Analyze the mythological story of odysseus from the lense of Propp’s Morphology

Analyze the mythological story of odysseus from the lense of Propp’s Morphology of a Folk Tale. Give a description of this morphology and the story of odysseus. Use directly quotes evidence ffrom the text.
Book source:
We have analyzed myths from different perspectives, such as Burkert’s theory, a Freudian- Jungian approach, Propp’s Morphology of a Folk Tale (formalism/structuralism), Myth and Ritual, and even allegorical interpretations. Choose one or two myths among the ones we studied and analyze them through ONE of those “lenses”.
For example, in Burkert’s theory, a myth serves to legitimize social values and norms (such as the practice of xenia). What social norm(s) do those myths legitimize?
Be sure to spell out your reasoning very carefully. The best answers to this question will move from the evidence to your conclusion with careful attention to detail. Avoid generalizations.
Rubric 
Your essay should be around 2,000 word long.
Be sure that you make clear what pieces of information (in the case of this class, from the texts we have read and/or from the images we have seen in class) relate to the question you are discussing. Generalizations that are not anchored in specific, concrete evidence do not display your knowledge of the material; they can also run the risk of being contradicted by some of our material.
Be sure that you make clear the reasoning that leads your argument from the evidence to your conclusion. Even very interesting ideas cannot be persuasive if the reader cannot see why they should be valid.
• CHAPTER 22 •
The Return of Odysseus
But I imagine that the story of Odysseus is greater
than what he actually did, through the sweetness of Homer’s verse;
for by his winged song he gives to lies a certain dignity,
and his poetic craft deceives us, leading us astray by myths.
PINDAR, Nemean 7.20–23
The poetic genius Homer inherited a story about how Odysseus, one of the principal fighters at Troy, ran into great trouble trying to get home. After twenty years he returned, only to find his son’s life threatened, his father living like a pauper, and his wife besieged in her own house by lascivious, greedy, and politically ambitious men. Without allies, except experience and high intelligence, Odysseus appeared in disguise among his wife’s suitors and, on a feast day of Apollo, he killed them all in cold blood. Of this wonderful gory story of revenge Homer made a parable of the human journey from life into death and return again to life.
In ancient times the Iliad was compared to tragedy because of its somber themes and deep personal conflict; the Odyssey, by contrast, was compared with comedy because (like the folktales whose patterns and symbols Homer borrows) it has a happy ending in which the family is reunited and the promise of the future is affirmed. The Odyssey is a towering artistic achievement, admired and still imitated by artists today, one of the most influential myths in the Western world.
Odysseus’ Journey from Troy
The Cicones and the Lotus Eaters
In the Odyssey, Odysseus recounts his adventures at a banquet on the island of Phaeacia in the court of King Alcinoüs (al-sin-o-us), where Odysseus came ashore after shipwreck in a violent storm. He has been away from home twenty years: ten at Troy, three lost at sea, and seven on the island of the mysterious nymph Calypso (“concealer”). Odysseus’ first-person narrative of his travels occupies one-sixth of Homer’s 12,000-line poem, the Odyssey.
PERSPECTIVE 22.1 Ulysses
The figure of Odysseus, the Roman Ulysses, has long fascinated the West. Although he takes on many meanings, he is always either glorified as the seeker of truth, the restless clever intelligence penetrating the secrets of the world, or damned as the treacherous deceiver, the exalter of intellect above the demands of the heart. Homer’s Odysseus belongs to the first category, but the anti-Odysseus tradition appears as early as Sophocles’ play Philoctetes (409 BC) and is refined by Euripides, Vergil, and others.
The Romans especially developed the tradition hostile to Odysseus because they claimed Aeneas, a Trojan, as their founder. In his Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) follows the Roman tradition, for he saw legitimate political power in his own world as descending from the Roman state, said to inherit Trojan power (according to the myth). Dante’s is the first important portrayal of Odysseus in a nonclassical language.
In the twenty-sixth canto of the Inferno, the first of three parts of the Divine Comedy, Dante stands with his guide, Vergil, and looks down in the pit reserved for deceitful counselors. Dante and Vergil are near Hell’s deepest caverns and beneath them see flames that look like fireflies in the darkness. Vergil explains that one flame, split at the top, is Ulysses, crafty inventor of the Trojan Horse, who through guile sneaked into Troy (with Diomedes) and stole the protecting statue of Athena, the Palladium.
Ulysses is condemned to Hell because of his successful stratagems against the Roman’s Trojan forebears, but Dante also condemns him for the restlessness of his intellect and his search for truth, a sinful exploration that can lead only to destruction. The flame speaks and tells a tale never told in the ancient world: how Odysseus never reached home, but was lost, still searching, in the high seas beyond the Pillars of Heracles (= Strait of Gibraltar). The voice is prophetic, foretelling the age of discovery when restless Europeans, cultural descendants of Greece and Rome and dependent on ancient Greek geographers, crossed the Atlantic Ocean and sailed around Africa to discover new worlds. Although building his portrait of Ulysses on that of the Roman poet Vergil, Dante rediscovered the Greek Odysseus who scorns comfort to explore the unknown.
The pro-Odysseus tradition reappears in “Ulysses” of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), the most famous English poet of the Victorian age, who glorifies the very qualities that Dante condemns. The poem is set on Ithaca. Ulysses has grown old, but he is determined to leave home again in pursuit of fresh adventure:
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees …
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die …
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”
A sympathetic perception also underlies the most celebrated recasting of Odysseus in the twentieth century in James Joyce’s (1882–1941) novel Ulysses (1922). In this long and difficult work (768 pages), really a satire, Ulysses appears as Leopold Bloom, an Irish Jew, forever the outsider, who makes a modest living selling advertising for a newspaper. The book describes his wanderings on a single day through the streets of Dublin, whose humdrum everyday life replaces the exotic lands of Homer’s story. Telemachus is replaced by Stephen Dedalus, whose name combines that of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, and that of Daedalus, the master artist of Athens.
Stephen Dedalus is a world-weary dropout whose mind is preoccupied with the relationship between Hamlet and his father (just as Homer’s Telemachus goes in quest of his father). The princess Nausicaä, whom Homer’s Odysseus compared to Artemis in beauty, is a crippled shop-girl who inspires Leopold Bloom to masturbate in his pants as he watches her on the beach. Penelopê, Leopold’s wife, Molly, is conducting a torrid affair with Blazes Boylan (= the suitors), who in this case has succeeded in seducing the lady of the house. Although Leopold knows about her tryst on that afternoon, he can think of no way to prevent it. Yet Molly in her own way, in her heart, is truly like Penelopê, ever faithful to her beloved “Poldy.”
When Odysseus and his twelve ships leave Troy, they stop at Ismarus in Thrace, land of the Cicones (sik-o-nēz), and sack the city. Against the advice of their commander, they pause to devour the stolen sheep, cattle, and wine. On the next morning the neighboring Cicones attack, killing six men from every ship (each ship seems to have had a crew of fifty).
The remaining Greeks escape by sea but are soon caught in a storm off the southern coast of the Peloponnesus. Violent winds blow them out of the everyday world into the mythical land of the Lotus Eaters. The local inhabitants consume a drug that makes men forgetful of their home and their purpose:
[94] Once any of them had tasted the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus,
95 he lost his desire to return, to boast of his glorious exploits.
All they wished was to stay in the land of the eaters of lotus,
drowsily nibbling the fruit, and forgetting their hopes of return.
Ignoring their tears, I frog-marched them back at once to the vessels,
to lash them under the thwarts in the bilge of the hollow ships.
100 Then I ordered the rest of my crew, shipmates sober and trusty,
to embark in the ships right away, lest, after tasting the lotus
some of them might be tempted to give up all hope of return.
Quickly they hurried aboard and took their place on the benches.
Swinging together they caught at the foaming sea with their oars.
HOMER, Odyssey 9.94–104
Polyphemus
At sea again, the Greeks come to the land of the Cyclopes (“round-eyes”) and the cave of the Cyclops Polyphemus (“much-renowned”). This story, one of the most famous in the world, surely had an independent existence before Homer adapted it to the story of Odysseus. From the evidence of art, the story seems to have been excerpted often from the longer poem for separate performance, once it was written down in the eighth century BC:
[105]     Forward we sailed, regretful of all we were leaving behind.
In time we came to the land of the arrogant lawless Cyclopes,
who sow no crops with their hands, nor harvest the ripened grain,
but entrust all that to heaven; so all their needs are supplied—
wheat and barley and vines which bear them wine in abundance,
110 fostered by Zeus’s rain, without labor of seedtime or harvest.
They never unite in assembly for common decisions or laws,
but live in echoing caves on the highest peaks of the mountains,
alone, each ruling his wife and children, ignoring all others.
A little outside a harbor along the Cyclopean coastline
115 stretches a wooded island, a breeding place for wild goats,
untroubled by wandering humans or hunters in search of game.
