People and Themes in Homer's Odyssey

Agathe Thornton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317694625
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Critique littéraire ancienne et classique

Published in 1970, this important work interprets the poem with a focus on the idiosyncrasies of its originally oral composition.

In part I, the main themes of the Odyssey such as 'guest-friendship' and 'testing' are investigated. The incorporation of these and other themes, such as 'omens' and the 'homecomings of the Achaeans', into the dramatic construction of the whole epic is also examined. In Part II, the main characters of the Odyssey are described: the Suitors, Telemachus, Odysseus and Penelope. So too are Theoclymenus and Laertes, whom traditional criticism has maligned or disregarded. The analysis of the characters tries to illumine features which are challenging for the contemporary reader. In the conclusion, the 'plan' of the Odyssey is reconstructed. The author argues that it would probably have been performed over the course of three days: two sessions each day, with each recitation maintaining its own artistic unity.

PART I

THEMES AND COMPOSITION IN THE ODYSSEY

CHAPTER I

THE HOMECOMINGS OF THE ACHAEANS

Their Function in the Poem

The homecomings of the Achaeans after the fall of Troy offered a wealth of material for the epic singer. He might sing of the return of Agamemnon, of Menelaus, of Nestor, of Diomedes, of Odysseus and others. The poet of our Odyssey chose to sing the homecoming of Odysseus. But he did not therefore exclude all the others; he worked a number of them into the composition of his poem with various purposes in view. We will consider first the functions fulfilled by these Achaean return-stories; and secondly the manner in which they are told.

The most prominent of the Achaean homecomings throughout the Odyssey is that of Agamemnon, which is set into relation to each one of the main actors in the poem: to the Suitors, Telemachus, Odysseus and Penelope.

In his opening speech at the beginning of the divine assembly Zeus speaks pensively of Aegisthus who was killed by Orestes, son of Agamemnon: ‘Alas, how mortals blame the gods! For they say that evils come from us. But they themselves also by their own outrageous deeds suffer beyond their destiny, as now Aegisthus has married beyond his destiny the wedded wife of Agamemnon, and killed him himself when he came home, although he knew the steep destruction (that threatened him). For we told him beforehand, sending Hermes, the sharp-sighted Argus-killer, not to kill him, nor to marry his wife: “For vengeance will come for Agamemnon from Orestes, when he has reached manhood and longs for his native land”. Thus spoke Hermes. But he did not persuade the mind of Aegisthus, however kindly he was disposed; and now Aegisthus has paid the penalty for it all’.¹

Noble Aegisthus married the absent king’s wife, Clytemnestra, seized his kingship, and killed King Agamemnon himself on his return. Agamemnon’s son, Orestes, when grown to manhood, came home and killed Aegisthus to avenge his father. The nobles of Ithaca woo the absent king’s wife, Penelope. They have every intention of killing Odysseus if he should come home and want to drive them out of his house.² Antinous and Eurymachus have in mind to usurp the kingship, as we shall see, and kill Telemachus. When Telemachus has come to be a man, and Odysseus has returned in disguise, the two kill the Suitors in revenge for their evil deeds. The parallelism is unmistakable and has often been pointed out.³

Zeus’ speech makes a brilliant beginning, precisely because its relevance is not immediately evident. The person of whom Zeus thinks first and foremost is Aegisthus, his criminal actions in spite of forewarnings, and his punishment by death at the hands of Orestes. Why does Homer introduce the homecoming of Agamemnon in this oblique way? Why is Agamemnon himself, counterpart of Odysseus, not in the centre of the story of his return? There are two reasons for this. First, in Books 1 and 2, the outrageous actions and intentions of the Suitors are represented, and they are forewarned by the words of Telemachus, by omen and prophecy, just as Aegisthus was forewarned.⁴ Zeus’ speech leads therefore directly into the action at Ithaca. Secondly, by placing the crimes of Aegisthus and their punishment at the beginning, Homer indicates the moral and religious theme which pervades his Odyssey: that outrageous actions are punished by the decree of Zeus. In fact, Zeus’ speech is ‘programmatic’, as E. R. Dodds puts it.⁵

