The Making of the Odyssey 0198718365, 9780198718369

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THE MAKING OF THE ODYSSEY

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The Making of the Odyssey M. L. WEST

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries. © M. L. West 2014 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published 2014 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2014947487 ISBN 978–0–19–871836–9 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

To Stephanie

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Preface After writing The Making of the Iliad (Oxford 2011) I started making notes for a parallel work on the Odyssey. I soon realized that it was necessary first to make a more thorough study of the Cyclic poems, with which the Odyssey has such manifold links. This led me to write The Epic Cycle: A Commentary on the Lost Troy Epics (Oxford 2013). After completing that I continued with the Odyssey project. This then is the sister volume to The Making of the Iliad, but it is not a twin sister; perhaps a prettier one. Each chapter is longer than the one before. The first is a summary of my conclusions, which I put here because people signing up for tours usually like to know in advance where they are going. Any who prefer mystery tours, or who find it more satisfactory to apprehend a book’s argument gradually in the course of reading it, are of course free to start at Chapter 2. The last chapter, ‘Proof of the Pudding’, which makes up more than half of the whole work, corresponds to the Analytical Commentary in the Iliad book, though it is not written in commentary format but as a continuous read. In the Iliad book I referred to the poet as P. To differentiate the Odyssey poet I shall call him Q. No one, I am sure, will confuse him with the gospel source known as Q to New Testament scholars, or with MI6’s inventive quartermaster in the James Bond films. As in the Iliad book, I make more reference to nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholarship, and less to more recent work, than is fashionable. Many contemporary writers on Homer seem to cite nearly everything they have read, but to have read little that is more than thirty or forty years old. There is much intelligent and valuable criticism to be found in the older literature, and I have tried to seek it out and to give credit for significant insights where it is due. These are ghosts who deserve their sip of blood (or ink) so that their voice can be heard again. Or as Friedrich Hebbel put it in his Requiem,

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Preface Seele, vergiß sie nicht, Seele, vergiß nicht die Toten! Sieh, sie umschweben dich, Schauernd, verlassen, Und in den heiligen Gluten, Die den Armen die Liebe schürt, Atmen sie auf und erwarmen, Und genießen zum letzten Mal Ihr verglimmendes Leben.

I should like to thank the staff of Oxford University Press for the care and professionalism that they have devoted to the production of the book. I dedicate it to my wife, who is the author of the best commentary on any four books of the Odyssey and who, patient as Penelope and rather more acute, has supported my Homeric and other studies for over half a century. M.L.W. Oxford 2014

Contents Abbreviations

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1. Conclusions

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2. Resourceful Odysseus

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Odysseus’ name and nature.—The Cyclops.—The incontinent heron.—The Returning Husband. The archery contest.—A northeast wind?—A proto-Odyssey

3. The Odyssey in Context

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Relationship to the Iliad. Relationship to the Cyclic epics. NonTrojan epic. Hesiodic poetry. Elegy, iambus.—The contemporary world; dating.—Early reception

4. The Poet and his Art

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Values.—The gods; destiny.—Poetic merits.—Narrative technique. Typical scenes. Transitions. Similes. Dialogue.—Weaknesses and inconcinnities.—Q as wordsmith. Adaptation of other poets’ verses. Re-use of own verses. Brachylogy; unclarity; metre.—Geography.— Where did Q live?

5. The Poem in the Making

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The overall organization of the poem.—Backgrounds; the Ithacan setting.—The domestic situation.—Telemachos’ journey.— Odysseus’ wanderings.—The visit to Hades.—Calypso.—The Phaeacians.—The homecoming; Odysseus’ battle plan.—The morning after.—Below the surface

6. Proof of the Pudding

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Bibliography Index

307 311

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Abbreviations AJP arg. Cl. Ant. CQ Ep. adesp. FGrHist

American Journal of Philology argument (in citations of Cyclic poems) Classical Antiquity Classical Quarterly Epica adespota, ed. West F. Jacoby and others, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker Jb. f. cl. Phil. Jahrbücher für classische Philologie Kl. Schr. Kleine Schriften Mus. Helv. Museum Helveticum NJb. Neue Jahrbücher für das Klassische Altertum PBA Proceedings of the British Academy PCPS Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society Phil. Philologus PMGF M. Davies, Poetarum Melicorum Graecorum Fragmenta Q the poet of the Odyssey RE Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft REG Revue des Études grecques Rh. Mus. Rheinisches Museum RPh Revue de philologie SBAW Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu München SIFC Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica TAPA Transactions of the American Philological Association TrGF B. Snell, R. Kannicht, S. Radt, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta Wien. St. Wiener Studien ZPE Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik ZVS Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Sprachforschung The Epic Cycle and other fragmentary early epics are cited from my Loeb edition, Greek Epic Fragments from the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries BC (Cambridge, Mass.–London 2003).

