it that can have rooted the ship in the sea just as she was getting into port? We could see the whole of her only a moment ago."

170 This was how they talked, but they knew nothing about it; and Alkinoos said, "I remember now the old prophecy of my father. He said that Poseidon would be angry with us for taking every one so safely over the sea, and would one day wreck a Phaeacian ship as it was returning from an escort, and envelop our city with a high mountain. This was what my old father used to say, and now it is all coming true. Now therefore let us all do as I say; in the first place we must leave off giving people escorts when they come here, and in the next let us sacrifice twelve picked [ krinô] bulls to Poseidon that he may have mercy upon us, and not envelop our city with the high mountain." When the people heard this they were afraid and got ready the bulls.

185 Thus did the chiefs and rulers of the dêmos of the Phaeacians to king Poseidon, standing round his altar; and at the same time Odysseus woke up once more upon his own soil. He had been so long away that he did not know it again; moreover, Zeus’ daughter Athena had made it a foggy day, so that people might not know of his having come, and that she might tell him everything without either his wife or his fellow citizens and friends recognizing him until he had taken his revenge upon the wicked suitors. Everything, therefore, seemed quite different to him - the long straight tracks, the harbors, the precipices, and the goodly trees, appeared all changed as he started up and looked upon his native land. So he smote his thighs with the flat of his hands and cried aloud despairingly.

200 "Alas," he exclaimed, "among what manner of people am I fallen? Are they savage and uncivilized [not dikaios] or hospitable and endowed with god-fearing noos? Where shall I put all this treasure, and which way shall I go? I wish I had stayed over there with the Phaeacians; or I could have gone to some other great chief who would have been good to me and given me an escort. As it is I do not know where to put my treasure, and I cannot leave it here for fear somebody else should get hold of it. In good truth the chiefs and rulers of the Phaeacians have not been dealing fairly [ dikaios] by me, and have left me in the wrong country; they said they would take me back to Ithaca and they have not done so: may Zeus the protector of suppliants chastise them, for he watches over everybody and punishes those who do wrong. Still, I suppose I must count my goods and see if the crew have gone off with any of them."

217 He counted his goodly coppers and cauldrons, his gold and all his clothes, but there was nothing missing; still he kept grieving about not being in his own country, and wandered up and down by the shore of the sounding sea bewailing his hard fate. Then Athena came up to him disguised as a young shepherd of delicate and princely mien, with a good cloak folded double about her shoulders; she had sandals on her comely feet and held a javelin in her hand. Odysseus was glad when he saw her, and went straight up to her.

228 "My friend," said he, "you are the first person whom I have met with in this country; I salute you, therefore, and beg you to be well disposed in noos towards me. Protect these my goods, and myself too, for I embrace your knees and pray to you as though you were a god. Tell me, then, and tell me truly, what land and country [ dêmos] is this? Who are its inhabitants? Am I on an island, or is this the sea board of some continent?"

236 Athena answered, "Stranger, you must be very simple, or must have come from somewhere a long way off, not to know what country this is. It is a very celebrated place, and everybody knows it East and West. It is rugged and not a good driving country, but it is by no means a bad island for what there is of it. It grows any quantity of grain and also wine, for it is watered both by rain and dew; it breeds cattle also and goats; all kinds of timber grow here, and there are watering places where the water never runs dry; so, sir, the name of Ithaca is known even as far as Troy , which I understand to be a long way off from this Achaean country."

250 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 [ alêthês], and made up a lying story in the instinctive wiliness of his noos.

256 "I heard of Ithaca ," said he, "when I was in Crete beyond the seas, and now it seems I have reached it with all these treasures. I have left as much more behind me for my children, but am fleeing because I killed Orsilokhos son of Idomeneus, the fleetest runner in Crete . I killed him because he wanted to rob me of the spoils I had got from Troy with so much trouble and danger both on the field of battle and by the waves of the weary sea; he said I had not served his father loyally in the Trojan dêmos as vassal, but had set myself up as an independent ruler, so I lay in wait for him and with one of my followers by the road side, and speared him as he was coming into town from the country. It was a very dark night and nobody saw us; it was not known, therefore, that I had killed him, but as soon as I had done so I went to a ship and besought the owners, who were Phoenicians, to take me on board and set me in Pylos or in Elis where the Epeans rule, giving them as much spoil as satisfied them. They meant no guile, but the wind drove them off their course, and we sailed on till we came hither by night. It was all we could do to get inside the harbor, and none of us said a word about supper though we wanted it badly, but we all went on shore and lay down just as we were. I was very tired and fell asleep directly, so they took my goods out of the ship, and placed them beside me where I was lying upon the sand. Then they sailed away to Sidonia, and I was left here in great distress of mind."

287 Such was his story, but Athena smiled and caressed him with her hand. Then she took the form of a woman, fair, stately, and wise, "He must be indeed a shifty and deceitful person," said she, "who could surpass you in all manner of craft [ kerdos] even though you had a god for your antagonist. Daring that you are, full of guile, unwearying in deceit [ apatê], can you not drop your tricks and your instinctive falsehood, even now that you are in your own country again? We will say no more, however, about this, for we both of us know craftiness [ kerdos] upon occasion - you are the best counselor and orator among all humankind, while I for diplomacy and crafty ways [ kerdea] have fame [ kleos] among the gods. Did you not know Zeus’ daughter Athena - me, who have been ever with you, who kept watch over you in all your ordeals [ ponoi], and who made the Phaeacians take so great a liking to you? And now, again, I am come here to talk things over with you, and help you to hide the treasure I made the Phaeacians give you; I want to tell you about the troubles that await you in your own house; you have got to face them, but tell no one, neither man nor woman, that you have come home again. Bear everything, and put up with every man's violent insolence [ biê], without a word."

311 And Odysseus answered, "A man, goddess, may know a great deal, but you are so constantly changing your appearance that when he meets you it is a hard matter for him to know whether it is you or not. This much, however, I know exceedingly well; you were very kind to me as long as we Achaeans were fighting before Troy , but from the day on which we went on board ship after having sacked the city of Priam, and heaven dispersed us - from that day, Athena, I saw no more of you, and cannot ever remember your coming to my ship to help me in a difficulty; I had to wander on sick and sorry till the gods delivered me from evil and I reached the dêmos of the Phaeacians, where you encouraged me and took me into the town. And now, I beseech you in your father's name, tell me the truth, for I do not believe I am really back in Ithaca . I am in some other country and you are mocking me and deceiving me in all you have been saying. Tell me then truly, have I really got back to my own country?"

329 "You are always taking something of that sort into your head," replied Athena, "and that is why I cannot desert you in your afflictions; you are so plausible, shrewd and shifty. Any one but yourself on returning from so long a voyage would at once have gone home to see his wife and children, but you do not seem to care about asking after them or hearing any news about them till you have made trial of your wife, who remains at home vainly grieving for you, and having no peace night or day for the tears she sheds on your behalf. As for my not coming near you, I was never uneasy about you, for I was certain you would get back safely though you would lose all your men, and I did not wish to quarrel with my uncle Poseidon, who never forgave you for having blinded his son. I will now, however, point out to you the lie of the land, and you will then perhaps believe me. This is the haven of the Old One of the Sea, Phorkys, and here is the olive tree that grows at the head of it; [near it is the cave sacred to the Naiads;] here too is the overarching cavern in which you have offered many an acceptable hecatomb to the nymphs, and this is the wooded mountain Neritum."

352 As she spoke the goddess dispersed the mist and the land appeared. Then Odysseus rejoiced at finding himself again in his own land, and kissed the bounteous soil; he lifted up his hands and prayed to the nymphs, saying, "Naiad nymphs, daughters of Zeus, I made sure that I was never again to see you, now therefore I greet you with all loving salutations, and I will bring you offerings as in the old days, if Zeus’ redoubtable daughter will grant me life, and bring my son to manhood."

362 "Take heart, and do not trouble yourself about that," rejoined Athena, "let us rather set about stowing your things at once in the cave, where they will be quite safe. Let us see how we can best manage it all."

366 Therewith she went down into the cave to look for the safest hiding places, while Odysseus brought up all the treasure of gold, bronze, and good clothing which the Phaeacians had given him. They stowed everything carefully away, and Athena set a stone against the door of the cave. Then the two sat down by the root of the great olive, and consulted how to compass the destruction of the wicked suitors.

375 "Odysseus," said Athena, "noble son of Laertes , think how you can lay hands on these disreputable people who have been lording it in your house these three years, courting your wife and making wedding presents to her, while she does nothing but mourning your nostos, giving hope and sending encouraging messages to every one of them, but meaning [in her noos] the very opposite of all she says."

382 And Odysseus answered, "In good truth, goddess, it seems I should have come to much the same bad end in my own house as Agamemnon did, if you had not given me such timely information. Advise me how I shall best avenge myself. Stand by my side and put your courage into my heart as on the day when we loosed Troy 's fair diadem from her brow. Help me now as you did then, and I will fight three hundred men, if you, goddess, will be with me."

393 "Trust me for that," said she, "I will not lose sight of you when once we set about it, and I would imagine that some of those who are devouring your substance will then bespatter the pavement with their blood and brains. I will begin by disguising you so that no human being shall know you; I will cover your body with wrinkles; you shall lose all your yellow hair; I will clothe you in a garment that shall fill all who see it with loathing; I will blear your fine eyes for you, and make you an unseemly object in the sight of the suitors, of your wife, and of the son whom you left behind you. Then go at once to the swineherd who is in charge of your pigs; he has been always well affected towards you, and is devoted to Penelope and your son; you will find him feeding his pigs near the rock that is called Raven by the fountain Arethusa, where they are fattening on beechmast and spring water after their manner. Stay with him and find out how things are going, while I proceed to Sparta and see your son, who is with Menelaos at Lacedaemon , where he has gone to try and find a report [ kleos] on whether you are still alive."

416 "But why," said Odysseus, "did you not tell him, for you knew all about it? Did you want him too to go sailing about amid all kinds of hardship while others are eating up his estate?"

420 Athena answered, "Never mind about him, I sent him that he might be well spoken [ kleos] of for having gone. He is in no sort of difficulty [ ponos], but is staying quite comfortably with Menelaos, and is surrounded with abundance of every kind. The suitors have put out to sea and are lying in wait for him, for they mean to kill him before he can get home. I do not much think they will succeed, but rather that some of those who are now eating up your estate will first find a grave themselves."

429 As she spoke Athena touched him with her wand and covered him with wrinkles, took away all his yellow hair, and withered the flesh over his whole body; she bleared his eyes, which were naturally very fine ones; she changed his clothes and threw an old rag of a wrap about him, and a tunic, tattered, filthy, and begrimed with smoke; she also gave him an undressed deer skin as an outer garment, and furnished him with a staff and a wallet all in holes, with a twisted thong for him to sling it over his shoulder.

439 When the pair had thus laid their plans they parted, and the goddess went straight to Lacedaemon to fetch Telemakhos. 440

English (Butler, rev. Nagy et al., 2020) (OCR draft) Experimental (English (Butler, rev. Nagy et al., 2020)) — 13 focus

Rhapsody 13

1 Thus did he speak, and they all held their peace throughout the covered hall, enthralled by the charm of his story, till presently Alkinoos began to speak.

“Odysseus,” said he, “now that you have reached my bronze-founded house [5] I doubt not you will get home without further misadventure no matter how much you have suffered in the past. To you others, however, who come here night after night to drink my choicest wine and listen to my bard, I would insist as follows. [10] Our guest has already packed up the clothes, wrought gold, and other valuables which you have brought for his acceptance; let us now, therefore, present him further, each one of us, with a large tripod and a cauldron. We will recoup ourselves by the levy of a general rate [15] throughout the district [ dēmos]; for private individuals cannot be expected to bear the burden of such a handsome present.”

Every one approved of this, and then they went home to bed each in his own abode. When the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared, they hurried down to the ship and brought their cauldrons with them. [20] Alkinoos, the hallowed prince, went on board and saw everything so securely stowed under the ship’s benches that nothing could break adrift and injure the rowers. Then they went to the house of Alkinoos, the hallowed prince, to get dinner. 24 On their [= the Phaeacians’] behalf Alkinoos, the one with the holy power, sacrificed an ox [25] to Zeus, the one who brings dark clouds, the son of Kronos, and he rules over all. 26 Then, after burning the thigh-pieces, they feasted, feasting most gloriously, 27 and they were feeling delight [ terpesthai]; in their midst sang-and-danced [ melpesthai] the divine singer [ aoidos], 28 Demodokos, honored by the people. But Odysseus kept on turning his eyes towards [30] the sun, as though to hasten his setting, for he was longing to be on his way. As one who has been all day plowing a fallow field with a couple of oxen keeps thinking about his supper and is glad when night comes that he may go and get it, for it is all his legs can do to carry him, [35] even so did Odysseus rejoice when the sun went down, and he at once said to the oar-loving Phaeacians, addressing himself more particularly to King Alkinoos, pre-eminent among all others:

“Sir, and all of you, farewell. Make your drink-offerings and send me on my way rejoicing, [40] for you have fulfilled my heart’s desire by giving me an escort, and making me presents, and may the gods grant that I turn those things into blessed [ olbia] possessions; may I find my admirable wife living in peace among friends, and may you whom I leave behind me give satisfaction to your [45] wives and children; may the gods grant you every kind of good accomplishment [ aretē], and may no evil thing come among your people.”

47 Thus did he speak. His hearers all of them approved his saying and agreed that he should have his escort inasmuch as he had spoken reasonably. Alkinoos therefore said to his servant, [50] “Pontonoos, mix some wine and hand it round to everybody, that we may offer a prayer to father Zeus, and speed our guest upon his way.”

Pontonoos mixed the wine and handed it to every one in turn; the others each from his own seat made a drink-offering [55] to the blessed gods that live in the sky, but Odysseus rose and placed the double cup in the hands of Queen Arete.

“Farewell, Queen,” said he, “henceforward and for ever, till age [60] and death, the common lot of humankind, lay their hands upon you. I now take my leave; be happy in this house with your children, your people, and with King Alkinoos.”

As he spoke he crossed the threshold, and Alkinoos sent a man [65] to conduct him to his ship and to the sea shore. Arete also sent some maid servants with him—one with a clean khiton and cloak, another to carry his strong-box, and a third with wheat and wine. [70] When they got to the water side the crew took these things and put them on board, with all the meat and drink; but for Odysseus they spread a rug and a linen sheet on deck that he might sleep [75] soundly in the stern of the ship. Then he too went on board and lay down without a word, but the crew took every man his place in order [ kosmos] and loosed the hawser from the pierced stone to which it had been bound. 78 When they [= the Phaeacian seafarers] began rowing out to sea, 79 he [= Odysseus] felt a sweet sleep falling upon his eyelids. [80] It was a deep sleep, the sweetest, and most similar to death.

81 Meanwhile, the ship was speeding ahead, just as a team of four stallions drawing a chariot over a plain 82 speeds ahead in unison as they all feel the stroke of the whip, 83galloping along smoothly, with feet raised high as they make their way forward, 84 so also the prow of the ship kept curving upward as if it were the neck of a stallion, and, behind the ship, waves that were [85] huge and seething raged in the waters of the roaring sea. 86The ship held steadily on its course, and not even a falcon, 87 raptor that he is, swiftest of all winged creatures, could have kept pace with it. 88 So did the ship cut its way smoothly through the waves, 89 carrying a man who was like the gods in his knowledge of clever ways, [90] who had beforehand suffered very many pains [ algea] in his heart [ thūmos], 91taking part in wars among men and forging through so many waves that cause pain, 92but now he was sleeping peacefully, forgetful of all he had suffered.

93 93 And when the brightest of all stars began to show, the one that, more than any other star, comes to announce the light of the Dawn born in her earliness [95] that is when the ship, famed for its travels over the seas, drew near to the island. Now there is in the locale [ dēmos] of Ithaca a haven of Phorkys, the Old One of the sea, which lies between two points that break the line of the sea and shut the harbor in. These shelter it from the storms of wind and sea [100] that rage outside, so that, when once within it, a ship may lie without being even moored. At the head of this harbor there is a large olive tree, and at no distance a fine overarching cavern sacred to the nymphs who are called [105] Nymphs of Wellsprings, Naiads. There are mixing-bowls within it and wine-jars of stone, and the bees hive there. Moreover, there are great looms of stone on which the nymphs weave their robes of sea purple—very curious to see—and at all times there is water within it. It has two entrances, [110] one facing North by which mortals can go down into the cave, while the other comes from the South and is more mysterious; mortals cannot possibly get in by it, it is the way taken by the gods.

Into this harbor, then, they took their ship, for they knew the place. [115] She had so much way upon her that she ran half her own length on to the shore; when, however, they had landed, the first thing they did was to lift Odysseus with his rug and linen sheet out of the ship, and lay him down upon the sand still fast asleep. Then [120] they took out the presents which great-hearted Athena had persuaded the haughty Phaeacians to give him when he was setting out on his voyage homewards. They put these all together by the root of the olive tree, away from the road, for fear some passer by might come and steal them before Odysseus awoke; and then they made the best of their way home again.

[125] But Poseidon, the Earthshaker, did not forget the threats with which he had already threatened Odysseus, so he took counsel with Zeus. “Father Zeus,” said he, “I shall no longer be held in any sort of respect among you gods, [130] if mortals like the Phaeacians, who are my own flesh and blood, show such small regard for me. I said I would get Odysseus home when he had suffered sufficiently. I did not say that he should never achieve a homecoming [ nostos] at all, for I knew you had already nodded your head about it, and promised that he should do so; but now they have brought him over the sea in a ship fast asleep [135] and have landed him in Ithaca after loading him with more magnificent presents of bronze, gold, and raiment than he would ever have brought back from Troy, if he had had his share of the spoil and got home without misadventure.”

139 And Zeus answered, [140] “What, O Lord of the Earthquake, are you talking about? The gods are by no means wanting in respect for you. It would be monstrous were they to insult one so old and honored as you are. As regards mortals, however, if any of them is indulging in insolence [ biē] and treating you disrespectfully, it will always rest with yourself to deal with him as you may think proper, [145] do as you wish and as was pleasing to your heart.”

“I should have done so at once,” replied Poseidon, shaker of the Earth, “if I were not anxious to avoid anything that might displease you; 149 so now I want to smash the very beautiful ship of the Phaeacians [150] when it comes back, in a misty crossing of the sea, from its conveying mission, 151 so that these people [= the Phaeacians] will hold off, at long last, and stop their practice of conveying 152 humans. And I want to make a huge mountain envelop their city.”

“My good friend,” answered Zeus, “I should recommend you [155] at the very moment [155] when all the people of the city look out and see the ship sailing in, 156 turn it into a rock, just as it is about to reach land. 157 Make it look like a swift ship, so that people will look at it with wonder 158 —all of humanity will do so; and make the huge mountain envelop their city.”

When earth-encircling Poseidon heard this he went [160] to Skheria where the Phaeacians live, and stayed there till the ship, which was making rapid way, had got close-in. Then he went up to it, turned it into stone, and drove it down with the flat of his hand so as to root it in the ground. After this he went away. [165] The Phaeacians of the long oars then began talking among themselves, and one would turn towards his neighbor, saying, “Who is it that can have rooted the ship in the sea just as she was getting into port? We could see the whole of her only a moment ago.”

[170] This was how they talked, but they knew nothing about it; and Alkinoos said, “I remember now the old prophecy of my father. He said that Poseidon would be angry with us for taking every one so safely over the sea, [175] He once said that he [Poseidon] will smash the very beautiful ship of the Phaeacian men 176 when it comes back, in a misty crossing of the sea, from its conveying mission, 177 and that he will make a huge mountain envelop our city. 178That is what the old man said. And now you and I see that all these things are being brought to fulfillment. 179 But come, let us all comply with exactly what I am about to say. [180] In the first place we must leave off giving people escorts when they come here, and in the next let us sacrifice twelve picked [ krinein] bulls to Poseidon 182 in hopes that he will take pity 183 and will not make the tall mountain envelop our city.” 184 When the people heard this they were afraid and got ready the bulls.

[185] Thus did the chiefs and rulers of the district [ dēmos] of the Phaeacians pray to king Poseidon, standing round his altar; and at the same moment great Odysseus woke up, once more upon his own soil. He had been so long away that he did not know it again; moreover, Zeus’ daughter Athena [190] had made it a foggy day, so that people might not know of his having come, and that she might tell him everything without either his wife or his fellow townspeople and friends recognizing him until he had taken his revenge upon the wicked suitors. Everything, therefore, seemed quite different to him— [195] the long straight tracks, the harbors, the precipices, and the goodly trees, appeared all changed as he started up and looked upon his native land. So he smote his thighs with the flat of his hands and cried aloud despairingly.

[200] “Alas,” he exclaimed, “among what manner of people am I fallen? Are they savage and uncivilized [non- dikaios] or hospitable and endowed with god-fearing mind [ noos]? Where shall I put all this treasure, and which way shall I go? I wish I had stayed over there with the Phaeacians; [205] or I could have gone to some other great chief who would have been good to me and given me an escort. As it is I do not know where to put my treasure, and I cannot leave it here for fear somebody else should get hold of it. In good truth the chiefs and rulers of the Phaeacians have not been dealing in a fair [ dikaios] way with me, [210] and have left me in the wrong country; they said they would take me back to Ithaca and they have not done so: may Zeus the protector of suppliants chastise them, for he watches over everybody and punishes those who do wrong. [215] Still, I suppose I must count my goods and see if the crew have gone off with any of them.”

217 He counted his goodly coppers and cauldrons, his gold and all his clothes, but there was nothing missing; still he kept grieving about not being in his own country, [220] and wandered up and down by the shore of the sounding sea bewailing his hard fate. Then Athena came up to him disguised as a young shepherd of delicate and princely mien, with a good cloak folded double about her shoulders; [225] she had sandals on her comely feet and held a javelin in her hand. Odysseus was glad when he saw her, and went straight up to her.

“My friend,” said he, “you are the first person whom I have met with in this country; I salute you, therefore, and beg you to be well disposed towards me in your thinking [ noos]. [230] Protect these my goods, and myself too, for I embrace your knees and pray to you as though you were a god. Tell me, then, and tell me truly, what land and country [ dēmos] is this? Who are its inhabitants? Am I on an island, or is this the sea board [235] of some continent?”

Owl-vision Athena answered, “Stranger, you must be very simple, or must have come from somewhere a long way off, not to know what country this is. It is a very celebrated place, [240] and everybody knows it East and West. It is rugged and not a good driving country, but it is by no means a bad island for what there is of it. It grows any quantity of wheat and also [245] wine, for it is watered both by rain and dew; it breeds cattle also and goats; all kinds of timber grow here, and there are watering places where the water never runs dry; so, sir, the name of Ithaca is known even as far as Troy, which I understand to be a long way off from this Achaean country.”

[250] 250 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].

“I heard of Ithaca,” said he, “when I was in Crete beyond the seas, and now it seems I have reached it with all these treasures. I have left as much more behind me for my children, but am fleeing because I killed Orsilokhos, a man of swift feet and son of Idomeneus, [260] the fleetest runner in Crete. I killed him because he wanted to rob me of the spoils I had got from Troy with so much trouble and danger both on the field of battle and by the waves of the weary sea; [265] he said I had not served his father loyally in the Trojan district [ dēmos] as vassal, but had set myself up as an independent ruler, so I lay in wait for him and with one of my followers by the roadside, and speared him as he was coming into town from the country. It was a very dark night and nobody saw us; it was not known, therefore, [270] that I had killed him, but as soon as I had done so I went to a ship and besought the owners, who were Phoenicians, to take me on board and set me in Pylos [275] or in shining Elis where the Epeioi rule, giving them as much spoil as satisfied them. They meant no guile, but the wind drove them off their course, and we sailed on till we came here by night. It was all we could do to get inside the harbor, [280] and none of us said a word about supper though we wanted it badly, but we all went on shore and lay down just as we were. I was very tired and fell asleep directly, so they took my goods out of the ship, and placed them beside me where I was lying upon the sand. [285] Then they sailed away to Sidonia, and I was left here in great distress of mind.”

287 Such was his story, but owl-vision Athena smiled and caressed him with her hand. Then she took the form of a woman, fair, stately, and high- spirited. [290] “He must be indeed a shifty lying character,” said she, “who could surpass you in all manner of craft [ kerdos] even though you had a god for your antagonist. Daring that you are, full of guile, unwearying in deceit [ atē], [295] can you not drop your tricks and your instinctive falsehood, even now that you are in your own country again? We will say no more, however, about this, for we both of us know craftiness [ kerdos] upon occasion—you are the best counselor and orator among all humankind, while I for diplomacy and crafty ways [ kerdea] have fame [ kleos] among the gods. [300] Did you not know Zeus’ daughter Athena—me, who have been ever with you, who kept watch over you in all your ordeals [ ponos], and who made the Phaeacians take so great a liking to you? And now, again, I am come here to talk things over with you, and help you to hide the treasure I made the haughty Phaeacians [305] give you; I want to tell you about the troubles that await you in your own house; you have got to face them, but tell no one, neither man nor woman, that you have come home again. Bear everything, and put up with [310] every man’s violent insolence [ biē], without a word.”

And resourceful Odysseus answered, “A man, goddess, may know a great deal, but you are so constantly changing your appearance that when he meets you it is a hard matter for him to know whether it is you or not. This much, however, I know exceedingly well; you were very kind to me [315] as long as we Achaeans were fighting at Troy, but from the day on which we went on board ship after having ransacked the city of Priam, and the gods dispersed us—from that day, Athena, I saw no more of you, and cannot ever remember your coming to my ship to help me in a difficulty; [320] I had to wander on sick and sorry till the gods delivered me from evil and I reached the district [ dēmos] of the Phaeacians, where you encouraged me and took me into the town. And now, I beseech you in your father’s name, tell me the truth, for I do not believe [325] I am really back in Ithaca. I am in some other country and you are mocking me and deceiving me in all you have been saying. Tell me then truly, have I really got back to my own country?”

329 Then grey-eyed Athena said, [330] “You are always taking something of that sort into your head,” replied owl-vision goddess Athena, “and that is why I cannot desert you in your afflictions; you are so plausible, shrewd and shifty. Any one but yourself on returning from so long a voyage would at once have gone home to see his wife and children, but you do not [335] seem to care about asking after them or hearing any news about them till you have made trial of your wife, who remains at home vainly grieving for you, and having no peace night or day for the tears she sheds on your behalf. As for my not coming near you, I was never uneasy about you, for I was certain [340] you would get back safely though you would lose all your men, and I did not wish to quarrel with my uncle Poseidon, who never forgave you for having blinded his son. I will now, however, point out to you the lie of the land, and you will then perhaps believe me. [345] This is the haven of the old merman Phorkys, and here is the olive tree that grows at the head of it; [near it is the cave sacred to the Naiads;] here too is the overarching cavern in which [350] you have offered many an acceptable hecatomb to the Nymphs of Wellsprings, Naiads, and this is the wooded mountain Neriton.”

As she spoke the goddess dispersed the mist and the land appeared. Then long-suffering great Odysseus rejoiced at finding himself again in his own land, and kissed the bounteous soil; [355] he lifted up his hands and prayed to the nymphs, saying, “Naiad nymphs, daughters of Zeus, I was sure that I was never again to see you, now therefore I greet you with all loving salutations, and I will bring you offerings as in the old days, if Zeus’ terrifying daughter will grant me [360] life, and bring my son to manhood.”

“Take heart, and do not trouble yourself about that,” rejoined owl-vision Athena, “let us rather set about stowing your things at once in the cave, where they will be quite safe. [365] Let us see how we can best manage it all.”

366 Therewith she went down into the cave to look for the safest hiding places, while Odysseus brought up all the treasure of gold, bronze, and good clothing which the Phaeacians had given him. [370] They stowed everything carefully away, and Athena set a stone against the door of the cave. Then the two sat down by the root of the great olive, and consulted how to compass the destruction of the wicked suitors.

[375] “Resourceful Odysseus,” said Athena, “noble son of Laertes and seed of Zeus, think how you can lay hands on these disreputable people who have been lording it in your house these three years, courting your godlike wife and making wedding presents to her, while she does nothing but mourning your nostos, [380] giving hope and sending encouraging messages to every one of them, but meaning [in her noos] the very opposite of all she says.”

And resourceful Odysseus answered, “In good truth, goddess, it seems I should have come to much the same bad end in my own house as Agamemnon did, [385] if you had not given me such timely information. Advise me how I shall best avenge myself. Stand by my side and put your courage into my heart as on the day when we loosed Troy’s fair diadem from her brow. Help me now as you did then, [390] and I will fight three hundred men, if you, goddess, will be with me.”

“Trust me for that,” said she, “I will not lose sight of you when once we set about it, and I would imagine that some of those who are devouring your substance will then [395] bespatter the pavement with their blood and brains. I will begin by disguising you so that no human being shall know you; I will cover your body with wrinkles; you shall lose all your yellow hair; I will clothe you [400] in a garment that shall fill all who see it with loathing; I will blear your fine eyes for you, and make you an unseemly object in the sight of the suitors, of your wife, and of the son whom you left behind you. Then go at once to the swineherd [405] who is in charge of your pigs; he has been always well affected towards you, and is devoted to circumspect Penelope and your son; you will find him feeding his pigs near the rock that is called Raven by the fountain Arethousa, where they are fattening on beechmast [410] and spring water after their manner. Stay with him and find out how things are going, while I proceed to Sparta and see your son, who is with Menelaos at Lacedaemon, the country of lovely women, [415] where he has gone to try and find out [ kleos] whether you are still alive.”

416 “But why,” said resourceful Odysseus, “did you not tell him, for you knew all about it? Did you want him too to go sailing about amid all kinds of hardship while others are eating up his estate?”

[420] Owl-vision Athena answered, “Never mind about him, I sent him that he might be well spoken [ kleos] of for having gone. He is in no sort of difficulty [ ponos], but is staying quite comfortably with Menelaos, and is surrounded with abundance of every kind. [425] The suitors have put out to sea and are lying in wait for him, for they mean to kill him before he can get home. I do not much think they will succeed, but rather that some of those who are now eating up your estate will first find a grave themselves.”

As she spoke Athena touched him with her wand and covered him with wrinkles, took away all his yellow hair, [430] and withered the flesh over his whole body; she bleared his eyes, which were naturally very fine ones; she changed his clothes and threw an old rag of a wrap about him, and a khiton, [435] tattered, filthy, and begrimed with smoke; she also gave him an undressed deer skin as an outer garment, and furnished him with a staff and a wallet all in holes, with a twisted thong for him to sling it over his shoulder.

When the pair had thus laid their plans they parted, and the goddess [440] went straight to Lacedaemon to fetch Telemachus, the son of Odysseus.

English (William Cullen Bryant, 1873) (OCR draft) Experimental (English (William Cullen Bryant, 1873)) — 13 focus

BOOK ΧΙΙΙ.

HE spake, and all within those shadowy halls

Were silent; all were held in mute delight.

Alcinoüs then took up the word and said: -

"Since thou hast come, Ulysses, as a guest,

To this high pile and to these brazen rooms,

So long a sufferer, thou must not depart

Upon thy homeward way a wanderer still.

And this let me enjoin on each of you

Who in this palace drink at our repasts

The choice red wine, and listen to the bard :

Already in a polished chest are laid

Changes of raiment, works of art in gold,

And other gifts, which the Phæacian chiefs

Have destined for our guest; now let us each

Bestow an ample tripod and a vase,

And we in an assembly of the realm

Will see the cost repaid, since otherwise

Great would the burden be that each must bear."

So spake Alcinoüs; they approved, and sought

Their homes to sleep, but when the child of Dawn,

The rosy-fingered Morn, appeared, they came,

All bringing to the ship their gifts of brass

In honor of the guest. The mighty prince

Alcinoüs, going through the ship, bestowed

The whole beneath the benches, that no one

Of those who leaned to pull the oar might thence

Meet harm or hindrance. Then they all went back

To the king's palace, and prepared a feast.

The mighty prince Alcinoüs offered up

For them an ox to cloud-compelling Jove,

The son of Saturn, ruler over all.

They burned the thighs, and held high festival,

And all was mirth. Divine Demodocus

The bard, whom all men reverenced, sang to them.

Meantime Ulysses often turned to look

At the bright Sun, and longed to see him set,

So eager was the hero to set sail

Upon his homeward way. As when a swain

Awaits his evening meal, for whom all day

Two dark-brown steers have dragged the solid plough

Through fallow grounds, and welcome is the hour

Of sunset, calling him to his repast,

And wearily he walks with failing knees,

So welcome to Ulysses did the light

Of day go down. Then did he hold discourse

With the Phæacians, lovers of the sea,

And chiefly with Alcinoüs, speaking thus:

"O monarch most illustrious of thy race,

Alcinoüs, now when ye have duly poured

Wine to the gods, be pleased to send me hence

In peace, and fare ye well! All that my heart

Could wish have ye provided bounteously,

An escort and rich gifts; and may the gods

Bestow their blessing with them! May I meet

My blameless wife again, and find my friends

Prosperous! And ye whom I shall leave behind,

Long may ye make the wives of your young years

And children happy! May the gods vouchsafe

To crown with every virtue you and them,

And may no evil light upon your isle!"

He spake; the assembly all approved his words,

And bade send forth the stranger on his way,

Who spake so nobly. Then the mighty prince

Alcinoüs turned, and to the herald said:

"Now mix the wine, Pontonoüs, in a jar,

And bear a part to all beneath our roof,

That we with prayers to Father Jupiter

May send the stranger to his native land."

He spake; Pontonoüs mingled for the guests

The generous wine, and went with it to each,

Who poured it on the ground, from where they sat,

To all the dwellers of the ample heaven;

And then the great Ulysses, rising up,

Placed the round goblet in Aretè's hands,

And thus bespake the queen with winged words :-

"Farewell, O queen, through the long years, till age

And death, which are the lot of all, shall come.

Now I depart, but mayst thou, here among

Thy people, and the children of thy love,

And King Alcinoüs, lead a happy life!"

So spake the high-born chieftain, and withdrew,

And crossed the threshold. King Alcinoüs sent

A herald with him to direct his way

To the fleet ship and border of the deep.

Aretè also sent her servant-maids, -

One bearing a fresh cloak and tunic, one

A coffer nobly wrought, and yet a third

Bread and red wine; and when they reached the ship

Beside the sea, the diligent crew received

Their burdens, and bestowed within the hold

The food and drink, but spread upon the deck

And at the stern a mat and linen sheet,

That there Ulysses undisturbed might sleep.

He went on board and silently lay down,

While all the rowers in due order took

Their seats upon the benches. Loosing first

The hawser from the perforated rock,

They bent them to their task, and flung the brine

Up from the oar, while on the chieftain's lids

Lighted a sweet and deep and quiet sleep,

100

Most like to death. As, smitten by the lash,

Four harnessed stallions spring on high and dart

Across the plain together; so the prow

Rose leaping forward, while behind it rolled

A huge dark billow of the roaring sea.

105

Safely and steadily the galley ran,

Nor could a falcon, swiftest of the birds,

Have kept beside it, with such speed it flew,

Bearing a hero who was like the gods

In wisdom, and whose sufferings in the wars

110

And voyages among the furious waves

Were great and many, though he slumbered now

In peace, forgetful of misfortunes past.

Now when that brightest star, the harbinger

Of Morning, daughter of the Dawn, arose,

115

The bark had passed the sea, and reached the isle.

A port there is in Ithaca, the haunt

Of Phorcys, Ancient of the Sea. Steep shores

Stretch inward toward each other, and roll back

The mighty surges which the hoarse winds hurl

120

Against them from the ocean, while within

Ships ride without their hawsers when they once

Have passed the haven's mouth. An olive-tree

With spreading branches at the farther end

Of that fair haven stands, and overbrows

125

A pleasant shady grotto of the nymphs

Called Naiads. Cups and jars of stone are ranged

Within, and bees lay up their honey there.

There from their spindles wrought of stone the nymphs

Weave their sea-purple robes, which all behold

130

With wonder; there are ever-flowing springs.

Two are the entrances: one toward the north

By which men enter; but a holier one

Looks toward the south, nor ever mortal foot

May enter there. By that way pass the gods.

135

They touched the land, for well they knew the spot.

The galley, urged so strongly by the arms

Of those who plied the oar, ran up the beach

Quite half her length. And then the crew came forth

From the good ship, and first they lifted out

140

Ulysses with the linen and rich folds

Of tapestry, and laid him on the sands

In a deep slumber. Then they also took

The presents from the hold, which, as he left

Their isle, the princes of Phæacia gave

145

By counsel of wise Pallas. These they piled

Close to the olive-tree, without the way,

That none, in passing, ere Ulysses woke,

Might do their owner wrong. Then homeward sailed

The crew; but Neptune, who could not forget

150

The threats which he had uttered long before

Against the godlike chief Ulysses, thus

Sought to explore the will of Jupiter :-

"O Father Jove! I shall no more be held

In honor with the gods, since mortal men,

155

The people of Phæacia, though their race

Is of my lineage, do not honor me.

I meant Ulysses should not reach his home

Save with much suffering, though I never thought

To hinder his return, for thou hadst given

160

Thy promise and thy nod that it should be.

Yet these Phæacians, in a gallant bark,

Have borne him o'er the deep, and while he slept,

Have laid him down in Ithaca, and given

Large gifts, abundant store of brass and gold,

165

And woven work, more than he could have brought

From captured Ilium, if he had returned

Safely, with all his portion of the spoil."

139

Then cloud-compelling Jupiter replied :

"Earth-shaker, ruler of a mighty realm !

170

What hast thou said? The gods deny thee not

Due honor; perilous it were for them

To show contempt for one who stands in age

And might above them all. But if among

The sons of men be one who puts such trust

175

In his own strength as not to honor thee,

Do as seems good to thee, and as thou wilt."

Promptly the god who shakes the shores replied;

"What thou dost bid me I would do at once,

But that I fear and would avoid thy wrath.

180

I would destroy that fair Phæacian bark

In its return across the misty sea

From bearing home Ulysses, that no more

May the Phæacians lend an escort thus

To wandering men, and I would also cause

185

A lofty mount to rise and hide their town."

Then spake again the Cloud-compeller Jove :

"Thus were it best, my brother: when the crowd

Of citizens already see the ship

Approaching, then transform it to a rock

190

In semblance of a galley, that they all

May gaze in wonder; thus wilt thou have caused

A lofty mount to stand before their town."

This when the shaker of the shores had heard,

He flew to Scheria, the Phæacian isle,

195

And stood, until that galley, having crossed

The sea, came swiftly scudding. He drew near

And smote it with his open palm, and made

The ship a rock, fast rooted in the bed

Of the deep sea, and then he went his way.

200

Then winged words were spoken in that throng

Of the Phæacians, wielders of long oars,

And far renowned in feats of seamanship.

And, looking on each other, thus they said : -

"Ha! what has stayed our good ship on the sea?

205

This moment we beheld her hastening home."

'T was thus they talked, unweeting of the cause.

But then Alcinoüs to the assembly said : -

"Yes! now I call to mind the ancient words

Of prophecy, —- my father's, who was wont

210

To say that Neptune sorely is displeased

That we should give to every man who comes

Safe escort to his home. In coming times,

Such was my father's prophecy, - the god

Would yet destroy a well-appointed bark

215

Of the Phæacians on the misty deep

Returning from an escort, and would cause

A lofty mount to stand before our town.

So prophesied the aged man; his words

Are here fulfilled. Now do as I appoint,

220

And let us all obey. Henceforth refrain

From bearing to their homes the strangers thrown

Upon our coast; and let us sacrifice

To Neptune twelve choice bullocks of the herd,

That he may pity us, nor hide our town

225

With a huge mountain from the sight of men."

184

He spake, and they were awed and straightway brought

The bullocks for the sacrifice. So prayed

To sovereign Neptune the Phæacian chiefs

And princes, standing round the altar-fires.

230

Now woke the great Ulysses from his sleep

In his own land, and yet he knew it not.

Long had he been away, and Pallas now,

The goddess-child of Jove, had cast a mist

Around him, that he might not yet be known

235

To others, and that she might tell him first

What he should learn ; nor even might his wife,

Nor friends, nor people, know of his return,

Ere he avenged upon the suitor crew

His wrongs, and therefore all things wore to him

240

Another look, - the footways stretching far,

The bights where ships were moored, the towering rocks,

And spreading trees. He rose and stood upright,

And gazed upon his native coast and wept,

And smote his thigh, and said in bitter grief:-

245

"Ah me! what region am I in, among

What people? lawless, cruel, and unjust?

Or are they hospitable men, who fear

The gods? And where shall I bestow these goods,

And whither go myself? Would that they all

250

Were still with the Phæacians, and that I

Had found some other great and mighty king

Kindly to welcome me, and send me back

To my own land. I know not where to place

These treasures, and I must not leave them here,

255

Lest others come and seize them as a spoil.

Nay, these Phæacian chiefs and counsellors

Were not, in all things, either wise or just.

They gave their word to land me on the coast

Of pleasant Ithaca, and have not kept

260

Their promise. O, may Jove avenge this wrong!

He who protects the suppliant, who beholds

All men with equal eye, and punishes

The guilty. Now will I review my stores

And number them again, that I may see

265

If those who left me here have taken aught."

217

Thus having said, he numbered all his gifts,

Beautiful tripods, caldrons, works of gold,

And gorgeous woven raiment; none of these

Were wanting. Then he pined to see again

270

His native isle, and slowly paced the beach

Of the loud sea, lamenting bitterly.

There Pallas came to meet him in the shape

Of a young shepherd, delicately formed,

As are the sons of kings. A mantle lay

275

Upon her shoulder in rich folds; her feet

Shone in their sandals: in her hand she bore

A javelin. As Ulysses saw, his heart

Was glad within him, and he hastened on,

And thus accosted her with winged words: -

280

"Fair youth, who art the first whom I have met

Upon this shore, I bid thee hail, and hope

Thou meetest me with no unkind intent.

Protect what thou beholdest here and me;

I make my suit to thee as to a god,

285

And come to thy dear knees. And tell, I pray,

That I may know the truth, what land is this?

What people? who the dwellers? may it be

A pleasant isle, or is it but the shore

Of fruitful mainland shelving to the sea?"

290

And then the goddess, blue-eyed Pallas, said :

"Of simple mind art thou, unless perchance

Thou comest from afar, if thou dost ask

What country this may be. It is not quite

A nameless region; many know it well

295

Of those who dwell beneath the rising sun,

And those, behind, in Evening's dusky realm.

Rugged it is, and suited ill to steeds,

Yet barren it is not, though level grounds

Are none within its borders. It is rich

300

In corn and wine, for seasonable rains

And dews refresh its soil. Large flocks of goats

And herds of beeves are pastured here; all kinds

Of trees are in its forests, and its springs

Are never dry. The fame of Ithaca,

305

Stranger, has travelled to the Trojan coast,

Though that, I hear, lies far away from Greece."

250

She spake; Ulysses, the great sufferer,

Rejoiced to be in his own land, whose name

Pallas, the child of ægis-bearing Jove,

310

Had just now uttered. Then with winged words

He spake, but not the truth; his artful speech

Put that aside, for ever in his breast

The power of shrewd invention was awake:

"In the broad fields of Crete, that lie far off

315

Beyond the sea, I heard of Ithaca,

To which I now am come with these my goods.

I left as many for my sons and fled,

For I had slain Orsilochus, the fleet

Of foot, the dear son of Idomeneus,

320

Who overcame by swiftness in the race

The foremost runners in the realm of Crete.

He sought to rob me wholly of my share

Of Trojan spoil, for which I had endured

Hardships in war with heroes, and at sea

325

Among the angry waves. The cause was this:

I would not in the siege of Troy submit

To serve his father, but, apart from him,

I led a troop, companions of my own.

The youth returning from the fields I met,

330

And smote him with the spear, - for near the way

I lay in ambush with a single friend.

A night exceeding dark was in the sky;

No human eye beheld, nor did he know

Who took his life. When I had slain him thus

335

With the sharp spear I hastened to a ship

Of the Phœnicians, and besought their aid,

And gave them large reward, and bade them steer

To Pylos, bearing me, and leave me there,

Or where the Epeians hold the hallowed coast

340

Of Elis. But the force of adverse winds

Drove them unwilling thence; they meant no fraud.

We wandered hither, just at night we came ;

And rowing hard, the seamen brought their ship

Within the port. No word was said of food,

345

Though great our need. All disembarked in haste

And lay upon the shore. Deep was the sleep

That stole upon my weary limbs. The men

Took from the hold my goods, and, bearing them

To where I slumbered on the sand, set sail

350

For populous Sidonia, leaving me

Here quite alone with sorrow in my heart."

287

He spake; the blue-eyed goddess, Pallas, smiled,

And touched the chief caressingly. She seemed

A beautiful and stately woman now,

355

Such as are skilled in works of rare device,

And thus she said to him in winged words:

"Full shrewd were he, a master of deceit,

Who should surpass thee in the ways of craft,

Even though he were a god, - thou unabashed

360

And prompt with shifts, and measureless in wiles!

Thou canst not even in thine own land refrain

From artful figments and misleading words,

As thou hast practised from thy birth. But now

Speak we of other matters, for we both

365

Are skilled in stratagem. Thou art the first

Of living men in counsel and in speech,

And I am famed for foresight and for craft

Among the immortals. Dost thou not yet know

Pallas Athenè, child of Jove, whose aid

370

Is present to defend thee in all time

Of peril, and but lately gained for thee

The favor of the whole Phæacian race?

And hither am I come to frame for thee

Wise counsels, and to hide away the stores

375

Given by the opulent Phæacian chiefs

At thy departure. I shall also tell

What thou must yet endure beneath the roof

Of thine own palace, by the will of fate.

Yet bear it bravely, since thou must, nor speak

380

To any man or woman of thyself

And of thy wandering hither, but submit

To many things that grieve thee, silently,

And bear indignities from violent men."

Ulysses, the sagacious, thus rejoined :

385

"O goddess, it is hard for mortal man

To know thee when he meets thee, though his sight

Be of the sharpest, for thou puttest on

At pleasure any form. Yet this I know,

That thou wert kind to me when we, the sons

390

Of Greece, were warring in the realm of Troy.

But when we had o'erthrown the lofty town

Of Priam, and embarked, and when some god

Had scattered the Achaians, after that,

Daughter of Jove, I never saw thee more,

395

Never perceived thee entering my bark

And guarding me from danger, - but I roamed

Ever from place to place, my heart weighed down

By sorrow, till the gods delivered me,

And till thy counsels in the opulent realm

400

Of the Phæacians brought my courage back,

And thou thyself didst guide me to the town.

And now in thy great father's name I pray,

For yet I cannot think that I am come

To pleasant Ithaca, but have been thrown

405

Upon some other coast, and fear that thou

Art jesting with me, and hast spoken thus

But to deceive me, tell me, is it true

That I am in my own beloved land?"

329

And then the goddess, blue-eyed Pallas, said:

410

"Such ever are thy thoughts, and therefore I

Must not forsake thee in thy need. I know

How prompt thy speech, how quick thy thought, how shrewd

Thy judgment. If another man had come

From such long wanderings, he had flown at once

415

Delighted to his children and his wife

In his own home. But thou desirest not

To ask or hear of them till thou hast put

Thy consort to the trial of her truth, -

Her who now sits within thy halls and waits

420

In vain for thee, and in perpetual grief

And weeping wears her nights and days away.

I never doubted - well, in truth, I knew

That thou, with all thy comrades lost, wouldst reach

Thy country, but I dreaded to withstand

425

My father's brother Neptune, who was wroth,

And fiercely wroth, for that thou hadst deprived

His well-beloved son of sight. But now

Attend, and I will show thee Ithaca

By certain tokens; mark them and believe.

430

The port of Phorcys, Ancient of the Deep,

Is here; and there the spreading olive-tree,

Just at the haven's head; and, close beside,

The cool dark grotto, sacred to the nymphs

Called Naiads, - a wide-vaulted cave where once

435

Thou camest oft with chosen hecatombs,

An offering to the nymphs, - and here thou seest

The mountain Neritus with all his woods."

So spake the goddess, and dispersed the mist,

And all the scene appeared. Ulysses saw

440

Well pleased, rejoicing in his own dear land,

And, stooping, kissed the bountiful earth, and raised

His hands, and thus addressed the nymphs in prayer : -

"Nymphs, Naiads, born to Jove, I did not hope

To be with you again. With cheerful prayers

445

I now salute you. We shall bring you soon

Our offerings, as of yore, if graciously

Jove's daughter, huntress-queen, shall grant me yet

To live, and bless my well-beloved son."

And then the goddess, blue-eyed Pallas, said:

450

"Be of good cheer, and let no anxious thought

Disturb thy mind. Let us bestir ourselves

To hide away the treasures thou hast brought

Within this hallowed grot in some recess

Where they may lie in safety; afterward

455

Will we take counsel what should next be done."

366

The goddess said these words, and took her way

Into the shadowy cavern, spying out

Its hiding-places; while Ulysses brought

The treasures thither in his arms, the gold,

460

The enduring brass, the raiment nobly wrought, -

Which the Phæacians gave him. These they laid

Together in due order; Pallas then,

The daughter of the Ægis-bearer Jove,

Closed up the opening with a massive rock.

465

Then, sitting by the sacred olive-tree,

They plotted to destroy the haughty crew

Of suitors, and the blue-eyed Pallas said: --

"O nobly born, and versed in many wiles,

Son of Laertes! now the hour is come

470

To think how thou shalt lay avenging hands

Upon the shameless crew who, in thy house,

For three years past have made themselves its lords,

And wooed thy noble wife and brought her gifts,

While, pining still for thy return, she gave

475

Hopes to each suitor, and by messages

Made promises to all, though cherishing

A different purpose in her secret heart."

Ulysses, the sagacious, answered her :

"Ah me, I should have perished utterly,

480

By such an evil fate as overtook

Atrides Agamemnon, in the halls

Of my own palace, but for thee, whose words,

O goddess, have revealed what I should know.

Now counsel me how I may be avenged.

485

Be ever by my side, and strengthen me

With courage, as thou didst when we o'erthrew

The towery crest of Ilium. Would thou wert

Still my ally, as then! I would engage,

O blue-eyed Pallas, with three hundred foes,

490

If thou, dread goddess, wouldst but counsel me."

And then the blue-eyed Pallas spake again :

"I will be present with thee. When we once

Begin the work, thou shalt not leave my sight;

And many a haughty suitor with his blood

495

And brains shall stain thy spacious palace floor.

Now will I change thine aspect, so that none

Shall know thee. I will wither thy fair skin,

And it shall hang on crooked limbs; thy locks

Of auburn I will cause to fall away,

500

And round thee fling a cloak which all shall see

With loathing. I will make thy lustrous eyes

Dull to the sight, and thus shalt thou appear

A squalid wretch to all the suitor train,

And to thy wife, and to the son whom thou

505

Didst leave within thy palace. Then at first

Repair thou to the herdsman, him who keeps

Thy swine; for he is loyal, and he loves

Thy son and the discreet Penelope.

There wilt thou find him as he tends his swine,

510

That find their pasturage beside the rock

Of Corax, and by Arethusa's fount.

On nourishing acorns they are fed, and drink

The dark clear water, whence the flesh of swine

Is fattened. There remain, and carefully

515

Inquire of all that thou wouldst know, while I,

Taking my way to Sparta, the abode

Of lovely women, call Telemachus,

Thy son, Ulysses, who hath visited

King Menelaus in his broad domain,

520

To learn if haply thou art living yet."

416

Ulysses, the sagacious, answered her :

"Why didst not thou, to whom all things are known,

Tell him concerning me? Must he too roam

And suffer on the barren deep, and leave

525

To others his estates, to be their spoil?"

And then the blue-eyed goddess spake again :

"Let not that thought distress thee. It was I

Who sent him thither, that he might deserve

The praise of men. No evil meets him there;

530

But in the halls of Atreus' son he sits,

Safe mid the abounding luxuries. 'T is true

That even now the suitors lie in wait,

In their black ship, to slay him ere he reach

His native land; but that will hardly be

535

Before the earth shall cover many a one

Of the proud suitors who consume thy wealth."

So Pallas spake, and touched him with her wand,

And caused the blooming skin to shrivel up

On his slow limbs, and the fair hair to fall,

540

And with an old man's wrinkles covered all

His frame, and dimmed his lately glorious eyes.

Another garb she gave, - a squalid vest;

A ragged, dirty cloak, all stained with smoke;

And over all the huge hide of a stag,

545

From which the hair was worn. A staff, beside,

She gave, and shabby scrip with many a rent,

Tied with a twisted thong. This said and done,

They parted; and the goddess flew to seek

Telemachus in Sparta's sacred town.

550

English (Thomas Hobbes, 1667, ed. Molesworth 1843) (OCR draft) Experimental (English (Thomas Hobbes, 1667, ed. Molesworth 1843)) — 13 focus

ODYSSEY.

LIB. XIII.

Ulysses sleeping is set ashore at Ithaca by the Phaeacians, and waking knows it not. Pallas in form of a shepherd helps to hide his treasure. The ship that conveyed him turned into a rock ; and Ulysses by Pallas is instructed what to do, and transformed into an

old beggar.

THIS said, all silent and delighted were.

Alcinous then said, Ulysses, since

You safely to me are arrived here,

You shall not lose your way in going hence.

But, princes, you that daily with me sit,

Drinking good wine and hearing music sweet,

And given to the stranger have what's fit,

I'll tell you what yet farther I think meet.

Garments he has a chest full, and good store

Of gold, plate, and of other gifts he has.

Take my advice. Let each man give him more,

A cauldron, or a three-foot pot of brass.

I know to each man 'twill be too great largess,

But by the people's contribution

We'll make amends; the town shall bear the charges.

The motion pleas'd, and 'twas agreed upon.

Then went they every man to his repose.

And soon as morning did again appear,

Aboard the ship the vessels they dispose,

Alcinous himself directed where.

And then into the palace they return,

And sacrifice to Jove a well-fed beast;

The thighs upon the altar there they burn,

And with the rest they make themselves a feast.

Demodocus before them sung and play'd,

Who for his art was famous in the town.

Ulysses to the sun look'd up, and stayed

Longing and wishing that it would go down ;

As one that hath at plough been all the day,

Hungry his belly, feeble is his knee,

Beholds the setting of the sun with joy;

So glad Ulysses was sunset to see.

Then to Alcinous and all the rest,

Offer, said he, unto the Gods their wine.

I have already all that I request,

And many gifts, which may the pow'rs divine

Make happy to me. Let me now depart,

That I may see my dear wife and my friends.

And blest may you stay here with joy at heart,

Comfort your wives, and obtain all your ends;

And strong and worthy children may you have,

Nor 'mongst the people trouble or disease-

This said, they prais'd him all, and counsel gave

The stranger to conduct safe o'er the seas.

Alcinous then call'd for wine, and bad

Pontonous present it to each one,

Until unto the Gods all offer'd had,

That so Ulysses the sooner might be gone.

Pontonous brought wine, and carried it

From man to man, and each man drank his cup,

Blessing the Gods in order as they sit.

When all had drunk, Ulysses standeth up,

And speaking to queen Arete, he said:

Happy for ever may you be, O queen.

I take my leave. Be you for ever joy'd

In king Alcinous as you have been,

And in your children and your people all.

And when he this had said, away he went.

Alcinous did then a squire call,

Whom with Ulysses to the ship he sent.

Arete to her women sent. One brought

Fine bread and store of black wine of the best;

Another brought with her a cloak and coat;

Another brought, to lay them in, a chest,

Which by the mariners were quickly stow'd

Aboard the good ship, with the wine and bread.

And for Ulysses many rugs they strew'd

0' th' deck, astern, with linen at his head.

And then aboard lie went. When he was lain,

Their seats they take, and parted from the strand,

Reclining dash d with oars the liquid plain,

While sleep Ulysses bound had foot and hand.

As when four horses gallop o'er a plain,

The way runs swiftly by the coach's side;

So did the good ship mount upon the main,

And to the stem the water swiftly glide,

A hawk could hardly with it have kept pace,

A hawk that of all fowl the swiftest flies;

So swiftly ran the ship on th' ocean's face,

And with her breast the rising water slice;

Bearing a man for wisdom like a God,

That pass'd had fearful billows on the deep,

And many bloody paths of war had trod,

The thought whereof was now removed by sleep.

Above the earth now risen was the star,

Day's messenger, and brightest of the sky.

The ship was then from Ithaca not far.

A port there is, which from a deity

Is called Phorcys, a sea-deity.

Two jetting rocks defend it from the wind;

When once within, a ship will safely lie,

. There needs no cord a floating ship to bind.

At the port's head grows a large olive-tree,

And near it an obscure and pleasant cave,

Where the Nereiades delight to be,

And there they bowls of stone and beakers have;

The bees make honey there. Besides, there be

Long beams of stone, whereon the nymphs do weave

Rich purple garments, wonderful to see,

And fountains which their running never leave.

100

Two doors there are, one north, men go that way;

The other to the south more sacred is,

Th' immortals here go in, and none but they;

The Gods have to themselves reserved this.

All this Ulysses' convoy knew before;

105

And here the ship arrived, safely lands,

And half her length lay dry upon the shore,

Such was the strength of those Phaeacian hands.

The lusty seamen, when they landed were,

First took Ulysses, sleeping as he lay,

110

Bedding and all, and to the land him bear,

And lay him from the sea a little way:

Then they unship his goods, gold, vestures, brass,

Gifts given him by the Phaeacians;

Which at the foot of the olive-tree they place,

115

Out of the way, lest passengers should chance

To steal them while Ulysses was asleep.

When this was done, the convoy stayed not,

But rowed out the ship into the deep.

Nor Neptune had Ulysses yet forgot,

120

But said to Jupiter, complaining then:

What honour from the Gods can I expect,

When the Phaeacians, that are but men,

(Although descended from me), me neglect ?

For though Ulysses I destroyed not,

125

Because his coming home you had decreed;

Yet that he should be brought home thus, ne'er thought,

Asleep, and painless, and with so much speed,

Enriched with gold, and brass, and vestures store,

As much as had come to his share at Troy.

130

This the Phaeacians have done, and more,

In this licentiousness they take a joy.

139

Then answered Jove: Neptune, what's this you say?

The Gods neglect you not. It cannot be,

That are the eldest and of greatest sway

135

Of any of them. If man injure thee,

To take revenge enough your own pow'r is.

I will not hinder you, do what you please.

To Jupiter then Neptune answer'd this;

I could, O Jove, have been reveng'd with ease,

140

But that I fear'd you would offended be.

And now 111 tell you what I mean to do.

As soon as I the ship returning see,

I'll fix it, that they may no more do so;

Besides, their city with a hill 111 hide.

145

O but, said Jupiter, were it my case,

When from the city people all espied

The ship hard by, I would a rock there place

In likeness of a ship not far from land,

To make men wonder, and then round about

150

The city make a mighty mountain stand.

This said by Jove, the God of Seas went out

To Scheria, where the Phaeacians

First planted were. The ship came swiftly on,

And on it Neptune laid his mighty hands.

155

And roots it in the sea, turn'd into stone.

The rowers t' one another say, What's this?

Who hath our good ship fixed in the water?

And yet above the water still it is.

Thus said they, but knew nothing of the matter.

160

Then spake Alcinous. Performed, said he,

Is what long since I heard my father say,

That Neptune angry was that strangers we,

Whoe'er they were, do to their homes convey,

And threatened had with a great hill to hide

165

The city, and destroy the passage-boat.

This by my father then was prophecied,

And now, you see, at last about 'tis brought.

Therefore be rul'd by me. Convoy no more;

But let us unto Neptune sacrifice

170

Twelve chosen bullocks, and his grace implore

To set no hill there.

184

So did he advise.

And then to Neptune they their prayers make

Standing at th' altar, king and princes all.

And now Ulysses lying was awake,

175

But to his mind the place could not recal;

For Pallas had about him cast a mist,

That at his coming he might not be known;

But she herself instruct him as she list,

Till he the suitors all had overthrown.

180

All things seem'd to him other than they were,

Paths, highways, creeks, havens, trees, and rocks;

And rising up he was he knew not where,

And with his open hand his thigh he knocks.

Ay me, said he, whither am I come now?

185

To civil, or to wild and lawless men?

Where shall I hide my treasure? Whither go?

Would I were at Phaeacia agen.

To other friends I might have gone from thence,

And t' Ithaca obtained a convoy,

190

Here for my treasure I see no defence.

Left here to others they will be a prey.

I see the princes of Phaeacia

Are not so just as I take them to be.

They promised to set me at Ithaca,

195

But have to some place else transported me.

Jove, that sees all, and punisheth the ill,

Will be revenged also of these men.

But come, my presents number now I will,

The seamen may have ta'en some back agen.

200

217

His garments and his plate then number'd he,

And nothing missing was of all his pelf.

Then walk'd he softly along by the sea,

Lamenting and bewailing of himself.

And then came Pallas to him. She had on

205

The body of a shepherd young and tender,

As if she had of some prince been the son;

Lin'd was his coat, the thread was fine and slender,

With dart in hand, and fine shoes on his feet.

Ulysses, who beheld her, was much joy'd,

210

And forth himself advanced, her to meet.

And first he to her spake, and thus he said:

Joy to you be, and good-will towards me ;

Save for me these my goods, and save me too.

You are the first I meet here ; at your knee

215

I bow myself, as men bow Gods unto.

Tell me, I pray you, true: What land is this ?

What town ? Th' inhabitants what men ?

An isle, or of the continent a piece ?

To this the Goddess answered agen.

220

Simple you are, or very far hence dwell,

To ask what country this is. For 'tis not

A place obscure; for known 'tis very well

Both east and west, though but a little spot,

And rugged ground, not fit for galloping ;

225

Yet corn it bears abundantly and wine ;

And is well watered both with dew and spring,

And nourisheth great herds of goats and kine.

Of wood of ev'ry sort there is good store.

Though from Achaea far men say is Troy,

230

Yet Ithaca is talk'd of on that shore.

250

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.

287

At this the goddess smil'd, and strok'd his head,

265

And in a woman's shape before him stood,

Of stature tall and like to one well bred.

The craft that catches you had need be good.

You cannot, though at home, your wiles forego,

And your feign'd stories, though there be no need,

270

So close they stick to you from top to toe.

But now no more of that; for 'tis agreed,

'Mongst mortals you, amongst immortals I,

For counsel and invention excel.

Did you not know me, that perpetually

275

Have at your need assisted you so well ?

And now am come to help you to secure

The rich Phaeacian presents you have here,

And tell you what at home you must endure?

Affronts and scorns, you shall find many there.

280

Then said Ulysses, Difficult it is

For any mortal man, though very wise,

To know a God, that can their form dismiss,

And, when they will, put on a new disguise.

When th' Argive army was besieging Troy,

285

Goddess, I know how gracious you were then;

But after (the town sack'd) we came away,

And scatter'd had the Gods our ships and men,

And I was wand'ring on the ocean wide,

I never saw you, never had your aid,

290

Save at Phaeacia you were pleased to guide

Me to the town, and hasten me dismayed.

But I beseech you (for still do I doubt

This is not Ithaca that I am at,

But some place else, and that you go about

295

With comforts feign'd my sorrows to abate)

Tell me if this my country be indeed ?

329

Pallas said then, Suspicious still you are;

I cannot, therefore, leave you in your need,

Since wise you be, and willing to beware.

300

Another man that had been long away,

Had straight gone home to see his wife and son;

But that for you is not the safest way,

Nor had it yet been opportunely done.

Know how she'll take it first. She keeps within,

305

And spends in weeping both the night and day.

I know full well the Fates his coming spin,

But that his mates shall first be cast away.

But with my uncle Neptune had no mind

To be at odds, that in such choler is,

310

For making of his son the Cyclops blind.

But come, I'll shew you Ithaca. First, this

The port of Phorcys is ; this th' olive-tree,

There near it is the gloomy cavern, where

The nymphs Naiades invoked be,

315

And by you in that cave much worshipp'd were.

The hill so cloth'd with wood is Neriton.

This said, the mist dissolves, and then Ulysses

His native country joyful looks upon,

And falling on his knees, the soil he kisses.

320

And then to the Naiades he pray'd,

Hail ! Daughters of high Jove, Naiades,

Ne'er to have seen you more I was afraid;

But oft we shall again, if Pallas please

To give me life, and prosper my dear son,

325

Your altar fill with gifts as heretofore.

The Goddess Pallas, when his pray'r was done,

Answer'd, Let that thought trouble you no more.

But come, let's now see how your goods to save,

Now presently. 'Twere well that they were laid

330

Within some rock at bottom of the cave.

366

Then went she in, and caves in cave survey'd.

Ulysses brought into the grot his store,

Garments, and heavy brass, and golden plate ;

Which Pallas plac'd, and laid a rock o' th' door,

335

And then in counsel both together sate

The suitors to destroy. Pallas first spake.

Ulysses, said she, think on how you may

Your just revenge of the proud suitors take,

That use your house and substance as their prey;

340

That marry would your wife by force. But she

Still keeps them off with hopes and promises,

Expecting your return continually,

But than of marriage thinks of nothing less.

Oh ! said Ulysses, but for your advice,

345

I died had as Agamemnon did.

But now, O Pallas, find out some device,

How of the suitors best I may be rid,

And by me stand, inspiring courage stout,

As when we pull'd Troy's head-gear off her head.

350

For then to master them I should not doubt,

Three hundred though they were. Then answered

The Goddess Pallas : By you I will stand ;

You cannot fight, but I shall of it know,

And bring unto you such a lucky hand,

355

That with their blood and brains the ground shall flow.

Come, first I'll make you to men pass unknown:

I'll shrink your skin, that's now so fair and fresh,

And from your head take off that hair so brown,

And cover will with such array your flesh,

360

As men shall hate the sight of; then your eyes

I'll shrivel up, that were so full and bright,

That in this habit th' woo'rs may you despise,

Nor your wife know you standing in her sight.

Then go you to the master of your swine,

365

That loves you, and your son, and your consort;

And to direct you to him take this sign :

He's at Crow-rock, thither the swine resort,

And t' Arethusa's well; for why, the oaken

Berries, with that sweet water, make them fat.

370

Stay there till to him you your mind have spoken,

And well inform'd yourself of your estate.

To Lacedaemon I the while will go,

To call your son Telemachus away,

Who thither went by sea, that he might know

375

What Menelaus there of you could say.

416

Then said Ulysses, Goddess, since you could

Have told him all yourself, why did you not ?

Meant you that also he be wand'ring should,

While other men stay feeding on his lot ?

380

Trouble not you yourself with him, said she :

I sent him, and went with him with intent

To show him to the world abroad. And he

At Sparta treated is to his content.

'Tis true, the suitors with a ship are gone

385

To wait for, and to kill him by the way;

But I believe, before that that be done,

Some will lie low that now your goods destroy.

And as she spake, she strok'd him with her wand,

And rivel'd seem'd his skin (which was before

390

So sleek and fair) as if it had been tann'd;

And gray his hair, rivel'd his eyes all o'er.

And then she gave him an ill-favoured rag,

Torn, foul, and smutted filthily with soot,

And over that the pill'd skin of a stag,

395

And satchel full of holes then added to 't

With twisted-string. And up their counsel brake.

The Goddess Pallas then to Sparta past,

To bid Telemachus his leave to take

Of Menelaus, and go home with haste.

400

English (George Chapman, 1667, ed. Hooper 1857) (OCR draft) Experimental (English (George Chapman, 1667, ed. Hooper 1857)) — 13 focus

THE THIRTEENTH BOOK OF HOMER'S ODYSSEYS.

THE ARGUMENT.

ULYSSES (shipp'd, but in the even,

With all the presents he was given,

And sleeping then) is set next morn

In full scope of his wish'd return,

And treads unknown his country shore,

Whose search so many winters wore.

The ship (returning, and arrived

Against the city) is deprived

Of form, and, all her motion gone,

Transform'd by Neptune to a stone.

Ulysses (let to know the strand

Where the Phæacians made him land)

Consults with Pallas, for the life

Of every wooer of his wife.

His gifts she hides within a cave,

And him into a man more grave,

All hid in wrinkles, crooked, gray,

Transform'd; who so goes on his way.

ANOTHER ARGUMENT.

No. Phæacia

Ulysses leaves;

Whom Ithaca,

Unwares, receives.

HE said; and silence all their tongues contain'd,

In admiration, when with pleasure chain'd

Their ears had long been to him. At last brake

Alcinous silence, and in this sort spake

To th' Ithacensian, Laertes' son:

"O Ithacus! However over-run

With former sufferings in your way for home,

Since 'twas, at last, your happy fate to come

To my high-roof'd and brass-foundation'd house,

I hope, such speed and pass auspicious

Our loves shall yield you, that you shall no more

Wander, nor suffer, homewards, as before.

You then, whoever that are ever graced

With all choice of authoriz'd power to taste

Such wine with me as warms the sacred rage,

And is an honorary given to age,

With which ye likewise hear divinely sing,

In honour's praise, the poet of the king,

I move, by way of my command, to this:

That where in an elaborate chest there lies

A present for our guest, attires of price,

And gold engraven with infinite device,

I wish that each of us should add beside

A tripod, and a caldron, amplified

With size, and metal of most rate, and great;

For we, in council of taxation met,

Will from our subjects gain their worth again;

Since 'tis unequal one man should sustain

A charge so weighty, being the grace of all,

Which borne by many is a weight but small."

Thus spake Alcinous, and pleased the rest;

When each man closed with home and sleep his feast.

But when the colour-giving light arose,

All to the ship did all their speeds dispose,

And wealth, that honest men makes, brought with them.

All which even he that wore the diadem

Stow'd in the ship himself, beneath the seats

The rowers sat in, stooping, lest their lets

In any of their labours he might prove.

Then home he turn'd, and after him did move

The whole assembly to expected feast.

Among whom he a sacrifice address'd,

And slew an ox, to weather-wielding Jove,

Beneath whose empire all things are, and move.

The thighs then roasting, they made glorious cheer,

Delighted highly; and amongst them there

The honour'd-of-the-people used his voice,

Divine Demodocus. Yet, through this choice

Of cheer and music, had Ulysses still

An eye directed to the eastern hill,

To see Him rising that illustrates all;

For now into his mind a fire did fall

Of thirst for home. And as in hungry vow

To needful food a man at fixed plow

To whom the black ox all day long hath turn'd

The stubborn fallows up, his stomach burn'd

With empty heat and appetite to food,

His knees afflicted with his spirit-spent blood)

At length the long-expected sun-set sees,

That he may sit to food, and rest his knees;

So to Ulysses set the friendly light

²³⁴

The sun afforded, with as wish'd a sight.

Who straight bespake that oar-affecting State,

But did in chief his speech appropriate

To him by name, that with their rule was crown'd.

"Alcinous, of all men most renown'd,

Dismiss me with as safe pass as you vow

(Your off'ring past) and may the Gods to you

In all contentment use as full a hand;

For now my landing here and stay shall stand

In all perfection with my heart's desire,

Both my so safe deduction to aspire,

And loving gifts; which may the Gods to me

As blest in use make as your acts are free,

Even to the finding firm in love, and life,

With all desired event, my friends, and wife.

When, as myself shall live delighted there,

May you with your wives rest as happy here,

Your sons and daughters, in particular state,

With every virtue render'd consummate;

And, in your general empire, may ill never

Approach your land, but good your good quit ever."

This all applauded, and all jointly cried:

"Dismiss the stranger! He hath dignified

With fit speech his dismission." Then the king

Thus charged the herald: "Fill for offering

A bowl of wine; which through the whole large house

Dispose to all men, that, propitious

Our father Jove made with our prayers, we may

Give home our guest in full and wished way."

This said, Pontonous commix'd a bowl

⁵⁶

Of such sweet wine as did delight the soul.

Which making sacred to the blessed Gods,

That hold in broad heaven their supreme abodes,

God-like Ulysses from his chair arose,

And in the hands of th' empress did impose

The all-round cup; to whom, fair spoke, he said:

"Rejoice, O queen, and be your joys repaid

By heaven, for me, till age and death succeed;

Both which inflict their most unwelcome need

100

On men and dames alike. And, first, for me,

I must from hence, to both: Live you here free,

And ever may all living blessings spring,

Your joy in children, subjects, and your king."

This said, divine Ulysses took his way;

105

Before whom the unalterable sway

Of king Alcinous' virtue did command

A herald's fit attendance to the strand,

And ship appointed. With him likewise went

Handmaids, by Arete's injunction sent.

110

One bore an out and in-weed, fair and sweet,

The other an embroider'd cabinet,

The third had bread to bear, and ruddy wine;

All which, at sea and ship arrived, resign

Their freight conferr'd. With fair attendants then,

115

The sheets and bedding of the man of men,

Within a cabin of the hollow keel,

Spread, and made soft, that sleep might sweetly seel

His restful eyes, he enter'd, and his bed

In silence took. The rowers ordered

120

Themselves in several seats, and then set gone

The ship, the gable from the hollow stone

Dissolved and weigh'd up, all, together, close

Then beat the sea. His lids in sweet repose

Sleep bound so fast, it scarce gave way to breath

125

Inexcitable, most dear, next of all to death.

And as amids a fair field four brave horse

Before a chariot stung into their course

With fervent lashes of the smarting scourge,

That all their fire blows high, and makes them urge

130

To utmost speed the measure of their ground;

So bore the ship aloft her fiery bound;

About whom rush'd the billows black and vast,

In which the sea-roars burst. As firm as fast

She ply'd her course yet; nor her winged speed

135

The falcon-gentle could for pace exceed;

So cut she through the waves, and bore a man

Even with the Gods in counsels, that began

And spent his former life in all misease,

Battles of men, and rude waves of the seas,

140

Yet now securely slept, forgetting all.

And when heaven's brightest star, that first doth call

The early morning out, advanced her head,

Then near to Ithaca the billow-bred

Phæacian ship approach'd. There is a port,

145

That th' aged sea-God Phorcys makes his fort,

Whose earth the Ithacensian people own,

In which two rocks inaccessible are grown

Far forth into the sea, whose each strength binds

The boist'rous waves in from the high-flown winds

150

On both the out-parts so, that all within

The well-built ships, that once their harbour win

In his calm bosom, without anchor rest,

Safe, and unstirr'd. From forth the haven's high crest

Branch the well-brawn'd arms of an olive-tree;

155

Beneath which runs a cave from all sun free,

Cool, and delightsome, sacred to th' access

Of Nymphs whose surnames are the Naiades;

In which flew humming bees, in which lay thrown

Stone cups, stone vessels, shittles all of stone,

160

With which the Nymphs their purple mantles wove,

In whose contexture art and wonder strove;

In which pure springs perpetually ran;

To which two entries were; the one for man,

On which the north breath'd; th' other for the Gods,

165

On which the south; and that bore no abodes

For earthy men, but only deathless feet

Had there free way. This port these men thought meet

To land Ulysses, being the first they knew,

Drew then their ship in, but no further drew

170

Than half her bulk reach'd, by such cunning hand

Her course was managed. Then her men took land,

And first brought forth Ulysses, bed, and all

That richly furnish'd it, he still in thrall

Of all-subduing sleep. Upon the sand

175

They set him softly down; and then the strand

They strew'd with all the goods he had, bestow'd

By the renown'd Phæacians, since he show'd

So much Minerva. At the olive root

They drew them then in heap, most far from foot

180

Of any traveller, lest, ere his eyes

Resumed their charge, they might be others' prise.

These then turn'd home; nor was the sea's Supreme

Forgetful of his threats, for Polypheme

Bent at divine Ulysses, yet would prove

185

(Ere their performance) the decree of Jove.

"Father! No more the Gods shall honour me,

Since men despise me, and those men that see

The light in lineage of mine own loved race.

I vow'd Ulysses should, before the grace

190

Of his return, encounter woes enow

To make that purchase dear; yet did not vow

Simply against it, since thy brow had bent

To his reduction, in the fore-consent

Thou hadst vouchsafed it; yet, before my mind

195

Hath full power on him, the Phæacians find

Their own minds' satisfaction with his pass,

So far from suff'ring what my pleasure was,

That ease and softness now is habited

In his secure breast, and his careless head

200

Return'd in peace of sleep to Ithaca,

The brass and gold of rich Phæacia

Rocking his temples, garments richly woven,

And worlds of prise, more than was ever stroven

From all the conflicts he sustain'd at Troy,

205

If safe he should his full share there enjoy."

139

The Shower-dissolver answer'd: "What a speech

Hath pass'd thy palate, O thou great in reach

Of wrackful empire! Far the Gods remain

From scorn of thee, for 'twere a work of pain

210

To prosecute with ignominies one

That sways our ablest and most ancient throne.

For men, if any so beneath in power

Neglect thy high will, now, or any hour

That moves hereafter, take revenge to thee,

215

Soothe all thy will, and be thy pleasure free."

"Why then," said he, "thou blacker of the fumes

⁷

That dim the sun, my licens'd power resumes

Act from thy speech; but I observe so much

And fear thy pleasure, that, I dare not touch

220

At any inclination of mine own,

Till thy consenting influence be known.

But now this curious-built Phæacian ship,

Returning from her convoy, I will strip

Of all her fleeting matter, and to stone

225

Transform and fix it, just when she hath gone

Her full time home, and jets before their prease

In all her trim, amids the sable seas,

That they may cease to convoy strangers still,

When they shall see so like a mighty hill

230

Their glory stick before their city's grace,

And my hands cast a mask before her face."

"O friend," said Jove, "it shows to me the best

Of all earth's objects, that their whole prease, drest

In all their wonder, near their town shall stand,

235

And stare upon a stone, so near the land,

So like a ship, and dam up all their lights,

As if a mountain interposed their sights."

When Neptune heard this, he for Scheria went,

Whence the Phæacians took their first descent.

240

Which when he reach'd, and, in her swiftest pride,

The water-treader by the city's side

Come cutting close, close he came swiftly on,

Took her in violent hand, and to a stone

⁸⁹

Turn'd all her sylvan substance; all below

245

Firm'd her with roots, and left her. This strange show

When the Phæacians saw, they stupid stood,

And ask'd each other, who amids the flood

Could fix their ship so in her full speed home,

And quite transparent make her bulk become?

250

Thus talk'd they; but were far from knowing how

These things had issue. Which their king did show,

And said: "O friends, the ancient prophecies

My father told to me, to all our eyes

Are now in proof. He said, the time would come,

255

When Neptune, for our safe conducting home

All sorts of strangers, out of envy fired,

Would meet our fairest ship as she retired,

And all the goodly shape and speed we boast

Should like a mountain stand before us lost,

260

Amids the moving waters; which we see

Perform'd in full end to our prophecy.

Hear then my counsel, and obey me then:

Renounce henceforth our convoy home of men,

Whoever shall hereafter greet our town;

265

And to th' offended Deity's renown

Twelve chosen oxen let us sacred make,

That he may pity us, and from us take

184

This shady mountain. They, in fear, obey'd,

Slew all the beeves, and to the Godhead pray'd,

270

The dukes and princes all ensphering round

The sacred altar; while whose tops were crown'd,

Divine Ulysses, on his country's breast

Laid bound in sleep, now rose out of his rest,

Nor (being so long removed) the region knew.

275

Besides which absence yet, Minerva threw

A cloud about him, to make strange the more

His safe arrival, lest upon his shore

He should make known his face, and utter all

That might prevent th' event that was to fall.

280

Which she prepared so well, that not his wife,

Presented to him, should perceive his life,

No citizen, no friend, till righteous fate

Upon the Wooers' wrongs were consummate.

Through which cloud all things show'd now to the king

285

Of foreign fashion; the enflower'd spring

Amongst the trees there, the perpetual waves,

The rocks, that did more high their foreheads raise

To his rapt eye than naturally they did,

And all the haven, in which a man seem'd hid

290

From wind, and weather, when storms loudest chid.

He therefore, being risen, stood and view'd

His country earth; which, not perceived, he rued,

And, striking with his hurl'd-down hands his thighs,

He mourn'd, and said: "O me! Again where lies

295

My desert way? To wrongful men and rude,

And with no laws of human right endued?

Or are they human, and of holy minds?

What fits my deed with these so many kinds

Of goods late given? What with myself will floods

300

And errors do? I would to God, these goods

Had rested with their owners, and that I

Had fallen on kings of more regality,

To grace out my return, that loved indeed,

And would have given me consorts of fit speed

305

To my distresses ending! But, as now,

All knowledge flies me, where I may bestow

¹⁰¹¹

My labour'd purchase. Here they shall not stay,

Lest what I cared for others make their prey.

O Gods! I see the great Phæacians then

310

Were not all just and understanding men,

That land me elsewhere than their vaunts pretended,

Assuring me my country should see ended

My miseries told them, yet now eat their vaunts.