This theme is not only worked out in the action of the epic when the Suitors are punished by death, but it is constantly kept to the fore in the characterization of the Suitors. The key words are ‘insolence’ (hybris) and ‘violence’ (bie). Athene disguised as Mentes, watching the Suitors, says that they ‘seem to feast in the house with excessive wantonness’, perpetrating ‘much that is disgraceful’.⁶ When Telemachus addresses the Suitors he calls them ‘Suitors of my mother, men of insolence and violence’.⁷ This characterization even crystallizes into formulae.⁸ When Antinous, the leading prince among the Suitors, hurls a stool at the beggar Odysseus, even his own associates are taken aback and wonder whether the beggar might be a god in disguise. For ‘in the likeness of strangers from afar, the gods in various forms wander through the cities watching the wantonness and the “good and orderly life of men”’.⁹ The matter is stated by Odysseus himself when, in reply to Eurymachus’ entreaty, he refuses to spare the Suitors; not for any gifts whatever would he stop his hand from slaying ‘until the Suitors had paid the penalty for all their transgression’;¹⁰ and Eurycleia, exulting over the bodies of the Suitors, is checked by Odysseus, who realizes that the Suitors’ death is brought about by the gods and their own evil deeds, and that they owe their shameful end to their own ‘wilful folly’.¹¹ Further bloodshed is prevented by Zeus, who causes the kinsfolk of the dead Suitors to ‘forget the killing of their sons and brothers’.¹² This presents a first inkling of a transition from the endlessly destructive justice of kin blood-vengeance to a more humane justice of the gods, as Hommel has shown, who connects this with the mercy of Athene at the end of Aeschylus’ Eumenides.¹³

Zeus’ speech about Aegisthus states then the religious and ethical theme of divine justice worked out in the Odyssey in the actions and fate of the Suitors.

The tale of Agamemnon’s homecoming ends in young Orestes slaying Aegisthus, the murderer of his father. Our poet has used this part of the story in relation to Telemachus: Orestes, the famous avenger of his father, is set as a glorious example before Telemachus by Athene and by Nestor in order to rouse him to action.¹⁴ This is well known, and needs no further explanation.

Agamemnon himself is brought into relation with Odysseus and indirectly with Penelope. In the Underworld the two heroes meet. Agamemnon describes his death at the hand of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra’s betrayal; and then, speaking out of his own experience, warns Odysseus not to trust Penelope, however sensible she is, and not to return to his place openly but in secret.¹⁵

When Athene and Odysseus meet again for the first time after Odysseus’ arrival on Ithaca, Athene tells Odysseus about the Suitors in the palace, and he replies that he would have perished in the same evil fashion as Agamemnon, had the goddess not told him everything.¹⁶ The outcome is of course that Athene turns Odysseus into an old beggar so that he may be unrecognizable and return home in concealment as Agamemnon had suggested.¹⁷

Finally the lots of Agamemnon, Achilles, the Suitors and indirectly Odysseus are brought together in the second Underworld scene at the beginning of the last book of the epic. This scene needs detailed interpretation as it has not been understood.

The second Underworld scene is a carefully constructed whole. It is introduced by Hermes guiding the spirits of the dead Suitors from the palace at Ithaca down to the asphodel fields of the dead. Hermes is in this scene a guide of souls. He is also a god of sleep and waking, because he is described as ‘charming the eyes of men with his staff’ and waking them from sleep.¹⁸ He is a god of sleep among the Phaeacians who make to him the last libation in the day when they are on the point of going to bed.¹⁹ Sleep and Death are brothers in the Iliad;²⁰ and they together carry the body of slain Sarpedon to Lycia at Zeus’ command, being called ‘swift guides’ or ‘conductors’.²¹ Here it is of course the body, and not the spirit, that is carried off after death; and Sarpedon, a son of Zeus, is a special case. But what is plain is the close conjunction of function between death and sleep in Homeric thought. Hermes as god of sleep and guide of the dead is firmly embedded in this context. While most of the time the spirits of the dead leave their bodies and go to Hades without a guide, apart from Hermes in our passage, the Keres, death goddesses or daemons, are twice said to ‘carry’ them off.²² But there are specific reasons for Hermes to be represented as guide of the Suitors’ souls at the beginning of the last book of the Odyssey.

