Odyssey
Odyssey
by Homer
THE LITERARY WORK
An epic poem set around 1200 bce in the Mediterranean region; composed in Greek c, 725 bce
SYNOPSIS
As he wanders back from the Trojan War, Odysseus encounters a fantastic array of monsters, heroes, and gods, before encountering daunting threats at home.
Events in History at the Time of the Epic
Events in History at the Time the Epic Was Composed
Homer is one of the most romantic and most debated figures in the history of Western literature. The ancients identified him as the author of the Iliad as well as the Odyssey, two major epics of ancient Greece (also in Classical Literature and Its limes). Although he is popularly believed to have been a blind man who lived on the west coast of Asia Minor, scholars have questioned whether one poet composed both works and even if Homer ever existed. Today many classicists agree that the Iliad was in-deed composed by a single male author, but whether he was a blind storyteller named Homer is another matter. While most agree that one author also composed the Odyssey, debate continues over whether the same man composed both epics. The author of the Odyssey seems to have worked from an in-depth knowledge of the Iliad. Without solid evidence to the contrary, most scholars fall into step with ancient Greek tradition in naming Homer the author of both epics. The more one researches the Homeric epics, the more one realizes that other details about the poems are fraught with uncertainty as well. There is little consensus among scholars regarding when Homer composed them. According to Herodotus, the Greek historian of the fifth century bce, Homer produced the epics about 850 bce, but most modern critics locate him between 750 and 700 bce. In any case, there is no dispute over the wealth of oral tradition that gave rise to both epics or the importance of their impact on the Greeks and Western civilization in general. Of the two, the Odyssey reveals more about the domestic life, and much about the beliefs and values of some of the earliest Greeks.
Events in History at the Time of the Epic
Layers of history in the Odyssey
The Odyssey centers on prevailing Greek values, such as hospitality and the sanctity of marriage, rather than on events that transpired in a historical time period. In fact, while the events in the epic take place during the Mycenaean Age (1600-1200 bce), the narrative details show that it actually interweaves layers of time up to the composition of the epic, from the Mycenaean Age through the Dark Age (1150-750 bce) to the Greek Renaissance (750-700 bce). There are seeming anachronisms in the Odyssey that bear witness to the centuries over which it evolved. In Homer’s accounts of death, the bodies are cremated rather than buried in the beehive-shaped tombs characteristic of the Mycenaean period. Though his weapons are mostly made of bronze, many of the tools are iron, a popular metal of the later Dark Age. Even Homer’s own time finds its way into the story; a surge of real exploration begun shortly before the epic was composed recalls the wanderings of Odysseus.
The larger period of world history in which Mycenaean civilization thrived was the late Bronze Age, which takes its name from the metal that people used for their weapons and household tools. Much of what we know about the civilization itself comes from Linear B tablets, that is, tablets containing writing in Linear B script, a pre-alphabetic script that consists of roughly 90 signs, each of which stands for a syllable. Large numbers of Linear B tablets were discovered by archaeologists in ruins from the cities of Pylos (at the “palace of Nestor” ruins) and Knossos. The evidence indicates that Greek civilization during the late Bronze Age was highly sophisticated; kings lived in opulent palaces and commissioned artists to produce carefully wrought ceramics, mosaics, and metalwork. There existed well-built roads and a highly developed trading system linking Greece to the Near East, northern Africa, and Italy. Society at its most developed was arranged in a hierarchy. At the top stood the wanax (the word refers to the king, but may mean “lord” or “master”), followed by an army commander, then a high-status group of perhaps priests and military officers. Next came lesser officials and maybe some wealthy merchants and traders. Underneath was the mass of commoners, who lived in rural villages and labored as farmers, herders, and artisans. At the bottom toiled slaves, generally captives from foreign lands. Agamemnon is called a wanax in the Odyssey. Odysseus, whose own society seems somewhat unsophisticated, is not. If such a hierarchy existed in his land, he could be seen as the equivalent of a wanax, but this would demand drawing strict parallels between the legendary and real worlds, an impossible task since Homer mixes time periods.