O Jove! Great Guardian of poor suppliants,

315

That others sees, and notes too, shutting in

All in thy plagues, that most presume on sin,

Revenge me on them.

217

Let me number now

The goods they gave, to give my mind to know

If they have stolen none, in their close retreat."

320

The goodly caldrons then, and tripods, set

In several ranks from out the heap, he told,

His rich wrought garments too, and all his gold,

And nothing lack'd; and yet this man did mourn

The but supposed miss of his home-return,

325

And, creeping to the shore, with much complaint;

Minerva (like a shepherd, young, and quaint,

As king sons are, a double mantle cast

Athwart his shoulders, his fair goers graced

With fitted shoes, and in his hand a dart)

330

Appear'd to him, whose sight rejoiced his heart,

To whom he came, and said: "O friend! Since first

I meet your sight here, be all good the worst

That can join our encounter. Fare you fair,"

¹²¹³

Nor with adverse mind welcome my repair,

335

But guard these goods of mine, and succour me.

As to a God I offer prayers to thee,

And low access make to thy loved knee.

Say truth, that I may know, what country then,

What common people live here, and what men?

340

Some famous isle is this? Or gives it vent,

Being near the sea, to some rich continent?"

She answer'd: "Stranger, whatsoe'er you are,

Y' are either foolish, or come passing far,

That know not this isle, and make that doubt trouble,

345

For 'tis not so exceedingly ignoble,

But passing many know it; and so many,

That of all nations there abides not any,

From where the morning rises and the sun,

To where the even and night their courses run,

350

But know this country. Rocky 'tis, and rough,

And so for use of horse unapt enough,

Yet with sad barrenness not much infested,

Since clouds are here in frequent rains digested,

And flowery dews. The compass is not great,

355

The little yet well-fill'd with wine and wheat.

It feeds a goat and ox well, being still

Water'd with floods, that ever over-fill

With heaven's continual showers; and wooded so,

It makes a spring of all the kinds that grow.

360

And therefore, Stranger, the extended name

Of this dominion makes access by fame

From this extreme part of Achaia

As far as Ilion, and 'tis Ithaca."

250

This joy'd him much, that so unknown a land

365

¹⁴

Turn'd to his country. Yet so wise a hand

He carried, even of this joy, flown so high,

That other end he put to his reply

Than straight to show that joy, and lay abroad

His life to strangers. Therefore he bestow'd

370

A veil on truth; for evermore did wind

About his bosom a most crafty mind,

Which thus his words show'd: "I have far at sea,

In spacious Crete, heard speak of Ithaca,

Of which myself, it seems, now reach the shore,

375

With these my fortunes; whose whole value more

I left in Crete amongst my children there,

From whence I fly for being the slaughterer

Of royal Idomen's most loved son,

Swift-foot Orsilochus, that could out-run

380

Profess'd men for the race. Yet him I slew,

Because he would deprive me of my due

In Trojan prise; for which I suffer'd so

(The rude waves piercing) the redoubled wo

Of mind and body in the wars of men.

385

Nor did I gratify his father then

With any service, but, as well as he

Sway'd in command of other soldiery,

So, with a friend withdrawn, we waylaid him,

When gloomy night the cope of heaven did dim,

390

And no man knew; but, we lodged close, he came,

And I put out to him his vital flame.

Whose slaughter having author'd with my sword,

I instant flight made, and straight fell aboard

A ship of the renown'd Phœnician state;

395

When prayer, and pay at a sufficient rate,

Obtain'd my pass of men in her command;

Whom I enjoin'd to set me on the land

Of Pylos, or of Elis the divine,

Where the Epeïans in great empire shine.

400

But force of weather check'd that course to them,

Though (loath to fail me) to their most extreme

They spent their willing powers. But, forced from thence,

We err'd, and put in here, with much expence

Of care and labour; and in dead of night,

405

When no man there served any appetite

So much as with the memory of food,

Though our estates exceeding needy stood.

But, going ashore, we lay; when gentle sleep

My weary powers invaded, and from ship

410

They fetching these my riches, with just hand

About me laid them, while upon the sand

Sleep bound my senses; and for Sidon they

(Put off from hence) made sail, while here I lay,

Left sad alone."

415

287

The Goddess laugh'd, and took

415

His hand in hers, and with another look

(Assuming then the likeness of a dame,

Lovely and goodly, expert in the frame

Of virtuous housewiferies) she answer'd thus:

"He should be passing sly, and covetous

420

Of stealth, in men's deceits, that coted thee

In any craft, though any God should be

Ambitious to exceed in subtilty.

Thou still-wit-varying wretch! Insatiate

¹⁵¹⁶¹⁷

In over-reaches! Not secure thy state

425

Without these wiles, though on thy native shore

Thou sett'st safe footing, but upon thy store

Of false words still spend, that even from thy birth

Have been thy best friends? Come, our either worth

Is known to either. Thou of men art far,

430

For words and counsels, the most singular,

But I above the Gods in both may boast

My still-tried faculties. Yet thou hast lost

The knowledge even of me, the seed of Jove,

Pallas Athenia, that have still out-strove

435

In all thy labours their extremes, and stood

Thy sure guard ever, making all thy good

Known to the good Phæacians, and received.

And now again I greet thee, to see weaved

Fresh counsels for thee, and will take on me

440

The close reserving of these goods for thee,

Which the renown'd Phæacian states bestow'd

At thy deduction homewards, only moved

With my both spirit and counsel. All which grace

I now will amplify, and tell what case

445

Thy household stands in, uttering all those pains

That of mere need yet still must wrack thy veins.

Do thou then freely bear, nor one word give

To man nor dame to show thou yet dost live,

But silent suffer over all again

450

Thy sorrows past, and bear the wrongs of men."

"Goddess," said he, "unjust men, and unwise,

That author injuries and vanities,

By vanities and wrongs should rather be

Bound to this ill-abearing destiny,

455

Than just and wise men. What delight hath heaven,

That lives unhurt itself, to suffer given

Up to all domage those poor few that strive

To imitate it, and like the Deities live?

But where you wonder that I know you not

460

Through all your changes, that skill is not got

By sleight or art, since thy most hard-hit face

Is still distinguish'd by thy free-given grace;

And therefore, truly to acknowledge thee

In thy encounters, is a mastery

465

In men most knowing; for to all men thou

Tak'st several likeness. All men think they know

Thee in their wits; but, since thy seeming view

Appears to all, and yet thy truth to few,

Through all thy changes to discern thee right

470

Asks chief love to thee, and inspired light.

But this I surely know, that, some years past,

I have been often with thy presence grac'd,

All time the sons of Greece waged war at Troy;

But when Fate's full hour let our swords enjoy

475

Our vows in sack of Priam's lofty town,

Our ships all boarded, and when God had blown

Our fleet in sunder, I could never see

The Seed of Jove, nor once distinguish'd thee

Boarding my ship, to take one woe from me.

480

But only in my proper spirit involved,

Err'd here and there, quite slain, till heaven dissolved

Me, and my ill; which chanc'd not, till thy grace

By open speech confirm'd me, in a place

Fruitful of people, where, in person, thou

485

Didst give me guide, and all their city show;

And that was the renown'd Phæacian earth.

¹⁸

Now then, even by the Author of thy birth,

Vouchsafe my doubt the truth (for far it flies

My thoughts that thus should fall into mine eyes

490

Conspicuous Ithaca, but fear I touch

At some far shore, and that thy wit is such

Thou dost delude me) is it sure the same

Most honour'd earth that bears my country's name?"

"I see," said she, "thou wilt be ever thus

495

In every worldly good incredulous,

And therefore have no more the power to see

Frail life more plagued with infelicity

In one so eloquent, ingenious, wise.

Another man, that so long miseries

500

Had kept from his loved home, and thus returned

To see his house, wife, children, would have burned

In headlong lust to visit. Yet t' inquire

What states they hold, affects not thy desire,

Till thou hast tried if in thy wife there be

505

A sorrow wasting days and nights for thee

In loving tears, that then the sight may prove

A full reward for either's mutual love.

But I would never credit in you both

Least cause of sorrow, but well knew the troth

510

Of this thine own return, though all thy friends,

I knew as well, should make returnless ends;

Yet would not cross mine uncle Neptune so

To stand their safeguard, since so high did go

His wrath for thy extinction of the eye

515

Of his loved son. Come then, I'll show thee why

I call this isle thy Ithaca, to ground

Thy credit on my words: This haven is own'd

By th' aged sea-god Phorcys, in whose brow

This is the olive with the ample bough

520

And here, close by, the pleasant-shaded cave

That to the Fount-Nymphs th' Ithacensians gave,

As sacred to their pleasures. Here doth run

The large and covered den, where thou hast done

Hundreds of offerings to the Naiades.

525

Here mount Neritus shakes his curled tress

Of shady woods." This said, she clear'd the cloud

That first deceived his eyes; and all things show'd

His country to him. Glad he stood with sight

Of his loved soil, and kiss'd it with delight.

530

And instantly to all the Nymphs he paid

(With hands held up to heaven) these vows, and said:

"Ye Nymphs the Naiades, great Seed of Jove,

I had conceit that never more should move

Your sight in these spheres of my erring eyes,

535

And therefore, in the fuller sacrifice

Of my heart's gratitude, rejoice, till more

I pay your names in offerings as before,

Which here I vow, if Jove's benign descent,

The mighty Pillager, with life convent

540

My person home, and to my saved decease

Of my loved son's sight add the sweet increase."

329

"Be confident," said Pallas, "nor oppress

Thy spirits with care of these performances,

But these thy fortunes let us straight repose

545

In this divine cave's bosom, that may close

Reserve their value; and we then may see

How best to order other acts to thee."

Thus enter'd she the light-excluding cave,

And through it sought some inmost nook to save,

550

¹⁹

The gold, the great brass, and robes richly wrought,

Given to Ulysses. All which in he brought,

Laid down in heap; and she imposed a stone

Close to the cavern's mouth. Then sat they on

The sacred olive's root, consulting how

555

To act th' insulting Wooers' overthrow,

366

When Pallas said: "Examine now the means

That best may lay hands on the impudence

Of those proud Wooers, that have now three years

Thy roof's rule sway'd, and been bold offerers

560

Of suit and gifts to thy renowned wife,

Who for thy absence all her desolate life

Dissolves in tears till thy desired return;

Yet all her Wooers, while she thus doth mourn,

She holds in hope, and every one affords

565

(In fore-sent message) promise; but her words

Bear other utterance than her heart approves."

"O Gods," said Ithacus, "it now behoves

My fate to end me in the ill decease

That Agamemnon underwent, unless

570

You tell me, and in time, their close intents.

Advise then means to the revenged events

We both resolve on. Be thyself so kind

To stand close to me, and but such a mind

Breathe in my bosom, as when th' Ilion towers

575

We tore in cinders. O if equal powers

Thou wouldst enflame amids my nerves as then,

I could encounter with three hundred men,

Thy only self, great Goddess, had to friend,

In those brave ardours thou wert wont t' extend!"

580

"I will be strongly with thee," answer'd she,

"Nor must thou fail, but do thy part with me.

When both whose powers combine, I hope the bloods

And brains of some of these that waste thy goods

Shall strew thy goodly pavements. Join we then:

585

I first will render thee unknown to men,

And on thy solid lineaments make dry

Thy now smooth skin; thy bright-brown curls imply

In hoary mattings; thy broad shoulders clothe

In such a cloak as every eye shall loath;

590

Thy bright eyes blear and wrinkle; and so change

Thy form at all parts, that thou shalt be strange

To all the Wooers, thy young son, and wife.

But to thy herdsman first present thy life,

That guards thy swine, and wisheth well to thee,

595

That loves thy son and wife Penelope.

Thy search shall find him set aside his herd,

That are with taste-delighting acorns rear'd,

And drink the dark-deep water of the spring,

Bright Arethusa, the most nourishing

600

Raiser of herds. There stay, and, taking seat

Aside thy herdsman, of the whole state treat

Of home occurrents; while I make access

To fair-dame-breeding Sparta for regress

Of loved Telemachus, who went in quest

605

Of thy loved fame, and lived the welcome guest

Of Menelaus."

416

The much-knower said:

"Why wouldst not thou, in whose grave breast is bred

The art to order all acts, tell in this

His error to him? Let those years of his

610

Amids the rude seas wander, and sustain

The woes there raging, while unworthy men

Devour his fortunes?" "Let not care extend

Thy heart for him," said she, "myself did send

His person in thy search, to set his worth,

615

By good fame blown, to such a distance forth.

Nor suffers he in any least degree

The grief you fear, but all variety

That Plenty can yield in her quiet'st fare,

In Menelaus' court, doth sit and share.

620

In whose return from home, the Wooers yet

Lay bloody ambush, and a ship have set

To sea, to intercept his life, before

He touch again his birth's attempted shore.

All which, my thoughts say, they shall never do,

625

But rather, that the earth shall overgo

Some one at least of these love-making men,

By which thy goods so much impair sustain."

Thus using certain secret words to him,

She touched him with her rod; and every limb

630

Was hid all over with a wither'd skin;

His bright eyes blear'd; his brow curls white and thin;

And all things did an aged man present.

Then, for his own weeds, shirt and coat, all rent,

Tann'd, and all sootiéd with noisome smoke,

635

She put him on; and, over all, a cloke

Made of a stag's huge hide, of which was worn

The hair quite off; a scrip, all patch'd and torn,

Hung by a cord, oft broke and knit again;

And with a staff did his old limbs sustain.

640

Thus having both consulted of th' event,

They parted both; and forth to Sparta went

The gray-eyed Goddess, to see all things done

That appertain'd to wise Ulysses' son.

English (William Cowper, 1791, ed. Southey) (OCR draft) Experimental (English (William Cowper, 1791, ed. Southey)) — 13 focus

THE THIRTEENTH BOOK OF HOMER'S ODYSSEY.

ARGUMENT OF THE THIRTEENTH BOOK.

Ulysses having finished his narrative, and received additional presents from the Phæacians, embarks; he is conveyed in his sleep to Ithaca, and in his sleep is landed on that island. The ship that carried him is in her return transformed by Neptune to a rock. Minerva meets him on the shore, enables him to recollect his country, which, till enlightened by her, he believed to be a country strange to him, and they concert together the means of destroying the suitors. The Goddess then repairs to Sparta to call thence Telemachus, and Ulysses, by her aid disguised like a beggar, proceeds toward the cottage of Eumæus.

HE ceased; the whole assembly silent sat,

Charm'd into ecstasy with his discourse

Throughout the twilight hall. Then, thus the King.

Ulysses, since beneath my brazen dome

Sublime thou hast arrived, like woes, I trust,

Thou shalt not in thy voyage hence sustain

By tempests tost, though much to woe inured.

To you, who daily in my palace quaff

Your princely meed of generous wine and hear

The sacred bard, my pleasure thus I speak.

The robes, wrought gold, and all the other gifts

To this our guest, by the Phæacian Chiefs

Brought hither in the sumptuous coffer lie.

But come-present ye to the stranger, each,

An ample tripod also, with a vase

Of smaller size, for which we will be paid

By public impost; for the charge of all

Excessive were by one alone defray'd.

So spake Alcinois, and his counsel pleased;

Then, all retiring, sought repose at home.

But when Aurora, daughter of the dawn,

Look'd rosy forth, each hasted to the bark

With his illustrious present, which the might

Of King Alcinous, who himself her sides

Ascended, safe beneath the seats bestowed,

Lest it should harm or hinder, while he toil'd

In rowing, some Phæacian of the crew.

The palace of Alcinoüs seeking next,

Together, they prepared a new regale.

For them, in sacrifice, the sacred might

Of King Alcinoüs slew an ox to Jove

Saturnian, cloud-girt governor of all.

The thighs with fire prepared, all glad partook

The noble feast; meantime, the bard divine

Sang, sweet Demodocus, the people's joy.

But oft Ulysses to the radiant sun

Turn'd wistful eyes, anxious for his decline,

Nor longer, now, patient of dull delay.

As when some hungry swain whose sable beeves

Have through the fallow dragg'd his ponderous plough

All day, the setting sun views with delight

For supper' sake, which with tired feet he seeks,

So welcome to Ulysses' eyes appear'd

The sun-set of that eve; directing, then,

His speech to maritime Phæacia's sons,

But to Alcinoüs chiefly, thus he said.

Alcinoüs, o'er Phæacia's realm supreme!

Libation made, dismiss ye me in peace,

And farewell all! for what I wish'd, I have,

Conductors hence, and honourable gifts

With which heaven prosper me! and may the Gods

Vouchsafe to me, at my return, to find

All safe, my spotless consort and my friends!

May ye, whom here I leave, gladden your wives

And see your children blest, and may the Powers

Immortal with all good enrich you all,

And from calamity preserve the land!

He ended; they unanimous, his speech

Applauded loud, and bade dismiss the guest

Who had so wisely spoken and so well.

Then thus Alcinoüs to his herald spake.

Pontonoüs! charging high the beaker, bear

To every guest beneath our roof the wine,

That, prayer preferr'd to the eternal Sire,

We may dismiss our inmate to his home.

Then bore Pontonoüs to every guest

The brimming cup; they, where they sat, perform'd

Libation due; but the illustrious Chief

Ulysses, from his seat arising, placed

A massy goblet in Areta's hand,

To whom in accents wing'd, grateful, he said.

Farewell, O Queen, a long farewell, till age

Arrive, and death, the appointed lot of all !

I go; but be this people, and the King

Alcinoüs, and thy progeny, thy joy

Yet many a year beneath this glorious roof!

So saying, the Hero through the palace-gate

Issued, whom, by Alcinoüs' command,

The royal herald to his vessel led.

Three maidens also of Areta's train

His steps attended; one, the robe well-bleach'd

And tunic bore; the corded coffer, one;

And food the third, with wine of crimson hue.

Arriving where the galley rode, each gave

Her charge to some brave mariner on board,

And all was safely stow'd. Meantime were spread

Linen and arras on the deck astern,

For his secure repose. And now the Chief

Himself embarking, silent lay'd him down.

Then every rower to his bench repair'd;

They drew the loosen'd cable from its hold

In the drill'd rock, and resupine, at once

With lusty strokes upturn'd the flashing waves.

His eye-lids soon sleep, falling as a dew,

Closed fast, death's simular, in sight the same.

She, as four harness'd stallions o'er the plain

Shooting together at the scourge's stroke,

Toss high their manes, and rapid scour along,

So mounted she the waves, while dark the flood

Roll'd after her of the resounding Deep.

100

Steady she ran and safe, passing in speed

The falcon, swiftest of the fowls of heaven;

With such rapidity she cut the waves,

An Hero bearing like the Gods above

In wisdom, one familiar long with woe

105

In fight sustain'd, and on the perilous flood,

Though sleeping now serenely, and resign'd

To sweet oblivion of all sorrow past.

The brightest star of heaven, precursor chief

Of day-spring, now arose, when at the isle

110

(Her voyage soon perform'd) the bark arrived.

There is a port sacred in Ithaca

To Phorcys, hoary antient of the Deep,

Form'd by converging shores, prominent both

And both abrupt, which from the spacious bay

115

Exclude all boisterous winds; within it, ships

(The port once gain'd) uncabled ride secure.

An olive, at the haven's head, expands

Her branches wide, near to a pleasant cave

Umbrageous, to the nymphs devoted named

120

The Naiads. In that cave beakers of stone

And jars are seen; bees lodge their honey there;

And there, on slender spindles of the rock

The nymphs of rivers weave their wondrous robes.

Perennial springs water it, and it shows

125

A twofold entrance; ingress one affords

To mortal man, which Northward looks direct,

But holier is the Southern far; by that

No mortal enters, but the Gods alone.

Familiar with that port before, they push'd

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The vessel in; she, rapid, plow'd the sands

With half her keel, such rowers urged her on.

Descending from the well-bench'd bark ashore,

They lifted forth Ulysses first, with all

His splendid couch complete, then lay'd him down

135

Still wrapt in balmy slumber on the sands.

His treasures next, by the Phæacian Chiefs

At his departure given him as the meed

Due to his wisdom, at the olive's foot

They heap'd, without the road, lest while he slept

140

Some passing traveller should rifle them.

Then homeward thence they sped. Nor Ocean's God

His threats forgot denounced against divine

Ulysses, but with Jove thus first advised.

Eternal Sire! I shall no longer share

145

Respect and reverence among the Gods,

Since now Phæacia's mortal race have ceased

To honour me, though from myself derived.

It was my purpose, that by many an ill

Harrass'd, Ulysses should have reach'd his home,

150

Although to intercept him, whose return

Thyself had promised, ne'er was my intent.

But him fast-sleeping swiftly o'er the waves

They have conducted, and have set him down

In Ithaca, with countless gifts enrich'd,

155

With brass, and tissued raiment, and with gold;

Much treasure! more than he had home convey'd

Even had he arrived with all his share

Allotted to him of the spoils of Troy.

To whom the cloud-assembler God replied.

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139

What hast thou spoken, Shaker of the shores,

Wide-ruling Neptune? Fear not; thee the Gods

Will ne'er despise; dangerous were the deed

To cast dishonour on a God by birth

More ancient, and more potent far than they.

165

But if, profanely rash, a mortal man

Should dare to slight thee, to avenge the wrong

Some future day is ever in thy power.

Accomplish all thy pleasure, thou art free.

Him answer'd then the Shaker of the shores.

170

Jove cloud-enthroned! that pleasure I would soon

Perform as thou hast said, but that I watch

Thy mind continual, fearful to offend.

My purpose is, now to destroy amid

The dreary Deep yon fair Phæacian bark,

175

Return'd from safe conveyance of her freight;

So shall they waft such wanderers home no more,

And she shall hide their city, to a rock

Transform'd of mountainous o'ershadowing size.

Him then Jove answer'd, gatherer of the clouds.

180

Perform it, O my brother, and the deed

Thus done, shall best be done ;- What time the people

Shall from the city her approach descry,

Fix her to stone transform'd, but still in shape

A gallant bark, near to the coast, that all

185

May wonder, seeing her transform'd to stone

Of size to hide their city from the view.

These words once heard, the Shaker of the shores

Instant to Scheria, maritime abode

Of the Phæacians, went. Arrived, he watch'd.

190

And now the flying bark full near approach'd,

When Neptune, meeting her, with outspread palm

Depress'd her at a stroke, and she became

Deep-rooted stone. Then Neptune went his way.

Phæacia's ship-ennobled sons meantime

195

Conferring stood, and thus in accents wing'd,

The amazed spectator to his fellow spake.

Ah! who hath sudden check'd the vessel's course

Homeward? This moment she was all in view.

Thus they, unconscious of the cause, to whom

200

Alcinoüs, instructing them, replied.

Ye Gods! a prophecy now strikes my mind

With force, my father's. He was wont to say-

Neptune resents it, that we safe conduct

Natives of every region to their home.

205

He also spake, prophetic, of a day

When a Phæacian gallant bark, return'd

After conveyance of a stranger hence,

Should perish in the dreary Deep, and changed

To a huge mountain, cover all the town.

210

So spake my father, all whose words we see

This day fulfill'd. Thus, therefore, act we all

Unanimous; henceforth no longer bear

The stranger home, when such shall here arrive;

And we will sacrifice, without delay,

215

Twelve chosen bulls to Neptune, if, perchance,

He will commiserate us, and forbear

To hide our town behind a mountain's height.

184

He spake, they, terrified, the bulls prepared.

Thus all Phæacia's Senators and Chiefs

220

His altar compassing, in prayer adored

The Ocean's God. Meantime Ulysses woke,

Unconscious where; stretch'd on his native soil

He lay, and knew it not, long time exiled.

For Pallas, progeny of Jove, a cloud

225

Drew dense around him, that ere yet agnized

By others, he might wisdom learn from her,

Neither to citizens, nor yet to friends

Reveal'd, nor even to his own espoused,

Till, first, he should avenge complete his wrongs

230

Domestic from those suitors proud sustain'd.

All objects, therefore, in the Hero's eyes

Seem'd alien, foot-paths long, commodious ports,

Heaven-climbing rocks, and trees of amplest growth.

Arising, fixt he stood, his native soil

235

Contemplating, till with expanded palms

Both thighs he smote, and plaintive thus began.

Ah me! what mortal race inhabits here?

Rude are they, contumacious and unjust,

Or hospitable, and who fear the Gods?

240

Where now shall I secrete these numerous stores ?

Where wander I, myself? I would that still

Phæacians own'd them, and I had arrived

In the dominions of some other King

Magnanimous, who would have entertain'd

245

And sent me to my native home secure!

Now, neither know I where to place my wealth,

Nor can I leave it here, lest it become

Another's prey. Alas! Phæacia's Chiefs

Not altogether wise I deem or just,

250

Who have misplaced me in another land,

Promised to bear me to the pleasant shores

Of Ithaca, but have not so perform'd.

Jove, guardian of the suppliant's rights, who all

Transgressors marks, and punishes all wrong,

255

Avenge me on the treacherous race! - but hold-

I will revise my stores, so shall I know

If they have left me here of aught despoil'd.

217

So saying, he number'd carefully the gold,

The vases, tripods bright, and tissued robes,

260

But nothing miss'd of all. Then he bewail'd

His native isle, with pensive steps and slow

Pacing the border of the billowy flood,

Forlorn; but while he wept, Pallas approach'd,

In form a shepherd stripling, girlish fair

265

In feature, such as are the sons of Kings;

A sumptuous mantle o'er his shoulders hung

Twice-folded, sandals his nice feet upbore,

And a smooth javelin glitter'd in his hand.

Ulysses, joyful at the sight, his steps

270

Turn'd brisk toward her, whom he thus address'd.

Sweet youth! since thee, of all mankind, I first

Encounter in this land unknown, all hail!

Come not with purposes of harm to me!

These save, and save me also. I prefer

275

To thee, as to some God, my prayer, and clasp

Thy knees a suppliant. Say, and tell me true,

What land? what people? who inhabit here?

Is this some isle delightful, or a shore

Of fruitful main-land sloping to the sea?

280

Then Pallas thus, Goddess cærulean-eyed.

Stranger! thou sure art simple, or hast dwelt

Far distant hence, if of this land thou ask.

It is not, trust me, of so little note,

But known to many, both to those who dwell

285

Toward the sun-rise, and to others placed

Behind it, distant in the dusky West.

Rugged it is, not yielding level course

To the swift steed, and yet no barren spot,

However small, but rich in wheat and wine;

290

Nor wants it rain or fertilizing dew,

But pasture green to goats and beeves affords,

Trees of all kinds, and fountains never dry.

Ithaca therefore, stranger, is a name

Known even at Troy, a city, by report,

295

At no small distance from Achaia's shore.

250

The Goddess ceased; then, toil-enduring Chief

Ulysses, happy in his native land,

(So taught by Pallas, progeny of Jove)

In accents wing'd her answering, utter'd prompt

300

Not truth, but figments to truth opposite,

For guile in him stood never at a pause.

O'er yonder flood, even in spacious Crete

I heard of Ithaca, where now, it seems,

I have myself with these my stores arrived;

305

Not richer stores than, flying thence, I left

To my own children; for from Crete I fled

For slaughter of Orsilochus the swift,

Son of Idomeneus, whom none in speed

Could equal throughout all that spacious isle.

310

His purpose was to plunder me of all

My Trojan spoils, which to obtain much woe

I had in battle and by storms endured,

For that I would not gratify his Sire,

Fighting beside him in the fields of Troy,

315

But led a different band. Him from the field

Returning homeward, with my brazen spear

I smote, in ambush waiting his return

At the road-side, with a confederate friend.

Unwonted darkness over all the heavens

320

That night prevailed, nor any eye of man

Observed us, but unseen I slew the youth.

No sooner then with my sharp spear of life

I had bereft him, than I sought a ship

Mann'd by renown'd Phæacians, whom with gifts

325

Part of my spoils, and by requests, I won.

I bade them land me on the Pylian shore,

Or in fair Elis by the Epeans ruled;

But they, reluctant, were by violent winds

Driven devious thence, for fraud they purposed none.

330

Thus through constraint we here arrived by night,

And with much difficulty push'd the ship

Into safe harbour, nor was mention made

Of food by any, though all needed food,

But disembark'd in haste, on shore we lay.

335

I, weary, slept profound, and they my goods

Forth heaving from the bark, beside me placed

The treasures on the sea-beach where I slept,

Then reimbarking, to the populous coast

Steer'd of Sidonia, and me left forlorn.

340

287

He ceased; then smiled Minerva azure-eyed

And stroak'd his cheek, in form a woman now,

Beauteous, majestic, in all elegant arts

Accomplish'd, and with accents wing'd replied.

Who passes thee in artifice well-framed

345

And in imposture various, need shall find

Of all his policy, although a God.

Canst thou not cease, inventive as thou art

And subtle, from the wiles which thou hast loved

Since thou wast infant, and from tricks of speech

350

Delusive, even in thy native land?

But come, dismiss we these ingenious shifts

From our discourse, in which we both excel;

For thou of all men in expedients most

Abound'st and eloquence, and I, throughout

355

All heaven have praise for wisdom and for art.

And know'st thou not thine Athenæan aid,

Pallas, Jove's daughter, who in all thy toils

Assist thee and defend? I gave thee power

To engage the hearts of all Phæacia's sons,

360

And here arrive even now, counsels to frame

Discrete with thee, and to conceal the stores

Given to thee by the rich Phæacian Chiefs

On my suggestion, at thy going thence.

I will inform thee also what distress

365

And hardship under thy own palace-roof

Thou must endure; which since constraint enjoins,

Bear patiently, and neither man apprize

Nor woman that thou hast arrived forlorn

And vagabond, but silent undergo

370

What wrongs soever from the hands of men.

To whom Ulysses, ever wise, replied.

O Goddess! thou art able to elude,

Wherever met, the keenest eye of man,

For thou all shapes assumest; yet this I know

375

Certainly, that I ever found thee kind,

Long as Achaia's Heroes fought at Troy;

But when (the lofty towers of Priam laid

In dust,) we re-embark'd, and by the will

Of heaven Achaia's fleet was scatter'd wide,

380

Thenceforth, O daughter wise of Jove, I thee

Saw not, nor thy appearance in my ship

Once mark'd, to rid me of my numerous woes,

But always bearing in my breast a heart

With anguish riven, I roam'd, till by the Gods

385

Relieved at length, and till with gracious words

Thyself didst in Phæacia's opulent land

Confirm my courage, and becamest my guide.

But I adjure thee in thy father's name-

O tell me truly, (for I cannot hope

390

That I have reach'd fair Ithaca; I tread

Some other soil, and thou affirm'st it mine

To mock me merely, and deceive,) oh say-

Am I in Ithaca? in truth, at home?

329

Thus then Minerva the cærulean-eyed.

395

Such caution ever in thy breast prevails

Distrustful; but I know thee eloquent,

With wisdom and with ready thought endued,

And cannot leave thee therefore thus distress'd.

For what man, save Ulysses, new-return'd

400

After long wanderings, would not pant to see

At once his home, his children, and his wife?

But thou preferr'st neither to know nor ask

Concerning them, till some experience first

Thou make of her whose wasted youth is spent

405

In barren solitude, and who in tears

Ceaseless her nights and woeful days consumes.

I ne'er was ignorant, but well foreknew

That not till after loss of all thy friends

Thou should'st return; but loth I was to oppose

410

Neptune, my father's brother, sore incensed

For his son's sake deprived of sight by thee.

But, I will give thee proof-come now-survey

These marks of Ithaca, and be convinced.

This is the port of Phorcys, sea-born sage;

415

That, the huge olive at the haven's head;

Fast by it, thou behold'st the pleasant cove

Umbrageous, to the nymphs devoted named

The Naiads; this the broad-arch'd cavern is

Where thou wast wont to offer to the nymphs

420

Many a whole hecatomb; and yonder stands

The mountain Neritus with forests cloathed.

So saying, the Goddess scatter'd from before

His eyes all darkness, and he knew the land.

Then felt Ulysses, Hero toil-inured,

425

Transport unutterable, seeing plain

Once more his native isle. He kiss'd the glebe,

And with uplifted hands the nymphs adored.

Nymphs, Naiads, Jove's own daughters! I despair'd

To see you more, whom yet with happy vows

430

I now can hail again. Gifts, as of old,

We will hereafter at your shrines present,

If Jove-born Pallas, huntress of the spoils,

Grant life to me, and manhood to my son.

Then Pallas, blue-eyed progeny of Jove.

435

Take courage; trouble not thy mind with thoughts

Now needless. Haste-delay not-far within

This hallow'd cave's recess place we at once

Thy precious stores, that they may thine remain,

Then muse together on thy wisest course.

440

366

So saying, the Goddess enter'd deep the cave

Caliginous, and its secret nooks explored

From side to side; meantime Ulysses brought

All his stores into it, the gold, the brass,

And robes magnificent, his gifts received

445

From the Phæacians; safe he lodged them all,

And Pallas, daughter of Jove ægis-arm'd,

Closed fast, herself, the cavern with a stone.

Then, on the consecrated olive's root

Both seated, they in consultation plann'd

450

The deaths of those injurious suitors proud,

And Pallas, blue-eyed Goddess, thus began.

Laertes' noble son, Ulysses! think

By what means likeliest thou shalt assail

Those shameless suitors, who have now controul'd

455

Three years thy family, thy matchless wife

With language amorous and with spousal gifts

Urging importunate; but she, with tears

Watching thy wish'd return, hope gives to all

By messages of promise sent to each,

460

Framing far other purposes the while.

Then answer thus Ulysses wise return'd.

Ah, Agamemnon's miserable fate

Had surely met me in my own abode,

But for thy gracious warning, power divine!

465

Come then-Devise the means; teach me, thyself,

The way to vengeance, and my soul inspire

With daring fortitude, as when we loosed

Her radiant frontlet from the brows of Troy.

Would'st thou with equal zeal, O Pallas! aid

470

Thy servant here, I would encounter thrice

An hundred enemies, let me but perceive

Thy dread divinity my prompt ally.

Him answer'd then Pallas cærulean-eyed.

And such I will be; not unmark'd by me,

475

(Let once our time of enterprize arrive)

Shalt thou assail them. Many, as I judge,

Of those proud suitors who devour thy wealth

Shall leave their brains then on thy palace-floor.

But come. Behold! I will disguise thee so

480

That none shall know thee; I will parch the skin

On thy fair body; I will cause thee shed

Thy wavy locks; I will enfold thee round

In such a kirtle as the eyes of all

Shall loath to look on; and I will deform

485

With blurring rheums thy eyes, so vivid erst;

So shall the suitors deem thee, and thy wife,

And thy own son whom thou didst leave at home,

Some sordid wretch obscure. But seek thou first

Thy swine-herd's mansion; he, alike, intends

490

Thy good, and loves affectionate thy son

And thy Penelope; thou shalt find the swain

Tending his herd; they feed beneath the rock

Corax, at side of Arethusa's fount,

On acorns dieted, nutritious food

495

To them, and drinking of the limpid stream.

There waiting, question him of thy concerns,

While I from Sparta praised for women fair

Call home thy son Telemachus, a guest

With Menelaus now, whom to consult

500

In spacious Lacedæmon he is gone,

Anxious to learn if yet his father lives.

To whom Ulysses, ever-wise, replied.

416

And why, alas! all-knowing as thou art,

Him left'st thou ignorant? was it that he,

505

He also, wand'ring wide the barren Deep,

Might suffer woe, while these devour his wealth?

Him answer'd then Pallas cærulean-eyed.

Grieve thou not much for him. I sent him forth

Myself, that there arrived, he might acquire

510

Honour and fame. No sufferings finds he there,

But in Atrides' palace safe resides,

Enjoying all abundance. Him, in truth,

The suitors watch close ambush'd on the Deep,

Intent to slay him ere he reach his home,

515

But shall not as I judge, till of themselves

The earth hide some who make thee, now, a prey.

So saying, the Goddess touch'd him with a wand.

At once o'er all his agile limbs she parch'd

The polish'd skin; she wither'd to the root

520

His wavy locks, and cloathed him with the hide

Deform'd of wrinkled age; she charged with rheums

His eyes before so vivid, and a cloak

And kirtle gave him, tatter'd both, and foul,

And smutch'd with smoke; then casting over all

525

An huge old deer-skin bald, with a long staff

She furnish'd him, and with a wallet patch'd

On all sides, dangling by a twisted thong.

Thus all their plan adjusted, different ways

They took, and she, seeking Ulysses' son,

530

To Lacedæmon's spacious realm repair'd.

English (H. B. Cotterill, 1911) (OCR draft) Experimental (English (H. B. Cotterill, 1911)) — 13 focus

ODYSSEY BOOK XIII

THUS did he end; and they sat all utterly silent and speechless,

Holden as 'twere by a spell in the shadowy hall of the palace.

Then King Alcinous outspake and in answer addressed him:

"Since now under the roof of my bronze-floored palace, Odysseus,

Safe thou art come, thou'lt never, methinks, go wandering further,

Ere to thy home thou return'st, however to hardship accustomed.

Now to you all and to each I announce this further injunction,

Each who is wont to partake of the glowing wine of the elders

Here in my banqueting-hall, and to list to the song of the minstrel :

Lo, in a polished coffer the raiment received by the stranger

Lieth, and fair things fashioned of gold, and the rest of the presents

Which Phaeacian lords of the council collected together.

Come, let us also present him a full-sized tripod and cauldron,

Each of us; then can we later, by making collection in public,

Win us repayment; 'tis hard when the one does favours for nothing."

Thus spake Alcinous and his speech was received with approval.

Each one then to his homestead departed to lay him to slumber.

Now when the morning was newly arisen, the roseate-fingered,

Quickly they brought to the vessel the bronze that rejoiceth a mortal;

This did the powerful chief, King Alcinous, on the vessel

Going around stow under the benches away, to prevent it

Hindering any that rowed when amain at his oar he was pulling.

Then to the house of the king they betook them and set them a-feasting,

After the powerful monarch had given an ox to be slaughtered

Unto Cronion, the ruler of all, who dwells in the storm-cloud.

So when the thighs they had burnt they partook of a glorious banquet,

Making them merry, and harked to the strains of the godlike singer

Demodocus, blind bard by the people beloved; but Odysseus

Ever and ever was turning his eyes to the sun in its splendour,

Longing to hasten its setting, so eager he felt for departure.

Even as yearns for his supper a man when his wine-red oxen

All day long have tugged at a jointed plough in a fallow,

E'en as he joys when he seeth the sun's light sink to the setting,

So he can get to his food and his knee-joints ache as he walketh-

Thus did Odysseus rejoice when the sunlight sank to the setting.

Suddenly then to the lovers of ships, Phaeacia's nobles,

Chiefly to Alcinous these words addressing, he turned him:

"O King Alcinous, illustrious prince of the people,

Pour ye libation and bid me farewell !-farewell to you also !

Now it is all fulfilled as I wished in the depth of my bosom,

Escort and loving gifts—May the gods celestial grant me

Blessing therein! May I come to my home, and my peerless consort

There may I find still living and well, with the rest of my dear ones!

Ye too, bide ye at home with your wedded wives and your children,

Making them happy with love. May the gods prosperity grant you,

Every kind, and all that is ill dwell far from the people."

Thus did he speak, and they all assented and made resolution

Homeward the stranger to help, since duly and well he had spoken.

Then did the powerful king to his henchman turn and address him :

"Pontonoüs, come mix strong wine and serve us a bumper,

Plenty for all at the feast, that a prayer we may raise to the Father,

Ere we shall send our guest on his way to his distant homeland."

Thus did he speak; and a wine honey-hearted was mixed by the henchman;

Then to them all he dispensed it in turn; and they made a libation

Unto the blesséd immortals who dwell in the infinite heaven,

Pouring it there as they sat. Then rising, the godlike Odysseus

Into the hands of the queen gave over his twy-cupped goblet,

While uplifting his voice these swift-winged words he addressed her:

"Fare thee well, O queen, and be happy for ever, till lastly

Age shall befall thee, and death, which cometh to every mortal.

Now it is need that I go; but do thou live joyfully alway

Here in thy home with the monarch, thy lord, and thy children and people!"

These words said, stept over the threshold the godlike Odysseus,

Having beside him the herald whom Alcinous had commanded

Down to the shore of the sea and the swift-winged vessel to guide him.

Also had Arete told three of her women to follow.

One of them bare in her arms fresh raiment a cloak and a doublet;

Then was a second commissioned to carry the strong-made coffer,

While that the third had a burden of bread and of glittering red wine.

So, when at last they had come to the sea and arrived at the vessel,

Speedily then was it all by the high-born men of the escort

Taken aboard and bestowed in the hold with the wine and the viands.

Also they spread for Odysseus a rug and a wrapper of linen

Nigh to the stern, on the deck of the hollow vessel, to lie there

Soundly asleep; and he mounted the ship and composed him to slumber

Silently, while that the crew sat down on the benches in order,

Each in his place; and loosed from the mooring-stone was the hawser.

PATTEN WILSON
THE ARRIVAL AT ITHACA

Then, as they backward swung uptossing the brine with the oar-blades,

Softly a sleep profound spread over his slumbering eyelids,

Deep as a trance and surpassingly sweet—yea, death it resembled.

Now did the vessel as over a plain four stallion coursers

Harnessed abreast, 'neath strokes of the lash, come thundering onward,

Bounding aloft as they gallop apace their course to accomplish,

So did the stern of the ship go bounding aloft—and behind it

Mightily eddied the dark blue wave of the bellowing ocean.

Steadily onward she flew; not even the falcon that soareth,

Swiftest of birds of the air, might vie with the ship in her swiftness;

So did she speed on her way, right easily cleaving the billows,

Bearing a man who was like to the gods everlasting in wisdom,

One who had suffered already in heart full many a sorrow,

Tossed by the billows of war and the grievous waves of the ocean.

Now he is sleeping in peace, forgetful of all that he suffered.

So when the star was on high that of all is the brightest, and ofttimes

Comes as the herald of light when the newborn day is arising,

Voyaging over the waters the ship drew near to an island

Where is a haven of Phorcys, the ancient god of the ocean.

Here it is Ithacan land. Two capes jut forth from the coast-line,

High precipitous cliffs but aslope to the verge of the harbour,

Fending the monstrous surge of the rollers aroused by the storm-winds

Out in the open; but ever within unloosed from the cable

100

Well-decked vessels can ride when they enter the bound of the roadstead.

Now at the head of the haven a long-leaved olive is growing,

Distant from which not far is a pleasant and shadowy grotto,

Hallowed haunt of the nymphs who are known as the fountain naiads.

Here in the depths of the cave are amphora vessels and wine-bowls

105

Formed of the rock, and the bees hide here their treasures of honey;

Here stand, fashioned in stone, vast looms, where many a naiad

Weaveth her robes of the deep-sea purple, a wonder to gaze at.

Water perennial welleth within. Two mouths hath the cavern;

One to the North Wind looks and is easy for mortals to enter,

110

One to the South, and is more for the gods; nor ever by this way

Entereth any of human race; 'tis a path for immortals.

Into the haven they rowed (they had known it before), and the vessel

Ran on the beach: to the half of her length on the sand was she driven,

Such was her speed, and such was the strength of the hands that impelled her.

115

Out of the well-benched vessel when now they had stepped on the dry land,

First from the deck of the hollow ship uplifting Odysseus,

E'en as he lay in the rug and the glistering wrapper of linen,

Down on the sand of the shore, still heavy with slumber, they placed him.

Then from the vessel they landed the gifts that the king and the nobles,

120

Moved by the noble Athena, bestowed when for home he departed.

These in a heap up-piling they left at the foot of the olive

Somewhat aside from the path, lest any that saw it in passing,

Ere that Odysseus awoke, might venture anigh and despoil him.

These now homeward returned.

125

But the King Earth-shaking Poseidon

125

Ne'er had forgotten the vows that he uttered when erst he had threatened

Godlike Odysseus, and turning to Zeus he demanded his counsel:

"Father Zeus! I can hope henceforth from the gods everlasting

Little respect, since men that be mortal so little respect me,

E'en Phaeacian folk—whose race from myself is descended.

130

Lo, full many afflictions I vowed should fall on Odysseus

Ere to his home he returned—though wholly to stay his returning

Ne'er did I try from the moment thou gav'st thy consent and thy promise.

Now these men have borne him asleep in a swift-winged vessel

Over the sea and on Ithaca set him, and richly with presents

135

Helped him with bronze and with gold and abundance of woven apparel-

Treasures so many as ne'er from the Trojans Odysseus had gained him

Had he returned unscathed with his well-won share in the booty."

Him forthwith gave answer the god who gathers the storm-clouds:

"Lo now, what is this word, Earth-shaker and Ruler of ocean?

140

Thee nowise dishonour the gods. 'Twere difficult truly

Thee, who art eldest and best of us all, to assail with dishonour,

While if a mortal, obeying his hardy and arrogant nature,

Honours thee not, it is thine to avenge thee, or now or hereafter.

Act as thou willst as it seems to be best to the spirit within thee!"

145

Then did the King Earth-shaking Poseidon address him in answer:

"Quickly enough had I done as thou say'st, O King of the storm-clouds,

Had I not held thee in awe and dreaded arousing thy anger.

Now I am minded to smite this fine Phaeacian vessel

While from the convoy she homeward returns in the mist-bound ocean;

150

Yea I will smite her and teach them to stop and to stay with their convoys.

This will I do, and will whelm with the mass of a mountain the city."

Him forthwith gave answer the god who gathers the storm-clouds:

"Friend, as it seems to my mind, 'twere verily better and wiser,

Just at the moment when out of the city the whole of the people

155

Watcheth her enter the harbour, to change her, anigh to the sea-shore,

Into a rock with the form of a vessel, that ever hereafter

Mortals shall wonder. Then whelm with the mass of a mountain the city !"

Now when he heard this saying the King Earth-shaker Poseidon

Went to the Scherian isle, where dwell Phaeacian people.

160

Here he remained till anigh was the ship as she voyaged the ocean

Rapidly speeding along ; then the King Earth-shaker, approaching,

Suddenly changed her to stone and rooted her deep in the waters,

Smiting with downward stroke of the hand; and he turned and departed.

Uttering swift-winged words then turned them the one to the other

165

All of the Scherian folk—those famous oarsmen and sailors-

Each man gazing the while at the man that was standing beside him :

"Ah me! who is it fettered the swift ship fast on the ocean

E'en as she entered the port? Just now she was visible plainly."

Thus spake one to the other, but how it had happened they knew not.

170

Then King Alcinous rose up in the midst and harangued them:

"Lo now, surely the doom prophetic is falling upon me

Told by my sire, who was wont to proclaim that Poseidon was angered,

Jealous because we unfailingly offer an escort to all men.

'Some day'—so did he speak—'as a fine Phaeacian vessel

175

Over the mist-bound deep from a convoy returns shall the sea-god

Smite her to pieces and whelm with the mass of a mountain the city.'

Such was the rede of my sire, and it all finds now a fulfilment.

Come now, hear what I say, and let all of us follow my counsel!

Never again let us give such convoy, if wandering mortals

180

Come to the city; and now let us offer Poseidon atonement;

Twelve choice bulls let us slaughter in hope he may show us compassion,

Neither in anger o'erwhelm with the mass of a mountain the city."

So did he speak, and in fear they prepared them the bulls for oblation.

Thus then offering prayers to Poseidon, the king of the ocean,

185

All of the best of the land, Phaeacia's princes and leaders,

Stood surrounding the altar.

And godlike Odysseus, awaking,

Opened his eyes on the land of his birth, nor yet did he know it,

Such long years had he wandered afar; and around him the goddess

Pallas Athena, the daughter of Zeus, poured mist to conceal him,

190

Keeping him hidden until she had given him counsel in all things,

Lest that his wife might know him, or friends, or the men of the city,

Ere for transgression the suitors had paid complete satisfaction.

Wherefore utterly strange was the land to the eyes of its master,

All of the clambering paths and all of the sheltering havens,

195

Lofty precipitous crags and the bloom of luxuriant forests.

Hastily rising he stood and gazing around on his homeland

Uttered a pitiful groan and on both of his thighs in despondence

Smote with a downward stroke of the hands and made lamentation:

"Ah me, what is the folk whose country I now am arrived at ?

200

Dwell here savages wanton and wild, despisers of justice ?

Have they a love for the stranger and hearts that revere the immortals?

Whither to carry my treasure I know not at all ; and myself too

Where shall I turn me? I would 'twere back in the Scherian island

Just as it was; and perchance I had found some powerful monarch

205

Elsewhere, ready to grant me a welcome and give me an escort.

Now I am truly in doubt to bestow it. I Airs like not

Leaving it here as a find and a welcome booty for others.

Nay but in sooth not at all like lovers of wisdom and justice

Acted, methinks, those high Phaeacian nobles and princes,

210

Bringing me thus to a land unknown; for they promised to bring me

Unto the far-seen Ithacan isle, and the promise is broken.

Zeus I beseech to requite it, the suppliant's god, who is watching

Ever the deeds of mankind and punisheth every sinner.

Well now, come, I will look to the presents and reckon the number;

215

Haply departing they took of the things on the hollow vessel."

These words said, he inspected the tripods and beautiful cauldrons,

Numbering all, and the gold and the woven and exquisite garments.

Nothing he missed of them all, and with joyless thoughts of his homeland

Slowly he wandered along by the shore of the bellowing ocean

220

Uttering many a moan.

Then approached him the goddess Athene

Likened in form to a youth who tendeth the sheep on a pasture,

Having a delicate beauty of mien, as the son of a chieftain;

Twofold over her shoulders a well-wrought mantle she carried;

Sandals she wore on her fair white feet, and a lance she was holding.

225

Then as he saw her Odysseus rejoiced and advancing to meet her

Lifted in welcome his voice, and with swift-winged words he addressed her :

"Friend, since thou art the first I have lighted upon in the country,

Welcome!—for truly I hope that thou com'st with a friendly intention-

Rescue this treasure of mine, and myself too! Lo, I beseech thee

230

Even as wert thou a god, at thy knees as a suppliant falling.

Also relate me the truth—for I fain would know it for certain :

What is this land? What people and natives dwell in the country?

One of the far-seen isles peradventure? or one of the beaches

Sloping adown to the sea on the fertile coast of the mainland?"

235

Him forthwith gave answer the grey-eyed goddess Athene:

"Foolish thou seemst, O stranger, or else thou art come from a distance,

Seeing thou askest the name of the land. So utterly nameless

Sooth it is not. There's many and many a mortal that knows it-

Every mortal that dwells in the east, whence dawneth the sunrise,

240

Every mortal behind in the west, where fadeth the daylight.

Truly the island is rugged—not fit for the driving of horses-

Still, not utterly poor, though lacking in open expanses.

Corn in amazing abundance it groweth, and also the wine-grape

Ripens, and ever with rain and with freshening dew it is moistened.

245

Good is the isle as a pasture for goats and for kine, and it beareth

Every manner of wood and hath watering-places that fail not.

Therefore, stranger, hath Ithaca's name reached even to Troyland,

Though right far, it is said, 'tis away from the shores of Achaea."

So did she speak, and it joyed long-suffering godlike Odysseus,

250

Yea he rejoiced in the land of his birth when he heard what she told him,

Pallas Athena, the daughter of Zeus who beareth the aegis.

Then uplifting his voice these swift-winged words he addressed her ;

Yet no truth did he speak, for he curbed it before it was uttered,

Keeping, as ever, control of the mind right cunning within him:

255

"Ah yes, Ithaca's name I have heard far over the ocean,

E'en in the broad-spread island of Creta, from which I am come now,

I and this treasure of mine; and as much did I leave for my children,

Flying the land; for the son I had killed of a prince of the country,

Orsilochus swift-footed, who conquered in fleetness of running

260

Every mortal that liveth on bread in the isle of the Cretans.

Him I had killed—for he wished to deprive me of all of my booty

Gotten at Troy, in the winning whereof great toil I had suffered,

Tossed on the billows of war and the grievous waves of the ocean-

Wished it because I refused as attendant to follow his father

265

There in the Trojan land, and had captained a band of my fellows.

So with my bronze-shod spear I attacked him whenas he was coming

Home from the fields, waylaying him close to the road with a comrade.

Black was the night that enshrouded the heaven; no mortal perceived us;

None was aware of the deed I had done when of life I bereft him.

270

Now no sooner the man with my sharp-edged spear I had murdered,

Straight to a ship I betook me of proud Phoenician sea-folk;

Them I entreated, and gave them of spoil that delighteth a mortal,

Earnestly begging them take me aboard of the vessel and land me

Either at Pylos or Elis the fair, where rule the Epeans.

275

Thither to come howbeit withheld them the might of the storm-wind,

Much as they wished it; nor acted they willingly thus to deceive me.

Out of the course thus driven, at night we arrived at this island.

Toilfully rowing ahead to a harbour we came, and exhausted,

Wholly forgetful of food, though needing sorely a supper,

280

Stepped from the vessel and, just as we were, lay down on the sea-shore.

Now when in slumber refreshing I sank outworn with my labours,

Carrying all of my goods from the hollow vessel, they placed them

Here at my side, where sleeping I lay on the sands of the sea-shore.

Then, embarking again, for the flourishing city of Sidon

285

Started, and here I am left with a heart that is heavy with trouble."

Thus had he spoken when, smiling, the grey-eyed goddess Athene

Touched him with gentle caress; and she changed to the form of a woman

Beautiful, stately, and gifted with deftness in exquisite handwork.

Then uplifting her voice these swift-winged words she addressed him :

290

"Truly a master in craft were one that excelled thee in cunning!

Conquered in guile were e'en the immortal who happened to meet thee.

Ah, thou audacious inventor of falsehood, insatiate trickster,

Even at home, as it seemeth, thou mean'st not to cease from deceiving,

Weaving thy fables, wherein from the ground of thy heart thou delightest.

295

Come, let us speak no longer thereof! We are both of us practised

Weavers of wiles for of all of mankind thou art easily foremost

Both in thy counsels and speech, and amid the immortals I win me

Fame for my wit and my wiles. Yet how didst thou fail to discern me,

Pallas Athena, the daughter of Zeus—that goddess who always

300

Stands at thy side and defends thee in every hardship and danger,

Ay and who gained thee the love and the favour of all the Phaeacians?

Now am I come that we two may take some counsel together,

Also in safety to bring these gifts that the lordly Phaeacians

Gave at thy homeward departing (for such was my will and intention),

305

Yea and in order to tell thee of all thou art destined to suffer

E'en in thy well-built home—So resign thee to fate and endure it!

Nor do thou utter a word to a man of them all or a woman,

Telling that home thou art come from thy wanderings. Suffer in silence !

E'en though bitter the pain and deep the indignity, bear it!"

310

Her then in answer addressed these words deep-plotting Odysseus :

"Difficult 'twere for the mortal thou meetest, goddess, to know thee,

Though right clever he were, for thou cloth'st thee in every semblance.

This howbeit I know, that thou gavest me favour aforetime,

While in the country of Troy were warring the sons of Achaea;

315

Yet, when at last we had plundered the steep-built city of Priam,

After the Greeks had embarked on the ships and a god had dispersed them,

Never again I beheld thee, thou daughter of Zeus, nor perceived thee

Mounting aboard of my vessel in order to save me from sorrow.

Cherishing deep in my bosom a heart that was stricken with anguish,

320

Ever I wandered, until the immortals from evil released me,

Even till thou thyself in the rich Phaeacian country

Gavest me comforting words and didst show me the way in the city.

Now in the name of the Father I beg thee to tell me for never

May I believe I am come to the far-seen Ithacan island;

325

Nay, in a foreign land I am roaming, and merely to mock me

This thou art saying, and cheating my soul with an empty illusion-

Tell me the truth! Am I come to the dear-loved land of my fathers?"

Him forthwith gave answer the grey-eyed goddess Athene:

"Ever and alway the same suspicious thoughts in thy bosom !

330

This is the reason I ne'er can desert thee in all thy affliction,

Since thou art wary and ready of wit and surpassing in prudence.

Gladly had many a man, thus safely returned from a far land,

Hastened him home in the longing to look on his wife and his children;

Nowise such is thy wish—nor to listen and learn from another,

335

Ere thou hast tested thy wife to the full; but she sitteth, as alway,

There in thy palace halls, and filled with the gloom of her sadness

Waneth the day and waneth the night, while ever she weepeth.

Truly I ne'er had a doubt—nay, deep in my spirit I knew it,

Knew thy return was assured, though lost were all of thy comrades;

340

Yet was I all unwilling to strive with my father's brother,

Even Poseidon, who cherished at heart such anger against thee,

Raging because of his well-loved son, whom thou reftest of eyesight.

Come now, look on the scene and assure thee 'tis Ithaca's island!

Here is the haven of Phorcys, the ancient god of the ocean !

345

There, at the head of the harbour, a high-branch'd olive is growing,

Distant from which not far is a pleasant shadowy grotto,

Sacred haunt of the nymphs that are known as the fountain naiads;

There is the cave with its roof high-arched where often aforetime

Unto the nymphs thou hast made full many a perfect oblation.

350

There too, clothed in its forests, the mountain of Neriton riseth."

These words spoken, she scattered the mist and uncovered the landscape.

Then exulted in joy long-suffering godlike Odysseus;

Yea he rejoiced and embracing the earth, dear mother of harvests,

Uttered a prayer to the nymphs, uplifting his hands to the heaven :

355

'Fountain Naiads, ye daughters of Zeus, I had verily never

Hoped to behold you again. With the vows of affection I greet you;

Yea and oblation of gifts we shall make you, as often aforetime,

Should but the daughter of Zeus, the bestower of booty, Athene,

Graciously grant me to live, and my son to arrive at his manhood."

360

Then once more made answer the grey-eyed goddess Athene :

"Take thou courage, nor suffer thy heart herein to be anxious!

Now let us carry the gifts to the depth of this wonderful grotto;

There we will hide them at once, since there we can leave them in safety;

Then let us twain take counsel together to act for the wisest."

365

Thus when the goddess had spoken she plunged in the shadowy cavern

Eagerly searching for places of hiding; and quickly Odysseus

Bringing the whole of his treasure—the gold and the bronze adamantine,

Fine-wrought garments as well, that Phaeacian nobles had given-

Stowed them away; and a boulder was set in the door by the goddess,

370

Pallas Athena, the daughter of Zeus who beareth the aegis.

Then did the twain at the base of the sacred olive recline them,

There to consult, devising the doom of the insolent suitors.

First of the twain to begin was the grey-eyed goddess Athene:

"Zeus-born son of Laertes, thou wise and wileful Odysseus,

375

Think how best with a strong right hand these suitors to punish,

Shamelessly lording it still, as for three long years, in thy palace,

Wooing thy godlike wife and offering presents as lovers,

While with continual grief in her heart, as she waits for thy coming,

All she befooleth with hopes, and she giveth her promise to each one

380

Sending him many a message; but things far other she longs for."

Her then in answer addressed these words deep-plotting Odysseus :

"Lo now, just as it happ'd to Atrides, King Agamemnon!

Just his terrible doom in my halls I was fated to suffer,

Hadst thou not told me of all, O goddess, and duly advised me.

385

Now come, weave me a plan, how best I may hope to requite them.

Stand thou too by my side, and with dauntless courage endue me,

E'en as at Troy, when we loosened her shining tiara of towers.

Art thou so eager to stand, O grey-eyed goddess, beside me,

Then am I ready enough three hundred foes to encounter,

390

Having thy favour, my lady and goddess, to help and befriend me."

Him forthwith gave answer the grey-eyed goddess Athene:

"Yea assuredly still I befriend thee, and ne'er shall forsake thee

Then, when at last we shall come to the work; and if much I mistake not,

Soon with his blood and his brains the unmeasured earth will bespatter

395

Many a man of the suitors, who now are wasting thy substance.

Come, I will change thy appearance that none shall be able to know thee;

All of the fair smooth flesh on thy pliant limbs will I wither,

Shrivel the yellow hair from thy head and wrap thee in raiment

Beggarly, such that a man might hacker at any that wore it.

400

Lustreless too will I make thine eyes, once gleaming in beauty,

So that a thing of contempt thou'lt seem to the whole of the suitors,

Yea to thy wife and the son thou didst leave as a babe in thy palace.

Now for thyself 'twere best to betake thee at first to the swineherd,

Even the thrall who attends to thy pigs. He is full of devotion

405

Both for thyself and thy son and the wise-souled Penelopeia.

Sitting in charge of the swine thou'lt find him—the herd that is feeding

Nigh to the Raven's Rock at the side of the spring Arethusa,

Eating the acorns wherein they delight, and drinking the fountain's

Dark sweet water—a food that doth nourish luxuriant fatness.

410

Here by the side of the swineherd remain and question him fully,

While I betake me to Sparta, the city of beautiful women,

Telemachus to recall; for thy son, thy beloved, Odysseus,

Thither, to wide Lacedaemon, is gone and to prince Menelaus,

Tidings of thee to discover, if still on the earth thou art living."

415

Her then in answer addressed these words deep-plotting Odysseus:

'Why hast thou said to him nought of the truth, though fully thou knewst it?

Was't to compel him to wander with sufferings, like to his father,

Over the wastes of the sea, while strangers devour his possessions?"

Him forthwith gave answer the grey-eyed goddess Athene:

420

"Let not the thought of thy son too grievously trouble thy spirit.

I myself was his guide, for I wished him to win by the journey

Manly renown. Nor imagine he suffereth hardship. In comfort

Now in Atrides' palace he sits in the midst of abundance.

True, in their black-hulled ship these youths are lying in ambush

425

Eager to kill him before he arrives at the land of his fathers;

Yet do I reck not thereof, for the earth far sooner shall swallow

Many a one of the wooers who daily consume thy possessions."

Thus when Athena had spoken, her wand she extended and touched him;

All of the fair smooth flesh on his limbs of his body she withered,

430

Shrivelled the yellow hair from his head, and the whole of his person,

Every limb, with the skin of a man right agéd she covered ;

Lustreless too did she make those eyes, once gleaming in beauty;

Round him in stead of his raiment she wrapt vile rags and a doublet

Hanging in tatters and filthy, with smoke all foully besmutted,

435

Over him cast as a mantle the hide of a timorous roe-deer

Naked of hair, and she gave him a staff and a beggarly wallet

Terribly tattered and torn; and thereon was a cord to suspend it.

Thus, their counsellings ended, they parted, the goddess Athene

Going to fair Lacedaemon to seek for the son of Odysseus.

440

Notes on the current edition

Odyssey

1. Or Phaeacian. See B. v. 44.

2. This is the morning of the thirty-fifth day. Pope.

3. A sea-deity, son of Terra.

4. The place seems to have been fitted up as a temple, and Pope very properly supposes that, on solemn occasions, the statues of the gods were carried in procession through the southern gate, which was consecrated to that purpose.

5. It was necessary for Ulysses to land alone, in order to his concealment; if he had been discovered, the suitors would im- mediately have destroyed him, if not as the real Ulysses, yet under the pretext of his being an impostor. Now if he had been waked, the Phœa- cians would have been obliged to have attended him, which he could not have denied with decency, nor accepted with safety. Homer, therefore, had no other way left to unravel his fable happily. Dacier. Plutarch, in his treatise of "Reading the Poets," tells us, that there was a tradition that Ulysses was naturally drowsy. His greatest calamities arise from his sleeping: when he was ready to land upon his own country by the favour of Aeolus, he falls asleep, and his companions let loose a wind that bears him from it; he is asleep while they kill the oxen of Apollo; and here he sleeps while upon his own country. Plutarch is of opinion, that Ulysses feigned this sleep to rid himself of the Phaeacians without embarrassment, being ashamed to dismiss them without entertainment and gifts of hospitality. But Homer himself seems to give a natural reason in the subsequent verses. Pope.

6. That the Phaeacians should fly away in secret is no wonder: Ulysses had, by the mouth of the prophet Tiresias, told the Phaeacians that the suitors plotted his destruction; and therefore, the mariners might very reasonably be apprehensive that the suitors would use any persons as enemies, who should contribute to restore Ulysses to his country. This is the reason why they made this voyage by night; namely, to avoid discovery. Eustathius remarks, that the Phaeacians, being an unwarlike nation, were afraid to teach any person the way to their own country, by discovering the course of navigation to it. Pope.

7. Homer does not tell us that the last denunciation of covering the town with a mountain, was fulfilled; it is probable that it was averted by the piety of Alcinoüs. Pope.

8. That is, the faith of the Phaeacians, who left him on the coast; whether they had been honest enough to leave him all the presents that he had received.

9. Minerva, observes Pope, had already assured him that he was landed in his own country: but such is the nature of man; when he desires any thing vehemently, he scarce believes himself in the possession of it, even while he possesses it.

10. The deity, Minerva.

11. Nothing is more judicious than this conduct in Homer; the whole number of suitors are to be slain by a few hands, which might shock our reason if it were related suddenly, without any preparation to show us the probability of it.

12. We are not to suppose this "master of the herds" (Eumaeus) a person of low rank, but an officer of trust; the riches of those ages consisting in flocks and herds.

13. This rock was so called from a young man whose name was Corax, who in pursuit of a hare fell from it, and broke his neck: Arethusa, his mother, hearing of the accident, hanged herself by the fountain, which afterwards took its name from her, and was called Arethusa. EUSTATHIUS. Pope.

New Alexandria Commentaries

Anita Nikkanen

Telemakhos appeals to the principle of reciprocity in his address to the Ithacans: his speech shows that feasting, such as the suitors are undertaking at Odysseus’ house, is a matter that calls for reciprocation (when correctly conducted; O.2.74-78). Conversely, an evil turn should likewise be reciprocated by an evil turn, another aspect of reciprocity that Telemakhos’ words make clear, and which their chiastic arrangement further underscores (δυσμενέων κάκ’ ἔρεξεν … κακὰ ῥέζετε δυσμενέοντες ‘[if Odysseus,] bearing ill-will, did evil deeds … you are doing evil deeds, bearing ill-will,’ O.2.72-73). The Ithacans’ not stopping the suitors would in Telemakhos’ words be explicable as a return for an earlier bad turn by Odysseus, but if that is not the case, they deserve as punishment the mēnis of gods (O.2.66-67).

As for what mēnis is, let us take a step back and look at some elements in Telemakhos’s speech: he describes the wrongs of the suitors (O.2.63-64), presents a principle for the maintenance of the proper state of affairs – mēnis of gods as the punishment for the outrageous situation in Ithaca (O.2.66-67) – and extends the blame from the culprits proper to their solidarity group (O.2.64-66). As Muellner argues with regards to Telemakhos’ speech, mēnis is a sanction aimed at maintaining the cosmic order and incurring it implies the transgression of fundamental cosmic rules, such as the ones the suitors break in abusing the hospitality of Odysseus’ household. Furthermore, given the role of solidarity in maintaining the continuity of the world order, those in the solidarity group of a transgressor are liable for punishment along with the culprit. Thus the three elements singled out from Telemakhos’ speech conform to the concept of mēnis and its functioning in maintaining social and cosmic order. (Compare the speech of Mentor at O.2.229-241, in my note on which I discuss mēnis and memory, which works towards the same end as mēnis but in a symmetrically opposite manner, and the ethical function of the two further. With regard to reciprocity, Mentor, in contrast to what Telemakhos says here, is clear on the point that there has been no earlier bad turn by Odysseus that would justify the current outrage in Ithaca, and so, the people deserve a punishment as a reciprocation for their actions).

To return to reciprocity: just as mēnis has a moral dimension and a function in upholding the proper social and cosmic order, so, too, is reciprocity involved in morality. Reciprocal exchange is a total social phenomenon in the Maussian sense of the term, such that reciprocal exchange is also an articulation of the social order, of the cosmic hierarchy, and an instance of the working of themis (the rules that enforce cosmic hierarchy and proper social behavior) – it is worth noting here that Telemakhos appeals to Themis in his speech (O.2.68). mēnis in fact protects the rules of exchange and the hierarchy of proper cosmic order, and reciprocity and mēnis are thus interconnected. Telemakhos’ speech neatly illustrates this web of interconnected concepts, and his argument relies on understanding their role within the Homeric society.

See further:

Mauss, Marcel. 1990. The Gift: The form and reason for exchange in archaic societies. Transl. W. D. Halls. London: Routledge.

Muellner, Leonard. 1996. The Anger of Achilles: Mênis in Greek Epic. Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press.

Seaford, Richard. 1994. Reciprocity and Ritual: Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City-State. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press.

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The wording of Mentor’s address to the assembly demonstrates the ethical dimension of the archaic Greek concept of memory: the failure of the people of Ithaca to respect Odysseus and behave appropriately towards him and his household is attributed to their not remembering him. Conversely, the speech also indicates that such forgetful subjects deserve harsh rulers (O.2.230-234): memory is the principle that maintains good social interactions and proper social order, and its absence brings about the opposite. Mentor’s name, ‘he who reminds,’ ‘he who stirs up’, is not inappropriate to the context, either.

Comparing Mentor’s speech with that of Telemakhos earlier in the assembly (O.2.45-69; some of what I discuss here is also included in my comment on O.2.63-79), we see further dimensions of memory as the principle that maintains proper social order. Telemakhos in his speech describes the wrongs of the suitors (O.2.63-64), presents a principle for the maintenance of the proper state of affairs – in his speech, it is mēnis of gods as the punishment for the outrageous situation in Ithaca (O.2.66-67) – and extends the blame from the culprits proper to their solidarity group (O.2.64-66). As Muellner argues with regards to Telemakhos’ speech, mēnis is a sanction aimed at maintaining the cosmic order and incurring it implies the transgression of fundamental cosmic rules, such as the ones the suitors break in abusing the hospitality of Odysseus’ household. Furthermore, given the role of solidarity in maintaining the continuity of the world order, those in the solidarity group of a transgressor are liable for punishment along with the culprit. Thus the three elements singled out from Telemakhos’ speech conform to the concept of mēnis and its functioning in maintaining social and cosmic order.

Likewise, then, we find all three elements of Telemakhos’ speech in that of Mentor’s, albeit with slight changes: the wrongs of the suitors are there (O.2.235-238) and the blame is extended to their solidarity group, the Ithacans (O.2.239-241, also O.2.233-234). Where there is a notable difference, however, is in the principle for the maintenance of the proper state of affairs: while in Telemakhos’ speech it is mēnis, in Mentor’s it is memory (O.2.233). However, Mentor makes clear that what is being perverted is the sovereign order, that of Odysseus’ position as the king over the Ithacans (O.2.230-234): this complements the role of mēnis in maintaining cosmic order, including the hierarchies of the sovereign order between and among gods and men. To underscore the parallelism of their speeches, at this very point Mentor’s words even echo those of Telemakhos’ (cp. πατὴρ δ’ ὣς ἤπιος ἦεν ‘and how kind a father he was’, Telemakhos at O.2.47 and Mentor at O.2.234). Memory thus appears as the flipside of mēnis: just as the latter’s function is maintaining the cosmic order as a sanction, a punishment for transgressing the rules, memory is the principle that promotes behavior that agrees with cosmic order.

See further:

Muellner, Leonard. 1996. The Anger of Achilles: Mênis in Greek Epic. Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press.

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Telemakhos’ appeal to Nestor makes use of – and demonstrates – the function of memory in the context of appropriate reciprocation, another instance of the ethical aspect of memory: the typical scenario is one where the speaker asks the addressee to remember an earlier favor, and remembering this, it is implied, results in reciprocation of that favor as is fitting. The formula asking for remembering and reciprocation, τῶν νῦν μοι μνῆσαι καί μοι… ‘remember them for me now and [do something] for me’ (O.3.100) after mentioning the earlier favor(s) is repeated elsewhere in similar contexts, and so appears to be traditional (these exact same lines are repeated in Telemakhos’ appeal to Menelaos at O.4.328-331, and the formula recurs also in Penelope’s prayer to Athena at O.4.762-766).

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As the cause of Athena’s mēnis here shows, besides failing to remember and therefore to act appropriately, failing to be νοήμων ‘thoughtful,’ ‘intelligent,’ ‘in possession of noos [mind]’ and δίκαιος ‘just’ can also lead to behavior that transgresses against the cosmic order. Words indicating mental qualities such as noos, noēmōn and phrenes are linked to the good kind of mindfulness and memory indicated by words such as mimnēskomai, and lack of them is associated with behavior that incurs mēnis (cp. I.15.128-129). In contrast to the Argives’ failures with respect to their minds and their subsequent punishment, a good mind is given as the reason for unfailing good conduct, for example Eumaios in his sacrifices to the gods on account of his good phrenes (O.14.420-421; cp. also O.24.194-195).

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These lines repeat O.3.98-101, Telemakhos’ appeal to Nestor. Just as there, so here Telemakhos’ appeal to Menelaos makes use of – and demonstrates – the function of memory in the context of appropriate reciprocation, another instance of the ethical aspect of memory: the typical scenario is one where the speaker asks the addressee to remember an earlier favor, and remembering this, it is implied, results in reciprocation of that favor as is fitting. The formula asking for remembering and reciprocation, τῶν νῦν μοι μνῆσαι καί μοι… ‘remember them for me now and [do something] for me’ (O.4.331) after mentioning the earlier favor(s) is repeated elsewhere in similar contexts, and so appears to be traditional (in addition to Telemakhos’ appeal to Nestor at O.3.98-101, the formula recurs in Penelope’s prayer to Athena at O.4.762-766).

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This speech by Penelope echoes the themes of those of Telemakhos and Mentor in O.2.63-79, O.2.229-241. When she asks her rhetorical question of whether the suitors listened to their parents tell of Odysseus, Penelope maintains, like Mentor, that it is ignorance or forgetfulness of Odysseus’ kindness as a ruler that explains the suitors’ arrogance. ἀκούετε (O.4.688), “you (pl.) hear,” here corresponds to a function of mimnēskomai, ‘remember’, when the latter denotes the performance of klea andrōn, epic songs about the glory of men: as mimnēskomai marks the activity of the bard, akouō, ‘hear’, is what the audience would do. The applicability of this constellation of concepts to the present passage is supported by Penelope’s insistence that Odysseus’ actions in the past were not only praiseworthy, but in fact also the subject of discourse – we can picture the suitors’ parents performing klea andrōn, specifically the kleos of Odysseus.

She also echoes Mentor, as well as Telemakhos, when she spells out that the suitors’ behavior is no fitting return for Odysseus’ treatment of his fellow men, and that the appropriate kind of reciprocation is manifestly not to be had (O.4.693-695). Where she differs from Mentor and Telemakhos, however, is in articulating the idea of reciprocity by using the term kharis, which here could be translated as ‘gratitude’, though its range of meanings is wider. In her speech, then, a connection is drawn between memory and reciprocity, specifically reciprocity denoted by kharis (see O.22.318-319 and my note there on the conventionality of the idea that good deeds deserve good kharis in return, and when that does not happen, the social system is being perverted).

Looking at how Telemakhos’, Mentor’s, and Penelope’s speeches converge on a topic but use different vocabulary to articulate what is involved makes apparent the connections between these key terms. We perceive the parallelism of mēnis and memory and their association with reciprocity in Telemakhos’ and Mentor’s speeches on the one hand, and the connection between memory and reciprocity denoted by kharis in particular in Penelope’s on the other. In addition, just as we can see that memory and mēnis are closely linked to themis, proper conduct, and upholding the cosmos (e.g. in Telemakhos’ speech in O.2), so the social role of kharis, especially as a force for or indication of proper social order (as in Penelope’s speech here), fits well in this network of concepts. Indeed, since the reciprocation of kharites (plural of kharis) is intended to establish a stable relationship with benefits to both parties, it appears to create an effect similar to that of the fear of mēnis or the positive guidance of memory. Just as mēnis and memory work to maintain the existing world order, so relationships of kharis are a further manifestation of the stability of the cosmos (see further O.24.281-286 and my note there on the connections between kharis and themis). Furthermore, a relationship of kharis involves memory (cp. e.g. dedications such as CEG 332 calling themselves mnāma), which can, in part, explain its similarity – or its kinship – to the purposes of mēnis and memory. The ideal of a remembering relationship of kharis as a manifestation of good behavior, however, is the opposite of what Penelope is talking about: in the scenario she describes, there is no kharis, no good conduct, and no memory of Odysseus. Compare Hesiod Works and Days 182-194 on the disruption of social order, proper reciprocal relationships and lack of kharis.

See further:

CEG = Hansen, P. A. 1983. Carmina Epigraphica Graeca saeculorum viii-v a. Chr. n. Berlin: de Gruyter.

MacLachlan, Bonnie. 1993. The Age of Grace: Charis in Early Greek Poetry. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Nagy, Gregory. 1974. Comparative Studies in Greek and Indic Meter. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. (pp. 244-246 on akouō, ‘hear’, as specifically a verb applied in Homeric diction to the hearing of kleos)

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Penelope’s prayer to Athena to save Telemakhos in return for the sacrifices Odysseus has made for the goddess is another example of the function of memory in the context of appropriate reciprocation, as seen with Telemakhos with Nestor (O.3.98-101) and Menelaus (O.4.328-331). This scene between Penelope and Athena offers a slight variation in that the addressee is a divinity and the earlier favor a sacrifice; however, the interrelation of memory and proper reciprocation remains the same, including the use of the formula, τῶν νῦν μοι μνῆσαι καί μοι… ‘remember them for me now and [do something] for me’ (O.4.765).

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Compare Sappho fr. 5.3-7: praying for the wishes of someone to be fulfilled, combined with bringing kharmata to friends and pain to enemies appears to be traditional. Both here and in Sappho, the context is that of achieving a nostos after dangerous seafaring.

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Odysseus is wishing Nausicaa a marriage like his own: for the likemindedness of Odysseus and Penelope, see e.g. O.18.281-283 on their similarity in cunning and O.24.192-195 on their good minds. Singling out likemindedness as the greatest good for the couple accords also with the Hesiodic representation of the fifth age of men, where the lack of likemindedness is the most prominent sign of the failures of this age (Works and Days 182-184).

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Odysseus’ contemplation of the ideal feast while visiting the Phaeacians presents us with a picture of the sort of situation where kharis (reciprocal exchange of good turns; see O.24.281-286 and my comment there for this meaning of kharis) points to the upholding of good social order, and the meal can be seen as a manifestation of the good social bond in the community. Here, not only is the ideal meal pleasant, endowed with kharis and euphrosune, ‘good cheer’ – Euphrosyne even being the name of one of the Kharites – but it is orderly (ἑξείης, “in order,” O.9.8) and upheld as the best state of affairs (κάλλιστον, “finest,” “most beautiful,” “best,” O.9.11). The participants in such a meal, then, are morally good, following the principles for good conduct. This ideal meal, endowed with kharis, is in stark contrast with the one foreshadowing the doom of the suitors at O.20.392-394 (where see my comment), described as akharistos, ‘lacking kharis,’ and payback for their evil deeds.

See further:MacLachlan, Bonnie. 1993. The Age of Grace: Charis in Early Greek Poetry. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Seaford, Richard. 1994. Reciprocity and Ritual: Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City-State. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press.

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Just as memory is the principle that maintains good behavior and keeps one on the right track (cp. O.2.229-241 and see note there), this passage illustrates the power of forgetting in leading people astray from their proper path and failing to do the right thing. Eating lotus makes Odysseus’ men want νόστου τε λαθέσθαι ‘forget return home’ (the same effect of forgetting caused by lotus at O.9.102). Not only do they no longer think about it, but they are unable to act on it either: it takes Odysseus’ using force to bring them back to their ship and carry on. Indeed, forgetting appears to be one of the main obstacles for Odysseus’ reaching home (cp. O.1.57, O.10.236), and Ithaca, or nostos, is one of the two recurring objects of forgetting in the Odyssey (the other object being grief, regularly unforgettable, e.g. Penelope’s unforgettable grief at the loss of Odysseus, O.1.342). In contrast, it is with a call to remember his fatherland that Odysseus’ companions get him to act and make him continue on his way home from Kirke’s island (O.10.472).

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This attempt by the Cyclops to trick Odysseus illustrates the way lanthanein/lēthein is used in the context of speech in the Odyssey: in such context lanthanein/lēthein consistently indicates deceit. So here, it is in his devious speech (ὣς φάτο) to Odysseus that the Cyclops attempts to escape the notice and so deceive our hero, but the wily man that he is, Odysseus is not taken in (οὐ λάθεν).