No danger ever concerns them as they wander over the hillsides,
no goat pens cumber the island, no plowland limits their range.
No humans inhabit the region, unplowed and fallow forever,
120unharvested through the ages, a pasture for bleating goats.
For Cyclopes know nothing of ships with red-painted gunwales.
They have no shipwrights to build vessels of well-fitted benches
to sail to the cities of men and return with whatever they lack—
crossing the sea in their vessels in search of something to trade.
125 Traders, indeed, might make of the island a prosperous city,
a source of all that is good with nothing to threaten its safety.
By the coast of the foaming sea lie rich and well-watered meadows
that, planted with grapes, would yield almost perpetual vintage.
Plowmen could easily harvest abundant crops in their season
130 from the island’s soil, so easy to harrow, so deep and so fertile.
The harbor, moreover, is perfect; a ship has no need of an anchor
or hawsers at either end, to hold her fast in her place.
Just beach her and leave her alone for as long a time as you fancy
till the men are ready to sail and following breezes are rising.
135 Abundant fresh water runs from springs at the head of the harbor,
rising deep in a cave whose mouth is surrounded by poplars.
Some god was surely the pilot who guided us into the harbor
through the dark of night, for the dawn had not begun to appear.
Deep fog enveloped the ships, no moon was shining in heaven.
140 Clouds had covered her face. No one saw the loom of the island,
nor did we see the long crests of the breakers rolling ashore
till our vessels had already grounded and run on the sandy beach.
We jumped out into the water, removed the gear from the vessels,
then pulled our ships to safety and clambered up on the seashore
145 where we sank into deepest slumber to wait for the breaking of dawn.
Rose-fingered dawn at last revealed the coming of morning.
Gaping about in surprise, we wandered all over the island
whose nymphs, the daughters of Zeus, the god adorned with the aegis.
roused up herds of wild goats as breakfast for all my comrades.
150 From the ships we took curved bows and deeply socketed lances,
split ourselves into three groups, and then set off to the hunt.
The gods gave us wonderful luck. Nine goats were allotted to each
of the dozen ships of my fleet, and ten to me as commander.
So we spent the whole day till the sun was setting at evening,
155 feasting on endless fresh meat washed down with mellow old wine.
For the wine in our ships as yet was not completely exhausted,
wine that was part of our loot from the holy Ciconian city.
This we had poured in great jars and distributed plenty to each.
All that day we watched the land of the nearby Cyclopes,
160 seeing their smoke and hearing the sound of men and their flocks.
But after the sun had set and darkness came over the heavens,
we finally laid ourselves down to sleep by the edge of the water.
Rose-fingered dawn at last revealed the coming of morning.
I rose to my feet, called the men, and issued them these as orders:
165     “My comrades, stay here a bit while I and the crew of my vessel
go out to spy on the natives, what sort of people they are.
Uncivilized, maybe, and savage, having no vestige of honor,
or possibly kindly to strangers with minds inspired by heaven.”
At this I climbed in my ship and ordered my comrades to follow,
170 to cast off the hawsers, board, and seat themselves at the oars.
Quickly they hurried aboard and took their place on the benches.
Swinging together they caught at the foaming sea with their oars.
When we got to the nearby mainland, we could see the mouth of a cavern
down by the edge of the sea, high-vaulted, shaded by laurels,
175 where sheep and goats liked to sleep. Its front was a sort of corral,
fashioned of rough quarried stones piled up as high as the roof,
braced by long slender firs and trunks of high-foliaged oak trees.
Inside, there slept by himself a man of incredible stature,
a hermit, watching his sheep, avoiding the rest of his fellows,
180 in solitude making up fantasy, dreaming his god-accursed dreams.
His frame was enormous, atrocious, unlike that of bread-eating humans.
Rather, he looked like a craggy spur of a desolate mountain,
standing alone and apart, its trees all gnarled and contorted.
The rest of my loyal crew I told to remain with the vessel
185 and to pull it up on the beach while I myself with a dozen,
the best of the men, set out. With me I carried a goatskin
of wine, black, potent, and sweet, which Maron, son of Euanthes,
priest of Ismarean Apollo,° gave me when we protected
him with his wife and son, out of reverence for Apollo.
190 For Maron lived in a tree-studded meadow, the property of the god.
He had given magnificent gifts—seven talents of workable gold
and a bowl of the purest silver. As crown to this he included
fully a dozen double-eared jars, into which he decanted
a sweet and powerful wine, a drink to delight the immortals.
195 Nobody knew it existed, not even the slaves of the household.
Maron alone, his wife, and his stewardess knew of the secret.
Whenever he drank of the crimson wine with a heart sweet as honey,
he filled one cup and then added full twenty measures of water.°
At once the bowl breathed out a bouquet of heavenly fragrance,
200 a scent which I knew full well no man would dream of resisting.
With this I filled up a wineskin and hid it all in a knapsack,
for deep in my heart I suspected I soon would encounter a being
armed with invincible strength, but savage, barbaric, and lawless.
We quickly got to the cave, but did not find its owner within it,
205for he was herding fat sheep and moving from pasture to pasture.
Into the cave we wandered and looked around in amazement:
baskets loaded with cheeses, pens crowded with kids and with lambs,
milling about, group by group, the oldest, middling, and weanlings;
containers—pans, bowls, and buckets—carefully fashioned for milking.
210 Uneasily then my companions began to urge me, suggesting
that we borrow a few of the cheeses and maybe a kid or a lamb,
driving them out from the sheepfolds. Then, hurrying back to the ship
we should depart at once and set off on the briny dark waters.
But I refused their advice (later on, how I wished I had listened!),
215 for I wanted to see the owner and see what gifts he might offer.°
(In fact, when he did appear, he was not at all nice to my comrades.)
So we sat inside by a fire and nibbled bits of the cheeses,
offering some to the gods, while we waited for him to come back.
At last he returned from the pasture with a heavy load of dry wood
220 to give him light for his supper. He threw this down on the floor
inside the cave with a crash that frightened us off to a corner
while he himself went out, to return with the ewes and the nannies,
leaving the rams and the billies corralled outside in the forecourt.
He then picked up a great rock and set it to serve as a barrier.
225 Twenty-two four-wheeled wagons could not shift it up from its threshold,
yet he easily moved this towering rock to block up the doorway.
Then down he sat to milk the ewes and the bleating nannies,
setting their young under each, with everything neat and in order.
Half the white milk he collected to curdle in wickerwork baskets;
230 the rest he poured into bowls, to take and drink for his supper.
He busied himself at his task, but when at last he was finished
he blew up his fire, looked around, saw us, and thus he addressed us:
“Gentlemen, who might you be? Whence did you voyage the waters?
Are you come hither to trade, or are you wandering at random
235 like pirates over the sea, cruising now this way, now that,
forever risking your lives and bringing destruction to others?”
So he inquired and we felt our poor hearts shatter within us,
hearing his thundering voice and seeing the mass of his body.
Yet I managed to answer his question in these diplomatic words:
240     “We are Achaeans, returning home from our warfare at Troy.
Winds of all sorts have scattered and driven us over the surges,
some in the way they would go, but us by a far different journey.
No doubt the inscrutable mind of Zeus has determined our fortune.
Know you that we are the people of Atreus’ son, Agamemnon,
245 whose fame is the greatest of all men living under the heaven
for the mighty city he sacked, the many peoples he conquered.
For our part, now we have met you, we beg you for only one thing:
Grant us a kindly reception with a trifle to bid us good-bye,
the usual gift to a stranger, or show due respect to the gods.
250 Suppliants we kneel before you, whom Zeus, defender of strangers,
defends as fully as those to whom honor is owed to as guests.”
From deep in his evil heart the Cyclops gave me his answer:
“Stranger, you really are stupid, or else live a long way off,
if you warn me to dread the gods or fear that they may be offended.
255 We Cyclopes pay no attention to Zeus or the other immortals
because we are stronger by far. And if a whim should possess me,
my fear of the anger of Zeus would not save you or your friends.
But tell me, where did you moor your stout and well-founded ship,
close by, or off at a distance? I really would like to know.”
260 His clumsy attempt to trap me did not deceive my astuteness.
I innocently gave him an answer in lying treacherous words:
“Poseidon, Shaker of Earth, has smashed my ship on a reef
as a rising wind drove her close to a point we wanted to weather.
Only these men and I survived her utter destruction.”
265 Even this tale did not soften the flinty heart of the Cyclops.
Springing erect, he grabbed with his hands, caught two of my sailors,
and smashed them down on the rock as you kill a superfluous puppy.
Their brains burst out from their skulls and ran all over the floor.
He twisted one limb from another (his way of preparing his supper),
270 and, crunching them down like a wildcat, left never a morsel uneaten,
not entrails or muscle, not even the bones and their succulent marrow.