Greek religious life appears to have depended more on the proper performance of rituals than anything else. Sacrifices, which involved the ritual slaying of an animal (generally a cow or sheep) in the name of a god, were the strongest element of worship. It is because Odysseus has sacrificed more to the gods than any other man that he wins the support of the king of the gods, Zeus, in his struggles to return home to Ithaca, a small rugged isle that the ancients identified with the land known today as Ithaca, located off the west coast of Greece in the Ionian Sea.
The late Bronze Age was a time of aggressive expansion for the Mycenaean Greeks. Fighting for territory, their top military men—their high-status warriors—rode chariots, or lightly wooded horse-drawn vehicles, to the front, then may have fought from the chariots or dismounted to do battle. Back home in their kingdoms, large walled cities dotted the landscape. The major cities had time-honored names—Mycenae, Thebes, and Pylos. Apparently they were the key dwelling places of the civilization’s kings, whose palaces and citadels towered over their communities. The kings made certain that the region’s food supply was secure and provided a basic framework of law and order. When they were not serving in the army or working at the palace in exchange for benefits, the men tended to their farming and their livestock. The women meanwhile spent most of their time spinning, weaving, cooking, and child rearing. A simple system of writing emerged—the Linear B script—only to disappear when the large cities were destroyed shortly after 1200 bce. Archeologists speculate that a series of local disputes as well as climate changes and possibly earthquakes led to the fall of the cities and ushered in the Dark Age.
Backdrop of the Trojan War—Odysseus’s ploy
At the time of the Trojan War, the Greeks were not a unified state but a collection of settlements. Due in large part to Homer’s works, the war came to be viewed as a defining moment in Greek history. Homer’s epics were performed publicly for centuries, becoming known to most inhabitants of these settlements, and developing into a standard by which all other works and values were measured.
The stories that made up the epics were not new to the Greeks. Homer’s original audiences would have known the details of the Trojan War, which called Odysseus away from his native Ithaca. They would have come to the story armed with information from popular legends portraying Odysseus as a fighter in the Trojan War. From these same legends, they knew that Odysseus left the war as one of its greatest heroes, largely because of his crafty ploy of building the wooden horse, the trick that finally helped the Greeks win the painstaking ten-year war.
Legend has it that the Trojan War began with the Judgment of Paris. Insulted at not being invited to a banquet, the goddess of discord, Eris, sought to cause trouble among the gods. She threw a golden apple labeled For the Fairest into the banquet hall. Zeus, knowing better than to bear responsibility for deciding which of the goddesses deserved the apple, called for the decision to be made by a mortal named Paris, the prince of Troy. Paris had to choose among Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena. Each of the goddesses sought to bribe him for his favor, and Aphrodite’s bribe—to reward Paris with the most beautiful mortal woman—worked. He chose Aphrodite. Now it was time for her to keep her end of the bargain. The problem was that the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen, was already married to a Greek king, Menelaus, of Sparta.
According to some accounts Paris kidnapped Helen; according to others, he seduced her. Either way, she was taken back to Troy and the enraged Menelaus assembled a huge fleet of Greek warriors, enlisting Odysseus in the effort. The Greeks initiated a ten-year siege against Troy, winning only after they enacted Odysseus’s plan to trick the Trojans by building a huge wooden horse, filling its hollow belly with armed Greek warriors, and then pretending to sail away, as if defeated. The Trojans did not know what to make of this lone horse out-side their walls, but they eventually dragged the horse inside the city. Under cover of night, the hidden Greeks streamed out of the horse, opened the gates for their fellow warriors (who had sailed back into the harbor), and sacked Troy. Again, all this would have been known to Homer’s first audience.
In the Odyssey readers encounter Odysseus in the tenth year of his return voyage from Troy, that is, 20 years after leaving home. He departs from the battlegrounds of Troy with several ships still intact, but loses them all (and the men in them) during his adventurous journey home; in fact, he loses all the men on his own ship too. The Odyssey contains a scene in which a singer relates the story of Troy’s destruction and the slaughter that took place there. Hearing the story, Odysseus weeps, perhaps over wartime memories, perhaps because he laments his long absence from home and separation from family and friends.