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This passage demonstrates the reciprocity, or complementarity, of memory and mēnis in the context of upholding proper social and cosmic order and the value system based on reciprocal exchange. Elpenor asks Odysseus to remember (μνήσασθαι, O.11.71) him and the funerary rites that are his due so as not to have Elpenor become a mēnima, ‘cause of mēnis’ (O.11.73), of the gods toward Odysseus. If Odysseus remembers and performs the rites, all is well, the cosmic order is maintained; if he forgets, he will incur mēnis as a punishment. Here, too, we can see that memory leads to proper conduct and helps avoid both the wrong courses of action and mēnis; mēnis, in turn, is the punishment when the rules are transgressed, and the fear of mēnis keeps one on the right path. This is central to the complementarity of memory and mēnis and neatly illustrated by the passage: when there is memory, there will be no mēnis, as memory keeps one mindful of the danger of incurring mēnis, and so helps avoid it in the first place. On the contrary, there will only be mēnis when this memory is absent. The relationship between memory and mēnis is thus not of perfectly symmetrical reciprocity, but the provision of one in the absence of the other.

See further:

Watkins, Calvert. 1977. “On Μῆνις.” Indo-European Studies 3:686-722.

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This phrase about the good mental abilities of a character is here used of Amphinomos, the suitor who appears to be the least rotten of the lot. His better qualities are further brought out in this passage by mentioning that he pleases Penelope the most with words (μύθοισι; O.16.397-398) and that he thinks well (ἐῢ φρονέων, O.16.399), in both cases vocabulary we can see elsewhere in the Odyssey to connect with a good mind and memory. The same formulaic phrase φρεσὶ γὰρ κέχρητ' ἀγαθῇσιν, “for he had good phrenes,” is used of Eumaios and his unforgetful, unfailing observance of the gods (O.14.420-421): the formula indicates the connection between good memory, good phrenes, and respect of the cosmic order. Sharing this formulaic description with Odysseus’ exemplarily upright swineherd, Amphinomos appears to be of this more mindful sort, too. This characterisation is furthermore supported by Amphinomos’ deference to the gods’ will (O.16.402-403). Elsewhere, his exceptionality among the suitors is brought out in his treatment of Odysseus disguised as a beggar (O.18.122-123): he is deferential and kind when all others insult Odysseus.

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In this passage Penelope appeals to Antinoos in a way that follows the model of the invocational theme. It refers to memory in order to elicit the desirable action, and the usual phrase for the theme is ἦ οὐ μέμνῃ, “or do you not remember” (e.g. O.24.115). Here, however, we have a variation on the formulaic phrase, as Penelope says ἦ οὐκ οἶσθ', “or do you not know,” to introduce a reminiscence on how Odysseus protected Antinoos’ father from the angry people. Penelope’s appeal corresponds to the invocational theme in also including a command: σε παύεσθαι κέλομαι, “I order you to stop” (O.16.433; compare the invocational theme at O.24.114). Furthermore, Penelope introduces a past favor to remember – an appeal to the rules of reciprocity. She has chosen a particularly relevant example, one that allows to draw clear parallels between the situation of Antinoos’ father in the past and what the son himself is doing in the present. Just as the people wanted to kill his father, so now the suitors, with Antinoos spearheading the plans, are plotting to kill Telemakhos (O.4.660-672, and again at O.16.363-392). And just as the people also wanted to eat up Antinoos’ father’s livelihood, so the suitors are eating up that of Odysseus (or Telemakhos). These are correspondences that Penelope herself points out specifically (O.16.431-432). What is more, Penelope refers to a social institution that entails bonds of obligation, which has been established between Odysseus and Antinoos’ father: hiketeia, ‘supplication’, or the relationship between the suppliant and the supplicated created through the ritual (cp. xenia, ‘guest-friendship’) – and these bonds are hereditary. Here Penelope reminds Antinoos of the very institution itself by using a specific term, ἱκέτας, “suppliants,” (Odyssey 16.422; also ἵκετο, “[Antinoos’ father] came [as a suppliant],” O.16.424) to indicate it, and spells out both the origin of this special relationship between his family and that of Odysseus (Odyssey 16.424-430), and how Antinoos is breaking it in the current situation (Odyssey 16.421-22, 431-32).

It should not, then, take much noos, ‘understanding’, ‘intelligence’, ‘mind’, to get the message, but does Anti-noos get it? He does not get a chance to respond as Eurymakhos takes over, assuring Penelope that Telemakhos has nothing to fear – while plotting his demise (O.16.419-448). But neither of the two suitors give an indication that Penelope’s speech has the desirable effect, as Eurymakhos’ immediate response and Antinoos’ subsequent behavior show. He instead proves to be worthy of his name, ‘Counter-noos.’ It is this faculty, noos, which is needed in good working order to avoid transgressing the rules of social and cosmic order, and the lack of which is associated with incurring mēnis, the sanction guaranteeing the maintenance of this order. Memory, in a role complementing that of mēnis, also upholds this order and these rules, and does so by keeping one mindful, in the right way, of the proper course of action. In addition to containing a variation on the invocational theme’s formulaic phrase appealing to memory, then, Penelope’s speech diverges from it also in not eliciting the morally desirable action.

See further:

Gould, John. 1973. “ΗΙΚΕΤΕΙΑ.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 93:74-103.

Moran, William Stephen. 1975. “Μιμνήσκομαι and ‘Remembering’ Epic Stories in Homer and the Hymns.” Quaderni Urbinati di cultura classica 20:195-211.

Muellner, Leonard. 1996. The Anger of Achilles: Mênis in Greek Epic. Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press.

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In this speech by Odysseus, words indicating good mental abilities, pepnumenos, ‘being in full possession of one’s senses’, ‘wise’ and epētēs, ‘courteous’, ‘gentle’, or, as Annette Dale argues, ‘very proficient in speech,’ are applied to Amphinomos, the noblest among the suitors. The first of these, pepnumenos, is often applied to Telemakhos to indicate his good sense (e.g. O.1.367, O.2.208, O.4.593), whereas epētēs is used in conjunction with adjectives pointing to good sense: angkhinoos, ‘ready of wit’, ‘shrewd’, and ekhephrōn, ‘sensible’, literally, ‘having phrenes’ – and all three are applied to Odysseus, a prime example of possessing a good mind (O.13.322, the only other occurrence of epētēs in Homer). Furthermore, epētēs, especially in the sense ‘very proficient in speech,’ ties in with Amphinomos’ description at O.16.397-398: that he is most pleasing to Penelope when it comes to speech (see also my comment at O.16.397).

In another passage illustrating Amphinomos’ positive difference from the rest of the suitors, he seconds Telemakhos’ reproach of the suitors’ riotousness at supper and suggestion it is time they go home (O.18.414-421). Amphinomos maintains that Telemakhos is right and proposes a libation before they head home - and here too, his ability at speaking plays a part: what he says is to all ἑαδότα μῦθον, “a pleasing speech” (O.18.422). His good sense not only leads to sensible speech, but his speech is effective, he can persuade his listeners: the suitors leave. So even in one of the suitors – the noblest one – we are shown the connection between good sense and speaking well, and that the first needed for the second.

See further:

Dale, Annette Teffeteller. 1982. “Homeric ἐπητής/ἐπητύς: Meaning and Etymology.” Glotta 60:205-214.

Russo, Joseph, Manuel Fernández-Galiano, and Alfred Heubeck. 1992. A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, vol. III. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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Penelope’s memory and mindfulness of her marriage to Odysseus are exceptional in the Odyssey: other women, we are told (O.15.20-23), tend to forget their previous marriage and children when remarrying, but Penelope here, in proposing the contest of the bow to determine the successful suitor, presents herself as doing the opposite (these lines are repeated at O.21.77-79 when she actually issues the challenge). Compare O.24.194-198, where Agamemnon singles out Penelope’s memory of Odysseus as that which deserves commemorating as a kleos. Penelope stands out as an example of socially ethical behavior.

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In this passage we see that the suitors’ lack of kharis in their dealings with Odysseus’ household is repaid by an akharistos meal, one that has no kharis (as the term applies to the reciprocal exchange of good turns; see O.24.281-286 and my comment there for this meaning of kharis). Although the end of the passage, “for they were the first to contrive unseemly things” (O.20.394), appears to explain the meal’s lack of kharis as a result of Athena’s and Odysseus’ initiative in unjust machinations, according to Penelope, the suitors have done ἀεικέα ἔργα, “unseemly deeds,” before this. Furthermore, she connects the suitors’ unseemly deeds directly with a lack of kharis in return for good deeds (O.4.694-695, where see my comment). The lack of kharis in this meal as the reciprocation of the lack of kharis in the suitors’ feasting in Odysseus’ house, therefore, is another manifestation of the interconnections of kharis, reciprocity and social order, and the concerns regarding them that run through the fabric of the Odyssey.

See further:Seaford, Richard. 1994. Reciprocity and Ritual: Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City-State. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press.

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The inset narrative of how Odysseus came to have the bow that Penelope challenges the suitors to string and shoot with in order to win her hand has (as often for inset narratives in the Homeric poems) layers of meaning relevant to the main narrative. The bow is a gift of friendship from Iphitus, whom Odysseus meets while in Messene to collect a debt owed by the Messenians: they had taken three hundred sheep and their shepherds from Ithaca. Iphitus likewise is in search of twelve lost mares. The situation framing their encounter sets out a model for how reciprocation should work, even if “negative” as here, starting in theft: Odysseus is due recompense for the three hundred sheep and their shepherds. The theft of the sheep and shepherds parallels the suitors’ slaughtering of and feasting on Odysseus’ livestock and abuse of his household.

The suitable recompense for the suitors’ arrogance is foreshadowed in the story of the bow, as well. The twelve mares that Iphitus has come to reclaim turn out to be his undoing when Herakles kills him to keep the mares. Herakles does this while a guest in Iphitus’ house, without regard for the fact that he is offered food there – and without regard for the opis of the gods (O.21.28: σχέτλιος, οὐδὲ θεῶν ὄπιν αἰδέσατ’, “merciless one, and he did not fear the opis of gods”). Watkins (1977) has shown that opis is synonymous with mēnis. In comparing this line with a nearly identical one in Hesiod’s Works and Days (σχέτλιοι, οὐδὲ θεῶν ὄπιν εἰδότες, “merciless ones, and they did not know the opis of gods,” 187) where the transgressions incurring the opis are also listed, it is evident that divine retribution for transgression against the rules that maintain the cosmic order is meant. The scene between Herakles and Iphitus is one of hospitality (O.21.28-29), which parallels the situation between the suitors and Odysseus in the main narrative. Just as Herakles in the inset narrative breaks the rules of hospitality, so in the framing narrative do the suitors. Where the inset narrative contrasts with the main narrative is in the punishment: unlike Herakles, the suitors do not get out scot-free. The instrument of their undoing is the bow, the weapon that gives rise to this inset narrative. It is a gift of friendship (O.21.35), and as Seaford (1994) notes, it embodies the relationship of guest-friendship and the rules of hospitality; as such, it is an appropriate punisher for the abuse of hospitality. I would like to add that we are even told that Odysseus does not take this bow with him when he goes to Troy, but leaves it at home as a μνῆμα ξείνοιο φίλοιο, “a reminder of a dear guest-friend” (O.21.40). Appropriately, in a further way, then, the instrument of the suitors’ punishment embodies also the memory that leads to good conduct as a marker and upholder of a relationship of exchanging kharites, the reciprocal exchange of good turns.

See further:

Muellner, Leonard. 1996. The Anger of Achilles: Mênis in Greek Epic. Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press. (see pp. 36, 40, 187 on opis = mēnis and applications of Watkins’ argument)

Seaford, Richard. 1994. Reciprocity and Ritual: Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City-State. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press.

Watkins, Calvert. 1977. “On Μῆνις.” Indo-European Studies 3:686-722. (see pp. 708-709, where he posits “a virtual semantic identity” between theōn opis and theōn mēnis)

West, Martin Litchfield, ed. 1966. Hesiod, Theogony. Oxford: Clarendon Press. (see p. 230 on Theogony 222 for theōn opis in Hesiod as meaning divine punishment rather than mere divine regard)

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Compare O.19.576-581, where these same lines occur when Penelope proposes the contest of the bow. As noted there, Penelope’s memory and mindfulness of her marriage to Odysseus are exceptional in the Odyssey: other women, we are told (O.15.20-23), tend to forget their previous marriage and children when remarrying, but Penelope, as she issues the challenge of the bow to the suitors here, presents herself as doing the opposite (these lines are also found at O.19.576-581 where Penelope proposes the contest of the bow to determine the successful suitor). Compare O.24.194-198, where Agamemnon singles out Penelope’s memory of Odysseus as that which deserves commemorating as a kleos. Penelope stands out as an example of socially ethical behavior.

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This speech of Leiodes the sacrificing priest as he begs Odysseus to spare him during the massacre of the suitors contains a line ending that also appears in Penelope’s speech at O.4.695: οὐδέ τίς ἐστι χάρις μετόπισθ’ εὐεργέων, “and there is no kharis afterwards for good deeds.” Here, Leiodes claims that he has not done anything, but will lie dead beside the suitors, “and there is no kharis afterwards for good deeds” (O.22.318-319). Although Odysseus does not believe him and slays him, Leiodes’ words confirm the conventionality of the thought: good deeds deserve good kharis in return, and when that does not happen, the social system is being perverted.

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These words of Agamemnon show that the likeminded couple, Penelope and Odysseus (cp. O.6.181-184), is worthy of #kleos, a glorious epic song – and what is more, this kleos is characterized by #kharis. His praise makes the source of kleos in the Odyssey explicit. It is the mind (phrenes, O.24.194) of Penelope and her remembering Odysseus (O.24.195) that is worthy of celebration. And it is, again, a much-contriving Odysseus (O.24.192), his epithet pointing to his mental abilities, who has the luck of having Penelope as his wife. Although what exactly the arēte, ‘excellence’ (O.24.193, O.24.197), that both gives rise to this song and is its subject, is in, is left somewhat ambiguous, or even whether it is the arēte of Penelope or Odysseus – or, as I would like to take it, of the couple together – we can see that mental abilities are central to it, and throughout the Odyssey, the couple standing out for theirs are Penelope and Odysseus.

Further, Agamemnon’s words show the connection between the worthy achievements and their commemoration in song very clearly. Agamemnon speaks specifically of songs and reputation conveyed through them, contrasting Penelope with Klytaimestra. The balance of the comparison of the two women creates an effect of symmetrical opposition. As Penelope is called κούρῃ Ἰκαρίου, “daughter of Ikarios” (O.24.195), so Klytaimestra is Τυνδαρέου κούρη, “daughter of Tyndareos” (O.24.199), both named through their fathers, but with the word order reversed as if to draw out the contrast between them. While Penelope εὖ μέμνητ’ Ὀδυσῆος, / ἀνδρὸς κουριδίου, “well remembered Odysseus, her wedded husband” (O.24.195-196), Klytaimestra κακὰ μήσατο ἔργα, / κουρίδιον κτείνασα πόσιν, “devised her evil deeds, killing her wedded husband” (O.24.199-200). In both cases, the object of the wife’s action is her respective husband, both times qualified by “wedded” (there is perhaps even a suggestion of further parallelism in the alliterative echoing in memnēt’, ‘remembered’, and mēsato, ‘devised’). As Penelope occasions κλέος, “song of glory,” and ἀοιδὴν / […] χαρίεσσαν, “kharis-filled song,” to delight mortals (O.24.196-198), so Klytaimestra gives rise to στυγερὴ […] ἀοιδὴ, “hateful song,” among humans (O.24.200-201), the words and phrases mirroring one another again. The parallelism and even repetitions of specific words and phrases concretely demonstrates the opposition between the two kinds of song, the praise poetry of epic on one hand, and the blame poetry on the other.

Finally, khalepe, ‘grievous’, ‘harsh’, ‘hard to bear’, that qualifies the repute Klytaimestra gives women is the same word as we have seen in Mentor’s speech qualifying the harsh (khalepos, O.2.232) king that he takes the Ithacans to deserve for not remembering Odysseus. Therefore, in the polarities between good, ethical conduct and memory on the one hand and bad behavior and incurrence of mēnis on the other, Klytaimestra’s song would fall on the side of the latter, leading to grief and pain. If we compare this picture with that presented by Odysseus in his wishes for a happy marriage to Nausikaa, we can see that this pain aligns with the algea, ‘griefs’, suffered by the enemies of the ideal likeminded couple (O.6.184). In contrast, the good person’s praise poetry in Agamemnon’s exclamation is characterized by kharis: the kleos is an aoidē khariessa, a ‘kharis-filled song’ (O.24.197-198), just as the likemindedness of the couple in Odysseus’ wishes for Nausikaa is the cause of kharmata, ‘source of joy’ (O.24.185), for their well-wishers. And here we have one such well-wisher, Agamemnon, exclaiming on the happiness of Odysseus and Penelope, and even calling their kleos kharis-filled himself.

See further:

Nagy, Gregory. 1974. Comparative Studies in Greek and Indic Meter. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

_. 1979. The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the hero in Archaic Greek Poetry. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Revised edition, 1999.

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In this passage, Laertes provides us with more insights on the proper kind of relationship of kharis, of reciprocal exchange of good turns. Most importantly, he specifies what is themis, right in accordance with the rules that enforce cosmic hierarchy and proper social behavior, in relationships of kharis: the ample reciprocal exchange of gifts and hospitality (O.24.285). Both of the key terms for reciprocity, in the form of words connected to kharis (χαρίζεο, “gave freely,” O.24.283) and amoibe (ἀμειψάμενος, “having requited,” O.24.285), are present. In addition, the way the themis of relationships of kharis is phrased, with ὅς τις ὑπάρξῃ, “when one has begun,” (O.24.286), implies that the relationship is continuous, with a potentially infinite number or reciprocations. This confirmation the ongoing nature of kharis also supports its connection to memory, which is necessary for sustaining this continuity. This is the kind of reciprocity, Laertes maintains, that Odysseus would have shown.

Laertes also characterizes the suitors (and by extension, especially given the impreciseness of his words, their solidarity group) as ἀτάσθαλοι ἄνδρες, “wicked men” (O.24.282). This adjective is applied to their behavior elsewhere in the poem, too, and it is the opposite of Odysseus’ conduct according to Penelope (O.4.693). Laertes also characterizes the suitors as ὑβρισταὶ, “men of hubris,” making explicit their status as violators of the rules maintaining the cosmic order (cp. O.24.458 on atasthalia; O.1.368, O.3.206-207, O.4.321, O.4.625-627, O.16.85-86, O.16.410, O.15.328-329 on hubris). The contrast drawn here between the suitors and Odysseus implies that what qualifies the suitors as men of hubris is their failure in matters of kharis in accordance with themis. What Laertes says of the suitors matches what we see in Penelope’s speech at O.4.687-695 (where see my comment).

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Zeus’ speech here offers a solution to what may appear to be the beginning of a continuous cycle of violence and one of the tensions set up early in the poem. The speech recalls that of Telemakhos’ to the assembly, which forecast the threat of mēnis to the suitors and Ithacans (O.2.63-69). Instead of the extension of the retributive power of mēnis to the suitors’ solidarity group, however, Zeus here proposes to cancel it with the help of divinely inspired total forgetting of the suitors and their killing (ἔκλησιν, O.24.485). We can see that lēthē is opposed not only to memory, but also to its flipside mēnis. Furthermore, by comparing Zeus’ speech with that of Mentor’s in the assembly, another way in which it resolves the tensions set up in the poem becomes apparent: just as Mentor says that the Ithacans deserve a harsh ruler for not remembering how kind a ruler Odysseus was (O.2.230-234), here Zeus promises that Odysseus will in fact continue to rule, and there will be love between him and his subjects. This outcome, too, depends on the eklēsis, and so we can see that the ills resulting from mēnis and not remembering are both countered by this divine forgetting, further underlining their parallelism.

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David Elmer

This line marks the first occurrence in the Odyssey of a formulaic expression"then he/she thought of other things"(ἔνθ᾽ αὖτ᾽ ἀλλ᾽ ἐνόησε) that occurs, with minor variations, eleven times in the Odyssey and twice in the Iliad. The formula shows interesting patterns of restriction in both poems. In the Odyssey, it is always used with a female subject (Athena [2.382, 2.393, 4.795, 5.382, 6.112, 18.187, 23.242, 23.344], Helen [4.219], Nausikaa [6.251], or Penelope [16.409]). In the Iliad, it is used exclusively of Achilles (23.140, 23.193). See Iliad 23.140 for discussion of the two Iliadic instances; here I concentrate on the formula’s occurrences in the Odyssey.

\r\nFrom a narratological point of view, the expression has an important function: as noted by de Jong 2001:66, it “highlights a new, often sudden or unexpected turn in the story,” in this case “the—abrupt—change of scene from Telemachus to Athena.” In other words, the formula marks the development of the plot in a new direction that is not a mere continuation of what has preceded. (Odyssey 23.242 is a significant exception.) Furthermore, it links this new development with the intervention of some specific agent, who is thus momentarily represented as controlling the plot. De Jong 2001:66 notes that the frequency with which the expression is used of Athena corresponds to the goddess’s “role of ‘director’ of the story of the Odyssey.” Occurrences of the formula with Helen, Nausikaa, and Penelope as subjects extend this plot-making power to other prominent women. In this way, a convenient narrative device serves also to underscore one of the poem’s major thematic concerns, namely, the way in which the story of Odysseus’ homecoming—the plot of the Odyssey—depends upon the favorable disposition of certain women, above all Penelope. The poem has numerous ways of signaling that its plot hinges on female agents (see Odyssey 11.226, Odyssey 11.436-39). This should not, however, be interpreted as a subversive gesture: as stressed by Murnaghan 2005, Athena as “source and sponsor” of the Odyssey’s plot works to uphold the authority of the patriarchal oikos.

\r\n\r\nReferences

\r\nde Jong, Irene J. F. 2001. A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey. Cambridge and New York.

\r\nMurnaghan, Sheila. 1995. “The Plan of Athena.” In The Distaff Side: Representing the Female in Homer’s Odyssey (ed. B. Cohen) 61-80. New York and Oxford.

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The so-called “Catalogue of Heroines” is bracketed by references to Persephone’s role in summoning and then dispersing the heroines whose appearances occasion the various entries in the Catalogue. Here, Odysseus stresses that Persephone “bid” the psukhai of the heroines to approach the animals he had slaughtered; at Odyssey 11.385-86, resuming his narration after an “intermezzo” in which he converses with Arete and Alkinoos, Odysseus transitions to the “Catalogue of Heroes” by explaining that Agamemnon appeared “when reverend Persephone scattered in various directions the psukhai of the women.” Odysseus thus presents Persephone as the ‘director’ of this portion of his narrative, a position that corresponds to that of Athena as ‘director’ of the plot of the Odyssey (on Athena as ‘director,’ see Murnaghan 2005, de Jong 2001:66). The emphasis on Persephone, then, is one of several reminders of the fact that the story of Odysseus’ homecoming unfolds as a result of Athena’s active intervention (see note on Odyssey 2.382). It also points to the importance of another female sponsor, Arete, at this particular moment in Odysseus’ story. Odysseus has been advised by Athena that his hopes for a homecoming depend especially on Arete's good will (Odyssey 7.75-9; the importance of Arete in this regard seems to figure the importance of Penelope as the woman on whose good will Odysseus’ homecoming ultimately depends). The “Catalogue of Heroines” has been described as “Odysseus’ gift to Arete” (Pache 1999:28), an effort to appeal to her interests just as the “Catalogue of Heroes” explicitly answers Alkinoos’ request to hear about the psukhai of those who fell at Troy. The appeal is a success: Arete responds by urging the Phaeacians to present Odysseus with additional gifts. By underscoring the importance of Persephone as the one who directs the Catalogue, Odysseus may subtly suggest to his patroness that she has the power to direct the subsequent course of his own story.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nReferences\r\n\r\nde Jong, I. J. F. 2001. A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey. Cambridge and New York.\r\n\r\nMurnaghan, S. 1995. “The Plan of Athena.” In The Distaff Side: Representing the Female in Homer’s Odyssey (ed. B. Cohen) 61-80. New York and Oxford.\r\n\r\nPache, Corinne. 1999. “Odysseus and the Phaeacians.” In Nine Essays on Homer (eds. M. Carlisle and O. Levaniouk) 21-33. Lanham, MD.

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Odysseus characterizes the suffering attendant on the Trojan expedition—including the many deaths depicted in the Iliad—as a consequence of Zeus’ displeasure and the “will (βουλαί) of women.” This description substantially modifies the causal framework put forward by the Iliad, which presents the events it describes as the result of “the will of Zeus” (Διὸς βουλή, as in Iliad 1.5) alone. Odysseus’ reconfiguration of Iliadic causality reflects the distinctive vision of the Odyssey, which portrays female figures as exercising considerable control over events: Athena, with the support of Zeus, is the divine sponsor of the plot (see Murnaghan 2005), and the success of Odysseus’ homecoming is repeatedly represented as depending on the goodwill of various women, above all Penelope. (See also Odyssey 2.382, 11.226).\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nReferences\r\n\r\nMurnaghan, S. 1995. “The Plan of Athena.” In The Distaff Side: Representing the Female in Homer’s Odyssey (ed. B. Cohen) 61-80. New York and Oxford.

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The “he/she thought of other things” (ἄλλ᾽ ἐνόησε) formula ordinarily signals a change of scene or turn of the plot in a substantially new direction (see Odyssey 2.382). Here, exceptionally, it marks a continuation of the current scene: Athena devises a way to avoid a narrative shift. The remarkable reversal of normal usage draws attention to the passage that follows (Odyssey 23.247-343), a passage that is concluded by another instance of the formula, used, as usual, to signal a change of scene engineered by Athena (Odyssey 23.344; this is an instance of “ring composition”). The lines thus enclosed describe the long-awaited reunion of Penelope and Odysseus, and include the verse that Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus, according to the scholia, designated as the τέλος (the “end” or “fulfillment”—the meaning of this remark is much debated) of the Odyssey (see 23.296). The passage also includes the recapitulation of prior events by both Penelope and Odysseus. The integration of their respective stories (Penelope narrates what has happened on Ithaka in Odysseus’ absence, while Odysseus relates the tale of his wanderings) not only figures the reunion of the lovers; it also reconstitutes in a straightforward, linear fashion the fabula of the Odyssey, which has been presented by the poem’s master narrator in a self-consciously disjointed manner (compare de Jong 2001:563). The bracketing of these signal acts of narration by references to Athena’s agency underscores the goddess’s role as “source and sponsor of the plot” (quotation from Murnaghan 2005:61): it is Athena who makes possible the recapitulation of the plot on this occasion, just as it is she who sets in motion and directs events throughout the poem.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nReferences\r\n\r\nde Jong, I. J. F. 2001. A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey. Cambridge and New York.\r\n\r\nMurnaghan, S. 1995. “The Plan of Athena.” In The Distaff Side: Representing the Female in Homer’s Odyssey (ed. B. Cohen) 61-80. New York and Oxford.

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Douglas Frame

use of nḗpioi echoes Od. IX.44-46

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quoted and translated: analysis of role of Helios in correct understanding of the root *nes-. Earliest meaning is a “return from death and darkness” or “having returned to life and light” whose context is hieratic. Helios takes away from Odysseus’ companions their day of return because only the hero, like the sun, can pass through the regions of death without dying

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comparison of “foolish” companions to Odysseus, archetype of intelligence. Signifies traditional association of companions’ loss of nóstos with their lack of nóos

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citation of Zeus’ characterization of Odysseus’ preeminent quality, nóos

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analysis of Odysseus’ role and function in the Odyssey as expressed by Zeus. His destiny is to “return home,” an idea expressed by the word nóstos – a nominal derivative of néomai

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Athena announces here her plan to visit Telemachus in order to ‘arouse’ him and ‘put spirit in his mind’. These two expressions mean the same thing. When Athena carries out her plan she disguises herself, in Book 1, as Mentes, a foreign trader, and then, in Books 2 and 3, as Mentor, an old man of Ithaca, and both these names mean the same thing, ‘he who arouses, he who stirs up’. The noun menos, ‘spirit’, in Od. 1.89 contains the same verbal root men- as the names Mentēs and Mentōr, and the occurrence of the noun in Athena’s speech anticipates her two disguises. For the meaning of the name Mentōr, particularly in relation to the name Nestōr, see the essay “Nestor’s Name”. As ‘he who stirs up’ the name Mentōr implies an active verb menō, ‘stir up’, which does not occur in Greek. The active verb with the meaning ‘stir up’ is epotrunō, which is what occurs in Athena’s speech. To make the verbal connection with the names Mentēs and Mentōr the verb epotrunō is glossed in Athena’s speech by the phrase with menos. For more on the verb (ep)otrunō in relation to the name Mentōr*, see Frame 2009:25n37.

Frame, Douglas, 2009. Hippota Nestor. Cambridge, 2009

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analysis of formulaic variation of Od. XI.114, Od. XII.141. The traditional context of prophesy is preserved without implication of “returning from death,” but Homer substitutes oíkad’ eleústhai for neȋai

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quoted as evidence that Homer understood neȋai as simply meaning “you will return home”

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citation of Nestor’s appraisal of Odysseus as the “shrewdest” of the Achaeans. Suggests that whereas Nestor symbolizes nóos, Odysseus makes nóos effective

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example of relationship between verbs signifying mind as nóstos. Compare to Il. X.509, Od. III.142

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analysis of Telemachus’ description of Nestor, who appears “immortal.” Suggests that Nestor’s apparent “immortality” is a remnant of his possible former mythological status as a god

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analysis of an available solution to the imprecise opposition between “escaping death” and “being caught” explored in Od. V.312, Il. XXI.281, Od. XXIV.34

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reference to Homeric passage where nóos is connected to traditional sense of return.

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citation of Phaeacian epithet, ankhítheoi, “close to the gods”

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analysis of the role of Hermes’ staff in suggesting that that the return of Odysseus is a return to consciousness and life

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analysis of original notion of verb halṓō, “to be seized by death”

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analysis of Pylos’ (púlai of Hades) possible connection to lost story of Nestor’s cave, which Homer might here allude to: en Pulōi en nekúessin, “in Pylos amongst the dead”

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analysis of the use of nóēma to describe the Phaeacian ships. The simile “as quick as thought” is unique in Homer

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analysis of the equation of sleep with death. Argues that details show that sleep is a basic part of the “return” motif

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analysis of reference to “counsels” as a suggestion that Oydesseus is on his final “return to life,” and that his nóos is ready to emerge. This same theme is seen in the return from Cyclops’ cave (Od. IX.444-445)

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analysis of lḗthē as the “forgetfulness of death” in the description of the sleeping hero because his nóos is removed by lḗthē

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citation of the fact that the Phaeacian ship arrives at dawn. Suggests tentative link to the role of the sun in the final voyage of Odysseus

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This passage, beginning with the expression ho d'asphaleōs agoreuei 'he speaks to the point unfailingly' is remarkably similar, even word-for-word the same, as what the poet Hesiod says in Theogony lines 86 and 91-92 in describing the gift of fair speech which the Muses give to a king when they honor him from birth. The difference is that Hesiod names the context—kings—whereas Odysseus does not, but the reason for this is clear: for Odysseus to do so would require him to identify himself before his dramatic self-disclosure in Book 9. Once the reason for Odysseus’s silence, namely his still hidden identity, is taken into account, the context of the two passages is the same, namely fair speech as the essential quality of a king.

The close correspondence in phrasing between the two passages has raised the question whether one passage imitates the other, but no consensus has ever been reached. The answer seems to lie not in the imitation of one poet by the other, but in a common poetic tradition behind both poets. This tradition has been identified in a perceptive study by Richard Martin as “the instruction of princes,” a wide-spread genre with important examples in Greek, from Hesiod’s Works and Days and the poetry of Theognis, to the lost Instructions of Chiron. The Hesiodic passage fills in for us what is deliberately withheld in Odysseus’s speech, namely that he is speaking about what it is to be a king. The Homeric audience would have understood this, because they, like us, knew that the speaker is not only a king, but, in the Homeric scheme of things, the ideal king.

This is only half the story, however. When Odysseus delivers his piece of princely instruction, he does more than hint at his own identity. He also brings the Homeric audience into the story through a more subtle case of hidden identity than his own. In spite of surface appearances the intended recipient of Odysseus’s instruction is not in fact the young Phaeacian to whom it is overtly addressed: his name, Euryalos, which relates to the sea, does not distinguish him from the other Phaeacians, twenty-one of whom have similar sea-related names. That name is generic, a reflection of the Phaeacians’ mythic function as sea-farers. Odysseus does indeed reprove Euryalos at the start of his speech, saying “you are like a reckless man,” and again at the end, where he acknowledges Euryalos’s fine physical appearance, but censures his lack of understanding (noos). However, the burden of Odysseus’s speech is not this reproof, but a positive portrayal of fair speech and its salutary effects.

The figure who stands most to benefit from this positive instruction is not Euryalos, but the future king of the Phaeacians, who is part of the whole episode from the start. It is Laodamas, the favorite son and heir apparent of king Alcinous, who first sets the episode in motion by inviting—indeed challenging—Odysseus to participate in contests (Odyssey 8.131-151), an invitation which Odysseus turns down with some asperity (Odyssey 8.152-157). This occasions Euryalos’s ill-considered words to Odysseus (Odyssey 8.158-164) and Odysseus’s response. But if Laodamas is the intended recipient of Odysseus’s instruction, why is he not presented as such, but instead kept far enough from the hero’s display of mettle to escape notice entirely? Odysseus himself provides one answer after his mighty rock toss, when he challenges all the Phaeacian youths to compete with him in further contests but excepts Laodamas from his challenge: only a fool would compete with his host, and Odysseus will not do that(Odyssey 8.204-208). This prudent respect for a host can be seen as present in the prior situation as well, in which Euryalos draws a reproof that all but touches Laodamas, but does not in fact touch him.

Now Laodamas' name, which means “he who controls the people,” is well suited to a future king, but that is not its real significance, or not all of it. The last Neleid king of Miletus had this name—Leōdamas in its Ionic form—and, while dates are uncertain, this Leōdamas can easily be placed in the Homeric era. Leōdamas is a good candidate to have been the prime mover of Panionian unity in the late eighth and early seventh century BC. We are fortunate indeed to know something of this Leoōamas beyond his name. His memory has been preserved in fragments of two historians of the Roman era. Leōdamas was successful in a foreign war which benefited Miletus and confirmed him as king, and as king he went on to become much loved by his people. His story ended tragically when he was murdered by a rival for the kingship, and this brought kingship itself to an end in Miletus.

Now the Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor traced their pre-migration origins back to the Bronze Age city of Pylos and its legendary founder, king Neleus. More precisely, the royal family of the Ionian city of Miletus traced their origins back to king Neleus, and they were therefore called Neleidai, “descendants of Neleus.” These Neleids then extended their pedigree to other Ionian cities in the process of forming a greater Ionian community, the so-called Ionian dodecapolis. This union of twelve cities, meeting at its cult center Panionion, gave rise to the two Homeric epics as part of the process of Ionian community formation. It is this Ionian community, as it met at Panionion, that the Phaeacians represent.

In Homer it is not Neleus himself but his son Nestor who plays a great role. It is he who represents the earliest stage in the picture of a common Panionian origin. Alcinous, the Phaeacian king, is a second Nestor, a conscious duplication of the Pylian king. Athena reveals this when she disguises herself as a maiden and meets Odysseus on his way to the Phaeacian palace (Odyssey 7.19-81) . She tells Odysseus about the king and queen he is about to meet inside the palace, and for the king she gives a genealogy extending over four generations, which is in effect Nestor’s genealogy: the names are different but the genealogy’s intricate structure is the same. By her action Athena also identifies the queen, Arete, as a second stage in the picture of a common Panionian origin when she leaves Odysseus and flies to Athens and enters the royal palace, her place of worship. The Neleids were said to have migrated from Pylos to Athens at the end of the Bronze Age, where they became the ruling family; Arete, who is cast in the mold of the Athenian city-goddess, Athena Polias, represents this second stage. It was from Athens that the Neleids next founded Miletus and became its ruling family: the founder of Miletus was named Neleus like his Pylian ancestor, and this gave the Neleid kings of Miletus two ancestors to explain their name.

When Odysseus gives princely instruction in Book 8 of the Odyssey, identifying fair speech as the essential quality of a king, the instruction is really addressed not to his apparent interlocutor, a misbehaved youth, but to a future king who stands by unnoticed. This future king in turn represents an actual king, ruling in the Homeric present. The Phaeacian Laodamas has as yet done nothing to distinguish himself except behave properly to a stranger. He is all future potential. That potential, we are meant to understand, has now been fulfilled in the actual present. The king who rules now is fictively pictured as having been present to hear the ideal king discourse on what it is to be a king. He has heard the lesson of the past—the heroic past—from the very hero of the poem. The Homeric audience is equally honored in this because like their king they also are like the Phaeacians, since they are also listeners to Odysseus' discourse, and as such they also have received the lessons of the heroic past from the hero’s own mouth.

Bibliographical references

Douglas Frame, "New Light on the Homeric Question: the Phaeacians Unmasked,” http://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/4453. For more details on the argument excerpted above, see this article.

Douglas Frame, "Odysseus and Kingship: Commentary on Odyssey 8.166-177," Classical Inquiries, June 3, 2016, http://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/odysseus-and-kingship-commentary-on-odyssey-8-166-177. The above comment is excerpted from this article.

Richard P. Martin, “Hesiod, Odysseus, and the Instruction of Princes,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 114 (1984), pp. 29–48.

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analysis of the role of Phaeacians as sea-faring escorts who have a peculiar status halfway between gods and men

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citation of Athena’s creation and then removal of the mist upon Odysseus’ arrival. Argues this reinforces the thematic connections between the arrival of Odysseus and the Sun

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analysis of the use of nóos and nóēma as the proper reappearance of Odysseus’ nóos when he awakens in his homeland

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example of the appearance of nóos linked to Odysseus’ return

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example of the appearance of nóos linked to Odysseus’ return. Analysis of Athena as representation of the intelligence of Odysseus

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citation of Athena’s creation and then removal of the mist upon Odysseus’ arrival. Argues this reinforces the thematic connections between the arrival of Odysseus and the Sun

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analysis of the verb stugéō and its Stygian (Stúx) connotations

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analysis of the Phaeacians’ preparation for Odysseus’ sleep. Argues that details show that sleep is a basic part of the “return” motif

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reference to special pride of the Phaeacians as escorts, same lines appear in Od. VIII.174

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reference to connection between description of the Phaeacian of ships and nóos and néomai

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reference to the conventional nature of Homer’s description the sacking of the Ciconian city

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comparison of the cause of destruction here with the slaughter of the cattle of Helios: the nḗpioi. Mindlessness as a cause of destruction is also emphasized by the suggestion of drunkenness

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use of nḗpioi echoes Od. I.8-9

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reference to the conventional nature of the Ciconian warriors who stand closest the world of the Iliad

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suggestion that the poet who constructed this episode might have still understood the ancient thematic role of the sun. This could explain the peculiar usage of “dawn,” since much has already happened before the battle begins. Compare to Od. XVI.777ff

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example of similarities between the Laestrygonians and the Cyclopes. Compare to Od. X.112-113, Od. X.120, Od. X.121-122, Od. X.82-183, Od. X.98, Od. X.116, Od. X.124, Od. IX.190-192, Od. IX.482, Od. IX.537, Od. IX.108, Od. IX.167, Od. IX.187-188, Od. IX.291

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example of similarities between the Laestrygonians and the Cyclopes

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analysis of Homer’s reinterpretation of the traditional collocation ásmenoi ek thanátoio, as phúgomen thánaton

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analysis of the collocation ásmenoi ek thanátoio. Proposes ásmenos is derivative of *nes- and suggests collocation originally meant “having returned from death”

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suggestion that collocation nóstou te lathésthai, “to forget their homecoming,” is related to a loss of “mind”

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suggestion that collocation nóstoio láthētai, “that he might forget his homecoming,” is related to theme of a loss of “mind”

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reference to the modification of the traditional full refrain seen at the end of the first, third, and fifth episodes

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citation of the offshore island as a threshold to the encounter with the Cyclops [MRBTP: 'ff']

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comparison to Paṇi myth in which a cave dwelling demon keeps flocks he encloses at night and releases by day

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evidence of the role of Odysseus’ intelligence in the Cyclops episode

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evidence of the role of Odysseus’ intelligence in the Cyclops episode

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analysis of the pun between mêtis and the name Oûtis. The equation between the two words, coupled with the latent meaning of death in Oûtis, suggests that Homer has preserved the relation between death and nóos

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analysis of close connection between the latent “return from death” and words denoting intelligence

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analysis of Odysseus’ words thanátou lúsin, a “loosening of death,” and hṓs te per psukhēs, “as of for my psukhē,” which equate the Cyclops’ cave with death

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evidence of the role of Odysseus’ intelligence in the Cyclops episode

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analysis of phrase pukinà phronéonti as the closest Homer comes to realizing the original sense of nóos. Also suggests connection between “counsels” and the return from the Cyclop’s cave as a manifestation of a “return to life”

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suggests connection between “counsels” and the return from the Cyclops’ cave as a manifestation of a “return to life.”

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analysis of another Homeric recasting of the traditional collocation ásmenoi ek thanátoio as phúgomen thánaton. Two observations are made: (1) The traditional “return from death” theme is here, as in the minor episodes, latent. (2) This latent feature is closely connected with the Cyclops’ cave. Traces of the cave’s connection with the realm of the dead remain in Odysseus’ calling himself Oûtis while within the cave

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analysis of Odysseus’ loss of the anonymity as death, the regaining of his name as a rebirth. Compare to words of Alcinous (Od. VIII.552-553)

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analysis of formulaic variation of Od. XI.114, Od. XII.141. The context is changed from prophesy to curse, élthoi substituted for traditional neȋai. Dependence of élthoi on previous mention of “home” and “fatherland” shows the secondary nature of this passage

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citation of the offshore island as a threshold to the encounter with the Cyclops [MRBTP: 'ff']

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analysis of the location and context of the appearance of the traditional refrain

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analysis of the collocation ásmenoi ek thanátoio. Proposes ásmenos is derivative of *nes- and suggests collocation originally meant “having returned from death”

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example of Aeolus adventure as another instance of the “mindlessness” of the companions

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example of Aeolus adventure as another instance of the “mindlessness” of the companions

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reference to the modification of the traditional full refrain seen at the end of the first, third, and fifth episodes

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analysis of the episode that describes the Laestrygonian kingdom. Argues that the phrase “the paths of day and night are close together” refers not to a geographic location (as Thucydides 6.2.1 attests) but rather the latent mythic background of the gates (or threshold) of night and day (as attested by Pamenides Proem 11, Hesiod Theogony 744ff.)

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description of the Laestrygonian harbor, which is compared to the cave of the Cyclops

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analysis of why Odysseus alone does not enter the Laestrygonian harbor, the place of death. Argues that Homer’s understanding of what was once a “return from death” as a matter of “escape” means that it is no longer necessary to enter the place of death

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suggestion that the episode with the Laestrygonian queen shows this episodes original underworld context

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analysis of Homer’s reinterpretation of traditional ásmenoi as aspasíōs… phúge, which shows that Homer understood ásmenoi to mean “happy”

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analysis of the collocation ásmenoi ek thanátoio. Proposes ásmenos is derivative of *nes- and suggests collocation originally meant “having returned from death”

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Homer says Circe was the daughter of Helios

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Explanation of Odysseus’ odd description Circe’s land as “where the darkness is and where the dawn.” Circe’s land is equated with sunset when Odysseus ventures into “death and darkness” but with the dawn when he “returns to life and light”

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evidence of “witlessness” of the companions as a negative indication of the thematic presence of nóos

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evidence for suggestion that collocations utilizing forms of lanthánomai with nóstos are semantically related to theme of a loss of “mind.” Comparison with intended effect of Circe’s drugs: to make the companion forget their homeland

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analysis of ambiguity about nature of companions who are turned into swine but retain their nóos

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analysis of Hermes’ role in providing Odysseus the knowledge necessary to “return” from the wiles and dangers of Circe. Thus, nóos is the nóstos of the Circe episode

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suggests a comparison between pent up companions of Odysseus and the imprisoned beasts of the Sun

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analysis of Hermes’ role in providing Odysseus the knowledge necessary to “return” from the wiles and dangers of Circe. Thus, nóos is the nóstos of the Circe episode

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evidence for notion that Hermes as psychopomp leads Odysseus to death and back to life

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analysis of Hermes’ role in providing Odysseus the knowledge necessary to “return” from the wiles and dangers of Circe. Thus, nóos is the nóstos of the Circe episode

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analysis of Hermes’ role in providing Odysseus the knowledge necessary to “return” from the wiles and dangers of Circe. Thus, nóos is the nóstos of the Circe episode

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Description of the phármakon Hermes provides Odysseus, a plant with back root and white blossom – an appropriate symbol of for the underlying meaning of the Circe episode

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evidence for Circe episode as a “return from death”

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evidence for Circe episode as a “return from death”

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evidence for Circe episode as a “return from death”

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analysis of Homer’s use of the verb nostḗsein

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analysis of Teiresias’ retention of nóos as the distinguishing characteristic which separates him from the dead

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analysis of Homer’s emphasis on journey to Hades as a journey “to gain knowledge”

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analysis of Elpenor (described as oúte phresìn hê̄isin arērṓs) as a survival of the traditional notion that a lack of nóos meant a lack of nóstos

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analysis of voyage to Cimmerians as Homer’s attempt to add verisimilitude to traditional theme of “death and darkness.” Compare to Hesiod’s description of twilight region (Theogony 758ff.), where the original context is preserved

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analysis of Homer’s emphasis on journey to Hades as a journey “to gain knowledge”

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analysis of Homer’s emphasis on journey to Hades as a journey “to gain knowledge”

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analysis of the Sun’s apparent endowment with an all-embracing consciousness. Compare to Xenophanes frag.20 (Diehl)

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analysis of mimnḗskeo and médomai, argues they have the same significance for the connection between nóos and néomai as does lanthánomai in Od. X.236, Od. X.472

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comparison of the formulaic diction of ásmenoi in Od. IX.62-62 and néomai, which elucidates common meaning. Dates probable composition of lines to second millennium B.C.

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traditionally an essential part of a Nekuomanteίa

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evidence for connection of prophesy of Teiresias with the theme of “life and death”

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analysis of mimnḗskeo and médomai, argues they have the same significance for the connection between nóos and néomai as does lanthánomai in Od. X.236, Od. X.472

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analysis of language used to describe the imprisonment of Melampus

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analysis of survival of the role of nóos in the story of Melampus, which suggests a the context of prophesy similar to Teiresias’ relationship to the theme of “returning from death”

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brief analysis of the Dioscuri, who as a combination of immortal and mortal elements, experience an alternation between life and death

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This passage featuring three Athenian heroines belongs to the Panathenaic version of the catalogue of heroines. It is the final such Athenian expansion of the catalogue, and functions as an "Athenian signature." In the last line of the passage the god Dionysus is mentioned in connection with the third Athenian heroine, Ariadne. The form of his name in Greek is the Athenian form versus the usual Homeric form (Διόνυσος, with a short -o- vs. the usual Epic form Διώνυσος, with -ō-), and this is part of the "signature." If the whole signature is deliberate - if it is asserting its Athenian origin- the phrase containing the name Dionysus may have a double meaning. On the surface of the narrative Ariadne is killed Dionusou marturiēisi "on the evidence of Dionysus." In terms of an "Athenian signature" the "evidence of Dionysus" could suggest a slightly different translation, "the evidence of the word Dionysus."

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analysis of antithetical fates of Achilles and Odysseus as contrasted by the by the “wits” of Odysseus and Achilles’ fate amongst the “mindless” dead

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reference to Odysseus’s remarks that Achilles is even a king in the underworld

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reference to Achilles’ response that he would rather be a serf in life that a king amongst the dead – a reference to Achilles’ juxtaposition with Odysseus (the one who has nóos will return, the one who does not will not)

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citation of Odysseus’s appraisal of himself and Nestor as the foremost Greek counselors. Suggests that whereas Nestor symbolizes nóos, Odysseus makes nóos effective

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analysis of Nestor’s battle with the Epeians as latent conveyor of traditional conception of Nestor as leader of his people from the dark night of danger to the daylight of victory

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analysis of the traditional story in which Nestor alone survived the attack of Heracles on Pylos

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description of the near extinction of the people of Pylos before Nestor’s cattle raid and battle rout. Evidence for contention that Nestor brings his people back to life

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quoted and translated: reference to the fact that Nestor, as the only son of Neleus associated with life, is the only one to survive Hercules’ attack on Pylos

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description of the near extinction of the people of Pylos before Nestor’s cattle raid and battle rout. Evidence for contention that Nestor brings his people back to life

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description of the near extinction of the people of Pylos before Nestor’s cattle raid and battle rout. Evidence for contention that Nestor brings his people back to life

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analysis of apparent discrepancy of Odysseus’ and Hesiod’s (Theogony 1011ff.) described location of Circe’s land. Circe’s land is equated with sunset when Odysseus ventures into “death and darkness” but with the dawn when he “returns to life and light”

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analysis of Circe’s emphatic connection of Nekyia with theme of a “return from death”

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reference to Circe’s description of the cattle and sheep of Helios. Comparison with the parallel story of Euenius (Hdt. 9.92.2-95), which suggests traditional link between prophesy, intelligence, sleep, and death that lies behind Od. XII. Similar association between cattle and the return from darkness and death is found in Vedic mythology (RV 2.24.3, 6.65.5, 6.13.3), the story of Hercules and cattle of Geryon, and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (411 ff.)

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analysis of the name, Néaira, as derivative of néomai, which refers both to the returning light of day and to light in the context of salvation – a name suitable for guardian of the cattle of Helios

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comparison of the formulaic diction of ásmenoi in Od. IX. 62-62 and néomai, which elucidates common meaning. Dates probable composition of lines to second millennium B.C. Traditionally, essential part of a Nekuomanteίa

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comparison of the formulaic diction of ásmenoi in Od. IX.62-62 and néomai, which elucidates common meaning. Dates probable composition of lines to second millennium B.C.

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analysis of the relation between escape and intelligence. Suggests that Homer was “dimly” aware of the relation between “mind” and the “return from death”

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analysis of the Sun’s apparent endowment with an all-embracing consciousness. Compare to Xenophanes frag.20 (Diehl)

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interpretation of Helios episode as “return from death.” Sleep, or unconsciousness, is analyzed as the death from which nóstos is the “return”

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analysis of possible reminiscence of Helios’ descent into Hades as the means by which the companions, who equated with sunset, were put to death

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analysis of formulaic variation of Od. XI.114, Od. XII.141. Homer substitutes derivative form of νοστήσεις. Context of prophesy almost absent as a result of Homer’s modification of traditional diction

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example of stock nature of the description of Odysseus’ possessions

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example of a line which displays the ambiguity of halṓō, meaning either “to be captured” or “to be killed.” Only external evidence makes the meaning clear. However, the opposition between pheúgein and halonai is clear

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

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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

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

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

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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

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analysis of language used to describe the imprisonment of Melampus.

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comparison to Od. IX.56-59

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suggests that transitive force of Nestor’s name could have created new transitive verb néō, which was restricted to hieratic contexts

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analysis of the verb anései, which is argued in the phrase m’anései stands for original *me nései – a future of the hitherto hypothetical verb néō. This would have the lines read “therefore I do not know whether the god will bring me home or whether I will die in Troy.” Argues that proposed verb néō can mean to “bring back from death”

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reference to Odysseus’ statement that he did not think all the Achaeans would return home

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evidence not to postulate sn- initial for etymology of nóos

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analysis of the close relationship between metis. Suggests that Homer was “dimly” aware of the relation between “mind” and the “return from death”

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evidence for the description of D.B. Monro’s understanding of the verb anései, as a compound verb meaning “to place” or “set upon”

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analysis of original notion of verb halṓō, “to be seized by death”

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evidence for rarity of ἠέ κεν instead of ἤ κεν. Appears to appear only once

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Gregory Nagy

By saying ‘tell me, Muse’, the Master Narrator is saying that the song that he will perform is something that he hears from a goddess who is invoked here as a singular Mousa ‘Muse’. See also I.01.001, where the Master Narrator likewise calls on a singular Muse. Although ennepein ‘narrate, tell’ here at O.01.001 does not explicitly refer to singing as does aeidein ‘sing’ at I.01.001, the narrative that the Master Narrator narrates is notionally a song in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. See in general the comment on O.01.001–010.

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We have seen that the epithet polutropos ‘turning-into-many-different-selves’ at O.01.001 describes the narrative subject of the entire performed narration of the Odyssey as designated by the driving word anēr ‘man’ in the accusative, andra at O.01.001, used here as the grammatical object of the verb ennepein ‘narrate, tell’. Now we see that this epithet polutropos ‘turning-into-many-different-selves’ at O.01.001 is immediately followed at O.01.001–002 by a relative clause that outlines the overall narrative of the Odyssey: Odysseus veered many times and in many ways before he achieved a safe homecoming for himself. Similarly, we saw that the epithet oulomenē ‘disastrous’ at I.01.002 describes the narrative subject of the entire performed narration of the Iliad as designated by the driving word mēnis ‘anger’ in the accusative, mēnin at I.01.001, used there as the grammatical object of the verb aeidein ‘sing’. And we saw that this epithet oulomenē ‘disastrous’ is immediately followed at I.01.002 by a relative clause that outlines the overall narrative of the Iliad: the anger of Achilles caused immeasurable suffering. And we will see a further similarity when we consider the epithet lugros ‘disastrous’ at O.01.327, which describes the poetic subject of a performed narration as designated by the driving word nostos ‘homecoming’ in the accusative, noston at O.01.326, used there as the grammatical object of the verb aeidein ‘sing’. This epithet lugros ‘disastrous’ at O.01.327 is then immediately followed in the same verse by a relative clause that outlines the overall narrative there. See the comment on O.01.326–327.

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The multiplicity to be seen in the shape-shifting figure of Odysseus is poeticized by way of repeating the element pol(l)- ‘many’ of polutropos ‘turning-into-many-different-selves’, spilling over from O.01.001 into O.01.003–004: πολύτροπον…πολλὰ |…|πολλῶν… |πολλά.

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|1 That man, tell me O Muse the song of that man, the one who-turns-into-many-different-selves [polutropos], who in very many ways |2 veered from his path and wandered off far and wide, after he had destroyed the sacred [hieron] citadel of Troy. |3 Many different cities [astea] of many different people did he see, getting to know different ways of thinking [nóos]. |4 Many were the pains [algea] he suffered in his heart [thūmos] while crossing the sea [pontos], |5 struggling to merit [arnusthai] the saving of his own life [psūkhē] and his own homecoming [nostos] as well as the homecoming of his companions [hetairoi]. |6 But do what he might he could not save his companions [hetairoi], even though he very much wanted to. |7 For they perished through their own deeds-of-recklessness [atasthaliā plural], |8 disconnected [nēpioi] as they were, because of what they did to the cattle of the sun-god Hēlios. |9 They ate them. So, the god [Hēlios] deprived them of their day of-homecoming [nostimon]. |10 Starting-from-any-single-point-of-departure [hamothen], O goddess, daughter of Zeus, tell-me-as-you-have-told-those-who-came-before-me [eipe kai hēmīn].

There are three main points to be made in my comments here.

Point 1. The epic of the Homeric Odyssey begins in a way that resembles closely the beginning of its twin, the epic of the Homeric Iliad. On the term epic, used here for the first time in these comments on the Odyssey, see the inventory of Words and Ideas. The main theme of the Odyssey is signaled right away. On the term theme, see again the inventory. The signaling is accomplished by way of the first word of the very first verse of the epic. This word is the noun andra ‘man’, in the accusative case, which would be anēr in the nominative. The accusative case of anēr ‘man’ here marks this noun as the grammatical object of the verb ennepein ‘narrate, tell’, O.01.001. The Master Narrator is addressing a goddess who is the Muse of the Odyssey, asking the goddess to narrate for him the story of a man who is not yet named as Odysseus. On the term Master Narrator, see the inventory of Words and Ideas. The ‘man’ is the subject of the story. In other words, he is the subject of the narration, or the narrative subject. And this narrative subject is the grammatical object of the verb ennepein, meaning ‘narrate, tell’. Similarly at the beginning of the Homeric Iliad, as analyzed at I.01.001–012, the narrative subject is the first word in the very first verse. That word is the noun mēnin ‘anger’, in the accusative case, which would be mēnis in the nominative. The accusative case of mēnis there marks that noun as the grammatical object of the verb aeidein ‘sing’, I.01.110. There the Master Narrator is addressing a theā ‘goddess’ who is the Muse of the Iliad, asking that goddess to sing for him that anger, I.01.001. The song that will be narrated by the Muse for the Master Narrator will in turn be narrated by the narrator for his listeners. That song is The Song of the Anger, in the sense that the anger is the song. The anger is the narrative subject. Similarly in the Odyssey, the Master Narrator calls on the Muse of the Odyssey to ‘narrate the man’, that is, to ‘tell the song of the man’. Here too the song that will be narrated by the Muse for the Master Narrator will in turn be narrated by the narrator for his listeners. This song is The Song of the Man, in that the man is the song. The man is the narrative subject. And the song captures the total reality of the man.

Point 2. But this reality is not so easy to capture, since the man who is Odysseus is many-sided, as we will now see. Odysseus at O.01.001 is polutropos ‘turning-into-many-different-selves’. This translation makes explicit what is only implied in an alternative way of rendering this elusive word, ‘versatile in many ways’ (H24H 0§21, also 9§4, also 10§2), where the Latin root vert- ‘turn’ of the Latinate word versatile can mean not only ‘turn around’ but also ‘turn into a different self’, as we see most clearly in the Latin word for ‘werewolf’, versi-pellis, which literally means ‘he whose skin has turned’ (Pliny Natural History 8.34; Petronius 62; details in GMP 264–265). Similarly, polutropos applies to a figure who is different at every turn, and who becomes different many times and in many ways. That is why the ultimate shape-shifter, the god Hermes, is polutropos in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes (verses 13, 439). And that is why, in the only other context where Odysseus is described as polutropos, O.10.330, he is associated in that context with his polytropic model, Hermes himself, O.10.331–332. (Further commentary in GMP 34.) Since Odysseus can turn into something different at every turn, the multiplicity of angles to be seen at every turn helps explain why this hero will not yet be named at the beginning of the Odyssey.

Point 3. There is still more to be said about this adjective polutropos ‘turning-into-many-different-selves’ describing Odysseus at O.01.001: it is used here as an epithet for the narrative subject, which in this case is anēr ‘man’. Another such epithet is the adjective oulomenē ‘disastrous’ describing the mēnis ‘anger’ of Achilles at I.01.002. See the comment there.

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The comments I offer on Odyssey Rhapsody 1 through Rhapsody 24, starting here with Rhapsody 1, were based mostly on details that derive from seven books that I indicate in the Bibliography by way of these abbreviations: BA, GMP, H24H, HC, HPC, HQ, HR, MoM, PasP, PH. Each one of these books has its own index locorum. My colleague Anita Nikkanen, an Associate Editor for this online project, tracked the sequences of Homeric verses as listed in the indices for six of these books and then summarized my comments on those verses. Following up on her meticulous work, I am in the process of converting her summaries into a form of commentary. My comments on the Odyssey as I presented them in Classical Inquiries are merely samplings of the content that I hope to contribute to the overall commentary, to which a number of other colleagues are also contributing their own comments. That said, I now proceed to offer a sampling of comments on Rhapsody 1. At this point, my comments about the beginning of the Odyssey need no further introduction of their own.

draft js image error Zeus, Athena, and Hermes (1810). Drawing by John Flaxman. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

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Odysseus in the Odyssey gets credit already here, at the very beginning of the epic, for the conquest of Troy. By contrast, Achilles will never get credit for such a deed, even though he is the dominant hero of the Iliad, which means ‘the story of Ilion=Troy’ and which presents itself as the primary epic about the Trojan War. It is made explicit elsewhere in the Odyssey, though not here at the beginning, that mētis ‘mind, intelligence’ was the heroic quality that made it possible for Odysseus to become the conqueror of Troy. This theme is relevant to an epic story about a competition between Achilles and Odysseus centering on this question: who will get credit for conquering Troy? Will it be Achilles, exponent of biē ‘force, violence, strength’, or will it be Odysseus, exponent of mētis ‘mind, intelligence’? The story is reflected in the First Song of Demodokos in Odyssey 8, and it can be argued that the beginning of the Odyssey here alludes to that story. It can also be argued that the beginning of the Iliad also alludes to that same story. See the comment on I.01.001–012. In the end, though, as we know from the story of the Trojan Horse in the Third Song of Demodokos, retold in Odyssey 8, the mētis ‘mind, intelligence’ of Odysseus did succeed. And, by implication, the biē ‘force, violence, strength’ of Achilles had already failed, since Achilles was already dead by the time when Troy was conquered.

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Etymologically, the noun nóos ‘mind’ indicates consciousness as distinct from the unconsciousness of sleeping, swooning, and death itself. This noun is derived from the verb-root nes*- ‘return, come back’. The root nes- has a deeper meaning: ‘come to’, in the sense of ‘come back to consciousness’. Another noun derived from nes- is nostos ‘homecoming, song of / about homecoming’. This noun nostos also has a deeper meaning: ‘coming back to light and life’. See the comment on O.01.05. Two definitive books on the Greek reflexes of the root nes- ‘return, come back’: Frame 1978 and 2009. I add here a special note on my translation of O.01.003: ‘Many different cities of many different people did he see, getting to know different ways of thinking [nóos]’. I translate nóos* ‘mind’ here as ‘way[s] of thinking’ because the wording says that Odysseus gets to know different ways of thinking by making contact with many different persons in the course of all his travels. Because he gets to know their different ways of thinking, his knowledge now makes it possible for Odysseus himself to think in many different ways. So he is getting to know his own ‘mind’ differently by getting to know the different minds of others.

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It is announced here, at the very beginning of the Odyssey, that many algea ‘pains’ await Odysseus in this epic, O.01.004. There is a parallel announcement at the beginning of the Iliad: many algea ‘pains’ await the Achaeans in that epic, I.01.002. See further the comment on I.01.002.

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Etymologically, the noun nostos ‘homecoming’ indicates a ‘return’ or ‘coming-back’, derived from the verb-root nes*- ‘return, come back’. This root nes-, as already noted, has a deeper meaning: ‘come to’, in the sense of ‘come back to consciousness’. The noun nostos itself, meaning ‘homecoming’, also has a deeper meaning: ‘coming back to light and life’. Etymologically related to the noun nostos in the sense of ‘coming back to light and life’ is the noun nóos ‘mind’, which has the deeper meaning of ‘coming to’ in the sense of ‘coming back to consciousness’. Two definitive books on the Greek reflexes of the root nes- ‘return, come back’: Frame 1978 and 2009. As for nostos ‘homecoming’ in the sense of ‘song of homecoming’, see O.01.326–327. On arnusthai in the sense of ‘struggle to merit’ (or ‘struggle to win as a prize’), see also the comment on I.18.121.

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The companions of Odysseus are destroyed because of their own atasthaliai ‘deeds-of-recklessness’. The narrative emphasizes that the companions must own their mistakes. It is essential to note here that the destruction of the companions here is caused not by the Will of Zeus: rather, they are destroyed because they suffer the consequences of doing what they did of their own free will. I add a further note here: I translated the plural of atasthaliā ‘recklessness’ here as ‘deeds-of-recklessness’ in order to convey the fact that a singular noun expressing an abstraction can refer to concrete examples of the abstraction when it is used in the plural. So for example atasthaliā ‘recklessness’ is an abstraction, but here at O.01.007 the plural atasthaliai refers to concrete examples of recklessness—in this case, the recklessness is exemplified by the killing and eating of the Cattle of the Sun.

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The Homeric contexts of nēpios, as the work of Edmunds 1990 | 2016 has shown, point to an etymology involving a combination of the negative prefix n̥*- with the root Hp- in the sense of ‘connect’, as in Latin in-eptus ‘non-connected’, not with the root u̯ekw- in the sense of ‘speak’, as in Latin in-fāns ‘non-speaking’. What is at stake in the meaning of nēpios is connectivity with parental models and, by extension, with ancestral models. The connectivity may be merely behavioral, as in the case of young animals that survive by staying connected to the older animals that generated them. In the case of humans, the connectivity that begins at infancy is not only behavioral but also mental, extending into adult patterns of consciously following ancestral models of behavior. Further, such connectedness to models may be not only mental but also emotional and even moral. And to be disconnected from such models runs the risk of being doomed for destruction, as we see here at O.01.008 in the case of the companions who did not heed Odysseus. Their disconnectedness is moral as well as mental.

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Detail 1. I translate hamothen as ‘starting-from-any-single-point-of-departure’ as a way of differentiating this expression from enthen ‘starting-from-that-[specific-]point-of-departure’ as at O.08.500, where Demodokos starts his narrative at a specific point in the action.

Detail 2. The form theā ‘goddess’ is Aeolic: see the comment at I.01.001.

Detail 3. On the epithet thugatēr (vocative thugater) Dios ‘daughter of Zeus’, see the anchor comment at I.03.374.

Detail 4. I translate eipe kai hēmīn, which means literally ‘tell us also’, as ‘tell-me-as-you-have-told-those-who-came-before-me’ in order to convey the idea that the ‘us’ here refers not only to the ‘me’ of the Master Narrator but also, elliptically, to all the previous master narrators of the Odyssey. In other words, the narration acknowledges not only the horizontal singular ‘me’ of O.01.001 but also the vertical plural succession of performers that led up, in the course of time, to the ultimate ‘me’ of the here-and-now in performance. On ellipsis, the elliptic plural, and the ellipsis of successive ‘I’-s in the ‘we’ of the Master Narrator, see also the comment on I.02.486. On ellipsis in general, see I.04.196; also I.06.209, I.07.015–017.

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The Olympians habitually go to the realm of the Aethiopians, situated on the banks of the cosmic river Ōkeanos, to dine with them there. The Aethiopians simultaneously inhabit the Far West and the Far East. This simultaneity is a mark of a theme that can best be described as a coincidence of opposites. See the comments on I.01.423–425. Here at O.01.022–026, only Poseidon is visiting the Aethiopians. Unlike other humans, who no longer dine with the gods, the Aethiopians still dine with them. Other humans have been separated from the gods and must therefore sacrifice to them instead of dining with them.

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Near the beginning of the Iliad, in contemplating the countless algea ‘pains’, I.01.002, suffered in the Trojan War, the Master Narrator declares that his narration is the Will of Zeus in the process of reaching fulfillment, I.01.005. Near the beginning of the Odyssey, by contrast, Zeus himself declares that mortals are unjustified in saying that the algea ‘pains’ that they suffer, O.01.034, are caused by the gods. The god continues: it is of their own free will, O.01.033–034, that mortals commit atasthaliai ‘deeds of recklessness’, O.01.034, and so their pains are huper moron ‘beyond what is fated’, O.01.034. See already the relevant comments at O.01.007. So, mortals are unjustified in trying to hold the gods legally responsible, as expressed by the verb aitiâsthai ‘hold responsible’, O.01.032.

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Here is the first mention of Peisistratos, son of Nestor, in the Odyssey. (He is not mentioned in the Iliad.) It can be argued that this Peisistratos was claimed to be the ancestor of Peisistratidai, the lineage that dominated Athens in the sixth century BCE. On Peisistratos of Athens, see also I.10.000.

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(What follows is epitomized from H24H 9§17.) At a council of the gods, the goddess Athena declares her intention to go to Ithaca to become a mentor to the young hero Telemachus, O.01.088–089. Descending from Olympus and landing in Ithaca, the goddess assumes the human form of a fatherly hero named Méntēs, O.01.105, who proceeds to give wise advice to the young hero. In a subsequent intervention, O.02.268, the goddess will assume the human form of another fatherly hero, named Méntōr, and, as in the present intervention, this other father-substitute will likewise proceed to give wise advice to the young hero. These two names Méntēs and Méntōr are both related to the noun menos, which I translate as ‘mental power’. This word, as we can see here at O.01.089, refers to the heroic ‘power’ that the goddess Athena says she will put into Telemachus. The noun menos, usually translated as ‘power’ or ‘strength’, is derived from the verb-root mnē-, meaning ‘mentally connect’ (details in GMP 113). Likewise derived from this verb-root are the agent nouns Méntēs and Méntōr, which both mean ‘he who connects mentally’. When a divinity connects a hero to his heroic mentality, the hero will have menos, that is, ‘power’ or ‘strength’. To have heroic power or strength, you have to have a heroic mentality. See further the comment on O.01.320–322.

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|88 αὐτὰρ ἐγὼν Ἰθάκηνδε ἐλεύσομαι, ὄφρα οἱ υἱὸν |89 μᾶλλον ἐποτρύνω καί οἱ μένος ἐν φρεσὶ θείω, |90 εἰς ἀγορὴν καλέσαντα κάρη κομόωντας Ἀχαιοὺς |91 πᾶσι μνηστήρεσσιν ἀπειπέμεν, οἵ τέ οἱ αἰεὶ |92 μῆλ’ ἁδινὰ σφάζουσι καὶ εἰλίποδας ἕλικας βοῦς. |93 πέμψω δ’ ἐς Σπάρτην τε καὶ ἐς Πύλον ἠμαθόεντα |94 νόστον πευσόμενον πατρὸς φίλου, ἤν που ἀκούσῃ, |95 ἠδ’ ἵνα μιν κλέος ἐσθλὸν ἐν ἀνθρώποισιν ἔχῃσιν.

|88 As for me, I will go travel to Ithaca, going to his [= Odysseus’] son |89 in order to give him [= Telemachus] more encouragement and to put mental power [menos] into his heart [phrenes]. |90 He is to summon the long-haired Achaeans for a meeting in assembly, |91 and he is to speak out to all the suitors [of his mother Penelope], who persist in |92 slaughtering again and again any number of his sheep and oxen. |93 And I will conduct [pempein] him to Sparta and to sandy Pylos, |94 and thus he will learn [punthanesthai] the return [nostos] of his dear [philos] father, if by chance he [= Telemachus] hears [akouein] it, |95 and thus may genuine glory [kleos] possess him throughout humankind.

Here the nostos of Odysseus, O.01.094, is shown to be not only a ‘homecoming’ but also a ‘song of homecoming’. On the meaning ‘song of homecoming’, see the comment on O.01.326–327. On kleos in the sense of an overall reference to the ‘glory’ of poetry, see the comment on I.02.325. Here at O.01.088–095, we can see that nostos as a ‘song of homecoming’ is a prerequisite for the quest of Odysseus to achieve the kleos ‘glory’ of poetry. Odysseus will receive the kleos ‘glory’ of his own Odyssey only if he achieves a successful nostos ‘homecoming’, and it is the kleos ‘glory’ of poetry that turns his homecoming into a song of homecoming. What the goddess says at O.01.094 is not that Telemachus will learn about the nostos of Odysseus if he is fortunate enough to hear about it. In the original Greek text, the noun nostos is the direct object of both the verb punthanesthai, ‘learn’ and the verb akouein ‘hear’ at O.01.094 here, and that is why I chose to translate the verse this way: ‘and thus he will learn [punthanesthai] the return [nostos] of his dear [philos] father, if by chance he [= Telemachus] hears [akouein] it’. Elsewhere too in the Odyssey, we see nostos as the direct object of punthanesthai ‘learn’: O.02.215, O.02.264, O.02.360, O.04.714—as also of akouein ‘hear’: O.01.287, O.02.218, O.02.360. It is not a question of learning about a homecoming, of hearing about a homecoming. Rather, Telemachus will learn the actual song of the homecoming, the song of nostos, by hearing it. He will actually hear the song from the hero Nestor in Odyssey 3 and from the hero Menelaos along with his divine consort Helen in Odyssey 4. (This formulation is epitomized from H24H 9§20; see also Stone 2016.09.28.)

draft js image error Athena (1810). Drawing by John Flaxman. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

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The text as transmitted by Aristarchus (see the inventory of Words and Ideas) reads:

πέμψω δ’ ἐς Σπάρτην τε καὶ ἐς Πύλον ἠμαθόεντα

‘I [= Athena] will conduct [pempein]him [= Telemachus] on his way to Sparta and to sandy Pylos’

But the text as transmitted by Zenodotus (see again the inventory of Words and Ideas) reads:

πέμψω δ’ ἐς Κρήτην τε καὶ ἐς Πύλον ἠμαθόεντα

‘I [= Athena] will conduct [pempein] him [= Telemachus] on his way to Crete and to sandy Pylos’

The variant reading that we see transmitted here by Zenodotus (quoted in the scholia for O.03.313) indicates a variant epic tradition to which I will refer hereafter as a Cretan Odyssey. Further details at O.01.284–286, anchor comment on Cretan Odyssey.

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Here Ithaca is figured as one single dēmos ‘community, district’.

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The meaning of the name Méntēs, ‘he who connects mentally’, is relevant to the plot of the Odyssey: see the comments on O.01.088–089.

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The singer of tales here, named Phemios, O.01.154, is ‘singing’ for the suitors as his audience, and the word translated as ‘sing’ here is aeidein at O.01.154 and at O.01.155. Such a singer is not exactly the equivalent of a “court poet,” since Phemios is singing for the suitors against his will, that is, he is singing anankēi ‘by way of constraint’, O.01.154. And what kind of a singer is this Phemios? He sings while accompanying himself on a kind of lyre, designated by the noun kitharis at O.01.153; also, his playing on the lyre is designated by the verb phormizein at O.01.055. In Plato Ion 533b-c, Phemios is described as a rhapsōidos ‘rhapsode’. The description is accurate in the sense that rhapsodes were professional performers of Homeric poetry in the classical period, as we see clearly in the overall context of Plato’s Ion. But this same description is inaccurate in the sense that rhapsodes in the classical period performed Homeric poetry without accompanying themselves on the kitharā ‘lyre’: as we see overall in Plato’s Ion and elsewhere, the rhapsodic form of ‘singing’ Homeric poetry was basically recitative, with reduced melody. By contrast, as we read in Plato Ion 533b-c, performers in the classical period who sang with full-blown melody while accompanying themselves on the kitharā ‘lyre’ were called kitharōidoi ‘citharodes’, that is, ‘kitharā-singers’. In other words, these ‘lyre-singers’ were performers of what we call lyric. At the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens during the classical period, these lyre-singers or citharodes competed with each other in singing lyric, while rhapsodes competed with each other in singing epic. As we can learn from Plato Ion 533b-c, the prototypical citharode was considered to be Orpheus, while the prototypical rhapsode was Phemios. But Phemios, even though he sings epic and not lyric, is not exactly a rhapsode in the classical sense of the term: as I have already pointed out, Phemios sings while accompanying himself on a kind of lyre, designated by the noun kitharis at O.01.153; also, his playing on the lyre is designated by the verb phormizein at O.01.055. Nevertheless, Plato has a point in considering Phemios a prototypical rhapsode, since what he sings is epic, which is what rhapsodes recite in the classical period—and which is not what citharodes any longer sing. On Phemios as a singer of epic, see the comment on O.01.325–327.

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The theme of abduction by gusts of wind is analyzed at length in the comment at O.15.250-251.

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The text as transmitted by Aristarchus (see inventory of Words and Ideas) reads:

πρῶτα μὲν ἐς Πύλον ἐλθὲ καὶ εἴρεο Νέστορα δῖον,

κεῖθεν δὲ Σπάρτηνδε παρὰ ξανθὸν Μενέλαον·

ὃς γὰρ δεύτατος ἦλθεν Ἀχαιῶν χαλκοχιτώνων.

‘First you [= Telemachus] go to Pylos and ask radiant Nestor

and then from there to Sparta and to golden-haired Menelaos,

the one who was the last of the Achaeans, wearers of bronze tunics, to come back home.’

But the text as transmitted by Zenodotus (see again the inventory of Words and Ideas) reads:

πρῶτα μὲν ἐς Πύλον ἐλθέ, …

κεῖθεν δ’ ἐς Κρήτην τε παρ’ Ἰδομενῆα ἄνακτα,

ὃς γὰρ δεύτατος ἦλθεν Ἀχαιῶν χαλκοχιτώνων.

‘First go to Pylos …

and then from there to Crete and to king Idomeneus

who was the last of the Achaeans, wearers of bronze tunics, to come back home.’

Here at O.01.284–286, as also already at O.01.093, the variant reading that we see transmitted by Zenodotus (quoted in the scholia for O.03.313) indicates a variant epic tradition to which I have already referred as a Cretan Odyssey in my comment on O.01.093. As I argue in Nagy 2015.09.24§§36–37, what we see in these variant verses is a trace of a Cretan Odyssey as primarily represented in our Odyssey by the “Cretan lies,” which are micro-narratives embedded in the epic macro-narrative of the Homeric Odyssey. In comments forthcoming, there will be more to say about these “Cretan lies.” Here I confine my comments to points that are relevant to what we read at O.01.093 and O.01.284–286. In “our” Odyssey, as Nestor reports at O.03.191–192, Idomeneus after the Trojan War returns to Crete with all his men safe and sound. In the Cretan Odyssey, by contrast, Idomeneus seems to have traveled with Odysseus after the conquest of Troy by the Achaeans, and this king of the Cretans even experienced, together with Odysseus, the horrors of the Cave of the Cyclops: such a story about joint adventures experienced by Idomeneus and Odysseus is attested in a painting on a red-figure stamnos, 480 BCE, featuring the name-tags ΙΔΑΜΕΝΕΥΣ ‘Ida-meneus’ [sic] and ΟΔΥΣΥΣ ‘Odusus’ [sic] appended to images of these two heroes, showing each one of the two clinging to a ram’s underbelly (Levaniouk 2011:105).

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This expression ep’ anthrōpous ‘throughout humankind’ is conventionally associated with words referring to remembrance by way of song. See the anchor comment at I.10.213.

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The noun thūmos, which I translate here as ‘heart’, expresses in Homeric diction the human capacity to feel and to think, taken together. In some Homeric contexts, thūmos is used as a synonym of phrenes, which can also be translated as ‘heart’, as in my comment on O.01.089. In other Homeric contexts, on the other hand, thūmos is pictured as the vital force that is contained by the phrenes (details in GMP 113n111). Even in such contexts, both words can be approximated as ‘heart’. In still other contexts, phrenes is best translated as ‘thinking’. Such a meaning is not contradictory, since Homeric diction leaves room for the idea that you can think with your heart.

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|320 … Into his heart [thūmos] |321 she [= Athena] had placed mental power [menos] and daring, and she had mentally-connected [hupo-mnē-] him with his father |322 even more than before.

(Here I epitomize from H24H 9§§18–19.) The idea of menos as ‘mental power’ is elegantly recapitulated here at O.01.320–321. The goddess Athena has just finished the first phase of her role as mentor to Telemachus. She had initiated this phase at O.01.088–089 after having assumed, as we saw at O.01.105, the human shape of the fatherly Méntēs. This name Méntēs, as I indicated in the comment on O.01.088–089, means ‘he who connects mentally’. Having finished with the role of Méntēs, the goddess now transforms herself into a bird and flies out of the palace through a lightwell on the roof, and what we see here at O.01.320–321 is the wording that describes what Athena had accomplished so far in connecting the mind of Telemachus with the mind of his father. In her role as Méntēs, ‘he who connects mentally’, the goddess has given to the hero Telemachus the menos or ‘mental power’ of connecting with the heroic identity of his father. That act of doing this is expressed here at O.01.321 by the verb hupo-mnē-, which means literally ‘mentally connect’ (details in GMP 113). But the mental connectivity of Telemachus is not yet complete, as we will see in the comment on O.01.346–352.

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At O.01.325, Phemios is described as the aoidos ‘singer’ who aeidei ‘sings’ epic songs, and the epic song that he sings here is the nostos of the Achaeans, also at O.01.325, where nostos can be translated as not only ‘homecoming’ but also ‘song of homecoming’. Such a song is evidently epic, as we see for example in the title Nostoi ‘Songs of Homecoming’ in the epic Cycle. See under epic and epic Cycle in the inventory of Words and Ideas. See also the comment on O.01.153–155.

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The syntax here in O.01.326–327 shows that the use of the noun nostos ‘homecoming, song of homecoming’ at O.01.326 as the grammatical object of aeidein ‘sing’ in the same verse makes this same noun the narrative subject of the song that is being sung by the singer Phemios. The nostos ‘homecoming’ is the song that the singer sings, and so the ‘homecoming’ is also a ‘song of homecoming’. My translation ‘song of homecoming’ is meant to show that the homecoming is the song. The placement of the adjective lugros ‘disastrous’ at O.01.327 as an epithet for the narrative subject nostos ‘homecoming’ in the previous verse at O.01.326 is parallel to the placement of the adjective oulomenē ‘disastrous’ at I.01.002 as an epithet for the narrative subject mēnis ‘anger’ in the previous verse at I.01.001. See the comment on I.01.001–002. Another parallel is the placement of the adjective polutropos ‘turning-into-many-different-selves’ at O.01.001 as an epithet for the preceding narrative subject anēr ‘man’ in the same verse. There is further parallelism to be noted here. The epithet lugros ‘disastrous’ at O.01.327 for the narrative subject nostos ‘homecoming, song of homecoming’ at O.01.326 is immediately followed by a relative clause that outlines the overall narrative here: Athena caused misfortune for some of the Achaeans. Similarly, the epithet oulomenē at I.01.002 for the narrative subject mēnis at I.01.001 is immediately followed by a relative clause that outlines the overall narrative of the Iliad: the anger of Achilles caused immeasurable misfortune. See the comment on I.01.002. Also, the epithet polutropos ‘turning-into-many-different-selves’ at O.01.001 for the preceding narrative subject anēr ‘man’ in the same verse is immediately followed by a relative clause that outlines the overall narrative of the Odyssey: the hero Odysseus suffered many misfortunes by veering many times and in many ways before he achieved a safe homecoming for himself.