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1 Conclusions The Odyssey, like the Iliad, is an epic poem conceived on an exceptionally large scale, composed and set down in writing over many years. Even more than the Iliad, which a later hand augmented with the Doloneia, it is the work of a single poet (‘Q’), free from major interpolations. He was not the author of the Iliad. It is a different world that he portrays, and he sees it from a different perspective. The moral values are different. The gods appear as a much more unified body, supporting good conduct and punishing bad. Q himself is a very different kind of artist from the Iliad poet, with great virtues and many flaws. He is inventive and original, excellent at imaginative descriptions of landscapes and everyday activities, for which he has a pronounced taste. His characters are varied and individual, and their action and talk are naturalistically drawn; the dialogue often has a genuinely conversational quality. The treatment of typical scenes is free and flexible. Transitions are deft. On the other hand the similes are sometimes odd and incongruous. The narrative, while generally ample and leisurely, can on occasion be perfunctory, and it is riddled with inconsistencies and contradictions. Q’s command of language does not match the fluency of his invention. Too often he takes the easy route of reproducing or adapting verses that he or another poet has used elsewhere, without harmonizing them completely with the new context. His diction can occasionally be seriously eccentric or obscure. The poem dates from the last third of the seventh century bce. We cannot pinpoint Q’s homeland, but certain indications suggest Attica or Euboea as the likeliest regions. He had been to Delos and perhaps Crete, and he had sailed round as far as Ithaca, though his knowledge of the interior of the Peloponnese was poor. He had little contact with

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the eastern Aegean, but he was well acquainted with some of its poetic produce, including the Iliad, which he constantly imitates and adapts (often infelicitously). He was familiar with much of the subject matter of the Cyclic epics, whether or not they had already been fixed in writing in the form in which they were current later. He knew poetry about Heracles’ exploits, and an epic on the Argonauts’ voyage, from which he adapted several episodes to extend Odysseus’ adventures. He knew Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days and some Ionian elegy and iambus. Odysseus, or Olysseus as he was called in much of Greece, was a figure of ancient legend, at first probably not a warrior hero but a man celebrated for ingenuity and guile amusingly applied to diverse situations. As the tradition of the Trojan War developed, ingesting heroes from other legendary contexts, Odysseus became attached to it, specifically in the role of the man who devised the Wooden Horse and so brought about the Achaeans’ victory. He was also made the protagonist of two folk-tale narratives that found their way to Greece from abroad, perhaps early in the seventh century from the Pontic area: the story of the Blinded One-eyed Ogre and the story of the Returning Husband. The first was a self-contained tale that had nothing to do with the Trojan War and needed no context. The second presupposed a man absent from home for many years, and for this the established tradition of the war provided a natural point of attachment. Such a contextualization, with Odysseus as the hero, invited treatment in a new epic poem. This was the first Odyssey. Our Odyssey is descended from that proto-Odyssey. The interval between them was probably no more than one or two generations, and only a small number of poets need have been involved. An earlier version than ours, with Telemachos already playing a significant part, came to the attention of the Iliad poet. Q was trained as an oral performer of epic, but he resolved to create an Odyssey that would emulate the Iliad in scale and be likewise stabilized in writing. What he produced was a structure with three major parts: the Telemachy (α–δ with part of ο), Odysseus’ account of his wanderings (ε–μ), and the homecoming (ν–ω). In the proto-Odyssey the war might have been treated as sufficient to account for the hero’s long absence from home. The poet who first added further wanderings very likely related them in the third person. Q or one of his predecessors restructured the story so that most of them were related by Odysseus himself, allowing the whole narrative to be concentrated in