Monsters and gods
Greek mythology accounted for both benevolent and malevolent forces in the ancient world. By Homer’s day, many of the monsters and gods within the Odyssey had a rich oral history that existed outside Homeric epics and, as with legends of the Trojan War, was well known to the average Greek audience. Rhapsodes, people who professionally recited epic poetry by Homer and others in ancient Greece, told stories involving various kinds of supernatural figures that make appearances in the Odyssey.
The two main gods in the Odyssey, Athena and Poseidon, were familiar mythological figures. Athena, goddess not only of war and wisdom but also of arts and crafts, united the traditional roles of male and female. According to myth, Athena was born from the head of Zeus, the supreme ruler of the gods, and thereafter she remained his favorite. In statues, paintings, and other renderings, Athena is frequently represented as an armed warrior. The city of Athens honored her as its protector, and she gained distinction as a goddess who often came to the aid of humans. Athena served as helpmate and mentor to various Greeks, including Odysseus, his son Telemachus, and other impressive mortals, like Perseus (who beheaded Medusa) and Bellerophon (who harnessed the winged horse Pegasus).
Poseidon, god of the sea, was thought to be Zeus’s brother. Also the god of earthquakes and a tamer of horses, Poseidon could be both enemy and friend to man. It was said that he gave humans the first horse, but he was also dubbed “Earth-shaker” because of his tempestuous nature and his responsibility for earthquakes. He sided with the Greeks in the Trojan War but then developed a grudge against Odysseus, after he blinded the god’s son, Polyphemus. Poseidon becomes Odysseus’s primary antagonist. It is his curse that prolongs Odysseus’s return and causes such suffering. Odysseus has to somehow find his way back into the god’s good graces to reach home. When the story begins, Poseidon has already cursed the hero.
The monsters in the Odyssey also had a rich oral history. Polyphemus is a Cyclops, a one-eyed giant who dwells with others of his kind who raise sheep and goats on a distant island (later thought of as Sicily). In Homer’s epic, Polyphemus is a ruthless cannibal who traps Odysseus and his men in a cave and eats several of them alive. Later poets describe the giant falling madly in love with the sea nymph Galatea, who in some stories taunts him and in others respects him for being a son of the sea god, Poseidon. In the verse of one of these poets (Ovid), Polyphemus again behaves ruthlessly, crushing a rival for Galatea’s affections with a rock. The murder does the monster little good, however; in none of the stories does he win her love.
According to Greek myth, Scylla, the horrible six-headed monster in the Odyssey, was once a beautiful nymph. Glaucus—a fisherman who had become half-man, half-fish—fell in love with her, but she would not have him. He appealed for help to Circe, the enchantress, who fell in love with Glaucus and wanted him for herself. Still smitten with Scylla, however, he would not be swayed. Circe, driven by jealousy, poisoned Scylla, turning her into a monster with 12 doglike legs, six necks topped by fierce dogs’ heads, and three rows of teeth. Miserable, Scylla retreated into a cave (which tradition locates between Sicily and Italy in the Straits of Messina) and sought her revenge on passing sailors, whom she devoured, one for each of her six heads.
When sailors encounter Scylla in a narrow channel of water they must avoid a whirlpool on the opposite side created by the female sea monster Charybdis. The sailors face two equally threatening alternatives. Some scholars have theorized that Scylla and Charybdis represented actual nautical dangers: deadly countercurrents off the Strait of Messina (on the Sicilian side) may have been the inspiration for Charybdis, and Scylla may have been a huge squid of 3,000 years ago that inhabited the dangerously jagged rocks on the other side of the Strait, or perhaps she was simply the rocks themselves.