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To sing the kind of song that the singer Phemios sings—the song is called nostos ‘homecoming, song of homecoming’ at O.01.326—is described here at O.01.338 as an act of transforming the erga ‘deeds’ of men and gods into the kleos ‘glory’ of poetry. The verb kleiein ‘turn into glory [kleos]’ takes as its direct object the noun erga ‘deeds’.

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At O.01.326–327, we saw lugros ‘disastrous’ functioning as the epithet of the narrative subject of nostos ‘homecoming, song of homecoming’. The narrative subject nostos as ‘song of homecoming’, O.01.326, was followed by the epithet as the first word in the next verse, lugros ‘disastrous’, O.01.327. So, the epithet was carried over from one verse to the next. Similarly here at O.01.340–341, the word aoidē ‘song’ referring to the song of homecoming, O.01.340, is followed by the epithet lugrē ‘disastrous’ as the first word in the next verse, O.01.341. Once again, the epithet is carried over from one verse to the next. Similarly also at I.01.001–002, the word mēnis referring to the song of the anger of Achilles, I.01.001, is followed by the epithet oulomenē ‘disastrous’ as the first word in the next verse, I.01.002. Yet again, the epithet is carried over from one verse to the next.

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For Penelope, the song that is sung by the singer Phemios, which is supposed to turn the deeds of men and gods into the kleos ‘glory’ of poetry, as we saw at O.01.338, produces the opposite effect here at O.01.342. The song sung by Phemios reminds her of her missing husband Odysseus, making her feel penthos alaston ‘grief unforgettable’, O.01.342. This expression signals lament, which is presented here as antithetical to the kind of kleos ‘glory’ that is heard by the audience of Phemios, who are the suitors of Penelope. The personal involvement of Penelope in the song of Odysseus is what makes the kleos that she hears different from the kleos that the suitors hear. For her the kleos contains penthos, while for them it does not. Relevant here is the meaning of the “speaking name” (nomen loquens) of Phemios: the adjectival Phēmios is derived from the noun phēmē, which can be interpreted as meaning ‘something said that means more than what is meant by the one who says it’. On phēmē, see the comment at O.02.035. In terms of this interpretation, Phemios is a singer whose songs mean more than what is meant by that singer.

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Telemachus argues with his mother, defending the song that is sung by the singer Phemios about misfortunes experienced by heroes in the course of seeking a successful homecoming. There is a pleasure in the hearing of such a song, Telemachus says at O.01.346–347. Evidently, he does not yet understand the personal involvement of Penelope in the story of such homecoming—or of course his own involvement—because he does not yet understand that the ultimate character in the ultimate story of homecoming will be Odysseus himself. Telemachus speaks positively about the reception of the song of homecoming as sung by the singer Phemios. He says that the audience gives glory to the song, and the verb that is used in his wording is epi-kleiein at O.01.351, which I translate as ‘turn [deeds] into glory [kleos] and pass it on’. I render the epi- of epi-kleiein here as ‘and pass it on’, in the sense that epi- conveys the idea of ‘in addition to, on top of’, supplementing -kleiein in the sense of ‘turn [deeds] into glory [kleos]’. The wording of Telemachus is justifiable to the extent that the glory of heroes and gods as produced by the singer produces also glory for the song itself as received by the audience. That is to say, this verb epi-kleiein ‘turn [deeds] into glory [kleos] and pass it on’ is reciprocal: there is not only the giving of glory by the audience to the song sung by the singer but there is also the giving of glory by the singer to the song that he sings. Thus it is justifiable for Telemachus to say that the greatest glory goes to the aoidē ‘song‘, O.01.351, that is neōtatē ‘newest’, O.01.352, since the glory to be transmitted must be the latest glory to be received. The reception by the most recent audience must be decisively successful. What Telemachus does not yet understand, however, is that the most recent audience for an ongoing song of homecoming will be not the suitors but the ultimate audience of the Odyssey. The audience of the Odyssey will be the definitive audience for the reception of this ongoing song of homecoming. And, for that ultimate audience of the Odyssey, the ultimate hero of the song of homecoming will be Odysseus himself.

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Here we see for the first time the leader of the suitors. His name, Anti-noos, is antithetical to the identity of Odysseus as an exponent of nóos ‘mind’, which stands for that hero’s special way of thinking in the Odyssey. On the nóos of Odysseus, see already the comment on O.01.003.

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This epithet of Ēōs, goddess of the dawn, has a prefix ēri-, meaning ‘early’. See the comment at O.19.320.

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The mentoring of Telemachus by Athena continues. First the goddess was Méntēs. Now she will become Méntōr to the young hero. Through the mentorship of the goddess, Telemachus modulates into mental connectivity: he will no longer be disconnected from the epic legacy of his father. As he boards the ship that will take him to Pylos, he is ready to connect with the Odyssey in progress.

draft js image error Telemachus with Athena as Mentor (1810). Drawing by John Flaxman. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

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Thanks to mentoring by the goddess Athena, Telemachus takes the initiative of assembling an assembly.

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As we see from the context here, the agorē ‘assembly’ that is about to take place now in Ithaca is the first assembly to be assembled since Odysseus had left for Troy twenty years earlier.

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The verb piphauskesthai ‘say formally’, referring here to what is being spoken in the agorē ‘assembly’, can be compared with the active form of the verb, piphauskein ‘say formally’, as it is used at I.18.500 in the context of describing what is happening at an agorē ‘assembly’, I.18.497, which is the context for the litigation scene as depicted on the Shield of Achilles. Whatever is spoken at an assembly like the one that is now in progress, O.02.032, can qualify as dēmion ‘of the community [dēmos]’ if it is public business, not private business. If whatever is spoken at the assembly qualifies as public business, then it is the business of the dēmos. See also the comment on O.02.080. On dēmos as ‘community, district’, see O.01.103; see also I.05.077–078.

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The speech of the old man Aiguptios, O.02.025–034, is described by the Master Narrator as a phēmē ‘something said’, O.02.035. This translation ‘something said’ does not fully capture, however, the deeper meaning of the word, which is something like this: something said that means more than what is meant by the one who says it. Such a deeper meaning is made explicit at O.20.100 and O.20.105. See the comment at O.20.098–121, [HR]3§23. This interpretation of the meaning of phēmē is relevant to the meaning of the “speaking name” (nomen loquens) of Phemios the singer: the adjectival Phēmios is a derivative of the noun phēmē. Accordingly, Phemios is a singer whose songs mean more than what is meant by that singer. See the comment on O.01.342.

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The context here shows that a speaker in an assembly holds the skēptron ‘scepter’ when it is his turn to speak. See I.01.015 and the cross-references there.

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See the comment on O.02.032.

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This form is a back-formation from nēpios ‘disconnected’, becoming that negative word’s positive alternative. A typical source of connectivity is the father in relation to his son. Full argumentation by Edmunds 1990 | 2016.

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Here the word refers generally to the cosmic sanction of the immortals in reaction to injustices committed by mortals. On mēnis ‘anger’ as cosmic sanction in general, I refer to the definitive work of Muellner 1996.

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The gesture here of throwing the scepter to the ground is comparable with what happens at I.01.233–246. See the comment there.

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This speech is most noteworthy for its incorporation of the myth about the continual weaving and unweaving of the web of Penelope.

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The intent of Penelope to outwit the suitors by way of her continual weaving and unweaving of her web is described in terms of her qualities of nóos ‘mind’, O.02.092.

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The mental feats of Penelope are described here as noēmata ‘feats of the mind [nóos]’ that are incomparable to any other woman’s feats. The comparison is expressed by way of the adjective homoio- ‘similar to, same as’ (further analysis in MoM 2§12). This adjective homoio- ‘similar to, same as’ can be used in comparisons that express rhetorically the incomparability of the referent, as here.

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The oncoming pēma ‘pain’ is pictured here as a boulder that breaks off from mountainous heights overhead and starts rolling downward from above, ever increasing in speed as it nears ground zero: only when the boulder has reached a level plain does it finally stop ‘rolling’, as expressed by the verb kulindesthai. For other instances of such an image, see the comment on I.11.347.

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Athena’s idea of conducting Telemachus on a journey to Pylos and Sparta is introduced, as we saw, already at O.01.088–095. See the comment there. Here too at O.02.212–218, as there, nostos in the sense of ‘song of homecoming’ is the direct object of the verb punthanesthai ‘learn’, O.02.215, and also the direct object of the verb akouein ‘hear’, O.02.218. Elsewhere too in the Odyssey, we see nostos as the direct object of punthanesthai ‘learn’: O.02.264, O.02.360, O.04.714. Also of akouein ‘hear’: O.01.094, O.01.287, O.02.360. Further, such nostos as ‘song of homecoming’ is linked with kleos ‘glory’ (of poetry), as at least indirectly at O.02.217 here.

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Athena speaks as mentor and as Méntōr.

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The meaning of the name Méntōr, ‘he who connects mentally’, is relevant to the plot of the Odyssey: see the comments on O.01.088–089.

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On this back-formation from nēpios ‘disconnected’, see again the comment on O.02.047.

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From the context here, we can see that the dēmos ‘community’ of Ithaca is populated not only by the families of the suitors.

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In the exchange between Athena and Telemachus here, the role of the goddess as mentor of the young hero converges with her role as the hero Méntōr. Once again here, nostos ‘homecoming, song of homecoming’ is the direct object of punthanesthai ‘learn’ at O.02.264.

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The idea that menos ‘mental power’, O.02.271, has been instilled into Telemachus by his father is conveyed here by the verb stazein, which literally means ‘drip’. We may compare line 35 of Archilochus F 196A (ed. West), where menos refers explicitly to ejaculated semen. For other references to male arousal by way of words referring to mental power, see Nagy 1974:267–268. [[GN 2017.03.08.]]

menos ‘mental power’

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We see here at O.02.282 an occurrence that is rare in Homeric diction: dikaios in the sense of ‘righteous’, derived from dikē in the absolutized sense of ‘justice, righteousness’.

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Telemachus admits here that he had been nēpios ‘disconnected’ in the immediate context of asserting that he is now no longer so. What made him grow up, so to speak? The overall context shows that it was the mentorship of the goddess Athena.

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The verb lōbeuein ‘say words of insult’ is parallel to kertomeîn ‘say words of insult’, on which see the comment at I.02.256.

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This word may be related to the name Larikhos: Nagy 2015.10.01 §54.

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Odysseus’ double frame of reference – unlike Achilles, he gets both kleos and nostos – in the context of analyzing the application of the phrase “best of the Achaeans” to him

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On nostos ‘homecoming, song of homecoming’ as the direct object of both punthanesthai ‘learn’ and akouein ‘hear’, see again the comment on O.01.088–095.

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reference to the importance of δέ at the beginning of a rhapsodic performance. Argues that separation of μέν and δέ does not signify that book-divisions are a product of the Hellenistic age but of rhapsodic practices

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At O.02.434, which is the last verse of Rhapsody 2, there is a clause featuring the particle men (μέν). And now at O.03.001, which is the first verse of Rhapsody 3, there is a clause featuring the particle de (δέ). It can be argued that such divisions are typical of rhapsodic practice, where one performing rhapsode (rhapsōidos) could leave off performing after he finishes with the men-part of a syntactical construction while the next rhapsode, in relay, could take up the performance by restarting with the following de-part. See the comment at I.09.001–003 / anchor comment on a Rhapsody as one of 24 units of performance.

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Aided by the goddess Athena, young Telemachus becomes an ideal guest for his host, the elderly Nestor. Telemachus dearly needs the diplomatic skills of Athena, since Nestor is a prime devotee of the god Poseidon, who is not only a major rival of the goddess but also a relentless antagonist of Odysseus. Nestor’s stories about the travels of the Achaeans as they try to make their way back home after the Trojan War will help connect Telemachus with the ultimate story of his father’s own homecoming.

draft js image error Nestor’s Sacrifice (1805). Engraving after John Flaxman (1755-1826). Purchased as part of the Oppé Collection with assistance from the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund 1996. Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported).

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See the comments on I.01.423–425 and I.04.048.

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The derivation of the noun dais ‘feast; division of portions (of meat); sacrifice’ from the verb daiesthai ‘feast; divide(meat), apportion, distribute’ is re-enacted here by way of a figura etymologica: that is to say, the combination of the verb here with the noun as its direct object actually re-enacts the etymology.

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On the collocation of kleos ‘glory’ (of poetry) with nostos ‘homecoming, song of homecoming’ in the context of references to the glorification of Odysseus in the Odyssey, see the comments on O.01.088–095; also O.02.212–218 and O.02.360.

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Here is the first mention of Antilokhos, son of Nestor, in the Odyssey. On the importance of this figure in the Iliad, see I.08.078–117 / anchor comment on Nestor’s entanglement and the poetics of evocation. See also the comments on I.09.057–058.

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Metaphors of fabric-work can have negative connotations, as here.

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This adjective homoio- ‘similar to, same as’ and its verb homoioûn ‘compare’ can be used in comparisons that express rhetorically the incomparability of the referent, as here. See also I.02.553–554 and I.10.437.

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Nestor’s story about the nostos ‘homecoming’ of the Achaeans’ is in and of itself a ‘song of / about homecoming’, as we see from the description of this nostos as lugros ‘disastrous’, an adjective that is used here as an epithet of the narrative subject. See the comment on O.01.326–327, where nostos ‘homecoming, song of homecoming’ at O.01.326 is described as lugros ‘disastrous’ at O.01.327. See also the comment on I.01.002, where the adjective oulomenē ‘disastrous’, describing mēnis ‘anger’ in the previous verse, I.01.001, is likewise an epithet of the narrative subject. In that case, the narrative subject is the mēnis ‘anger’ of Achilles. Similarly in the context of the ‘disastrous [lugros] homecoming [nostos]’ of the Achaeans here at O.03.130, there is a foregrounding of mēnis ‘anger’, at O.03.135. In this case, the anger emanates from the goddess Athena herself.

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Epitome from Nagy 2015§§69–75:

[§69] In Odyssey O.03.130–183, old Nestor is telling a tale to young Telemachus about the various homecomings of the Achaeans after they succeeded in conquering the city of Troy. (Nestor’s tales of homecoming in Odyssey 3 reflect poetic traditions of great antiquity, which are analyzed most incisively and intuitively by Frame 2009:180–193.) The tale is told from the perspective of Nestor’s own experiences. My point of departure is a detail at O.03.169, where Nestor says that he and a group of his fellow Achaeans stopped over at the island of Lesbos on their way home from Troy, O.03.169. One time before and one time after their stopover at Lesbos, Nestor and his group participated in making sacrifices. The story about the first of these two sacrifices, as we will see [§75], contradicts a story in Song 17 of Sappho, which tells about a single sacrifice that involves Agamemnon and Menelaos.

[§70] The first of the two sacrifices mentioned by Nestor in Odyssey 3 takes place at the island of Tenedos, O.03.159, which is situated directly to the west of Troy. By contrast, the island of Lesbos is further away, to the southwest of the Trojan coastland. In Odyssey 3, the divine recipients of the sacrifice at Tenedos are designated only in general terms, as theoi ‘the gods’, O.03.159. Then, continuing their voyage back home from Troy, Nestor and his group set sail from Tenedos, and their next stopover, as already noted, is the island of Lesbos, O.03.169.

[§71] After their stopover at Lesbos, O.03.169, Nestor and his group continued their sea voyage back home. Next, they sailed over the open sea, with no more stopovers, until they reached the city of Geraistos, at the southern tip of the island of Euboea, O.03.177. By now the homecoming of this group of heroes was nearly complete, since the island of Euboea is situated right next to the European mainland. And here, at Euboea, Nestor participated in the second of the two sacrifices to which I have been referring, O.03.178–179. This second sacrifice involving Nestor was meant as a signal of thanksgiving for the successful homecoming of his group of Achaean voyagers, and the divine recipient of the sacrifice here is specified as the god Poseidon, O.03.178, whom Nestor and his fellow Achaeans honored by slaughtering, according to his tale, a multitude of bulls, O.03.178–179.

[§72] So, the second sacrifice attended by Nestor and his group, which took place on the island of Euboea, was a success. But the first sacrifice, which he had also attended and which had taken place on the island of Tenedos, was a failure. The failure, as narrated by Nestor in Odyssey 3, can be linked with a quarrel that broke out, evidently in the context of the feasting that followed this first sacrifice. The quarrel is marked by the word eris ‘strife’, O.03.160. Compare the words erizein ‘have strife’ at I.01.006 and eris ‘strife’ at I.01.008, with reference to the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon. In the case of the eris ‘strife’ at O.03.160, who quarreled with whom? The narrative answers the question: the two heroes who quarreled with each other were Nestor and Odysseus, O.03.161–166.

[§73] This quarrel between Nestor and Odysseus, O.03.161–166, cannot be understood without first considering an earlier quarrel that is central to the narration of Odyssey 3, and the narrator is once again Nestor. According to the tale as Nestor tells it, the two Sons of Atreus, Agamemnon and Menelaos, had quarreled with each other right after their victory at Troy. In this case as well, quarrel is marked by the word eris ‘strife’, O.03.136. And, as a result of this quarrel, all the Achaeans had split into two groups, so that half of them followed Menelaos as he sailed off from Troy to Tenedos while the other half stayed with Agamemnon at Troy, O.03.130–158. In terms of this story, Agamemnon intended to perform a sacrifice of one hundred cattle to the goddess Athena before leaving Troy, O.03.143–144, but Menelaos, leading half of the Achaeans, had sailed off together with Nestor and Odysseus and Diomedes before such a sacrifice could take place, O.03.153–154. It was only after Menelaos and his half of the Achaeans stopped over at the nearby island of Tenedos that they arranged for their own sacrifice there, O.03.159. And it was there at Tenedos that a second quarrel broke out—the quarrel between Nestor and Odysseus, O.03.161–166.

[§74] This second quarrel in the tale told by Nestor in Odyssey 3 resulted in a splitting of the group that had sided with Menelaos after the original splitting of all the Achaeans into one separate group siding with Menelaos and another separate group siding with Agamemnon. What resulted from the new split after the quarrel between Nestor and Odysseus was that Odysseus, together with his followers, now sailed off from Tenedos back to Troy in order to rejoin Agamemnon there, O.03.160–164, while Nestor together with Diomedes sailed on from their stopover at the island of Tenedos and arrived with their followers at the next stopover, at the island of Lesbos, O.03.165–169. When Nestor and Diomedes were already at Lesbos, O.03.169, they were joined there by Menelaos, who arrived later, O.03.168

[§75] And here I stop to highlight the contradiction between the story as told here in the Odyssey and the story as told in Song 17 of Sappho. In the Odyssey, we see that Menelaos came to Lesbos, but there is no mention here of Agamemnon. In Song 17, by contrast, it seems that both brothers came to Lesbos [Nagy 2015§50]:

|1 πλάϲιον δη μ̣[.....]...οιϲ᾿ α̣[ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣]ω |2 πότνι’ Ἦρα, ϲὰ χ[…..]ϲ̣ ̣ἐόρτ[α] |3 τὰν ἀράταν Ἀτρ[έϊδα]ι̣ π̣ό̣ηϲαν |4 τόι βαϲίληεϲ, |5 ἐκτελέϲϲαντεϲ μ[εγά]λ̣οιϲ ἀέθλοιϲ̣ |6 πρῶτα μὲν πὲρ Ἴ̣[λιον]· ἄψερον δέ̣ |7 τυίδ’ ἀπορμάθεν[τεϲ, ὄ]δ̣ο̣ν γὰρ̣ εὔρη̣[ν] |8 οὐκ ἐδ[ύναντο⌋, |9 πρὶν ϲὲ καὶ Δί’ ἀντ[ίαον] π̣εδέλθην̣ |10 καὶ Θυώναϲ ἰμε̣[ρόεντα] π̣αῖδα· |11 νῦν δὲ κ[αί..... …] ]...πόημεν |12 κὰτ τὸ πάλ̣[αιον {464|465} |13 ἄγνα καὶ κα̣[..... ὄ]χλοϲ |14 παρθέ[νων..... γ]υναίκων |15 ἀμφιϲ̣.[…] |16 μετρ’ ὀ̣λ̣[ολύγαϲ].

|1 Close by, …, |2 O Queen [potnia] Hērā, … your […] festival [eortā], |3 which, vowed-in-prayer [arâsthai], the Sons of Atreus did arrange [poieîn] |4 for you, kings that they were, |5 after first having completed great labors [aethloi], |6 around Troy, and, next [apseron], |7 after having set forth to come here [tuide], since finding the way |8 was not possible for them |9 until they would approach you (Hērā) and Zeus lord of suppliants [antiaos] |10 and (Dionysus) the lovely son of Thyone. |11 And now we are arranging [poieîn] [the festival], |12 in accordance with the ancient way […] |13 holy [agna] and […] a throng [okhlos] |14 of girls [parthenoi] […] and women [gunaikes] |15 on either side … |16 the measured sound of ululation [ololūgā].

Sappho Song 17.1–16

On the reading τόι (with the acute accent preserved in P.GC inv. 105 fr. 2) , see Nagy 2015§50.

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The mēnis ‘anger’ of the goddess Athena, O.03.135, is provoked by a failure, on the part of some of the Argives=Achaeans, to be dikaioi ‘righteous’ and noēmones ‘mindful [= having nóos]’, O.03.133–134. The wording of Nestor is diplomatic in avoiding the mention of specific heroes as deserving blame for a failure in dikē ‘justice, righteousness’ and nóos ‘mind, mindfulness’. Among those heroes who are implicated, even without being named, is Odysseus himself, so that even this hero may be a target here of the mēnis ‘anger’ of Athena.

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Epitome from Nagy 2017§78:

Here we see that Odysseus together with a sub-group of Achaean followers had already sailed from Tenedos back to Troy in order to rejoin Agamemnon, who was still there, O.03.160–164, while Nestor and Diomedes together with their Achaean followers sailed on from their stopover at the island of Tenedos and arrived at the next stopover, which was the island of Lesbos, O.03.165–169. There, at Lesbos, Nestor and Diomedes were joined by Menelaos, who arrived later, O.03.168–169.

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|168 ὀψὲ δὲ δὴ μετὰ νῶϊ κίε ξανθὸς Μενέλαος, |169 ἐν Λέσβῳ δ’ ἔκιχεν δολιχὸν πλόον ὁρμαίνοντας|168

He came late, golden-haired [xanthos] Menelaos did, after the two of us [= Nestor and Diomedes]. |169 It was at Lesbos that he [= Menelaos] caught up with us, as we were planning the long part of our sea voyage.

O.03.168–169

Nestor and Diomedes are already at Lesbos, and there they are joined by Menelaos, who arrived later. What follows is an epitome of Nagy 2017§§101–103, 105–106:

[§101] I interpret the wording of O.03.168–169 to mean that Menelaos arrived too late to participate fully in a sacrifice of one hundred cattle at Lesbos. And the place for this sacrifice to happen would have been the precinct of Hērā on that island. From the standpoint of the local myth that originated from Lesbos, as I have argued with reference to Song 17 of Sappho (Nagy 2015§§51–67), both Agamemnon and Menelaos had announced-in-prayer, already at Troy, the arrangement of a festival for Hērā at Lesbos, and what was wished-for in return was to find the best possible way to achieve a safe homecoming from Troy. So, in terms of my argument, what was announced-in-prayer was the performing of a sacrifice as the centerpiece of the festival to be arranged, but only one of the Sons of Atreus did his part in at least trying to make the sacrifice a success. That was Agamemnon. As for the other Son, Menelaos, he somehow failed to do his part. And, in terms of my reconstruction, it was because Menelaos arrived too late for the sacrifice. Similarly, as we will see in Odyssey 4, Menelaos arrived too late in his homecoming: by the time he got home, he was too late to save his brother—and he was too late even to avenge his brother’s death, since Orestes, son of Agamemnon, had already done so by killing Aigisthos, O.04.546–547.

[§102] This theme of failing by being late is an essential piece of my overall reconstruction of the myth about a sacrifice of one hundred cattle at Lesbos—a sacrifice that is featured as the climax of the festival that was announced-in-prayer by Agamemnon and Menelaos in Song 17 of Sappho (again, Nagy 2015§§51–67). In terms of this reconstruction, Agamemnon sailed to the island and arranged to sacrifice one hundred cattle to Hērā there, but Menelaos joined him only after the sacrifice was already in progress, since he did not arrive at Lesbos on time. In terms of this reconstruction, the quarrel between the Sons of Atreus, Agamemnon and Menelaos, must have happened during the feast that followed the sacrifice at Lesbos, just as the quarrel between Nestor and Odysseus happened at the feast that followed the sacrifice at Tenedos.

[§103] Menelaos seems to be idiosyncratic in his arrivals at sacrifices. For a striking example, see the comment on I.02.402–429. In that passage, we see a mental link between Menelaos and Agamemnon, allowing one brother to read the mind of the other.

[§105] At Lesbos, by contrast, it seems that the mental link between the brothers has somehow been broken. That is why Menelaos fails to arrive in time for the festival. And now the quarrel between Menelaos and Agamemnon ensues. So, who is to blame? Perhaps it was Menelaos, who was late. Or perhaps it was Agamemnon, who might have forgotten to invite Menelaos, assuming that his brother was still reading his mind.

[§106] But what was the quarrel about, anyway? Here I must add one last relevant detail to be found in Odyssey 3. As Nestor is recounting the moment when Menelaos arrives late at Lesbos, O.03.168–169, he himself adds the detail that I have in mind here: the fact is, Nestor and Diomedes and the other Achaeans who were there at Lesbos were already ‘deliberating’, O.03.169 (ὁρμαίνονταϲ), about two alternative ways of continuing their sea voyage. I argue that, in the version of the myth originating from Lesbos, Agamemnon was also part of these deliberations, and then the latecomer Menelaos joined in as well. I must stress that, although Menelaos was late for the sacrifice at Lesbos, he would have been there for the feasting that happened after the sacrifice. That was when, in terms of my reconstruction, the deliberations took place—and that was when the quarrel between the Sons of Atreus broke out in the version of the story that originated from Lesbos.

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What follows is an epitome of Nagy 2017§§107–108:

[§107] In the deliberations, as narrated in Odyssey 3, about two alternative ways for the Achaeans to sail home after their conquest of Troy, one of the two ways was to take the sea route north of Chios, thus venturing into the open sea and heading straight for the island of Euboea, O.03.170–171. The alternative way was to take the sea route south of Chios, O.03.172. That was the safer way. Nestor goes on to say that he and Diomedes and their followers, before deciding which sea route to take, had consulted a divinity, not named, who advised that they should head straight for the distant island of Euboea, thus taking the more direct sea route, O.03.173–178. In this version of the story as transmitted in Odyssey 3, Menelaos and his followers sailed along with Nestor and Diomedes, Ο.03.276–277. Or, to say it more precisely, Menelaos sailed with them at least as far as Cape Sounion.

[§108] Here I reconstruct another aspect of the alternative version of the story, originating from Lesbos, that told about the deliberations following the sacrifice performed by Agamemnon at Lesbos. After the deliberations, Agamemnon did not sail along with Nestor and Diomedes, and, instead, he took the more indirect sea route after he left Lesbos, while Menelaos, unlike Agamemnon, had taken the more direct sea route, choosing the same way that was chosen by Nestor. In terms of this alternative version, I argue, the deliberations about choosing between more direct and less direct sea routes led to a quarrel between Agamemnon and Menelaos, who disagreed about which way was the right way. I see an irony built into the idea that the setting for the quarrel would have been the sacrifice at Lesbos—and that Menelaos had been late in arriving at that ritual event. And, as I have already noted [§101], he will also be late—eight years too late—in arriving back home, O.04.546–547, even though he had chosen the more direct route from Lesbos.

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variants for I.09.653 [MRBTP: scholia]

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The syntax of the wording at O.03.205–207 indicates that Telemachus is on the verge of giving up hope, but the fuller use of comparable syntax in the wording of Nestor at O.03.218–224 reaffirms the hope. Telemachus uses a curtailed form of the syntax and then overtly says that his wish is impossible—only to be corrected by Nestor, who uses a full form. Telemachus wishes that the gods could give him the dunamis ‘power’ to kill the suitors: αἲ γάρ ἐμοὶ τοσσήνδε θεοὶ δύναμιν περιθεῖεν ‘if only the gods would grant me a power so great’, O.03.205. Then, instead of giving a premise as grounds of hope, he gives up hope by claiming that the gods have granted such a power neither to him nor to his father, O.03.208–209. At this point Nestor responds by resorting to a full form of the idiom: εἰ γάρ σ’ ὣς ἐθέλοι φιλέειν γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη | ὡς τότ’ Ὀδυσσῆος περικήδετο κυδαλίμοιο | δήμῳ ἔνι Τρώων ‘If only Athena with the looks of the owl would deign to love you | as surely as in those days she cared for glorious Odysseus in the district [dēmos] of Troy’, O.03.218–220. This time there is indeed a premise, there is reason to hope: if Athena does love you this much, Nestor is telling Telemachus, then the suitors will indeed be killed, O.03.223–224.

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These two negative terms hubris ‘outrage’ and atasthalo- ‘reckless’ are closely linked with each other in Homeric diction.

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On the use of this word aethloi (āthloi) ‘ordeal’ with reference to the Trojan War, see the comment on I.03.125–128.

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In the scholia for O.03.267 we see the only incontrovertible reference to Demetrius of Phaleron.

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The generic aoidos ‘singer’, as represented by the anonymous figure who is mentioned here, has the power to supervise the deeds of men and women by way of praising what is good and blaming what is bad. The aoidos that Agamemnon left behind to supervise Clytemnestra cannot be neutralized by way of removal from the scene. The aoidos does not need to see bad deeds in order to tell about them, since he can hear about them from the Muses.

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(What follows is epitomized from Nagy 2017.03.16.) Telemachus the son of Odysseus is bathed in a tub called an asaminthos, O.03.468. The bath is part of a welcoming ceremony organized by Nestor, king of Pylos, who is hosting the young prince. Telemachus is being bathed by Polykaste, youngest daughter of Nestor. After the bath, O.03.469, Telemachus proceeds to a dinner hosted by Nestor in his honor. But while he is still finishing the bath, as we see him emerging from the bathtub, Telemachus is described this way at O.03.468: ‘he [= Telemachus] emerged from the bathtub [asaminthos], looking the same as [homoios] the immortals in shape’ (ἔκ ῥ’ ἀσαμίνθου βῆ δέμας ἀθανάτοισιν ὁμοῖος). For more on homoio- in the sense of ‘same as’, see the comment on O.16.172–212.

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As Telemachus, accompanied by Peisistratos, arrives at Sparta, he finds that a wedding feast is in progress, in celebration of not one but two weddings. Menelaos, king of Sparta, is giving away his daughter in marriage to Neoptolemos, son of Achilles. She will be sent off to Neoptolemos. Meanwhile, Menelaos is also marrying off his bastard son Megapenthes.

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With the continued aid of the goddess Athena, young Telemachus now becomes an ideal guest for his new hosts, Menelaos together with Helen. The identity of Helen as a goddess becomes more evident now that she is back in Sparta. This divine identity will point to the future immortalization of the hero Menelaos by virtue of his winning back Helen as his consort.

draft js image error “The Fair Helen.” Willy Pogany (Hungarian, 1882–1955). Image via.

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We see at work here the mythological convention of naming a son after a primary heroic trait of the father, as in the case of the son of Ajax, whose name Eurusakēs means ‘the one with the wide shield [sakos]’; the meaning of this “speaking name” (nomen loquens) is made explicit in the wording of Sophocles Ajax 574–578. See also the comment on I.22.506–507 with reference to the the first of two names given to the son of Hector, Astyanax [Astuanax], I.06.403, which means ‘king [anax] of the city [astu]’. This meaning is relevant to the heroic role of the father as protecting a citadel from sieges. Such a role is expressed by the very name of Hector, Héktōr, which is an agent noun meaning ‘one who holds [ekhein]’ in the sense of ‘one who protects’. In the case of Megapenthēs, the meaning of his name as ‘the one with the great sorrow [penthos]’ is made explicit by references to the great penthos ‘sorrow’ experienced by the Achaeans in reaction to a most painful wounding of Menelaos in the context of the Trojan War, I.04.197, I.04.207. Also viewed in general are the sorrows of the Trojan War itself, which Menelaos expresses in detail at O.04.093–112. See the comment on O.04.093–116. As we will see at O.04.220–226, Helen attempts to neutralize such sorrows by drugging the wine to be poured for the feast hosted by Menelaos in honor of Telemachus: the word for this drug is nēpenthes, Ο.04.221, which can be interpreted as ‘negating sorrow [penthos]’.

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|15 ὣς οἱ μὲν δαίνυντο καθ’ ὑψερεφὲς μέγα δῶμα |16 γείτονες ἠδὲ ἔται Μενελάου κυδαλίμοιο, |17 τερπόμενοι· μετὰ δέ σφιν ἐμέλπετο θεῖος ἀοιδὸς |18 φορμίζων· δοιὼ δὲ κυβιστητῆρε κατ’ αὐτοὺς |19 μολπῆς ἐξάρχοντος ἐδίνευον κατὰ μέσσους.

|15 So they feasted throughout the big palace with its high ceilings, |16 both the neighbors and the kinsmen of glorious Menelaos, |17 and they were feeling delight [terpesthai]; in their midst sang-and-danced [melpesthai] a divine singer [aoidos], |18 playing on the special lyre [phorminx]; two special dancers [kubistētēre] among them |19 were swirling as he led [ex-arkhein] the singing-and-dancing [molpē] in their midst.

This passage provides comparative evidence for interpreting both the shorter and the longer versions of another passage, analyzed in the comment on I.18.603–604–(605–)606. As argued in that comment, a formulaic analysis of both the longer and the shorter versions of I.18.603–604–(605–)606 indicates that both versions are compatible with Homeric diction, suiting different phases in the evolution of this diction as a formulaic system.

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Aristarchus accepting the wording in these verses while rejecting the same at I.18.604-605, in the context of the analysis of the medieval manuscript tradition’s not attesting I.18.604-605, their restoration based on Athenaeus, and authentication on the basis of O.13.027-028

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Epitome from Nagy 2016.02.18§§1–4

[§1] The wording about to be quoted describes the very first impression experienced by the young hero Telemachus when he sees the splendor of the palace of Menelaos and Helen. We join the action as Telemachus and his traveling companion, the young hero Peisistratos, son of Nestor, are both being escorted into the palace of Menelaos and Helen:

|43 αὐτοὺς δ’ εἰσῆγον θεῖον δόμον. οἱ δὲ ἰδόντες |44 θαύμαζον κατὰ δῶμα διοτρεφέος βασιλῆος· |45 ὥς τε γὰρ ἠελίου αἴγλη πέλεν ἠὲ σελήνης |46 δῶμα καθ’ ὑψερεφὲς Μενελάου κυδαλίμοιο. |47 αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ τάρπησαν ὁρώμενοι ὀφθαλμοῖσιν …

|43 They were escorted inside the heavenly [theion] palace. Seeing what they were seeing, |44 they were filled with awe [thauma] as they proceeded through the palace of the king, that man whose origins are celestial. |45 There was a gleam [aiglē] there, which was like the gleam of the sun or the moon, |46 spreading throughout that palace famed for its high ceilings, that home of radiant Menelaos. |47 But then, after they had feasted their eyes on what they saw …

O.04.043–047

[§2] At this point, the story proceeds to take the visitors through a series of welcoming rituals, followed by a grand dinner arranged by Menelaos as the gracious host, O.04.047–070. And now the dinner conversation gets underway, starting with words of appreciation spoken by Telemachus and intended for Menelaos. Telemachus speaks here as a grateful guest, addressing his fellow guest Peisistratos, son of Nestor, but his words are really intended for Menelaos as the generous host. I will now quote these words of Telemachus as spoken to the son of Nestor—words that not only compliment Menelaos but also express most sincerely the young guest’s awestruck reaction to the splendor of the king’s palace:

|71 “φράζεο, Νεστορίδη, τῷ ἐμῷ κεχαρισμένε θυμῷ, |72 χαλκοῦ τε στεροπὴν κατὰ δώματα ἠχήεντα |73 χρυσοῦ τ’ ἠλέκτρου τε καὶ ἀργύρου ἠδ’ ἐλέφαντος. |74 Ζηνός που τοιήδε γ’ Ὀλυμπίου ἔνδοθεν αὐλή, |75 ὅσσα τάδ’ ἄσπετα πολλά· σέβας μ’ ἔχει εἰσορόωντα.”

|71 “I want you to notice something, son of Nestor, you who are so dear to my heart: |72 notice the flash [steropē] of bronze [khalkos] as its light pervades the echoing hall |73 and also the flash of gold and of electrum and of silver and of ivory. |74 I’m guessing that Zeus, who lives on Olympus, has such a hall inside his palace, |75 and he would have as many indescribable things as are here. A sense of holy awe [sebas] takes hold of me as I look at these things.”

O.04.071–075

[§3] What first catches the young man’s eye here is all the shining bronze he sees. And then it’s the gold, then the electrum, then the silver, and finally the ivory. But the first impression is the bronze, all that bronze. The light that he sees streaming from the bronze envelops everything with its radiance, and it’s just like heaven for the young man.

[§4] “Thought I’d died and gone to heaven.” The colloquial saying that I just quoted, which has become the title of a popular song recorded in 1991 by Bryan Adams, captures the young man’s awareness that he has just experienced something celestial. The reduced theology of this kind of imagined heaven resembles the celestial realm of the ancient Greek gods. Their ‘sky’ or ouranos, as we read at I.17.425, is traditionally visualized as ‘made of bronze’, khalkeos (χάλκεον οὐρανόν). This expression shows its own special kind of reduced theology: from out of the sky, when it’s bright, the gleam of a mighty bronze dome envelops everything on earth. Presiding over this bronze dome is the god Zeus, whose heavenly residence is called the khalkobates dō, ‘the palace with floor made of bronze’ (χαλκοβατὲς δῶ), I.01.426; I.14.173, I.21.438, I.21.505, O.08.321—a residence situated high above Mount Olympus, I.01.426, I.21.438, I.21.505. As we will see at O.07.084–090, the heavenly residence of Menelaos is comparable to the palace of Alkinoos (latinized as Alcinous), king of the Phaeacians.

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Menelaos laments here the sorrows of Trojan War, O.04.093–112, and Telemachus responds by weeping, O.04.113–116. These sorrows are accentuated by the personal involvement of heroes like Menelaos and Odysseus as main participants in the war. The very idea of lament, as signaled elsewhere by words like penthos and akhos, is seen here as an aspect of genuine narrative about the heroic world. As we are about to see, such a genuine narrative is to be contrasted with the false narrative induced by the drug nēpenthes, O.04.221, which prevents contact with the emotional world of lament. For the interpretation of nēpenthes as ‘negating sorrow [penthos]’, I refer ahead to the comment on O.04.220–226.

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On aethlos (āthlos) ‘ordeal’ in the specific sense of ‘ordeal of war’, see the comment on I.03.125–128.

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At O.04.113–116, we saw that Telemachus weeps in response to the laments of Menelaos over the sorrows of the Trojan War. And now we see at O.04.182–185 that Telemachus weeps again in response to further laments of Menelaos, whose sad words are at this point referring directly to the disappearance of Odysseus; also weeping are Helen and Menelaos himself, O.04.184–185, and Peisistratos too, O.04.186–189, who laments the death of his brother Antilokhos in the Trojan War. As we are about to see, the emotions conjured by such events as transmitted in genuine narratives about the Trojan War are to be contrasted with the absence of emotions in a false narrative induced by the drug nēpenthes, O.04.221, which prevents contact with the emotional world of lament. For the interpretation of nēpenthes as ‘negating sorrow [penthos]’, I again refer ahead to the comment on O.04.220–226.

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On the traditions surrounding the death of Antilokhos, son of Nestor and brother of Peisistratos, see the anchor comment at Ι.08.078–117 on: Nestor’s entanglement and the poetics of evocation. See also the comment on I.09.057–058.

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Before she narrates her own version of the Trojan War at O.04.235–264, Helen attempts to neutralize the sorrows experienced by those involved in the war. Most prominent among those present who had in fact been involved in the war is of course Helen’s consort Menelaos, who laments at O.04.093–112 the sorrows of the war. See the comment on O.04.093–116. Helen attempts to neutralize such sorrows by drugging the wine to be poured for the feast hosted by Menelaos in honor of Telemachus: the word for this drug is nēpenthes, Ο.04.221, which can be interpreted as ‘negating sorrow [penthos]’. So, nēpenthes is an antidote to the pain of penthos ‘sorrow’.

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The application of this epithet ‘daughter of Zeus’ to Helen is an overt reference to her divinity. On the use of Dios thugatēr / thugatēr Dios ‘daughter of Zeus’ as an epithet for goddesses, see the anchor comment at I.03.374. For more on the divinity of Helen, I epitomize from Nagy 2016.05.02§§0–4:

[§0] The picturing of Helen as a ‘daughter of Zeus’ here at O.04.227 is a most fitting description of a goddess who was already worshipped at Sparta in an era as early as the second half of the second millennium BCE—an era that marks the rise and the eventual fall of an early Greek civilization that archaeologists recognize as the Mycenaean Empire. But there is a problem with this picture: how do we square the idea of Helen as goddess of Sparta with the idea of Helen of Troy as we see her come to life in the Homeric Iliad? I hope to address this problem here by taking a second look at the idea of Helen’s ‘image-double’, the word for which in Greek was eidōlon.

[§1] Helen of Troy, as we know her in the Homeric Iliad, appears to be a woman, not a goddess. But the remarkable fact is—I spotlight its relevance from the start—that the Homeric Odyssey describes Helen here at O.04.227 by way of the epithet Dios thugatēr, which means ‘daughter of Zeus’. And I spotlight here another relevant fact that is even more remarkable: the Homeric Iliad describes Helen as Dios ekgegauia ‘daughter of Zeus’ at I.03.199, I.03.418, and the same epithet occurs also at O.04.184, O.04.219, O.23.218. But the most remarkable relevant fact of them all is that Dios thugatēr ‘daughter of Zeus’, as we see this epithet deployed elsewhere not only in the Iliad but also in the Odyssey, can be used only with reference to goddesses: Aphrodite at I.03.374 and I.05.131 and I.05.312, Athena at I.02.548 and I.04.128 and I.04.515, Artemis at O.20.061, Persephone at O.11.217, Ate at I.19.091, and the Muses at I.02.491–492 (plural) and at O.01.010 (singular). These and other facts to be brought up later lead me to argue that, although Helen appears to be a woman and not a goddess in the Iliad, she is still a goddess. And I argue further that, despite appearances as poetically created in the Iliad, Helen is recognized even there as a goddess. In terms of my argument, then, Helen is recognized as a goddess not only in Sparta but also in the Troy or ‘Ilion’ of the Iliad, the name of which epic means of course ‘the song of Ilion’. And she is a goddess in ‘the song of Ilion’ precisely because she is Helen of Sparta.

[§2] Someone may object that, even if it is a fact that you have Zeus as your father, this fact alone is not enough to make you a goddess or a god. Your mother must also be a goddess. In other words, you have to have two divine immortals as your biological parents in order to be worshipped as an immortal divinity in your own right. After all, as I myself have argued in H24H 0§5, the dominant gene in the genetic code of ancient Greek mythmaking is mortality while the recessive gene is immortality, not the other way around. In other words, if the family tree that produced you includes even one solitary mortal ancestor, that will be enough to make you mortal as well—no matter how many immortal ancestors grace your genealogy. So, what about Helen’s mother in Sparta? If she were a goddess, then the status of Helen as a goddess in her own right would be a given.

[§3] In one version of the surviving myths about Helen, the mother of Helen is in fact a goddess, named Nemesis (Cypria fragment 7 ed. Allen, by way of Athenaeus 8.334b–d). In terms of this version, then, there is no question about the divinity of Helen. But things are more complicated. There are also other versions, native even to Sparta, where the mother of Helen is not Nemesis but Leda, as we read in the wording of a Spartan song dramatized by Aristophanes in the Lysistrata (line 1314). And this Leda, as we are about to see, is a mortal woman who is impregnated by Zeus. So, I am faced with a problem here. In terms of my own argumentation concerning mortality as the dominant gene, as it were, I should expect the mortality of Leda as mother to undo the divinity of Helen as daughter of Zeus. In other words, even the paternity of immortal Zeus would not be enough to cancel the mortality of a mortal mother.

[§4] But Leda is no ordinary mortal mother, since her impregnation by Zeus produces not only Helen but also two sons who are twins, commonly known in English by their Latin names Castor and Pollux—Kastōr and Poludeukēs in the original Greek—who are also known as the Dioskouroi, meaning ‘sons of Zeus’ in Greek. See the comment on I.03.237. I argue that the mythological identity of Helen as a goddess at Sparta can best be understood by contemplating the mythological identity of these two brothers of hers, the Dioskouroi.

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These verses, cited by Herodotus 2.116.1–117.1 derive from a narrative tradition that indicates more than one stopover for Paris=Alexandros and Helen after her abduction/elopement from Sparta. I epitomize here from HPC 75–79 [= I§§184–187]]:

Herodotus makes a point of distinguishing Homer from what he describes as the poet of the Cypria, and, in making this distinction, he actually quotes a passage from the Homeric Iliad to prove his point (Herodotus 2.116.1–2.117.1):

Δοκέει δέ μοι καὶ ῞Ομηρος τὸν λόγον τοῦτον πυθέσθαι· ἀλλ’, οὐ γὰρ ὁμοίως ἐς τὴν ἐποποιίην εὐπρεπὴς ἦν τῷ ἑτέρῳ τῷ περ ἐχρήσατο, [ἐς ὃ] μετῆκε αὐτόν, δηλώσας ὡς καὶ τοῦτον ἐπίσταιτο τὸν λόγον. Δῆλον δέ, κατά περ ἐποίησε ἐν Ἰλιάδι (καὶ οὐδαμῇ ἄλλῃ ἀνεπόδισε ἑωυτόν) πλάνην τὴν Ἀλεξάνδρου, ὡς ἀπηνείχθη ἄγων Ἑλένην τῇ τε δὴ ἄλλῃ πλαζόμενος καὶ ὡς ἐς Σιδῶνα τῆς Φοινίκης ἀπίκετο. Ἐπιμέμνηται δὲ αὐτοῦ ἐν Διομήδεος Ἀριστηίῃ· λέγει δὲ τὰ ἔπεα ὧδε·

ἔνθ’ ἔσαν οἱ πέπλοι παμποίκιλοι, ἔργα γυναικῶν

Σιδονίων, τὰς αὐτὸς Ἀλέξανδρος θεοειδὴς

ἤγαγε Σιδονίηθεν, ἐπιπλὼς εὐρέα πόντον,

τὴν ὁδὸν ἣν Ἑλένην περ ἀνήγαγεν εὐπατέρειαν.

[I.06.289–292]

Ἐπιμέμνηται δὲ καὶ ἐν Ὀδυσσείῃ ἐν τοῖσδε τοῖσι ἔπεσι·

τοῖα Διὸς θυγάτηρ ἔχε φάρμακα μητιόεντα,

ἐσθλά, τά οἱ Πολύδαμνα πόρεν Θῶνος παράκοιτις

Αἰγυπτίη, τῇ πλεῖστα φέρει ζείδωρος ἄρουρα

φάρμακα, πολλὰ μὲν ἐσθλὰ μεμιγμένα, πολλὰ δὲ λυγρά.

[O.04.227–230]

Καὶ τάδε ἕτερα πρὸς Τηλέμαχον Μενέλεως λέγει·

Αἰγύπτῳ μ’ ἔτι δεῦρο θεοὶ μεμαῶτα νέεσθαι

ἔσχον, ἐπεὶ οὔ σφιν ἔρεξα τεληέσσας ἑκατόμβας.

[O.04.351–352]

Ἐν τούτοισι τοῖσι ἔπεσι δηλοῖ ὅτι ἠπίστατο τὴν ἐς Αἴγυπτον Ἀλεξάνδρου πλάνην· ὁμουρέει γὰρ ἡ Συρίη Αἰγύπτῳ, οἱ δὲ Φοίνικες, τῶν ἐστι ἡ Σιδών, ἐν τῇ Συρίῃ οἰκέουσι. Κατὰ ταῦτα δὲ τὰ ἔπεα καὶ τόδε [τὸ χωρίον] οὐκ ἥκιστα ἀλλὰ μάλιστα δηλοῖ ὅτι οὐκ Ὁμήρου τὰ Κύπρια ἔπεά ἐστι ἀλλ’ ἄλλου τινός· ἐν μὲν γὰρ τοῖσι Κυπρίοισι εἴρηται ὡς τριταῖος ἐκ Σπάρτης Ἀλέξανδρος ἀπίκετο ἐς τὸ Ἴλιον ἄγων Ἑλένην, εὐαέϊ τε πνεύματι χρησάμενος καὶ θαλάσσῃ λείῃ· ἐν δὲ Ἰλιάδι λέγει ὡς ἐπλάζετο ἄγων αὐτήν. Ὅμηρος μέν νυν καὶ τὰ Κύπρια ἔπεα χαιρέτω.

I think that Homer was aware of this story [= the story of Helen in Egypt]. But, because it [= this story] was not as appropriate for epic composition as was the other one [= the other story] that he used, he omitted it, though he made it clear that he was aware of this story [= the story of Helen in Egypt] as well. It is clear on the basis of the way he composed in the Iliad (and nowhere else has he [= Homer] retraced his steps to this) the detour of Alexandros [= Paris]—how he [= Paris], as he was bringing Helen, was blown off course and was detoured in various places and then how he reached Sidon in Phoenicia. He [= Homer] mentions the story [of Helen in Egypt] in the part about the greatest deeds of Diomedes. And the epic words he says are as follows.

There they were, the peploi, completely pattern-woven [poikiloi], the work of women

from Sidon, whom Alexandros [= Paris] himself, the godlike,

had brought home [to Troy] from the land of Sidon, sailing over the vast sea,

on the very same journey as the one he took when he brought back home [to Troy] also Helen, the one who is descended from the most noble father.

[I.06.289–292]

He [= Homer] mentions it [= the story of Helen in Egypt] in the Odyssey also, in these epic words:

Such magical things she had, the daughter of Zeus,

things of good outcome, which to her did Polydamna give, wife of Thon.

She was Egyptian. For her, many were the things produced by the life-giving earth,

magical things—many good mixtures and many baneful ones.

[O.04.227–230]

And these other things are said to Telemachus by Menelaos:

I was eager to return here, but the gods still held me in Egypt,

Since I had not sacrificed entire hecatombs [hekatombai] to them.

[O.04.351–352]

In these epic verses the Poet makes clear that he knew of the detour of Alexandros [= Paris] to Egypt; for Syria borders on Egypt, and the Phoenicians whose territory is Sidon dwell in Syria. In terms of these epic verses, this shows most clearly that the epic of the Cypria is not by Homer but by someone else. For in the Cypria it is said that on the third day after setting sail from Sparta Alexandros [= Paris] arrived in Troy bringing Helen, having made good use of a favorable wind and smooth seas. In the Iliad, on the other hand, he [= Homer] says that he [= Paris] was detoured as he was bringing her [= Helen]. So much for Homer and the epic of the Cypria.

(A note on Herodotus 2.116.4–5.) I question the judgment of modern editors who bracket sections 4 and 5 of Herodotus 2.116. Granted, the topic in these sections is the detour of Menelaos and Helen in Egypt after the war at Troy, not the detour of Paris and Helen before the war. But these passages are relevant to what Herodotus says thereafter (2.118–119) about Helen in Egypt after the war. Herodotus is making the point that there are other Homeric stories about Helen in Egypt, whereas there are no other Homeric stories about Helen in Phoenicia.

I now offer a paraphrase of the arguments made by Herodotus here at 2.116.1–2.117.1:

In a non-Homeric version of an epic called the Cypria (a version known to Herodotus but not to us), it is said that Paris and Helen sailed to Troy without making any detour. There is an alternative version in the Homeric Iliad, and Herodotus quotes the relevant verses. In this version, it is said that Paris and Helen did make a detour: they went to Phoenicia before they went to Troy. On the basis of an Egyptian story about Paris and Helen, Herodotus goes on to argue that they went to Egypt as well as Phoenicia, and that Homer knew it. After all, Egypt is next to Phoenicia. But the problem is, Homer later elided the story of Helen in Egypt as inappropriate. So the Iliad tells the story about Helen in Troy, not the story about Helen in Egypt. And the Odyssey follows the Iliad in accepting the story of Helen in Troy. Both epics, however, show traces of the story of Helen in Egypt, though the traces in the Iliad are only indirect.

Next, I offer a critical analysis of this paraphrase:

Herodotus considers the stories about detours in Egypt and Phoenicia within the larger context of stories about Helen in Egypt. Upon retelling an Egyptian version of a story about a detour of Paris and Helen in Egypt after he abducted her from Sparta (2.112–115), Herodotus says that Homer must have known that story (2.116.1). Then, in order to show that this is so, Herodotus offers proof (2.116–117), quoting I.06.289–292 and O.04.227–230 together with O.04.351–352. The passage I.06.289–292 concerns the detour of Paris and Helen before the war at Troy while the passages O.04.227–230 and O.04.351–352 concern the detour of Menelaos and Helen after the war. The first passage is meant as indirect proof that the story of Helen in Egypt was recognized by Homer in the Iliad while the other two passages are meant as direct proof that the story of Helen in Egypt was recognized by Homer in the Odyssey. The passages from the Odyssey are relevant to what Herodotus goes on to argue about the story of Helen in Egypt: he finds that this story is more believable than the story of Helen in Troy (2.118–119). In the Egyptian version, Paris is forced to leave Helen behind in Egypt after the two of them are detoured there (2.115.5). That is where Menelaos finds her after the war. According to this Egyptian version, then, Helen never went to Troy. For Herodotus, this version makes more sense than the Homeric version that dominates the Iliad and Odyssey.

I conclude by considering again the fact that Herodotus distinguishes Homer as the poet of the Iliad from the poet of the Cypria. This fact shows that the historian is familiar with the Panathenaic Homer. That is, he thinks of Homer as the poet of the two epics performed at the Panathenaia, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Nevertheless, Herodotus does not presuppose that everyone thinks this way. That is why he makes a point of establishing the distinction in the first place. He speaks of the poet of the Cypria as someone who may be considered to be Homer by others, but Herodotus knows better.

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Helen presents her story about the sorrows of the Trojan War as an entertainment, marked by the the programmatic word terpesthai ‘feel delight’, O.04.239. Evidently, the drug nēpenthes has occluded the sorrow of her listeners. See the comment on O.04.220–226.

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Here, unlike elsewhere, the cognitive act of recognizing Odysseus, as marked by the verb anagignōskein ‘recognize’, does not require the explicit use of the word sēma ‘sign’.

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Helen refers to her elopement with Paris=Alexandros as an atē ‘aberration’ caused by Aphrodite.

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φωνὴν ἴσκουσ’ ἀλόχοισιν.

‘She [= Helen] was likening [eïskein] her voice to the voices of their wives.’

Helen possesses the art of ‘making a likeness’ of the voices of others. By ‘likening’ her voice to the voices of any wife of any Homeric hero, she is actually making her voice the same as theirs. We see here a Muse-like feat of verbal art. On this point, I have more to say in the comment on O.19.203.

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In Odyssey 3, Nestor was telling young Telemachus tales about the adventures experienced by the Achaeans after their capture of Troy. Some of the tales involved the brothers Agamemnon and Menelaos. In the context of those tales, there was a mention of the island of Lesbos at O.03.169. And now in Odyssey 4, we get to know more about the adventures of Agamemnon and Menelaos after Troy, but here it is Menelaos himself who is telling tales about these adventures, and, in his tale, there is a detail about Lesbos that contradicts the tale told by Nestor in Odyssey 3.

Here I epitomize from Nagy 2015§§ 77–78:

[§77] While telling his tale to Telemachus in Odyssey 4, Menelaos expresses a wish that the young man’s father, Odysseus, will return to Ithaca and will defeat the suitors of Penelope—just as this hero of the Odyssey had once upon a time defeated an opponent named Philomeleides in a wrestling match that had taken place on the island of Lesbos, O.04.341–344. The verses here at Odyssey 4.341–344 are repeated at 17.132–135, where Telemachus retells to Penelope the story told to him by Menelaos.

[§78] In terms of what Menelaos says at O.04.341–344, he was in Lesbos when Odysseus performed his heroic feat there. There is some agreement here with the narrative of Nestor at O.03.168–169, who says that Menelaos had sailed from Tenedos to Lesbos. So too had Nestor himself and Diomedes sailed to Lesbos, and they were already there by the time Menelaos arrived. See the comment on O.03.168–169. But the problem is, Odysseus himself did not sail from Tenedos to Lesbos in the narrative of Nestor: rather, as we saw at O.03.160–169, Odysseus together with a sub-group of Achaean followers had already sailed from Tenedos back to Troy in order to rejoin Agamemnon, who was still there at Troy, O.03.160–164, while Nestor and Diomedes together with their Achaean followers sailed on from their stopover at the island of Tenedos and arrived at the next stopover, which was the island of Lesbos, O.03.165–169. There, at Lesbos, Nestor and Diomedes were joined by Menelaos, who as we saw arrived later, O.03.168–169. In short, the parting of ways for Odysseus in Odyssey 3 had already happened on the island of Tenedos, when he had left Nestor and Diomedes and Menelaos in order to rejoin Agamemnon. Here in Odyssey 4, by contrast, Odysseus seems to be still present in Lesbos when Diomedes and Nestor and Menelaos are present in Lesbos. And that is how Menelaos could have witnessed the victory of Odysseus in a wrestling match at Lesbos.

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Epitome from Nagy 2015§§79–91:

[§79] I argue that there were two variant myths at work in Odyssey 3 and 4, and that these myths could never be completely reconciled with one another. Nor, as I also argue, did they ever really need to be reconciled. In Homeric poetry, there is a built-in awareness of mutually contradictory local variations in mythmaking, and there are many examples where the poetry shows this awareness by ostentatiously including, without overt self-contradiction, details from recessive as well as dominant versions of any given myth. For another example, see the anchor comment at O.04.512–522 on: mutually contradictory local variations in mythmaking.

[§80] Keeping in mind the Homeric capacity to track such mutually contradictory local variations, let us consider the myth, as we saw it at work in Odyssey 3, about a grand sacrifice that took place on the island of Tenedos, O.03.159. Of the two Sons of Atreus, only Menelaos was present, while Agamemnon had stayed behind at Troy and was arranging a correspondingly grand sacrifice back there, to be attended by his half of the Achaeans—and that sacrifice was intended for Athena, Ο.03.143–145. As for the sacrifice at Tenedos, the divine recipients are not named, O.03.159. And, at the competing sacrifice on the island of Tenedos, arranged by Menelaos and attended by his half of the Achaeans, a quarrel broke out between Nestor and Odysseus, with the result that Odysseus and his followers went back to Agamemnon, O.03.160–164. After Tenedos, the only Achaean leaders who sailed on homeward with their followers were Nestor and Diomedes, O.03.165–167—to be joined later by Menelaos at Lesbos, O.03.168.

[§81] From here on, I refer to this ‘Tenedos version’ of the myth, O.03.159–164, as Myth One. But there is also a Myth Two, which is the ‘Lesbos version’, O.04.341–344. According to Myth Two, as we see it at work under the surface in Odyssey 4, there was a grand sacrifice that took place on the island of Lesbos, not on the island of Tenedos. At Lesbos, Odysseus was still together with Nestor and Diomedes—to be joined later by Menelaos. Unlike Myth One as we read it at O.03.159–164, which is a myth originating from Tenedos, this second variant myth originates from Lesbos. A signature of this Myth Two at O.04.341–344 is the reference, initiated by the speaking persona of Menelaos, to that primal wrestling match between Odysseus and Philomeleides on the island of Lesbos. In fact, there are traces of this Myth Two in sources external to Homeric poetry. As we learn from Hellanicus of Lesbos (FGH 4 F 150), the people of Lesbos had their own local stories about Philomeleides: he had been a king of theirs in the age of heroes, and he used to challenge visitors to engage with him in a wrestling match—but then his reputation for invincibility was undone by Odysseus, helped by Diomedes, when these heroes visited Lesbos. On Philomeleides of Lesbos, I have more to say in Nagy 2008:57.

[§82] I have so far left out a further detail in Myth Two as I have reconstructed it. According to this myth, which would be compatible with the myth as we see it at work in Song 17 of Sappho, Menelaos was not the only one of the two Sons of Atreus who visited Lesbos. Also visiting was his brother Agamemnon.

[§83] We have already seen that Myth One, compatible with the mythological traditions of Tenedos, situates the quarrel between Menelaos and Agamemnon at Troy, even before Agamemnon arranges for a sacrifice of one hundred cattle there. But now I argue that Myth Two, compatible with the mythological traditions of Lesbos, situates the quarrel of Menelaos and Agamemnon not at Troy—and certainly not at Tenedos—but rather at Lesbos. In Myth Two, as we are about to see, both Sons of Atreus visited Lesbos, and they quarreled there with each other. Further, we will see that such a quarrel between Menelaos and Agamemnon at Lesbos happened not before but after a grand sacrifice of one hundred cattle there. And, even further, we will see that the quarrel was linked with the ultimate failure of that sacrifice.

[§84] Here we return to Song 17 of Sappho, the relevant parts of which are quoted in the anchor comment at O.03.130–183 on two variant myths in Odyssey 3 and Odyssey 4, part 1 at §75. The clearest sign of failure, in terms of the narrative embedded in Song 17 of Sappho, is the wish that we see being formulated in heroic times—when it was announced-in-prayer that a festival is to be arranged at Lesbos. The eortā ‘festival’ (2: ἐόρτ[α]) that was arātā ‘announced-in-prayer’ (3: ἀράταν)—in the context of an animal sacrifice, as I reconstruct it—was instituted in hopes of ‘finding the way’ back home from Troy (7: [ὄ]δ̣ο̣ν … εὔρη̣[ν]). Hērā, as the primary divinity to whom it was announced-in-prayer that there would be a seasonally recurring festival at Lesbos, would be heeding the Sons of Atreus, who had prayed to her, imploring her to help them find their way back home safe and sound.

[§85] But the question remains: did Hērā heed the prayer of the Sons of Atreus? In the mythical world of heroes, a wish expressed by a hero who makes an announcement-in-prayer to a divinity is often not heeded by the divinity. See the anchor comment at I.02.402–429 on prayers heeded or not heeded by gods; also the comment on I.04.118–121.

[§86] Similarly, in terms of my reconstruction of the announcement-in-prayer made by the Sons of Atreus in Song 17 of Sappho, the sacrifice that was announced-in-prayer by these heroes was a failure, since their wish to find the safest way back home was not granted to either one of them. In the case of Agamemnon, we will see that he was killed after having sailed home safely, O.04.514–537. As for Menelaos, he will be sailing around aimlessly for eight years before he finally finds his way back home. At least, that is what we read in the version of the story as told at O.04.082 (see [§98] below).

[§87] Before I can proceed with my reconstruction, I must first situate its relevance to Song 17 of Sappho. In this song, I argue, we see a reference to a sacrifice of one hundred cattle in the precinct of Hērā at Lesbos, and this sacrifice is viewed, I also argue, as a failed ritual in the heroic past of a myth. In the myth, there is an announcement-in-prayer about performing the sacrifice, which will turn out to be a failure, whereas the seasonal reperforming of this sacrifice at the same place during the festival of Hērā is expected to be a successful ritual in the present time of reperformance as signaled in the song. In Song 17, as we have already seen (§75), the persona of Sappho is praying to Hērā herself, speaking to her about the eortā ‘festival’ (2: ἐόρτ[α]) that is being arranged in honor of the goddess. The speaking Sappho goes on to say that this festival, which ‘we’ in the present are arranging (11: πόημεν) as ‘we’ offer supplications to Hērā, is being arranged ‘in accordance with the ancient way’ (12: κὰτ τὸ πάλ̣[αιον) of celebration. In terms of the reading that we find in the papyrus, both Agamemnon and Menelaos had arranged (3: π̣ό̣ηϲαν) such a festival in ancient times by virtue of having announced-in-prayer the arrangement of such a festival in the first place. These conquerors of Troy needed to offer their prayer to Hērā, Zeus, and Dionysus (9-10), and, in that prayer, they were to announce the arrangement of the eortā ‘festival’ (2: ἐόρτ[α]), which was thus arātā ‘announced-in-prayer (3: ἀράταν). It is at this festival that the persona of Sappho is ‘even now’ praying to Hērā, nun de (11). And, in terms of my reconstruction, I argue that the centerpiece of such a seasonally recurring festival at Lesbos was a hecatomb, that is, the sacrificial slaughter of one hundred cattle. On the word hekatombē ‘hecatomb’, see the comment on O.04.351–353.

[§88] So, the central question is this: if such a ritual of sacrificing one hundred cattle was a failure in the past time of the myth, how could it become a model for the success of that ritual as it exists in its own present time?

[§89] Such an idea of failure in myth and success in ritual is typical of an aetiology. I repeat here my working definition (see the comment on I.23.01–064 Point 1): an aetiology focuses on a foundational catastrophe in the mythologized past that explains and thus motivates continuing success in the ritualized present and future.

[§90] An example of an aetiology that I have studied elsewhere in some detail is a complex of rituals and myths involving the god Apollo and the hero Pyrrhos at Delphi, where the overall ritual of slaughtering sheep and distributing in an orderly way their sacrificial meat inside the precinct of Apollo stands in sharp contrast with a myth, as reflected in Pindar’s Nemean 7 and Paean 6, about a disorderly distribution that resulted in the slaughtering of Pyrrhos himself when the hero arrived at Delphi to make sacrifice inside the precinct of the god (Nagy 2011a§§67–68, 70–72).

[§91] For another example of such an aetiology, I cite a story as retold by Herodotus (1.31.1–5) about a priestess of Hērā and her two boys, named Kleobis and Biton. The mother and the two sons, all three of them, are involved as major characters in an aetiological myth about the ritual practice of the hecatomb, which was a sacrificial slaughtering of one hundred cattle in the precinct of the goddess Hērā at the climax of the festival celebrated in her honor at Argos. On the word hekatombē ‘hecatomb’, see the comment on O.04.351–353. Also involved as major ‘characters’ in the story are two sacrificial oxen. The two boys, described as āthlophoroi ‘prize-winning athletes’, willingly took the place of the two sacrificial oxen, chosen to pull the wagon carrying the priestess across the plain of Argos—over a distance of 45 stadium-lengths—along a sacred way leading up to the precinct of Hērā (1.31.2). The oxen had been late in arriving at the starting-point of the procession (again, 1.31.2), and this lateness, in terms of the story, is the aetiological explanation for their replacement by the two athletes. If these two oxen had not been late, they would have been slaughtered along with the other ninety-eight oxen that had been chosen for the mass sacrifice of one hundred cattle at the finishing-point of the procession, inside the precinct of Hērā. At the feast that followed the sacrifice inside the precinct, the two boys died a mystical death after having pulled the wagon of the priestess from the starting-point all the way to this finishing-point of the procession (1.31.5). Thus, by way of this death that they shared with each other, the boys became sacrificial substitutes for the two premier victims of the animal sacrifice. (See Nagy 2015 ch. 4§142*1, with references to further commentary.)

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|351 Αἰγύπτῳ μ’ ἔτι δεῦρο θεοὶ μεμαῶτα νέεσθαι |352 ἔσχον, ἐπεὶ οὔ σφιν ἔρεξα τεληέσσας ἑκατόμβας· |353 οἱ δ’ αἰεὶ βούλοντο θεοὶ μεμνῆσθαι ἐφετμέων.

|351 In Egypt did they hold me up, the gods did, though I sorely wanted to make a homecoming [neesthai] back here [deuro = at home, where I am speaking now]. |352 Yes, they held me up, since [epei] I did not perform for them a perfect sacrifice of one hundred cattle [hekatombai]. |353 The gods always wanted their protocols to be kept in mind.

O.04.351–353

I interpret hekatom-b-ē ‘hecatomb’ as ‘sacrifice of one hundred [hekaton] cattle [b-]’ in Homeric contexts, as here. But I should note that there are some cases where the sacrifice is scaled down, referring not to cattle but to other sacrificial animals. In I.04.102, for example, the hekatombē involves sheep, not cattle. The passage here at O.04.351–353 is relevant to the narrative in Song 17 of Sappho, as quoted in the anchor comment at O.03.130–183 on two variant myths in Odyssey 3 and Odyssey 4, part 1.

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Epitome from Nagy 2015§92:

Menelaos, narrating for Telemachus and the assembled company the tale of his own homecoming from Troy, explains why the gods had temporarily checked the winds that could bring him back home in the final phase of his sea voyage, O.04.351–362. At one point in the tale, Menelaos is stranded on the island Pharos, offshore from Egypt O.04.354–360. And, in telling this part of the tale, the explanation that he gives for his temporary failure to sail on and to reach his homeland is this: because (352: ἐπεί) he had not performed a hecatomb. On the word hekatombē ‘hecatomb’, referring to a sacrificial slaughtering of one hundred cattle, see the comment on O.04.351–353.

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analysis of lines appearance in Plutarch Life of Alexander 26.5. Evidence for argument that Ptolemaic dynasty created the charter myth that they possessed the text of Alexander the Great, Aristotle’s text of Homer

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This description of Pharos is most relevant to the charter myth narrated in Plutarch Life of Alexander 26.5 about the Library of Alexandria.

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See the comments on I.01.155.

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This adjective adeukḗs is used in contexts referring to an interrupted sequence. In the present context, for example, adeukḗs describes the ólethros ‘doom’ that destroys a ship. See also O.06.273, O.10.245. The opposite of this adjective adeukḗs ‘discontinuous, interrupting’ can be seen in the adverb endukéōs, which can be interpreted as ‘continuously, uninterruptedly’. See the anchor comment at O.07.256. In terms of this interpretation, the root deuk-/duk- for this adjective/adverb conveys the sense of ‘continue’.

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|512 σὸϲ δέ που ἔκφυγε κῆρας ἀδελφεὸς ἠδ’ ὑπάλυξεν |513 ἐν νηυσὶ γλαφυρῇσι· σάωϲε δὲ πότνια Ἥρη.

|512 But your brother [= Agamemnon] escaped from the forces of destruction, and he slipped away |513 in his hollow ships. Hērā had saved [sōzein] him.

O.4.512–513

Epitome from Nagy 2015§§93–100:

[§93] By contrast with the temporary failure of Menelaos in his homecoming, as narrated by the hero himself at O.04.351–353, Agamemnon had already succeeded in sailing home, and Menelaos himself mentions this detail as he tells his own tale in Odyssey 4. In telling the tale, the explanation that Menelaos gives for his brother’s successful sea voyage is this: because the goddess Hērā had saved Agamemnon. I note here the background: Proteus had told Menelaos about this salvation of Agamemnon from the sea, and that is how Menelaos knows about it. As he retells the tale to Telemachus, Menelaos is quoting here the words of Proteus about the success of Agamemnon at sea, to be contrasted with the temporary failure of Menelaos himself.

[§94] As we learn, then, from the words of Proteus in Odyssey 4, Agamemnon was in fact saved at sea, since his voyage by sea was successful. But then he was killed after he landed near home, ambushed by Aigisthos, and so the rest of his voyage, by land, became a failure O.04.514-537. After treacherously hosting him at a dinner, Aigisthos had slaughtered Agamemnon as if that hero were some sacrificial ox that is being fed in a manger, O.04.535. By contrast, the voyage of Menelaos by sea was ultimately successful, because he finally got around to making a sacrifice of one hundred cattle in Egypt, O.04.581–586. In making this sacrifice, Menelaos was following the instructions of Proteus, O.04.472–480, and, this way, he appeased the anger of the gods, O.04.583. Now Menelaos could at long last sail back to his homeland, safe and sound O.04.584–586. At I.05.714–717, Hērā remarks to Athena that the two of them had promised to Menelaos a safe homecoming after the conquest of Troy.

[§95] We have seen, then, from the narrative of Menelaos in Odyssey 4, that Agamemnon was saved at sea by the goddess Hērā, O.04.512–513. But why had Hērā saved him? It was because, I argue, Agamemnon had at least tried to make a perfect sacrifice of one hundred cattle at Lesbos. By contrast, Menelaos had somehow failed to do his part in the corresponding sacrifice. In terms of my interpretation, based on the wording of Song 17 of Sappho, both Sons of Atreus had made an announcement-in-prayer about performing a sacrifice at Lesbos, but only Agamemnon succeeded in following through on that announcement.

[§96] I have already quoted the passage at O.04.252–254 where Menelaos says that the final phase of his sea voyage as he headed back home was held up by the gods precisely because he had not made a sacrifice of one hundred cattle. From the context, it is clear that this failure that made the gods so angry was a sin of omission, not commission. And his sin, I argue, was that he somehow failed to perform a sacrifice of one hundred cattle at Lesbos. But later on, when Menelaos does finally get around to performing a sacrifice of one hundred cattle in Egypt O.04.581–586, his performance is successful, and thus he finally appeases the anger of the gods, O.04.583.

[§97] The reader’s first impression may be that the sin of omission on the part of Menelaos, that is, his failure to perform a successful sacrifice of one hundred cattle, happens in Egypt: after all, the finding of a solution for the sin happens at this place—when Menelaos finally gets around to performing such a sacrifice. But such a first impression is wrong, I think, since Egypt was merely the last possible place as an occasion for such a sin of omission. There were many other places that Menelaos had visited before he ever reached Egypt, and Egypt had been for him merely the final stopover in the course of a most problematic overall sea voyage back home from Troy. Yes, the gods were in the process of punishing Menelaos in Egypt for his sin of omission when we see them interfering there with his sea voyage. And yes, the gods kept on interfering until Menelaos finally made the sacrifice, in Egypt, which was the place that turned out to be his point of departure in the very last phase of his sea voyage. But, as we will now see, the gods were already interfering with Menelaos in earlier phases of his sea voyage, and so the divine punishment for his sin of omission can be viewed as an ongoing series of misfortunes that kept on interfering with his travels after Troy.

[§98] The first such misfortune is already narrated by Nestor in Odyssey 3, concerning the death, at Cape Sounion, of the hero Phrontis, who had been steering the ship of Menelaos, O.03.276–283. That death, caused by the god Apollo, O.03.279–280, holds back Menelaos from sailing ahead. Only after he conducts a proper funeral for his companion, O.03.284–285, does he recommence his sea voyage. Then, as Menelaos sails past the headlands of Maleiai, his ships are blown off course: some are swept away to Crete, where they run aground and are shattered, O.03.286–299, while five of them reach Egypt, O.03.299–300. (The details here are parallel to what is narrated in the epic Cycle: Nostoi, Proclus summary p. 108 lines 20–23 ed. Allen 1912). In sharp contrast, the hero Nestor has a safe and swift sea voyage back home to Pylos, O.03.182–183, having evidently rounded successfully the headlands of Maleiai (I follow here the analysis of Frame 2009:184n79.) Meanwhile, once he reaches Egypt, Menelaos takes to plundering and looting there, and he amasses vast treasures, O.03.301, as ‘he was wandering around with his ships’, O.03.302 (ἠλᾶτο ξὺν νηυϲί). Later, in Odyssey 4, we learn from the narrative of Menelaos that his sea voyage had reached not only Egypt but also other exotic places, including Cyprus and Phoenicia, O.04.083, even Libya, O.04.085. After experiencing all these adventures, he was still just ‘wandering around’ in an aimless way, O.04.081 and O.04.083 (ἐπαληθείϲ), O.04.091 (ἠλώμην). As Menelaos himself remarks, he spent eight years just wandering around, O.04.082.

[§99] Already in the narrative of Nestor in Odyssey 3, the aimlessness of the sea voyage of Menelaos is anticipated: whereas Agamemnon got back home from Troy relatively soon, only to get killed by Aigisthos, Menelaos kept on wandering from one place to the next in his many sea voyages, and the word for his directionless maritime wanderings is plazeto ‘he was veering’, O.03.254 (πλάζετ’). Comparable, of course, are the even more extensive veerings of Odysseus in the overall Odyssey, as expressed by the same word plazesthai ‘veering’ already at the beginning of the epic: Odysseus is a hero ‘who veered [plangthē] in very many ways’, O.01.001–002 (ὃς μάλα πολλὰ | πλάγχθη).

[§100] So, where did all the veering begin for Menelaos? Where did his sea voyage start to go off course? According to one version of the myth about this hero’s travels by sea after Troy, as I will now argue, the veering can be traced all the way back to something that happened at Lesbos. I focus here on a detail we find in the tale told by Nestor in Odyssey 3. In that tale, Menelaos was late in arriving at Lesbos. See the comment on O.03.168–169.

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Epitome from Nagy 2015§79:

Narrated here in O.04.512–522 is the final phase of the sea voyage of Agamemnon as he sails his way back home after the Trojan War. At first, the winds carry him around the headlands of Maleiai, bringing him toward Spartan territory, but then, before he can land there, the winds correct themselves, as it were, and they now carry him in a different direction, toward Argive territory, which is where he finally lands. This way, the Spartan myth that localizes the home of Agamemnon at Amyklai in Spartan territory is recognized—before it is overruled by the rival Argive myth that localizes his home at Mycenae in Argive territory. In Homeric poetry, the Argive version of the myth is dominant, while the Spartan version is recessive.

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Proteus makes a prophecy here, foretelling the immortalization of Menelaos in a pedion ‘field’ named Ēlusion ‘Elysium’, O.04.563. A comparable setting for immortalization is a place known as the Makarōn nēsoi ‘Islands of the Blessed’ (as in Hesiod Works and Days 164–173). The name Ēlusion ‘Elysium’, as is evident from attestations outside of Homeric poetry, can refer to a mystical setting of immortalization as experienced by heroes worshipped in cult. From what evidence we have about hero cults, we can see that the rituals of worshipping heroes in cult places are ideologically synchronized with corresponding myths about the immortalization of these same heroes in paradise-like settings that are far removed from the everyday world. In fact, the forms Ēlusion 'Elysium' and Makarōn nēsoi 'Isles of the Blessed' are appropriate as names for actual cult sites. The proper noun Ēlusion coincides with the common noun en-ēlúsion, referring to a place made sacred by virtue of being struck by the thunderbolt (Pollux 9.41, etc.). The form Ēlúsion itself is glossed in the Alexandrian lexicographical tradition (Hesychius) as κεκεραυνωμένον χωρίον ἢ πεδίον ‘a place or field that has been struck by the thunderbolt', with this added remark: καλεῖται δὲ καὶ ἐνηλύσια ‘and it is also called enēlusia’. As for Makarōn nēsos ‘Island of the Blessed’, there is a tradition that the name was actually applied to the old acropolis of Thebes, the Kadmeion; specifically, the name designated the sacred precinct where Semele, the mother of Dionysus, had been struck dead by the thunderbolt of Zeus (Parmenides via the Suda and via Photius, under Makarōn nēsos; Tzetzes on Lycophron 1194, 1204). We are immediately reminded of the poetic tradition that tells how Semele became immortalized as a direct result of dying from the thunderbolt of Zeus (see Pindar Olympian 2.25, in conjunction with Hesiod Theogony 942). Inhabiting Elysium is the hero Rhadamanthys, O.04.564, who is described in this context as xanthos ‘with golden hair’. Similarly, Menelaos himself is conventionally described as xanthos: I.03.284, I.03.434, I.04.183, I.04.210, I.10.240, I.11.125, I.17.006, I.17.018, I.17.113, I.17.124, I.17.578, I.17.673, I.17.684, I.23.293, I.23.401, I.23.438, O.01.285, O.03.168, O.03.257, O.03.326, O.04.030, O.04.059, O.04.076, O.04.147, O.04.168, O.04.203, O.04.265, O.04.332, O.15.110, O.15.133, O.15.147.

