The Odyssey(Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) Read online

  The repetition of that memorable phrase makes the contrast between the two heroes explicit, but Odysseus is still, as he was in the Iliad, a warrior faithful to the martial ideal. He will gladly employ deceit to win victory, but if necessary he will confront mortal danger alone and unafraid. On Circe’s island, when Eurylochus returns to report the disappearance of his companions inside the witch’s palace and implores Odysseus not to go to their rescue but to set sail at once, he is met with a scornful refusal:

  “Eurylochus, stay right here,

  eating, drinking, safe by the black ship.

  I must be off. Necessity drives me on.”

  (ref)

  This necessity is his fidelity to that reputation, that fame among men, for which Achilles accepted an early death. This is the Odysseus of the Iliad, who, finding himself alone and outnumbered in a desperate struggle with the Trojans, rules out the thought of flight:

  “Cowards, I know, would quit the fighting now

  but the man who wants to make his mark in war

  must stand his ground . . .”

  (11.483–85)

  Odysseus shares with Achilles another characteristic of the heroic mentality: a prickly sensitivity to what he regards as a lack of respect on the part of others, an irrepressible rage against any insult to his standing as a hero. This was the motive of his near-fatal insistence on revealing his real name to Polyphemus: he could not bear the thought that the blinded giant would never know the identity or the fame of his conqueror. More cautious among the Phaeacians, he carefully remains anonymous but comes close to revealing the truth when, scorned by a young Phaeacian for his lack of athletic prowess, he hurls the discus a prodigious distance and then challenges them all —at boxing, wrestling, racing and archery. “Well I know,” he tells them,

  “how to handle a fine polished bow . . .

  Philoctetes alone outshot me there at Troy

  when ranks of Achaean archers bent their bows.”

  (ref)

  The most painful insult to his honor is of course the conduct of the suitors; their three-year-long occupation of his house is an intolerable affront, compounded by their brutal treatment of him as he plays the role of Nobody once again. And their sublime confidence that even if he did return he would meet a humiliating death fighting against their superior numbers stirs in him an Achillean wrath. When he finally kills Antinous, the most violent of the suitors, and identifies himself at last —“You dogs! you never imagined I’d return from Troy” (ref) — Eurymachus, the most deceitful of the suitors, offers full compensation and more for the damage they have done. Odysseus fiercely rejects it:

  “No, Eurymachus! Not if you paid me all your father’s wealth —

  all you possess now, and all that could pour in from the world’s end —

  no, not even then would I stay my hands from slaughter

  till all you suitors had paid for all your crimes!”

  (ref)

  We have heard this note sounded before, in the voice of Achilles in the Iliad rejecting Agamemnon’s peace offering:

  “Not if he gave me ten times as much, twenty times over, all

  he possesses now, and all that could pour in from the world’s end —

  . . . no, not even then could Agamemnon

  bring my fighting spirit round until he pays me back,

  pays full measure for all his heartbreaking outrage!”

  (9.464–73)

  In the event, Achilles exacts full measure not from Agamemnon but from Hector, who has killed his friend Patroclus and now wears Achilles’ armor. One after another he cuts down Trojan warriors, drives them into the river to drown or die under his merciless sword, until he meets and kills Hector, whose corpse he drags back to his camp, to lie there unburied while he sacrifices captured Trojans to appease the spirit of Patroclus dead. Odysseus’ vindication of his honor is no less bloody and merciless. Backed by his son and two loyal servants, he kills all the one hundred and eight young aristocrats who have besieged his wife; his servants savagely mutilate and kill the faithless shepherd Melanthius, who had insulted Odysseus; and Telemachus, ordered to dispatch the disloyal maids with his sword, chooses to deny them this “clean death” (ref) and hangs them. All scores are paid. With interest.

  Achilles’ revenge ends with a compassionate gesture, the return of Hector’s body to his father, Priam, but at the end of the Odyssey more blood is spilled. Eupithes, Antinous’ father, leads the suitors’ relatives against Odysseus and his men, but is killed by Laertes when the battle is joined. “They would have killed them all,” says Homer (ref), if Athena had not ordered Odysseus back and allowed the Ithacans to run for their lives. The description of the final battle is phrased throughout in Iliadic phrase and formula, and as Odysseus encourages his son and receives assurance that Telemachus will not disgrace his lineage, old Laertes sounds the authentic heroic note: “What a day for me, dear gods! What joy — / my son and my grandson vying over courage!” (ref).