The Epic in Focus
Plot summary
Divided into 24 books, the story takes place during the tenth year of Odysseus’s journey home from the Trojan War. Odysseus has been living on an island with the sea nymph, Calypso, for most of the ten years. The delay causes tremendous despair among loved ones at home, who think Odysseus dead. At the root of the delay is Poseidon, the sea god, who is punishing Odysseus for blinding his one-eyed son, a Cylops named Polyphemus. When the poem opens, the gods are deliberating over his fate. Poseidon, reports Zeus, wants to continue the punishment, but Athena adamantly supports this homesick warrior. Ruling in her favor, Zeus orders Calypso to send Odysseus home.
The first four books feature Telemachus, the only son of Odysseus. Now close to 20 years old, Telemachus has not seen his father since infancy. Currently he and his mother, Penelope, are suffering from an onslaught of suitors who want to wed her. Previously, in hopes of Odysseus’s return, she craftily delayed them by saying she would remarry once she finished weaving a shroud for her father-in-law. She proceeded to shrewdly spend her days weaving and her nights undoing all the progress. But her deception has been discovered and the pressure to choose a new husband has grown. Since Odysseus’s absence, the suitors have been feasting at Odysseus’s home and otherwise abusing the family’s hospitality (hospitality being one of the highest Greek values, whether serving a relative or a stranger). Into this unhappy environment comes Athena disguised as Odysseus’s friend Mentes. In keeping with Greek hospitality, “Mentes” is welcomed into Odysseus’s house. Disguised as this family friend, Athena directs Telemachus to leave in search of information about his father: “Come now, listen closely. Take my words to heart” (Homer, Odyssey, book 1, line 312). She later takes the form of Mentor, one of Odysseus’s comrades in the Trojan War, and guides Telemachus as he ventures forth to seek news of his father, setting out for the homes of Nestor and Menelaus—two kings who fought with Odysseus in the Trojan War.
There is a break in the action “as the narrative shifts away from Odysseus’s family onto the hero himself. Book 5 centers on the hero in his current quarters. Odysseus is living with Calypso, the sea nymph, feeling miserably homesick, sitting out by the beach on a headland, “wrenching his heart with sobs and groans and anguish, / gazing out over the barren sea through blinding tears” (Odyssey, 5.94-95). Obeying Zeus, Calypso sends the mournful Odysseus home on a raft. Poseidon, still angry with Odysseus, causes the raft to be destroyed and Odysseus ends up with the Phaeacians, who, also in keeping with the high value placed on hospitality, invite Odysseus to stay and dine with them even before they know his name. Odysseus recounts his entire journey up to his stay with Calypso, establishing a reputation for himself through story.
He tells of rescuing his men from the Lotus Eaters (who make people forget about home), escaping Polyphemus (the man-eating Cyclops), being attacked by the Laistrygones (giants who ate some of Odysseus’s men and pummeled their fleet with boulders), spending a year in the bed of Circe (a sorceress who at first turned his men into swine), and many other fantastic adventures. Each provides a new lens through which to view Odysseus the hero; he is by turns proud, bold, crafty, reverent, and stalwart. Just before Odysseus reaches Calypso’s island, his band lands on the island of the Sun god. Circe has cautioned him to refrain from killing the Sun god’s cattle, but despite his warnings, his men sacrifice and then eat the cattle. Zeus punishes the wrongdoers by sending a thunderbolt to smash this last ship in Odysseus’s fleet. Only he survives.
The Phaeacians—a kindly if boastful seafaring people—sympathize with Odysseus after learning his story. Not only has it been 20 years since he has been home, but he is now making his way there alone, bereft of all the men and ships he lost along the way. Finally, with the aid of the Phaeacians, Odysseus reaches Ithaca. With Athena’s help, he disguises himself as an old beggar to rid his house of the menacing suitors who are vying for his wife’s hand and his fortune. Athena lifts his disguise when Odysseus reunites with his grown son, Telamachus, who has returned from his own journey for information about his father a more mature and knowledgeable young man. The son and father join forces. Back in his beggarly disguise, Odysseus makes his way into the palace. When the “beggar” arrives, the suitors ridicule the newcomer. Believing Odysseus to be dead, they then compete for Penelope in the contest of the bow. She promises that whoever can string Odysseus’s mighty bow and shoot an arrow through a dozen axes (probably through the ring on an ax handle used to hang it on a wall) will be the one to marry her. All of them fail, but then the beggar stuns them all by achieving the feat. Next Odysseus removes his disguise and shoots an arrow in the ringleader’s throat, then threatens the rest of the suitors: “Now life or death—your choice—fight me or flee / if you hope to escape your sudden bloody doom! / I doubt one man in the lot will save his skin!” (Odyssey, 22.69-71). Athena and two loyal servants help Odysseus and Telemachus finish off the suitors. Next, father and son have the female servants who were sleeping with the suitors clean up the bloody mess before hanging these faithless servants too.