What could we do but rage as we lifted our hands to the heavens
while watching this horrible crime? Despair crushed all other emotion.
When the Cyclops finally ended stuffing his monstrous great belly
275 with swallows of human flesh, washed down with milk by the bucket,
he stretched himself out in his cave, in the very midst of the sheep.
For a moment I planned to approach, to draw the sword by my side,
to feel for the lethal spot where the diaphragm covers the liver
and stab him under the chest. But second thought gave me pause:
280 We too would die in the cave and suffer a horrible ending,
for I saw no way human hands could budge his rock from the doorway.
So all night long we lay groaning and waiting for dawn to appear.
Rose-fingered dawn at last revealed the coming of morning.
The Cyclops rekindled the fire and milked his magnificent sheep
285 in smooth and efficient fashion, then set each lamb to its mother.
Next, this duty completed, he grabbed two more of my comrades
to gobble them up for his breakfast. Then he easily lifted the stone,
drove his fat sheep outdoors, and put back the boulder behind them,
just as one does when replacing the lid on a quiver of arrows,
290and with many a merry whistle drove off his flock to the mountains.
There I was, left to brood and to fashion a terrible vengeance,
hoping Athena would grant my prayers and an opportune moment.
This plan suggested itself to my heart as by far most effective:
The Cyclops had cut a bludgeon of olive, still pliant and green,
295 and left it to dry by the pens. To us it looked fully as heavy
as the mast of a twenty-oared ship, black-sided, broad in the beam,
plodding its way through the surge, heavily loaded with cargo;
such was its length to our eyes, such was its cumbersome thickness.
From this I chopped off a piece, a length of fully a fathom,
300 and handed it on to my comrades to smooth it and taper it down.
They made the shaft of the weapon all smooth and easy to handle
while I first pointed the tip, then hardened it well in the fire.
This done, I carefully hid it by burying it under a dungheap,
plenty of which, of course, was everywhere piled in the cavern.
305 Lastly, I told the men to draw lots to decide who should join me
in the perilous job of lifting and twisting the ponderous timber
around in the Cyclops’ eyeball when he drifted off to sweet dreams.
Four volunteers they chose, and I added myself to the number.
At evening he reappeared, his wooly sheep going before him.
310 He drove the fat creatures onward into the depths of the cavern,
this time not leaving a one outside in the spacious forecourt.
Perhaps some deity moved him, or perhaps he suspected the truth.
Once more he lifted the boulder and set it over the doorway,
then sat him down to his milking of bleating nannies and ewes
315 in smooth and efficient fashion, then set each lamb to its mother.
Next, this duty completed, he seized two more of my comrades
and devoured them for his supper. At last I spoke to the Cyclops,
standing beside him and holding a large bowl of strong black wine:
“Cyclops, drink up,” said I, “now your cannibal orgy is over,
320 so you may learn what sort of drink we carried as cargo.
See, I have brought you a drop. I hope you will show me your mercy
and send me back to my home, giving up your boorish behavior
that I really can stand no more. How can you dream for a minute
that anyone ever will come, from any nation of mortals,
325 if they hear the way you have acted and the nasty way you behave?”
At that he reached for the bowl and drained it all at a gulp.
The sweet wine delighted his heart, and thus he addressed me again:
“Give me another big drink. But tell me, what is your name?
I shall certainly give you a present, one you will surely enjoy.
330 Oh yes, our land, rich in grapes, yields us Cyclopes a vintage
good in its way, and fostered by showers sent us by Zeus.
But that with which you have plied me is truly a fountain of nectar!”
So he exclaimed, and I poured him a sparkling bumper of wine.
Three times I offered him more; three times he drank in his folly.
335 At last, when the fumes had addled the brain and wits of the Cyclops,
I spoke to him once again with words deceitful of purpose:
“Cyclops, a moment ago you asked me to tell you my name.
I shall tell you, if you in return give me the present you promised.
‘Nobody’ is my name, for my dear mother and father
340 gave me this name at my birth, and since then all my companions.”
These were my words, and this the reply of his arrogant heart:
“ ‘Nobody,’ then, will be last, after all his friends, to be eaten;
before him, the rest will go down. That will be my farewell gift!”°
Collapsing, he sprawled on his back, his head drooping off to one side,
345 and slumber, who conquers all mortals, received him into its charge.
The wine and the half-chewed flesh of humans spewed from his gullet,
vomited up by the drunkard. Then I thrust the stake in the embers
and, while it heated, inspired the hearts of all my companions,
hoping that no one would fail me or flinch in a spasm of terror.
350 Green though it was, the olive-wood stake was about to catch fire
and shone with a red-hot glare. Approaching, I lifted it out.
The others stood by me to help, and some god fired their courage.
They picked up the olive-wood log, red-hot and sharp at the tip,
and swung it into his eye. Against it I threw my whole weight
355 and spun it around, like a shipwright drilling a hole in a timber:
He guides the drill, while his helpers, standing on either side,
saw the thong back and forth as the drill° sinks deeper and deeper.
So I and my men rotated the stake in the eye of the Cyclops. [Figure 22.1]
FIGURE 22.1. The blinding of Polyphemus, on a large Attic jug from Eleusis, c. 670 BC (the jar was used to bury a child). Odysseus and two companions, lifting the fire-hardened stake on their shoulders, blind Polyphemus. In this early mythic representation, the artist has experimented by painting Odysseus white, to distinguish him from the other figures; white usually meant that the figure was female. Note the cup in Polyphemus’ hand, referring to the detail that Odysseus first got him drunk. (Archaeological Museum, Eleusis)
Hissing, his blood spurted out, and the heat singed eyelid and brow.
360 The eyeball, scorched to its roots, crackled and boiled in the fire.
As when a blacksmith is quenching a big bronze° adze or an ax-head,
he plunges it into cold water which makes it sizzle and scream,
but gives the temper required, the strength and toughness of iron—
just so his eyeball squealed as the stake of olive-wood entered
365He let out a horrible cry, which the rocky cavern reechoed,
scaring us back in terror. He plucked at the blood-smeared stake,
wrenched it out from his eye, and in torment hurled it away.
He shouted to other Cyclopes, who lived in the nearby caves
dotted about the wind-blown hillsides, to come to his rescue.
370 Hearing his call, they came at a run from every direction,
and standing before his cave, they asked him what was the matter:
“What troubles you so, Polyphemus, making you call us to help
and rousing us from our slumber, so late in the god-given night?
Perhaps some rascally mortal is trying to rustle your sheep,
375 or is somebody bent on your murder by treachery or brute force?”
The mighty Polyphemus replied from the mouth of his cave:
“Nobody wants to kill me by treachery, not by brute force!”
To this the others replied in words aimed right at the mark:
“If nobody’s using force on a man alone and defenseless,
380 you must have an inescapable sickness, sent by great Zeus.
The best thing for you to do is to pray to your father Poseidon.”
With this retort they departed. I laughed in my inmost heart,
gloating over my shrewdness and seeing them tricked by my name.
The Cyclops groaned in his pain and suffered spasms of torture.
385 Groping about with his hands, he lifted the rock from the doorway,
meanwhile feeling around as he sat there at the entrance,
expecting to catch whoever might try to get out with the sheep,
and even hoping that I might be foolish enough to attempt it.
But I was pondering deeply, to make things turn out for the best,
390 and to find some way to avoid disaster for me and my comrades.
In this matter of life and death, in the face of imminent peril,
this was the method that seemed the best of all possible courses:
The cave held plenty of well-fed rams with thick shaggy fleeces
(big ones, handsome, all covered with heavy dark-colored wool),
395 which I quietly tied in threes with pliant shoots of the willow
where the monster Cyclops slept, planning his criminal horrors.
The rams in the middle each carried a man. The two on the outside
trotted along beside them and thus protected my comrades.
So three rams carried each man, but I myself was left over,
400 as also the noblest ram of the flock enclosed in the sheepfold.
Approaching the beast from behind and stretching under its belly,
I lay there, my hands holding tight to the animal’s glorious wool.
So we lay in discomfort and awaited the light of the dawning.
Rose-fingered dawn at last revealed the coming of morning.
405 The Cyclops drove all the males of the flock away to the pasture,
but the unmilked females remained, with udders swollen to bursting,
bleating in pain, in the cave. Tormented by horrible anguish,
their owner felt the back of each ram as it went out to pasture—
dumbo! he never suspected my men were lashed under their bellies.
410 Last of all the bellwether approached and was nearing the doorway,
slowed by the weight of his wool and of me, a man of resources.
Gently caressing its back, the mighty Polyphemus addressed it:
“My good old ram, how is it that you are last of my flock
to hurry out of the cavern? The others have never outstripped you
415 as you proudly galloped along, the first to taste of the grasses,
to get to the stream, and to hurry home to the fold in the evening.