  This aspect of the Odyssey has often been overlooked or underemphasized. Much, perhaps too much, has been made of Achilles’ bitter rejection of Odysseus’ attempt to comfort him in the world of the dead: “I’d rather slave on earth for another man — / . . . than rule down here over all the breathless dead” (ref). His words have been interpreted as a rejection of the heroic code of which in the Iliad he was the great exemplar. But it is not so much a rejection of the everlasting glory for which he consciously and deliberately traded his life as it is an angry reproach to Odysseus for contrasting his own “endless trouble” (ref) with Achilles’ great power among the dead. Achilles knew what he was giving up when he chose an early death with glory over long life, and it is understandable that Odysseus’ specious words of comfort should provoke an angry response. In any case, he goes on to ask for news of his son Neoptolemus: “Did he make his way to the wars, / did the boy become a champion —yes or no?” (ref). When Achilles hears Odysseus’ answer —“scores of men he killed in bloody combat. / How could I list them all . . . ?” (ref) —and hears the tale of his aggressive courage in the wooden horse and his safe return home, Achilles goes off

  “loping with long strides across the fields of asphodel,

  triumphant in all I had told him of his son,

  his gallant, glorious son.”

  (ref)

  GODS

  Unlike the Iliad, the Odyssey is an epic with a thoroughly domestic base. Except in the wanderings —and sometimes even there —we are down to earth, whether in the full and frequent meals in the palace (Fielding called the Odyssey the “eatingest epic”) or in the rural domesticity of Eumaeus’ hut. Yet the poem is firmly set in what might be called “heroic time,” a time when men were stronger, braver and more eloquent than they are now, women more beautiful, powerful and intelligent than they have been ever since, and gods so close to human life and so involved with individual human beings, in affection or in anger, that they intervened in their lives and even appeared to them in person. The inclination of modern critics to emphasize the unique aspect of Odyssean heroism at the expense and often to the exclusion of the recognizably Achillean aspects of the heroic vengeance that concludes the epic is paralleled by a tendency to find new developments on Olympus, in the nature and action of the gods, especially of Zeus. What has happened —according to Alfred Heubeck in his thoughtful and valuable introduction to the Oxford Commentary on the Odyssey —is nothing less than an “ethical transformation”: “With perceptiveness and wisdom Zeus now directs the fate of the world according to moral principles, which alone create and preserve order. The father of the gods has only a little way to go to become the just ruler of the world” (I, p. 23).

  Quite apart from the fact that it may be doubted whether Zeus ever went that little way (even in the Oresteia his justice is problematic), it is hard to find in the Odyssey evidence for this ethical transformation. In the meeting on Olympus with which the poem opens, Zeus discusses the case of Aegisthus, who, disregarding a
warning delivered by Hermes, has seduced Clytemnestra and, with her help, murdered Agamemnon. “Ah how shameless,” says Zeus,

  “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.”

  (ref)

  There is, as Heubeck himself points out, “nothing new in this moralizing.” Zeus admits that much of humanity’s suffering is the responsibility of the gods; what he is complaining about is that they compound it by reckless initiatives of their own.

  This council on Olympus presents us with a situation all too familiar from the Iliad: gods bitterly opposed to each other over the fate of mortals. In the Iliad Hera and Athena are ferociously bent on Troy’s destruction because of an insult to their pride and preeminence —the Judgment of Paris, the Trojan prince, which awarded the prize for beauty to Aphrodite. Poseidon, brother of Zeus, is equally intent on Troy’s destruction, because the Trojan king Laomedon cheated him of payment for building the walls of Troy. Apollo, whose temple stands on the citadel of Troy, is the city’s champion, and Zeus, the supreme arbiter, is partial to Troy because of the devotion of its inhabitants to his worship. The fate of the city and its women and children, as well as the lives and deaths of the warriors on both sides, are determined by the give-and-take of these divine wills in opposition, by the pattern of alliance, conflict, deceit and compromise that form their relationships.

  The conflicts rarely take violent shape; on the few occasions when they do, the divine opponents are not equally matched. Athena fights Ares and Aphrodite, and easily defeats both, while Hera spanks Artemis as if she were a little girl. But among the major powers —Zeus, Hera, Athena, Poseidon, Apollo —the struggle takes different forms: retreat, deceit, compromise. When, in the climactic battles that lead up to the death of Hector, Apollo is challenged to fight by Poseidon, he declines:

  “God of the earthquake —you’d think me hardly sane

  if I fought with you for the sake of wretched mortals . . .

  like leaves, no sooner flourishing, full of the sun’s fire,

  feeding on earth’s gifts, than they waste away and die.”

  (21.527–30)

  Gods may favor a hero or a city, but if that favor threatens to create a rupture between major powers, one of them may withdraw. Or they may bargain, as Zeus does with Hera when he reluctantly consents to let Troy fall. He consents, but with a proviso:

  “One more thing . . .

  Whenever I am bent on tearing down some city

  filled with men you love —to please myself —

  never attempt to thwart my fury . . .”

  (4.46–49)

  And Hera accepts; in fact, she offers him three cities instead of one:

  “. . . The three cities that I love best of all

  are Argos and Sparta, Mycenae with streets as broad as Troy’s.

  Raze them . . . I will never rise in their defense . . .”

  (4.60–63)

  Gods may also get their way by deceit, as Hera does when she seduces Zeus and puts him to sleep so that she and Poseidon can rally the Achaeans against Hector’s assault.