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Gusts of wind emitted by the cosmic river Ōkeanos have the power of ‘reviving’ humans in the sense of ‘reanimating’ them, as expressed by way of the verb ana-psūkhein, O.04.568. On the mystical force of this verb, see the comment on I.05.795.

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See the comment on O.01.241.

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See also the contexts of I.03.125–128, I.03.212, I.07.324, I.18.367, O.03.118, O.12.189-191.

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On pulai ‘gates’ as liminal points of entry and departure for consciousness and for the sun itself, see the comments at I.05.395–404, I.05.646. See also the anchor comment at I.08.367 on the Gates of Hādēs; also the anchor comment at I.23.071–076 on what the psūkhē ‘spirit’ of Patroklos really wants for itself—and for Achilles (Points 5 and 6 and 9).

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Only here in the Odyssey is the hero Tīthōnos ever mentioned, O.05.001. In the Iliad, there is a parallel mention of Tīthōnos at I.11.001. The wording of O.05.001–002 here matches the wording of I.11.001–002. The story of the abduction of Tīthōnos by Ēōs, goddess of dawn, is told in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 218–238. The liaison between the mortal man Tīthōnos and the immortal goddess Ēōs is parallel to the liaison between the mortal man Anchises and the immortal goddess Aphrodite. And, as a result of both these affairs, the mortal man is permanently damaged. In the case of Tīthōnos, he loses his youth though he holds on to life, but old age renders him immobile, as we read in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, verse 234. In the case of Anchises, he too is afflicted with immobility—which is why his son Aeneas has to carry him on his shoulders in ancient depictions of that hero’s escape from Troy together with his family (for a splendid example, I refer to a vase painting dated to the early fifth century BCE, British Museum inventory number 1836.0224.138). Such stories of permanent damage are relevant to the story of the affair between Odysseus and the goddess Calypso. In sum, the fact that Rhapsody 5 begins with a reference to an affair between a mortal man and an immortal goddess indicates the dangers that now threaten Odysseus.

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The rhapsody starts with the releasing of Odysseus by one goddess and ends with the mystical saving of his life by a second goddess, who is Leukotheā, the White Goddess. The beautiful Leukotheā saves Odysseus by undoing her hair and giving him as a life-saver the veil that had held her curls in place. As for the first goddess, who is Calypso, her action in releasing Odysseus from their mutual love affair becomes another life-saver for him. That is because the chances of success for such an affair between a mortal man and an immortal goddess would have been minimal, as we will see by observing other myths that tell about other such affairs. If the liaison of Odysseus with Calypso had continued, it is a certainty that he would have been killed off, just as Orion had died because of his liaison with Ēōs the goddess of the dawn.

draft js image error “Leucothea, the White Goddess, Preserving Ulysses” (1805). John Flaxman (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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The accusative of ommata ‘eyes’ here, as the direct object of thelgein, indicates that the idea of looking is built into this verb. Accordingly, it can be argued that the Lithuanian verb žvelgiù ‘look’ is a cognate of thelgein, which I translate as ‘put a trance on, enchant’. I interpret the enchantment here as an effect of visual attraction.

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The verb heleto ‘took’ referring here at O.05.121 to the seduction of Orion by Ēōs the goddess of the dawn is neutral in comparison to other verbs indicating an abduction by force, as when Ēōs hērpasen ‘seized’ Tīthōnos in Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 218. For more on the links of heroes like Orion and Tithōnos with Ēōs, see the comment on O.15.250–251.

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The myth about the liaison between the mortal man Orion and the immortal goddess Ēōs is retold by Calypso herself as an example of the double standard shown by the divine powers in not tolerating a relationship where the immortal lover of a mortal is female, not male. It is to be noted that Ēōs, at the moment when she takes the initiative in seducing Orion at O.05.121, is described with the epithet rhododaktulos ‘rosy-fingered’ instead of the epithet thugatēr Dios ‘daughter of Zeus’, which would have been appropriate if the seducer had been a goddess like Aphrodite. See the anchor comment at O.12.001–010.

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The goddess Artemis shoots Orion with her arrows.

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At O.05.136, Calypso says that she was intending to make Odysseus athanatos ‘immortal’ and agērōs ‘ageless’. Similarly in Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 214, Zeus when he abducts Ganymedes makes him athanatos ‘immortal’ and agērōs ‘ageless’. By contrast, in Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 221, Ēōs forgets to ask for agelessness after she abducts Tīthōnos and asks only that her mortal lover be athanatos ‘immortal’. So, she forgot to ask that he should have lasting hēbē ‘youth’, Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 224.

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At O.05.160, aiōn ‘life-force, lifetime’ is a potential recycling of time: see the comment on I.01.052. But such a recycling is threatened at O.05.161 by a linear prolongation of life, which would result in what is indicated here by the verb phthinesthai ‘wilt, perish’.

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For a god to swear by the Styx is to reaffirm the absolute permanence of its waters, as indicated by the epithet aphthito- ‘imperishable’ in Hesiod Theogony 389, 397, 805. See the comment on I.02.046; also the comment on Homeric Hymn to Demeter 259, where Demeter swears by the Styx that she would have made the child Demophon athanatos ‘immortal’ and agērōs, 260, if the mother of this child had not spoiled what the goddess intended.

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We see here a specialized sense of this noun harmoniā ‘joint’, derived from the root ar- as in arariskein ‘join’.

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If Odysseus could read the stars correctly, he would see that the constellation of Orion shows him what would have happened if his liaison with Calypso had been prolonged: Odysseus too would have been killed off, like Orion. The astral configuration of Orion the Hunter and Arktos the Bear here at O.05.273–275 is pictured also at I.18.487–489. The stars in this configuration are re-enacting the myth of Orion: how Ēōs the goddess of dawn made Orion her lover and how the goddess Artemis the huntress then shot Orion with her arrows and killed him. The myth, as we have already seen, is narrated at O.05.121–124. A special point of interest in the description of Arktos the Bear at O.05.274—also at I.18.488—is the expression dokeuei: it appears that this she-bear is ‘taking aim’ at Orion. It can be argued that this pose of Arktos the she-bear reveals her to be a stand-in for the goddess Artemis herself at the moment when the goddess takes aim at Orion in order to shoot him dead with her arrows. It can also be argued that the dangerous liaison of Ēōs with Orion at O.05.121–124 is viewed as a relevant parallel to the liaison of Calypso with Odysseus.

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The formulation of this wish shows that Odysseus is longing to be defined by an epic that is limited to the happenings in the Trojan War, excluding the happenings that he experiences in the Odyssey. But this is not to be. For Odysseus to be hero in his own epic, he must have a safe homecoming from Troy.

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Odysseus is saved from drowning by Ino, O.05.333, who was once a mortal woman but who has become immortalized after death by becoming the Leukotheā or ‘White Goddess’, O.05.334. The White Goddess gives to Odysseus her krēdemnon, that is, her headdress or ‘veil’, which becomes his life-saver: O.05.346, O.05.351, O.05.373, O.05.459. In order to give the hero her headdress, she would first have to undo her hair, as we can see by comparing the scene where Andromache lets fall from her head her own headdress, the word for which is, here again, krēdemnon, I.22.470. See the commentary on I.22.460–474, where I noted that the undoing of a woman’s hair, caused by the undoing of her krēdemnon, produces what I called an Aphrodisiac effect. So long as a woman’s krēdemnon is in place, her sexuality is under control just as her hair is under control. When the krēdemnon is out of place, however, her sexuality threatens to get out of control. Also, while saving the hero, the goddess assumes the form of a diving bird called aithuia, O.05.337 and O.05.353. These actions of Ino in saving Odysseus from the mortal dangers of the sea are parallel to the actions of the goddess Athena herself. [What follows is epitomized from Nagy 1985:80–81 (= §78).] Ino as aithuia has a parallel agent in ensuring the salvation of Odysseus from the sea: Athena herself redirects the storm sent against the hero by Poseidon, O.05.382–387, and then she saves him from immediate drowning by giving him a timely idea for swimming to safety, O.05.435–439. The hero submerges but then emerges from a wave that would surely have drowned him had it not been for Athena, O.05.435 and O.05.438, and this detail corresponds closely to the preceding emergence and submergence of Ino herself, O.05.337 and O.05.352–353. Such a correspondence suggests that Ino, the former mortal who is now a goddess, O.05.334 and O.05.335, is a model for a transition from death to life anew.

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Here the verb tēkesthai ‘melt away’ refers to wasting away in illness. For other metaphorical applications, see especially the comment at O.19.204–212

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The comparison of Odysseus to an octopus here is a signature, as it were, of his reputation for being polutropos ‘turning-into-many-different-selves’. This epithet is analyzed in the comment on O.01.001–010. On the polytropic nature of the octopus, I cite two relevant passages: Theognis 215–218 and Pindar F 43 SM.

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For this translation of epiphrosunē, ‘impulse of wisdom’, see HPC 45n33.

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This verb expresses the idea of revival, ana-pneîn (ἄμπνυτο) in the sense of ‘taking a breath’ or ‘breathing in’. See the comment on I.05.696–698.

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The elements ponos ‘pain’ and kamatos ‘pain’ in the expression δυσπονέος καμάτοιο at O.05.493 are conventional designations of the life-and-death struggles of a hero.

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The wording that starts Rhapsody 6 here at O.06.001–112 picks up where the wording of Rhapsody 5 left off, at O.05.491–493, where Odysseus had fallen asleep after his ordeals at sea.

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Nausicaa, princess of the Phaeacians, makes her appearance as a potential but unattainable love-interest for Odysseus—and as a delight for all who find themselves irresistibly drawn into the story of her girlish but principled encounter with the enthralled hero.

draft js image error “Nausicaa” (1878), Frederick Leighton (English, 1830–1896). Image via Wikimedia Commons.

This Rhapsody belongs to Nausicaa. I spell her name in its familiar latinized form, with a c, since her fame extends far beyond the ancient Greek world, where she appears as Ναυσικάα. In any case, the name has a certain primacy of place. I have no idea who said it first, but I first heard it from the long-departed Sterling Dow in the early 1960s: if you look up all surviving ancient Greek names in reverse alphabetical order, the first one you see is Nausicaa = Ναυσικάα, while the very last of them all is Calypso = Καλυψώ. Surely we see here a coincidence, not some mysterious signal emanating from some grand cosmic plan, but the coincidence itself seems just as lovely as Nausicaa is lovely. Some critics view her as a youthful love-interest for Odysseus, matching Calypso as the hero’s divine love-interest. But such a view detracts from the loveliness: Nausicaa is meant to be a love-interest for all who hear her story—just as Calypso is a universal love-interest in her own story as told in Rhapsody 5. In the story of Nausicaa as told in Rhapsody 6, she is pictured as the perfect bride for any man fortunate enough to succeed in marrying her—and she knows it. The self-awareness of Nausicaa is shaped by the poetry that idealizes her eligibility by animating her beauty and her charm to the point where she becomes comparable to the goddess Artemis. Odysseus himself initiates the comparison and, by comparing the girl to the goddess, he is signaling to himself that Nausicaa, even if she does not know it yet, is for him enticingly unattainable.

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The Cyclopes, when they were neighboring enemies of the Phaeacians, O.06.005, are said to have been superior because of their biē ‘force, violence, strength’, O.06.006.

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Nausicaa, daughter of Alkinoos (latinized as Alcinous), is named here for the first time, O.06.017. She is a kourē ‘girl’, O.06.015, and she is said to be homoiē ‘similar to’ or ‘same as’ the immortal goddesses. This comparison is a prelude to the wording of the narrative at O.06.102–109, where Nausicaa is compared directly to the goddess Artemis; also to the wording of Odysseus himself at O.06.150–152, where the hero himself compares Nausicaa directly to Artemis.

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Nausicaa wakes up at dawn, O.06.048–049, and goes from her room to the central part of the palace O.06.050–051, where she finds her mother sitting at the hearth and spinning wool in the company of the women who attend her O.06.052–053. A question here: did the mother start her spinning at dawn, or has she been spinning all night?

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At O.06.085–099, Nausicaa and the girls who attend her are at the banks of a river, washing the clothes they have brought from the palace, and then waiting for the wet clothes to dry in the sun; while they wait, they clean up and enjoy each other’s company as they indulge in a picnic. Next, at O.06.100–101, after having finished eating and drinking, they start playfully singing and dancing with each other: the playfulness of the song and dance is expressed by the verb paizein ‘play’ at O.06.100, while the actual singing /dancing is expressed by the noun molpē ‘singing and dancing’ at O.06.101. The prima donna / prima ballerina of the singing / dancing is Nausicaa herself, as expressed by the verb arkhesthai ‘lead off [in performing]’, again at O.06.101. The dancing in this case includes the playful tossing of a sphaira ‘ball’, O.06.100. While the girls are feeling all freed up in their playfulness, they throw off the krēdemna or ‘veils’ that they are wearing. So, now we can see that Nausicaa and the girls who attend her would not even think of going out in public without first putting on their krēdemna ‘veils’. They won’t leave home without wearing their headdresses. But now they are no longer in public—or so they imagine. The detail about wearing a veil when the girls leave home and go outdoors is hardly a signal of their being married. Clearly, all these girls are unmarried. So, we see here that unmarried women as well as married women like Andromache wear the krēdemnon in public. The custom is simply a signal of propriety. On the function of the krēdemnon ‘headdress’ as an equivalent of a ‘veil’, I recommend the work of Levine 1995 (especially pp. 96–110), who shows that the custom of wearing a veil is part of a “cultural grammar of hair” (Levine p. 95). Relevant are my comments about O.05.333–353 with reference to Ino the White Goddess and, earlier, about I.22.460–474 with reference to Andromache. In both sets of comments, I noted that the undoing of a woman’s hair, caused by the undoing of her krēdemnon, produces what I called an Aphrodisiac effect. So long as a woman’s krēdemnon is in place, her sexuality is under control just as her hair is under control. When the krēdemnon is out of place, however, her sexuality threatens to get out of control. But there is even more to it. When a woman or girl has her hair undone in a private place, then her sexuality is under control—so long as the vision of the woman or girl with hair undone is private. But what happens when the undoing of the hair is represented in the verbal arts or visual arts? Then the view becomes public and even voyeuristic, as we see for example in the painting I show here:

draft js image error Red-figured pyxis, picturing Nereids at home, “indoors”: the Nereid with her hair down is labeled as Thaleia. Image via The British Museum.

Similarly, there is something voyeuristic about the representation of Nausicaa and the girls who attend her as they sing and dance without wearing their veils: they imagine they are in a private place, but the medium of verbal art is watching them, making their performance public. In this scene, Odysseus is not the only voyeur.

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Nausicaa is compared directly to the goddess Artemis: just as Nausicaa is the prima donna / prima ballerina in relation to the group of singing / dancing girls who attend her, so also is Artemis in relation to the group of nymphs that correspondingly attend her, O.06.105; their singing / dancing here is expressed by way of the word paizein ‘play’ at O.06.106, corresponding to the singing / dancing of Nausicaa and of the girls attending her at O.06.100–101.

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Odysseus here compares Nausicaa directly to Artemis. He is not only saying that Nausicaa is ‘the same as’ Artemis, as expressed by the adjective homoio- ‘similar to, same as’. Rather, the hero is saying that perhaps Nausicaa is in fact Artemis.

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Odysseus here compares Nausicaa in all her beauty to a sacred phoinix ‘date palm’, O.06.163, which is located next to the altar of the god Apollo at Delos, O.06.162. The phoinix is also mentioned in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo 18 and 117. Odysseus claims to have seen this date palm with his own eyes when he visited Delos, O.06.163–165. This mention of Delos is a rare Homeric reference to locales that are distinctly Ionian in culture (HPC 227). Also, we see epic distancing here (Taplin 1996): back in the age of heroes, the date palm was still young and small, O.06.166–168—much smaller than it is imagined to be in the post-heroic age.

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The comparison of hair here to hyacinth blossoms is analogous to the comparison of hair with myrtle blossoms, as at I.17.051–052.

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See the anchor comment at O.04.489 on root duk-/deuk-‘continue’

This adjective adeukḗs occurs in contexts referring to an interrupted sequence. Nausicaa is concerned that the Phaeacians may say something, as expressed by the noun phēmis ‘something said’, that is adeukḗs for her reputation. Good reputation is conceived as a steady stream of speech, the interruption of which threatens to produce a bad reputation.

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Odysseus arrives at the palace and garden of Alkinoos (Alcinous), king of the Phaeacians, whose island was equated in ancient times with Kerkyra/Corcyra, the modern Corfù.

draft js image error View of Garitsa, region right outside the northern walls of the city of Corfu, and according to the legend the site of Alcinous’s gardens (1867). Étienne Rey (French, 1789–1867). Image via the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation.

Following the instructions of Nausicaa, Odysseus approaches the palace of her father Alkinoos (latinized as Alcinous), king of the Phaeacians. This palace and the adjacent garden of Alkinoos are not only enchanting but even enchanted, as will be argued in the comments for Rhapsody 7 here. And, as we will see later in the comments for Rhapsody 13, the garden of Alkinoos was thought to have survived on the island of Kerkyra, known in Roman sources as Corcyra and in modern times as Corfù. In ancient times, the people of Kerkyra claimed that their island was in fact the fabled realm of the Phaeacians.

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The mythical Gigantes 'Giants' are relevant to Athenian mythology.

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The name Athḗnē applies both to the goddess known in English as ‘Athena’, as at Odyssey 7.78, and to the place that is seen as the possession of the goddess—which is the territory of the place known in English as ‘Athens’, as at Odyssey 7.80.[1] The suffix -ḗnē is visible also in the name of the nymph Mukḗnē, who presides over the acropolis of Mycenae.[2]

\r\nThe same suffix -ḗnē is visible also in the place-name Messḗnē, which means something like ‘Midland’.[3] Here I compare the place-name me-za-na written on a Linear B tablet from Pylos, Cn 3.1. On the basis of this comparison, I have observed: “I suspect that the suffix -ḗnē is endowed with an elliptic function.”[4] What I meant is this: a form that is elliptic refers not only to X but also to everything that belongs to X, such as X2, X3, X4 etc. An elliptic form of X implies X2, X3, X4 etc. without naming X2, X3, X4 etc. explicitly. In terms of this definition, the name Athḗnē refers not only to the goddess ‘Athena’ but also to everything that belongs to the goddess. The primary example of that ‘everything’ in this context is the acropolis of Athens. And we see another level of ellipsis in the plural form Athênai: this elliptic plural refers not only to the acropolis of Athens but also to everything that belongs to the acropolis of Athens, which is the city of Athens, and, by extension, to everything that belongs to the city, which is ultimately the region of Attica.[5]

\r\nI see a parallel situation in the use of the form Aswia (/Aswiās) in the Linear B texts, where Aswia is evidently a goddess, as we see from the collocation po-ti-ni-ja a-si-wi-ja = potnia Aswia ‘[Our] Lady Aswia’ as written on a tablet from Pylos, Fr 1208. In the case of Aswia, the name survives into the classical period of recorded texts in the fifth century BCE and later: now the name is pronounced Asíā, meaning ‘Asia’, and the referent here is what we call ‘Asia Minor’ in English. So, from a diachronic perspective, this name applies both to the goddess and to the realm of the goddess. She is ‘Our Lady of Asia’ or ‘Asia’ personified.

\r\nI emphasize here that the form Athḗnē at line 80 of Odyssey 7 is the only instance, in all surviving texts ever written in the ancient Greek language, where the name of the place ‘Athens’ is found in the singular, not in the plural. Everywhere else in attested Greek, we read the elliptic plural Athênai, which I now interpret to mean ‘everything that belongs to the acropolis of Athḗnē’. And there is also a deeper level of ellipsis here: the suffix -ḗnē of Athḗnē indicates that the goddess Athena is also a personification of the place of Athena, which is the acropolis of Athens and, by extension, the city of Athens, and by further extension, everything that belongs to the city of Athens.

\r\n[1] Commentary in Nagy 2004:159-164.

\r\n[2] See Nagy 2004:163; also Palaiologou 2013:250n5.

\r\n[3] Nagy 2004:163n17.

\r\n[4] Again, Nagy 2004:163n17.

\r\n[5] See also Muellner 1976:70, who notes that the singular form of Athḗnē vs. the plural form Athênai can in fact refer to the place that we know as 'Athens'. Muellner also analyzes here the elliptic function of the plural form here. On the elliptic plural in general, see Nagy 2004:157-175.

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|78 ὣς ἄρα φωνήσασ’ ἀπέβη γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη |79 πόντον ἐπ’ ἀτρύγετον, λίπε δὲ Σχερίην ἐρατεινήν, |80 ἵκετο δ’ ἐς Μαραθῶνα καὶ εὐρυάγυιαν Ἀθήνην, |81 δῦνε δ’ Ἐρεχθῆος πυκινὸν δόμον. αὐτὰρ Ὀδυσσεὺς |82 Ἀλκινόου πρὸς δώματ’ ἴε κλυτά·

|78 Speaking thus, Athena [Athḗnē], with the looks of an owl, went off |79 over the barren sea, leaving behind lovely Skheria. |80 She came to Marathon and to Athens [Athḗnē], with its wide causeways, |81 and she entered the well-built palace of Erekhtheus. As for Odysseus, |81 he headed for the renowned palace of Alkinoos.

The comments that follow are epitomized from Nagy 2015.09.10§§6–9:

At O.07.078, we see the name Athḗnē for the goddess Athena. At O.07.080 we see the same name Athēnē for the place that is known in historical times as the city of Athens. As a place-name, Athḗnē is attested only here in the singular. Everywhere else, in the entire surviving textual evidence of the Greek language, this place-name is attested only in the plural, Athênai. The plural has an elliptic function, but I think that even the suffix -ḗnē of Athḗnē is elliptic. Here is a working definition of ellipsis: a form that is elliptic refers not only to X but also to everything that belongs to X, such as X2, X3, X4 etc. An elliptic form of X implies X2, X3, X4 etc. without naming X2, X3, X4 etc. explicitly. In terms of this definition, the name Athḗnē refers not only to the goddess ‘Athena’ but also to everything that belongs to the goddess. An example of such ‘everything’ would be the acropolis of Athens. And we see a further level of ellipsis in the plural form Athênai: this elliptic plural refers not only to the acropolis of Athens but also to everything that belongs to the acropolis, and this everything becomes the city of Athens. Eventually, the ellipsis extends to everything that belongs to the city, which is ultimately the region of Attica. Earlier, however, in the second millennium BCE, the extended region of Attica was not yet dominated by Athens. And a rival dominant power in Attica was Marathon, mentioned here at O.07.80 as an alternative residence of the goddess Athena. But even if Athena had alternative residences in Attica, only in one place did she have a condominium, as it were, with Erekhtheus, and that place was the acropolis of Athens. On the relationship of the goddess Athena with the hero Erekhtheus, see the comment on I.02.546–552. Comparable to the name Athḗnē is the name of the nymph or local goddess Mukḗnē, who presides over the acropolis of Mycenae. As for the elliptic plural Mukênai, it must refer not only to the acropolis but also to the region dominated by the acropolis. Another comparable form is the place-name Messḗnē, which means something like ‘Midland’. Here I compare the place-name me-za-na written on a Linear B tablet from Pylos, Cn 3.1. And here is another relevant piece of information from the Linear B texts: in a tablet from Knossos, V 52, the name of a female divinity in line one is a-ta-na-po-ti-ni-ja, which could possibly be intepreted as athānās potniāi ‘to the lady [potnia] of Athens’. I translate athānā here as ‘Athens’, by which I mean simply the acropolis of Athens as it existed as far back as the second millennium BCE. [Further analysis in Nagy 2015.09.10.]

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The palace of Alkinoos, described at O.07.081–111, is comparable to the heavenly residence of Menelaos. See the comment at O.04.043–075. I now argue here that the garden of Alkinoos, described at O.07.112–132, is likewise presented as a heavenly place. At O.07.103–130, where we see verses that overlap the descriptions of the palace and the garden, we find that the describing verbs avoid the past tense. The descriptions are restricted to the present tense. It has been argued that a textual interpolation has happened here (West 2000:480), on the grounds that Homeric diction does not use the present tense to indicate the past, and that only those aspects of the past that are viewed as permanent can be described in the present tense: examples include the chariot of Hērā, I.05.724–728; the abode of Poseidon under the sea at Aigai, I.13.021–022; the springs of the river Scamander, I.22.147–154; the harbor and cave of the Nymphs at Ithaca, O.13.096–112; and, most important for my argumentation here, the dwelling-place of the gods on Mount Olympus, O.06.043–046. Arguing against the theory of interpolation, I propose that not only the palace of Alkinoos but also his garden are modeled on an idealized and thus heavenly prototype. Both the palace and the garden are models of permanence. In the case of the palace, its permanence is actually made explicit in a reference at O.07.091–094 to golden and silver watchdogs that guard the palace and that are made to last forever by the divine smith Hephaistos. The aura of this beautiful place is not only enchanting but even enchanted. In terms of my argument, then, there is no need to posit (as does West 2000:483–486) a textual interpolation from an unattested passage that would have followed what is spoken by Nausicaa at O.06.255–303 with reference to the palace of Alkinoos and its environs. The present tenses that are used in descriptions of the palace and the garden at O.07.081–111 and 112–132 respectively are appropriate to the heavenly aura of the whole place.

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Alkinoos here qualifies for an epithet that would mean ‘he whose mental-power [menos] is sacred [hieron]’. Instead, however, the name of Alkinoos is expressed periphrastically: ‘the sacred [hieron] mental-power [menos] of Alkinoos’, as if the agency of the king originated from his mental power, not from his existence as a person. See also O.07.178.

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Hunger for food in the gastēr ‘stomach’ drives the poet as guest to say what his host wants to hear. The poet, then, is dependent on the patronage of his local audiences.

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The idea of forgetting as expressed by lēth- is the poetic foil for the idea of remembering as expressed by mnē- 'mentally connect'.

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This adverb endukéōs ‘continuously, uninterruptedly’ expresses the idea of an uninterrupted sequence. The opposite of this adverb endukéōs ‘continuously, uninterruptedly’ can be seen in the adjective adeukḗs, which can be interpreted as ‘discontinuous, interrupting’. See the anchor comment at O.04.489. In terms of this interpretation, the root duk-/deuk- for this adverb/adjective conveys the sense of ‘continue’.

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The project of Calypso was to make Odysseus immortal, he reports.

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The Ionian island of Euboea is ostentatiously described as very far away from the island of the Phaeacians. The point of this description may be related to the poetic agenda of the Odyssey in describing the kingdom of the Phaeacians as a mythological replica of the confederation known as the Ionian Dodecapolis as it existed around the late eighth and early seventh centuries BCE. (On the Ionian Dodecapolis, see the anchor comment on I.01.463; also the comment on I.02.867–869 and on I.20.403–405; see also under Ionian Dodecapolis in the inventory of Words and Ideas.) For a reconstruction of the poetic agenda originating from the Ionian Dodecapolis around the late eighth and early seventh centuries BCE, I recommend the analysis of Frame 2009 ch. 7. (As for a relatively later phase of the poetic agenda, where the kingdom of Alkinoos is reshaped as a mythological replica of the island-state of Kerkyra / Corcyra, I refer to my initial comments on Rhapsody 7 of the Odyssey, where I cross-refer to my further comments on Rhapsody 11.) From the standpoint of Ionian Dodecapolis, dominated by the city-state of Miletus in Asia Minor, the island of Euboea was situated far away to the west. The territory of Euboea was shared by two rival Ionian cities, Eretria and Khalkis, and the first of the two was a close ally of Miletus. The distancing of the Ionian Dodecapolis from Ionian Euboea could be explained as a playfully ostentatious reference to the far reach of East Greeks in dealing with West Greeks.

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Odysseus encounters the blind singer Demodokos, who performs three songs that reveal hidden truths about the hero of the Odyssey.

draft js image error Blind Demodokos sings of the siege of Troy (1810), by John Flaxman (English, 1755–1826). Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Alkinoos prepares a feast for Odysseus, who has not yet identified himself. This feast becomes a mythologized replica of a festival that puts on display a dazzling variety of old poetic traditions, soon to be replaced by the new poetry of the Odyssey.

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Once again, as at O.07.167 and O.07.178, the name of Alkinoos is expressed periphrastically: ‘the sacred [hieron] mental-power [menos] of Alkinoos’, as if the agency of the king originated from his mental power, not from his existence as a person. See also O.08.04.

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Alkinoos the king is addressing his subjects, the Phaeacians, and he speaks of the ‘escort’ that he plans to provide for the stranger who has not yet identified himself as Odysseus. The word that I translate as ‘escort’ here is pompē: O.08.030, O.08.031, O.08.033. And the word that I translate as ‘stranger’ is xenos: O.08.028. Alkinoos intends to be a host to this stranger, treating him as a ‘guest’, and the word that I translate as ‘guest’ here is likewise xenos, O.08.042. What Alkinoos plans to offer his guest is a dais, which refers on the surface to a ‘feast’. The feast will evidently include a dinner, O.08.042, and this dinner will include entertainment in the form of ‘singing’, the noun for which is aoidē at O.08.044 and the verb for which is aeidein at O.08.045. The one who will be singing is an aoidos ‘singer’, O.08.043, whose name is Demodokos, O.08.044. This singer’s singing ‘gives delight’, as expressed by way of the verb terpein, O.08.045.

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The idea of hosting the still-unidentified guest here is connected with the idea of the dais 'feast' of the Phaeacians as a stylized festival.

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Here the entire kingdom of the Phaeacians is figured as one single dēmos ‘community, district’. On dēmos as ‘community, district’, see the comments on O.01.103 and O.02.032; and see also the comment on I.18.497–508, with reference to a scene of litigation in the context of a dēmos ‘district’ (δήμῳ at I.18.500), which is parallel to a litigation recorded in the Linear B tablet Ep 704 from Pylos, again in the context of a dāmos (da-mo) ‘district’ (HR 75–76).

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The god who is the hymnic subject of Demodokos’ ongoing humnos and who presides over the stylized festival is ultimately Zeus.

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As I will start to argue in the comment at O.08.061, the dais ‘feast’ that is planned here by king Alkinoos for his guest will eventually be rethought as a stylized festival, centering on a sacrifice that leads to a division of meat at the feast.

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The word dais here, which can generally be translated as 'feast', signals the idea of a festival. It can be argued that the dais of the Phaeacians is a stylized festival, starting in Odyssey 8 and ongoing till Odyssey 13.

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With reference to the dais of the Phaeacians as a stylized festival: an aspect of the festival is the singing performed by Demodokos. This singing is meant to be a source of delight to those attending, and the programmatic word for 'delight' here is terpein at verse 45.

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The “speaking name” (nomen loquens) of the singer, Dēmódokos, can be interpreted as meaning ‘one who is received [verb dek(h)esthai] by the community [dēmos]’, and, in the present context, the dēmos ‘community, district’ that gives to the singer’s singing its reception is indicated at O.08.036: that community is the dēmos or ‘district’ of the kingdom ruled by Alkinoos the king. I translate Dēmódokos as ‘received by the community’, not just ‘received in the community’, because the noun dēmos implies an authority that is endowed with agency: the dēmos can perform a function, such as the reception of a song. We can see such agency at work in the use of the word dāmos (da-mo) in the Linear B tablet Ep 704 from Pylos: in the litigation that is described in that text, the dāmos literally speaks as one of the two parties engaged in the litigation over land-tenure: dāmos de min phāsi … ekheen (da-mo-de-mi-pa-si … e-ke-e) ‘but the dāmos says [phāsi] that she [= the priestess] has …’ (HR 75–76).

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In Homeric Greek as also in the language of Linear B, dēmos (dāmos) refers to a local 'district' that has its own customary laws. The element dēmo- in compound names like Dēmodokos in this verse highlights the localized functions of such figures.

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The king Alkinoos ‘sacrifices’, as indicated by the verb hiereuein at O.08.059, a number of sacrificial animals. They are twelve sheep, eight pigs and two head of cattle, as indicated at O.08.059–060, and the meat of these sacrificial animals will now be prepared for a dais ‘feast, division of portions (of meat); sacrifice’, as indicated at O.08.061—and as already indicated earlier at O.08.038. Following up on my comment at O.08.038 as also on the comment here at O.08.059–061, I will have more to say in the comment at O.08.061, coming up, about the dais ‘feast’ that is planned by king Alkinoos for his guest.

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With reference to the dais of the Phaeacians as a stylized festival:

We see in this context that the dais, as a feast, involves an animal sacrifice that leads to feasting on the meat of the sacrificial animal.

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An animal sacrifice marks the ritual start of the festival. The festival is understood to be the context of an agōn – between Demodokos and Odysseus.

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The starting of the dais 'feast' is signaled at O.8.61. The dais is ongoing until late at night, all the way to the end of O.12, and then it gets restarted on the next day, in O.13. Note the ring composition that articulates the restarting.

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[Epitomized from MoM 4§73:] The noun dais ‘feast’, as we see it used here at O.08.061, is derived from the verb daiesthai in the basic sense of ‘distribute’, which is used in contexts of animal sacrifice in referring to the ‘distribution’ of cooked meat among the members of a community, as at O.15.140 and O.17.332. Then, by way of synecdoche, the specific idea of distribution extends metonymically to the general idea of feasting and further to the even more general idea of a festival. Following the logic of this sequence of meanings, we see that the animal sacrifice at O.08.059 had led to the cooking and the distribution of the meat, O.08.061, which will lead to communal dining, O.08.071–072, which will lead to the First Song of Demodokos, O.08.073–083, and so on. On metonymy and * synecdoche, see the inventory of Words and Ideas. In terms of this logic, the metonymic use of the word dais in the sense of ‘feast’ here at O.08.061 marks a whole complex of events that are typical of festivals: animal sacrifice, communal feasting, singing as well as dancing at the feast. As we will see in comments that follow, this dais ‘feast’ as signaled at O.08.061 will be rethought as a stylized festival, centering on a sacrifice that leads to a division of meat at the feast. Such a festival will continue from here in Odyssey 8 all the way to the beginning of Odyssey* 13.

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The composition of song in this first performance of Demodokos is compared metaphorically to the weaving of a web. Note the context of oimē as ‘thread’ at verse 74.

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Demodokos is an aoidos ‘singer,’ O.08.062, and he is is blind, O.08.63–64. The song that he sings about the Trojan War, O.08.073–082, prompts Odysseus to break down in tears and weep, O.08.083–095. Every time the singer ‘leaves off’ singing, as indicated by lēgein, O.08.087, he then restarts his song, as indicated by aps arkhesthai, O.08.090, since his Phaeacian listeners ‘feel delight’, as indicated by the verb terpesthai, as they hear his singing, O.08.091. So, the listeners of Demodokos so enjoy his singing that they don’t let him stop. (See the comments at HC 2§299 and 2§343.) There is a contradiction here between the reactions of Odysseus and the other listeners. Every time the singer restarts his singing, Odysseus restarts his weeping, O.08.092. But Odysseus pretends to be enjoying the performance of Demodokos, O.08.089, and he manages to evade the notice of all the Phaeacians, O.08.093—except for Alkinoos, O.08.094–095. As I will argue with reference to the Third Song of Demodokos, that song can be interpreted as a restarting of the First Song of Demodokos—followed by a parallel restarting of the tears of Odysseus in response to it.

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The singers as represented in Homeric poetry are traditionally pictured as accompanying themselves on a string instrument or ‘lyre’, called a phorminx here.

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Before the singer starts singing, the Phaeacians and their unidentified guest are already feasting: they partake of both food and drink, O.08.072. The eating and drinking had begun at O.08.071, signaled already at O.08.061 by the noun dais ‘feast, feasting’. As we will see later, however, the singing itself is part of the dais ‘feasting’.

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The expression aristoi Akhaiōn (ἄριστοι Ἀχαιῶν) at verse 78, which I translate as ‘the best of the Achaeans’, here is in the plural, and nowhere else in either the Iliad or the Odyssey do we find such a plural (for a different, distributive plural by implication of this same expression 'best of the Achaeans', see my note on Iliad 8.228-235). Rather, we find the singular aristos Akhaiōn (ἄριστος Ἀχαιῶν), which I again translate as ‘the best of the Achaeans’. Although many heroes contend for this title in the macro-epic of the Iliad, only one of them, Achilles, emerges as eligible to be known in that epic as the absolute best of all the Achaeans, by contrast with such rivals as Agamemnon, Diomedes, and Ajax. Similarly in the Odyssey, only Odysseus emerges as the absolute best, by contrast with the suitors of Penelope. So, in terms of both these two macro-epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, there can only be one hero who is truly ‘the best of the Achaeans’.

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reference to the mixing of the ashes of Achilles and Patroklos in O.24.077 as not a duplication of references to the same mixing in the Iliad (I.23.243-244 and 23.091-092), therefore not violating Munro’s law, in the context of analyzing a traditional suppression of anything overtly Iliadic in the Odyssey (p. 21), and analysis of Demodokos’ first song on the neikos of Odysseus and Achilles, including the theory that it refers to an incident in the middle of the Cypria, comparison with the beginning of the Iliad, and the tradition of the quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles over whether Troy would be captured by might or artifice

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\n\n reference to the mixing of the ashes of Achilles and Patroklos in O.24.077 as not a duplication of references to the same mixing in the Iliad (I.23.243-244 and 23.091-092), therefore not violating Munro’s law, in the context of analyzing a traditional suppression of anything overtly Iliadic in the Odyssey (p. 21), and analysis of Demodokos’ first song on the neikos of Odysseus and Achilles, including the theory that it refers to an incident in the middle of the Cypria, comparison with the beginning of the Iliad, and the tradition of the quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles over whether Troy would be captured by might or artifice

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analysis of Demodokos as an idealization of an artist by the art form of epic

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\r\nOdysseus as implicitly the “best of the Achaeans” in the epic compositions of Demodokos, and Odysseus’ earning the title for what he did within the Odyssey rather than at Troy

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\r\nanalysis of the song of Demodokos on the neikos of Achilles and Odysseus as compared with themes that surface in the Iliad, and in terms of a tradition that contrasted the heroic worth of Odysseus and Achilles in terms of mētis and biē

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\r\ncomparison of the themes in the quarrel of Odysseus and Achilles in Demodokos’ song with those in the embassy scene in I.09 in an argument for the existence of a common epic heritage on the enmity between Achilles and Odysseus on which they draw

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\r\nanalysis of the passage against the background of the patterns of traditional diction to do with pēma and Dios boulē, and Demodokos’ alluding to an Iliad that would have featured Odysseus as the prime offender of Achilles and his chief resentment as centering on the slighting of his biē

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\r\nanalysis of the name of Achilles, as associated with pēma decreed by the Will of Zeus

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\r\nanalysis of the references to Delphi in the Odyssey, the thematic correlation of the death of Achilles with Delphi/sacrifice/quarrel, and its parallels to a variant myth about the death of Pyrrhos

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\r\nanalysis of Achilles’ (and the Aeacids) connections with the themes of dais and neikos, and comparison of this passage on the song of Demodokos with the Cypria and Achilles’ and Agamemnon’s quarrel at the beginning of the Iliad

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\r\nanalysis of Achilles’ connections with the themes of dais and neikos, and comparison of this passage on the song of Demodokos with Odysseus’ words regarding dais to Achilles in I.09.225-228

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\r\nanalysis of the thematic correlation of the death of Achilles with Delphi/sacrifice/quarrel and its parallels to a variant myth about the death of Pyrrhos, of Achilles’ (and the Aeacids) connections with the themes of dais and neikos, and the song of Demodokos on the quarrel of Achilles and Odysseus as incorporating Delphic lore

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\r\nOdysseus’ and Achilles’ quarrel as serving as a context to define the themes of mētis of Odysseus and biē of Achilles (comparison with the neikos of Hesiod and Perseus in W&D)

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\n\n comparison of Demodokos’ first song with the newer Iliad, both featuring Zeus as the implicit hymnic subject of the epic about the Trojan War, inspired by a singular Muse and subsuming the divine agency of Apollo under the Plan of Zeus \n\n----- Merged Content -----

\n\n The genitive of oimē 'thread' here marks the point of departure for the performance of the first song of Demodokos.

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\n\n Here oimē can be translated as ‘song’ in the context of analyzing the meanings of prooimion, oimos, oimē.

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\n\n analysis of the parallelism of Odysseus’ restarted outpouring of tears and Demodokos’ restarted epic, and of the plot of the epic about the Trojan War as equated with the prophecy of Apollo and the plan of Zeus \n\n----- Merged Content -----

\n\n argument that oimos/oimē/prooimion and humnos derive from roots referring to fabric making, and the metaphors of fabric making for composition of song \n\n----- Merged Content -----

\n\n analysis of the metaphors from weaving for the composition of song, here especially oimē as ‘thread’ \n\n----- Merged Content -----

\n\n analysis of Demodokos’ first and third song as parts of the same humnos, restarted, provoking the same response of tears in Odysseus, and Zeus as the cause of the pains and as the ultimate hymnic subject \n\n----- Merged Content -----

\n\n analysis of the kind of epic that the first song of Demodokos is, that is, older kind of epic analogous to what would have been introduced by the Homeric Hymns \n\n----- Merged Content -----

\n\n analysis of the kind of epic that the first song of Demodokos is, that is, older kind of epic, in the context of arguing that the poetic form of the epic of Demodokos is cognate with the poetic form of the epic Cycle \n\n----- Merged Content -----

\n\n analysis of the parallels between the prooimion in Herodotus and Homer (here, use of relative clauses as indirect questions) \n\n----- Merged Content -----

\n\n analysis of the dais of the Phaeacians as a stylized festival, here with reference to its epithet thaleiēi \n\n----- Merged Content -----

\n\n argument that a hymnic prooimion is not obligatory if Zeus is the implied hymnic subject authorizing the epic, here exemplified by Demodokos’ first and third song

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\r\ncomparison of the Cypria and Demodokos’ first and third song in terms of the Plan of Zeus as the frame of narration for the Trojan War

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\r\nanalysis of the Plan of Zeus as a sign of Homeric poetry

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\r\nanalysis of the Plan of Zeus, here Hector’s not returning to Andromache (in these verses) as the most special and most Iliadic view of the Plan of Zeus, and its being connected with the Plan of Zeus in the singing of Demodokos

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\n\n analysis of the dais of the Phaeacians as a stylized festival

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For more on the epic traditions of klea andrōn ‘the glories [klea] of men’, see the comment on I.09.185–191; also on I.09.524–599. On the poetics of kleos ‘glory’ as the glory conferred by poetry, especially by epic, see the comment on O.01.088–095.

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At O.08.073–082, we see the plot of the First Song—at least, the plot of the start of the First Song. We cannot be sure about the whole plot because the singer more than once ‘leaves off’ his song, as signaled by lēgein at O.08.087, and then ‘restarts’ it, as signaled by aps arkhesthai at O.08.090. The multiple restartings are prompted by the fact that the singer’s Phaeacian listeners ‘feel delight’, as indicated by the verb terpesthai, as they hear his singing, O.08.091, and they want to hear more. As I noted in my comment for O.08.062–095, even Odysseus pretends to be enjoying the performance of Demodokos, O.08.089. On points of comparison between the Iliad and the First Song of Demodokos as a micro-Iliad, see HPC 115–116, especially with reference to (1) the idea of being inspired by a single Muse and (2) the subsuming of the agency of Apollo under the Plan of Zeus; see also HC 2§309. On the Third Song of Demodokos as a continuation of the First, see HPC 101. On epic poetry about the Trojan War as a hymnic consequent, see MoM 4§73 and 4§99.2; also HC 2§326. (By hymnic consequent here, all I mean is whatever comes after something that is shaped like a hymn.) On the epic of Demodokos as cognate with the poetic form of the epic Cycle, see HC 2§331.

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I translate the genitive of oimē (οἴμης) here as ‘starting (from a story-thread)’. (See also PP 63, HC 2§92n.) The paraphrasing here of the song of Demodokos recapitulates the prooimion ‘proemium, prelude’ of the song. [What follows is epitomized from HC 2§§92–93:] In the case of the compound noun prooimion / προοίμιον, conventionally translated as ‘proemium’, the element -oim- / -οιμ- is derived from a root that we find also attested in two simple nouns, oimos / οἶμος and oimē / οἰμή. The Attic by-form of prooimion / προοίμιον, which is phroimion / φροίμιον, elucidates the prehistory of the root: we must reconstruct it not as oim*- but as hoim-, from soim-. This reconstruction helps elucidate the surviving contexts of both oimos / οἶμος and oimē / οἰμή, which do not always give a clear picture of the basic meaning of either form. In some contexts, the meaning seems to be ‘song’, as here at O.08.074, while in others it seems to be ‘way, pathway’, as in Hesiod Works and Days 290. With the help of comparative evidence, however, the primary meaning of oimos and oimē can be reconstructed as ‘thread, threading’, and the meanings ‘song’ or ‘way, pathway’ can be explained as secondary: that is, ‘song’ and ‘way, pathway’ are metaphorical generalizations derived from the meaning ‘thread, threading’ (PR 72, 81; also PP 63n20). And it is such a primary meaning ‘thread, threading’ that we find in comparable forms attested in other Indo-European languages: for example, the form soimos that we reconstruct from Greek oimos is attested as Old Icelandic seimr, meaning ‘thread’ (for this and other examples, see Durante 1976:176). In terms of such a primary meaning, the etymology of the compound noun prooimion ‘proemium’ can be interpreted as a metaphor referring to the ‘initial threading’ of a song. A close semantic parallel to the etymology of Greek prooimion ‘proemium’ as an ‘initial threading’ of a song is the etymology of Latin exordium, which likewise means ‘proemium’ in poetic and rhetorical contexts: the meaning of this noun as well can be traced back to the basic idea of an ‘initial threading’ (PP 63n20). The poetic and rhetorical concepts of both Greek prooimion and Latin exordium in the sense of ‘proemium’ have a common Indo-European ancestry. As I will argue later, not only oimos / oimē / prooimion but also humnos, ordinarily translated as ‘hymn’, are derived from roots that refer to the making of fabric. Moreover, I note that the word oimos is formulaically interchangeable with the word humnos at verse 451 of the Homeric Hymn (4) to Hermes, where we see the attestation of both οἶμος ἀοιδῆς and ὕμνος ἀοιδῆς in the manuscript tradition; at a later point, we will also consider the cognate expression ἀοιδῆς ὕμνον at verse 429 of Odyssey 8. I interpret the combinations of humnos and oimos with aoidē ‘song’ to mean respectively the ‘weaving’ of song and the ‘threading’ of song. Relevant to this interpretation is the context of oimē at verse 74 of Odyssey 8: we see here a metaphorical reference to the initial part of performing a song, that is, to the ‘initial threading’ of a song. To sum up, the meaning of oimos or oimē as ‘song’ results from a metaphorical extension: the idea of making song is being expressed metaphorically through the idea of making fabric. As for contexts where oimos and oimē seem to mean ‘way, pathway’, I argue that such a meaning is likewise a result of metaphorical extension: here the general idea of moving ahead from one point to another is being expressed metaphorically by applying the specific idea of threading one’s way from one point to another (more on this point at HC 2§311, in the excursus there). On points of comparison with the proemium that introduces the History* of Herodotus, see PH 221.

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The narrative subject of the epic that is being paraphrased here is a neikos ‘quarrel’ between Odysseus and Achilles, O.08.075. And the setting for this quarrel is a dais ‘feast’ that is explicitly correlated with a ‘sacrifice’, O.08.076: θεῶν ἐν δαιτὶ θαλείῃ ‘at a celebratory feast [dais] of the gods’. The same epithet thaleiēi (θαλείῃ) is also used to describe the ongoing dais ‘feast’ at O.08.099. This epithet is of special interest in light of the meaning of the noun thaliai in the plural, ‘celebrations, festivities’, as at O.11.603 (HPC 85n13). We may compare another feast, described at I.08.228–235, where the describer is Agamemnon, recalling a scene from the collective past of the Achaeans: the setting of this other feast was the island of Lemnos, and each one of the Achaean leaders took turns in boasting that he was the best Achaean of them all, I.08.229. In my comment on I.08.228–235, I noted that the noun eukhōlai ‘boastings’ in the plural at I.08.229 indicates a distributive action: the Achaeans were boasting not as a group but individually and competitively. The competitive boasting evidently centered on the question: who would be superior to all others in performing heroic exploits in the upcoming Trojan War? And the setting for this quarrel was a feast where the meat of oxen to be eaten in vast quantities was being apportioned among the Achaean leaders, I.08.231. Since the narrative here makes a point of adding that these leaders were also drinking wine, I.08.232, it is implied that all the boasting could get out of hand and lead to quarrels about the awarding of prime cuts of meat. It would have been expected that the best portion of meat should go to the best hero. On the idea of a champion’s portion of meat, see the comment on I.07.319–322. Having reconstructed for I.08.228–235 a scene of quarreling in the context of apportioning cuts of meat, I return to the scene at O.08.075–078, where we see once again a scene of quarreling in the context of apportioning cuts of meat. And here the ‘quarreling’ is explicitly called a neikos, O.08.075, while the ‘apportioning of meat’ is explicitly called a dais, O.08.076. As we saw in the comment for I.01.423–425, a dais is a feast where meat is distributed, and this meat comes from the sacrifice of sacrificial animals. Thus the act of sacrifice converts the feast of humans into a notional feast of the gods. This notion, ‘feast of the gods’, is made explicit at O.08.076, where the setting is described explicitly this way, as we have already seen: θεῶν ἐν δαιτὶ θαλείῃ ‘at a celebratory feast [dais] of the gods’. In this festive setting, as I already highlighted in the comment on I.08.228–235, the neikos ‘quarrel’ at O.08.075 is between Odysseus and Achilles, who are described at O.08.078 as ‘the best of the Achaeans’. In terms of such a dispute in the context of a feast, each one of the two heroes would be claiming to be the ‘best of the Achaeans’. Achilles would have claimed to be ‘best’ because of his superior biē ‘force, violence, strength’, while Odysseus would have counter-claimed to be ‘best’ because of his superior mētis ‘mind, intelligence’. See the comments on O.01.002; see also, further back, the comments on I.01.001–012, where I argue that the quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles came from an epic tradition that was independent from the epic tradition that featured the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles. Further, see the comment on I.09.346–352, where I note that this Iliadic passage was thought by Aristarchus (scholia A for I.09.347) to be an allusion to the quarrel at O.08.075–078 between Achilles and Odysseus over one overriding question: will Troy be conquered by relying on the physical power of Achilles or on the mental power of Odysseus?

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In the Iliad and Odyssey, Apollo at Delphi is mentioned only at Ι.09.404–405 and here at O.08.079–081. Agamemnon consults the oracle at Delphi, and he misunderstands what the oracle prophesies to him. See the next note, on O.08.081–082.

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Agamemnon misunderstands the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, which had evidently prophesied to him that Troy would be captured when the ‘best of the Achaeans’—Odysseus and Achilles—engage in a quarrel at a feast. Agamemnon rejoices when he sees the two heroes quarreling, since he thinks that victory over the Trojans will be quick and easy—and painless. But the war will be a great pēma ‘pain’, O.08.081, for the Achaeans as also for the Trojans, O.08.082. This pain is compared to a breakaway boulder that ‘rolls’ down from the heights above, as expressed by way of kulindesthai, O.08.081, and this boulder will crush anyone that stands in its way. And all that pain will be caused by the Will of Zeus, O.08.082. For another comparable misunderstanding on the part of Agamemnon, see the comments on I.02.007–015 and on I.02.036–040.

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The micro-epic of Demodokos as embedded in Odyssey 8.73–82, merges the poetic agenda that are kept separate in the macro-epics of the Iliad and the Odyssey. And, correspondingly, this same micro-epic merges the plan of Zeus as it operates in the Iliad with the plan of Zeus as it operates in the Odyssey. These mergers are compatible with the plural form boulai ‘plans’ referring to the plot of the micro-epic at verse 82 of Odyssey 8, as opposed to the singular form boulē ‘plan’ referring to the plot of the macro-epic at verse 5 of Iliad 1. Likewise in the Odyssey, as the book of Jim Marks has shown clearly, the whole plot of this macro-epic is driven by a singular plan of Zeus.

Bibliographical references

Marks, J. 2008. Zeus in the Odyssey. Hellenic Studies 31. Washington DC. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Marks.Zeus_in_the_Odyssey.2008.

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In Classical Inquiries, I note:

The epic singing of the first song of Demodokos in Odyssey 8, once it gets started by the prooimion as indicated by the syntax at verse 74, keeps getting restarted. Whenever the performer ‘leaves off’, as indicated by the word lēgein at verse 87, he keeps on ‘restarting’ the epic, as indicated by the wording aps arkhesthai ‘start again and again’ at verse 90. The continual restarting creates the effect of an endless narrative: the epic performance of the first song of Demodokos seems to have no end in sight.

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analysis of the leaving off and restarting of the hymnos in Demodokos’ songs and Odysseus’ reaction of dissolving into tears each time Demodokos restarts

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With reference to the 'leaving off' (lēgein) and the restarting of the humnos in the performance of Demodokos: in the case of this performance, which is about the Trojan War, Odysseus 'dissolves' (tēkein, tēkesthai) into tears each time Demodokos restarts.

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Alkinoos notices the weeping of Odysseus, and this act of noticing will lead to recognition. See the anchor comment at I.05.669 on noeîn ‘take note (of), notice’. This characteristic of Alkinoos, to ‘notice’ things, is relevant to his “speaking name”: see the comment at O.22.031–033.

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Alkinoos pauses the dining and the singing, though the dais at O.08.098 and at O.08.098 in the general sense of ‘feasting’ can continue. But now, instead of dining and singing, what will commence are aethloi (āthloi) in the sense of ‘athletic contests’, O.08.100. Listed at O.08.103 are athletic events in boxing, wrestling, long-jump, and footracing.

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Once again, as at O.08.076, the epithet thaleiēi (θαλείῃ) ‘celebratory’ is used to describe the ongoing dais ‘feast’ (δαιτί), O.08.099. On the meaning of this epithet, see the comment on O.08.075–078.

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All those attending the athletic event ‘felt delight’, as expressed by way of the verb terpesthai; in Hittite, the cognate noun tarpa-, likewise derived from the root *terp-, is used with reference to athletic events. (See MoM 4§78.)

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Here at O.08.200 the word agōn ‘competition’ is used with reference to a continuum of competitive athletic events. In this context, it becomes clear that the entire series of athletic events in this festive continuum can be viewed as an agōn ‘competition’. See also O.08.238.

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In the Second Song, Ο.08.329–332, Hephaistos as the god who is slow on his feet will catch up with the fleet-footed god Ares the adulterer. Similarly, Odysseus says here at O.08.230–233 that he is slow on his feet. But, when the time comes, we know that he too will catch up with those fleet-footed would-be adulterers, the suitors of his wife.

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|250 “ἀλλ’ ἄγε, Φαιήκων βητάρμονες ὅσσοι ἄριστοι, |251 παίσατε, ὥς χ’ ὁ ξεῖνος ἐνίσπῃ οἷσι φίλοισιν, |252 οἴκαδε νοστήσας, ὅσσον περιγινόμεθ’ ἄλλων |253 ναυτιλίῃ καὶ ποσσὶ καὶ ὀρχηστυῖ καὶ ἀοιδῇ. |254 Δημοδόκῳ δέ τις αἶψα κιὼν φόρμιγγα λίγειαν |255 οἰσέτω, ἥ που κεῖται ἐν ἡμετέροισι δόμοισιν.” |256 ὣς ἔφατ’ Ἀλκίνοος θεοείκελος, ὦρτο δὲ κῆρυξ |257 οἴσων φόρμιγγα γλαφυρὴν δόμου ἐκ βασιλῆος. |258 αἰσυμνῆται δὲ κριτοὶ ἐννέα πάντες ἀνέσταν, |259 δήμιοι, οἳ κατ’ ἀγῶνα ἐῢ πρήσσεσκον ἕκαστα, |260 λείηναν δὲ χορόν, καλὸν δ’ εὔρυναν ἀγῶνα. |261 κῆρυξ δ’ ἐγγύθεν ἦλθε φέρων φόρμιγγα λίγειαν |262 Δημοδόκῳ· ὁ δ’ ἔπειτα κί’ ἐς μέσον· ἀμφὶ δὲ κοῦροι |263 πρωθῆβαι ἵσταντο, δαήμονες ὀρχηθμοῖο, |264 πέπληγον δὲ χορὸν θεῖον ποσίν. αὐτὰρ ᾿Οδυσσεὺς |265 μαρμαρυγὰς θηεῖτο ποδῶν, θαύμαζε δὲ θυμῷ. |266 αὐτὰρ ὁ φορμίζων ἀνεβάλλετο καλὸν ἀείδειν |267 ἀμφ’ Ἄρεος φιλότητος ἐϋστεφάνου τ’ Ἀφροδίτης, |268 ὡς τὰ πρῶτ’ ἐμίγησαν ἐν Ἡφαίστοιο δόμοισι |269 λάθρῃ. [The story that has just started at line 266 now continues, ending at line 366.] |367 ταῦτ’ ἄρ’ ἀοιδὸς ἄειδε περικλυτός· αὐτὰρ Ὀδυσσεὺς |368 τέρπετ’ ἐνὶ φρεσὶν ᾗσιν ἀκούων ἠδὲ καὶ ἄλλοι |369 Φαίηκες δολιχήρετμοι, ναυσικλυτοὶ ἄνδρες. (At line 267, there is a variant reading attested: φιλότητα in the accusative, instead of φιλότητος in the genitive.)

|250 [Alkinoos is speaking.] “Let’s get started. I want the best of the Phaeacian acrobatic dancers [bētarmones] |251 to perform their sportive dance [paizein], so that the stranger, our guest, will be able to tell his near-and-dear ones, |252 when he gets home, how much better we (Phaeacians) are than anyone else |253 in sailing and in footwork, in dance [orkhēstus] and song [aoidē]. |254 One of you go and get for Demodokos the clear-sounding special lyre [phorminx], |255 bringing it to him. It is in the palace somewhere.” |256 Thus spoke Alkinoos, the one who looks like the gods, and the herald [kērux] got up, |257 ready to bring the well carved special lyre [phorminx] from the palace of the king. |258 And the organizers [aisumnētai], the nine selectmen, all got up |259 —they belonged to the district [dēmos]—and they started arranging everything according to the rules of the competition [agōn]: |260 they made smooth the place of the singing-and-dancing [khoros], and they made a wide space of competition [agōn]. |261 The herald [kērux] came near, bringing the clear-sounding special lyre [phorminx] |262 for Demodokos. He [= Demodokos] moved to the center [es meson] of the space. At his right and at his left were boys [kouroi] |263 in the first stage of adolescence [prōthēboi], standing there, well versed in dancing [orkhēthmos]. |264 They pounded out with their feet a dance [khoros], a thing of wonder, and Odysseus |265 was observing the sparkling footwork. He was amazed in his heart [thūmos]. |266 And he [= Demodokos], playing on the special lyre [phormizein], started [anaballesthai] singing beautifully |267 about [amphi] the bonding [philotēs] of Ares and of Aphrodite, the one with the beautiful garlands [stephanoi], |268 about how they, at the very beginning, mated with each other in the palace of Hephaistos, |269 in secret. [The story that has just started at line 266 now continues, ending at line 366.] |367 These things, then, the singer [aoidos] was singing [aeidein], that very famous singer. As for Odysseus, |368 he felt delight [terpesthai] in his heart as he was listening—and so too did all the others feel, |369 the Phaeacians, those men with their long oars, men famed for their ships.

As we are about to see, the Second Song of Demodokos is remarkably different from the First and the Third Songs—not only in form but also in content.

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Officials who are experts in setting up a place for holding competitive choral events of singing and dancing are here preparing to set up such a place. Such a choral event is an agōn ‘competition’, just like the athletic events that preceded. So, all these events are seen as a festive continuum.

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So, the competitive choral event is properly arranged, and a place is prepared for the ‘choral singing /dancing’, the word for which is khoros. The stylized festival continues.

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Acrobatic dancers lead off the choral singing and dancing, and the khoros or ‘place for choral singing-and-dancing’ becomes their dancing floor. This pattern of leading off resembles the pattern we see in versions of Ο.04.019 and Ι.18.606 where we see the variant reading ἐξάρχοντες instead of ἐξάρχοντος. In terms of this reading, the acrobatic dancers lead off, starting their performance before the singer starts.

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Now Demodokos the singer ‘begins performing’, as indicated by anaballesthai, and he sings, O.08.266. What the singer now sings is a proemium, the form of which is analogous to what we read in the Homeric Hymns.

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The subject of the song is the philotēs ‘sexual bonding’ of Ares and Aphrodite. The adulterous lovers will be caught in the act by the husband of Aphrodite, Hephaistos. The introduction of the story by way of the preposition amphi ‘about’ is typical of hymns. The story of the sexual encounter of Ares and Aphrodite is typical of a genre known as divine burlesque, on which see the comment on I.21.385–514. The subject of such a philotēs ‘sexual bonding’ is treated seriously by Empedocles DK B 35.

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verses matching these quoted in the Derveni Papyrus and considered by the commentator as Orphic (Obbink 1997:41n4)

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Reacting to the Second Song of Demodokos, both Odysseus and the Phaeacian listeners react by ‘feeling delight’ as expressed by way of terpesthai, O.08.368.

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|250 [Alkinoos is speaking.] “Let’s get started. I want the best of the Phaeacian acrobatic dancers [bētarmones] |251 to perform their sportive dance [paizein], so that the stranger, our guest, will be able to tell his near-and-dear ones, |252 when he gets home, how much better we (Phaeacians) are than anyone else |253 in sailing and in footwork, in dance [orkhēstus] and song [aoidē]. |254 One of you go and get for Demodokos the clear-sounding special lyre [phorminx], |255 bringing it to him. It is in the palace somewhere.” |256 Thus spoke Alkinoos, the one who looks like the gods, and the herald [kērux] got up, |257 ready to bring the well carved special lyre [phorminx] from the palace of the king. |258 And the organizers [aisumnētai], the nine selectmen, all got up |259 —they belonged to the district [dēmos]—and they started arranging everything according to the rules of the competition [agōn]: |260 they made smooth the place of the singing-and-dancing [khoros], and they made a wide space of competition [agōn]. |261 The herald [kērux] came near, bringing the clear-sounding special lyre [phorminx] |262 for Demodokos. He [= Demodokos] moved to the center [es meson] of the space. At his right and at his left were boys [kouroi] |263 in the first stage of adolescence [prōthēboi], standing there, well versed in dancing [orkhēthmos]. |264 They pounded out with their feet a dance [khoros], a thing of wonder, and Odysseus |265 was observing the sparkling footwork. He was amazed in his heart [thūmos]. |266 And he [= Demodokos], playing on the special lyre [phormizein], started [anaballesthai] singing beautifully |267 about [amphi] the bonding [philotēs] of Ares and of Aphrodite, the one with the beautiful garlands [stephanoi], |268 about how they, at the very beginning, mated with each other in the palace of Hephaistos, |269 in secret. [The story that has just started at line 266 now continues, ending at line 366.] |367 These things, then, the singer [aoidos] was singing [aeidein], that very famous singer. As for Odysseus, |368 he felt delight [terpesthai] in his heart as he was listening—and so too did all the others feel, |369 the Phaeacians, those men with their long oars, men famed for their ships.

As we are about to see, the Second Song of Demodokos is remarkably different from the First and the Third Songs—not only in form but also in content.

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What follows the Second Song of Demodokos, which can be viewed as a hymnic proemium, is further dancing and perhaps singing, which can be viewed together as a hymnic consequent. And the setting is called an agōn ‘competition’, O.08.380.

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Alkinoos says that the kingdom of the Phaeacians, described here as a dēmos ‘community, district’, is ruled by twelve basilēes ‘kings’, O.08.390, and that he counts himself as the thirteenth. (On krainein in the sense of ‘authorize’ and thereby ‘rule’, see GMP 59.) In terms of this description, Alkinoos figures himself as an over-king, and maybe the word basilēes here has the meaning of ‘sub-kings’—which is in fact the meaning of the corresponding word gwasilēwes (qa-si-re-we) in Linear B texts. According to Frame 2009 ch. 7, the twelve kings of the Phaeacians may represent a mythological replica of the confederation known as the Ionian Dodecapolis as it existed around the late eighth and early seventh centuries BCE. On the Ionian Dodecapolis, see the anchor comment on I.01.463; also the comment on I.02.867–869 and on I.20.403–405; see also under Ionian Dodecapolis in the inventory of Words and Ideas.

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Alkinoos wishes that the feasting should continue and that Odysseus should continue to ‘feel delight’, as expressed by terpesthai, while he hears at this feast the ‘weaving’ of the aoidē ‘song’ that started with the First Song of Demodokos and that will now connect with the Third Song. In this context, we see the meaning of the noun dais extended from the specific idea of ‘feast’ to the more general idea of a stylized ‘festival’. And the continued weaving of the song, which corresponds to the continuation of the stylized festival, is expressed here by way of the noun humnos, which is attested only here and nowhere else in either the Iliad or the Odyssey. In this unique context at O.08.429, the meaning of humnos can be reconstructed as ‘web’ or ‘connecting by way of fabric work’. In terms of such a reconstructed meaning, the humnos as a ‘web’ connects the First and the Second and the Third Songs of Demodokos and forms a continuum of song that extends throughout Odyssey 8, as if the ongoing dais of this Rhapsody were not only a continued feast but also a sustained festival. This festival makes room for events of athletics as well as songmaking.

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|485 αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ πόσιος καὶ ἐδητύος ἐξ ἔρον ἕντο, |486 δὴ τότε Δημόδοκον προσέφη πολύμητις Ὀδυσσεύς· |487 “Δημόδοκ’, ἔξοχα δή σε βροτῶν αἰνίζομ’ ἁπάντων· |488 ἢ σέ γε Μοῦσ’ ἐδίδαξε, Διὸς πάϊς, ἢ σέ γ’ Ἀπόλλων· |489 λίην γὰρ κατὰ κόσμον Ἀχαιῶν οἶτον ἀείδεις, |490 ὅσσ’ ἕρξαν τ’ ἔπαθόν τε καὶ ὅσσ’ ἐμόγησαν Ἀχαιοί, |491 ὥς τέ που ἢ αὐτὸς παρεὼν ἢ ἄλλου ἀκούσας. |492 ἀλλ’ ἄγε δὴ μετάβηθι καὶ ἵππου κόσμον ἄεισον |493 δουρατέου, τὸν ᾿Επειὸς ἐποίησεν σὺν Ἀθήνῃ, |494 ὅν ποτ’ ἐς ἀκρόπολιν δόλον ἤγαγε δῖος Ὀδυσσεὺς |495 ἀνδρῶν ἐμπλήσας, οἳ Ἴλιον ἐξαλάπαξαν. |496 αἴ κεν δή μοι ταῦτα κατὰ μοῖραν καταλέξῃς, |497 αὐτίκα καὶ πᾶσιν μυθήσομαι ἀνθρώποισιν, |498 ὡς ἄρα τοι πρόφρων θεὸς ὤπασε θέσπιν ἀοιδήν.”

|485 When they had satisfied their desire for drinking and eating, |486 then Odysseus, the one with many a stratagem, addressed Demodokos: |487 “Demodokos, I admire and pointedly praise you, more than any other human. |488 Either the Muse, child of Zeus, taught you, or Apollo. |489 All too well, in accord with its construction [kosmos], do you sing the fate of the Achaeans |490 —all the things the Achaeans did and all the things that were done to them, and they suffered for it— |491 you sing it as if you yourself had been present or had heard it from someone else. |492 But come now, move ahead and shift forward [metabainein] and sing the construction [kosmos] of the horse, |493 the wooden horse that Epeios made with the help of Athena, |494 the one that Odysseus, the radiant one, took to the acropolis as a stratagem, |495 having filled it in with men, who ransacked Ilion. |496 If you can tell me these things in due order [katalegein], in accord with proper apportioning [moira], |497 then right away I will say the authoritative word [muthos] to all mortals: |498 I will say, and I see it as I say it, that the god [theos], favorably disposed toward you, granted [opazein] you a divinely sounding song.”

When Odysseus calls on Demodokos to sing his Third Song, he challenges the singer at O.08.492 to metabainein ‘shift forward’. So, the starting point of the Third Song is not where the singer had left off when he last sang about the Trojan War. Demodokos will have to begin his story at a new starting-point, at a later starting point.

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This verb hormân (/ hormâsthai), meaning ‘set up (/ get set up) for a point of departure’, is understood as a poetic concept by Plato, Ion 534c.

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|499 ὣς φάθ’, ὁ δ’ ὁρμηθεὶς θεοῦ ἤρχετο, φαῖνε δ’ ἀοιδήν, |500 ἔνθεν ἑλών, ὡς οἱ μὲν ἐϋσσέλμων ἐπὶ νηῶν |501 βάντες ἀπέπλειον, πῦρ ἐν κλισίῃσι βαλόντες, |502 Ἀργεῖοι, τοὶ δ’ ἤδη ἀγακλυτὸν ἀμφ’ Ὀδυσῆα |503 εἵατ’ ἐνὶ Τρώων ἀγορῇ κεκαλυμμένοι ἵππῳ· |504 αὐτοὶ γάρ μιν Τρῶες ἐς ἀκρόπολιν ἐρύσαντο. |505 ὣς ὁ μὲν ἑστήκει, τοὶ δ’ ἄκριτα πόλλ’ ἀγόρευον |506 ἥμενοι ἀμφ’ αὐτόν· τρίχα δέ σφισιν ἥνδανε βουλή, |507 ἠὲ διατμῆξαι κοῖλον δόρυ νηλέϊ χαλκῷ, |508 ἢ κατὰ πετράων βαλέειν ἐρύσαντας ἐπ’ ἄκρης, |509 ἢ ἐάαν μέγ’ ἄγαλμα θεῶν θελκτήριον εἶναι, |510 τῇ περ δὴ καὶ ἔπειτα τελευτήσεσθαι ἔμελλεν· |511 αἶσα γὰρ ἦν ἀπολέσθαι, ἐπὴν πόλις ἀμφικαλύψῃ |512 δουράτεον μέγαν ἵππον, ὅθ’ εἵατο πάντες ἄριστοι |513 Ἀργεῖοι Τρώεσσι φόνον καὶ κῆρα φέροντες. |514 ἤειδεν δ’ ὡς ἄστυ διέπραθον υἷες Ἀχαιῶν |515 ἱππόθεν ἐκχύμενοι, κοῖλον λόχον ἐκπρολιπόντες. |516 ἄλλον δ’ ἄλλῃ ἄειδε πόλιν κεραϊζέμεν αἰπήν, |517 αὐτὰρ Ὀδυσσῆα προτὶ δώματα Δηϊφόβοιο |518 βήμεναι, ἠΰτ’ Ἄρηα, σὺν ἀντιθέῳ Μενελάῳ. |519 κεῖθι δὴ αἰνότατον πόλεμον φάτο τολμήσαντα |520 νικῆσαι καὶ ἔπειτα διὰ μεγάθυμον Ἀθήνην. |521 ταῦτ’ ἄρ’ ἀοιδὸς ἄειδε περικλυτός· αὐτὰρ ᾿Οδυσσεὺς |522 τήκετο, δάκρυ δ’ ἔδευεν ὑπὸ βλεφάροισι παρειάς. |523 ὡς δὲ γυνὴ κλαίῃσι φίλον πόσιν ἀμφιπεσοῦσα, |524 ὅς τε ἑῆς πρόσθεν πόλιος λαῶν τε πέσῃσιν, |525 ἄστεϊ καὶ τεκέεσσιν ἀμύνων νηλεὲς ἦμαρ· |526 ἡ μὲν τὸν θνῄσκοντα καὶ ἀσπαίροντα ἰδοῦσα |527 ἀμφ’ αὐτῷ χυμένη λίγα κωκύει· οἱ δέ τ’ ὄπισθε |528 κόπτοντες δούρεσσι μετάφρενον ἠδὲ καὶ ὤμους |529 εἴρερον εἰσανάγουσι, πόνον τ’ ἐχέμεν καὶ ὀϊζύν· |530 τῆς δ’ ἐλεεινοτάτῳ ἄχεϊ φθινύθουσι παρειαί· |531 ὣς Ὀδυσεὺς ἐλεεινὸν ὑπ’ ὀφρύσι δάκρυον εἶβεν. |532 ἔνθ’ ἄλλους μὲν πάντας ἐλάνθανε δάκρυα λείβων, |533 Ἀλκίνοος δέ μιν οἶος ἐπεφράσατ’ ἠδ’ ἐνόησεν

|499 Thus he [= Odysseus] spoke. And he [= Demodokos], getting set up for his point of departure [hormētheis], started [arkhesthai] from the god [theos]. And he made visible the song, |500 taking it from the point where they [= the Achaeans], boarding their ships with the strong benches, |501 sailed away, setting their tents on fire. |502 That is what some of the Argives [= Achaeans] were doing. But others of them were in the company of Odysseus, the one with the great glory, and they were already |503 sitting hidden inside the Horse, which was now in the meeting place of the Trojans. |504 The Trojans themselves had pulled the Horse into the acropolis. |505 So there it was, standing there, while they [= the Trojans] were saying many different things, |506 sitting around it. There were three different plans: |507 to cut open the hollow wood with pitiless bronze, |508 or to throw it off the rocky heights after pulling it up to the peak [of the acropolis], |509 or to leave it, great artifact [agalma] that it was, as a charm [thelktērion] of the gods |510 —which, I now see it, was exactly the way it was sure to [mellein] reach an outcome [teleutân], |511 because it was fate [aisa] that the place would be destroyed, once the city had enfolded in itself |512 the great Wooden Horse, when all the best men were sitting inside it, |513 the Argives [= Achaeans], that is, bringing slaughter and destruction upon the Trojans. |514 He sang how the sons of the Achaeans destroyed the city, |515 pouring out of the Horse, leaving behind the hollow place of ambush. |516 He sang how the steep citadel was destroyed by different men in different places. |517 —how Odysseus went to the palace of Deiphobos, |518 how he was looking like Ares, and godlike Menelaos went with him, |519 and how in that place, I now see it, he [= Demodokos] said that he [= Odysseus] dared to go through the worst part of the war, |520 and how he emerged victorious after that, with the help of Athena, the one with the mighty spirit. |521 Thus sang the singer [aoidos], the one whose glory is supreme. And Odysseus |522 dissolved [tēkesthai] into tears. He made wet his cheeks with the tears flowing from his eyelids, |523 just as a woman cries, falling down and embracing her dear husband, |524 who fell in front of the city and people he was defending, |525 trying to ward off the pitiless day of doom hanging over the city and its children. |526 She sees him dying, gasping for his last breath, |527 and she pours herself all over him [amphi-khu-] as she wails with a piercing cry. But there are men behind her, |528 prodding her with their spears, hurting her back and shoulders, |529 and they bring for her a life of bondage, which will give her pain and sorrow. |530 Her cheeks are wasting away with a sorrow [akhos] that is most pitiful [eleeinon]. |531 So also did Odysseus pour out a piteous tear [dakruon] from beneath his brows; |532 there he was, escaping the notice of all while he kept pouring out his tears [dakrua]. |533 But Alkinoos was the only one of all of them who was aware, and he took note [noeîn].

Complying with the request of Odysseus, Demodokos begins the story of his Third Song at a later point in the story—evidently later than where he had left off before. As signaled at O.08.500, the story begins with the Wooden Horse, exactly as Odysseus had requested. And the story can now focus on the greatest deed accomplished by Odysseus in the Trojan War: he was the hero who invented the Wooden Horse. Here was a feat of intelligence that finally resulted in the capture of Troy by the Achaeans. But the story also focuses on what was perhaps the worst deed of Odysseus in the Trojan War: as we can read in the surviving plot-outline of the Iliou Persis, an epic belonging to the epic Cycle and attributed to Arctinus of Miletus, Odysseus had a major role in the grim story of Troy’s final hours. He was the Achaean hero who captured Andromache, widow of Hector, and who executed the child of this doomed couple. But right before Demodokos reaches this horrific part of the story, Odysseus breaks down in tears, and his tears will interrupt the outcome of this story. The interruption, as we see in the narration that I have just quoted, takes the form of a simile that compares the weeping of the hero with the lament of an unnamed woman who has just been captured in war, O.08.521–531. The simile of the unnamed lamenting woman is substituted for the outcome of the story that tells of the final tearful moments of Troy’s destruction (HC 2§§334–344). In the epic Cycle, as represented by the Iliou Persis, that unnamed lamenting woman would be Andromache (HC 2§344). In the Homeric Odyssey, the tears of the captive woman lead to the tears of Odysseus, which in turn can now lead to the story of his own odyssey as a continuation of the tearful story that almost ended the narrative continuum at the feast of the Phaeacians. The story can now continue, shifting from an Iliad to an Odyssey.

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The metaphor of ‘dissolving’ into tears while weeping, as expressed here by way of the verb tēkesthai ‘melt away, dissolve’, extends into a further metaphor: with your own tears, you can be ‘pouring all over’ a loved one whom you are embracing: see the comment at O.08.527. Further relevant comments at O.19.204–212.

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We see here a simile comparing Odysseus to a weeping widow, and this simile is comparable to what happens to Andromache at the end of the Iliou Persis. We see here a relevance to the distinction between kleos and penthos (Odysseus’ weeping at Demodokos’ songs)

\r\nWe can compare Andromache’s lament in Iliad 24 and Kleopatre’s stance of lamentation in Iliad 09

\r\nContext: we see here a description of Odysseus as experiencing akhos when he hears Demodokos’ third song as signaling the form of the epic as that of the Cycle

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The metaphor of ‘pouring all over’ someone in the act of embracing that someone, as expressed here by way of the verb amphi-khu-, is an extension of the metaphor of ‘dissolving’ while weeping, on which see the comment at O.08.522. When you are weeping, pouring out your tears from your eyes, it is as if your whole self were dissoving into tears, which can then ‘pour all over’ the beloved someone whom you are embracing. Further relevant comments at O.16.214 and especially at O.19.204–212.

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Once again, Alkinoos notices that Odysseus is weeping, and this act of noticing will lead to recognition. See again the anchor comment at I.05.669 on noeîn ‘take note (of), notice’. This characteristic of Alkinoos, to ‘notice’ things, is relevant to his “speaking name”: see the comment at O.22.031–033. But the tears of Odysseus will conjure not only his own past sorrows: these sorrows are inseparable from the story of that dashing young rival of Odysseus, Achilles himself, who had died far too soon before his time.

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See the comment on O.13.175–177, where the lines are quoted and translated.

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the convention of the Dios boulē as at I.01.005 treated as a foil in this verse

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At O.08.581–583, Alkinoos asks the unrecognized Odysseus: does the singing of Demodokos about the Trojan War make you sad because you lost a relative in that war? Then, he asks an alternative question at O.08.584–586: or did you lose a hetairos ‘companion’ in the Trojan War? Well, Odysseus did in fact lose many companions, but the greatest of them all was Achilles. Pointedly, Alkinoos refers to the sadness of Odysseus as akhos ‘grief’ at O.08.541. In Homeric poetry, this word akhos ‘grief’ conjures the name of Achilles himself, as I noted already in the comment on I.01.002.

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The time has come for Odysseus himself to sing his own epic odyssey, and the hero chooses to start with the most celebrated story of the Homeric Odyssey, about the blinding of the Cyclops.

draft js image error “Ulysses Giving Wine to Polyphemus” (1805). John Flaxman (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.

The transition from Rhapsody 8 to Rhapsody 9 marks a change in the form of singing for the singer of tales. The poetic bravura of Demodokos, blind singer of the Phaeacians, will now be superseded by a masterpiece of epic narration performed by Odysseus himself, who is starting to sing his own epic odyssey. The hero’s song will extend from the beginning of Rhapsody 9 here all the way through the end of Rhapsody 12, and the size of this song, consisting of four rhapsodies, will correspond to one-twelfth of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey combined. Odysseus will perform his song in the style of the Homēridai, notional descendants of Homer who performed the Iliad and Odyssey in relay. The relay performance, which was competitive as well as collaborative, consisted of twelve units, each unit consisting of four rhapsodies, and it took place at the seasonally recurring festival of the Panionia at a place called the Panionion in Asia Minor. As already noted before, this festival was the political and cultural self-expression of the Ionian Dodecapolis, a confederation of twelve states that reached its apogee in the eastern Greek world during the late eighth and early seventh century BCE. (On the Ionian Dodecapolis, see the anchor comment on I.01.463; also the comment on O.07.321; also on I.02.867–869 and on I.20.403–405; see also under Ionian Dodecapolis in the inventory of Words and Ideas.) The division of the Iliad and Odyssey into twelve units, six for the Iliad and six for the Odyssey, with each unit containing four rhapsodies, corresponds to the division of the Ionian confederation into twelve states. It may be argued, then, that each one of the twelve states of the Ionian Dodecapolis fielded a rhapsode for performing competitively one of the twelve epic units. Which rhapsode was assigned which one of the twelve epic units could have been determined by lottery or perhaps by way of seasonal rotation. It may also be argued that the rhapsodic unit extending from the start of Rhapsody 9 here all the way through the end of Rhapsody 12 represents an idealized rhapsodic performance in the style of the Homēridai. And Rhapsody 9 begins with a kind of Homeric signature at O.09.03–011—the mark of Homer, as it were.