Having reclaimed his palace, Odysseus reveals himself to Penelope. In a touching recognition scene, the long-suffering beauty bursts into tears after so many years of hoping for his return in vain. Penelope rushes to Odysseus, throwing her arms around his neck. Weeping, the warrior holds “the wife / he love[s], the soul of loyalty, in his arms at last” (Odyssey, 23.260-261). The morning after, the families of the slaughtered suitors gather to wreak revenge on Odysseus and Telemachus. Fighting erupts, but Athena, again in disguise, appears to force a truce: “Hold back, you men of Ithaca, back from brutal war! / break off—shed no more blood—make peace at once!” (Odyssey, 24.531-532). With these words, the goddess restores harmony and brings the action to a peaceful close.
Greeks and the afterlife
One of the greatest adventures that Odysseus recounts to the Phaeacians is his trip to the underworld, from which mortals rarely return in Greek mythology. The underworld was often referred to as Hades, after the Greek god of death who ruled over it along with his bride, Persephone. Odysseus meets with several spirits there, including that of the blind prophet Tiresias, from whom Odysseus receives assurances that he will reach Ithaca and rid the palace of the suitors.
In Hades, Odysseus seeks to converse with the dead spirits. He sacrifices a lamb and a ewe, whose blood gives the shades the strength to talk. Odysseus speaks with Elpenor, one of his men who recently died. The spirit asks Odysseus for a proper burial, a wish he promises to fulfill upon his return to the land of the living. Odysseus speaks in turn with his mother, Tiresias, and various Greek heroes. His mother’s speech reveals what the ancients thought happened to a human being after death:
Sinews no longer bind the flesh and bones together—
the fire in all its fury burns the body down to ashes
once life slips from the white bones, and the spirit,
rustling, flitters away… flown like a dream.
(Odyssey, 11.250-252)
The spirits of all people, whether good or evil in life, wind up in Hades, according to the tales of Homer.
In the Odyssey, the underworld is a bleak and shadowy place. Even the names of waterways in Hades are sorrowful—Flood of Grief, River of Fire, River of Tears, and Stream of Hate (Odyssey, 10.563-564). Homer’s grim portrayal of the after-life is reinforced through the words of the famous veteran of the Trojan War, the Greek hero Achilles, who remarks, “I’d rather slave on earth for another man—some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—than rule down here over all the breathless dead” (Odyssey, 11.556-558).
Since no glory was promised in the afterlife, Greeks sought to be remembered by their great deeds in life. Heroes and would-be heroes spent their whole lives striving for kleos (remembered fame). This desire helps explain Odysseus’s refusal of Calypso’s offer of immortality. If he were to accept, not only would he never see his family again but he would lose the opportunity to perform a greater record of heroic deeds by which to be remembered.
Odysseus’s desire to remain mortal coincides with the fate that has been decided for him by the immortal gods. His return to Ithaca, “that year spun out by the gods when he should reach his home” is preordained, “though not even there would he be free of trials, / even among his loved ones” (Odyssey, 1.20-22). The idea of fate is complicated within the Odyssey by Zeus’s insistence that the gods alone are not to blame for what happens to human beings. Instead, human beings bring misery on themselves: “Ah how shameless—the way these mortals blame the gods. / From us alone, they say, come all their miseries, yes, / but they themselves, with their own reckless ways, / compound their pains beyond their proper share” (Odyssey, 1.37-40). It is through this combined idea of fate and free will that heroes find the opportunity to build kleos. The gods may control their ultimate fortunes, but the heroes are free to decide what to do with the time and the obstacles they are given.