  All three of these modes of Olympian diplomacy reappear in the Odyssey. Odysseus, by blinding Polyphemus, Poseidon’s son, has incurred the vengeful wrath of the god who rules the waves. When the hero meets Athena on the shore of Ithaca he asks her rather brusquely why she had abandoned him during the course of his wanderings:

  “. . . I never saw you,

  never glimpsed you striding along my decks

  to ward off some disaster.”

  (ref)

  Her reply, short, obviously embarrassed, and sandwiched between fulsome compliments and the lifting of the mist to show Odysseus that he really is home, is an avowal of concession made to superior force. “I could not bring myself,” she says, “to fight my Father’s brother, / Poseidon” (ref). And even this apology is evasive: she makes no attempt to explain why she did not help Odysseus before he incurred Poseidon’s wrath. Not until she secures the agreement of Zeus does she take the steps that lead to Odysseus’ return home. She proposes to Zeus that Odysseus be released from his seven-year confinement on Calypso’s island, and she does this at a meeting on Olympus from which Poseidon is absent; he is far away, at the ends of the earth, enjoying the homage of the Ethiopians. Poseidon is, in effect, deceived; when he returns and sees Odysseus on his raft approaching the Phaeacian shore he is furious. “Outrageous! Look how the gods have changed their minds / about Odysseus —while I was off with my Ethiopians” (ref). Athena would not challenge him openly; she acts behind his back.

  Poseidon knows that once Odysseus reaches Phaeacia he is “fated to escape his noose of pain” (ref), and in the event, the Phaeacians send him home on a supernaturally fast ship, loaded down with treasure greater than all he had acquired at Troy and lost at sea. Poseidon’s power has been defied, his honor slighted, and someone must pay. Odysseus is now beyond his reach, but the Phaeacians are another matter. “I will lose all my honor now / among the immortals,” he complains to Zeus,

  “now there are mortal men

  who show me no respect —Phaeacians, too,

  born of my own loins!”

  (ref)

  Zeus assures him that there is no loss of respect for him on Olympus, and as for mortal men —

  “If any man, so lost in his strength

  and prowess, pays you no respect —just pay him back . . .

  Do what you like. Whatever warms your heart.”

  (ref)

  Poseidon explains his purpose: to sink the Phaeacian ship that took Odysseus home as it sails into the harbor and to “pile a huge mountain round about their port” so that “They will learn at last / to cease and desist from escorting every man alive” (ref). Zeus approves, and suggests a refinement: to change the ship and, incidentally, its crew of fifty-two young men —“the best in town” (ref) —into a rock as the Phaeacians watch it approach the harbor. Poseidon swiftly does so, and at that sight King Alcinous recognizes the fulfillment of a prophecy, which also predicted that the city would be surrounded by a great mountain. He leads his people in sacrifice and prayer to Poseidon, hoping for mercy and promising that the Phaeacians will never again give sea passage to men who come to their city.

  This is the end of the great Phaeacian tradition of hospitality and help for the stranger and wayfarer. This action of Zeus casts a disturbing light on the relation between human ideals and divine conduct. If there is one stable moral criterion in the world of the Odyssey, it is the care taken by the powerful and well-to-do of strangers, wanderers and beggars. This code of hospitality is the one universally recognized morality. And its divine enforcer, so all mortals believe, is Zeus himself, Zeus xeinios, protector of stranger and suppliant. His name and title are invoked time after time, by Odysseus and also by Nausicaa, Echeneus the Phaeacian elder, Alcinous and Eumaeus.

  Of all the many hosts measured by this moral standard, the Phaeacians stand out as the most generous, not only in their regal entertainment of Odysseus but also in their speedy conveyance of the hero to his own home, a service they provide for all wayfarers who reach their shore. And now they are punished by the gods for precisely this reason, since their magnanimity has made Poseidon feel that his honor —the touchy sensitivity to public opinion that in Achilles brought ten thousand woes on the Achaeans, and drove Ajax to suicide and fueled his sullenness in the underworld —has been dealt an intolerable blow. The offenders must be punished, even if their punishment displays utter indifference to the only code of moral conduct that obtains in the insecure world of the Odyssey. Faced with Poseidon’s rage against the Phaeacians, Zeus the protector of strangers enthusiastically joins his powerful brother in his denunciation. Not only does he suggest the refinement of turning the ship to stone; he also approves of Poseidon’s intention to cut the Phaeacians off fro
m the sea forever by piling a huge mountain around the city.

  This has shocked some modern translators and editors, who have accordingly followed the lead of the ancient editor Aristophanes of Byzantium. By changing three letters in the Greek, he made Zeus end his speech with the words “but do not pile a mountain round the city.” The suggested petrification of the ship is a sop to gratify Poseidon and compensate him for a concession —the Phaeacians will not be cut off from the sea. Zeus xeinios lives up to his title; he is a Zeus who has undergone an ethical transformation.