But today you are last of all. Is it grief for your master’s eye,
which Nobody blinded, the scoundrel, he and his evil companions,
after getting me drunk? But I tell you, he hasn’t yet gotten away
420 from the death he deserves. How I wish that you could stand here beside me
and tell me in human speech how he managed to duck from my power!
I’d smash him down on the floor, his brains would spatter all over
in every part of the cave! And that would lighten the burden
of all the sorrow I feel, which that no-good Nobody caused me.”
425     With this he dismissed the ram to go free from the door and away.
As soon as the ram and I were far enough from the doorway,
I freed my hands from the wool and undid the bonds of my comrades.
Turning the fat and shambling sheep away from their pasture,
we drove them back to the ship and were greeted with great relief—
430 those of us who survived. For the rest they began to lament,
but sorrow I could not allow and shook my head at each mourner.
Instead, I told them to hurry and load the heavy-wooled sheep
down in the bilge of the ship’s timbers and set sail on the billowy ocean.
At once they hurried aboard and took their place on the benches.
435 Swinging together they caught at the foaming sea with their oars.
When we had gone as far as the sound of a man’s voice will carry,
I shouted back at the Cyclops in words of taunt and abuse:
“Cyclops, your luck was bad. No coward was he whose companions
you seized with violent hands in the hollow cave and devoured.
440 Your sin has found you out, your insolent treatment of strangers.
Unscrupulously you killed and ate them, right in your dwelling!
Revenge has fallen upon you from Zeus and the other immortals.”
So I jeered at the Cyclops, who raged even more in his heart.
He broke off the topmost peak of a mighty mountain nearby
445 and flung it out at the ship. Flying over, it landed beyond us.
The cresting sea swelled up where the rock fell into its waters
in a surge which hurtled our vessel headlong back to the shore,
a huge wave out of the deep, driving us in to destruction.
Hastily grabbing a spar, I reached it down to the bottom,
450 fended her off, and in silence signaled the oarsmen to heave,
to strain at the oars if they hoped to break away from the peril.
They fell to their oars and rowed, until, by churning the sea
we had opened a gap twice as wide as that we had earlier trusted.
Again I taunted the Cyclops, while my sailors tried to restrain me,
455 assailing me from all sides with clever attempts at persuasion:
“Why do you have to keep on infuriating this savage?
Just now he hurled that great rock beyond us out into the ocean,
washing us back to the shore, where we fully expected destruction.
If you had made the least sound, or if he had heard what you uttered,
460he would have smashed our bodies and ships into one bloody mess
with the toss of one jagged rock at that incredible distance.”
So they attempted in vain to persuade my imperious spirit.
Once more I called in an angry voice and showed my defiance:
“Cyclops, if ever a human asks how you came by your blindness,
465 or who it was that disfigured your eye, just give him the answer:
‘Odysseus put out my eye, Odysseus, sacker of cities,
the son of Laërtes, who dwells in Ithaca, lord of its palace.’”
Hearing, he gave a great moan and sadly made this reply:
“Alas, the words of a prophet have now returned to my mind.
470 There once was a seer among us, a prophet wise and sagacious,
Telemus, son of Eurymus, a man who excelled at divining,
grown old among the Cyclopes, for whom he practiced his science.
Long ago he assured me I was doomed to loss of my eyesight
at the hands of a certain Odysseus. This man, I assumed, would appear
475 big and impressive to look at, wearing the trappings of power.
But the man who put out my eye is little, feeble, and sluggish,
who could only do what he wanted by getting me drunk on his wine.
Come back to me then, Odysseus, so I can give you a present
fitting for your departure, by persuading the Shaker of Earth
480 to escort you off on your way and grant you a prosperous voyage.
For I am his son and Poseidon is proud that he is my father.
He himself, if he pleases, will escort you off on the journey,
not leaving the task to another, be it human or blessed immortal.”
He tried to wheedle me so, but I quickly gave him my answer:
485 “I wish I were able to rob you of life and send you to Hades!
Still, even the Shaker of Earth can never restore to you your vision.”
So I replied. The Cyclops then prayed to lordly Poseidon,
lifting his suppliant hands to the star-studded heaven above:
“Hear my prayer, Poseidon, thou dark-haired Shaker of Earth:
490 If I am truly your son, if you boast of being my father,
grant that the sacker of cities, Odysseus, son of Laërtes,
whose house is in Ithaca, never again may return to his home.
But if Fate ordains that he must revisit the land of his father,
that he look on his friends again and enter his well-built palace,
495 grant this: May he come as a beggar, a vagrant for long weary years,
bereft of his comrades’ lives, with no one left to support him;
may he come in a ship not his own, and find his household a chaos.”
Such was his prayer, and the dark-haired god approved his petition.
But the Cyclops seized on a rock, far bigger in size than before,
500 which he whirled up over his head, and exerting incredible force
he threw it a little behind the stern of the dark-sided vessel,
barely failing to reach the blade of the oar of the helmsman.
The cresting sea surged up where the rock fell into its waters,
making our dark ship yaw and plunge headlong right to the island.
505     We made our way to the shore, where our other well-fitted ships
lay drawn up all in a group with their worried crews sitting alongside,
always keeping a lookout and waiting till we should appear.
Arriving, we beached the vessel, and pulled her up on the sand.
We ourselves disembarked there by the side of the water,
510 brought the sheep of the Cyclops from out of the smooth-gliding vessel,
and divided them up so no one should leave without a fair share.
But to me as a special portion my well-armed comrades awarded
the noble ram who had brought me out of the cave of the Cyclops.
Of him I made an offering there on the shore of the ocean,
515 to dark-clouded Zeus, son of Cronus, ruler of all that has being,
the animal’s succulent thighs.° But Zeus ignored my offering
and schemed to destroy my well-fitted ships and trusty companions.
HOMER, Odyssey 9.105–555
Aeolus, the Laestrygonians, and Circê
Odysseus next tells how he came to the island of Aeolus (ē-o-lus), the wind-king (apparently unconnected with Aeolus, the ancestor of Jason), who spends his days dining with his six sons and six daughters, all married to one another. Aeolus feasts with Odysseus and his men and gives him a special gift in accordance with the customs of xenia: a sealed cowhide bag that contains the dangerous winds, which he warns him not to untie under any conditions (the motif of the folktale prohibition).
Favored by the good winds not enclosed in the bag, Odysseus and his men come so close to Ithaca that they can see men tending fires on the shore. In his exhaustion Odysseus falls asleep, and his men begin to murmur among themselves. Their commander probably has gold in the bag, they say, which he doubtless wants for himself. Greedily they untie the bag, the dangerous winds escape, and a storm catches the fleet. The Greeks find themselves back at the island of Aeolus. Observing that they must be bitterly hated by the gods to have suffered such a fate, Aeolus gruffly orders them away.
Next the Greeks come to the land of the Laestrygonians (les-tri-gōn-i-ans, perhaps “gnashers”). They park their ships in a long, narrow bay bordered by high cliffs and send out men to reconnoiter. The king’s daughter meets them and leads the advance party to her father, but the king promptly gobbles one down. The Laestrygonians, like the Cyclops, are cannibals!
Other Laestrygonians run in from far and wide, take up position on either side of the fjord, and smash the ships below with giant boulders. They harpoon the men wiggling in the water like eels, pull them out, and eat them alive. Everyone is killed and every ship destroyed—all except Odysseus and his lucky crew, who cleverly moored their vessel outside the entrance to the harbor.
On they sail and come to Aeaea, land of Circê (sir-sē, “hawk”), daughter of Helius the sun and sister of Aeëtes, Medea’s father. The island is heavily forested, surrounded by a mist so dense that one cannot see where the sun rises or sets. A wisp of smoke rises from the center of the island. Half the crewmembers go inland to investigate, while Odysseus remains by the ship. Soon a crewmember, Eurylochus, returns in a panic. They came to the house of a beautiful woman, he says, who sang a beautiful song while she wove. For some reason he, Eurylochus, hung back and watched as the others sat down to drink a potion the woman prepared. She touched them with her wand and instantly they turned into pigs (Figure 22.2).
FIGURE 22.2. Circê enchants the companions of Odysseus, Attic wine cup, c. 550 BC. Seductive Circê stands naked in the center, stirring a magic drink and offering it to Odysseus’ companions, already turning into animals—the one in front of Circê into a pig, the next to the right into a ram, and the third into a wolf. The figure behind Circê has the head of a boar. On the far left is a lion, beside whom Odysseus comes with sword drawn (but in the Odyssey they turn only into pigs). On the far right, one of the companions (Eurylochus) escapes. (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
Odysseus says he will take care of the matter and sets forth alone along the path. In the middle of the forest Hermes appears and gives Odysseus a magic herb called moly (mō-lē) with a black root and a brilliant white flower (perhaps a mandrake root). When Odysseus reaches the hut, animals—enchanted men, evidently—fawn upon him. He hears Circê singing from within. He enters her house and sits down at a table. She offers him a drink, but nothing happens when she touches him with her wand; the moly protects him. You must be Odysseus, she observes: A prophecy foretold that a man would one day defy her magic (just as a prophecy warned Polyphemus of Odysseus’ coming).