It is probably the desire for kleos that prompts Odysseus to reveal his real name to the Cyclops Polyphemus, after slyly tricking him into believing that Odysseus’s name is “Nobody.” Odysseus outsmarts the Cyclops, plunging a stake in his single eye, whereupon the monster cries for help:
Hearing his cries, [the other Cyclops] lumbered up from every side
and hulking around his cavern, asked what ailed him:
“What Polyphemus, what in the world’s the trouble?
…surely no one’s trying to kill you now by fraud or force!”
“Nobody, friends”…
“Nobody’s killing me now by fraud and not by force!”
“If you’re alone”…
and nobody’s trying to overpower you now
it must be a plague sent here by mighty Zeus
and there’s no escape from that.
You’d better pray to your father, Lord Poseidon.”
(Odyssey, 9.450-460)
With this the other Cyclops lumber off and Odysseus and his men make their escape. As they take to the sea, Odysseus brazenly taunts the still powerful but now eyeless brute: “Cyclops—if any man on the face of the earth should ask you who blinded you, shamed you so—say Odysseus, raider of cities, he gouged out your eye, Laertes’ son who makes his home in Ithaca!” (Odyssey, 9.558-561).
In the short run, when Odysseus divulges his real name, he harms himself and puts his crew in danger, for the revelation allows Poseidon to punish Odysseus for blinding Polyphemus, and the curse leads to shipwreck and a prolonged journey home. In the long run, though, the adventure adds to Odysseus’s kleos. He recounts the adventure along with others to the Phaeacians, thereby establishing and spreading his fame. It is through kleos that Odysseus seeks immortality. To gain such a reputation, to have one’s name preserved on the lips of men, is the ultimate goal of the ancient Greek hero.
Gender roles
While Greeks viewed marriage as a vital and respected institution, a double standard existed when it came to fidelity. Women were expected to be unquestionably monogamous while men could have numerous affairs. Although Penelope’s story serves as a backdrop to the adventures of her husband, her fidelity is highlighted as one of the central values to be taken from the Odyssey. To emphasize her faithfulness, Homer parallels her story with those of the legendary Helen—whose faithlessness led to the Trojan War—and of Helen’s sister, Clytemnestra. Clytemnestra was well known in oral tradition for having an affair with her husband’s cousin while Agamemnon, her husband, fought the Trojan War (Sophocles would later dramatize her treachery in Oresteia, also in Classical Literature and Its Times). Agamemnon survives the war only to be murdered by his wife upon his return. In the Odyssey, as if to punctuate the importance of female loyalty, Homer shares Agamemnon’s thoughts from the underworld:
Agamemnon’s ghost cried out. “Son of old Laertes—
mastermind—what a fine, faithful wife you won!
What good sense resided in your Penelope
A far cry from the daughter of Tyndareus, Clytemnestra—
what outrage she committed, killing the man she married once!”
(Odyssey, 24.211-220)
Clytemnestra is condemned for her actions. But no mention is made of the female slaves with whom Agamemnon had relations during the war, one of whom he claimed to value more than his wife. Similarly, although Penelope’s loyalty is commended, Odysseus is not blamed for the seven years he spent living with the nymph Calypso and the nearly one year that he shared a bed with the goddess Circe.
Although double standards clearly exist, the women portrayed in the Odyssey are neither incompetent nor powerless. Both Odysseus and Agamemnon leave their wives in charge of their separate kingdoms during the Trojan War. In Odysseus’s absence, Penelope shows wit and intelligence in the stratagems she devises to avoid marriage. But clearly men are meant to be in charge. Odysseus will not sleep with Circe, the powerful enchantress, until he has exerted control over her. Similarly order is not restored in Ithaca until his return; the suitors have been growing ever more disrespectful and Penelope cannot contain the situation without him. Her still maturing son cannot contain it either, although he does gain more authority over Penelope as the story progresses. Early in the tale, Telemachus begins to exert control as head of the household in his father’s absence, issuing directions: “Mother, / go back to your quarters. Tend to your own tasks, / ... As for giving orders, / men will see to that, but most of all: / I hold the reins of power in this house” (Odyssey, 1.410-413). Penelope, though surprised by her son’s newfound maturity, obeys without question despite her older age.