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|3 ἦ τοι μὲν τόδε καλὸν ἀκουέμεν ἐστὶν ἀοιδοῦ |4 τοιοῦδ’, οἷος ὅδ’ ἐστί, θεοῖσ’ ἐναλίγκιος αὐδήν. |5 οὐ γὰρ ἐγώ γέ τί φημι τέλος χαριέστερον εἶναι |6 ἢ ὅτ’ ἐϋφροσύνη μὲν ἔχῃ κάτα δῆμον ἅπαντα, |7 δαιτυμόνες δ’ ἀνὰ δώματ’ ἀκουάζωνται ἀοιδοῦ |8 ἥμενοι ἑξείης, παρὰ δὲ πλήθωσι τράπεζαι |9 σίτου καὶ κρειῶν, μέθυ δ’ ἐκ κρητῆρος ἀφύσσων |10 οἰνοχόος φορέῃσι καὶ ἐγχείῃ δεπάεσσι· |11 τοῦτό τί μοι κάλλιστον ἐνὶ φρεσὶν εἴδεται εἶναι.

|3 This is indeed a beautiful thing, to listen to a singer [aoidos] |4 such as this one [= Demodokos], the kind of singer that he is, comparable to the gods with the sound of his voice [audē], |5 for I declare, there is no outcome [telos] that is more gratifying [khariestero-]|6 than the moment when the spirit of festivity [euphrosunē] prevails throughout the whole community [dēmos] |7 and the people at the feast [daitumones], throughout the halls, are listening to the singer [aoidos] |8 as they sit there—you can see one after the other—and they are seated at tables that are filled |9 with grain and meat, while wine from the mixing bowl is drawn |10 by the one who pours the wine and takes it around, pouring it into their cups. |11 This kind of thing, as I see it in my way of thinking, is the most beautiful thing in the whole world.

O.09.003–012

(Epitomized from MoM 4§§71–73.) As Odysseus himself says here, as he finally proceeds to identify himself, there no greater kharis or ‘gratification’ in the whole world than the combination of good feasting and good singing, and the model for the general reference to singing here is the singer Demodokos. The kharis ‘gratification’ is signaled by the adjective khariestero- ‘more gratifying’ at O.09.005, referring to a telos ‘outcome’: there is no outcome that is more gratifying than what happens at a feast. The word euphrosunē ‘festivity, merriment’, O.09.006, signals the poetic occasion. (On the programmatic implications of this word as an indicator of the festive atmosphere, as it were, of the poetic occasion, I refer to a definitive formulation by Bundy 1986:2 with reference to the poetics of Pindar (see BA 91, 235; also PH 198). The feast that is going on here at the beginning of Rhapsody 9 is a continuation of the festivity that is already signaled by the word dais at O.08.429, which basically means ‘feast’. In that context, dais refers short-range to an occasion of communal dining as indicated by the word dorpon ‘dinner’, O.08.395, which will take place after sunset, O.08.417. The intended guest of honor at this feast will be Odysseus. This occasion of communal dining leads into the third song of Demodokos, O.08.484–485. But this same word dais at O.08.429 is also making a long-range reference: it refers metonymically to a stylized festival that has been ongoing ever since an earlier occasion of communal dining, O.08.071–072, which actually led into the first song of Demodokos. O.08.073–083. On metonymy, see the inventory of Words and Ideas. And the connectivity goes even further back in time. Leading up to the communal dining, there had been an animal sacrifice as expressed by the word hiereuein ‘sacrificially slaughter’ at O.08.059. Then, the meat of the sacrificed animals had been prepared to be cooked at the feast, O.08.061. And I stress that the word at O.08.061 for ‘feast’ is once again dais. In terms of this sequence, the metonymic use of the word dais ‘feast’ marks a whole complex of events that are typical of festivals.

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As with Odyssey 12.69-70 (Ἀργὼ πᾶσι μέλουσα 'the Argo, which-is-on-the-minds-of all'), we find some topic πᾶσι μέλειν 'to-be-on-the-minds-of all humans'. This time, that which is on the mind of the poet as he recites and, by universal extension, on the minds of all humans, is the speaker of the lines, Odysseus himself. Unlike with the Argo of Odyssey 12.69, however, there is a delay here in expressing this universalizing of Odysseus from the mind of the poet to the minds of all humans. The wording begins by saying that I, Odysseus, am linked with 'all' (πᾶσι) my acts of trickery (δόλοισιν), and only then, at line 20, does the wording go on to say the 'I-am-on-the-minds-of' (μέλω) humans. Now the idea that these humans are 'all' (πᾶσι) humans in the universe must be carried over from line 19. What we see in this carrying over is a construction known in ancient rhetoric as apo koinou (ἀπὸ κοινοῦ) 'by way of shared application', where a word is applied consecutively to two different syntactical situations. In this case, pāsi (πᾶσι) 'all' applies first only to the noun doloisin (δόλοισιν), but then, in the next line, to anthrōpoisi (ἀνθρώποισι) 'humans' in a different syntactical situation. Because the application is consecutive, we can understand the lines as meaning: 'first, I am linked with all my acts of trickery, and then, second, I am on the minds of all humans.'

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εἴμ’ Ὀδυσεὺς Λαερτιάδης, ὃς πᾶσι δόλοισιν | ἀνθρώποισι μέλω, καί μευ κλέος οὐρανὸν ἵκει.

I am Odysseus son of Laertes, and I, with all [πᾶσι] my acts of trickery, | I-am-on-the-minds-of [melein (μέλω)] all (πᾶσι) humans, and my glory [kleos] reaches all the way up to the sky.

(Epitomized from Nagy 2016.02.11§§4–7.) Here at O.09.019–020, Homeric poetry is channeling Odysseus in the act of starting to tell his own story. The wording begins by saying at O.09.019 that I, Odysseus, am linked with ‘all’ (πᾶσι) my acts of trickery, and only then, at O.09.020, does the wording go on to say that ‘I-am-on-the-minds-of’ (μέλω) humans—but now the idea that these humans are ‘all’ (πᾶσι) humans in the universe has to be carried over from the previous line, O.09.019. What we see here is a construction known in ancient rhetoric as apo koinou (ἀπὸ κοινοῦ) ‘by way of shared application’, where a word is applied consecutively to two different syntactical situations. (In 2016.02.11§4, I cite an example in Sappho Song 1 lines 7–8). In the Homeric example that we are now considering, O.09.019–020, the adjective pāsi (πᾶσι) meaning ‘all’ applies first only to the noun doloisi (δόλοισι) meaning ‘acts of trickery’ at line 19, but then at line 20 it applies also—and in a different syntactical situation—to the noun anthrōpoisi (ἀνθρώποισι) meaning ‘humans’. This way, the meaning ‘all’ applies to two different words belonging to two different syntactical situations. And the application of the meaning is consecutive: first, I am linked with ‘all my acts of trickery’, and then, second, I am on the minds of ‘all humans’. The verb melein, which I translate here with the wording ‘be-on-one’s-mind’, normally has as its grammatical subject whatever is on the mind of someone. In everyday contexts, what is on the mind of someone is incidental: someone happens to be thinking about something, and so that something is on the mind of that someone. In Homeric contexts, however, whatever is on someone’s mind is special and worthy of being recorded in poetry. Here is a striking example: when Andromache in the Iliad says to Hector that she is thinking thoughts about the uncertain future that awaits her and the child they had together, he remarks that ‘all these things are-on-my-mind [melei] as well’, I.06.441: ἦ καὶ ἐμοὶ τάδε πάντα μέλει. Such things are the subject of Homeric poetry, and so Homer must have such things on his mind as well. In poetic as also in prosaic contexts, the things that are on someone’s mind may be simply things that this someone is thinking about. But they may be more than that, as in the example I just gave concerning the things that are on the minds of Andromache and Hector. And these things are not just thoughts: they are caring thoughts, concerned thoughts, even worried thoughts. A word that refers to a song about such worried thoughts, as an expression of caring and concern, is merimna ‘care’, as used in the Hippolytus of Euripides, with reference to a custom originating in the city of Trozen, where girls who were celebrating their coming of age are seen in the act of singing and dancing a song. Their song is described as a sad love song, ‘a troubled thought that comes along with songmaking’ (μουσοποιὸς … μέριμνα 1428–1429). The noun that I translate here as ‘a troubled thought’ is merimna, which means literally a ‘care’ or a ‘concern’. A merimna, in other words, is what you have on your mind. In a song of Bacchylides (19.11), the same noun merimna, which I translate here as ‘a troubled thought’, refers to the thought-processes of the poet himself as he is pictured in the act of composing his song. A merimna, then, is a song that is ‘on one’s mind’. Similarly, I argue, the noun melos in the sense of ‘melody’ is derived from melei ‘is on one’s mind’; a melos is a song that is ‘on one’s mind’. Further examples in Nagy 2016.02.11§7.

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Odysseus and most of his companions have escaped from the land of the Kikones, where some of them died, and now the survivors are sailing on, described as ásmenoi, which I translate as ‘returning to light and life’. See the anchor comment on O.09.566.

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(What follows is epitomized from H24H 10§§8–9.) As we saw already at the very beginning of the Odyssey, the hero’s nostos, ‘return’ at O.01.005 connects with his nóos ‘mind, thinking’ at O.01.003 not only in the explicit sense of thinking about saving his own life but also in the implicit sense of being conscious of returning home. This implicit sense is encoded in the telling of the myth about the land of the Lotus-Eaters here at O.09.082–104. When Odysseus visits this land, those of his comrades who eat the lotus lose their consciousness of home and therefore lose their power to return home. The verb lēth-, ‘forget’, combined with nostos, ‘return’, as its object, conveys the idea of such unconsciousness, O.09.097/102. By contrast, the noun nóos ‘mind, thinking’ conveys the idea of being conscious of nostos. So, here is the basic teaching to be learned from the myth about the land of the Lotus-Eaters: if you lose the “implant” of homecoming in your mind, you cannot go home because you no longer know what home is.

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This land, as described here with reference to a mainland correlated with an offshore island, is a poeticized version of a colony in the making—before colonization actually happens. The Greek word for such colonization is ktisis, which literally means ‘foundation’. On ktisis poetry, see BA 180–181 and GMP 74; see also under ktisis poetry in the inventory of Words and Ideas.

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(Epitomized from PP 172.) Eustathius (1.9), in the Prolegomena to his commentary on the Iliad, says that performers of the Iliad wore red while performers of the Odyssey wore purple. He may perhaps be guessing when he attributes to ‘the ancients’ the idea that red stands for the blood shed in war, and purple, for the sea, as the setting for the wanderings of Odysseus. Still, his report about the actual dichotomy in color seems to be grounded in tradition. In Homeric diction, we find a parallel dichotomy of red and purple in descriptions of colors painted on ships: we already saw nēes miltoparēioi ‘ships having cheeks of red’ at I.02.637, with reference to the ships of Odysseus, and now we see it again here at O.09.125, with reference to generic ships. To be contrasted is the expression neas phoinīkoparēious ‘ships with cheeks of purple’ at O.11.124 and O.23.271. Moreover, the inventories of chariots in the Linear B tablets show yet another parallel dichotomy of red and purple in descriptions of colors painted on chariots: the noun i-qi-ja ‘chariot’ is described as either mi-to-we-sa = miltówessa ‘red’ as in Knossos tablet Sd 4407 or po-ni-ki-ja = phoinikiā ‘purple’ as in Knossos tablet Sd 4402. For the translation ‘purple’ in the latter case, I note φοινικόβαπτα ἐσθήματα ‘clothing dyed in purple’ in Aeschylus Eumenides 1028.

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analysis of Eustathius’ notion (1.9) of the ancient rationale of distinct color schemes

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The description of the Cyclopes ostentatiously presents them here as non-seafarers. But there were other traditions where the Cyclops and his followers were aggressively seafaring: they could even pursue Odysseus all over the Mediterranean Sea, as we see from the explicit testimony of the scholia PY for O.01.198: see Alwine 2009.

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In the context of this idealized description of a colony in the making, the use of aphthito- ‘imperishable, unwilting’ in describing the vines growing there can be explained as an aspect of the poetic idealization, indicating a wished-for permanence by way of imposing culture on nature.

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(Epitomized from Nagy 2007b:70–72.) Even in situations where the mētis ‘mind, intelligence’ of Odysseus in the specialized sense of ‘craft’ helps advance the homecoming of the hero in the Odyssey, it does nothing to advance the kleos or poetic ‘glory’ of his past epic exploits at Troy. A case in point is the decisive moment in the Odyssey when Odysseus devises the stratagem of calling himself Outis ‘no one’, O.09.366, in order to deceive and then blind Polyphemus the Cyclops. The pronoun ou tis ‘no one’ used by the hero for the crafting of his false name deceives not only the Cyclops but also the monster’s fellow Cyclopes when they use the same pronoun to ask the blinded Polyphemus this question: perhaps someone has wronged you?—O.09.405–406. The syntax of the question, expressing the uncertainty of the questioners, requires the changing of the pronoun ou tis ‘no one’ into its modal byform mē tis ‘perhaps someone’, which sounds like the noun mētis ‘craft’. The modal byform mē tis is intentionally signaling here the verbal craft used by Odysseus in devising this stratagem. And this intentional act of signaling is made explicit later on when the narrating hero actually refers to his stratagem as a mētis, O.09.414. The same can be said about the hero’s previous stratagem of blinding the Cyclops with a sharpened stake, an act of craftiness compared to the craft of blacksmiths, O.09.390–394. These and all other stratagems used by the hero against the Cyclops qualify as mētis ‘craft’, O.09.422. It goes without saying that the stratagem of crafting the false name Outis succeeds: when the blinded Cyclops answers the question of his fellow Cyclopes, perhaps someone has wronged you?—O.09.405–406—he uses the non-modal form of the pronoun, saying ou tis ‘no one’ has wronged me, O.09.408. Still, though this stratagem succeeds in rescuing Odysseus (and, for the moment, some of his companions), it fails to rescue the hero’s past kleos in Troy. In fact, the stratagem of Odysseus in calling himself Outis ‘no one’ produces just the opposite effect: it erases any previous claim to any kleos that the hero would have had before he entered the cave of the Cyclops. Such erasure is signaled by the epithet outidanos ‘good-for-nothing’, derivative of the pronoun ou tis ‘no one’: whenever this epithet is applied to a hero in the Iliad, it is intended to revile the name of that hero by erasing his epic identity, as at I.11.390. Such erasure means that someone who used to have a name will now no longer have a name and has therefore become a nobody, a no one, ou tis. In the Odyssey, the Cyclops reviles the name of the man who blinded him by applying this same epithet outidanos ‘good-for-nothing’ to the false name Outis, O.09.460. The effect of applying this epithet completes the erasure of the hero’s past identity that was started by Odysseus when he renamed himself as ou tis ‘no one’. The name that the hero had heretofore achieved for himself has been reduced to nothing and must hereafter be rebuilt from nothing. It is relevant that the annihilation of the hero’s identity happens in the darkness of an otherworldly cave, in the context of extinguishing the light of the single eye of the Cyclops, thereby darkening forever the monster’s power to see the truth unless he hears it.

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(Epitomized from Nagy 2007b:61.) The power of the Homeric simile in advancing the plot of epic is evident in the simile here at O.09.390–394, referring to the blinding of the Cyclops: when Odysseus and his men thrust into the single eye of the monster the fire-hardened tip of a wooden stake they had just crafted, the sound produced by this horrific act is compared to the sound produced when a blacksmith is tempering steel as he thrusts into cold water the red-hot edge of the axe or adze he is crafting. From a cross-cultural survey of myths that tell how a hero who stands for the civilizing forces of culture blinds a monster who stands for the brutalizing forces of nature, it becomes clear that such myths serve the purpose of providing an aetiology for the invention of technology (Burkert 1979:33–34). On the concept of aetiology, see the inventory of Words and Ideas. It is no coincidence that the three Cyclopes in the Hesiodic Theogony (139–146) are imagined as exponents of technology: they are identified as the three blacksmiths who crafted the thunderbolt of Zeus (Burkert 1979:156n23). Thus the simile about the tempering of steel in the Homeric narration of the blinding of the Cyclops serves the purpose of contextualizing and even advancing that narration by way of highlighting aspects of an underlying myth that is otherwise being shaded over.

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Odysseus and his companions have escaped from the cave of the Cyclops, where some of them died, and now the survivors are sailing on, described as ásmenoi, which I translate as ‘returning to light and life’. As argued by Frame 1978:6–33 (also 2009:39–41), the etymology of this participle ásmenos can be explained by deriving it from n̥s-menos*, where the element n̥s- is the zero grade of the Indo-European root nes-, meaning ‘return to light and life’. This etymology has been confirmed by de Lamberterie 2014. Here at O.09.566, the etymological explanation ‘returning to light and life’ corresponds to what has just happened to Odysseus and his companions: they have escaped from the darkness of the cave and from the threat of death there, emerging into the light and thus winning back their lives. So, they have literally returnd to light and life. For more on the semantics of ‘return to light and life’ as conveyed by the words nóos ‘mind’ and nostos ‘homecoming’, see the comment on O.01.003.

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This Rhapsody centers on the bewitching goddess Circe, whose mystical powers will lead Odysseus to make direct contact with the dead—and with the world of heroes who have already died.

draft js image error “Circe Invidiosa,” (1892). J. W. Waterhouse (English, 1849–1917). Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Circe, like her mystical island, is at first disorienting for Odysseus, but the goddess will in due course reorient the hero, making it possible for him to learn how he will ultimately make his way back home. Odysseus will find his reorientation in the realm of the unconscious.

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With the help of king Aeolus, keeper of the winds, Odysseus and his companions sail off from this king’s island, propelled by Zephyros, the West Wind, O.10.025. So, they are traveling from west to east. At O.11.0028–030, we see that they have already sailed for nine days, and then, on the tenth day, Ithaca finally comes into view. But now Odysseus falls asleep at the steering oar, and his companions make the human error of opening the Bag of Winds, so that their ships are blown back, east to west—all the way back to where they started, to the island of Aeolus, O.10.031–055. Aeolus now refuses to help Odysseus and his companions any further, O.056–076, and, as they sail on, O.077–79, it is no longer clear where they are headed. No longer will they be propelled toward Ithaca by the favoring West Wind that Aeolus had provided for them earlier. Their sea voyage is now directionless, and, by the time their ship reaches the land of the Laestrygonians, they have already lost their navigational compass, since this land appears to be a twilight zone, O.080–086. The disorientation will only intensify later, after Odysseus and some of his companions manage to escape from the land of the Laestrygonians and sail to the island of Circe: see the comment on O.10.189–202.

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Aeolus, god of the winds, tells Odysseus he is sending him off endukéōs, so that the hero could reach home. endukéōs is generally associated with the notion of an uninterrupted sequence. See Od. XIV.337, Od. XIV.334, Od. XIV.338, Od. XIV.111, Od. IX.489, Od. X.245, Od. VI.273, Od. XV.305, Od. XVII.111, Od. XVII.113, Od. XIV.390, Od. X.65, Od. XV.491

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See the anchor comment at O.07.256. Aeolus, keeper of the winds, had intended an uninterrupted voyage home for Odysseus, but human error has by now undone all the good intentions.

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Odysseus and some of his companions have escaped from the land of the Laestrygonians, where most of them died, and now the survivors are sailing on, described as ásmenoi, which I translate as ‘returning to light and life’. See the anchor comment on O.09.566.

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This name for the island of Circe will be a marker for a coincidence of opposites that reveals itself at O.12.001–004.

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Odysseus here at O.10.189–197 confesses to his companions that he no longer knows where the sun rises or where the sun sets, O.10.190–192, and, accordingly, he expresses his own despair by questioning whether there will be for him any further access to mētis ‘mind, intelligence’, O.10.193. So, the disorientation of Odysseus is linked with loss of mētis. Clearly, the mind of the hero is correlated here with the celestial dynamics of sunset and sunrise. See further the comment on O.10.190–102. (More on this subject in GMP 246.) In response to the hero’s expression of despair, his companions weep uncontrollably, O.10.198–202, and now all they can think about are the horrors they remember having experienced in their encounters with the Cyclops and with Antiphates the Laestrygonian, O.10.199–200. The epithet for one of these two monsters here, the Cyclops, is androphagos ‘man-eating’, O.10.200, which suits not only the cannibalistic Cyclops but also Antiphates the Laestrygonian, who as can see at O.10.115–116 is likewise a cannibal. These memories of cannibalism are most telling, since the name of the Cyclops is linked here with the biē ‘force, violence, strength’ of this monster, O.10.200. And the link surely extends to Antiphates the Laestrygonian. That monster too, like the Cyclops, is a negative exponent of biē ‘force, violence, strength’. And such memories evoke the worst moments of the story of the Trojan War as narrated in the Iliad, as when Achilles himself expresses the ghastly urge to eat the body of Hector raw, I.22.346–347. See the comment at I.22.346–348; also at I.23.001–064. So, Achilles as the primary exponent of biē ‘force, violence, strength’ in the Iliad can be seen in this context as a foil for Odysseus as the primary exponent of mētis ‘mind, intelligence’ in the Odyssey. Even the Iliadic contexts of biē ‘force, violence, strength’ are evoked here, since Cyclops at O.10.200 is described not only as androphagos ‘man-eating’ but also as megalētor ‘having a heart that is mighty’. Similarly at O.10.106, in an attested variant of that verse, this same description applies also to Antiphates the Laestrygonian. Beyond these two attestations, this epithet megalētor ‘having a heart that is mighty’ occurs nowhere else in the Odyssey, whereas it occurs regularly as a conventional description of generic warriors in the Iliad. That is why I propose to describe the horrific visions of cannibals in the Odyssey as Iliadic nightmares.

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|190 ὦ φίλοι, οὐ γὰρ ἴδμεν ὅπῃ ζόφος οὐδ’ ὅπῃ ἠώς, |191 οὐδ’ ὅπῃ ἠέλιος φαεσίμβροτος εἶσ’ ὑπὸ γαῖαν |192 οὐδ’ ὅπῃ ἀννεῖται· ἀλλὰ φραζώμεθα θᾶσσον, |193 εἴ τις ἔτ’ ἔσται μῆτις· ἐγὼ δ’ οὐκ οἴομαι εἶναι.

|190 My friends, I am speaking this way because I do not know which place is west and which place is east |191 - which is the place where the sun, bringing light for mortals, goes underneath the earth |192 and which is the place where it rises. Still, let us start thinking it through, as quickly as we can, |193 whether there is still any craft [mētis] left. I must tell you, though, I think there is none.

(Epitomized from H24H 10§§38, 40, 42.) When Odysseus reaches the island of Circe and learns that this place, though it first seems familiar and reminiscent of his own island, is in fact strange and alien and antithetical to home, he despairs. As noted in the previous comment, the hero feels he has no intelligence or mētis left in him to devise a stratagem for a successful homecoming, and his despair is expressed as a feeling of disorientation. He is no longer able to distinguish between orient and occident. To restate in terms of two words used elsewhere in the Odyssey, the hero is experiencing a loss of orientation in his nóos or ‘thinking’, and this loss is presently blocking his nostos, ‘homecoming’. Despite such moments of disorientation for Odysseus, however, his nóos, ‘thinking’ will ultimately reorient him, steering him away from his Iliadic past and toward his ultimate Odyssean future. That is, the hero’s nóos will make it possible for him to achieve a nostos, which is not only his ‘homecoming’ but also the ‘song about a homecoming’ that is the Odyssey.

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See the anchor comment at O.04.489. Again I note the use of this word adeukḗs in a context referring to an interrupted sequence. The potmos ‘fate’ of Odysseus’ companions is adeukḗs because they have been turned into swine and their journey home has thus been interrupted.

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In Point 2 of the comment on O.01.001–010, it was noted that the god Hermes, as the ultimate shape-shifter, is described as polutropos ‘turning-into-many-different-selves’ in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes (verses 13, 439). Here at O.10.330, Odysseus is likewise described as polutropos ‘turning-into-many-different-selves’, and the description is happening in a context where the hero is explicitly being linked with the god Hermes. So, Odysseus too is a shape-shifter, like his divine model Hermes. The importance of this quality of Odysseus as polutropos ‘turning-into-many-different-selves’ is highlighted by the use of this epithet in the very first verse of the Odyssey. Only there at O.01.001 and here at O.10.330 is Odysseus described as polutropos ‘turning-into-many-different-selves’.

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The use of this verb here in the context of ‘grabbing at’ food is relevant to the wording in Pindar Nemean 8.22, with reference to the language of blame.

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See the anchor comment at O.07.256. The ceremonial washing and anointing here is uninterrupted and therefore ritually effective.

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|490 ἀλλ’ ἄλλην χρὴ πρῶτον ὁδὸν τελέσαι καὶ ἱκέσθαι |491 εἰς Ἀΐδαο δόμους καὶ ἐπαινῆς Περσεφονείης |492 ψυχῇ χρησομένους Θηβαίου Τειρεσίαο, |493 μάντιος ἀλαοῦ, τοῦ τε φρένες ἔμπεδοί εἰσι· |494 τῷ καὶ τεθνηῶτι νόον πόρε Περσεφόνεια |495 οἴῳ πεπνῦσθαι· τοὶ δὲ σκιαὶ ἀΐσσουσιν.

|490 But first you [= Odysseus] must bring to fulfillment [teleîn] another journey and travel until you enter |491 the palace of Hādēs and of the dreaded Persephone, |492 and there you all will consult [khrē-] the spirit [psūkhē] of Teiresias of Thebes, |493 the blind seer [mantis], whose thinking [phrenes] is grounded [empedoi]: |494 to him, even though he was dead, Persephone gave consciousness [nóos], |495 so as to be the only one there who has the power to think [pepnûsthai]. But the others [in Hādēs] just flit about, like shadows [skiai].

Circe describes for Odysseus what to expect when he sees Teiresias in Hādēs. Exceptionally, the psūkhē ‘spirit’ of the hero, O.10.492, will have consciousness: that is, his phrenes ‘thinking’ will be empedoi ‘grounded’, O.10.493. On phrenes in the sense of ‘thinking’, see the anchor comment at O.01.320, where I note that Homeric diction leaves room for the idea that you can think with your heart. But what is it that confers on the psūkhē ‘spirit’ of Teiresias the exceptional power to think even when he is dead, in Hādēs? The answer is given at O.10.494–495: Persephone, queen of Hādēs, has exceptionally given permission for Teiresias to have the nóos ‘consciousness’, O.10.494, that is needed for ‘thinking’, pepnûsthai, even in Hādēs. Here I translate nóos ‘mind’ as ‘consciousness’, referring to the mystical force that will reintegrate the consciousness of the self with the body after death. It is relevant that the nóos or ‘consciousness’ of the ‘spirit’ or psūkhē of the seer Teiresias is properly activated only after he drinks the blood of two sacrificial sheep that Odysseus slaughters in order to make mental contact, as we will see at O.11.095–098. I offer further analysis in H24H 11§35. But there is a complication that I did not note in that analysis: Circe instructs Odysseus to perform a libation for the dead when he is in Hādēs, O.10.516–520, and he is further instructed to promise in a prayer directed at these dead that he will perform a sacrifice for them if he succeeds in getting back home to Ithaca: there Odysseus will slaughter a barren cow for the dead in general, O.10.522–523, and a black ram for Teiresias in particular, O.10.524–525. When the right time comes in Hādēs, and Odysseus performs his libations for the dead, O11.024–028, he will follow through and make that promise to them, namely, that he will sacrifice in Ithaca a barren cow for the dead in general, O.11.029–030, and a black ram for Teiresias in particular, O.11.032–033. (At H24H 11§35, I leave it unsaid that this black ram to be sacrificed in Ithaca is different from the black ram and black ewe that Odysseus sacrifices in Hādēs: see the comment on O.10.521–537.) As we know from external sources, such as Pausanias 5.13.1-2, a black ram is the preferred sacrificial animal to slaughter for the purpose of making mental contact with a male cult hero (H24H 0§11).

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The description of Teiresias as a mantis ‘seer’ is relevant to his prophecy about a future for Odysseus that transcends the boundaries of the narrative that frames the Odyssey.

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For Odysseus to make his transition from the realm of the living to the realm of the dead, he must first sail his ship to the end of the sea, delimited by the cosmic river Ōkeanos, and then he must sail on by somehow crossing this river. The verb that I translate here as ‘cross’ is perainein, O.10.508. Then he must beach his ship on the banks of the Ōkeanos, O.10.511, before he can disembark and then proceed into Hādēs.

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Circe instructs Odysseus to offer a khoē ‘libation’ to the dead after he enters Hādēs, O.10.518. This libation, to be poured into a shallow bothros ‘pit’ that he is to dig, O.10.517, will consist of three liquids, which will be poured in the following sequence, O.10.519–520: emulsified honey, water, wine.

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The dead can be visualized as karēna ‘heads’, that is, ‘skulls’, as here, which no longer contain any menos or ‘mental power’. To be compared are kephalai ‘heads’ at I.11.055 and in the variant verse adduced by Zenodotus at I.01.003.

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Circe’s instructions continue: in the course of offering his libation, in Hādēs, to the dead, Odysseus should also offer them a prayer, promising them that, if he succeeds in getting back home to Ithaca, he will then sacrifice there a barren cow for the dead in general, O.10.522–523, and a black ram for Teiresias in particular, O.10.524–525; then, having thus prayed, he should sacrifice to the dead a black ram and a black ewe together, O.10.526–527. It is understood that the blood of the black ram and the black ewe will flow into the bothros ‘pit’ mentioned at O.10.517—and that the dead will drink from there the blood of these sacrificial animals, O.10.536–537.

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See the comment on O.10.521.

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The death of Elpenor will be most relevant to the homecoming of Odysseus, and this relevance will be signaled at O.11.051–083.

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The encounter of Odysseus with the seer Teiresias in Hādēs is a mystical experience that defines the hero of the Odyssey in a new way: Odysseus now learns that he will have a homecoming that leads to a most startling discovery of his own self as a cult hero in the making.

draft js image error “Teiresias appears to Ulysses during the sacrifice,” (1780–1785). Henry Fuseli (German, 1741–1825). Image via Wikimedia Commons.

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As Odysseus and his companions navigate toward the entrance to Hādēs, the atmosphere becomes ever darker. They are pushing the limits of the Extreme West, which the sun no longer illuminates. They are entering a zone where the sun can no longer be seen, O.11.015–016. Here the darkness that comes after sunset will be permanent, unlike the sunset that has already happened at O.11.012, which for the rest of the world will be followed by sunrise on the next day. But here, in this part of the world, the next day will never be found. Demarcating this zone, at the limits of the Extreme West, is the world-encircling cosmic river Ōkeanos, O.11.013.

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Having arrived at the Ōkeanos, Odysseus and his companions beach their ship there and disembark, Ο.11.020, proceeding to the place in Hādēs where Circe had instructed them to make sacrifice to the dead, Ο.11.021–022. To get there, they go along the streams of the Ōkeanos, O.11.021. It is not said explicitly here that they have crossed the Ōkeanos in order to make their entrance into Hādēs, though the crossing is made explicit in the instructions of Circe at O.10.508. See the comment on O.10.508–512. Nor is it said that they will cross the Ōkeanos when they finally make their exit from Hādēs, O.11.636–640. When they do make their exit, Odysseus and his companions are pictured as reembarking on their ship and navigating it in the streams of the Ōkeanos, O.11.639–640, heading back to the sea that will take them back to the island of Circe. Then, at O.12.001–003, when they finally reach the sea again, from where they will navigate back to the island of Circe, this island is situated no longer in the Extreme West but in the Extreme East, O.12.003–004. So, by implication, they will have navigated all the way around the world by way of the Ōkeanos, from the Extreme West all the way to the Extreme East. This circumnavigation ends up at the same place where it started, at the island of Circe, but now this island is situated not in the Extreme West but in the Extreme East. So, the location of Aiaia, this island of Circe, is a coincidence of opposites. The achievement of such a coincidence by way of the Ōkeanos can be imagined as either a looping around the world or, better, a looping under the world: either way, the circular cosmic river Ōkeanos flows from West to East to West to East and so on forever. For more on coincidences of opposites, see the comments at I.01.423–425 and at O.01.022–026, O.10.135.

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At O.10.516–520, Circe had instructed Odysseus to offer a khoē ‘libation’ to the dead after he enters Hādēs, O.10.518. This libation, to be poured into a shallow bothros ‘pit’ that he had to dig, O.10.517, would consist of three liquids, which would be poured in the following sequence, O.10.519–520: emulsified honey, water, wine. Following the instructions of Circe here at O.11.024–036, Odysseus does as he was told to do. But now we see a further detail: when he digs the shallow bothros ‘pit’, O.11.025, he uses his sword for the digging, O.11.024. Then he goes ahead and pours the khoē ‘libation’ to all the dead, O.11.026, and again the sequence of the three liquids he pours will be the same, O.11.027–028: emulsified honey, water, wine.

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The dead can be visualized as karēna ‘heads’, that is, ‘skulls’, as here, which no longer contain any menos or ‘mental power’. See the comment on O.10.521.

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Here at O.11.029–036, Odysseus continues to follow the instructions of Circe as articulated earlier at O.10.521–537: in the course of offering his libation, in Hādēs, to the dead, Odysseus should also offer them a prayer, promising them that, if he succeeds in getting back home to Ithaca, he will then sacrifice there a barren cow for the dead in general, O.11.030–031, and a black ram for Teiresias in particular, O.11.032–033. And then, after having performed this prayer and these promises for all the dead, he sacrifices the two sheep that he and his companions have brought with them from the island of Circe: he cuts their throats, O.11.034–035, and then he lets their blood flow into the shallow bothros ‘pit’ that he has dug, O.11.036. Unlike O.10.526–527, where the sheep are said to be one black ram and one black ewe, those details are omitted here at O.11.034–035. Conversely, the detail at O.11.035–036 about the blood that flows into the bothros ‘pit’ from the cut throats of the sheep had been omitted at O.10.526–527. Likewise omitted at O.10.536–537—though it is implied—is the picturing of the dead in the act of actually drinking from the pit this blood that has flowed there from the cut throats of the sheep. Such drinking cannot happen, as Circe had instructed, until Teiresias arrives at the scene, O.10.536–537. And now that the blood has actually flowed into the pit, the instructions of Circe must be followed: no drinking of blood can be allowed until Teiresias arrives at the scene and drinks first, O.11.049–050. Teiresias finally gets to have his drink of blood only in O.11.095–098. Once he has his drink, Teiresias will make mental contact with Odysseus. See already the comment on O.10.490–495.

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The very first psūkhē ‘spirit’ of all the dead in Hādēs who will speak to Odysseus in Hādēs is Elpenor, O.11.051–083, who had been left behind, dead and unburied, on the island of Circe. The story of his death was told at O.10.551–560. In the comment on those verses, I already noted that the relevance of this figure to the homecoming of Odysseus is signaled here at O.11.051–083. And there will be a further signal at O.12.014–015.

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|75 σῆμά τέ μοι χεῦαι πολιῆς ἐπὶ θινὶ θαλάσσης, |76 ἀνδρὸς δυστήνοιο, καὶ ἐσσομένοισι πυθέσθαι· |77 ταῦτά τέ μοι τελέσαι πῆξαί τ’ ἐπὶ τύμβῳ ἐρετμόν, |78 τῷ καὶ ζωὸς ἔρεσσον ἐὼν μετ’ ἐμοῖσ’ ἑτάροισιν.

|75 Heap up a tomb [sēma] for me [= Elpenor] at the shore of the gray sea, |76 wretched man that I am, so that even those who live in the future will learn about it. |77 Bring to fulfillment [teleîn] these things for me, and stick the oar on top of the tomb [tumbos] |78 —the oar that I used when I was rowing with my companions [hetairoi].

These instructions are given to Odysseus by Elpenor himself or, more accurately, by his psūkhē, O.11.051, and the wording makes it explicit that the tomb that is to be made for this dead sailor is a sēma ‘sign, signal; tomb’.

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|90 ἦλθε δ’ ἐπὶ ψυχὴ Θηβαίου Τειρεσίαο, |91 χρύσεον σκῆπτρον ἔχων, ἐμὲ δ’ ἔγνω καὶ προσέειπε· |92 “διογενὲς Λαερτιάδη, πολυμήχαν’ Ὀδυσσεῦ, |93 τίπτ’ αὖτ’, ὦ δύστηνε, λιπὼν φάος ἠελίοιο |94 ἤλυθες, ὄφρα ἴδῃ νέκυας καὶ ἀτερπέα χῶρον; |95 ἀλλ’ ἀποχάζεο βόθρου, ἄπισχε δὲ φάσγανον ὀξύ, |96 αἵματος ὄφρα πίω καί τοι νημερτέα εἴπω.” |97 ὣς φάτ’, ἐγὼ δ’ ἀναχασσάμενος ξίφος ἀργυρόηλον |98 κουλεῷ ἐγκατέπηξ’. ὁ δ’ ἐπεὶ πίεν αἷμα κελαινόν, |99 καὶ τότε δή μ’ ἐπέεσσι προσηύδα μάντις ἀμύμων· |100 “νόστον δίζηαι μελιηδέα, φαίδιμ’ Ὀδυσσεῦ· |101 τὸν δέ τοι ἀργαλέον θήσει θεός. οὐ γὰρ ὀΐω |102 λήσειν ἐννοσίγαιον, ὅ τοι κότον ἔνθετο θυμῷ, |103 χωόμενος ὅτι οἱ υἱὸν φίλον ἐξαλάωσας. |104 ἀλλ’ ἔτι μέν κε καὶ ὧς, κακά περ πάσχοντες, ἵκοισθε, |105 αἴ κ’ ἐθέλῃς σὸν θυμὸν ἐρυκακέειν καὶ ἑταίρων, |106 ὁππότε κεν πρῶτον πελάσῃς εὐεργέα νῆα |107 Θρινακίῃ νήσῳ, προφυγὼν ἰοειδέα πόντον, |108 βοσκομένας δ’ εὕρητε βόας καὶ ἴφια μῆλα |109 Ἠελίου, ὃς πάντ’ ἐφορᾷ καὶ πάντ’ ἐπακούει. |110 τὰς εἰ μέν κ’ ἀσινέας ἐάᾳς νόστου τε μέδηαι, |111 καί κεν ἔτ’ εἰς Ἰθάκην, κακά περ πάσχοντες, ἵκοισθε· |112 εἰ δέ κε σίνηαι, τότε τοι τεκμαίρομ’ ὄλεθρον |113 νηΐ τε καὶ ἑτάροισ’. αὐτὸς δ’ εἴ πέρ κεν ἀλύξῃς, |114 ὀψὲ κακῶς νεῖαι, ὀλέσας ἄπο πάντας ἑταίρους, |115 νηὸς ἐπ’ ἀλλοτρίης· δήεις δ’ ἐν πήματα οἴκῳ, |116 ἄνδρας ὑπερφιάλους, οἵ τοι βίοτον κατέδουσι |117 μνώμενοι ἀντιθέην ἄλοχον καὶ ἕδνα διδόντες. |118 ἀλλ’ ἦ τοι κείνων γε βίας ἀποτείσεαι ἐλθών· |119 αὐτὰρ ἐπὴν μνηστῆρας ἐνὶ μεγάροισι τεοῖσι |120 κτείνῃς ἠὲ δόλῳ ἢ ἀμφαδὸν ὀξέϊ χαλκῷ, |121 ἔρχεσθαι δὴ ἔπειτα, λαβὼν εὐῆρες ἐρετμόν, |122 εἰς ὅ κε τοὺς ἀφίκηαι, οἳ οὐκ ἴσασι θάλασσαν |123 ἀνέρες οὐδέ θ’ ἅλεσσι μεμιγμένον εἶδαρ ἔδουσιν· |124 οὐδ’ ἄρα τοὶ ἴσασι νέας φοινικοπαρῄους, |125 οὐδ’ εὐήρε’ ἐρετμά, τά τε πτερὰ νηυσὶ πέλονται. |126 σῆμα δέ τοι ἐρέω μάλ’ ἀριφραδές, οὐδέ σε λήσει· |127 ὁππότε κεν δή τοι ξυμβλήμενος ἄλλος ὁδίτης |128 φήῃ ἀθηρηλοιγὸν ἔχειν ἀνὰ φαιδίμῳ ὤμῳ, |129 καὶ τότε δὴ γαίῃ πήξας εὐῆρες ἐρετμόν, |130 ἕρξας ἱερὰ καλὰ Ποσειδάωνι ἄνακτι, |131 ἀρνειὸν ταῦρόν τε συῶν τ’ ἐπιβήτορα κάπρον, |132 οἴκαδ’ ἀποστείχειν ἕρδειν θ’ ἱερὰς ἑκατόμβας |133 ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσι, τοὶ οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἔχουσι, |134 πᾶσι μάλ’ ἑξείης. θάνατος δέ τοι ἐξ ἁλὸς αὐτῷ |135 ἀβληχρὸς μάλα τοῖος ἐλεύσεται, ὅς κέ σε πέφνῃ |136 γήρᾳ ὕπο λιπαρῷ ἀρημένον· ἀμφὶ δὲ λαοὶ |137 ὄλβιοι ἔσσονται. τὰ δέ τοι νημερτέα εἴρω.”

|90 Then came also the spirit [psūkhē] of Theban Teiresias, |91 with a golden scepter in his hand. He recognized [gignōskein] me and said, |92 “Odysseus, you who are descended from the gods, noble son of Laertes, |93 why, wretched man, have you left the light of day |94 and come down to see the dead in this place without any delights? |95 Stand back from the trench and draw back your sharp sword |96 so that I may drink of the blood and tell you unmistakably true things.” |97 So he spoke, and I [= Odysseus] drew back, and sheathed my silver-studded sword, |98 putting it back into the scabbard, and then he [= Teiresias], after he had drunk the black blood, |99 began to address me with his words, faultless seer [mantis] that he was: |100 “It’s your homecoming [nostos] that you seek, a homecoming sweet as honey, O radiant Odysseus. |101 But the god will make this painful for you. I say that because I do not think |102 that the earth-shaking god [= Poseidon] will not take notice, who has lodged in his heart [thūmos] an anger [kotos] against you, |103 being angry that you blinded his dear son [= Polyphemus]. |104 Still, even so, after enduring many bad experiences, you all may get home |105 if you are willing to restrain your own heart [thūmos] and the heart of your companions [hetairoi] |106 when you pilot your well-built ship to |107 the island of Thrinacia, seeking refuge from the violet-colored sea, |108 and when you find the grazing cattle and the sturdy sheep |109 that belong to the god of the sun, Hēlios, who sees everything and hears everything. |110 If you leave these herds unharmed and think only about homecoming [nostos], |111 then you could still make it to Ithaca, arriving there after having endured many bad experiences. |112 But if you harm the herds, then I forewarn you of destruction |113 both for your ship and for your companions [hetairoi], and, even if you may yourself escape, |114 you will return [neesthai] in a bad way, losing all your companions [hetairoi], |115 in someone else’s ship, not your own, and you will find painful things happening in your house, |116 I mean, you will find high-handed men there who are devouring your livelihood |117 while they are courting your godlike wife and offering wedding-presents to her. |118 But you will avenge the outrages committed by those men when you get home. |119 But after you kill the suitors in your own house, |120 killing them either by trickery or openly, by way of sharp bronze, |121 you must go on a journey then, taking with you a well-made oar, |122 until you come to a place where men do not know what the sea is |123 and do not even eat any food that is mixed with sea salt, |124 nor do they know anything about ships, which are painted purple on each side, |125 and well-made oars that are like wings for ships. |126 And I will tell you a sign [sēma], a very clear one, which will not get lost in your thinking. |127 Whenever someone on the road encounters you |128 and says that it must be a winnowing shovel that you have on your radiant shoulder, |129 at that point you must stick into the ground the well-made oar |130 and sacrifice beautiful sacrifices to lord Poseidon: |131 a ram, a bull, and a boar that mounts sows. |132 And then go home and offer sacred hecatombs |133 to the immortal gods who possess the vast expanses of the skies. |134 Sacrifice to them in proper order, one after the other. As for yourself, death shall come to you from the sea, |135 a gentle death, that is how it will come, and this death will kill you |136 as you lose your strength in a prosperous old age. And the people all around [your corpse] |137 will be blessed [olbioi]. All the things I say are unmistakably true.”

The very first word uttered by Teiresias is nostos ‘homecoming, song of homecoming’, O.11.100. The use of this word here is connected with the fact that, earlier in the narrative, the seer Teiresias is described as exceptionally possessing consciousness even in Hādēs, and the word used for the idea of consciousness is nóos. The revelations of Teiresias are activated by his nóos ‘mind’, in the specific sense of ‘consciousness’. See the comment on O.10.490–495, with reference to the permission granted by Persephone for Teiresias to have the nóos ‘consciousness’, O.10.494, that is needed for ‘thinking’, pepnûsthai, even in Hādēs. It is relevant that the nóos or ‘consciousness’ of the ‘spirit’ or psūkhē of the seer Teiresias is properly activated only after he drinks the blood of the two sacrificial sheep that Odysseus slaughters in order to make mental contact with this seer, as we see at O.11.095–098. What Teiresias will then reveal, by way of his nóos, will be a heroic definition for Odysseus, whose goal is to achieve a nostos ‘homecoming, song of homecoming’, as signaled at O.11.100. See further the comment on O.11.100. For the centrality of nóos ‘mind’ and nostos ‘homecoming’ in the overall narrative of the Odyssey, see especially the comments on O.01.003 and O.01.005.

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This detail about a skēptron ‘scepter’ held by Teiresias is relevant not so much to him but to Odysseus, who is seeking to recover his kingship in Ithaca by way of a homecoming that only Teiresias can help him attain. On skēptron ‘scepter’ as a signal of kingship, see the comment on I.01.015.

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The prophetic powers of Teiresias make it possible for him to see beyond the plot of the narrative that frames the Odyssey as we know it. See the comment on O.10.493.

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This stretch of the prophecy made by Teiresias, O.11.100–118, covers the plot of the Odyssey as we know it. After this stretch, however, the prophecy will extend beyond such a plot.

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This stretch of the prophecy made by Teiresias, O.119–137, will extend beyond the plot or narrative frame of the Odyssey as we know it. (What follows is an epitome of H24H 11§§33, 41–44.) In an essay entitled “Sēma and Noēsis: The Hero’s Tomb and the ‘Reading’ of Symbols in Homer and Hesiod” (GMP 202–222), I analyzed at some length the mystical prophecy spoken by the psūkhē ‘spirit’ of the mantis ‘seer’ Teiresias at O.11.119–137 about an odyssey beyond the Odyssey. As I argued in that essay, the verses of this prophecy point to the future death of Odysseus and to the mystical vision of his own tomb, where he will be worshipped as a cult hero. My argument can be divided into four parts:

Part 1. Teiresias is predicting that Odysseus will meet his death in a mystical moment where he experiences a coincidence of opposites. And what is this mystical moment? It is a point where the sea and the negation of the sea coincide. That is, Odysseus goes as far away as possible from the sea, only to experience death from the sea: ‘death shall come to you from the sea, |135 a gentle death’, O.11.134-135. See the comment below on these lines. At this same point, where the sea and the negation of the sea coincide, the oar that he carries on his shoulder, which is an instrument linked exclusively with the sea, will be mistaken for a winnowing shovel, which is an instrument linked exclusively with the earth, that is, with the cultivation of the land: ‘Whenever someone on the road encounters you |128 and says that it must be a winnowing shovel that you have on your radiant shoulder’, O.11.127-128. And here is another coincidence of opposites: Odysseus at this point must sacrifice to Poseidon, god of the sea, O.11.130-131, even though this point is as far away from the sea as possible.

Part 2. And now we come to a mystical vision: in sacrificing to Poseidon, Odysseus must mark the place of sacrifice by sticking into the ground the oar that he was carrying on his shoulder: ‘at that point you must stick into the ground the well-made oar’, O.11.129. As I will now argue, what we are seeing here is a mystical vision of the tomb of Odysseus himself. The key to my argument is what the psūkhē of Teiresias says in introducing his prophecy: ‘And I [= Teiresias] will tell you [= Odysseus] a sign [sēma], a very clear one, which will not get lost in your thinking’, O.11.126. The wording here matches exactly the wording of Nestor addressed to Antilokhos in the Iliad: ‘And I [= Nestor] will tell you [= Antilokhos] a sign [sēma], a very clear one, which will not get lost in your thinking’, I.23.326. In that case, it can be argued that the sēma of Nestor for Antilokhos is a ‘sign’ as marked by the ‘tomb’ of a cult hero who has not yet been identified as Patroklos. See the comment on I.23.326–343. In the Odyssey as well, I argue, the sēma of Teiresias for Odysseus is a ‘sign’ as marked by the ‘tomb’ of a cult hero who has not yet been identified as Odysseus himself.

Part 3. There is archaeological evidence for the existence of a hero cult of Odysseus on the island of Ithaca, dating back to an early period when the Odyssey as we know it was still taking shape (H24H 11§43). And, in the version of the story as we see it in the Odyssey, Odysseus dies finally in Ithaca, which figures here as his homeland, O.11.132–137. In terms of this version of the story, then, Ithaca is recognized in the Odyssey as a prime location for the hero cult of Odysseus.

Part 4. This is not to say, however, that Ithaca was the only place where Odysseus was worshipped as a cult hero. From the testimony of Pausanias 8.44.4, for example, we see traces of a hero cult of Odysseus in landlocked Arcadia, which is located in the Peloponnesus and which is as far away from the sea as you can possibly be in the Peloponnesus. Here is the relevant testimony of Pausanias 8.44.4:

ἔστι δὲ ἄνοδος ἐξ Ἀσέας ἐς τὸ ὄρος τὸ Βόρειον καλούμενον, καὶ ἐπὶ τῇ ἄκρᾳ τοῦ ὄρους σημεῖά ἐστιν ἱεροῦ· ποιῆσαι δὲ τὸ ἱερὸν Ἀθηνᾷ τε Σωτείρᾳ καὶ Ποσειδῶνι Ὀδυσσέα ἐλέγετο ἀνακομισθέντα ἐξ Ἰλίου.

There is a path leading uphill from Asea [in Arcadia] to the mountain called the North Mountain [Boreion], and on top of that mountain there are traces of a sacred space; it is said that Odysseus had made this sacred space in honor of Athena the Savior [sōteira] and in honor of Poseidon, in return for his having arrived back home safely from Ilion [= Troy].

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The description of ships here at O.11.124 and also at O.23.271 as phoinikoparēioi ‘having cheeks of purple’ is to be contrasted with the description miltoparēioi ‘having cheeks of red’ at O.09.125 as also at I.02.637. See the comment on O.09.125.

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In this context, where Teiresias is foretelling the death of Odysseus, the word olbioi (plural) means ‘blessed’ or ‘blissful’, applying to ordinary humans who come into mental and even physical proximity to cult heroes by way of worshipping them.

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Not only the psūkhē ‘spirit’ of Teiresias but other psūkhai as well can now make mental contact with Odysseus—so long as their consciousness is activated by drinking sacrificial blood: such is the case with Antikleia, mother of Odysseus, O.11.146–153.

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This word thesphaton is ordinarily linked with the utterance of a mantis ‘seer’.

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Whoever succeeds in marrying Penelope would surely qualify as ‘the best of the Achaeans’. But the events of the Odyssey will prove that only Odysseus is qualified, and, since he has no rivals for that title, he is qualified to stay married to Penelope.

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The application of this word in such moments of emotional intensity is not just a metaphor: it is also a metonym, connecting with the dynamics of the cosmos. See the comment at O.19.204–212.

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On this epithet, see the anchor comment at I.03.374.

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The comparison of a psūkhē ‘spirit’ to a dream is relevant to questions about the connotations of this word with reference to unconsciousness.

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I defer here to the definitive analysis of Frame 2009:227-329.

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As we saw at I.02.658, the name of Hēraklēs is linked with the epic theme of biē in the sense of martial ‘force, violence, strength’; even the name of Hēraklēs can be formulated periphrastically as ‘the force of Hēraklēs’. And now we see the same pattern of naming applied to a hero named Iphiklēs. The application is all the more apt here, since the element īs ‘force, violence, strength’ in the name of Iphiklēs is a synonym of biē ‘force, violence, strength’.

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See the comment on O.11.290.

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Kastōr and Poludeukēs, the Divine Twins, are also mentioned at I.03.237. See the comment there.

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At O.11.330, Odysseus breaks off his performance, and the break continues till O.11.385, when the performance recommences. In between, there is a series of polite exchanges between Odysseus as performer and Alkinoos as the primary representative of the audience. The question is, has the duration of the performance become overlong? The answer is: no. On behalf of the audience, Alkinoos insists that Odysseus continue, and the master performer obliges.

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It is claimed that the deeds of Clytemnestra have disgraced not only herself but all women, and that women will be blamed for her deeds by way of blame poetry. On the poetics of blame, which is antithetical to praise, see the comments on I.02.216 and on I.03.242.

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The scene of this encounter in Hādēs between Odysseus and the psūkhē ‘spirit’ of Achilles exemplifies the general tendency in Homeric poetry to shade over any indications of immortalization after death.

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The nekroi ‘dead’ who are in Hādēs, O.11.475, have no consciousness: they are aphradees ‘non-conscious’—precisely because they are in Hādēs.

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Odysseus pays Achilles the compliment of addressing him here as phertatos 'the best'.

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Achilles says that he would give up the status of a king among the dead if he could only be alive again—even if he became an abject underling in life. It is as if Achilles were now ready to trade places with Odysseus.

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It is implied here that Ajax, not Odysseus, is really the second-best of the Achaeans.

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Odysseus blames the misfortunes of Ajax on the Will of Zeus, saying that the god is aitios ‘responsible’. See the comments on I.01.153, I.11.078–079, I.19.086–088, O.01.032–034.

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Minos presides here as judge in Hādēs, and this positioning of Minos was imitated by Hippias of Elis, as we read in Plato’s Hippias Minor.

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This form may be compared with krataiḗ as analyzed in the comment on I.05.083. Its meaning can be explained as ‘having a power that has violence’. See also the comment on O.12.124.

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On the use of bíē Hēraklēeíē ‘force of Hēraklēs’ to name Hēraklēs, see the comment on I.02.658.

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At O.11.602–604, it is said that Hēraklēs, described here as autos ‘himself’, O.11.602, is in Olympus, together with the immortal gods and married to Hēbē, so that the vision of Hēraklēs that is seen in Hādēs is just that, an eidōlon ‘vision’, at O.11.602. At I.01.004, we have seen that autoi ‘selves’ refers to dead bodies of heroes, to be contrasted with the word psūkhē ‘spirit’, which refers to either (A) the life-force of heroes when they are alive or (B) the disembodied conveyor of identity when they are dead—as in the case of the psūkhai ‘spirits at I.01.003. See the comment on I.01.003–005. At O.11.602–604, by contrast, the autos ‘self’ that is Hēraklēs is no longer dead but regenerated and thus immortalized. We may infer, then, that the psūkhē ‘spirit’ of Hēraklēs as his life-force has been reunited with his body, with his self, and that is why his psūkhē in Hādēs must be seen as a disembodied conveyor of his identity—as a mere eidōlon ‘vision’.

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The word that is used here for what we translate as the Labors of Hēraklēs is aethlos (āthlos) ‘ordeal’, O.11.622 and O.11.624. See the comment on I.03.125–128.

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Hereas of Megara (FGH 487 F 4, via Plutarch Theseus 20.1-2) argued that Peisistratos interpolated this verse about Theseus. As I argue, such narratives about textually added verses reflect the mechanism of expansion (vs. compression) in oral poetics.

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After departing from Hādēs, Odysseus and his companions get back into their ship and navigate toward the sea by way of the Ōkeanos, O.11.639.

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(What follows is epitomized from H24H 10§§31, 36–38, 42.)

Part 1. After his sojourn in Hādēs, which is narrated in Odyssey 11, here at the beginning of Odyssey 12 Odysseus finally emerges from that realm of darkness and death. As Odysseus now returns from Hādēs, crossing again the circular cosmic stream of Ōkeanos at O.12.001–002 and coming back to his point of departure, that is, to the island of the goddess Circe at O.12.003, we find that this island is no longer in the Far West: instead, it is now in the Far East, where Hēlios the god of the sun has his ‘sunrises’, an(a)tolai, O.12.004, and where Ēōs the goddess of the dawn has her own palace, featuring a special space for her ‘choral singing-and-dancing’, khoroi, O.12.003–004. Before the hero’s descent into the realm of darkness and death, we saw the Ōkeanos as the absolute marker of the Far West; after his ascent into the realm of light and life, we see it as the absolute marker of the Far East (GM 237). In returning to the island of Circe by crossing the circular cosmic river Ōkeanos for the second time, the hero has come full circle, experiencing sunrise after having experienced sunset. Even the name of Circe may be relevant, since the form Kirkē may be a “speaking name” (nomen loquens), cognate with the form kirkos, a variant of the noun krikos, meaning ‘circle, ring’ (DELG under κρίκος). As we will now see, this experience of coming full circle is a mental experience—or, to put it another way, it is a psychic experience.

Part 2. The return of Odysseus to light and life replicates the mystical journey of the sun as it travels every night from the Far West to the Far East, and thus the hero’s return becomes a substitute for the mystical journey of a soul. This way, the nostos ‘return’ of Odysseus, as an epic narrative, becomes interwoven with a mystical subnarrative. While the epic narrative tells about the hero’s return to Ithaca after all the fighting at Troy and all the travels at sea, the mystical subnarrative tells about the soul’s return from darkness and death to light and life.

Part 3. In some poetic traditions, the mystical subnarrative of the hero’s nostos can even be foregrounded, as in these verses of Theognis (1123–1128):

|1123 μή με κακῶν μίμνησκε· πέπονθά τοι οἷά τ’ Ὀδυσσεύς, |1124 ὅστ’ Ἀίδεω μέγα δῶμ’ ἤλυθεν ἐξαναδύς, |1125 ὃς δὴ καὶ μνηστῆρας ἀνείλατο νηλέι θυμῷ, |1126 Πηνελόπης εὔφρων κουριδίης ἀλόχου, |1127 ἥ μιν δήθ’ ὑπέμεινε φίλῳ παρὰ παιδὶ μένουσα, |1128 ὄφρα τε γῆς ἐπέβη δείλ’ ἁλίους τε μυχούς.

|1123 Do not remind me of my misfortunes! The kinds of things that happened to Odysseus have happened to me too. |1124 He came back, emerging from the great palace of Hādēs, |1125 and then killed the suitors with a pitiless heart [thūmos], |1126 while thinking good thoughts about his duly wedded wife Penelope, |1127 who all along waited for him and stood by their dear son |1128 while he [= Odysseus] was experiencing dangers on land and in the gaping chasms of the sea.

Part 4. The return of Odysseus from Hādēs leads to a rebuilding of his heroic identity. Earlier in the Odyssey, the status of Odysseus as a hero of epic had already been reduced to nothing. As we saw in the tale of his encounter with the Cyclops, the return of Odysseus from the monster’s cave deprives him of his past identity at Troy. His epic fame can no longer depend on his power of mētis, ‘craft’, which had led to the invention of the Wooden Horse, which in turn had led to the destruction of Troy. After his encounter with the Cyclops, Odysseus must achieve a new epic identity as the hero of his own epic about homecoming, about his own nostos, but, for the moment, his confidence in his power to bring about this nostos is reduced to nothing. He has lost his confidence in the power of his own mētis, ‘craftiness’, to devise a stratagem for achieving a nostos. When he reaches the island of Circe and learns that this place, though it first seems familiar and reminiscent of his own island, is in fact strange and alien and antithetical to home, he despairs, as we saw at O.10.189-202.

Part 5. Despite such moments of disorientation for Odysseus, his nóos, ‘thinking’, will ultimately reorient him, steering him away from his Iliadic past and toward his ultimate Odyssean future. That is, the hero’s nóos will make it possible for him to achieve a nostos, which is not only his ‘homecoming’ but also the ‘song about a homecoming’ that is the Odyssey. For this song to succeed, Odysseus must keep adapting his identity by making his nóos fit the nóos of the many different characters he encounters in the course of his nostos in progress. In order to adapt, he must master many different forms of discourse. The epithet for this ability to adapt, as we will see, is poluainos, ‘having many different kinds of coded words’: that is how Odysseus is described by the Sirens when he sails past their island, O.12.184).

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The storytelling of Odysseus is about to confront three of its most mystical moments here: the Song of the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, the Cattle of the Sun. The myths that shape these moments will become for Odysseus a set of powerful metaphors that drive his own odyssey.

draft js image error “Ulysses and the Sirens” (ca. 1909). Herbert James Draper (English, 1863–1920). Image via Wikimedia Commons.

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Just as the Greek goddess Ēōs is a dancer, so too is the Vedic goddess Uṣas: her epithet sūnr̥tāvatī means ‘good dancer’.

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|14 τύμβον χεύαντες καὶ ἐπὶ στήλην ἐρύσαντες |15 πήξαμεν ἀκροτάτῳ τύμβῳ εὐῆρες ἐρετμόν.

|14 We heaped up a tomb [tumbos] for him, and then, erecting as a column on top, |15 we stuck his well-made oar into the very top of the tomb [tumbos].

The story of Elpenor’s death was told at O.10.551–560. In the comment on those verses, I already noted that the relevance of this figure to the homecoming of Odysseus is signaled at O.11.051–083, and, further, here at O.12.014–015. Here we see Odysseus and his men making for Elpenor a tomb by heaping a tumulus of earth over the seafarer’s corpse and then, instead of erecting a stēlē or vertical ‘column’ on top, they stick his oar into the heap of earth. (What follows is epitomized from H24H§§47–50.)

Part 1. The ritual procedure for making the tomb of Elpenor follows the instructions given to Odysseus during his sojourn in Hādēs, O.11.051-080; these instructions were given by Elpenor himself or, more accurately, by his psūkhē ‘spirit’, O.11.051, and the wording makes it explicit that the tomb to be made is a sēma, O.11.075.

Part 2. In the light of this description, we can see that the ritual act of Odysseus when he sticks his own well-made oar into the ground at O.11.129 and sacrifices to Poseidon at O.11.130-131 points to the making of his own sēma or ‘tomb’, corresponding to the sēma or ‘sign’ given to him by Teiresias at O.11.126.

Part 3. There are two meanings to be found in this ritual act of Odysseus, since he sticks his oar into the ground at the precise moment when the oar is no longer recognized as an oar, O.11.129. In this coincidence of opposites, the oar is now a winnowing shovel, O.11.128—an agricultural implement that is used for separating the grain from the chaff after the harvesting of wheat. You toss the harvested wheat up in the air, and even the slightest breeze will blow the chaff further to the side while the grain falls more or less straight down into a heap in front of you. The winnowing shovel looks exactly like an oar, but it is not an oar for agriculturists. Conversely, the oar looks exactly like the winnowing shovel, but it is not a winnowing shovel for seafarers. For Odysseus, however, this implement could be both an oar and a winnowing shovel, since he could see that the same sēma or ‘sign’ has two distinct meanings in two distinct places: what is an oar for the seafarers is a winnowing shovel for the inlanders. And, in order to recognize that one sēma or ‘sign’ could have two meanings, Odysseus must travel, as we see from the key wording he learned from the instructions of Teiresias. Odysseus himself is represented as the user of this key wording when he retells to Penelope a retrospective story of his travels, O.23.266–268. And, as we saw at O.01.003, the travels of Odysseus throughout ‘the many cities of mortals’ were the key to his achieving his special kind of heroic consciousness, or nóos.

Part 4. Just as the implement carried by Odysseus is one sign with two meanings, so also the picture of this implement that we see stuck into the ground is one sign with two meanings. We have already noted the first of these meanings, namely, that the sēma or ‘sign’ given by Teiresias to Odysseus at O.11.126 is in fact the tomb of Odysseus, imagined as a heap of earth with an oar stuck into it on top, just as the tomb of the seafarer Elpenor is a heap of earth with his own oar stuck into it on top, as we just saw at O.12.14-15 and at O.11.075–078 respectively; in fact, as we saw O.11.075, this heap of earth is actually called the sēma of Elpenor, and the word here clearly means ‘tomb’.

Part 5. Accordingly, I paraphrase the first of the two meanings as a headline, “the seafarer is dead.” As for the second of the two meanings, I propose to paraphrase it as another headline, “the harvest is complete.” Here is why: the act of sticking the shaft of a winnowing shovel, with the blade pointing upward, into a heap of harvested wheat after having winnowed away the chaff from the grain is a ritual gesture indicating that the winnower’s work is complete (as we see from the wording of Theocritus 7.155-156). And the act of sticking the shaft of an oar into the ground, again with the blade facing upward, is a ritual gesture indicating that the oarsman’s work is likewise complete—as in the case of Odysseus’ dead comrade Elpenor, whose tomb is to be a heap of earth with the shaft of his oar stuck into the top, as we see at O.11.075–078 and here at O.12.014–015. So also with Odysseus: he too will never again have to sail the seas.

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|21 σχέτλιοι, οἳ ζώοντες ὑπήλθετε δῶμ’ Ἀΐδαο, |22 δισθανέες, ὅτε τ’ ἄλλοι ἅπαξ θνῄσκουσ’ ἄνθρωποι.

|21 Wretched men! You went down to the House of Hādēs while you were still alive. |22 You are dis-thanees [= you experience death twice], whereas other mortals die only once.

Circe understands the mystical experience that Odysseus and his companions have undergone by entering Hādēs in the Far West and then returning from there in the Far East, just as the sun mystically travels from west to east during the night. That is why Circe, after Odysseus and his men arrive back on her island, addresses the whole group as dis-thanees, that is, ‘those who experience death twice’. (What follows is epitomized from H24H 11§61.) So, Odysseus together with his companions had died metaphorically when he went to Hādēs in Odyssey 11 and then he had returned to light and life in Odyssey 12. But Odysseus will die for real in a future that is beyond the limits of the story told in the Odyssey as we have it: just as the seer Teiresias had predicted it when he gave to Odysseus a sēma or ‘sign’ at O.11.126, Odysseus will die after he experiences another coincidence of opposites—while carrying the oar that becomes a winnowing shovel.

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Here the thuella ‘gust of wind’ is linked with fire, and this link evokes a visualization of fire caused by the thunderbolt of Zeus.

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οἴη δὴ κείνῃ γε παρέπλω ποντοπόρος νηῦς | Ἀργὼ πᾶσι μέλουσα, παρ’ Αἰήταο πλέουσα

The only seafaring ship that has ever yet sailed past that [rock] was | the Argo, which-is-on-the-minds-of [μέλουσα] all [πᾶσι], and this was when it sailed away from Aietes.

(What follows is epitomized from Nagy 2016.02.11.) Homeric poetry is here telling a story by channeling Odysseus in the act of telling his own story, and the act of universalizing is immediately expressed. It happens at O.12.070 here: the wording says right away that the ship Argo, ‘which-is-on-the-minds-of’ (μέλουσα) humans, is an all-important subject, since it is on the minds of ‘all’ (πᾶσι) humans in the universe. The sailors of the good ship Argo faced the challenge of sailing past a most dangerous rock in the treacherous seas, and now Odysseus, admirer of the Argonauts, is faced with the same challenge in his own story. The verb melein ‘be on one’s mind’ is used here in the sense of referring to a song that is on the minds of all who hear it or want to hear it. See the comment on O.09.019–020.

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The ship Argo is πᾶσι μέλουσα 'on-the-minds of all humans', because Homer himself has these things on his mind when he mentions them. This universalizing of the Argo, from the mind of the poet to the minds of all humans, makes sense only because this poetry assumes its own universal appeal as a given.

The verb μέλουσα comes from the infinitive μέλειν, which I translate with the wording 'to-be-on-the-mind-of'. The subject of this verb μέλειν is whatever is on the mind of someone. In everyday contexts, what is on the mind of someone is incidental: someone happens to be thinking about something, and so that something is on the mind of that someone. In Homeric contexts, however, whatever is on someone's mind is special and worthy of being recorded in poetry. This worthy something, then, as signaled by μέλειν, is more than just an incidental thought: it is a caring thought, a concerned thought, even a worried thought. A striking example comes at Iliad 6.441, when, after Andromache says to Hector that she is thinking thoughts about the uncertain future that awaits her and their child, Hector responds that 'all these things are-on-my-mind [melei] as well' (ἦ καὶ ἐμοὶ τάδε πάντα μέλει).

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This name Krataiḯs is parallel to the epithet krataiḯs at O.11.597, the meaning of which can be explained as ‘having a power that has violence’. See the comment on I.05.083.

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The names for these two daughters of Hēlios the god of sunlight, Phaéthousa and Lampetíē, both refer to the radiance of the sun. These names are parallel to the names Phaéthōn and Lámpos as solar horses that draw the chariot of Ēōs the goddess of the dawn. See also the comment at O.23.246. These four names and the myths linked with them reflect mythological traditions that can be reconstructed by way of Indo-European linguistics. Of special interest is the morphology of Lampetíē.

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Whereas huperíōn ‘the one who travels up above’ can function as an epithet of Hēlios the god of the sun, it can also function as the name of the father of Hēlios.

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The translations ‘of many fables’ or more simply ‘fabled’ reflect the specialized meaning of ainos as ‘fable’. In addressing Odysseus this way, the Sirens are recognizing the hero’s fame as a master of ainos, which is a form of speech that can more generally be described as a coded message (on which see the comment on I.09.524–599). So, Odysseus is recognized as ‘able to speak about many things in code’. Such coded speech is by nature ‘riddling’, as we see from the meaning of ainigma ‘enigma, riddle’, which is a derivative of ainos. In order to survive, Odysseus must master many different forms of discourse, many different kinds of ainos. That is why he is addressed as poluainos ‘having many different kinds of ainos’ by the Sirens here when he sails past their island, O.12.184. (What follows is epitomized from H24H 10§43.) Even the transparent meaning of Polyphemus, Poluphēmos, which is the name of the Cyclops blinded by Odysseus, foretells the hero’s mastery of the ainos. As an adjective, poluphēmos means ‘having many different kinds of things said’, derived from the noun phēmē, ‘thing said’, as at O.20.100 and at O.20.105. See the comment at O.20.098–121, [HR]3§23. This adjective poluphēmos ‘having many different kinds of things said’ is applied as an epithet to the singer Phēmios, O.22.376, portrayed as singing songs that have many different meanings: see the comments at O.01.342 and O.02.035 (see also BA 17). In the case of Polyphemus, the very meaning of his name, which conveys the opposite of the meaning conveyed by the false name of Odysseus, Outis, ‘no one’, foretells the verbal mastery of the hero who blinded the monster.

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|184 δεῦρ’ ἄγ’ ἰών, πολύαιν’ Ὀδυσεῦ, μέγα κῦδος Ἀχαιῶν, |185 νῆα κατάστησον, ἵνα νωϊτέρην ὄπ’ ἀκούσῃς. |186 οὐ γάρ πώ τις τῇδε παρήλασε νηῒ μελαίνῃ, |187 πρίν γ’ ἡμέων μελίγηρυν ἀπὸ στομάτων ὄπ’ ἀκοῦσαι, |188 ἀλλ’ ὅ γε τερψάμενος νεῖται καὶ πλείονα εἰδώς. |189 ἴδμεν γάρ τοι πάνθ’, ὅσ’ ἐνὶ Τροίῃ εὐρείῃ |190 Ἀργεῖοι Τρῶές τε θεῶν ἰότητι μόγησαν, |191 ἴδμεν δ’ ὅσσα γένηται ἐπὶ χθονὶ πουλυβοτείρῃ.

|184 Come here, Odysseus, you of many riddling words [ainoi], you great glory to the Achaean name, |185 stop your ship so that you may hear our two voices. |186 No man has ever yet sailed past us with his dark ship |187 without staying to hear the sweet sound of the voices that come from our mouths, |188 and he who listens will not only experience great pleasure before homecoming [néesthai] but will also be far more knowledgeable than before, |189 for we know everything that happened at Troy, that expansive place, |190 —all the sufferings caused by the gods for the Argives [= Achaeans] and Trojans |191 and we know everything on earth, that nurturer of so many mortals—everything that happens.

Part 1. The two Sirens—there are only two of them in the Odyssey—declare here that they know everything in general—but they also declare that they know everything about the Trojan War in particular. By knowing everything, they are like the Muses. The repeated word idmen ‘we know’ at O.10.189/191 is comparable to what the Muses say to the Narrator in Hesiod Theogony 27/28, idmen ‘we know’. Also comparable is what the Narrator says to the Muses at I.02.485: iste te panta ‘you know everything’. By knowing everything about the Trojan War, the Sirens are like the Muses of the Iliad, as at I.02.485. It may be said that the Sirens are the false Muses of the Iliad.

Part 2. The Song of the Sirens is relevant to I.09.413, where Achilles says he will have to choose between a nostos, which is a safe ‘homecoming’, and the kleos or ‘glory’ of the poetry that will be his if he dies young at Troy. See the comment on I.09.410–416. Achilles will have to forfeit nostos in order to achieve his kleos or ‘glory’ as the central hero of the Iliad. By contrast, Odysseus must have both kleos ‘glory’ and nostos ‘homecoming’ in order to merit his own heroic status in the Odyssey (BA 36-40). For him, the nostos is not only a ‘homecoming’ but also a ‘song about a homecoming’, and that song is the Odyssey. It is the kleos or ‘glory’ of that song that will be his—if his quest for a homecoming is to succeed.

Part 3. (What follows is epitomized from H24H 9§14.) The narrative of the kleos or ‘glory’ of song that Odysseus earns in the Odyssey cannot be the Iliad, which means ‘tale of Troy’ (Ilion is the other name for Troy). The Iliad establishes Achilles as the central hero of the story of Troy, even though he failed to destroy the city—while Odysseus succeeded, by devising the stratagem of the Wooden Horse. Because of the Iliad tradition, “the kleos of Odysseus at Troy was preempted by the kleos of Achilles” (BA 41). Thus the kleos that Odysseus should get for his success in destroying Troy is elusive, by contrast with the kleos that Achilles gets in the Iliad, which is permanent. So, Odysseus cannot afford to dwell on his success at Troy, because the kleos he may get for that success will become permanent only if it extends into the kleos that he gets for achieving a successful homecoming. Odysseus, then, must get over the Iliad.

Part 4. As we see from the wording of the Sirens’ Song here in the Odyssey, O.12.184–191, the sheer pleasure of listening to a song about the destruction of Troy will be in vain if there is no nostos, no safe return home from the faraway world of epic heroes; and, by extension, the Iliad itself will become a Song of the Sirens without a successful narration of the Odyssey (BA [1999] xii).

Part 5. (What follows in Parts 5 and 6 is epitomized from H24H 10§§19–20.) So, to repeat, Odysseus must get over the Iliad. But, to get over the Iliad, he must sail past it. His ongoing story, which is the Odyssey, must be about the seafarer who is making his way back home, not about the warrior who once fought at Troy. The kleos of Odysseus at Troy cannot be the master myth of the Odyssey, since the kleos of Achilles at Troy has already become the master myth of the Iliad. As I already noted, the kleos or poetic ‘glory’ of Achilles in the Iliad has preempted a kleos for Odysseus that centers on this rival hero’s glorious exploits at Troy. For the hero of the Odyssey, the ongoing kleos of his adventures in the course of his nostos is actually threatened by any past kleos of his adventures back at Troy. Such a kleos of the past in the Odyssey could not rival the kleos of the more distant past in the Iliad. It would be a false Iliad. That is why Odysseus must sail past the Island of the Sirens. The Sirens, as false Muses, tempt the hero by offering to sing for him an endless variety of songs about Troy in particular and about everything else in general.

Part 6. The sheer pleasure of listening to the songs of the Sirens threatens not only the nostos, ‘homecoming’, of Odysseus, who is tempted to linger and never stop listening to the endless stories about Troy, but also the soundness of his ‘thinking’, his nóos. And it even threatens the ongoing song about the hero’s homecoming, that is, the Odyssey itself (BA [1999] xii). Accordingly, the use of the verb néesthai ‘return, have a homecoming’ at O.12.188 signals what is at stake for both the nostos ‘homecoming’ and the nóos ‘mind’ of Odysseus, and it is no accident that these two nouns are actually both derived from that verb.

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(The following is epitomized from H24H 10§28.) At O.07.241–266, Odysseus told the story of his liaison with the goddess Calypso, and that part of the story ended there with the releasing of Odysseus from the cave of the goddess. Here at O.12.447–450, the storytelling comes full circle as Odysseus revisits that story about the liaison, which had led into the story of his arrival in the land of the Phaeacians. The hero’s arrival as revisited at the end of the storytelling in Odyssey 12 is implicitly a return to light and life from the cave of Calypso, comparable to the return of the hero to light and life from the darkness and death that were linked with the cave of the Cyclops Polyphemus at the end of the storytelling in Odyssey 9. Similarly at the end of the storytelling in Odyssey 11, Odysseus was ready to emerge from the darkness and death of Hādēs and return to light and life at the beginning of Odyssey 12.

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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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The mention of dais ‘feast’ here at O.13.023 takes us all the way back to the dais ‘feast’ that is planned by king Alkinoos for his guest back at O.08.038. See the comments at O.08.059–061 and at O.08.061. The dais ‘feast’ is eventually rethought as a stylized festival, centering on a sacrifice that leads to a division of meat at the feast. Such a festival continues from Odyssey 8 all the way to here, at the beginning of Odyssey 13.

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The sacrificing of an ox to Zeus here marks this god as the ultimate hymnic subject of the festive performances starting with the three songs of Demodokos in Odyssey 8 and capped by the narrative of Odysseus himself in Odyssey 9–12. As we see most clearly in the Homeric Hymns, the invoked divinity who presides over a given festival is the hymnic subject of the hymn (MoM 4§82). We know from Pindar Nemean 2.1–3 that Zeus was the hymnic subject of the Homēridai, notional descendants of Homer, who performed the Iliad and Odyssey in relay (HPC 240, MoM 4§§99.4, 99.5). Accordingly, I interpret the sacrifice to Zeus here at O.13.024–025 as a signature, as it were, of the Homēridai. See also the comment that introduces Rhapsody 9.

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|24 τοῖσι δὲ βοῦν ἱέρευσ’ ἱερὸν μένος Ἀλκινόοιο |25 Ζηνὶ κελαινεφέϊ Κρονίδῃ, ὃς πᾶσιν ἀνάσσει. |26 μῆρα δὲ κήαντες δαίνυντ’ ἐρικυδέα δαῖτα |27 τερπόμενοι· μετὰ δέ σφιν ἐμέλπετο θεῖος ἀοιδός |28 Δημόδοκος, λαοῖσι τετιμένος.

|24 On their [= the Phaeacians’] behalf Alkinoos, the one with the holy power, sacrificed an ox |25 to Zeus, the one who brings dark clouds, the son of Kronos, and he rules over all. |26 Then, after burning the thigh-pieces, they feasted, feasting most gloriously, |27 and they were feeling delight [terpesthai]; in their midst sang-and-danced [melpesthai] the divine singer [aoidos], |28 Demodokos, honored by the people.

(What follows is epitomized from MoM 4§§35–38.)

Part 1. Here the singer Demodokos performs one last song before Odysseus leaves the land of the Phaeacians. The occasion is most festive, marking the conclusion of the overall festivities that had started in Odyssey 8—and had continued ever since then. Bringing these festivities to a spectacular close, Alkinoos the king of the Phaeacians slaughters a sacrificial ox to the god Zeus, and this animal sacrifice is the cue for Demodokos to emerge once again as the lead singer in the midst of a festive crowd.

Part 2. I note that the wording at O.13.027 is exactly the same as at O.04.017. See the comment on O.04.015–019. More important, we see the same wording also at I.18.604, which is the line that shows a part of the longer version of I.18.603–606. See the comment on I.18.603–604–(605–)606. In each one of these three lines that I just noted, O.13.027 and O.04.017 and I.18.604, a solo singer is shown, but the individuated soloist is leading into a choral song combined with dance, as signaled by the word melpesthai in all three contexts. This word, as we have seen, combines the idea of singing with the idea of dancing—that is, choral dancing. That is why I translate melpesthai in a hyphenated format, ‘singing-and-dancing’. See also the comments on I.18.603–604–(605–)606 and O.04.015–019.