She then invites him to her bed, but Odysseus, remembering advice given by Hermes, draws his sword and forces her to swear a great oath: to do him no harm. If he did not extort this promise, she would castrate him, Hermes had warned. Circê swears the oath, and then they go to bed!
Afterward, Circê releases Odysseus’ men from their enchantment. They remain on the island for a year, feasting and taking their pleasure. At last Odysseus’ men remind the commander of their purpose: to return home. Circê agrees that they may go, but first they must cross the river Ocean to gather information from the ghost of Tiresias. They will need to survive the Sirens and Scylla (sil-la, “dog”) and Charybdis (ka-rib-dis) too, and under no circumstances should they eat the Cattle of Helius.
PERSPECTIVE 22.2 The Legends of Odysseus in European Art
Fifteenth-century painter Dosso Dossi (1486–1542) worked at the court of Duke Alfonso d’Este at Ferrara where the duke’s favorite poet, Ariosto Lodovico (1474–1533), composed his famous poem Orlando Furioso, which combined elements of classical tales with medieval romance. Ariosto’s enchantress Alcina appears to be a blend of Homer’s Circê and Morgan le Fay from legends about King Arthur. Dosso Dossi may have been thinking of Alcina when he painted this sensuous representation of the queen and enchantress who changed men into animals (Perspective Figure 22.2a). Homer’s Circê used potions and a wand to wreak her magic, but Dosso Dossi’s witch, in a European medieval tradition of magic, recites her spell from a tablet engraved with cryptic signs, having already consulted the book of magic still open at her feet. The peaceful deer, the fishing spoonbill, and the dogs at her feet may once have been men. Ominous birds of prey alight in the trees, an owl and a kite. In the background, her “hut”: a rather grand wooden structure of several stories.
Claude Lorraine (1600–1682) was a classicizing painter who studied in Rome with a specialist in harbor scenes (Perspective Figure 22.2b). In this anachronistic setting he presents Odysseus’ return of Agamemnon’s concubine Chryseïs to her father Chryses, a priest of Apollo. Chryseïs herself is a diminutive figure in a blue dress seated on a hatbox just left of center in the foreground, her head turned to watch the cows for sacrifice arriving in a boat. The man in red beside her must be Odysseus, in charge of the prisoner’s surrender. Three other Greek soldiers stand by and chat casually. Above them, to their left, arrive cattle for the sacrifice. A varied ransom of bales and chests is being stacked on the dock (lower center), and more goods arrive in the boat to the far right. Two men stand on the dock and converse, the one with the elaborate headdress perhaps the prophet Chryses. The public building to the left is perhaps Apollo’s temple over which Chryses presides. Boats and ships crowd the harbor, while others go about their business: In the lower left, a man repairs the dock with a hammer and two men, one standing, play dice. The whole is suffused with the golden light of the setting sun.
PERSPECTIVE FIGURE 22.2A. Dosso Dossi (c. 1486–1542), Circe in a Landscape, c. 1525, oil on canvas. (National Gallery, Washington, DC)
PERSPECTIVE FIGURE 22.2B. Claude Lorrain (1600–1682), Ulysses Returning Chryseïs to Her Father, oil on canvas. (Musée du Louvre, Paris)
The story of Penelopê’s efforts to trick the suitors by promising to marry after finishing a shroud for Odysseus’ father, then unraveling it at night, is represented in an early-eighteenth-century painting by French artist François Lemoyne (1688–1737) (Perspective Figure 22.2c), known for his luminous sensuousness. Penelopê sits before her loom. Her trick discovered at last, she points to the finished shroud, which handmaids spread out for inspection. On the left, other handmaids bring yarn for Penelopê’s loom and a rug, apparently a gift from the suitors, tempting her to marriage. But Odysseus’ ship even now draws into port, barely visible in the distance beyond the porch (to the right of the tree). Lemoyne was commissioned to paint this subject for the wife’s room in an elegant private house in Paris. Thus he pays tribute to fidelity and the strength of the marriage vows to inspire the room’s occupant.
The paintings of J. M. W. Turner (1755–1851) are among the outstanding artistic achievements of the nineteenth century. Known for his seascapes and misty landscapes, he is the first to isolate color apart from form, prefiguring the abstract painters of the twentieth century. Here (Perspective Figure 22.2d) Odysseus, dressed in a scarlet cloak, stands beneath a red banner beside the left-hand mast of the eighteenth-century galleon to shout his defiance at Cyclops, a shadowy figure above the cliff (hard to make out!). At the bottom of the cliff gapes the cave of Cyclops, a fire burning within. The writhing Polyphemus, just blinded, invokes the vengeance of his father Poseidon. Some companions on the crowded galleon try to restrain Odysseus. Still others unfurl the sails to speed the boat away from danger. On the central mast the ship shows two flags, a red pennant at the top with Odysseus’ name on it in Greek, and a white one below with a painting of the Trojan horse being dragged into the city (not visible here). The prow of the ship is a sea-monster with the anchor hanging from it like a great hook.
PERSPECTIVE FIGURE 22.2C. François Lemoyne (1688–1737), The Works of Penelope, c. 1729–1737, oil on canvas (Musée Rodin, Paris)
PERSPECTIVE FIGURE 22.2D. J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851), Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus, 1829, oil on canvas. (National Gallery, London)
Beneath the prow mermaids play in the water. Another ship is visible to the right, its sailors cheering on Odysseus, and other ships are on the horizon, with the horses of the Sun visible in the lower right. For Turner the interest in this painting is the landscape/seascape, the misty colors of a never-never land satisfying to the Romantic taste for the picturesque and sublime. Painter John Constable described Turner’s style as “airy visions, painted with tinted steam.”
Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, the Cattle of Helius, and Calypso
And so they cross the river Ocean. Odysseus speaks with the ghosts of many, including Tiresias (Chapter 12). Again they embark and approach the island of the Sirens, whose song no man can resist. Odysseus, on Circê’s advice, stops up the ears of his men—but not his own—with wax and orders himself bound to the mast. If he cries out when he hears the Sirens’ song, they are to bind him tighter.
In art, the Sirens have the heads and breasts of women but the wings and bodies of birds (like the Harpies, an image taken from the Egyptian ba-bird, a picture of the soul; Figure 22.3). At their feet lie the rotting corpses of the many sailors who have heeded their sweet song, which draws all who hear it to their death. Odysseus, ravished by their song, begs his men to release him, but they only bind him more tightly until they pass in safety.
FIGURE 22.3. Odysseus and the Sirens, Attic jug, c. 450 BC. Odysseus, bound to the mast, hears the Sirens’ song while his men, their ears plugged with wax, row past the island. Two stand on the cliffs, while the third falls to her death, evidently because Odysseus escaped their alluring song. Note the apotropaic eye on the prow of the ship and Odysseus’ heroic nudity. (British Museum, London)
Next they come to a double evil, the origin of the proverbial saying for an impossible situation, to be “between Scylla and Charybdis.” On one side of a narrow strait is Charybdis, an enormous whirlpool that sucks down and spits up a torrent of water three times a day, and on the other, beneath a cliff as sheer as glass, lives Scylla, a monster with twelve feet, all misshapen, and six long necks, each with its own head. In each head lie three rows of teeth. Up to her middle she is hidden in a cave, but she holds her head out to snatch passersby. Scylla seems to have no connection with the Megarian Scylla, daughter of Nisus, who fell in love with Minos. Because Charybdis promises certain death, Odysseus orders that they hug the cliff while he stands at the prow, sword drawn against the monster. Scylla, unimpressed, reaches down, seizes six men, and devours them gruesomely as the others row with all their might.
They come to Thrinacia, the island of Helius, where his cattle graze, which Circê had forbidden them to devour. Held on the island by contrary winds, the men soon begin to starve and are reduced to eating fish (real heroes eat red meat). While Odysseus reconnoiters inland, Eurylochus agitates against their commander, saying that he would rather die with a full belly than live like this. When Odysseus comes down from the hills, where he had fallen asleep, he smells the rich scent of beef roasting on spits and hears the mooing of the spitted cows (as a sign of divine displeasure). The damage is done.
When the winds blow fair, they set out again, but Zeus, acting on a complaint from the angry Helius, smashes the ship with a thunderbolt. Everyone drowns except Odysseus, who clings to a mast. He drifts back toward the straits of Scylla and Charybdis and feels himself sucked down, but at the last second seizes a fig tree growing on a cliff above the whirlpool. Charybdis rips away the mast as he hangs suspended, and then whips round and round, exposing the sandy bottom of the deep sea. At last Charybdis spits up again, Odysseus drops back onto the mast, and again he is swept away. Days later he washes up on Ogygia, “the navel of the sea,” Calypso’s island.