One of the only places where women appear to wield significant power is Scheria, the land of the Phaeacians, the ideal society, to which Odysseus recounts much of his story. Odysseus is advised to pay homage first to the queen, Arete: “If only the queen will take you to her heart, / then there’s hope that you will see your loved ones,/reach your own grand house, your native land at last” (Odyssey, 6.343-345). While Arete rules alongside her husband, she clearly possesses political clout of her own. Calypso and Circe wield authority in their magical lands, but both appear less powerful than Odysseus, since he overpowers Circe and rejects Calypso’s pleadings to stay by her side.
Sources and literary context
Literary Greek seems to start with Homer. He belonged to a mainly oral culture, in which people received most of their information by word of mouth: “In Homer the oral tradition which went back to Mycenaean times reached its culmination and its end.... Centuries of history have gone into the making of ... [the] Odyssey” (Ehrenberg, p. 10).
It is generally believed that the Odyssey existed first as stories that were sung by generations of oral poets, traveling men who performed for entertainment. These singers relied on memory to recount their tales, but felt free to improvise in response to their audiences—thus, the assertion that centuries of history went into the making of the epic. The singers also used a number of repeated formulas to aid them in their musical storytelling. Epithets, descriptive words or phrases attached to a character’s name, such as “bright-eyed goddess” and “Dawn with her rosered fingers,” which can be found throughout the Odyssey, were among the primary formulas.
Besides the Iliad and the Odyssey, there were probably other epic poems telling other parts of the Trojan War story. These were the forerunners of the Epic Cycle, a later collection of poems that, together with the Iliad and the Odyssey, told a continuous history of the Trojan War from the wedding of Achilles’ parents (the mortal Peleus and the goddess Thetis) to the death of Odysseus. After the Odyssey comes the Telegony, which can be thought of as a sequel, for it treats Odysseus’s later travels and military adventures, including his demise. These last two works in the cycle center on Odysseus, moving from the tale of the Greek hero’s return home to his final adventures.
Events in History at the Time the Epic Was Composed
The Greek Renaissance
Traces of Homer’s own era can be found within the Odyssey. First, Odysseus’s adventures can be seen as mirroring the expansionist slant of Greece during the Greek Renaissance, the resurgence of cultural and social activity that began around 750 bce, shortly before Homer’s day. Odysseus is an experienced sailor who provides detailed observations of the people and geography of every land he visits, as sailors in Homer’s age would. Many scholars further believe that Odysseus’s travels led him through Sicily and Italy, two main sites of Greek colonization in the eighth century bce.
The political structure of Odysseus’s Ithaca mirrors the evolving polis or city-state of the Greek Renaissance. In real life, this was the period in which the polis emerged as one small village grew into one another and as society became stratified, or more distinctly stratified. Those people in control of the land within and around the city walls began to concentrate their power. Since kings and royal families were no longer a feature of these societies, powerful landowners emerged as a new aristocracy. The towns in which they lived gained importance. Gradually a new type of community formed, wherein citizens were ruled by a class of noble landowners. The emergence of this new noble class may have inspired the reappearance of tales such as the Odyssey, which depict the exploits and problems of wealthy leaders. In all probability, the noble class liked to trace its ancestry to the same legendary heroes that Homer features in his tales.
Reception and impact
The Odyssey became the first Greek text to be translated for use by Roman schoolboys, and its fame continues unabated. For the Greeks, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey became primary sources for the mythology and legend that dominated much of their artistic culture. At least one Greek, however, remained torn about the value of Homer’s work: some 300 years after the Odyssey was composed, Plato accuses Homer of telling unpleasant tales about the gods, heroes, and underworld.