Part 3. The text of O.13.024–028 is a most decisive piece of comparative evidence validating the authenticity of the corresponding passage in the longer version of I.18.603–606. Both of these two passages show an individuated lead singer in the midst of a festive crowd surrounding a choral performance that brings delight to all. Both in O.13.027 and in I.18.604, the decisive word that shows the interaction of the individuated lead singer with choral performance is melpesthai ‘sing-and-dance’. (The verb melpesthai ‘sing-and-dance’ at I.18.604 is picked up by the corresponding noun molpē ‘singing-and-dancing’ at I.18.606.) But the passage at O.13.024–028 occludes any direct mention of dancers, thus differing from the corresponding passage in the longer version of I.18.603–606, which highlights two individuated dancers as well as a chorus. Conversely, the passage in the shorter version of I.18.603–606 occludes any direct mention of a singer, thus differing from the corresponding passage in O.13.024–028 here, which highlights Demodokos as an individuated lead singer.

Part 4. The decisive evidence of this passage, O.13.024–028, is missing from the reportage of Athenaeus (5.181c) about the editorial decisions of Aristarchus concerning O.04.015–019 and I.18.603–606. And it is missing also from the argumentations of some who build theories about various kinds of textual interpolation. As I argued in the comment on I.18.603–604–(605–)606, the evidence of the wording at I.18.604–605 indicates that both the shorter and the longer versions result from formulaic variation.

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The programmatic word terpesthai ‘feel delight’ as used here at O.13.027 can be connected to the use of the same word at O.08.429 with reference to the festive performances described in Odyssey 8. See the comment on O.08.429.

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Aristarchus accepting the wording in O.04.017-018 while rejecting the same at I.18.604-605, in the context of the analysis of the medieval manuscript tradition’s not attesting I.18.604-605, their restoration based on Athenaeus, and authentication on the basis of O.13.027-028

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The description here of Demodokos as ‘honored by the people [lāoi]’ reinforces the etymology of his “speaking name” (nomen loquens): ‘one who is received [verb dek(h)esthai] by the community [dēmos]’. See the comment on O.08.044.

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|78 εὖθ’ οἳ ἀνακλινθέντες ἀνερρίπτουν ἅλα πηδῷ, |79 καὶ τῷ νήδυμος ὕπνος ἐπὶ βλεφάροισιν ἔπιπτε, |80 νήγρετος ἥδιστος, θανάτῳ ἄγχιστα ἐοικώς. |81 ἡ δ’, ὥς τ’ ἐν πεδίῳ τετράοροι ἄρσενες ἵπποι, |82 πάντες ἅμ’ ὁρμηθέντες ὑπὸ πληγῇσιν ἱμάσθλης |83 ὑψόσ’ ἀειρόμενοι ῥίμφα πρήσσουσι κέλευθον, |84 ὣς ἄρα τῆς πρύμνη μὲν ἀείρετο, κῦμα δ’ ὄπισθεν |85 πορφύρεον μέγα θῦε πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης. |86 ἡ δὲ μάλ’ ἀσφαλέως θέεν ἔμπεδον· οὐδέ κεν ἴρηξ |87 κίρκος ὁμαρτήσειεν, ἐλαφρότατος πετεηνῶν· |88 ὣς ἡ ῥίμφα θέουσα θαλάσσης κύματ’ ἔταμνεν, |89 ἄνδρα φέρουσα θεοῖσ’ ἐναλίγκια μήδε’ ἔχοντα, |90 ὃς πρὶν μὲν μάλα πολλὰ πάθ’ ἄλγεα ὃν κατὰ θυμόν, |91 ἀνδρῶν τε πτολέμους ἀλεγεινά τε κύματα πείρων· |92 δὴ τότε γ’ ἀτρέμας εὗδε, λελασμένος ὅσσ’ ἐπεπόνθει. |93 εὖτ’ ἀστὴρ ὑπερέσχε φαάντατος, ὅς τε μάλιστα |94 ἔρχεται ἀγγέλλων φάος Ἠοῦς ἠριγενείης, |95 τῆμος δὴ νήσῳ προσεπίλνατο ποντοπόρος νηῦς.

|78 When they [= the Phaeacian seafarers] began rowing out to sea, |79 he [= Odysseus] felt a sweet sleep falling upon his eyelids. |80 It was a deep sleep, the sweetest, and most similar to death. |81 Meanwhile, the ship was speeding ahead, just as a team of four stallions drawing a chariot over a plain |82 speeds ahead in unison as they all feel the stroke of the whip, |83 gallopping along smoothly, with feet raised high as they make their way forward, |84 so also the prow of the ship kept curving upward as if it were the neck of a stallion, and, behind the ship, waves that were |85 huge and seething raged in the waters of the roaring sea. |86 The ship held steadily on its course, and not even a falcon, |87 raptor that he is, swiftest of all winged creatures, could have kept pace with it. |88 So did the ship cut its way smoothly through the waves, |89 carrying a man who was like the gods in his knowledge of clever ways, |90 who had beforehand suffered very many pains [algea] in his heart [thūmos], |91 taking part in wars among men and forging through so many waves that cause pain, |92 but now he was sleeping peacefully, forgetful of all he had suffered. |93 And when the brightest of all stars began to show, the one that, more than any other star, |94 comes to announce the light of the Dawn born in her earliness, |95 that is when the ship, famed for its travels over the seas, drew near to the island.

(The following is epitomized from H24H 10§§11–12.) The very idea of consciousness as conveyed by nóos is derived from the metaphor of returning to light from darkness, as encapsulated in the moment of waking up from sleep, or of regaining consciousness after losing consciousness, that is, of ‘coming to’. See the comment on O.01.003; also on O.09.082–104. This metaphor of coming to is at work not only in the meaning of nóos in the sense of consciousness but also in the meaning of nostos in the sense of returning from darkness and death to light and life. See the comment on O.01.005. Remarkably, these two meanings converge at one single point in the master myth of the Odyssey. It happens here at O.13.078-095, when Odysseus finally reaches his homeland of Ithaca. Odysseus has been sailing home on a ship provided by the Phaeacians, against the will of the god Poseidon, and the hero falls into a deep sleep that most resembles death itself, O.13.079–080. This sleep makes him momentarily unconscious: he ‘forgets’, as expressed by the verb lēth-, O.13.092, all the algea, ‘pains’, of his past journeys through so many different cities of so many different people, O.13.090-091. Then, at the very moment when the ship reaches the shore of Ithaca, the hero’s homeland, the morning star appears, heralding the coming of dawn, O.13.093–095. The Phaeacians hurriedly leave Odysseus on the beach where they placed him, still asleep, when they landed, O.13.119, and, once they sail away, he wakes up there, O.13.187. So, the moment of the hero’s homecoming, which is synchronized with the moment of sunrise, is now further synchronized with a moment of awakening from a sleep that most resembles death.

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Homeric references to four-horse chariots are confined to contexts having to do with chariot racing. For chariot fighting, two-horse chariots are the Homeric norm. For exceptions, see the comments on I.05.263–273 and on I.08.185.

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|149 νῦν αὖ Φαιήκων ἐθέλω περικαλλέα νῆα |150 ἐκ πομπῆς ἀνιοῦσαν ἐν ἠεροηδέι πόντῳ |151 ῥαῖσαι, ἵν’ ἤδη σχῶνται, ἀπολλήξωσι δὲ πομπῆς |152 ἀνθρώπων, μέγα δέ σφιν ὄρος πόλει ἀμφικαλύψαι

|149 So now I want to smash the very beautiful ship of the Phaeacians |150 when it comes back, in a misty crossing of the sea, from its conveying mission, |151 so that these people [= the Phaeacians] will hold off, at long last, and stop their practice of conveying |152 humans. And I want to make a huge mountain envelop their city.

The god Poseidon is speaking, and he is very angry at the Phaeacians for providing Odysseus with one of their ships to convey the hero back to his home in Ithaca. The god now plans to take revenge, and he asks Zeus to approve his plan, which has two parts: (1) to smash the ship as it sails back home to the Phaeacians and (2) to make a huge mountain ‘envelop’ their city.

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|155 ὁππότε κεν δὴ πάντες ἐλαυνομένην προίδωνται |156 λαοὶ ἀπὸ πτόλιος, θεῖναι λίθον ἐγγύθι γαίης |157 νηὶ θοῇ ἴκελον, ἵνα θαυμάζωσιν ἅπαντες |158 ἄνθρωποι, μέγα δέ σφιν ὄρος πόλει ἀμφικαλύψαι

|155 When all the people of the city look out and see the ship sailing in, |156 turn it into a rock, just as it is about to reach land. |157 Make it look like a swift ship, so that people will look at it with wonder |158 —all of humanity will do so; and make the huge mountain envelop their city.

Before Zeus gives his approval, he modifies the terms of Poseidon's two-part plan for vengeance. In the case of the first part, as we see here, the Will of Zeus is not that the ship be smashed but only that it be turned into a rock at the very moment that it sails into the entrance to the harbor—a rock destined to be a famous landmark for all time to come. In the case of the second part of the sea god’s plan, it seems that Zeus will indeed allow Poseidon to make a huge mountain ‘envelop’ the city. We see here the precise wording of these two parts of the Will of Zeus, addressed as commands to Poseidon.

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(Epitomized from Nagy 2001:84–91, where bibliography is provided about various different views concerning this verse.)

According to the version of O.13.158 that survives only by way of Aristophanes, the future of the Phaeacians is not at all closed off. It remains open-ended, extending into the “present” when the epic is being narrated. The threatening mountain will not block the harbor of the Phaeacians from the outside world —if we read mēde ‘but not…’ instead of mega de ‘and a huge…’ at O.13.158.

Two questions immediately come to mind. First, how could this different version fit the overall narrative of the Homeric Odyssey? Second, is the textual basis of this version “legitimate”?

I already addressed the first question in the comments above, taking a close look at the logic of the narrative after O.13.158. Here I turn to the second question about O.13.158: is the textual basis of the different version featuring mēde ‘but not…’ really “legitimate”? We can now add a related question: if it is legitimate, then does that delegitimize the version featuring mega de ‘and a huge…’?

Whether we need to choose one or the other variant depends on the way we look at Homeric poetry. If this poetry is merely a static text, then we are indeed forced to make a choice. If, however, we view Homeric poetry as a living system—an oral tradition that evolves ultimately into the textual tradition inherited by the Alexandrian editors—then we do not have to choose whenever we see a variation. Rather, as I will now go on to argue, the choices were already being made by Homeric poetry itself, which could opt for different variants in different phases of its own evolution.

My reasoning here derives from an overall “evolutionary model” that I have worked out as a general way of accounting for the making of Homeric poetry (PasP 109–114 and HQ 29–112). In terms of this model, as I now plan to argue, the living and evolving oral tradition of Homeric poetry itself allowed for a choice either to seal off its own past from the present time of narration or to reach into this present time and thereby make its presence fully manifest.

According to the narrative option linked with the first of our two variants from O.13.158, mega de ‘and a huge…’, the outlook is hopeless for the Phaeacians, since Poseidon’s plan to seal off the city of the Phaeacians has been restated by Zeus and is therefore tantamount to the Will of Zeus, which the Homeric tradition conventionally equates with the way things ultimately turn out in epic narrative, as at I.01.005. At the beginning of the Odyssey, however, Zeus himself undercuts the equation of epic plot with the Will of Zeus, O.01.032–034. That is, there are differences in shades of meaning between the Iliadic and the Odyssean perspectives on the Will of Zeus as the plot of epic (PH 241–242).

According to the narrative option linked with the second variant mēde ‘but not…’, the outlook is still hopeful. After all, at an earlier point in the narrative, O.13.144–145, we can see a way out when Zeus tells Poseidon to exact any punishment he pleases ‘if any human honors you not at all’ (ἀνδρῶν δ᾿ εἴ περ τίς σε … | οὔ τι τίει), O.13.143–144. The context is this: Poseidon has been angrily questioning Zeus, calling on him to explain the Will of Zeus (Διὸς δ᾿ ἐξείρετο βουλήν), O.13.127. That is, Poseidon calls on Zeus to explain the overall plot of the narrative—now that the Phaeacians have conveyed Odysseus back home to Ithaca. How can I be honored among the gods, Poseidon plaintively asks Zeus, ‘when the Phaeacians do not honor me at all?’ (ὅτε με βροτοὶ οὔ τι τίουσι | Φαίηκες), O.13.129–130. But then, as we have already seen in the comments, the story goes on to say that the Phaeacians will indeed initiate a remedy after the first disaster by proceeding to honor Poseidon with sacrifice in order to avert the second disaster, which is, the envelopment of their harbor by a huge mountain.

The narrative option that I link with the variant mēde ‘but not…’, according to which the Phaeacians are to be spared the second disaster of an all-enveloping mountain, depends on whether this variant as adduced by Aristophanes of Byzantium in place of mega de ‘and a huge…’ at O.13.158 is a genuine formulaic variant or only a textual variant. If it is the latter, then mēde ‘but not…’ may be just an editorial conjecture. That possibility would severely reduce the chances for arguing that mēde ‘but not…’ is a genuine alternative to mega de ‘and a huge…’. In what follows, however, I will argue against that possibility on several levels.

From an analysis of the formulaic system in which mēde ‘but not…’ is embedded, this form can be justified as a functioning element in that system, just as the form mega de ‘and a huge…’ is a functioning element: in other words, mēde and mega de can be considered compositional alternatives in the formulaic system of Homeric diction.

As Leonard Muellner points out in a message written 1998.03.10 to me and to Chad E. Turner, mega de ‘and a huge…’ at O.13.177 is syntactically and formulaically parallel to mēde ‘but not’ at O.13.183. In a message written 1998.02.03, Turner had pointed out to me that the metrical placement of mēde ‘but not…’ at O.13.198 is singular (although there are cases where this word straddles the last syllable of a spondee and the first syllable of a dactyl in the third and fourth feet, he finds no other cases in the second and third feet). But the formulaic system is capable of generating rare forms and combinations. For a striking example, we may compare the unique attestation of mēden at I.18. 500: here is a word that is found this one and only time in the Iliad and the Odyssey put together, and yet it can be shown to be formulaic. See Muellner 1976:101–102, 106.

Moreover, there is immediate contextual as well as formulaic evidence to support the argument that mēde ‘but not…’ is a functioning compositional variant in the formulaic system. Let us consider the wording of Zeus in his answer to Poseidon’s angry questioning at O.13.145:

|145 ἔρξον ὅπως ἐθέλεις καί τοι φίλον ἔπλετο θυμῷ

|145 Do as you wish and as was pleasing to your heart.

This open-ended wording of Zeus matches formulaically the wording of Alkinoos, when he had originally “quoted” the prophecy of his father, O.08.570–571:

|570 ὣς ἀγόρευ᾿ ὁ γέρων. τὰ δέ κεν θεὸς ἢ τελέσειεν, |571 ἤ κ᾿ ἀτέλεστ᾿ εἴη, ὥς οἱ φίλον ἔπλετο θυμῷ

|570 That is what the old man said. And the god [Poseidon] could either bring these things to fulfillment |571 or they could be left unfulfilled, however it was pleasing to his heart.

The formulation of Zeus, then, in leaving it still undecided whether or not the Phaeacians are to be ‘enveloped’, can be used as evidence to argue that mēde ‘but not…’ is indeed a genuine compositional alternative to mega de ‘and a huge…’.

As for the possibility that mēde ‘but not…’ is an emendation based on an editorial conjecture, my own cumulative work on Homeric variants as adduced by the three great Alexandrian editors of Homer (Zenodotus, Aristophanes, and Aristarchus) leaves me skeptical, since I find that these editors normally do not make emendations without manuscript evidence (PasP 107–152).

In making the specific argument that both variants mega de ‘and a huge…’ and mēde ‘but not…’ are genuine compositional alternatives, I return to my general argument that Homeric poetry is not a static text but a slowly evolving system. In terms of this general argument, the variant mega de produces a narrative closure for the Phaeacians: their fate is sealed. The variant mēde, however, produces an outcome that is open-ended.

These two variants, I contend, reflect different phases in the evolution of Homeric poetry. Let us begin with the variant mega de ‘and a huge…’, the context of which can be linked with a relatively more Panhellenic phase of epic. (On the relativity of Panhellenism—despite the absolutist implications of the term—as a cultural impulse, see PH p. 53.) I have defined this phase elsewhere as one that “concentrates on traditions that tend to be common to most locales and peculiar to none” (PH 54). The Panhellenic phases of epic make contact with the “present” time of narration by shading over any “local color” that might distract from the widest possible range of ways to visualize this “present” (PH 53). A Panhellenic version, then, will tend to universalize the concerns of the present.

But there are also other, less Panhellenic, ways for epic to make contact with the “present” time in which narration happens: the “local color” can be highlighted, though only at the cost of narrowing the range of ways to visualize this “present.” The context of the variant mēde ‘but not…’ can be linked with such a relatively less Panhellenic phase of epic. This variant makes contact with the epic “present” in a less universalized and more localized way. One focus of localization is historical Corcyra, modern-day Corfù.

The fact is, the Corcyraeans of the Classical period claimed to be residents of the land of the Phaeacians, as we know from a remark of Thucydides (1.25.4); from another remark of his, we know also that they worshipped King Alkinoos as their local cult hero (3.70.4).

In O.13.155–158, we hear how the Phaeacians will one day look out at their harbor and see their returning ship suddenly turn into a rock, and we hear also how that fabulous petrified ship will continue to be a most wondrous sight for future generations of humanity to see and to keep on seeing for all time to come. There are references to this “real-life” rock in Pliny (Natural History) 4.53 and Eustathius (Commentary on Odyssey vol. II p. 44 line 27), and to this day the “petrified ship” remains a most celebrated tourist attraction for visitors to Corfù. But the essential point is, the reference to this rock is already there in the Odyssey—that is, in a version of the Odyssey that says mēde ‘but not…’ instead of mega de ‘and a huge…’ at O.13.158.

The identity of the Corcyraeans as descendants of the Phaeacians depends on the Will of Zeus as he formulates it at O.13.155–158, and it depends especially on the variant mēde ‘but not…’ of O.13.158, which yields an open-ended narrative that reaches directly into the “present” of the Classical period and beyond.

As a political and cultural fact of life, the self-identification of the Corcyraeans with the Phaeacians has been dated as far back as the eighth century BCE, when the island was settled by colonists from Eretria and, soon thereafter, from Corinth (Plutarch Greek Questions 293a; further sources analyzed in Frame 257n158). The variant represented by mēde ‘but not…’ at O.13.158 may be just as early, and in fact it may be the vehicle for expressing just such a political and cultural fact of life. This is not to say that the other variant represented by mega de ‘and a huge…’ at O.13.158 may not be just as early. It is only to say that both variants were still available to the Homeric tradition of epic as it evolved during the pre-Classical period. In such an early period, the affirming—or the denying—of a claim of descent from the Phaeacians was essential not just poetically but also politically and culturally. It really mattered then, and it continued to matter well into the Classical period of the fifth century and beyond, as we have seen from the remark of Thucydides (1.25.4, 3.70.4) about the Corcyraeans’ claim that they inhabited the land of the Phaeacians, whose king, Alkinoos, they worshipped as their local hero.

In the Hellenistic period of the Alexandrian editors of Homer, by contrast, the question of choosing mega de ‘and a huge…’ or mēde ‘but not…’ would have mattered purely from a poetical rather than a political or cultural point of view. The Corcyraeans’ claims to the land of the Phaeacians would not be a major concern any more, at least not politically. But it would still really matter in another way: was the petrified ship of the Phaeacians a figment of the poetic imagination, walled off in the epic past, or was it the same thing as the real-life rock at the entrance to the harbor of Corcyra, accessible to all humanity in the contemporary Hellenic world? The disagreement between Aristarchus and Aristophanes over the choice of mega de ‘and a huge…’ or mēde ‘but not…’ respectively must have centered on such questions. One way, we see a beautiful snapshot from the enchanted imaginary world of the epic past. The other way, we see a comparably beautiful vista in the enchanting touristic world of the non-epic present, still anchored in the permanence of the epic past. Either way, petrified ship or scenic rock, what we see is a beloved cultural landmark of Hellenism.

All this is not to say that we must ultimately choose between these two versions of seeing things Homeric. It is only to say that both variants were still available to the Homeric tradition of epic as it evolved into the Classical period and beyond. And it is to ponder the power of epic either to close down or to open up its pathways to the present. The fate of the Phaeacians in conveying the heroic past to the present depends on that power of Homeric dimensions.

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|158 ἄνθρωποι, μηδέ σφιν ὄρος πόλει ἀμφικαλύψαι

|158 —all of humanity will do so; but do not make the mountain envelop their city

Here we see another version of O.13.158, adduced by the Alexandrian editor Aristophanes of Byzantium (as we learn from the scholia for O.13.152). This different version was disputed by the later Alexandrian editor Aristarchus of Samothrace: he preferred the version of O.13.158 that I showed earlier, which is the one that survives in the medieval manuscript tradition. According to the version that survives only by way of Aristophanes, the future of the Phaeacians is not at all closed off. It remains open-ended, extending into the “present” when the epic is being narrated. For more, see the Excursus on Odyssey 13.158.

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comment on the petrification of the ship of the Phaeacians’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’ as the premier example of landmark poetics involving the theme of petrification (in the context of analyzing the petrified serpent in I.02)

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Complying with the reaction of Zeus to the original two-part plan of revenge, Poseidon proceeds to turn the returning ship into a rock at O.13.160–164. The first part of Poseidon's two-part plan has now been accomplished, although in modified form, in compliance with the Will of Zeus. The ship has been petrified at the approach to the harbor, instead of being ‘smashed’ at midsea.

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At this midpoint in the ongoing narrative about the fate of the Phaeacians, we see their reaction to the petrifaction of their ship. They are in shock: awestruck as they are, they cannot understand how this disaster could have happened to them, O.13.165–169.

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|175 φῆ ποτε Φαιήκων ἀνδρῶν περικαλλέα νῆα |176 ἐκ πομπῆς ἀνιοῦσαν ἐν ἠεροηδέι πόντῳ |177 ῥαισέμεναι, μέγα δ᾿ ἧμιν ὄρος πόλει ἀμφικαλύψειν

|175 He [= Nausithoos] once said that he [Poseidon] will smash the very beautiful ship of the Phaeacian men |176 when it comes back, in a misty crossing of the sea, from its conveying mission, |177 and that he will make a huge mountain envelop our city.

Alkinoos, king of the Phaeacians, has comprehended what is still in the process of happening. He explains to the Phaeacians that he now understands a prophecy that his father Nausithoos had once told him: it must have been this present disaster, Alkinoos says, that his father had prophesied to him—along with that other disaster still waiting to be narrated in the Odyssey, which is, the occlusion of the Phaeacians from the world of the present. Such an occlusion will happen if Zeus arranges for a huge mountain to envelop the city of the Phaeacians, thus blocking their harbor from access to the sea.

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|178 ὣς ἀγόρευ᾿ ὁ γέρων. τὰ δὲ δὴ νῦν πάντα τελεῖται. |179 ἀλλ᾿ ἄγεθ᾿, ὥς ἂν ἐγὼ εἴπω, πειθώμεθα πάντες.

|178 That is what the old man said. And now you and I see that all these things are being brought to fulfillment. |179 But come, let us all comply with exactly what I am about to say.

The audience of our Odyssey already knows this prophecy as recapitulated in O.13.173–177, because Alkinoos had already "quoted" it to Odysseus at O.08.565-569. The textual transmission of O.08.565–569 and O.13 173–177 leaves the two passages matching almost exactly, word for word. There is some degree of non-matching, though: for example, the ship is εὐεργέα ‘well-built’ in most manuscripts at O.08.567 vs. περικαλλέα ‘very beautiful’ in most manuscripts at O.13.175, while the mutually alternative forms are attested in a minority of manuscripts at both places. In terms of oral poetics, such variation may be justified even where the “quoting” of a character’s words happens to be a narrative requirement of the composition, as it is here. At that earlier point in the narrative, however, Alkinoos had said something in addition, which he does not say now (O.08.570–571):

|570 ὣς ἀγόρευ᾿ ὁ γέρων. τὰ δέ κεν θεὸς ἢ τελέσειεν, |57 ἤ κ᾿ ἀτέλεστ᾿ εἴη, ὥς οἱ φῦλον ἔπλετο θυμῷ

|570 That is what the old man said. And the god [Poseidon] could either bring these things to fulfillment |571 or they could be left unfulfilled, however it was pleasing to his heart.

Now, instead of “repeating” this part of the old man’s prophecy, Alkinoos commands the Phaeacians to take immediate action, as we see from the wording of O.13.178–179, quoted and translated above. When Alkinoos had first “quoted” the prophecy of his father at O.08.570–571, the “quotation” had left a loophole: Poseidon may or may not bring ‘these things’ to fulfillment, as he wishes. But now at O.13.178–179 there is the greatest urgency, and Alkinoos exclaims hyperbolically that ‘all these things are being brought to fulfillment’. The rhetorical point of this hyperbole is to motivate the Phaeacians to take immediate action. Even though the half-hopeful words of Alkinoos at O.08.570–571 are not repeated but are replaced by the increasingly desperate words of O.13.178–179, there is still a trace of hope—provided that the Phaeacians take immediate action by following the emergency orders of Alkinoos, which are formulated in the verses that immediately follow, O.13.180–182.

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King Alkinoos here orders the Phaeacians to do two things without delay: to resolve never again to engage in the otherworldly pompē ‘conveying’ of mortals back to their real world, O.13.180, and to offer a sacrifice of twelve bulls to Poseidon, O.13.180–182. The Phaeacians must do these two things before the second of the two disasters should happen, which is, the blocking of their harbor by a huge mountain.

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The Phaeacians immediately proceed to make sacrifice to the sea god, supplicating him, O.13.184–187. At this sacrifice, we may presume that they do indeed resolve never again to engage in the otherworldly “conveying” of mortals back to their “real” world. Such a resolution by the Phaeacians would of course cancel their own otherworldly status as mediators between the inner world of the narrative and the outer world of “reality” as implicit in the “present” time when the narration of epic is actually happening.

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|182 … αἴ κ᾿ ἐλεήσῃ |183 μηδ᾿ ἥμιν περίμηκες ὄρος πόλει ἀμφικαλύψῃ

|182 … in hopes that he [Poseidon] will take pity |183 and will not make the tall mountain envelop our city.

The hope, Alkinoos says here, is that Poseidon may still take pity and stop his plan.

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So, what will happen to the Phaeacians according to the narrative? We cannot be completely certain. The Homeric narrative about the Phaeacians breaks off here at O.13.187, at the very moment when they are offering sacrifice and praying to Poseidon to take pity on them. The narrative break takes place most abruptly, dramatically, and even exceptionally—at mid-verse. In the first part of the verse at O.13.187, the Phaeacians are last seen standing around the sacrificial altar; in the second part of the verse, Odysseus has just woken up in Ithaca. A new phase of the hero’s experiences has just begun in the “real” world of Ithaca.

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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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Now that he has finally returned to his homeland of Ithaca, Odysseus must accomplish another kind of return: he must be restored to kingship. Such a restoration, however, must start from the bottom up. The goddess Athena, his ultimate benefactor but occasional antagonist, has made Odysseus seem to be ‘base’ on the outside, hiding his inner moral nobility. Only those who are likewise morally ‘noble’ will be able to read, as it were, the hero’s true nature. Meanwhile, the coded tales told by Odysseus point toward the truth of his kingship—without revealing it outright. A telling example here in Rhapsody 14 is the second Cretan tale told by Odysseus: it is about a Cretan princeling, not unlike the dapper figure we see in the romanticized restoration of a Minoan fresco as featured in the cover-illustration for Rhapsody 14.

draft js image error Minoan—probably Neopalatial—fresco commonly known as the “Lily Prince.” Whatever the exact type of this personage (perhaps a crowned acrobat, according to the interpretation of Maria Shaw), the Lily Prince is certainly a Minoan of elite standing. Public domain image based on a famous watercolor by Émile Gilliéron of a reconstruction by Arthur Evans. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

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Here is the first time in the Odyssey that Eumaios is mentioned by name. On the meaning of Eúmaios, see the note on O.17.292.

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See the anchor comment at O.07.256. Here at O.14.063, the idea of ritual and moral correctness in host-guest relationships is conveyed by the idea of not interrupting the proper sequence of procedures and protocols.

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See the comment on O.14.063.

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The wording at O.14.124–125 refers indirectly to itinerant poets/singers who are ready to adapt the content of their poetry/song to whatever the local audience expects to hear as its own local truth-value. It is as if such poets/singers were ‘lying’, as expressed at O.14.125 by the verb pseudesthai, which is contrasted here in this line with the adjective alēthe- ‘true’. Such itinerant poets/singers are described here as if they were wanderers in general who are ready to adapt the content of whatever they say to the standards of whomever they encounter in a given locale. By implication, those standards represent the real truth, while the mental process of adapting the truth is the equivalent of lying. Wandering beggars are like that: they will lie in order to please those who might give them food to express their pleasure. By implication, hunger for food in the stomach drives the poet as guest to say what his host wants to hear. The poet, then, is dependent on the patronage of his local audiences. See also the comment on O.07.215–221. There is a relevant passage in Hesiod Theogony 26–28, quoted in the comment on O.19.203.

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Here again Ithaca is figured as one single dēmos ‘community, district’. See already the comment on O.01.103.

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This scenario, where a man falls overboard into the sea and dies, so that his body is devoured by fish, is a “favorite fear” that motivates the epithet ikhthuoeis ‘fish-swarming’ as an adjective describing pontos ‘crossing [of the sea]’. See the comment on I.09.004.

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Here at O.14.192–359 we see the second example of “Cretan lies” told by Odysseus in the context of his re-entry into the kingdom of Ithaca. The first example is at O.13.256–286. The concept of “Cretan lies” was introduced in the anchor comment at O.01.284–286 on Cretan Odyssey.

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ἐκ μὲν Κρητάων γένος εὔχομαι εὐρειάων

I say-solemnly [eukhesthai] that I was born and raised in Crete, the place that reaches far and wide

(What follows is epitomized from Nagy 2017.04.11 5§§27–28.) Odysseus, disguising himself as a Cretan princeling, begins with a statement about his origins. He says he is from Crete. In the singular, Krētē refers to the island of Crete. But here at O.14.199 we see the plural Krêtai, which cannot mean a multiplicity of islands named Crete. There is no such thing. Rather, we see here an elliptic plural, meaning ‘Crete and everything that belongs to it’. And of course whatever belongs to Crete are all the Aegean islands and lands controlled by the thalassocracy of Crete (HTL 163–164, following Muellner 1976:70). At O.19.178, we will see a pronoun that refers to Crete, and, like the noun Krêtai here at O.14.199, that pronoun too appears not in the singular but in the plural. So, again at O.19.178, we will see an elliptic plural. Also, in the comment on O.07.078–081, I noted a parallel example: it is the elliptic plural Athênai, which means ‘Athēnē and everything that belongs to it’. My translation here shows ‘it’ instead of ‘her’ for a simple reason: the fact is, the singular form Athēnē refers not only to the goddess Athena but also to the place that she personifies. As we see at O.07.080, the noun Athēnē in the singular can refer not only to the goddess Athena but also to the place that she controls, which was primarily the acropolis of Athens. So, to put that singular form into the plural, which is an elliptic plural, is a way of referring to all the places controlled by the acropolis of Athens. Besides Athênai in the sense of ‘Athens’, other such elliptic plurals include Mukênai ‘Mycenae’ and Thêbai ‘Thebes’. See the comment on O.07.078–081 (see also, again, HTL 163-164). On ellipsis in general, see the comment on I.04.196; also on I.06.209, I.07.015–017.

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(What follows is epitomized from HPC 289–290, where I offer supplementary bibliography.) A comparable pairing of Ares and Athena as divinities of war is found at I.18.515–519. See the comments on those lines. As I noted already in those comments, such a pairing of Ares and Athena is so old as to be traceable all the way back to the Bronze Age. Here I offer some details. As we know from the documentary evidence of the Linear B tablets found in the palace of Knossos in Crete, the divinities Athena and Ares (in that order) are paired as symmetrical recipients of offerings: in one tablet, V 52, a-ta-na-po-ti-ni-ja is listed together with e-nu-wa-ri-jo and pa-ja-wo-ne and po-se-da-o-ne. I interpret these syllabic spellings as follows: a-ta-na-po-ti-ni-ja = Athānāi potniāi or perhaps Athānās potniā (see the comment on O.07.078–081), e-nu-wa-ri-jo = Enūaliōi, pa-ja-wo-ne = Paiāwonei, po-se-da-o-ne = Poseidāonei. As we know from the evidence of Homeric diction, the divine name Enūalios became an epithet of Ares, as we see for example at I.18.211. In some Homeric contexts, as at I.20.069, Enūalios is a god in his own right, distinct from Ares, just as Paiāwōn (Homeric Paiēōn) is in some contexts distinct from Apollo, as at I.05.401, I.05.899–900. As for the name of Ares, it too is attested in the Linear B tablets, Knossos Fp 14 and Fp 5816, in the form a-re = Arei. The Cretan connection of Athena and Ares is attested here at O.14.216 as well, where Odysseus in the second of his “Cretan lies” represents himself as a Cretan prince who professes his devotion to these two divinities in moments of crisis in battle. I should add that the pairing of Ares and Athena in the world of images represented on the Shield of Achilles is expressed by way of bronzework that is overlaid with gold, I.18.517–519. Such a technique of metalwork, as narrated on the Shield, is notionally linked to the heroic age or, as archaeologists would say it, to the Bronze Age.

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See the comment on O.14.063.

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The theme of abduction by gusts of winds is analyzed at length in the comment at O.15.250–251.

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This expression ep’ anthrōpous ‘throughout humankind’ is conventionally associated with words referring to remembrance by way of song. See the anchor comment on I.10.213.

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We see here a rare Homeric glimpse of a sacrificial practice where sacrificers deposit choice cuts of meat in honor of the gods.

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Syntactically, the premise here reinforces the probability of the wish.

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|462 κέκλυθι νῦν, Εὔμαιε καὶ ἄλλοι πάντες ἑταῖροι, |463 εὐξάμενός τι ἔπος ἐρέω· οἶνος γὰρ ἀνώγει, |464 ἠλεός, ὅς τ’ ἐφέηκε πολύφρονά περ μάλ' ἀεῖσαι |465 καί θ’ ἁπαλὸν γελάσαι καί τ' ὀρχήσασθαι ἀνῆκε, |466 καί τι ἔπος προέηκεν, ὅ πέρ τ' ἄρρητον ἄμεινον. |467 ἀλλ' ἐπεὶ οὖν τὸ πρῶτον ἀνέκραγον, οὐκ ἐπικεύσω.

|462 Listen to me now, Eumaios and all you other companions! |463 Speaking proudly [eukhesthai], I will tell you an utterance. The wine is telling me to do so. |464 Wine, distracting as it is, impels even the thinking man to sing |465 and to laugh softly. And it urges him on to dance. |466 It even prompts an utterance that may be better left unsaid. |467 But now that I have shouted out loud [anakrazein], I will not suppress it.

The wording here, as delivered by the disguised Odysseus to Eumaios, is cognate with the poeticized replication of a festive occasion in the words of Pindar, Nemean 7.75–76:

ἔα με· νικῶντί γε χάριν, εἴ τι πέραν ἀερθείς | ἀνέκραγον, οὐ τραχύς εἰμι καταθέμεν.

Your indulgence, please! If I—to reciprocate the victor—shouted something out loud [anakrazein] as I soared too far up, I am not unversed in bringing it back down.

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The discourse of the disguised Odysseus, shown here in the act of speaking to Eumaios, matches the discourse of a poet/singer who is performing at a festive occasion.

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Eumaios compliments the discourse of Odysseus, calling it a fine example of an ainos. Here the meaning of ainos can be interpreted in a general poetic sense, as ‘coded words’—a ‘coded message’. But there is also a specific poetic sense that is conveyed by the same word: an ainos can be festive, highlighting the merriment of song and dance. The same kind of festivity is formalized also in the victory odes of Pindar, where the medium of the odes can refer to itself by way of the same word, ainos, as we see for example in the case of Olympian 11.7. See also the general comment on O.09.003–011 and the specific comment there on the word euphrosunē ‘festivity, merriment’ at O.09.006. On the programmatic implications of this word as an indicator of the festive atmosphere, as it were, of the poetic occasion, I refer again here to a definitive formulation by Bundy 1986:2 with reference to the poetics of Pindar (see BA 91, 235; also PH 198).

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At O.13.439–440 it was said that the goddess Athena, after parting with Odysseus on the island of Ithaca, ‘next’ went off to Sparta in order to connect with Telemachus there. The moment of that connection, which was going to happen ‘next’, was expressed by way of the adverb epeita, O.13.439. Now at O.15.001–003 this moment that had been destined to happen ‘next’ is finally at hand, and we see the goddess arriving at Sparta, where she will make it possible for Telemachus to connect mentally with his own nostos ‘homecoming’ to Ithaca, O.15.003. Essential here at O.15.03 is the use of the verb hupo-mnē-, meaning ‘mentally connect’. The same verb is used in a comparable context at O.01.322. See the comment on O.01.320–322. Here at O.15.001–003, Telemachus will mentally connect not only with the idea of his own homecoming but also with the song of that homecoming, which will merge with the song of his father’s homecoming. Telemachus needs to be mentally connected to his own nostos not only in the sense of ‘homecoming’ and ‘song of homecoming’ but also, more mystically, ‘return to light and life’. On this mystical meaning, see the comment on O.01.005, where this noun nostos is explained as meaning etymologically a ‘return’ or a ‘coming-back’, derived from the verb-root nes- ‘return, come back’, which has a deeper meaning as well: ‘come to’, in the sense of ‘come back to consciousness’. The noun nostos itself, meaning ‘homecoming’, likewise has a deeper meaning: ‘coming back to light and life’. Etymologically related to this noun nostos in the sense of ‘coming back to light and life’ is the noun nóos ‘mind’, which has the deeper meaning of ‘coming to’ in the sense of ‘coming back to consciousness’. As I argued in the comment on O.13.078–095, the idea of ‘coming to’ as embedded in the noun nostos is activated at the moment when Odysseus comes home to Ithaca: there he wakes up from a death-like sleep at the precise moment when the sun rises. To experience such a nostos as a ‘homecoming’, as I also argued in the same comment, is to experience a symbolic ‘return to light and life’, and the Odyssey as a ‘song of homecoming’ is such a nostos. Here at O.15.001–003, we see that the son of Odysseus must likewise experience a nostos, expressed here at O.15.003 not only by the noun nostos but also by the verb néesthai*, derived from the root nes-. This line, O.15.003, shows that the song of this nostos*, of this homecoming, is meant to merge with the song of the father’s homecoming. See also the comment on O.01.088–089.

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(What follows is epitomized from Nagy 2017.04.11 5§§29–31.) In the Homeric Odyssey, the Minoan-Mycenaean world is linked more directly to Sparta than to Crete. To make this point, I start with the beginning of Odyssey 15, where the goddess Athena appears in an epiphany to Telemachus at Sparta. As Athena tells Telemachus at O.15.001–009, it is time for the young hero to conclude his visit at Sparta and to go back home to Ithaca. I highlight the fact that Sparta is described here at O.15.001 as eurukhoros (εἰς εὐρύχορον Λακεδαίμονα), meaning ‘having a wide dancing-place’. I see here a Minoan-Mycenaean signature. Relevant is the word Kallikhoron, which is explained this way in the dictionary of Hesychius: Καλλίχορον· ἐν Κνωσσῷ ἐπὶ τῷ τῆς Ἀριάδνης τόπῳ ‘Kallikhoron was the name of the place of Ariadne in Knossos’. And the meaning of this ‘place of Ariadne’, Kallikhoron, is ‘the dancing-place that is beautiful’. It is most relevant to highlight here the fact that the word khoros can designate either the ‘place’ where singing and dancing takes place or the group of singers and dancers who perform at that place. Such a beautiful place, as we already saw in the comment on I.18.590–606, is made visible by the divine smith Hephaistos when he creates the ultimate masterpiece of visual art, the Shield of Achilles. At I.18.593–606, we see in action the singing-and-dancing that happens in the picturing of the divine place, the word for which is khoros, I.18.590. And the prima donna for such singing and dancing can be visualized as the girl Ariadne, for whom Daedalus had made the ultimate place for song and dance, I.18.592.

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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.

draft js image error 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.

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

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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).

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

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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.

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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).

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

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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.

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

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

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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’.

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Odysseus, because of his external appearance as an old beggar, cannot be recognized by his own son Telemachus. To make the recognition happen, the goddess Athena temporarily transforms the father into a young aristocrat. For Telemachus, however, the transformation itself can be read as the epiphany of a god.

draft js image error “Minerva Restoring Ulysses to his Own Shape” (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.16.062 as also at O.14.199, we see an elliptic plural, meaning ‘Crete and everything that belongs to it’. See the note on O.14.199.

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Here again, as at O.11.179 and at O.15.521–522, it is said that whoever succeeds in marrying Penelope would surely qualify as ‘the best of the Achaeans’.

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These two negative terms hubris ‘outrage’ and atasthalo- ‘reckless’ are closely linked with each other in Homeric diction. The two words together are also closely linked with the suitors of Penelope in the Odyssey.

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The fact that Athena here can be recognized by the main character of the Odyssey may be relevant to the role of Athena as the goddess presiding over the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens as the venue for the performance of this epic.

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The act of noticing is sometimes connected with special signals, as here: neuein ‘nod’; see also the comment on I.09.223.

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|172 ἦ, καὶ χρυσείῃ ῥάβδῳ ἐπεμάσσατ’ Ἀθήνη. |173 φᾶρος μέν οἱ πρῶτον ἐϋπλυνὲς ἠδὲ χιτῶνα |174 θῆκ’ ἀμφὶ στήθεσφι, δέμας δ’ ὤφελλε καὶ ἥβην. |175 ἂψ δὲ μελαγχροιὴς γένετο, γναθμοὶ δ’ ἐτάνυσθεν, |176 κυάνεαι δ’ ἐγένοντο ἐθειράδες ἀμφὶ γένειον. |177 ἡ μὲν ἄρ’ ὣς ἔρξασα πάλιν κίεν· αὐτὰρ Ὀδυσσεὺς |178 ἤϊεν ἐς κλισίην. θάμβησε δέ μιν φίλος υἱός, |179 ταρβήσας δ’ ἑτέρωσε βάλ’ ὄμματα, μὴ θεὸς εἴη, |180 καί μιν φωνήσας ἔπεα πτερόεντα προσηύδα· |181 “ἀλλοῖός μοι, ξεῖνε, φάνης νέον ἠὲ πάροιθεν, |182 ἄλλα δὲ εἵματ’ ἔχεις καί τοι χρὼς οὐκέθ’ ὁμοῖος. |183 ἦ μάλα τις θεός ἐσσι, τοὶ οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἔχουσιν· |184 ἀλλ’ ἵληθ’, ἵνα τοι κεχαρισμένα δώομεν ἱρὰ |185 ἠδὲ χρύσεα δῶρα, τετυγμένα· φείδεο δ’ ἡμέων.” |186 τὸν δ’ ἠμείβετ’ ἔπειτα πολύτλας δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς· |187 “οὔ τίς τοι θεός εἰμι· τί μ’ ἀθανάτοισιν ἐΐσκεις; |188 ἀλλὰ πατὴρ τεός εἰμι, τοῦ εἵνεκα σὺ στεναχίζων |189 πάσχεις ἄλγεα πολλά, βίας ὑποδέγμενος ἀνδρῶν.” |190 ὣς ἄρα φωνήσας υἱὸν κύσε, κὰδ δὲ παρειῶν |191 δάκρυον ἧκε χαμᾶζε· πάρος δ’ ἔχε νωλεμὲς αἰεί. |192 Τηλέμαχος δ’,—οὐ γάρ πω ἐπείθετο ὃν πατέρ’ εἶναι,—|193 ἐξαῦτίς μιν ἔπεσσιν ἀμειβόμενος προσέειπεν· |194 “οὐ σύ γ’ Ὀδυσσεύς ἐσσι πατὴρ ἐμός, ἀλλά με δαίμων |195 θέλγει, ὄφρ’ ἔτι μᾶλλον ὀδυρόμενος στεναχίζω. |196 οὐ γάρ πως ἂν θνητὸς ἀνὴρ τάδε μηχανόῳτο |197 ᾧ αὐτοῦ γε νόῳ, ὅτε μὴ θεὸς αὐτὸς ἐπελθὼν |198 ῥηϊδίως ἐθέλων θείη νέον ἠδὲ γέροντα. |199 ἦ γάρ τοι νέον ἦσθα γέρων καὶ ἀεικέα ἕσσο· |200 νῦν δὲ θεοῖσιν ἔοικας, οἳ οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἔχουσι.” |201 τὸν δ’ ἀπαμειβόμενος προσέφη πολύμητις Ὀδυσσεύς· |202 “Τηλέμαχ’, οὔ σε ἔοικε φίλον πατέρ’ ἔνδον ἐόντα |203 οὔτε τι θαυμάζειν περιώσιον οὔτ’ ἀγάασθαι· |204 οὐ μὲν γάρ τοι ἔτ’ ἄλλος ἐλεύσεται ἐνθάδ’ Ὀδυσσεύς, |205 ἀλλ’ ὅδ’ ἐγὼ τοιόσδε, παθὼν κακά, πολλὰ δ’ ἀληθείς, |206 ἤλυθον εἰκοστῷ ἔτεϊ ἐς πατρίδα γαῖαν. |207 αὐτάρ τοι τόδε ἔργον Ἀθηναίης ἀγελείης, |208 ἥ τέ με τοῖον ἔθηκεν ὅπως ἐθέλει, δύναται γάρ, |209 ἄλλοτε μὲν πτωχῷ ἐναλίγκιον, ἄλλοτε δ’ αὖτε |210 ἀνδρὶ νέῳ καὶ καλὰ περὶ χροῒ εἵματ’ ἔχοντι. |211 ῥηΐδιον δὲ θεοῖσι, τοὶ οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἔχουσιν, |212 ἠμὲν κυδῆναι θνητὸν βροτὸν ἠδὲ κακῶσαι.”

|172 So spoke Athena, and she touched him [= Odysseus] with her golden wand. |173 First she made his mantle and his tunic to be cleanly washed, |174 she made it be that way, what he was wearing over his chest, and she augmented his size and his youthfulness. |175 His tan complexion came back, and his jaws got firmed up, |176 and dark again became the beard around his chin. |177 Then she [= Athena], having done her work, went back where she came from, while |178 Odysseus headed for the shelter. His dear son [= Telemachus] marveled at him, |179 and, in his amazement, he [= Telemachus] cast his gaze away from him, in another direction, fearing that he [= Odysseus] might be a god. |180 And he [= Telemachus] addressed him [= Odysseus], speaking winged words: |181 “As a different kind of person [alloio-], stranger, have you appeared [phainesthai] to me just now, different than before. |182 You have different clothes and your complexion is no longer the same kind [homoio-]. |183 You must be some god, one of those gods who hold the wide sky. |184 So be gracious, in order that we may give you pleasing sacrifices |185 and golden gifts of good workmanship. Have mercy on us.” |186 And he [= Telemachus] was answered then by the one who suffered many things, the radiant Odysseus: |187 “I am not some god. Why do you liken [eïskein] me to the immortals? |188 But I am your father, for whom you mourn and |189 suffer many pains, enduring the violent acts of men.” |190 Having said these things, he kissed his son and let fall from his cheeks |191 a tear, letting it fall to the ground. Until then he had persisted in showing no sign of pity. |192 And Telemachus, since he was not yet convinced that he [= Odysseus] was his father, |193 once again addressed him with words in reply: |194 “You are not Odysseus my father. Instead, some superhuman force |195 is enchanting me, and it makes me weep and mourn even more. |196 I say this because no mortal man could craft these things that are happening to me, |197 no mortal could do these things by way of his own devising, unless a god comes in person |198 and, if he so wishes, easily makes someone a young man or makes him an old man. |199 Why, just a little while ago you were an old man wearing unseemly clothes, |200 but now you look like [= perfect of eïskein] the gods who hold the wide sky.” |201 He was answered by Odysseus, the one with many kinds of craft, who addressed him thus: |202 “Telemachus, it does not seem right [= perfect of eïskein] for you to be amazed at your father who is right here inside [the shelter], |203 for you to be amazed too much or to feel overwhelmed. |204 There will never again be some different [allos] person who comes here, some different Odysseus, |205 but here I am such [toiosde] as I am. I have had many bad things happen to me. I have been detoured in many different ways. |206 But now I am here, having come back in the twentieth year to the land of my ancestors. |207 I tell you, this was the work of Athena, the giver of prizes, |208 who has made me be such [toios] as she wants me to be, for she has the power. |209 One moment, she has made me to be looking like [enalinkios] a beggar, and then, the next moment, |210 like a young man who has beautiful clothes covering his complexion. |211 It is easy for the gods, who hold the wide sky, |212 to make a mortal man become exalted with radiance or to debase him.

(What follows is epitomized from MoM 2§§18–20.) As soon as Odysseus has been stroked by the wand of Athena, his outward appearance—his khrōs ‘complexion’—is no longer the same as it had been before, O.16.182. That is what Telemachus is saying to Odysseus. The son is amazed that the father no longer looks like an old beggar. The word used here to express the idea of sameness is homoio- ‘similar to, same as’, O.16.182. This word homoio-, derived from homó-, further derives from the Indo-European form somo- meaning ‘same’. In fact, the English word same is cognate with the Greek word homó-. See the anchor comment at I.05.441. Because the complexion of Odysseus is no longer the same, he no longer looks the same. Now he looks different. He is now a different kind of person. In the wording of O.16.181, Odysseus the person is now alloio- ‘a different kind’. This word alloio- (ἀλλοῖο-) ‘a different kind’ is the opposite of homoio- (ὁμοῖο-) ‘the same kind’. I note that the extension -io- (-ιο-) of the adjectives homoio- (ὁμοῖο-) ‘the same kind’ and alloio- (ἀλλοῖο-) ‘a different kind’ is parallel to the extension -io- (-ιο-) of the adjectives hoio- (oἷο-) ‘what kind’ and toio- (τοῖο-) ‘that kind’. At O.16.205 and O.16.208 in the passage I have just quoted and translated, we also see this meaning of toio- ‘that kind’ in action. In this same passage, it is said that Odysseus looks like an old man or looks like a young man, whatever a divinity may wish, O.16.198. But when he looks like a young man for Telemachus to see, his son needs to avert his eyes because he sees what he now sees, O.16.179. What he now sees is that Odysseus at that moment looks not only like a young man but also like a divinity. Relevant is the question that Odysseus asks his son at O.16.187: ‘Why do you liken [eïskein] me to the immortals?’... In answer to this question, Telemachus can rightly say at O.16.200: ‘but now you look like [= perfect of eïskein] the gods who hold the wide sky’. And, in terms of the ritual transformation of Odysseus by way of a sacred contact with the wand of the goddess Athena herself, this mortal not only looks like one of the gods but he actually becomes a god in the ritual moment marked by the similes that liken him to the god. So, the contexts of eïskein ‘make likenesses, liken’ at O.16.187 and O.16.200 show that Telemachus was justified in saying that Odysseus looks the same as a god after being touched by the wand of Athena. Similarly at O.03.464–468, there is a ritual transformation of Telemachus when he is bathed in a bathtub called an asaminthos, O.03.468. As I note in the comment on O.03.464–468, here is what happens at O.03.468 to Telemachus as a result of this ritual bath: ‘he [= Telemachus] emerged from the bathtub [asaminthos], looking the same as [homoio*-] the immortals in shape’ (ἔκ ῥ’ ἀσαμίνθου βῆ δέμας ἀθανάτοισιν ὁμοῖος).

In the light of this analysis, I offer a general formulation: for a mortal to appear like an immortal to other mortals is to become a divinity in a ritual moment of epiphany—as marked by the similes that make mortals equal to divinities in that ritual moment.

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The image of ‘pouring all over’ someone whom you are embracing, as expressed here by way of the verb amphi-khu-, extends from the idea of dissolving in tears: when you are weeping, pouring out your tears from your eyes, it is as if your whole self were dissoving into tears, which can then ‘pour all over’ that beloved someone whom you are embracing. The metaphor of dissolving while weeping, as here, can also be found at O.08.527. See also the comment at O.19.204–212.

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The act of noticing is here again connected with a special signal: neuein ‘nod’; see the comment on I.16.164.

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As Penelope says in her words of blame directed at Antinoos here, this suitor of hers violates the rules of reciprocity more blatantly than any of the other suitors. That is because he shows no gratitude for the kindness that Odysseus as king had shown to Eupeithes, the father of Antinoos, back when Eupeithes was a refugee seeking the favor of Odysseus the king. In the story as told all too briefly by Penelope, O.16.424–429, this man Eupeithes had once sought refuge at the palace of Odysseus, asking the king to protect his food-supply, which was about to be expropriated, O.16.429. The threat of expropriation came from the dēmos ‘community’, described here as being very angry at Eupeithes, O.16.425. But Odysseus had intervened and prevented the expropriation, O.16.430. That is why it is now all the more outrageous, says Penelope at O.16.431, that the son of the same man whose livelihood had thus been saved by a beneficent king should now turn right around and expropriate the livelihood of his family’s benefactor, since Antinoos and the other suitors are now consuming the livelihood of Odysseus, depleting the resources of that generous king. That is bad enough, says Penelope, but Antinoos goes even further, much further: this ingrate also makes advances at the king’s wife and even plots the murder of the king’s son, O.16.431–432.

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Back in Rhapsody 16, Eumaios the swineherd had left behind in his shelter an unrecognized Odysseus and had gone off to the palace in order to contact Penelope; in the swineherd’s absence, Telemachus, left alone with Odysseus, could now get to see his father transformed into an idealized godlike hero, made visible through a luminous epiphany produced by the sacred wand of the goddess Athena. This way, Telemachus could recognize the true Odysseus. But this true hero must not yet be recognized by the returning Eumaios. So, before the swineherd had ever made his return from the palace to the shelter, Athena had already produced a reverse transformation of Odysseus, and the hero could thus revert to his disguise as a lowly beggar. Now, at the beginning of Rhapsody 17, Odysseus can ready himself to go off to the palace in order to engage the suitors as a beggar, thus testing them. The testing will clearly reveal that all the suitors, down to the last man, are morally debased on the inside while seeming to be noble on the outside. Odysseus, in his degraded state as an elderly beggar, is matched by the degradation of his beloved hunting dog Argos, who at least lives long enough to recognize the hero.

draft js image error “Ulysses and his Dog” (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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To beg for a meal is to engage at ground zero, as it were, in the protocols of the dais as a ‘feast’. But even at ground zero, a dais is a dais, and such feasting requires the moral observance of ritualized protocols.

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Again, a dais is a dais, even for beggars.

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See the anchor comment at O.07.256.

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This adjective argós ‘swift, alert; bright’, applied here at O.17.062 to two hunting dogs of Telemachus (κύνες ... ἀργοί), is relevant to the name of the dog Árgos: see the comment at O.17.292.

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See again the anchor comment at O.07.256. Here at O.17.111 and at O.17.113, Telemachus is saying that Nestor as a host ephílei ‘loved’ him endukéōs ‘continuously, uninterruptedly’, fostering him as if he had been a son of his own who had just returned after an absence. In this case, then, the status of a child as a dependent has been interrupted, but the love of the father has not, thanks to the ritual and moral correctness of observing the protocols of fosterage: Nestor as a foster father substitutes for Odysseus in fostering Telemachus.

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See again the anchor comment at O.07.256.

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The element al- of an–al–tos ‘unnourished’ here is cognate with the root al- of Latin alō ‘nourish’.

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The outrageousness of the wish here is correlated with the self-deluding assumption that is built into the premise.

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On Phemios as a singer of tales, see the comment at O.01.153–155. On anaballesthai ‘begin performing’, see the comment at O.08.266. On the phorminx as a ‘special lyre’, see the comment at O.08.067.

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In the exchange that takes place between Eumaios and Odysseus here at O.17.273–289, both speakers express their awareness of the need for awareness as indicated by the verb noeîn ‘take note (of), notice’, O.17.281, which must anticipate the awareness of those who are ready to harm them, O.17.278.

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The comments here can be divided into five parts.

Part 1. The form Árgos, as used here at O.17.292 and also at O.17.300, derives from the adjective argós ‘swift, alert; bright’. For example, hunting dogs or kúnes are conventionally described as argoí (κύνες ... ἀργοί). See the comment at O.17.062. The recessive accentuation of Árgos marks it as a proper noun—a name—as distinct from the adjective argós ‘swift, alert; bright’, which has a word-final accent. This “speaking name” (nomen loquens) here applies to a beloved hunting dog of Odysseus. It has been twenty years since the hero last saw Argos, and he finds the hound in a pathetically degraded state: old and decrepit, Argos dies almost immediately after recognizing Odysseus, who appears on the surface to be similarly old and decrepit. The recognition is signaled by the verb noeîn ‘take note of, notice’, O.17.301, which is used elsewhere as well in contexts of signaling recognition, as at O.08.094 and at O.08.533. See the comments there. See also the anchor comment at I.05.669 on noeîn ‘take note (of), notice’. Relevant is the note at I.13.726–735 about a generalizing statement that is made in those lines: it is said there that a person’s nóos ‘mind’, I.13.732, is what enables him or her to ‘recognize’, gignōskein, I.13.734.

Part 2. At O.17.301, the recognition of the true Odysseus by a hound named Árgos can be seen as a Hermetic signature. In Homeric diction, the god Hermes is conventionally described as argeïphóntēs, as at O.01.038, and this agent noun can be read etymologically as ‘killing by way of speeding light’. The translation ‘speeding light’ corresponds to the etymology of the adjective argós ‘swift, alert; bright’, the more basic meaning of which is ‘shining with the speed of light’. (The etymology is analyzed at length in DELG under ἀργός.) Such a meaning is evident in forms that we find attested also in other Indo-European languages: for example, a cognate form of the es-stem arges- as in argeï-phóntēs is attested in the Indic epithet/name r̥jí-śvan- (as in Rig-Veda 1.101.1), where -śvan- is cognate with Greek kúon- ‘dog’: this epithet means something like ‘he whose hounds are swift’. But argeï-phóntēs must also have meant ‘killer of Argos’ in contexts where the name Árgos refers to a many-eyed and thus all-seeing hound that had been killed once upon a time by the god Hermes. The relevant myth, which centers on the transformation of a woman named Io into a cow guarded by Argos, is reflected for example in Aeschylus Suppliants 305: Ἄργον, τὸν Ἑρμῆς παῖδα γῆς κατέκτανεν ‘Argos the earthborn, whom Hermes killed’; at 304, in the same context, Argos is described as panóptēs ‘all-seeing’. In this myth, the name Árgos signals a monstrous double of Hermes himself, who is in his own right a panoptic marvel of perception and perceptiveness.

Part 3. We find a comparable situation in a medieval Irish myth about the hero Cú Chulainn, whose name is overtly understood to mean ‘Hound of Culann’. This hero had once upon a time killed a monstrous watchdog belonging to a smith named Culann. According to the myth as retold in Recension 1 of The Cattle Raid of Cooley (http://celt.ucc.ie/published/T301012/index.html, p. 142), the smith laments the death of the hound, saying that this wondrous beast had been the main protector of his herds of cattle and flocks of sheep; responding to the lament, Cú Chulainn promises that (1) he will raise another hound to replace the watchdog he had killed and that, in the meantime, (2) he, Cú Chulainn, will serve as the main protector of the smith’s herds of cattle and flocks of sheep. Hearing the twofold promise of Cú Chulainn, a man named Cathbad, who is the druid of Conchobar, king of the Ulstermen, now makes a pronouncement: from here on, says the druid, the hero who killed the hound of the smith Culann will forever be called Cú Chulainn, which means ‘Hound of Culann’. Cú Chulainn responds to the druid’s pronouncement by formally accepting his new name. In this Irish myth, the detail about the association of Cú Chulainn with herds of cattle and flocks of sheep is comparable with what we know about the association of the god Hermes with cattle and sheep, as for example in the Homeric Hymn (4) to Hermes: sheep at line 2, cattle at line 14. In the same Irish myth, we see another detail that is comparable to what we know about Hermes: Cú Chulainn, before he kills the Hound of Culann, is named Sétantae (http://celt.ucc.ie/published/T301012/index.html, p. 137). Etymologically, the meaning of this name seems to be ‘knower of the roads’ (sét mean ‘road’: see Ó hUiginn 2006:508). [[I owe this reference to Joseph Nagy.]]

Part 4. By way of comparison, I highlight a detail in the Homeric Hymn (4) to Hermes, line 303, where Hermes is told to lead the way to the secret place where he had hidden the cattle of Apollo: ‘you lead the way’ (σὺ δ' αὖθ' ὁδὸν ἡγεμονεύσεις); the idea of ‘leading the way’ is repeated at line 392 (Ἑρμῆν δὲ ... ἡγεμονεύειν). In the case of Hermes, the myth about his killing Argos, who can be seen as a monstrous canine version of his other self, signals the god’s absolutized powers of perception and recognition. Such powers are characteristic of the hero Odysseus as well, who as we have seen already at O.01.001 is linked with the god Hermes by way of his own heroic capacity for shape-shifting, which can be viewed as the ultimate challenge to a recognition of the true self. See the comment on O.01.001–010, Point 2.

Part 5. Another relevant Hermetic signature, I propose, is the name Eúmaios, the first occurrence of which can be found at O.14.055. The context there is this: Eumaios the swineherd has just called off a pack of fierce watchdogs that had been threatening to harm the disguised Odysseus, O.14.029–038. What seems to be Hermetic about the name of this swineherd is the element -maios, which I connect with the name of the god’s mother, Maîa, as in the Homeric Hymn (4) to Hermes line 4. This name is derived from the noun maîa, meaning ‘midwife’ (DELG under μαῖα). Accordingly, I interpret Eúmaios as a “speaking name” (nomen loquens) meaning something like ‘linked with good midwifery’.

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On daiesthai ‘feast; divide (meat), apportion, distribute’, see the comments at O.03.066 and at O.08.061. The one who cuts and distributes the meat is the daitros ‘distributor’, as here at O.17.331.

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What the speakers are speaking about here at O.17.336–355 is the ethical imperative of feeding the hungry who cannot afford to feed themselves. Someone who responds to such an ethical imperative will be performing an act of generosity that shows ethical nobility. Such nobility, which comes from within, distinguishes Telemachus from the suitors of Penelope, who are noble only in their exterior appearance. The begging that is about to be performed by the disguised Odysseus here will be a testing of the suitors—whose lack of generosity will fully expose them in all their ethical deficiency.

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Addressing Antinoos, Eumaios scolds him for his lack of generosity. Antinoos, he says, fails to observe the common rules of decency, which require that you treat any ‘stranger’ as a ‘guest’, xenos, O.17.382. Thus you must perform the role of a good host. See the comment at O.08.026–045 on the meaning of xenos as both ‘stranger’ and ‘guest’. If you treat a stranger as a guest, then you will be reciprocated—unless of course the stranger turns out to be an enemy, in which case the reciprocity can be canceled. Still, you must first presume that the stranger will reciprocate you. True, strangers who are beggars can reciprocate you the least or not at all, but, all the same, your inner nobility must still oblige you to treat even beggars as guests. The irony here, of course, is that Antinoos is in no position to act as a host, since he is expropriating the property and livelihood of the absent Odysseus, who should be the real host, while Antinoos is the worst of guests, since he denies food to strangers when the food does not even belong to him.

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Aside from beggars, there are of course many other kinds of xenoi ‘strangers’ to be hosted as potential guests. In the wording of Eumaios, such potential xenoi include various kinds of craftsmen or dēmiourgoi (dēmioergoi), O.17.383. This word means literally ‘craftsmen of the dēmos’, where dēmos ‘community, district’ is to be understood as a legally-sanctioned zone of activity within which craftsmen are authorized to be practicing their crafts. Comparable is the concept of áes cerd ‘people of the crafts’ in medieval Irish legal traditions: these craftsmen are entitled to juridical immunity as they travel from one petty kingdom or túath to another in the course of practicing their crafts, and the practitioners of such crafts include various social grades of poets. (Details in Nagy 2011a§149.) Similarly in the case of the dēmiourgoi (dēmioergoi) ‘craftsmen of the dēmos’ at O.17.383: these craftsmen too must have been juridically immune as they traveled from one dēmos to another in the course of practicing their crafts. The practicioners of such crafts included the categories of mantis ‘seer’, iētēr ‘physician’, and tektōn ‘carpenter, joiner’, as we see at O.17.384. And, as in the case of the medieval Irish craftsmen, these crafts also included the category of the aoidos ‘singer’ or poet, as we see at O.17.385.

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The parallelism of the tektōn ‘carpenter’ with the aoidos ‘singer’ is particularly noteworthy, since the craft of the singer is conventionally compared to the craft of the carpenter. Especially relevant here is the wording in Pindar Pythian 3.113–114: here the poets of epic are compared metaphorically to tektones ‘carpenters, joiners’ who ‘join together’— as expressed by the verb-stem harmot-/harmod- —the epea ‘words’ of poetry (ἐπέων ... τέκτονες οἷα ... | ἅρμοσαν). The verb-stem harmot-/harmod- that I translate as ‘join together’ here (ἅρμοσαν) derives from the root ar-, meaning ‘join’. Relevant is the “speaking name” (nomen loquens) of Homer, Hóm-ēros, which can be analyzed morphologically as a compounding of homo- ‘together’ with the root ar*- ‘join’, meaning ‘he who joins together’ in the metaphorical sense of a ‘joiner, carpenter’. See also the note at I.05.722.

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Here at O.17.494 the premise is indicated simply by way of houtōs ‘thus’.

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Here at O.17.496–497 the wish is predicated on the wish that has just been uttered at O.17.494. That previous wish, since it is a curse, can be treated as a premise in its own right.

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Speaking to Penelope, Eumaios describes the stranger whom he has been hosting in his shelter: for Eumaios, the disguised Odysseus is comparable to an aoidos ‘singer’, O.17.518. Thus the reciprocity that this would-be beggar is offering in the role of a would-be guest needs to be reassessed from minimum to maximum. The reciprocation that Eumaios as a good host will ultimately receive from Odysseus—and from the poets for whom Odysseus as poet will be a model—is destined to be most positive. Most negative, on the other hand, is the reciprocation that is destined for Antinoos and for the other suitors.

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|1 ἦλθε δ᾽ ἐπὶ πτωχὸς πανδήμιος, ὃς κατὰ ἄστυ |2 πτωχεύεσκ᾽ Ἰθάκης, μετὰ δ᾽ ἔπρεπε γαστέρι μάργῃ |3 ἀζηχὲς φαγέμεν καὶ πιέμεν· οὐδέ οἱ ἦν ἲς |4 οὐδὲ βίη, εἶδος δὲ μάλα μέγας ἦν ὁράασθαι

|1 Then came a beggar [ptōkhos], ranging-all-over-the-district [dēmos], who all through the town [astu] |2 of Ithaca would go around begging. He stood out, with his gluttonous [margē] stomach, |3 because of his endless eating and drinking. And he had no īs, |4 nor biē, but in appearance he was big to look at.

Here I leave untranslated the synonyms īs and biē, both of which I had previously translated as ‘force, strength, violence’ in the note at O.18.001–117. As I already observed in that note, appearances here are deceiving: Iros looks strong on the outside but he is weak on the inside, and the exposure of his weakness will prove to be something that is ridiculed in epic. The act of ridiculing is the program, as it were, of mock epic, but here the mocking is reversed: now it is epic that will be mocking mock epic. As we are about to see, epic will overcome mock epic. Odysseus, even though he looks weak on the outside, will beat up on Iros, who looks strong on the outside. The mock epic form to which the epic refers here is signaled by a most telling word: it is margos ‘gluttonous, wanton’, at O.18.002, describing the gastēr ‘stomach’ of Iros, who stands out as an ostentatiously greedy consumer of food and drink, O.18.002–003. A character who is margos is not just a negative example of lowly humans in general: in the poetic language of praise/blame, such a character is a negative example of lowly poets in particular. A lowly man who is margos ‘gluttonous, wanton’ is to be seen generically as a greedy blame poet. Such a blame poet, as we will now see, is typical of a poetic form that I describe here as mock epic. We can see the formal features of such a poetic form at the very beginning of Rhapsody 18, where the wording matches in syntax the beginning of a mock epic known as the Margites. There the main character to be introduced on stage, as it were, is described not as a ptōkhos ‘beggar’, as here at O.18.001, but as a poet who turns out to be a blame poet. I show here the actual wording that we find at the beginning of that mock epic (Margites F 1 ed. West):

|1 ἦλθέ τις ἐς Κολοφῶνα γέρων καὶ θεῖος ἀοιδός, |2 Μουσάων θεράπων καὶ ἑκηβόλου Ἀπόλλωνος, |3 φίλῃς ἔχων ἐν χερσὶν εὔφθογγον λύρην

|1 Then came to Colophon some man, an old man, a divine [theios] singer [aoidos], |2 surrogate [therapōn] of the Muses and of Apollo who shoots from afar, |3 and in his hands, those hands of his, he held a lyre that made a beautiful sound.

As we see from the explicit description here, Margites is an aoidos ‘singer’: that is, he is a poet. Moreover, he is a blame poet, as we see even from the morphology of his name Margī́tēs, derived from the adjective margós ‘gluttonous, wanton’. This “speaking name” (nomen loquens) Margī́tēs is morphologically parallel to another “speaking name,” Thersī́tēs, which means ‘the bold one’ (tharsos/thersos is ‘boldness’ in negative contexts of blame poetry). This character named Thersites is represented in the Iliad as a blame poet of the worst kind: see the comments at I.02.214, I.02.216, I.02.217–219, I.02.221, I.02.222, I.02.224, I.02.225–242, I.02.235, I.02.241–242, I.02.243, I.02.245, I.02.246–264, I.02.246, I.02.247, I.02.248–249, I.02.251, I.02.255, I.02.256, I.02.265–268, I.02.269–270, I.02.275, I.02.277. In the narrative about Thersites in the Iliad, as I pointed out in my comments on the verses I just listed, it is clear that blame poetry is antithetical not only to praise poetry but also to epic, and that epic has the power to blame, in its own right, this blame poetry. Thus, epic can defeat blame poetry, making it an object of ridicule just as blame poets attempt to make epic an object of ridicule. When Odysseus beats up on Thersites in the Iliad, epic is defeating blame poetry. Similarly, when Odysseus beats up on Iros in the Odyssey, epic is defeating blame poetry and, further, epic is also defeating mock epic. In the case of the Margites, this mock epic starts off mock seriously by describing the poet simply as a poet, though he will turn out to be a blame poet as the narrative proceeds. The metrical form of such mock epic is a combination of two kinds of verses: (1) dactylic hexameters, which are the medium of epic, and (2) iambic trimeters, which had once been the medium of mock poetry in general—the word for which is iambos (BA 243–252). A case in point is what we find in the attested fragments of the Margites: in the three verses of this poem’s beginning, already quoted above, the first two verses are dactylic hexameters, to be contrasted with the third verse, which is an iambic trimeter (Nagy 2015.10.15§§28–29). At a later point in this same fragmentary poem, we see other such iambic trimeters, the most notable example of which is this verse (Margites F 201.1 ed. West F 4b.1):

πόλλ’ οἶδ’ ἀλώπηξ, ἀλλ’ ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα.

The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.

The same verse is attested in a fable, “The Fox and the Hedgehog,” which is embedded in blame poetry attributed to Archilochus (F 201.1 ed. West):

πόλλ’ οἶδ’ ἀλώπηξ, ἀλλ’ ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα.

The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.

Such uses of fables in both poetry and prose are suitable for praising or for blaming or simply for warning (BA 280–288; Nagy 2011a§§6–7, 129, 138–146). In the case of “The Fox and the Hedgehog,” Fable 427 (ed. Perry), there is such an element of warning attested in a version attributed to Aesop by Aristotle Rhetoric 2.1393b22–1394a1, who reports that this fable was narrated by Aesop to the people of Samos on the occasion of their impending execution of a ‘demagogue’.

Addendum: In Poetics 1448b24–34, Aristotle reconstructs an early phase of praise poetry and blame poetry where praise evolves into epic, as exemplified by the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey, while blame evolves into the poetry of playful ridicule, as exemplified by the mock epic Margites, which Aristotle actually attributes to Homer. In Poetics 1448b34–1449a6, Aristotle goes on to argue that the poetry of epic evolved further into tragedy while the poetry of playful ridicule evolved further into comedy (additional comments in Nagy 2015.10.15§§15–16). In terms of Aristotle’s terminology, then, the mock epic Margites can be described as a hybrid form of comedy.

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This story, extending from line 1 of Rhapsody 18 all the way through line 117, shows a temporary change in poetic form. There is a sudden switch here from epic to non-epic. The character of Iros, as named at O.18.06, is non-epic, even anti-epic or, better, mock epic. We see here the story of a mock epic character who looks like an epic hero on the outside but who does not measure up, on the inside, to epic standards. In outward appearance, he qualifies as megas ‘great, big’, O.18.04, but he is ridiculously weak on the inside: that is, he lacks the epic inner quality of īs ‘force, violence, strength’, O.18.03. This quality, so blatantly lacking in the character of Iros, is also indicated by way of the word biē at O.18.04, which means the same thing as does īs at O.18.03: ‘force, violence, strength’. The action that will take place after Iros insults and even threatens Odysseus will prove that Iros is weak on the inside, and this weakness will disqualify him from surviving in epic.

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In Rhapsody 18, Odysseus as a make-believe beggar is challenged by a most questionable character named Iros, who figures as a real beggar. What makes Iros so questionable is his similarity to characters who figure in a poetic form that can best be described as mock epic.

draft js image error “Ulysses Preparing to Fight with Irus” (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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The “speaking name” (nomen loquens) of Îros (῏Ιρος), Ο.18.006, is linked here with the name of Îris (῏Ιρις), the goddess who functions as divine messenger. On the name of Iris, see the comment on I.17.547–549. Iros too carries messages, as we see here from the use of apangellein ‘carry messages’ at O.18.008; unlike Iris, however, Iros carries messages indiscriminately: ‘whenever anyone tells him [to carry a message]’, O.18.008. Such an indiscriminate function as performed by Iros is ridiculous compared to the deliberate and serious function performed by Iris, who carries only those messages that are sent by the immortal gods themselves. Just as Iros himself has no inner ‘force’—no īs and no biē, as we saw at O.18.003 and O.18.004 respectively, so also the messages that he carries from one random person to another random person have no inner ‘force’ either. To be contrasted is the goddess Iris, who as carrier of divine messages is the embodiment of the inner ‘force’ that is contained in these messages: her name actually derives from the root u̯ī- as in īs ‘force, violence, strength’. Also, as I point out in the comment at I.17.547–549, the conventional association of this goddess Iris with windspeed is parallel with the association of windspeed with the words īs and biē*, which both mean ‘force, violence, strength’.

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When Iros ‘quarrels with’ Odysseus, as expressed by the verb neikeîn here at O.18.009, he is acting as a blame poet who is hostile not only to Odysseus but also to the epic of the Odyssey. See the comment at I.02.221, where neikeîn ‘quarrel with’ refers to the blame that Thersites aims at both Achilles and Odysseus, the main heroes of the Iliad and Odyssey respectively. On blame as blame poetry, see the comment at O.18.001–004.

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|15 δαιμόνι᾽, οὔτε τί σε ῥέζω κακὸν οὔτ᾽ ἀγορεύω, |16 οὔτε τινὰ φθονέω δόμεναι καὶ πόλλ᾽ ἀνελόντα. |17 οὐδὸς δ᾽ ἀμφοτέρους ὅδε χείσεται, οὐδέ τί σε χρή |18 ἀλλοτρίων φθονέειν· δοκέεις δέ μοι εἶναι ἀλήτης |19 ὥς περ ἐγών, ὄλβον δὲ θεοὶ μέλλουσιν ὀπάζειν

|15 O you, you who must be possessed by some superhuman-force [=daimōn]! I am harming you by neither deed nor word. |16 And I do not begrudge [phthoneîn] that someone should be a giver [to you], even when someone [like you] has already been a taker in great quantities. |17 This threshold will accommodate both of us, and you should not |18 be begrudging [phthoneîn] about the property of others. You seem to be a wandering-beggar [alētēs] |19 like me, and it is the gods who are likely to grant prosperity [olbos].

(What follows is epitomized from BA 228.) The verb phthoneîn ‘begrudge’ corresponds to the noun phthonos ‘being begrudging’. To begrudge is to feel ungenerous about giving something for someone else to have, or even about accepting a pre-existing situation where someone else already has something that you don’t want for that someone to have—because you want to have it instead. In the praise poetry of Pindar, as at Olympian 8.55, phthonos conventionally applies to blame poetry. In such praise poetry, blame poets are viewed as ungenerously negative about the very thought that someone should be getting praised by praise poetry. It is this kind of phthonos ‘begrudging’ that we find encapsulated in the behavior of Iros toward Odysseus. Picking a quarrel, as expressed by the verb neikeîn at O.18.009, Iros hurls words of blame against Odysseus. In doing so, he also orders Odysseus to get out of the way, O.18.010, threatening that the present eris ‘strife’ between the two of them, O.18.013, may escalate from verbal to physical violence, Ο.18.010–013. The disguised master of the household refuses to budge from the doorway, answering Iros with the words that I have just quoted from O.18.015–019. There the collocation of olbos ‘prosperity’ at O.18.019 with phthoneîn ‘begrudge’ at O.18.016 and O.18.018 reflects a traditional way of thinking, well attested also in Pindar’s praise poetry, which teaches that prosperity is given by the gods to the righteous—and that this gift is threatened by the unrighteous, who feel begrudging about such god-given prosperity. Ironically, the prosperity of Odysseus himself is now being threatened by the suitors, whose messenger Iros, as a mock Iris, is so begrudging as to hinder our hero from even entering his own household. Without having to identify himself as the real householder, however, Odysseus warns Iros not ‘to be begrudging [phthoneîn] about the property of others’ (ἀλλοτρίων φθονέειν), O.18.018. Such a begrudging attitude on the part of Iros is directly comparable to blame poetry in its function as a traditional negative foil of praise poetry within praise poetry, where the vice of gluttony is pictured as a prime characteristic of blame poetry: hence the saying ‘words are a morsel for those who are begrudging [phthoneroi]’ (ὄψον δὲ λόγοι φθονεροῖσιν) in Pindar Nemean 8.21. In fact, we now see from the Homeric description of Iros that his role as a blame poet is manifested in precisely this sort of gluttony. And the key word is margos 'gluttonous, wanton'.

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Even before the physical combat between the disguised Odysseus and Iros takes place, Iros is already losing his nerve as he sees Odysseus half-revealed in the hero’s true form through the intervention of the goddess Athena, O.18.069–071. The reaction of the suitors is to start maliciously gloating over the fear shown by Iros, and the Master Narrator quotes here at O.18.073–074 what any one of the suitors might be saying as they gloat. And what the suitors say is already mocking Iros for failing to live up to his outward appearance of manly strength: the suitors are saying derisively that Iros is really unmanly, not manly. Just as the Master Narrator had previously said—and I highlighted this already in the comment at O.18.001–004—Iros may seem to be megas ‘great, big’ on the outside, O.18.004, but he is ridiculously weak on the inside: that is, he lacks the epic inner quality of īs ‘force, violence, strength’, O.18.003. This quality, so blatantly lacking in the character of Iros, is also indicated by way of the word biē at O.18.04, which means the same thing as does īs at O.18.03: ‘force, violence, strength’. The fear shown by Iros, leading to his defeat at the hands of Odysseus, proves that he really has no īs, no bíē. Accordingly, the suitors now call him Á-īros, O.18.073, which may be reconstructed as n̥-u̯īros* and glossed etymologically as ‘he who has no force = u̯īs’. This form serves as a comic correction for what now emerges as the sarcastically misapplied meaning of the “speaking name” (nomen loquens) Îros as u̯īros ‘he who has force = u̯īs’. Now we see that the form Îros* seems is a play on an unattested Greek word u̯īros, cognate with Latin vīr ‘man’, etc. The mocking name Á-īros O.18.073 explains the sarcasm built into the mocking name Îros. This mocking name Îros in the sense of u̯īros ‘he who has u̯īs’ is not incompatible with the likewise mocking assocation of Iros with Iris, the messenger of the gods, as analyzed in the comment at O.18.006–007: as I argued in that comment, the name Îris* itself can be derived from the same root u̯ī- as in ī́s* ‘force, violence, strength’.