Odysseus lives on Ogygia for seven years. Calypso is a beautiful nymph who loves him and even offers him eternal life, if he will only marry her. But Odysseus longs to go home and every day goes down to the shore. Looking across the sea, he weeps with desire for his beloved wife, Penelopê, and his home. Athena, his protectress, asks Zeus to release Odysseus at last from his suffering and the persecutions of Poseidon. Zeus consents, and Hermes descends to inform Calypso. Bitterly, she agrees.
Observations: Historical and Mythical Travel
About 800 BC Greeks from the long island of Euboea, which hugs the east coast of the mainland north of Athens, traveled in small open boats across perilous seas all the way to Italy, where they founded the earliest Greek colonies. Homer’s Odyssey, by far the best known of the returns from Troy, seems to have been composed and written down on the island of Euboea at about this same time, between 800 and 750 BC, near the date of the alphabet’s invention, which it may have inspired. Its natural audience was seamen who had actually traveled to the far West, and Odysseus’ adventures were from an early time identified with specific geographic features in and around Italy: Calypso’s island with Malta, Polyphemus’ island with Sicily, Scylla and Charybdis with the Strait of Messina between Italy and Sicily, the island of Aeolus with the Lipari Islands north of Sicily, the Sirens’ land with the promontory of Sorrento, and Circê’s island with Ischia in the Bay of Naples.
Homer must have heard many sailors’ tales about adventure in Italy, and he may have gone there himself. It is a mistake, however, to see in the Odyssey a sailor’s log or to reconstruct a close identity between mythical and real locations. Homer fashions his narrative to appeal to an audience of wanderers, yet creates a symbolic voyage, a vision of moral purpose and national identity.
Sometimes Odysseus nearly forgets his purpose, as when he lies in Circê’s arms. At other times he is the lonely Greek set in defiance against the alien outside world and its barbarous, sometimes disgusting customs. Cyclopes and the Laestrygonians are portrayed as cannibals, repulsive to the civilized Greek. The shepherd Cyclopes do not cultivate grains, have assemblies, respect the gods, or understand the responsibilities of xenia. They lack the arts of civilization (though they make a crude wine), very like the actual peoples with whom the Greeks struggled in Italy, Sicily, and further west. Such peoples are perceived as dangerous but stupid, and in the end no match for the wily Greek. A beautiful island, ripe for development, lies just off Cyclops’ island, a perfect place for a colony, but Cyclopes have no ships to explore the world, preferring to live alone in their caves. That’s the way it is with non-Greeks.
Return to Ithaca
Phaeacia and Nausicaä
On Ogygia, the hero builds a raft and sets out to sea. After drifting many days, he comes near the shore of Scheria, island of the Phaeacians (fē-āsh-unz, identified by Thucydides, fifth century BC, with Corcyra, on the coastal route to Italy). As Odysseus is about to land, Poseidon, returning from the land of the blameless Ethiopians where he has richly dined, sees Odysseus on his raft. Still angry because Odysseus blinded his son Polyphemus, Poseidon sends a great storm. Caught in the violent waves and wind, the raft breaks up and throws Odysseus into the sea.
He swims for three days and nights and would have drowned had it not been for the sea-goddess Leucothea (lū-koth-e-a), who once was Ino, nurse of Dionysus and wife of Athamas. She rises from the waves and gives him her veil to tie around his chest; the veil has magical powers of protection. He comes ashore where a stream pours into the sea. Exhausted and scaly with brine, he climbs into the bushes, makes a dark nest, and falls asleep.
That night Nausicaä (nau-sik-a-a), the adolescent daughter of the Phaeacian king Alcinoüs, has a dream. Athena appears to her in disguise and advises that she wash her clothes to attract a husband. Surely no man likes a woman who neglects her laundry! Next morning, Nausicaä receives her father’s permission to go to the sea with her attendants, leading a wagon stuffed with dirty clothes.
Nausicaä and her friends, parthenoi all, spread the clothes on the shore to dry, then for relaxation throw a beach ball back and forth. The ball goes astray and falls into the stream, and the girls’ excited shrieks wake up Odysseus. He staggers up stark naked out of the bushes, but modestly holds a branch before his private parts, so as not to be too frightening (Figure 22.4). The maidens, except for Nausicaä, flee down the beach. The tattered and weary but courtly wanderer praises her beauty in language reminiscent of Anchises’ speech to Aphrodite (Chapter 9):
FIGURE 22.4. Odysseus and Nausicaä, Attic vase, c. 440 BC. A naked Odysseus, holding a stick in front of his genitals, with twigs in his hair, Athena at his side, speaks to Nausicaä, half-turned to run away. The princess’s clothes hang from the tree behind the hero. In this case Odysseus’ nudity is realistic, not heroic. (Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek, Munich)
[148]     “I drop to my knees, my lady. Are you goddess, or are you human?
If in fact you are one of the gods who dwell above in the heavens,
150to judge by your outward form you are Artemis, daughter of Zeus,
whom in stature, bearing, and form I think you most closely resemble.
But if indeed you are human, one of us who dwells on the earth,
thrice blest in you are your father and the honored lady your mother,
thrice blest also your brothers, whose hearts are warmed with delight,
155 watching your willowy movement as you come and go in the dance.
But most blest of all is the lucky suitor who carries you homeward,
offering the richest presents in the contest to make you his bride.
I tell you, these eyes have never beheld your like among mortals,
neither woman nor man, and I gaze at your every action in wonder.
160 Once, on the island of Delos, by the altar of Phoebus Apollo
(I and my men had stopped on the way that would lead to such sorrow),
I noticed a fair young sapling arising out of a palm tree,
a shoot like no tree had ever made spring up out of the earth.
As I looked on that, the same emotions arose in my spirit—
165 wonder, astonishment, fear—as strike me, kneeling before you.
“Yesterday I was cast ashore from the wine-colored ocean,
on the twentieth day since first I was driven by wind and by wave
from the isle of Ogygia. Doubtless some god directed me hither,
to suffer, perhaps, even here. My troubles are surely not over.
170 Before my day of releasing, the gods will yet bring me more sorrow.
But, lady, I pray you, have pity. To you I direct my appeal,
for of others I know not a one who rules in this land and its city.
Show me the way to the palace, and give me a rag like a beggar’s,
some cover, perhaps, from the linen you brought to wash on the seashore.
175     “Lastly I pray that the gods may grant you a husband and home,
a household of peace and love, for nothing is dearer or finer than
concord of husband and wife who share their hopes for the family,
the envy of all their foes and the glory of those who respect them.”
HOMER, Odyssey 6.148–185
Nausicaä, flattered and unafraid, calls back her maids. They give Odysseus a bath, from which he emerges shining like a young man, handsome and comely. Wearing some of the laundry, Odysseus follows Nausicaä to the city, hidden in a mist and keeping a certain distance (or the neighbors would gossip). In the court of King Alcinoüs, Odysseus tells his famous adventures.
Ithaca, Argus, and Euryclea
The Phaeacians, who are marvelous seafarers, give Odysseus many gifts. Then, after listening to his adventures, they transport him to Ithaca and, while he is asleep, put him ashore in a fog. He awakes and cannot at first believe he has touched his native soil, but Athena appears and reassures him. He makes his way to the hut of his own swineherd, Eumaeus (yū-mē-us), who of course does not recognize his master after so many years. Still, Eumaeus, who understands correct behavior, offers what hospitality he can.
Telemachus (tel-em-a-kus, “fighter from afar”), Odysseus’ only son and therefore in danger from the suitors, had gone abroad to Pylos and Sparta in hopes of finding some news about his father (where Helen drugged the punch and Menelaus told the story of the Trojan Horse). The suitors have laid an ambush, which he avoids by landing on the back side of the island. He comes up to the swineherd’s hut. Odysseus reveals his true identity to his son, who describes the situation at the house. For many years the suitors have pressed their demand that Penelopê marry one of them. In the meanwhile, they devour Odysseus’ wealth, sleep with the female slaves, and scorn the young Telemachus.
Disguised as a beggar, Odysseus makes his way inland to the palace. Just outside the gate his faithful dog Argus (“swifty”) is asleep on a dung heap, old now and near death. As a pup he was Odysseus’ favorite hound, before the hero went to Troy. Argus peers up, recognizes his master, cocks his ears, and drops over dead from excitement.
Inside the palace, Odysseus stands in the shadows of the great hall. The suitors, led by Antinoüs (an-tin-o-us), revile the beggar: One throws a stool at his head, another, a hoof from the food basket. They complain how Penelopê had promised to marry one of them as soon as she finished weaving a burial robe for Laërtes, Odysseus’ father, who lives in the countryside, sleeping on a bed of leaves, but each night she sneaked into the hall and undid as much of the weaving as she had done that day (Figure 22.5; compare Perspective Figure 22.2c). The suitors discovered the trick long ago, yet still she will not choose a husband.