This passage is closely linked with the end of the previous book, being both parallel and contrasted. There Athene leads Odysseus, Telemachus, Philoetius and Eumaeus out of the town with the first light already on the earth, but she hides them in night. While the Suitors are led, squeaking like bats that flit about in the inner recesses of a big cave, over a mouldy path at last to where ‘live the souls, images of those who have become tired’, Odysseus and his companions emerge, after the Underworld scene, at the rich well-cultivated farm of Laertes, ready for action.²³ Here, at the end of the epos, Athene and Hermes work in concert, though on parallel lines, as they did at the beginning. In Book 1 Athene suggests that, while Hermes should go to Calypso and tell her to release Odysseus, she herself will go to Ithaca and rouse Telemachus.²⁴ She does so, and Hermes goes to Calypso in Book 5. The collaboration of Athene and Hermes seems in fact to be traditional: Heracles was accompanied by Hermes and Athene when he fetched Cerberus from the Underworld.²⁵

Furthermore, this journey of the Suitors’ spirits into Hades is prepared for earlier.²⁶ In his uncanny vision of the doomed Suitors Theoclymenus says: ‘The forehall is full of ghosts, and the courtyard is full of them, hastening towards the Underworld down below the darkness.’²⁷ When the battle in the palace is finished, the bodies of the slain Suitors lie in a heap, like a pile of fish cast on to the beach:²⁸ nothing is said about their spirits going to Hades. Later their bodies are shifted from the hall to the porch outside and stacked leaning against each other:²⁹ again nothing about their spirits. Then, Hermes calls them out and sets them moving with his staff.³⁰ The god’s command is needed to initiate the spirits’ departure, since a whole book has passed by since the Suitors’ death.

Having arrived on the field of asphodel, Hermes and the spirits of the Suitors ‘found’ Achilles accompanied by Patroclus, Antilochus and Ajax.³¹ These four heroes are mentioned together by Nestor as having died before Troy; and in the first Underworld scene Achilles is described as being accompanied by the other three in almost identical lines,³² ‘And close came the spirit of Agamemnon, son of Atreus’, accompanied by all those who died with him in the house of Aegisthus. After a short speech by Achilles, Agamemnon describes to Achilles in great detail the glory and the honours with which he was buried, concluding with a reference to his own wretched death. ‘Thus they spoke to each other in such a way; and close to them came the Guide of souls, Killer of Argus, leading down the spirits of the Suitors vanquished by Odysseus.’³³ The sequence of events is strange here. If it is taken to be chronological, it does not make sense, because Hermes leading the Suitors seems to arrive among the spirits twice over.³⁴ The clue to the apparent confusion lies in the use of the word ‘they found’ the spirit of Achilles.³⁵ Cunliffe³⁶ gives as one shade of meaning of this verb ‘to find or come upon in a specified place or condition or doing something specified’. When in the second book of the Iliad everyone was rushing to the ships after Agamemnon’s speech, Athene ‘then found Odysseus, like unto Zeus in intelligence, standing; and he did not touch the black ship with the good rowing benches since grief filled his heart and spirit. Standing close by him owl-eyed Athene spoke to him.’³⁷ Here the verb ‘found’ is followed by over two lines describing Odysseus’ attitude and feelings, and then by Athene approaching him and speaking to him. The form of presentation is the same when Iris ‘finds’ Helen, whose weaving and tragic role is described before Iris approaches her,³⁸ and again when the Ambassadors ‘find’ Achilles who is described in over five lines as singing to his lyre and having Patroclus sitting beside him, before they step forward, and stand in front of him.³⁹ The common shape of such a scene is then: (1) finding a person, (2) description of the person’s state, etc., (3) approaching that person and talking. In the case of Nestor, who was ‘found’ by Agamemnon arranging and exhorting his troops, the second part, that is the description, is seventeen lines long and includes a speech to his men of seven lines.⁴⁰

In the Odyssey Telemachus and Pisistratus ‘found’ Menelaus giving a wedding-feast for a son and daughter of his to his fellow townsmen.⁴¹ Particulars about the two marriages are given, and about the son born from a slave woman, since Helen had not borne another child after Hermione. After this expansion we return to the wedding-feast which is accompanied by a bard’s song and the swift circling of two acrobats. Then at last Telemachus and his friend stand at the porch, and contact is made through Eteoneus seeing them. Here the description of Menelaus giving a feast and all the explanation that is added spans over sixteen lines, the explanations in part referring to the past.⁴² Finally in Book 5 Calypso found Odysseus ‘sitting on the beach, and never did his eyes become dry of tears’.⁴³ Through the word ‘never’ the description is immediately widened to comprise the past as well as t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I Themes and Composition in the Odyssey
• Part II The People in the Odyssey
• General
• Passages Cited