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The words that Antinoos addresses to the beggar Iros here at O.18.079–087 intensify the fear already felt by this beggar at O.18.075, now that he has had second thoughts about ever having challenged Odysseus, disguised as a rival beggar. The intensification of the fear is understandable, given that Antinoos threatens to do horribly cruel things if Iros loses his upcoming fight against this rival, O.085–087.

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Here is what Antinoos threatens to do to Iros if this beggar loses the fight with the disguised Odysseus, O.18.085–087: Iros will be put on a ship and sent off from the island of Ithaca over to the mainland, and there the hapless beggar will be handed over to a mysteriously infernal figure named Ekhetos, who will proceed to cut off his prisoner’s nose and ears and then ‘pull out’ his genitals, feeding them to the dogs. I have a special reason for choosing to focus on these horrific torments in presenting my anchor comment on extreme cruelty in Homeric narrative. Here is the reason: these same horrific torments, which are imagined here at O.18.085–087 as happening only in the future, become realities later on, at O.22.474–479. But who will inflict the same torments in this later passage? Will it be the infernal Ekhetos? No, in this case, the agents of torment will be Philoitios the cowherd and Eumaios the swineherd, perhaps with the help of Telemachus, the son of Odysseus. True, the person who is punished at O.22.475–477, the goathered Melanthios, is presented as a morally negative character, no better than the beggar Iros. But the persons who inflict the torments in this passage are understood to be morally positive. See the comment at O.22.437–479. So, an explanation is still needed for understanding how these supposedly righteous men could ever bring themselves to the point of inflicting horrors that were parallel to the horrors potentially inflicted by the mysteriously infernal Ekhetos. Part of an explanation can be found in another passage, O.21.308–309, where Antinoos commands the disguised Odysseus not even to make an attempt at stringing the bow: if you persist, Antinoos threatens, you will be sent off to that infernal character Ekhetos. Although the words of Antinoos leave unmentioned here at O.21.308–309 any threatened loss of nose and ears and genitals, his earlier words at O.21.300–301 have already compared Odysseus to a Centaur named Eurytion, whose ears and nose were indeed chopped off by his outraged hosts after he misbehaved at their feast. For more on the story of Eurytion the Centaur, see the comment at O.21.288–310.

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The suitors as a group reinforce the threat to send Iros to the mysteriously infernal Ekhetos. See the anchor comment at O.18.085–087.

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See the comments at O.05.160–161 and I.01.052.

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Here the reference to mōlos ‘struggle’ is comic, in that the fight between Odysseus and Iros is a mock struggle, not serious fighting that befits epic, as in the case of mōlos Arēos ‘struggle of Ares’, analyzed in the comment at I.02.401.

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Syntactically, the premise here reinforces the probability of the wish. See also the comments on O.14.440–441 and O.15.341–342.

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The speaker here is Antinoos himself: whoever succeeds in marrying Penelope, he says, would surely qualify as ‘the best of the Achaeans’. As the narrative will make clear, however, Antinoos is the least worthy of all the suitors in pursuit of this double goal of marrying Penelope and thus qualifying as ‘the best of the Achaeans’. See also the comments at O.11.179, O.15.521–522, and O.16.076.

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The insults hurled by Melantho at the disguised Odysseus are replete with words indicating the language of blame poetry. For aiskhro- ‘disgraceful, shameful’, see the comments at I.02.216, I.03.038, I.06.325. For oneideio- ‘insulting’, see the comments on oneidos (plural oneidea) ‘words of insult’ at I.01.291, I.02.222, I.03.242, I.20.244–256. As for eniptein ‘scold’ at O.18.321 and O.18.326, it applies not only to unrighteous blame, as here, but also to righteous blame, as when Penelope scolds Antinoos at O.16.417.

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See the comment on lōbeuein ‘say words of insult’ at O.02.323.

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On kertomeîn ‘say words of insult’, see the comments at O.02.323 and I.02.256.

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What Odysseus says to Eurymakhos here at O.18.366–386 can be seen as a poetic admonition given by the righteous to the unrighteous, especially in the wording at O.18.366–375, which is comparable to what Hesiod says to Perses in the Hesiodic Works and Days.

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The suitor Eurymakhos is stung by the words spoken to him by the disguised Odysseus. These words, spoken tharsaleōs ‘boldly’, O.18.390, can be seen as blame poetry—but here the blame is justified, unlike the blame that is hurled at Odysseus by the suitors and by the disloyal members of his own household.

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In the immediate context, here at O.18.424, only the surface meaning of therapōn as ‘attendant’ is evident.

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Rhapsody 19 is best known for a scene where Odysseus is recognized by his old nurse Eurykleia. She notices a tell-tale scar on his leg—the result of a wound that marks the moment in his youth when he was gored in a boar hunt. This scar can be seen as a sēma or ‘sign’ of the hero’s identity.

draft js image error “Euryclea Discovers Ulysses” (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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|107 ὦ γύναι, οὐκ ἄν τίς σε βροτῶν ἐπ’ ἀπείρονα γαῖαν |108 νεικέοι· ἦ γάρ σευ κλέος οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἱκάνει, |109 ὥς τέ τευ ἦ βασιλῆος ἀμύμονος, ὅς τε θεουδὴς |110 ἀνδράσιν ἐν πολλοῖσι καὶ ἰφθίμοισιν ἀνάσσων |111 εὐδικίας ἀνέχῃσι, φέρῃσι δὲ γαῖα μέλαινα |112 πυροὺς καὶ κριθάς, βρίθῃσι δὲ δένδρεα καρπῷ, |113 τίκτῃ δ’ ἔμπεδα μῆλα, θάλασσα δὲ παρέχῃ ἰχθῦς |114 ἐξ εὐηγεσίης, ἀρετῶσι δὲ λαοὶ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ.

|107 My lady, who among mortals throughout the limitless stretches of earth |108 would dare to quarrel [neikeîn] against you with words? For truly your glory [kleos] reaches the wide firmament of the sky itself |109 —like the glory of some faultless king [basileus], who, godlike as he is, |110 and ruling over a population that is multitudinous and vigorous, |111 upholds good acts of dikē [= eu-dikiai], while the dark earth produces |112 wheat and barley, the trees are loaded with fruit, |113 the ewes steadily bring forth lambs, and the sea abounds with fish, |114 by reason of the good directions he gives, and his people are-meritorious [aretân] under his rule.

(What follows is epitomized from H24H 12§§4–12§§4–7.) The wording here at O.19.107–114 shows the only place in the Odyssey where Penelope is said to have kleos or ‘glory’ herself, O.19.108, but even here the glory emanates more broadly from the poetic tradition that features primarily Odysseus and only secondarily those who are close to him, especially Penelope. This passage here will be relevant to the context of the kleos ‘glory’ attributed to Odysseus at O.24.196, to be analyzed in the comment on that line (further analysis in H24H 9§§22–23; also BA 38). Here at O.19.107–114, the kleos ‘glory’ of Penelope depends on the validity of comparing this glory with the corresponding glory of the unnamed king whose ‘good acts of dikē’ energize the fertility and prosperity of the land he rules. Since the words about this just king are spoken by the disguised Odysseus, it is evident that he himself will take the role of that just king when the time comes. But when exactly will that time come? Will it be after he kills the suitors? Or will it be after he dies? I ask the second question because the wording that refers to the inhabitants of the fertile and prosperous land of the just king is remarkably parallel to the wording that referred to the inhabitants of the kingdom of Odysseus after he is dead: they are said to be olbioi ‘blessed’, O.11.137. See the comment at O.11.136–137. This wording comes from the prophecy of Teiresias to Odysseus at O.11.090-137, which I quoted in my comments on Rhapsody 11. As also in those comments, I draw attention once again to the word olbioi here, which I continue to translate here as ‘blessed’, and which describes the inhabitants of the kingdom of Odysseus. As I argued in the comment at O.11.136–137, this word olbioi, ‘blessed’, refers to the blessings of fertility and prosperity that the inhabitants of Ithaca receive as a result of the hero’s death (the prophecy of his death at O.11.136–137 will be retold at O.23.283–284). This death will lead to the transformation of Odysseus into a cult hero (further analysis in H24H 11§59). In the Hesiodic Works and Days, verse 172, this same word olbioi, ‘blessed’, is used to describe cult heroes who are immortalized after death and who enjoy a state of bliss in the Islands of the Blessed, which is a paradisiacal setting that transcends the temporal and the spatial constraints associated with sites where the bodies of cult heroes are believed to be buried (further analysis in H24H 11§15). My argument, then, is that the picture of a just king who rules over a fertile and prosperous land here at O.19.107–114 refers to the future status of Odysseus as a cult hero. But I still need to confront a possible objection: why would a cult hero be described as a basileus, ‘king’, at O.19.109? And besides, would not the title of ‘king’ fit Odysseus when he is alive, right after he kills the suitors and recovers his kingdom—and before he is dead? True, the title would fit then as well, but I maintain that the context of the words spoken by the disguised Odysseus to Penelope is more transcendent. The fact is, the title of ‘king’ fits the cult hero as well. There is evidence to show that the generic cult hero is conventionally described as a basileus, ‘king’ (further analysis in BA 170–172). In a stylized thrēnos or ‘lament’ composed by Pindar (F 133, quoted by Plato Meno 81b), for example, hēroes hagnoi, ‘holy heroes’, are equated with basilēes, ‘kings’ (βασιλῆες ἀγαυοὶ … ἥροες ἁγνοί). Also, in an inscription grounded in rituals honoring the dead, in a context of promising a blissful life after death, the dead person is told: καὶ τότ’ ἔπειτ’ ἄ[λλοισι μεθ’] ἡρώεσσιν ἀνάξει[ς] ‘and then you will be king [anassein] among the other heroes [hērōes]’ (IG XIV 638 = SEG 40:824[2]; further analysis in BA 171, where the citation needs to be corrected).

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In the comment at O.17.381–394, I noted the listing there of four kinds of craftsment who belong to the category of dēmiourgoi (dēmioergoi) ‘craftsmen of the dēmos’, where dēmos ‘community, district’ is to be understood as a legally-sanctioned zone of activity within which craftsmen are authorized to be practicing their crafts. The four kinds of craftsmen were the mantis ‘seer’, the iētēr ‘physician’, and the tektōn ‘carpenter, joiner’ at O.17.384 and the aoidos ‘singer’ or poet at O.17.385. Now we see here at O.19.135 a fifth kind of craftsman, the kērux ‘herald.’

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For more on tēkesthai ‘melt away, dissolve’ as a metaphor for weeping, see the note at O.19.204–212.

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οὐ γὰρ ἀπὸ δρυὸς ἐσσὶ παλαιφάτου οὐδ’ ἀπὸ πέτρης

‘For surely you are not from an oak, going back to an old saying, or from a rock.’

In asking the disguised Odysseus to reveal his origins, Penelope says she assumes that the genealogy of this unidentified man is not all that difficult to trace: surely this man does not need to trace his ancestry all the way back to the prototypes of humanity, which would be an exercise in a special kind of mythology that can best be described as anthropogony. In the anthropogonic myths that have survived in the Greek language—as also in other Indo-European languages—two most common alternative versions claim that the First Human originated from a tree or from a rock. The tree is commonly pictured as an oak. The epithet palaiphato- ‘going back to an old saying’ here at O.19.163 applies not only to the proverbial drūs ‘oak’ but also to the comparably proverbial petrē ‘rock’. Both versions of such an anthropogonic myth center on a violent act that is simultaneously destructive and regenerative: the ignition, as it were, of the First Human happens when a thunderbolt strikes a primordial tree or rock. Details in GMP ch. 7, “Thunder and the Birth of Humankind.” See also Forte 2015.

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Here at O.19.165–203 we see the third example of “Cretan lies” told by Odysseus in the context of his re-entry into the kingdom of Ithaca. The first example is at O.13.256–286 and the second is at O.14.192–359. The concept of “Cretan lies” was introduced in the anchor comment at O.01.284–286 on Cretan Odyssey.

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|172 Κρήτη τις γαῖ’ ἔστι μέσῳ ἐνὶ οἴνοπι πόντῳ, |173 καλὴ καὶ πίειρα, περίρρυτος· ἐν δ’ ἄνθρωποι |174 πολλοὶ ἀπειρέσιοι, καὶ ἐννήκοντα πόληες· |175 ἄλλη δ’ ἄλλων γλῶσσα μεμιγμένη· ἐν μὲν Ἀχαιοί, |176 ἐν δ’ Ἐτεόκρητες μεγαλήτορες, ἐν δὲ Κύδωνες |177 Δωριέες τε τριχάϊκες δῖοί τε Πελασγοί· |178 τῇσι δ’ ἐνὶ Κνωσός, μεγάλη πόλις, ἔνθα τε Μίνως |179 ἐννέωρος βασίλευε Διὸς μεγάλου ὀαριστής, |180 πατρὸς ἐμοῖο πατήρ, μεγαθύμου Δευκαλίωνος. |181 Δευκαλίων δ’ ἐμὲ τίκτε καὶ Ἰδομενῆα ἄνακτα· |182 ἀλλ’ ὁ μὲν ἐν νήεσσι κορωνίσιν Ἴλιον εἴσω |183 ᾤχεθ’ ἅμ’ Ἀτρεΐδῃσιν· ἐμοὶ δ’ ὄνομα κλυτὸν Αἴθων, |184 ὁπλότερος γενεῇ· ὁ δ’ ἅμα πρότερος καὶ ἀρείων.

|172 There’s a land called Crete, in the middle of the sea that looks like wine. |173 It’s beautiful and fertile, surrounded by the waves, and the people who live there |174 are so many that you can’t count them. They have 90 cities. |175 Different people speak different languages, all mixed together. |176 There are Eteo-Cretans, those great-hearted ones. And Cydonians. |177 There are Dorians, with their three divisions, and luminous Pelasgians. |178 In this land [plural] is Knossos, a great city. There it was that Minos, |179 who was renewed every nine years [enneōros], ruled as king. He was the companion [oaristēs] of Zeus the mighty. |180 And he was the father of my father, Deukalion, the one with the big heart. |181 Deukalion was my father, and the father also of Idomeneus the king. |182 That man [= Idomeneus], in curved ships, went off to Ilion [= Troy], |183 yes, he went there together with the sons of Atreus [= Agamemnon and Menelaos]. As for my name, which is famous [kluton], it is Aithōn. |184 I’m the younger one by birth. As for the other one [= Idomeneus], he was born before me and is superior to me.

(What follows is epitomized from Nagy 2017.04.11 4§§1–2.) In the Third Cretan Tale of Odysseus, the hero assumes the “false” identity of a Cretan prince named Aithōn, who is a grandson of Minos and the younger brother of Idomeneus. The relationship of Aithōn to Minos and to Idomeneus reflects a synthesizing of Minoan and Mycenaean “signatures.” A clearly Minoan signature is the detail about Minos as the grandfather, and a clearly Mycenaean signature is the detail about Idomeneus as the older brother: this Idomeneus is of course one of the most prominent Achaean warriors in the Homeric Iliad as we know it. On Idomeneus, Mycenaean king of Crete, see the anchor comment at O.01.284–286.

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Here at O.19.177, the epithet of the Dorians is trikhā́īkes (Δωριέες ... τριχάϊκες), which reflects the traditional division of Dorian communities into three phūlai ‘subdivisions’, Dumânes/Hulleîs/Pámphūloi. So, I interpret the formation trikhā-u̯īk- *to mean ‘with three-way homes’, where u̯īk- is the same root that we find in oikos ‘home’, from u̯oikos.

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Here at O.19.178, I translate the pronoun têisi (τῇσι) as ‘in this land [plural]’. This pronoun, referring to the land of Crete, is in the plural, not in the the singular, as we might have expected. The explanation can be found in the comment at O.14.199, where we see Krētē, the name of Crete, not in the singular but in the plural, Krêtai. As I point out in that comment, plural Krêtai cannot mean a multiplicity of islands named Crete. There is no such thing. Rather, we see there an elliptic plural, meaning ‘Crete and everything that belongs to it’. And of course whatever belongs to Crete are all the Aegean islands and lands controlled by the thalassocracy of Crete. So also in the case of the pronoun τῇσι that I translate as ‘in this land [plural]’ at O.19.178, we see an elliptic plural referring to Crete together with everything that belongs to Crete. Even the pronoun signals the imperial power of Crete.

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This name Aithōn derives from the participle aíthōn of the verb aíthein ‘burn’. In the lore of fable, aithōn suits such characters as the crafty fox who is ‘burning’ with hunger and will rely on his craftiness to find ways to feed his insatiable stomach. Such lore is reported in the scholia for Pindar Olympian 11.9, where the generic alōpēx ‘fox’ is actually described as aithōn. Such a description can apply in negative contexts to a beggar in pursuit of food for his insatiable stomach, who in turn is comparable to a greedy blame poet in pursuit of rewards for his poetry. See the comment on O.18.001–004. In positive contexts, on the other hand, the name Aithōn can apply to a righteous man who is ‘burning’ with hunger for justice, as in Theognis 1209–1210 (commentary and further details in GMP 273–274). For more on Aithōn, I strongly recommend the analysis of Levaniouk 2011:36–49.

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|185 ἔνθ’ Ὀδυσῆα ἐγὼν ἰδόμην καὶ ξείνια δῶκα. |186 καὶ γὰρ τὸν Κρήτηνδε κατήγαγεν ἲς ἀνέμοιο |187 ἱέμενον Τροίηνδε, παραπλάγξασα Μαλειῶν· |188 στῆσε δ’ ἐν Ἀμνισῷ, ὅθι τε σπέος Εἰλειθυίης, |189 ἐν λιμέσιν χαλεποῖσι, μόγις δ’ ὑπάλυξεν ἀέλλας. |190 αὐτίκα δ’ Ἰδομενῆα μετάλλα ἄστυδ’ ἀνελθών· |191 ξεῖνον γάρ οἱ ἔφασκε φίλον τ’ ἔμεν αἰδοῖόν τε. |192 τῷ δ’ ἤδη δεκάτη ἢ ἑνδεκάτη πέλεν ἠὼς |193 οἰχομένῳ σὺν νηυσὶ κορωνίσιν Ἴλιον εἴσω.

|185 There [in Crete] is where I [= Aithōn] saw Odysseus and gave him gifts of guest-host friendship [xenia]. |186 You see, he had been forced to land at Crete by the violent power [īs] of a wind. |187 He was trying to get to Troy, but the wind detoured him as he was sailing past the headlands of Maleiai, |188 and he was dropped off [by the violent wind] at Amnisos, exactly where the cave of Eileithuia is situated. |189 It was a harsh landing, and he just barely avoided being destroyed by the blasts of the sea-gales. |190 Right away he asked to see Idomeneus as soon as he came to the city [= Knossos]. |191 You see, he was saying that he was a guest-friend [xenos] [of Idomeneus] and that they had a relationship of mutual respect. |192 But it was by now already the tenth or eleventh day since he [= Idomeneus] |193 had departed, sailing off with a fleet of curved ships on his way to Ilion [Troy].

(What follows is epitomized from Nagy 2017.04.11 4§3.) Here, at this confluence of Minoan-Mycenaean signatures, is where the hero of the Odyssey once again enters the stream of mythmaking about a Cretan Odyssey. In this version, Odysseus has not yet reached his destination, which is Troy, but Idomeneus has presumably already arrived.

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Detoured by violent winds, the Odysseus of this Cretan Odyssey lands in Crete. The place where he lands is Amnisos, and a poetic landmark for this place is a cave of Eileithuia. As we know from the reportage of Strabo, who flourished in the first century BCE, Amnisos was reputed to be the sea harbor of Minos the king. Here is the precise wording of Strabo (10.4.8 C476): Μίνω δέ φασιν ἐπινείῳ χρήσασθαι τῷ Ἀμνισῷ, ὅπου τὸ τῆς Εἰλειθυίας ἱερόν ‘they say that Minos used Amnisos as his seaport, and the sacred-space [hieron] of Eileithuia is there’. According to Pausanias (4.20.2), the priestess of Eileithuia at Olympia makes a regular offering to this goddess as also to her cult-hero protégé Sosipolis, and this offering is described as mazas ... memagmenas meliti ‘barley-cakes [mazai] kneaded in honey [meli]’ (μάζας ... μεμαγμένας μέλιτι). In Laconia and Messenia, the goddess Eileithuia was known as Eleuthia, and this form of her name is actually attested in a Linear B tablet found at Knossos. Here is my transcription of the relevant wording that is written in Knossos tablet Gg 705 line 1:

a-mi-ni-so / e-re-u-ti-ja ME+RI AMPHORA 1

Amnisos: Eleuthiāi meli [followed by the ideogram for “amphora”] 1

‘Amnisos: for Eleuthia, honey, one amphora’.

We see here at O.19.188 a striking example of details in Homeric poetry that show continuity with the era of Minoan-Mycenaean civilization. My original argumentation concerning the Minoan-Mycenaean heritage of the details we read in this Homeric verse at O.19.188 appeared in Nagy 1969. For further details on what is said by Pausanias 4.20.2 about Eileithuia, see Nagy 2015.02.25. For more on O.19.188 in the overall context of O.19.185–193, I strongly recommend Levaniouk 2011:93–96.

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ἴσκε ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγων ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα

‘He made likenesses [eïskein], saying many deceptive [pseudea] things looking like [homoia] genuine [etuma] things.’

This verse, which closes the Third Cretan Tale, signals that Odysseus has been speaking as a poet whose art can be understood only by those who are qualified. Most comparable are the verses that are said to be spoken by the Muses to Hesiod in the Hesiodic Theogony, 26–28:

|26 ποιμένες ἄγραυλοι, κάκ᾿ ἐλέγχεα, γαστέρες οἶον, |27 ἴδμεν ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγειν ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα, |28 ἴδμεν δ᾿, εὖτ᾿ ἐθέλωμεν, ἀληθέα γηρύσασθαι.

|26 Shepherds camping in the fields, base objects of reproach, mere stomachs [gasteres]! |27 We know how to say many deceptive [pseudea] things looking like [homoia] genuine [etuma] things, |28 but we also know how, whenever we wish it, to proclaim things that are true [alēthea].

(What follows is epitomized from MoM 2§§22–28.) In these Hesiodic verses, what is deceptive is not the fact that some things ‘look like’ other things. Rather, what is deceptive is that pseudea ‘deceptive things’ can look like etuma ‘real things’. On this point, see also the comment at O.14.124–125. And even deceptive things that look like real things can still be equal to real things, the same as real things. As I indicated in my comments at O.16.172–212, for example, Odysseus is really ‘equal to the immortals’ when he looks like an immortal in ritual contexts. As I also indicated in those comments, the contexts of eïskein ‘make likenesses, liken’ at O.16.187 and O.16.200 show that Telemachus was justified in saying that Odysseus looks the same as a god after being touched by the wand of Athena. If Telemachus was at first deceived by the looks of Odysseus in such contexts, then the deception was happening from the viewpoint of an uninitiated beholder who could not yet distinguish between what is deceptive and what is real. Similarly in the Hesiodic Theogony, the figure of Hesiod has been such an uninitiated beholder before his poetic initiation into the art of the Muses. After his initiation, however, he can now envision what is real even when he beholds things that can be deceptive. The same principle holds whenever Odysseus utters words to be envisioned only by those who have already been initiated into the art of the Muses of poetry. That is what happens here at O.19.203. What is deceptive about the deceptive things that Odysseus is saying in his Third Cretan Tale is not the fact that some things ‘look like’ other things. Rather, what is deceptive is that pseudea ‘deceptive things’ look like etuma ‘real things’. And, once again, even these deceptive things that look like real things can still be equal to real things—the same as the real things that are seen by those who are initiated into the art of the Muses. This art is the art of poetic imagination, which can make even deceptive things look like real things, be equal to real things, be the same as real things. Such is the art that is borrowed by the alluring figure of Helen when she makes her voice identical to the voice of any wife of any Homeric hero: see the comment on eïksein ‘liken’ at O.04.279. Helen’s voice, borrowed from the poetry of the Muses, has the power of conjuring the voices of the wives themselves. And, by extension, her poetic voice has the power of conjuring the very images of the wives. True, Helen means to deceive, but her deceptive words in this narrative frame are the same as the real words of Homeric poetry in the overall narrative frame of that poetry—real words that activate visions of the real things of Homeric poetry. These real things are whatever is real for this poetry, which is figured as true overall, even if it contains things that seem at first to be deceptive. For Homeric poetry, whatever is divinely true can contain deceptions and still be true.

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The emotional response of Penelope to the Third Cretan Tale as told by the disguised Odysseus is to break down in tears. The idea of her melting away in tears, as expressed by way of the verb tēkesthai ‘melt away, dissolve’ at O.19.204 and O.19.208, is directly compared here by way of simile—ὡς ‘just as’ at O.19.205—to the melting of snow on top of a mountain when it makes contact with the West Wind: here the basic physical process of a melting of snow is expressed by way of the verb kata-tēkesthai/kata-tēkein ‘melt away, dissolve’ at O.19.205/O.19.206. If such familiar idioms as melting away in tears did not exist in the English language today, as also in other modern languages, then the very idea that the khrōs ‘complexion’ of Penelope at O.19.204 and her parēïa ‘cheeks’ at O.19.208 were ‘melting away’, as expressed by tēkesthai’, would surely seem far more defamiliarizing. But the fact is, a feeling that is quite alien is happening in the Homeric comparison here: a macrocosmic process of melting snow is being drawn into a microcosmic personal experience of pouring out your tears from your eyes, all over your complexion—with the result that all of you liquifies. Here the world of similes and metaphors extends into the world of metonymy: the emotional intensity of personal experience connects to the dynamics of the cosmos, as when snow melts. On simile and metaphor, also on metonymy, see the inventory of Words and Ideas.

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Penelope tests the disguised Odysseus, who claims to have encountered the real Odysseus. If you really did encounter him, tell me details about him! Here are the questions at O.19.215–219: what was his outer appearance, what did he wear, and who were his nearest companions? In responding to Penelope with a detailed description, O.19.221–248, the disguised Odysseus displays his mental bravura in making connections between his disguised self and his real self. In this context, at I.19.132, while describing a tunic worn by the real Odysseus, the disguised Odysseus uses the word noeîn: ‘I took-note [noeîn] of the tunic’ (τὸν δὲ χιτῶν’ ἐνόησα). As we have already seen in other contexts, the act of noticing as indicated by noeîn ‘take note (of), notice’ is programmed to lead toward recognition. See the comments at O.08.094 and O.08.533. See also especially the anchor comment at I.05.669 on noeîn ‘take note (of), notice’.

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The disguised Odysseus has just finished narrating to Penelope a description of the real Odysseus, giving a variety of details. Here at O.19.250, these details are described as sēmata ‘signs’ that are all ‘recognized’ by Penelope, as indicated by the verb anagignōskein (σήματ' ἀναγνούσῃ). As noted already in the comment at O.19.215–248, the verb noeîn ‘take note of, notice’ already indicates that a recognition is about to take place.

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Penelope formally confirms here that the details recounted by the disguised Odysseus at O.19.221–248 have been recognized by her as indications of the real Odysseus.

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Once again, the emotional experience of Penelope is conveyed by the metaphor of dissolving while weeping. See especially the comment at O.19.204–212.

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Penelope shows that she knows how to match the hospitality that Odysseus had consistently demonstrated as king of Ithaca. What she says here will be elaborated further at O.19.325–334. See the comments on those verses.

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The goddess of the dawn, Ēōs, has a fixed epithet ēri-géneia, meaning ‘early-generated’ or ‘early-generating’, as at O.02.001. This epithet, which is exclusively hers, has a prefix that derives from the old locative adverb êri ‘early’, and Homeric diction actually preserves êri in collocation with ēṓs ‘dawn’ here at O.19.320. This form ēri-géneia is comparable to the name of the earth-encircling river Ēri-danós, as described in Apollonius of Rhodes Argonautica 4.596. The first part of this name Ēri-danós likewise has the prefix êri; the second part –danos seems to mean ‘dew’ or ‘fluid’, and a likely cognate is Indic dā́nu- ‘fluid, dew’. See also Part 4 of the comment on O.15.250–251.

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Once again, Penelope shows that she knows how to match the hospitality that Odysseus had consistently demonstrated as king of Ithaca—hospitality that will earn for him poetic kleos ‘glory’, O.19.333. This passage, then, will be relevant to the context of kleos ‘glory’ at I.24.196.

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Here at O.19.331 the objects of mockery as expressed by the verb ephepsiaâsthai ‘mock’ are the unjust, who therefore deserve to be mocked. Such mockery comes from blame poetry, and here the blame is directed at those who violate the moral protocols of hospitality.

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This expression ep’ anthrōpous ‘throughout humankind’ here at O.19.334 is conventionally associated with words referring to remembrance by way of song. In this case, the relevant word is kleos, O.19.333, referring to the ‘glory’ of poetry and song. See the anchor comment at I.10.213.

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Here at O.19.370 and O.19.372 the objects of mockery as expressed by the verb ephepsiaâsthai ‘mock’ are not the unjust but the just, such as the disguised Odysseus and others like him who are despised as beggars. Once again, such mockery comes from blame poetry, but here the blame is unjustifiable. The women who mock the disguised Odysseus are described at O.19.373 as engaging in lōbē ‘words of insult’ and aiskhea ‘disgraceful things’. Both these words point to unjustified forms of blame. On lōbē ‘words of insult’, see the comment at O.18.347. As for aiskhea ‘disgraceful things’, it is the concrete plural of the abstract singular aiskhos, which means ‘disgrace, shame’: see the comment on aiskhos at O.11.433.

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Eurykleia recognizes Odysseus when she is washing his feet. The sign for her recognition is the scar that she notices on his leg—a wound that marks the time when he went on a boar hunt to Parnassus with his mother’s father, Autolykos. The word that signals the recognition is gignōskein ‘recognize’ at O.19.392 and at O.19.468. The scar that Eurykleia recognizes here turns out to be a sēma ‘sign, signal’ of the hero’s true identity, as we see from the use of that word at O.21.217 and at O.23.073. See the comments at O.21.217–224 and at O.23.073–077 respectively. This word sēma ‘sign, signal’ does not occur here at O.19.388–507, but the occurrences at O.21.217 and O.23.073 and O.24.329 indicate clearly that the scar as a sēma is a subtext, as it were, for the recognition scene that frames the narrative about the boar hunt at Parnassus.

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As we see here at O.19.433–434, the sun rises from the waters of the world-encircling river Ōkeanos at sunrise, as also at I.07.421–423, and it sets into these same waters at sunset, as we see at I.08.485–486. See the comment at I.07.421–423.

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The translation of menos here at O.19.440 as the ‘mental power’ of winds is explained in the note at I.12.018. I epitomize here: forces of nature can have a mind of their own, as it were, because they are connected to the mental power of divinities who control the cosmos and to whom humans using their own mental power can pray for the activation of such control.

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|518 ὡς δ᾿ ὅτε Πανδαρέου κούρη, χλωρηῒς ἀηδών, |519 καλὸν ἀείδῃσιν ἔαρος νέον ἱσταμένοιο, |520 δενδρέων ἐν πετάλοισι καθεζομένη πυκινοῖσιν, |521 ἥ τε θαμὰ τρωπῶσα χέει πολυηχέα φωνήν, |522 παῖδ᾿ ὀλοφυρομένη Ἴτυλον φίλον, ὅν ποτε χαλκῷ |523 κτεῖνε δι᾿ ἀφραδίας, κοῦρον Ζήθοιο ἄνακτος.

|518 As when the daughter of Pandareos, the nightingale [aēdṓn] in the green |519 sings beautifully at the onset anew of springtime, |520 perched in the dense foliage of trees, |521 and she pours forth, changing it around [trōpôsa] thick and fast, a voice with many resoundings [poluēkhḗs], |522 lamenting her child, the dear Itylos, whom once upon a time with weapon of bronze |523 she killed inadvertently, the son of Zethos the king.

Here at O.19.518–523 the figure of Penelope expresses her anxieties by comparing them to the emotions expressed in the song of a generic aēdōn ‘nightingale’, O.19.518, and the bird is in this context immediately identified with a woman named Aēdōn who became the prototype of all nightingales when she was turned into a nightingale as a result of the immeasurable sorrow she experienced over having inadvertently killed her own son. What is most remarkable about this comparison, framed as a simile by way of the phrase ὡς δ' ὅτε ‘just as when’ at O.19.518, is that the primal emotions of the woman Aēdōn are figured as the prototype of the emotions conveyed by the song sung by any nightingale. For mythological variations on the theme of a woman who turned into the prototype of all nightingales, see Nagy 2016.01.07. For more on the myth of Aēdōn and its relevance to Penelope, I strongly recommend the analysis of Levaniouk 2011:213–228.

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The generic nightingale, as she sings her song, modulates her tune, ‘changing it around’—which is how I translate trōpôsa (τρωπῶσα) here at I.19.521. The sound made by the songbird’s song is described in this same verse as poluēkhḗs ‘with many resoundings’ (accusative πολυηχέα), but there is a variant reading reported by Aelian On the nature of animals 5.36: poludeukḗs (likewise accusative πολυδευκέα) ‘with many continuations’. Morphologically, this form poludeukḗs ‘with many continuations’ is the opposite of adeukḗs, meaning ‘discontinuous, interrupting’—in other words, ‘with no continuations’. For more on the meaning of adeukḗs, see the anchor comment at O.04.489.

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There is a pattern of onomatopoeia built into the name Itylos = ´Itulos, as derivative of ´Itus (Ἴτυς), a name of the son of the unfortunate mythical woman who was turned into a nightingale. The doubling of this name produces a “tweeting” effect, as in Aeschylus Agamemnon 1144: Ἴτυν Ἴτυν στένουσ᾿ ‘[the nightingale] mourning “´Itun ´Itun”’; also Sophocles Electra 148: ἃ Ἴτυν αἰὲν Ἴτυν ὀλοφύρεται ‘who keeps on mourning “´Itun ´Itun”’.

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Here again at O.19.528, as at O.11.179, O.15.521–522, O.16.076, O.18.289, it is said that whoever succeeds in marrying Penelope would surely qualify as ‘the best of the Achaeans’. And now it is Penelope herself who is saying this.

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ἀλλ’ ἄγε μοι τὸν ὄνειρον ὑπόκριναι καὶ ἄκουσον

‘Come, respond [hupo-krinesthai] to my dream [oneiros], and hear my telling of it.’

When Penelope challenges the disguised Odysseus to interpret her oneiros ‘dream’, the word that is used in her challenge here at O.19.535 is hupo-krinesthai, which I translate as ‘respond to (a sign), interpret’; the same word is used at O.19.555 when the disguised Odysseus refers to the challenge. The verb hupo-krinesthai is used at O.19.535 in the imperative, and the word for ‘dream’, oneiros, is in the accusative; likewise at O.19.555, hupo-krinesthai takes the accusative of the word for ‘dream’, oneiros. This verb is derived from krinein/krinesthai, the basic meaning of which is ‘separate, distinguish, judge’. The verb krinein, in the active voice, can be translated as ‘interpret’ when combined with the noun opsis, ‘vision’, as its object (Herodotus 7.19.1-2) or with enupnion, ‘dream’, as its object (Herodotus 1.120.1). It is a question of interpreting-in-performance. In the middle voice, hupo-krinesthai suggests that the performer is interpreting for himself as well as for others. The basic idea of hupo-krinesthai, then, is to see the real meaning of what others see and to quote back, as it were, what this vision is really telling them. Such a vision distinguishes what is real from what is unreal.

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Penelope tests the disguised Odysseus by challenging him to interpret a dream that she had, which is for her a sign that she says she needs to be interpreted for her, O.19.535–553. Odysseus responds to the sign, giving his interpretation, O.19.555–558, and then Penelope responds to the interpretation, O.19.560–569. What Penelope dreams, O.19.535–553, is that the geese in her courtyard are suddenly killed by an eagle that swoops down on them. She cries and cries over the loss of her geese. But then, within the narrative of the dream itself, O.19.546–550, the eagle is quoted as saying to Penelope that he is Odysseus and that the geese are the suitors, who are to be punished for their unjust behavior. The disguised Odysseus responds to the convoluted words of Penelope by saying that her dream has already interpreted itself and that no response is needed from him—except to say what he has just said, that the dream has already interpreted itself, O.17.555–558. This way, Odysseus postpones identifying himself to Penelope, but at the same time he shows his good judgment in distinguishing between what is false and what is true about his own heroic identity as defined by his sense of justice, which is being challenged by the injustices inflicted on him by the suitors.

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In Penelope’s dream as she reports it here at O.19.547, the talking eagle that dream-interprets itself to be really Odysseus says that this dream is not just any onar or ‘dream’ but rather, more than that, it is a hupar esthlon or ‘waking reality’ (οὐκ ὄναρ, ἀλλ' ὕπαρ ἐσθλόν). The reality that is being foretold in the dream here at O.19.547 is signaled by the word hupar, which refers to a dream that is seen when one is asleep but will also be seen after one is awake, as opposed to the word onar (also oneiros), which refers to a dream seen only in sleep. (The word hupar is cognate with the element suppar- of the Hittite verb suppariya- ‘sleep’: see DELG under ὕπαρ.) The reality foretold by a dream that is hupar is reinforced here at O.19.547 by the epithet esthlon ‘real, genuine, good’, which is derived from the root es- ‘to be’ as in esti ‘is’. The vision signaled by the hupar esthlon or ‘waking reality’, as I have translated it, will come to fulfillment, that is, it will reach its real outcome, as expressed by the verb teleîn ‘reach an outcome’. Imperfective uses of this verb teleîn ‘reach an outcome’ refer to realities that are still in the making, that have not yet come to fulfillment: see for example the comment at I.02.330. Perfective uses of this same word, on the other hand, refer to a reality that has come to fulfillment. Here at O.19.547, we see a future perfect use: the talking eagle of the dream is foretelling a reality that will have already happened when the right moment in the narrative finally arrives. This verb teleîn ‘reach an outcome’, as used here at O.19.547, focuses on a central idea in contexts of composition-in-performance. The idea is this: whatever is being said in the performance will come to fulfillment in the composition when all is said and done.

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The adjective amenēna ‘having no mental power [menos] inside’ applies elsewhere exclusively to the dead. Here it applies to dreams. See further the comment at O.10.521.

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In the response of Penelope, O.19.562–569, to the response of Odysseus in interpreting her dream, she says that there are two kinds of dreams, passing through two kinds of pulai ‘gates’, O.19.562: the first kind passes through a gate of keras ‘horn’, and the second kind, through a gate of elephas ‘ivory’, O.19.563. The first kind signals what is real, while the second, what is deceptive. That is why the mental power of distinguishing what is real from what is unreal becomes so seriously important. But there is also a playful side to these images of horn and ivory, as reflected in the word play that links (1) the noun keras ‘horn’ with the verb krainein in the sense of ‘authorize as real’, O.19.567, and (2) the noun elephas ‘ivory’ with the verb elephairesthai in the sense of ‘deceive’, O.19.565. The object of the verb krainein ‘authorize as real’ here is etuma ‘real things’ (ἔτυμα), O.19.567: that is what dreams from a Gate of Horn will bring. Correspondingly, the object of what is brought by dreams from a Gate of ivory is a-kráan-ta ‘unauthorized’ (ἀκράαντα), O.19.565. The playfulness extends further: I suspect that the symbolism of keras ‘horn’ here involves not only the elevated sense of ‘authorization’ but also the earthy sense of sexual desire. I suspect that the Aphrodisiac properties linked with horn as a substance are in play here. Perhaps relevant is all the folkore surrounding the earthy English adjective ‘horny’. When I speak of ‘horn’ here, I have in mind primarily the kerata ‘antlers’ of deer, the aphrodisiac properties of which are highlighted for example by the physician Galen (vol. 14 p. 240 ed. C. G. Kühn 1827). I ask myself: why does Penelope cry and cry in her dream about losing her geese? Perhaps her familiarity with the geese can be linked with her familiarity—however unwelcome—with the suitors. The geese have been around for twenty years, and where was the eagle during all this time? Perhaps that is why it is safe for Penelope to offer a recusal at O.19.568–569: surely my dream came from a Gate of Ivory, not from a Gate of Horn. For more on Penelope’s dream, I strongly recommend the analysis of Levaniouk 2011:229–246, with a critical survey of the multifarious interpretations that have been offered over the years by experts and nonexperts alike.

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Rhapsody 20 reveals the darkest thoughts of Penelope. There she is, lying awake in bed, unable to fall asleep, and now she starts to think the unthinkable, tearfully spilling her private thoughts by praying to Artemis: I want to die in the worst way, she confides to the goddess, so why don’t you shoot me with your arrows, putting me out of my misery? Or maybe my death should be even worse? Penelope is now haunted by horror stories about unfortunate girls who thought they were getting married but who instead became servants to infernal Furies. She cries for them and she cries for herself, thinking of a dream she had about sleeping with Odysseus, who was looking the way he had looked twenty years ago. Her crying carries over till daybreak, and her laments are overheard from not that far away by Odysseus, who is having his own dark thoughts about the vengeance he so passionately desires.

draft js image error “The Harpies Going to Seize the Daughters of Pandareus” (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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This epithet thugatēr Dios ‘daughter of Zeus’, applied here to the goddess Artemis, derives from contexts that apply to the goddess of the dawn, Ēōs. See the anchor comment at I.03.374.

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In a despondent mood, unable to fall asleep, Penelope prays to the goddess Artemis, wishing for a death that should happen ēdē ‘already now’, O.20.061 (ἤδη), that is, autika nūn ‘right this instant’, O.20.063 (αὐτίκα νῦν). Such a death, if it is to happen ‘right this instant’, would come from arrows shot by Artemis, O.20.061–063. And such an instantaneous death would thus happen before Penelope were to be forced into marrying one of the suitors. Alternatively, however, the death that she wishes for could happen at a later point, as indicated by way of the expression ē epeita ‘or later’, O.20.063 (ἢ ἔπειτα). In the case of such a postponed death, the sequence of events would have already reached a moment where a forced marriage has already been arranged for an unwilling Penelope—and where the wedding is already about to take place. Penelope’s alternative wish to die at such a later moment, right before an actual wedding, pictures the same kind of death that had been experienced once upon a time by the daughters of Pandareos, whose story will now be retold, starting at O.20.066. The retelling of this story from a distant past will be worded by Penelope herself, who will now make a comparison between what had happened to the daughters of Pandareos and what she imagines will eventually happen in her own story if she is forced to marry one of the suitors. I will now consider the wording that introduces the comparison between the dreaded future of Penelope and the dreaded past of the daughters of Pandareos. A moment in that past time is described most ominously here: ‘just as when gusts of wind [thúellai] took away [an-heleîn] the daughters of Pandareos’, O.20.066 (ὡς δ’ ὅτε Πανδαρέου κούρας ἀνέλοντο θύελλαι). Thus, just as the daughters of Pandareos had been taken away by gusts of wind right before their wedding, so also Penelope, in her prayer, wishes for a comparable death if she cannot die right away. Here is how she says it: ‘or later [ē epeita] may a gust of wind [thúella], snatch me away [an-harpáxāsa]...’, O.20.063 (ἢ ἔπειτά μ’ ἀναρπάξασα θύελλα), ‘... and drop me into the forward-flowing streams of the Ōkeanos’, O.20.063–065 (ἐν προχοῇς βάλοι ... Ὠκεανοῖο). This world-encircling river Ōkeanos, as we have already seen in other Homeric contexts, separates the living from the dead. See especially the comment at O.10.508–512: to cross the streams of the Ōkeanos is to cross into Hādēs. So, if Penelope cannot be granted her first wish, which is, to die right now, shot to death by the arrows of Artemis, then the wording of her prayer allows her to ask for her alternative second wish, which is, to experience death before any wedding is arranged against her will. But how does such a wedding, dreaded by Penelope, compare with the wedding that had been arranged for the daughters of Pandareos? At O.20.073–076, we see that the divinity who was arranging for these girls to get married was Aphrodite, seemingly acting as a sole agent. Earlier, at O.20.067–069, we see that Aphrodite had saved the girls from dying after their parents had been destroyed by the gods: it seems that the orphan girls were still infants, and Aphrodite raised them on a diet of cheese, honey, and wine, O.20.068–069. As the little orphans, saved by Aphrodite, were growing up, other female deities took part in raising them: (1) Hērā gave them beauty and intelligence, O.20.070–071, (2) Artemis gave them just the right dimensions to grow into, O.20.71, and (3) Athena gave them skills, O.20.072—which surely included expertise in weaving. But then, at a point where the girls are already so perfectly ready for marriage—a marriage that Aphrodite had personally arranged for them—they are snatched away by violent gusts of wind, O.20.077, which deliver them to Erīnues ‘Furies’ whom they are now destined to serve as attendants, O.20.078. And the removal of the girls from the visible world is described here in wording that is more violent than the wording that had previously described the death wished by Penelope for herself. Penelope’s wording had referred to a thúella ‘gust of wind’ that would snatch her away from the visible world, O.20.063, and carry her off to the Ōkeanos, where she would cross into the realm of Hādēs. But now, at O.20.077, the gusts of winds that snatch away the daughters of Pandareos are hárpuiai, and the violence of these gusts of wind is evident in the English word that is used to translate the personifications of these ‘rapacious gusts of wind’. These personified gusts of wind are the Harpies. And the death of these unfortunate girls who were seized by the Harpies is then followed by a horrific afterlife, imagined as an eternity of servitude to Erīnues ‘Furies’, O.20.078. How, then, to account for the dreaded fate of the daughters of Pandareos? Something went very wrong here. Although the Homeric narrative gives no details about the identity of the bridegrooms intended for these would-be brides, I suspect that there was something wrong with them in particular—and that the sole agency of Aphrodite in arranging for the would-be wedding, seemingly to the exclusion of Hērā, Artemis, and Athena, signals what might have gone wrong for the daughters of Pandareos. Whatever it was that did go wrong for these doomed girls, Penelope says that the infernal fate that awaited them is for her still preferable to the dreaded prospect of her getting married off to any of the suitors. Before I can bring this analysis to a close, I must return here to the wording ē epeita at O.20.063, which I have translated simply as ‘or later’. The function of this wording can easily be misunderstood if we lose track of the ring composition that is activated at this point. Penelope wishes for an immediate death caused by the shafts of Artemis, O.20.061–063, or a delayed death caused by the abducting winds, O.20.63–65. At O.20.066, the story about the abduction of the daughters of Pandareos is introduced as a precedent. The story is further developed at O.20.067–076, climaxed at O.20.077, where we see a recap of O.22.066. Then the line at O.20.079 recaps Penelope's wish for a delayed death, and, to close out the ring composition, the line at O.22.080 recaps her original wish for an immediate death. So, the force of ē epeita ‘or later' in expressing a delayed death at O.20.063 is that the winds would snatch Penelope away at a later point in the presumed narrative, right before her marriage to one of the suitors, just as the Harpies abducted the daughters of Pandareos right before the arranged marriage of these doomed girls, O.20.073–074. My interpretation of ē epeita 'or later' here at O.20.063 helps explain the connotations of the epithet metakhróniai 'delayed' as applied to the Hárpuiai ‘Harpies’ at Hesiod Theogony 269.

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In her wakeful agonizing, Penelope recalls a dream she had, O.20.087–090, where she was lying in bed with Odysseus at her side, and he looked the way he had looked when she had last seen him twenty years earlier. It seemed to her, she says at O.20.090, that this was not an onar ‘dream’ but a hupar esthlon ‘wakeful reality’ (οὐκ ὄναρ, ἀλλ’ ὕπαρ ἐσθλόν). On my interpretation of this ‘wafkeful reality’, see the note at O.19.547. Penelope’s remembrance of such a dream here validates the reality that is foretold in the dream as narrated and then interpreted at O.19.535–565. See the comment on the lines there. Further, this dream as remembered here at O.20.087–090 will in fact come true in Odyssey 23, when Penelope and Odysseus are finally reunited. As we will see, Odysseus at O.23.163 emerges from a ritual bath looking like a perfect bridegroom. See the comment at that line. So, Penelope will soon be lying together in bed with the man of her dreams.

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(What follows is epitomized from HR 55–60 = 3§§20–33.)

[§20.] At O.20.103–104 Odysseus is praying to Zeus for both an omen and a phēmē ‘something said’ as indications telling him that he will indeed prevail over the suitors. Zeus responds by sending both thunder, O.20.103–104, and a phēmē, O.20.105.

[§21.] The phēmē takes the form of a prayer uttered by an anonymous woman grinding grain with her handmill, O.20.112–119. She is not sure for whom the sign of the god’s thunder is intended, O.20.114 (τεῳ ‘for someone), but she prays to Zeus that he should intend it for her too, O.20.115 (καὶ ἐμοί ‘for me too’) by bringing to fulfillment the epos ‘words’ that she now speaks, O.20.115. The narrative that frames what she says in her prayer likewise refers to the prayer as an epos, adding that this epos is meant to be a sēma ‘sign’ for Odysseus, O.20.111.

[§22.] What the woman is quoted as saying is poetically represented here as a song, as we can see from the reference to “milling songs” in Plutarch Banquet of the Seven Sages 157 (Carmina Popularia [PMG] no. 869): in this case, it is stated explicitly that a woman is heard singing while grinding grain with her handmill. At O.20.111, the poetic representation of singing here is also indicated by way of the word epos, plural epea, which means not just ‘words’ but also specifically ‘poetic words’ in Homeric diction (see the comments on epea ‘words’ at I.12.387–391 and at I.20.248–250; see also GMP 221).

[§23.] For some interpreters, an irreversible mistake can be found here in what seems to be a contradiction between the words of the narrative framing the phēmē and the words of the “quoted” phēmē itself. In the words of the phēmē as spoken by the woman, she says that the thundering of Zeus came from the starry sky, O.20.113 (οὐρανοῦ ἀστερόεντος), where no cloud is to be seen, O.20.114 (οὐδέ ποθι νέφος ἐστί ‘and there is not a cloud [nephos] anywhere’). This, then, was the sign that the woman had received: it was a thundering from a clear sky. By contrast, the narrative that frames what she says refers to the thundering of Zeus ‘from ‘radiant Olympus’, O.20.103 (ἀπ᾿ αἰγλήεντος Ὀλύμπου), and the thundering had come ‘from on high, from out of the clouds [nephea]’, O.20.104 (ὑψόθεν ἐκ νεφέων).

[§24.] Of course, no Homer critic would have any problem if the narrative frame here had been more simple, featuring only one sign—that is, if Odysseus had prayed for only one sign, the thunder of Zeus. The problem seems to arise from the combining of two signs in the narration—the thunder of Zeus and the song of the anonymous woman. It is this combination that has led to what appears to be a contradiction between these two signs. And yet, I propose that the combining of two narrative signs here amounts to an artistic narratological elaboration, which succeeds in producing a special poetic effect by way of juxtaposing the perceptions of the anonymous woman and the perceptions of Odysseus.

[§25.] For the anonymous woman, only one sign had been needed, the thundering of Zeus, and that is the sign that she had received. For Odysseus, however, the thundering of Zeus was not the complete sign that he had received. It was an incomplete sign. In terms of his own prayer, it had to be completed, complemented, by something that is actually said, which turned out to be the words of the woman. Those words, however, could not become a completed phēmē for Odysseus unless Zeus heeded those words on their own terms, on the woman’s terms. For the woman, the thundering of Zeus came from a clear sky. For Odysseus, the same thundering had come from a clouded sky, and the message of Zeus became clear only after the woman received her own message from a clear sky. The wording of the woman, an incipient epos that was as yet unclear for her, became a finished epos that was indeed clear for Odysseus, just as the thundering of Zeus shifted perceptually from a clouded to a clear sky. For Odysseus, the clarification and hence the fulfillment of the epos of the woman makes this epos into a genuine prophetic utterance: the phēmē ‘thing said’ as it is called at O.20.100 and at O.20.105 turns out to be a kleēdōn ‘prophetic utterance’, as it is finally called at O.20.120. The woman’s words have now become fulfilled as a speech-act. Her speech—or song—has now become an act of special prophecy, of cledonomancy. At the moment of fulfillment, Odysseus rejoices at both omens: (1) the prophetic utterance, kleēdōn, and (2) the thundering of Zeus. Here is the wording: ‘he rejoiced at the kleēdōn | and at the thundering of Zeus’, O.20.120–121 (χαῖρεν δὲ κλεηδόνι ... | Ζηνός τε βροντῇ).

[§26.] The prophecy, of course, starts with Zeus, whose thundering is in itself the primal act that leads to the cledonomancy. Zeus himself is ultimately prophetic in his manifestations of weather, and his meaning can be ambivalently bright or dark, clear or cloudy, positive or negative. The Indo-European form di̯eu-, which becomes Greek Zeus* (Ζεύς), means basically ‘sky’, thus conveying a cledonomantic ambivalence: it portends either clear or clouded weather. Despite this ambivalence of clear or clouded, positive or negative, in the meaning ‘sky’, the Indo-European noun di̯eu- stems from the verb diu̯-, which has only the positive meaning ‘be bright / clear’, not the negative ‘be dark / cloudy’. The darkness and the clouds show the other side of Zeus.

[§27.] There is a similar cledonomantic ambivalence in the meaning of the Indo-European form nebhos, which becomes Greek nephos* (νέφος) ‘cloud’: it means basically ‘cloud’ in ambivalently good or bad weather. This ambivalence explains the fact that in some Indo-European languages the derivative of nebhos means primarily ‘sky’, by way of metonymy. Such is the case with Russian nebo ‘sky’. Thus in Russian idiom, na nebe ni oblaka means ‘there’s not a cloud [oblako] in the sky [nebo]’. From the standpoint of Indo-European linguistics, we see here a new word for ‘cloud’, oblako, while the old word for ‘cloud’ has become, metonymically, the new word for ‘sky’. This new word can even stand for a cloudless sky, as in the idiom we have just seen: na nebe ni oblaka means ‘there’s not a cloud [oblako] in the sky [nebo*]’.

[§28.] Such a metonymic sense of Indo-European nebhos as ‘sky’ is visible also in some Homeric usages of the noun nephos / nephea ‘cloud’ / ‘clouds’, which is potentially ambivalent in its own right concerning questions of good or bad weather. When Zeus thunders ‘from on high, from out of the clouds [nephea]’ at O.20.105 (ὑψόθεν ἐκ νεφέων), he is thundering from the sky, through the metonymy of the clouds. In this case, the ambivalence of clouds or sky is canceled only by the explicit statement, in the words of the singing woman at 20.114, that there is no nephos ‘cloud’ in the sky. In all other Homeric attestations, the potential metonymic sense of nephos / nephea as ‘sky’ can remain in force. A particularly striking example of this metonymic sense of ‘sky’ is evident at I.13.523–524, where Zeus is pictured as sitting in grand isolation on the summit of Olympus, under a shining canopy of ‘golden nephea’ (ἀλλ᾿ ὁ γὰρ ἄκρῳ Ὀλύμπῳ ὑπὸ χρυσέοισι νέφεσσιν | ἦστο). At that moment in the narrative, the god is described as ‘wrapped up’ in his own thoughts, which are conventionally called the Will of Zeus, I.13.524 (Διὸς βουλῇσιν ἐελμένος). The scholia V for O.20.104 actually cite this Iliadic passage, explaining the usage of nephea at O.20.104 in terms of metonymy. A similar explanation is offered in Scholia BQ: that the word nephea* at O.20.102 is to be understood as referring to a realm where clouds can be expected to happen.

[§29.] I propose that the theme of the Will of Zeus, as a conventional plot device of Homeric narrative, is essential for understanding the double omen of Zeus’ thunder and the woman’s song in the Odyssey. I propose, further, that the weather in this passage of the Odyssey depends on the Will of Zeus, and that the sudden shift from a cloudy to a clear sky is a choice in Homeric narratology, not a mistake in Homeric meteorology.

[§30.] Moreover, the sudden shift from cloudy to clear skies can happen only after the narrative makes it clear that there is not a cloud in the sky. Before that clarification, it was left unclear whether or not the sky was cloudy. If the thundering of Zeus comes out of a clear blue sky, it is a bigger omen than if it comes out of a cloudy sky. If Odysseus had prayed for just one omen, not two, it would not be clear whether the thundering of Zeus had happened in cloudy or in clear weather. Since he prayed for two omens, however, and since the second omen was granted, now everything is clear, and the prophecy is augmented.

[§31.] The shift from a clouded sky to a clear one depends on the clarification of the Will of Zeus in the course of the narrative. Further, the sēma ‘sign’ meant by Zeus for Odysseus at O.20.111 depends implicitly on the faculty for both encoding and decoding it, and that faculty is conventionally expressed by the noun nóos ‘mind’ and the verb noeîn ‘take note (of), notice’ (see the anchor comment at I.05.669). The nóos or ‘intentionality’ of Zeus is key to understanding the plot-constructions of Homeric narrative. In the Iliad, for example, when Zeus expresses his Will by nodding his head, I.01.524–527, Hērā reacts by chiding him for not telling what it is that he really intends—literally, for not making an epos out of what he ‘has in his nóos’, as expressed by the verb noeîn at I.01.543. Zeus replies that the mūthos ‘wording’ that he ‘has in his nóos’ as expressed again by noeîn at I.01.549, is for him alone to know. And yet, the Homeric audience may already know, since the Iliad declares programmatically that its plot is the Will of Zeus, I.01.005. See the comment at that line (see also GMP 222).

[§32.] To sum up, I repeat my earlier formulation: when Zeus thunders ‘from on high, from out of the clouds [nephea]’ at O.20.105 (ὑψόθεν ἐκ νεφέων), he is essentially thundering from the sky, through the metonymy of the clouds. This poetic description in the framing narrative does not contradict, per se, the later perception of a clear sky within the framed speech, O.20.114: ‘and there is not a cloud [nephos] anywhere’ (οὐδέ ποθι νέφος ἐστί). But that later perception does indeed clarify the earlier narrative perception of a sky that may be clouded over. Now the sky is clear, as the cledonomantic words have finally been clarified.

[§33.] The time has come to rethink the passage I have analyzed here in terms of oral poetics, not just poetics per se. I hold that the complexities of this passage reflect the accretions of a highly sophisticated oral poetic tradition that kept on continually recombining its older and its newer elements in the productive phases of its evolution. These older and newer elements may at times seem to contradict each other if we stop and view each of them as individual parts, but I suggest that such contradictions were transcended by the actual re-combinations of these parts into the totality of an ongoing system that we know as Homeric poetry. In order to account for such an ongoing system, I developed my evolutionary model for the making of Homeric poetry. For more on such a model, see the comment at I.12.335–336 and at I.13.066; also the Excursus on O.13.158.

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The cognitive process of noeîn ‘take note (of), notice’ at O.20.204 is associated here with a moment of ‘remembering’ as expressed by the root of the verb mnē- ‘mentally connect’ at O.20.205.

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The noun kertomiai ‘words of insult’ is correlated with the verb kertomeîn ‘say words of insult’, as attested at I.02.256, O.02.323, O.18.350.

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The noun enīpē ‘scolding’ is correlated with the verb eniptein ‘scold’, on which see especially the comment at O.18.321–326.

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The feasting that we see being described here at O.20.276–280 involves the whole astu ‘city’ of Ithaca, O.20.276, and, as we see in the wording of O.20.276–277, all this feasting climaxes in a hekatombē ‘hecatomb’, as proclaimed throughout the city by kērūkes ‘heralds’. On the word hekatombē ‘hecatomb’, a priestly word referring to the sacrifice of one hundred cattle, see the comment on O.04.351–353. The occasion for this hecatomb is evidently a festival of Apollo, signaled by the vivid description at O.20.277–278: the Achaeans are now seen assembling inside the sacred alsos ‘grove’ of the god Apollo, O.20.278. What follows after the sacrifice of a hundred cattle is then described at O.20.279–280: the meat is cooked and divided among the participants. And the whole occasion of this feasting is indicated at O.20.280 by way of two all-important words here: (1) dais ‘feast, division of portions (of meat); sacrifice’, and (2) daiesthai ‘feast; divide (meat), apportion, distribute’. On dais ‘feast’ as a stylized way of referring to an overall festival, see the introductory comments at O.08.038 and at O.08.061; also the follow-up comments at O.08.429, O.09.003–111, O.13.023. For further references to the festival of Apollo, see the comments at O.21.267, O.21.404-411, and O.21.429-430.

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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

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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)

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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

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

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comment on the contrast between eti and aiei in this passage

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

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

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

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

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analysis of the functional overlap between hiketēs and xeinos, argument that in Homer hiketēs still means ‘he who comes, arrives,’ and here the collocation of hikanein/hikein and xeinos

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in a list of attestations of genos eukhesthai einai and its transformations and analysis of the archaism in this verse

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analysis of the functional overlap between hiketēs and xeinos, argument that in Homer hiketēs still means ‘he who comes, arrives’

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

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in the discussion of the rationale of the classification of the attestations of eukhesthai + dative

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in the discussion of the rationale of the classification of the attestations of eukhesthai + dative

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analysis of the passages in the Odyssey that imply that a basic component of the story of Odysseus’ return, the massacre of the suitors, is a variant of the mēnis theme

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in the discussion of the rationale of the classification of the attestations of eukhesthai + dative

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analysis of the interconnections of mēnis, exchange rules, and timē for xenoi

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in the list of offenses that (threaten to) incur mēnis

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in a list of examples of eukhesthai + infinitive, analysis of the fixed doublet passages, the only doublets with sacral eukhesthai (this one and I.17.059-060)

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transformation Dii patri  Dii t’alloisin te theoisin, in the context of the analysis of O.15.353 and I.08.526

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

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in a list of examples of eukhesthai + infinitive, analysis of the fixed doublet passages, the only doublets with sacral eukhesthai (this one and I.17.050-051)

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

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comparison with this verse with phanai with xeinos/hiketēs eukhesthai einai formulas and argument that in the latter formulas eukhesthai means ‘say (proudly, accurately, contentiously)’

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comparison of the diction here with that in I.24.039-048 regarding persons incurring mēnis, here with reference to biē and themis

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comparison of the diction here with that in I.24.039-048 regarding persons incurring mēnis, here with reference to biē and themis

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in a list of examples of the functional relationship between eukhesthai and phanai (in the context of analyzing genos eukhesthai einai formulas)

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analysis of the interconnections of mēnis, exchange rules, and timē for xenoi

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comparison of this verse with phanai with xeinos/hiketēs eukhesthai einai formulas and argument that in the latter formulas eukhesthai means ‘say (proudly, accurately, contentiously)’

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transformation Dii patri  Dii t’alloisin te theoisin, in the context of the analysis of O.15.353 and I.08.526

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

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analysis of the passages in the Odyssey that imply that a basic component of the story of Odysseus’ return, the massacre of the suitors, is a variant of the mēnis theme

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comment on Ktesippos as a villain in terms of the morality of the Odyssey

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analysis of thuoskoos as not a particularly prestigious occupation, in the context of analyzing Odysseus’ response to Leodes in O.22.321

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analysis of the versatility of poetic technique to report prayers (invocation, grant of favor, request of favor)

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analysis of Allen’s text at I.08.526 vs. Zenodotus’s version of the verse, and Allen’s version’s being closer to verses like O.21.211

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analysis of extending the formula beyond the verse-end in pairings of akouein and eukhesthai, as in this verse

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

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analysis of the attestations of eukhesthai + aorist infinitive (and the series to which O.21.210-211 belongs)

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Apollo’s name-epithet formulas which have the same metrical shape as the divine names in the dative in the eukhomai + dative formulas, but which are not used in this system because, unlike the others, they begin with a vowel (here, words occurring before Apollo’s two dative formulas that always end with a consonant)

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hand as regular metonym for a warrior’s biē

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

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in a list of passages exemplifying the complementary metrical distribution of eukhos and kudos

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hand as regular metonym for a warrior’s biē

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analysis of the attestations of eukhesthai + aorist infinitive (and the series to which this verse belongs)

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analysis of the meaning and uses of piphauskesthai, here in the sense of ‘reveal through speech’ (in the context of analyzing the semantic and formal confusion of piphaskein and piphauskesthai)

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analysis of the differentiation of blame in the Odyssey (vs. in the Iliad) and the muting of the mēnis theme in it, here especially regarding the suitors, their relatives, and Odysseus and his family

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presence of battle-book formulas in the battle in the Odyssey, here a death announcement, in the context of the analysis of the non-formulaic eukhesthai introducing speech in O.14.463, which is nevertheless analogous to formula (X) (death eukhesthai), though it is not followed by a death announcement but an adventure tale (traditional function aborted by genre-suppression)

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in a list of expressions which do not specify the speaker’s name, in the context of analyzing I.11.379 and demonstrating the functional equivalence of eukhesthai in (X) || kai eukhomenos epos ēuda or (Y) hōs ephat’ Argeioisi d’akhos genet’ euxamenoio

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analysis of thuoskoos as not a particularly prestigious occupation, in the context of analyzing Odysseus’ response to Leodes in O.22.321

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analysis of Odysseus’ response to Leodes in O.22.231 as taking him to take pride in his relationship with the suitors

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comparison of this use of secular eukhesthai to specify social relationships as marks of privilege and identity with Vedic parallels

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analysis of thuoskoos as not a particularly prestigious occupation, in the context of analyzing Odysseus’ response to Leodes in O.22.321

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in a list of eukhesthai einai + social relationship

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analysis of Odysseus’ response to Leodes in this verse as taking him to take pride in his relationship with the suitors

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comparison of this use of secular eukhesthai to specify social relationships as marks of privilege and identity with Vedic parallels

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contrasting Phemios’ plea to be spared to Odysseus with that of Leodes, in context of the analysis of Odysseus’ response to Leodes in O.22.231 as taking him to take pride in his relationship with the suitors

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the morality of the Odyssey, here the forbidding of big talk over dead bodies

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analysis of the passages in the Odyssey that imply that a basic component of the story of Odysseus’ return, the massacre of the suitors, is a variant of the mēnis theme

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analysis of the transformation of formula (A) to (B), which resumes the narrative after an order/exhortation by a man in authority to a group of men to do something (here, to wash hands), and conclusion that (A)’s eukhomenos was felt to be have sacral connotations inappropriate to the secular contexts of (B)

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analysis of the meaning and uses of piphauskesthai (in the context of analyzing the semantic and formal confusion of piphaskein and piphauskesthai), in this verse as ‘show, reveal’

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Here in Odyssey 24.46, the Achaeans cut their hair at the funeral of Achilles. This ritual gesture, GN argues, signals a symbolic transition from long-haired Achaeans to short-haired Greeks, corresponding to a transition from the heroic age to a post heroic-age. See H24H 14§26a. Commenting on the post-heroic era that follows the death of Achilles, the Ampelourgos says: οὐδὲ κομᾶν ἔτι μετὰ τὸν Ἀχιλλέα καλὸν ἡγούμενοι ‘no longer could they [= the Achaeans] consider it a beautiful thing to grow their hair long, once Achilles was gone’ (Philostratus Hērōikos 51.13). The wording connotes an aetiology, as if the death of Achilles were the single reason that explains why adult men of the post-heroic age no longer wore their hair long - except for such notable counter-examples as the Spartans. The wearing of long hair was a distinctive sign of pre-adult status. Even in the Iliad, the long hair of Achilles ostentatiously signals his pre-adult status, as we can see from the scene describing the funeral of Patroklos, where Achilles cuts off his long blond hair as he stands at the funeral pyre of his best friend (23.141). It is at this same place where the tumulus to be shared by Patroklos and Achilles will be built when the time comes for the funeral of Achilles himself (23.126). In this Homeric scene, as Achilles is standing on the heights of the promontory that will become the setting for the tumulus that houses his own body, he wistfully looks out over the seas of the outer Hellespont, fixing his gaze toward the far west, in the direction of his native land of Thessaly, and longing for the river Sperkheios that flows through that distant land: it was to the waters of that river, which he will never live to see again, that he had hoped to sacrifice his long hair after he came of age and was ready to cut it (23.142-153). But now Achilles cuts off his long hair prematurely and unseasonally as he stands there at the Asiatic promontory that will become the setting for the tumulus that houses his body (23.142). [See also GN HPC 166 = II§85.] And now the Achaean comrades of Achilles follow his example and likewise cut off their hair (23.135-136). So also in the wording that I have just highlighted from the Hērōikos of Philostratus, we see a reference to this ritual of coming of age: now that Achilles is dead, adult males of the future will be wearing their hair short, no longer long. It is as if all the ‘sons of the Achaeans’ were now ready to shift from pre-adult to adult status - now that Achilles is dead and buried. So, now, the huies Akhaiōn, ‘sons of the Achaeans’, as the Achaean warriors are regularly called in the Iliad (1.162 and so on) have reached a post-heroic maturity that inaugurates a post-heroic age.

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comment on the identification of Patroklos with Achilles

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

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analysis of the functional overlap between hiketēs and xeinos, argument that in Homer hiketēs still means ‘he who comes, arrives’ and that the only difference between xeinos and hiketēs de toi eukhomai einai is that the speaker of the second has yet to receive hospitality

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

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analysis of the development of Greek posis compared with Vedic pati-

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analysis of phanai as contrasting with and substituting for eukhomai, in the context of analyzing the meaning of eukhesthai in genos eukhesthai einai formulas

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

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interpretation of kathaptein as “get hold of, grab” and so “restrain”

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analysis of the formulas with the three places where eukhesthai + dative has the shape eukh ˘ ˘ – [=short short long], with this verse showing a process analogous to what we see in I.11.736

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in a list of examples of eukhesthai + dative (formulas which report prayers)

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in a list of examples of eukhesthai + dative (formulas which report prayers)

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analysis of the formulas with the three places where eukhesthai + dative has the shape eukh ˘ ˘ – [=short short long], with this verse showing a process analogous to what we see in I.11.736

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Mary Ebbott

This passage describing the coordinated fighting method of the half-brothers Ajax and Teucer may depict a very old style of battle, and connects the identities of the two brothers in an ancient, perhaps even Indo-European, mythic way (Ebbott 2003:41–44). The brief simile comparing Teucer running behind Ajax’s shield in between shots to a child hiding behind his mother (Odyssey 8.271) creates several powerful associations. Teucer’s illegitimacy is highlighted by his comparison to the child, since a “bastard” (nothos) could be imagined as a perpetual child in Greek myth and poetry (Ebbott 2003:31–40). The comparison of Ajax to the mother, moreover, highlights the emotional bonds between warriors: mother similes in the Iliad signify the care, love, and protection that comrades on the battlefield extend to one another (Casey and Ebbott 2012).

\r\n\r\nReferences

\r\nDué, C., and Ebbott, M. 2012. “Mothers-in-Arms: soldiers’ emotional bonds and Homeric similes.” War, Literature, and the Arts. 24.

\r\nEbbott, M. 2003. Imagining Illegitimacy in Ancient Greek Literature. Lanham, MD.

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Olga Levaniouk

This is the first occurrence of Penelope's name in the Odyssey. Πηνελόπεια is a nom parlant and signals Penelope's belonging to a thematically related group of women in myth. The name was perceived as significant in antiquity and a linguistically unobjectionable derivation from the name of a bird, πηνέλοψ, was known to Didymus (as attested by Eustathius' Commentarii ad Homeri Odysseam 1.65.36). The etymology of the word πηνέλοψ itself is obscure beyond the second part of the compound, derived from the h₃ek^ṷ root and meaning "looking (like)" (Chantraine 2009, s.v. ὄπωπα, πηνέλοψ). Nevertheless, the relevance of the penelops to Penelope can be ascertained. The penelops appears to be a bird similar to a halcyon. According to Aristotle Historia Animalium (593b23) the penelops is a small waterbird and lives at sea. Penelopes are mentioned together with halcyons in Aristophanes Birds 298 and Ibycus fr. 317a PMG. In the latter fragment, penelopes are described as ποικίλαι (2), αἰολόδειροι (2), and possibly also ἁλιπορφυρίδες (3), if Schneidewin's reconstruction is correct (Schneidewin 1833.128-131). Penelopes are said to be ποικιλόδειροι and τανυσίπτεροι in Alcaeus 345 L-P.2. Of these epithets the penelops shares with the halcyon ποικίλος ‘of varied color’ and τανυσίπτερος ‘long-winged’. If ἁλιπορφυρίδες is correctly restored, then this too allies the penelops to the halcyon, which is described by the rare epithet ἁλιπόρφυρος in Alcman 26 PMG.4. The penelops in Alcaeus 345 L-P. and the halcyon in Alcman 26 PMG are represented as (respectively) flying over the waves and coming from Okeanos. In poetry and myth, the (female) halcyon characteristically faithful to her mate, laments when the mate is lost, and is tied to the solar symbolism of death and rebirth (e.g. Alcman 26 PMG, Simonides 508 PMG, Aristotle, Historia Animalium 8.542b4, Dionysius, De Avibus 2.7, Plutarch On the Intelligence of Animals * 983a). These features are shared by a mythological character whose name derives from the name of the bird, Alkyone, the wife of Keyx (Hesiod, fr. 10a.94-96 M, fr. 10d MW, Ovid, Metamorphoses 11.410-748, Ps.-Apollodorus 1.7.4). Alkyone is a woman dominated by faithfulness to her husband, for whom she laments and finally dies when he departs on a long sea voyage and does not return. Just as Penelope's story is morphologically similar to that of Alkyone, so are the two birds that give them their names. Being similar to the halcyon, the penelops is a fitting match for Penelope, among whose dominant features are faithfulness to her husband and lament for him while he is absent. An argument has also been made that Penelope takes part in the operation of the overarching solar metaphor in the Odyssey (Levaniouk 2011:298-312). The similarities between the two myths parallel those between the two bird-named women and also those between the two birds. The connections appear to be systemic rather than accidental. Penelope and Alkyone have further points of contact with yet another woman with a bird's name, Aedon the nightingale, to whom Penelope compares herself in Odyssey 19.518. Penelope and Alkyone are closer to each other than to Aedon, though all three share key features, the most important being their laments. In the same way, penelops and halcyon are more similar to each other than to the nightingale, but both have associations with the latter. Both ποικιλόδειρος and αἰολόδειρος (the epithets of the penelops in Alcaeus and Ibycus respectively) are epithets of the nightingale (Hesiod Works and Days 203; Nonnus Dionysiaca 26.211). In Ibycus’ fragment penelopes and halcyons are represented as sitting πετάλοισιν ἐπ' ἀκροτάτοις ‘on the topmost leaves’, literally ‘petals’, a topos about the nightingale (Odyssey xix 520, Homeric Hymn to Pan 17-18, Anthologia Palatina 12.2.3, 12.136.3). Since the halcyon's voice is described in the same terms as that of the nightingale and since, like the nightingale, the halcyon is imagined as a woman transformed into a bird and forever lamenting, it is likely that the penelops too is a bird of lament similar to the nightingale and the halcyon and that, as with the nightingale (Nagy 196:59n.1), the compounds with -δειρος applied to it (ποικιλόδειρος and αἰολόδειρος) signify the quality of its voice rather than the color of its neck. For a fuller discussion of the name's significance see Levaniouk 2011:287-318.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nReferences\r\n\r\nChantraine, P. 2009. Dictionaire etymologique de la langue grecque. Histoire des mots. Paris.\r\n\r\nLevaniouk, O. 2011. The Eve of the Festival. Cambridge, MA.\r\n\r\nNagy, G. 1996. Poetry as Performance: Homer and beyond. Cambridge.\r\n\r\nSchneidewin, F. 1833. Ibyci Rhegini Carminum Reliquiae, Göttingen.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n

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Homer Odyssey 13

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BOOK XIII.

Alcinoüs

'Great Jove the Father first' (he cried) 'implore;

'Then send the stranger to his native shore.'

Neptune

'This then I doom: to fix the gallant ship

'A mark of vengeance on the sable deep;

'To warn the thoughtless self-confiding train,

'No more unlicens'd thus to brave the main.
175

'Full in their port a shady hill shall rise,

'If such thy will.'—' We will it,' Jove replies.

Jove

'E'en when with transport, blackening all the strand,

'The swarming people hail their ship to land,

'Fix her for ever, a memorial stone:
180

'Still let her seem to sail, and seem alone.

'The trembling crowds shall see the sudden shade

'Of whelming mountains overhang their head!'

Minerva

Thus then Minerva: 'From that anxious breast
415

'Dismiss those cares, and leave to heaven the rest.

'Our task be now thy treasur'd stores to save,

'Deep in the close recesses of the cave:

'Then future means consult.'

Ulysses

'Must he too suffer? he, O goddess! bear
480

'Of wanderings and of woes a wretched share?

'Through the wild ocean plough the dangerous way,

'And leave his fortunes and his house a prey?

'Why would'st not thou, O all-enlighten'd mind!

'Inform him certain, and protect him, kind?'
485

Current edition Experimental

Rhapsody 13

BOOK ΧΙΙΙ.

ODYSSEY.

THE THIRTEENTH BOOK OF HOMER'S ODYSSEYS.

THE ARGUMENT.

ANOTHER ARGUMENT.

THE THIRTEENTH BOOK OF HOMER'S ODYSSEY.

ARGUMENT OF THE THIRTEENTH BOOK.

ODYSSEY BOOK XIII

PATTEN WILSON
THE ARRIVAL AT ITHACA

Notes on the current edition

New Alexandria Commentaries

menos ‘mental power’

Footnotes

Bibliography

Stable identifiers

Search the Perseus Catalog for:

Search the Perseus Catalog for:

BOOK XIII.

Alcinoüs 'Great Jove the Father first' (he cried) 'implore; 'Then send the stranger to his native shore.'

Neptune 'This then I doom: to fix the gallant ship 'A mark of vengeance on the sable deep; 'To warn the thoughtless self-confiding train, 'No more unlicens'd thus to brave the main. 175 'Full in their port a shady hill shall rise, 'If such thy will.'—' We will it,' Jove replies.

Jove 'E'en when with transport, blackening all the strand, 'The swarming people hail their ship to land, 'Fix her for ever, a memorial stone: 180 'Still let her seem to sail, and seem alone. 'The trembling crowds shall see the sudden shade 'Of whelming mountains overhang their head!'

Minerva Thus then Minerva: 'From that anxious breast 415 'Dismiss those cares, and leave to heaven the rest. 'Our task be now thy treasur'd stores to save, 'Deep in the close recesses of the cave: 'Then future means consult.'

Ulysses 'Must he too suffer? he, O goddess! bear 480 'Of wanderings and of woes a wretched share? 'Through the wild ocean plough the dangerous way, 'And leave his fortunes and his house a prey? 'Why would'st not thou, O all-enlighten'd mind! 'Inform him certain, and protect him, kind?' 485

Current edition Experimental

Rhapsody 13

BOOK ΧΙΙΙ.

ODYSSEY.

THE THIRTEENTH BOOK OF HOMER'S ODYSSEYS.

THE ARGUMENT.

ANOTHER ARGUMENT.

THE THIRTEENTH BOOK OF HOMER'S ODYSSEY.

ARGUMENT OF THE THIRTEENTH BOOK.

ODYSSEY BOOK XIII

PATTEN WILSON THE ARRIVAL AT ITHACA

Notes on the current edition

New Alexandria Commentaries

menos ‘mental power’

Footnotes

Bibliography

Stable identifiers

Alcinoüs

'Great Jove the Father first' (he cried) 'implore;

'Then send the stranger to his native shore.'

Neptune

'This then I doom: to fix the gallant ship

'A mark of vengeance on the sable deep;

'To warn the thoughtless self-confiding train,

'No more unlicens'd thus to brave the main.
175

'Full in their port a shady hill shall rise,

'If such thy will.'—' We will it,' Jove replies.

Jove

'E'en when with transport, blackening all the strand,

'The swarming people hail their ship to land,

'Fix her for ever, a memorial stone:
180

'Still let her seem to sail, and seem alone.

'The trembling crowds shall see the sudden shade

'Of whelming mountains overhang their head!'

Minerva

Thus then Minerva: 'From that anxious breast
415

'Dismiss those cares, and leave to heaven the rest.

'Our task be now thy treasur'd stores to save,

'Deep in the close recesses of the cave:

'Then future means consult.'

Ulysses

'Must he too suffer? he, O goddess! bear
480

'Of wanderings and of woes a wretched share?

'Through the wild ocean plough the dangerous way,

'And leave his fortunes and his house a prey?

'Why would'st not thou, O all-enlighten'd mind!

'Inform him certain, and protect him, kind?'
485

PATTEN WILSON
THE ARRIVAL AT ITHACA