FIGURE 22.5. Penelopê before the web, from an Attic cup, c. 440 BC. Penelopê sits in a melancholy pose before her loom, the shroud partly done, while her son Telemachus stands before her with two spears, viewing her with skepticism. A griffin, a horse, and a man, all winged, are embroidered into the bottom band. (Museo Civico, Chiusi, Italy)
Penelopê desires to speak to the beggar, whom she does not recognize as her husband in disguise. The beggar informs Penelopê that her husband is still alive. He has himself seen him, he says, and Odysseus will soon be home. Penelopê does not believe a word of it, but is thankful for the pleasant thought. She asks the old nurse Euryclea (yū-ri-klē-a), who suckled Odysseus when he was an infant, to wash the beggar’s tired and dirty feet.
Euryclea hauls out an enormous bronze cauldron and fills it with hot water. As she scrubs away, suddenly she feels a scar on the beggar’s thigh. When Odysseus was young, a boar had sliced him there. Odysseus sees that she has recognized him and seizes her scrawny throat with his powerful hand. One peep out of her, he warns, and she dies!
Penelopê, Telemachus, and the Suitors
Penelopê, with a little help from Athena, suddenly decides that she will marry on the very next day. She arranges a contest to help her decide. She will marry whoever can string her husband’s bow, stored all these years in a closet, and with the bow shoot an arrow through the holes of twelve aligned ax handles whose heads are buried in a long mound of dirt on the floor (if this is what Homer means; the language is unclear and there are many interpretations). The bow was a gift of Iphitus (son of the great bowman Eurytus), whom Heracles threw from the walls of Tiryns.
The suitors try to string the bow but are too weak from years of carousing. One suitor warms it at the fire, thinking this will make his task easier. A sneering Telemachus suggests that they let the beggar try his hand. He gives the bow to Odysseus. Ignoring the indignant noblemen, the beggar takes the wonderful weapon and easily strings it, like a poet who puts a string to his lyre. The beggar nocks an arrow and in a moment of high drama fires it through the aligned holes of the ax handles. Then:
[1]     Stripping himself of his rags, the shrewd foresighted Odysseus
sprang up to straddle the threshold, holding his bow and a quiver
loaded with swift-flying arrows, which he poured out, ready for use,
onto the ground at his feet. Then he turned and spoke to the suitors:
5     “So ends the meaningless contest, the silly purposeless pastime.
Now I shall shoot at a mark that no man has ever transfixed.
I shall know at once if I hit it. Apollo, grant me that glory!”
Straight at a suitor he shot his arrow, bitter and deadly,
where Antinoüs sat, reaching out to receive a beautiful goblet,
10 twin-handled, golden, into his hands, to drink of its wine,
with no thought of death in his heart. Who indeed would ever imagine
that one single man, in the midst of banqueters crowded around him
(however strong he might be), could bring him death and destruction?
Odysseus’ arrow, well aimed, struck its victim square in the gullet,
15 and its head sped on through the tenderest part of Antinoüs’ neck.
His body slumped to one side. The cup in the hand of the dead man
clanged to the floor. From his nostrils spurted a jet of his blood.
In a dying spasm his legs jerked out and kicked back the table,
spilling the food in a dirty puddle of bread and hot meat.
20 From all the house the suitors ran with a shout to the body
of him who was murdered. Some jumped in alarm from their places,
peering around all through the well-built rooms of the palace.
HOMER, Odyssey 22.1–24
The suitors think it is some terrible mistake, but Odysseus tells them the truth:
[34]     Wily Odysseus, glaring, addressed the men in this fashion:
35 “You curs, you thought that I would never return to my homeland
from Troy and seized on the chance to ravage my prosperous house hold.
Your violence forced the women, my slaves, to give way to your lust,
and while I was still alive you hoped you might marry my wife.
You showed no fear of the gods, the mighty dwellers in heaven,
40 nor did you worry that human vengeance might strike you hereafter.
But now—the crisis of death is waiting for you and your fellows.”
HOMER, Odyssey 22.34–41
Helped by Telemachus, Eumaeus, and another retainer, Odysseus massacres the 108 unarmed men (Figure 22.6). The hall reeks of blood and gore when Penelopê, awakened by Euryclea, descends from the upper chambers. She has just enjoyed the best nap, she says, since the day that Odysseus went to Troy! She sees the man drenched in the suitors’ blood but refuses to believe that he is her husband. Nonetheless, she is grateful and, so that the man might rest, asks Euryclea to bring out her master’s bed. Odysseus is amazed at her coldness—as his wife, she should be receiving him into her own bed:
FIGURE 22.6. Odysseus slays the suitors, Attic cup, c. 440 BC. Odysseus draws his bow as two serving girls look on. Below, on the other side of the pot, the suitors uselessly struggle to defend themselves. Two are on a couch, while a third crouches behind a table. Note the dapper mustache of the suitor on the far right. (Antikenmuseum, Berlin; Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturßesitz)
PERSPECTIVE 22.3 Cavafy’s “Ithaca”
The Greek language has been encoded in writing longer than any other language still spoken on Earth, in Linear B script and a related script from Cyprus from about 1400 to 1100 BC and in alphabetic writing from about 800 BC up to the present. The oldest parts of the Hebrew Bible, once thought to be the oldest writing, date in their present form to about 500 BC. Although today the Greek language is restricted mainly to the borders of modern Greece, fine poets continue to appear who reinterpret for modern Greek speakers the traditions of ancient times. Such a poet was Constantine Cavafy (1863–1933).
Born in the Greek community in Constantinople (Istanbul), now almost nonexistent, he belonged to a prominent commercial family who moved soon after his birth to Alexandria in Egypt, founded by Alexander the Great. There he worked for most of his life as a clerk, but he knew and influenced the British writers E. M. Forster, T. S. Eliot, Arnold Toynbee, D. H. Lawrence, and Lawrence Durrell. Cavafy often celebrated erotic love between men, but in “Ithaca” (1894) he re-creates Odysseus’ homeland as a symbol for the journey that is itself the goal, the Odyssey of everyone’s life:
Ithaca*
As you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that your journey be a long one,
filled with adventure, filled with discovery.
Laestrygonians and Cyclopes,
the angry Poseidon—do not fear them:
You’ll never find such things on your way
unless your sight is set high, unless a rare
excitement stirs your spirit and your body.
The Laestrygonians and Cyclopes,
the savage Poseidon—you won’t meet them
so long as you do not admit them to your soul,
as long as your soul does not set them before you.
Pray that your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings
when with what pleasure, with what joy,
you enter harbors never seen before.
May you stop at Phoenician stations of trade
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and voluptuous perfumes of every kind—
buy as many voluptuous perfumes as you can.
And may you go to many Egyptian cities
to learn and learn from those who know.
Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
You are destined to arrive there.
But don’t hurry your journey at all.
Far better if it takes many years,
and if you are old when you anchor at the island,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will give you wealth.
Ithaca has given you a beautiful journey.
Without her you would never have set out.
She has no more left to give you.
And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not mocked you.
As wise as you have become, so filled with experience,
you will have understood what these Ithacas signify.
*Translated by Barry B. Powell from the Greek text in Cavafy, Poiêmata: 1897–1933 (Ikaros, 1989).
[166]     “You’re a strange woman all right. To you beyond
all women have the Olympians given a hard heart.
No other woman would harden her heart as you,
and stand apart from her husband who after desperate suffering
170 had come to her in the twentieth year, to his native land.
All right nurse, make up a couch so I may lie down alone,
for her heart is iron.” Then wise Penelopê answered him:
“Odd fellow, I am not proud, nor do I scorn you,
nor yet am I so amazed, for well I knew you
175when you went forth from Ithaca on your long-oared ship.
Yet come, Euryclea, strew for him the stout bedstead
outside the well-built bridal chamber which he himself made.
Bring the stout bedstead from there and cast on bedding,
fleeces and shining coverlets.” She spoke, testing her husband.
180     But Odysseus in anger spoke to his true-hearted wife,
and said, “Woman, you’ve spoken a bitter word.
Who has set my bed elsewhere? Hard would it
be to do, although highly skilled, unless a
god should easily by his will move it to
185 another place. But of men no mortal alive,
no matter how young and strong, could easily pry
it from its place, for a great token is set in the well-built
bed, and it was I who built it and no one else.
A long-leafed olive grew in the court, strong,
190vigorous, thick and round like a pillar …”
HOMER, Odyssey 23.166–190
Odysseus goes on to describe how he built his bed with the tree stump as an immovable post.
So he spoke, and her knees went slack where she sat,
and her heart melted as she knew the sure tokens
that Odysseus told her. With a burst of tears she ran toward him
and flung her arms about the neck of Odysseus and kissed his head.