Plato has positive comments about Homer as well. In The Republic, Plato called Homer “the most poetic and first of the tragic poets” (Plato, 606e; also in Classical Literature and Its Times). More specifically, he praised Homer for presenting images of self-control in Odysseus, particularly when the hero, in a moment of rage, wants to slay all the suitors single handedly rather than wait for aid. He wisely restrains himself, saying, “Endure, my heart, you have suffered more shameful things than this” (Odyssey, 20.18). His declaration indicates his growth, since at times on the long journey he has been a victim of his own lack of self-control, giving in to emotional reactions without considering the consequences.
In the fifth century bce, the Greek historian Herodotus credited Homer with having “made” the great gods and heroes who people his compositions (poet in fact comes from the Greek for “to make”). It was a tribute Homer shared
THE ODYSSEY INSPIRES EDNA ST. VINCENT MII1AY (1892-1950)
An Ancient Gesture
I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
Penelope did this too.
And more than once: you can’t keep weaving all day
And undoing it all through the night;
Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;
And along towards the morning, when you think it will never be light,
And your husband has been gone, and you don’t know where, for years,
Suddenly you burst into tears;
There is simply nothing else to do.
And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
This is an ancient gesture, authentic, antique,
In the very best tradition, classic, Greek:
Ulysses did this too,
But only as a gesture, a gesture which implied
To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.
He learned it from Penelope…
Penelope, who really cried.
(Millay)
with Hesiod, whom Herodotus credited as well (see Hesiod’s Theogony, also in Classical Literature and Its Times). Herodotus singled out Homer as the finest transmitter of the Heroic Age in ancient Greece. The historian refers here to the fifth-century bce belief in a prior age that was peopled by a race of larger, stronger, braver, and comelier looking men and women. In Poetics (fourth century bce), the philosopher Aristotle praises Homer for his uniquely creative accomplishments. The philosopher praises Homer for developing a unified plot—that of Odysseus’s homecoming—and recounting multiple episodes of this single plot instead of recounting all the actions and experiences of a hero, whether they are connected to that storyline or not.
Throughout the years, the Homeric epics have become two of the most influential works of Western literature. The Odyssey, in particular, has captivated many notable writers. Enchanted by the characters and themes surrounding Odysseus’s journey, writers from Alfred Lord Tennyson to John Keats to Edna St. Vincent Millay to Eudora Welty to Margaret Atwood, have penned poems and short stories exploring the work from various perspectives.
Homer’s epics have served as a blueprint for later epics, such as Virgil’s Aeneid and Milton’s Paradise Lost. The Odyssey would become the model for the archetypal hero’s journey (Odysseus) as well as the archetypal themes of coming-of-age (Telemachus) and the human search for one’s identity, all of which are continually explored in modern works. It is precisely these themes that James Joyce drew on in writing his masterpiece Ulysses (a name that is the Latin equivalent of the Greek Odysseus). Likewise, Charles Frazier drew on Homer’s epic to write Cold Mountain, which features a journey like that of Odysseus, placed against the backdrop of the American Civil War. Thanks no doubt to its dual focus on self-development and social relations in a setting more ancient than Classical Greece, the Odyssey continues to inspire audiences as a rare lens into one of humanity’s earliest societies and timeless humanity.
—Christina Nation
For More Information
Blundell, Sue. Women in Ancient Greece. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995.
Burstein, Stanley M., Walter Donlan, Sarah B. Pomeroy, and Jennifer Tolbert Roberts. Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Ehrenberg, Victor. From Solon to Socrates: Greek History and Civilization during the Sixth and Fifth Centuries bce. London: Methuen, 1973.
Eickhoff, R. L. The Odyssey. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2001.
Higgins, Reynold. Minoan and Mycenaean Art. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.
Homer. Odyssey. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin, 1996.
Lacey, W. K. The Family in Classical Greece. London: Thames and Hudson, 1968.
Millay, Edna St. Vincent. “An Ancient Gesture.” PoemHunter.com. http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=6999&poem=156241.
Plato. The Republic. Trans. G. M. A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1974.
Pomeroy, Sarah B. Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity. New York: Shocken, 1975.
Powell, Barry B. Homer. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.