HOMER, Odyssey 23.204–208
Penelopê was only testing him, after all (as Odysseus had tested so many others). They go upstairs to make love and chat about all that has happened. Odysseus tells her everything, although he skims rapidly past the beautiful Circê and Calypso! So ends the twenty-third book of Homer’s Odyssey. In the final book Odysseus goes to see his father Laertes and then battles briefly the relatives of the slain suitors. Athena interposes herself and the poem ends rather lamely, before more blood is spilled.
Curious tales from other sources report Odysseus’ further career: how his restless nature carried him away again to the mainland, where he took another wife even while Penelopê was alive. He returned to Ithaca, there to meet his death. While living with Circê, he had fathered a child, Telegonus (tel-eg-o-nus, “begotten afar”), who grew up and came in search of his father. Telegonus arrived on Ithaca with some companions, but not knowing where Odysseus was, drove off some cattle. Telemachus and the aged Odysseus attacked the invaders. In the fight Telegonus stabbed Odysseus with his spear tipped with a stingray’s poisonous tail. Thus was fulfilled Tiresias’ prophecy in the underworld that Odysseus would “die a gentle death from the sea” (although it is hard to see how being stabbed with a stingray’s barb is “gentle”). According to a still odder tale, Telegonus then married Penelopê and carried her and Telemachus back to Circê’s island, where Telemachus married the ageless witch. But such bizarre intricacies, popular in later antiquity and unfriendly to our expectations about a hero’s career, are utterly foreign to the spirit of Homer’s timeless tale (for the complete Odyssey, go to http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/odyssey.html).
Observations: Symbols of Rebirth in the Folktale of the Man Who Came Home, Tested by Woman and the World
Homer’s Odyssey, viewed as a whole, is the story of a hero who came home after a long absence, found his household in the hands of usurpers, and killed them to reestablish his ascendancy. The older generation—tough, smart, and wise in the need for just behavior—is triumphant over the younger generation—brash, indolent, and self-indulgent, taking what they want. Because the youthful usurpers threaten traditional property rights, the poem appears to be a simple tale of revenge, of human justice triumphant over wrong. Not the gods’ enmity but their own thoughtless behavior brings about the suitors’ destruction.
Zeus sets this powerful moral theme in the beginning of the poem when Zeus complains that humans blame gods for their troubles, when in fact their own recklessness brings them to grief. Zeus cites the example of Aegisthus: Warned not to sleep with Clytemnestra, he did so anyway. No wonder he paid the price. Similarly, Odysseus’ foolish men dawdle in the land of the Cicones, eat the dangerous Lotus, open the bag of the winds, and devour the cattle of the Sun.
Justice is based on restraint, on the ability to hold back and not give in to one’s animal appetite. Food is good, but when forbidden by gods, on Helius’ island, or when it belongs to someone else, on Ithaca, you should not eat it. Sex is pleasurable, but when your husband is absent you must do without. Sometimes, however, these simple morals, typical of folktales, are contradicted by the story itself. Although Zeus explains that humans are responsible for their own troubles, it is Poseidon, a god, who harasses Odysseus in revenge for the blinding of Polyphemus, where the fault seems to lie heavily on the monster’s side.
But the underlying structure of the story is much older than the moral posture Homer gives it. We noticed in Chapter 13 how the epic of Gilgamesh and Homer’s Odyssey begin with nearly the same words. In these stories the hero goes on a journey where deadly dangers threaten, but eventually he returns. The hero must slay his dragon, even as Gilgamesh overcame Humbaba, and Odysseus overcomes many deadly enemies. Even the 108 suitors who besiege Odysseus’ home are, in a realistic mode, a kind of dragon. Repeatedly they are described as voracious (“devouring his substance”) and sexually threatening (“whoring with the maidservants”). They hope to have intercourse with Odysseus’ wife.
In the same way, the mythical dragon devours everything in sight and sexually threatens a woman. In the myth of the dragon combat, the monster is often overcome by a trick, sometimes at a drunken banquet, and slain with a special weapon. Even so Odysseus tricks the beast with 108 mouths by entering the palace in disguise, surprising the suitors in the dining hall, then even as they drink killing them with a special bow that no one else can string. As the dragon-slayer receives a princess as reward, Odysseus too “marries” the woman.
In Mesopotamian cosmogonic myth and in Hesiod (see Chapter 4), such stories describe the triumph of the ordered world over the disordered, of life and progress over death and stagnation, even as a prominent theme in Homer’s poem is the hero’s victory over death—so closely interwoven are myths of creation, the epic hero, and the folktale hero. The enemies of Odysseus are death’s allies: sleep (Odysseus falls asleep at crucial junctions in the stories of Aeolus and the cattle of Helius), narcosis (the Lotus Eaters), darkness (the cave of Polyphemus, the shadowy land of the Cimmerians), or forgetfulness of purpose (Circê). Declared by all to be dead, Odysseus travels across water, the element separating this world from the next, to the land of the Cimmerians, where he interrogates the actual spirits of the dead and sees the torments of the damned (Chapter 12). Calypso, whose name means “concealer” and whose island is the “navel of the sea,” offers him eternal life, but it is eternal death for the inquisitive man ever thirsting for experience: Death hovers in the still central point of the boundless water, “concealing” the dead from the living (Hades means “unseen”).
Water is death and its god, Poseidon, is Odysseus’ relentless enemy. Like Polyphemus and the Laestrygonians, death is a cannibal, devouring the living in the tomb’s dark and hungry maw. Within the dark cave of the Cyclops, Odysseus is “Nobody”—nameless, without identity, nonexistent. As dragons of death are stupid, so Polyphemus is made drunk by wine, fooled by the trick of the name, then wounded by the special weapon of the pointed stake. The same pattern underlies the slaying of the suitors, but it is cast in a realistic mode. When Odysseus escapes from the cave, passing from darkness into light, from death into life, he takes his name back and shouts to Polyphemus, “I am Odysseus!” After he kills the suitors, Penelopê recognizes him and they retire to the wedding bed.
Triumph over death leads to rebirth. Odysseus, like a baby leaving the “navel of the sea,” passes through waters to emerge naked on the shore of Phaeacia. He takes refuge in a womblike hole in the dark bushes and then is welcomed by Nausicaä, a parthenos who has dreamed of imminent marriage, like the marriage that will unite Odysseus and Penelopê at the end of the poem. Nausicaä’s role as deliverer, as new mother, is explicit as Odysseus is about to depart for Ithaca. She says to him, “Never forget me, for I gave you life” (Odyssey 9.464).
In cosmogonic myth, the primordial being is female, like Tiamat or Gaea, who begets monstrous creatures that oppose the establishment of the ordered world; or she is herself the enemy. But the female is ambiguous and may also conspire with the hero to overthrow the monsters of chaos, as Gaea conspired with Cronus to defeat Uranus, or as Rhea conspired with Zeus to overthrow Cronus. The ambiguity of the female in such stories is paralleled in the extraordinary array of female types in the Odyssey, good and evil, who oppose or help Odysseus’ efforts to return home and reestablish order.
At one end of the spectrum are the dangerous seductive females Calypso and Circê, so like the seductive but deadly Inanna/Ishtar. Calypso, although beautiful, is the “concealer.” Circê, although beautiful, wants to castrate Odysseus, a symbolic death. She turns men into pigs by the irresistible female power that reduces the male to pure animal lust, snorting and groveling in the filth. The female Scylla eats them whole. The female Sirens, like perverted Muses, lead men to their deaths through the alluring promise of secret knowledge dressed in beautiful song.
On the positive end of the scale stand Athena, Odysseus’ protector; Nausicaä, the uncorrupted parthenos, cast as both potential mate for Odysseus and symbolic mother; and Penelopê, who resists sexual temptation for twenty years. In Zeus’s speech about human folly, Clytemnestra is cited as an example of humans who act recklessly and pay the price. Throughout the poem Clytemnestra is the implied opposite to Penelopê. Clytemnestra is the wicked woman who gave in to sexual desire, betrayed the strict rules of wifely fidelity, and murdered her husband. Penelopê, by contrast, is the ideal woman, long-suffering, ever-faithful, and ingenious in preserving the honor of her home. Beset by a dangerous crisis, she courageously decides to take a second husband, thus setting up (unknowingly) the slaughter of the suitors. Clever like her husband, she cooly tests Odysseus with the token of the bed, in its immovability the symbol for their own marriage, as the olive tree from which it is made stands for the life of the family uncorrupted by adultery.
In the contrasting but parallel stories of the royal houses of Mycenae and Ithaca, Odysseus is like Agamemnon, each returning from Troy to find his house in the hands of enemies; Telemachus is like Orestes, fighting to restore family right and honor. The difference between the parallel legends lies in the character of the woman: Odysseus survives because Penelopê is woman as she should be, while Agamemnon is cut down like a dog. That, too, is a moral of the tale.