Conclusions

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a narrower time-frame. Telemachos’ journey, in which he learns about other heroes’ returns from Nestor and Menelaos, thus setting Odysseus’ return more graphically in context, was Q’s own innovation. His original idea was that the young man should go to Pylos and Crete, but before coming to the Cretan visit he abandoned the idea and substituted Sparta. He took pains to fill out the context of the homecoming in other ways too: by giving Odysseus a more complete family and background, and by situating his household within a civic society. This Ithacan community remains in the background, but its existence made it necessary to add a further episode at the end in which Odysseus could reach a settlement with the suitors’ families. In the course of composing the wanderings Q drastically changed and extended them. Initially they lasted no more than three years, and they took Odysseus by way of Crete into the eastern Mediterranean, to Phoenicia, Egypt, and Libya. Then Q became aware of the need to give Menelaos seven years of wandering with Helen, to account for his absence from the story of Agamemnon’s murder and Orestes’ revenge. He transferred to Menelaos Odysseus’ eastern adventures (including an encounter with Proteus) and shifted Odysseus’ itinerary further west to avoid overlap. At the same time he had to make his wanderings last much longer so that he did not reach home before Menelaos. He achieved this by marooning him for seven years on Calypso’s isle. After tracing the trajectory of Odysseus’ peregrinations round the uncharted waters of the western Mediterranean, he spoiled their geographical coherence by importing a series of additional adventures adapted from the story of the Argonauts, one of which was explicitly located at the sunrise, while others carried the imprint of Pontic scenery. In the middle of them he set a journey to Hades, where Odysseus was to consult the soul of Teiresias. In an earlier version this consultation had taken place in Thesprotia shortly before Odysseus arrived back in Ithaca. After bringing his hero home, Q vacillated over how he was to overcome the suitors; he had probably recited different versions at different times. Originally the suitors numbered only twelve, and after Odysseus had strung the great bow (a motif that came to Greece as part of the Returning Husband story) he could have dispatched them with it. But Q, given as he was to carefree inflation, had seen fit to increase their number to 108; and there had to be a heroic role for

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Telemachos. This called for a regular spear-fight, with support from loyal herdsmen. Until the last quarter of the poem it is the spear-fight that Odysseus seems to be anticipating, and the existence of the bow is never mentioned. In the event he begins by shooting the suitors, and when his arrows are expended a spear-fight develops. We can see from this example (among many others) that Q worked forward from α towards ω without having worked out in advance exactly how the narrative was to go. Like the Iliad poet, he made many insertions in what he had already written, in a few places adding a whole scene. Recognition of this fundamental fact about the Homeric epics is the key to solving many of the critical difficulties that scholars have identified over the last two centuries. Such is my view of the Odyssey in outline. The detail will be progressively filled in over the following chapters.

2 Resourceful Odysseus We know Odysseus principally from the Homeric poems. The Odyssey tells the story of his return home after the Trojan War. In the Iliad we see him during the war, recognized by all as one of the leading Achaean heroes. At Α 138 he and Ajax are the first to come to Agamemnon’s mind as major warriors who, like Achilles, have won rewards for their prowess. He plays a prominent role throughout, and while he defeats no adversary of great note, in Λ he is one of three champions who have to be disabled as the precondition for the Trojan advance to the ships. In the Cyclic poems too he appeared regularly as a major figure at Troy. He was sent on important missions, or undertook them on his own initiative; he and Ajax together recovered Achilles’ body from the battle as it raged around them, and he was adjudged, fairly or no, to have played the greater part in that achievement. He captured the Trojan seer Helenos, went into Troy in disguise on a spying expedition, and again with Diomedes to steal the Palladion. He conceived the stratagem of the Wooden Horse, led the special force that hid inside it, and killed Hector’s son at the sack. So far as we can see, he was well established in the tradition about the war. In the cases of certain other heroes such as Achilles, Sarpedon, and Glaukos, there is reason to think that they were brought in at a comparatively late stage in the evolution of the saga.1 In Odysseus’ case there are no obvious signs of this. He has a role in the story as far back as we can see. We know from the oral traditions of other peoples, however, that the legend of a great enterprise, such as the Achaean expedition against Troy, is liable to draw in famous figures from other stories,

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West 2011a: 42–7 (Achilles); 64 f. (Sarpedon and Glaukos).

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men who, where historical evidence is available, sometimes turn out to have lived in an earlier or later century than the one in which the enterprise is set.2 Of the Homeric heroes who fight at Troy, the Salaminian Ajax and the two Cretan leaders, Idomeneus and Meriones, seem from various indications to belong to a distinctly earlier time than the last phase of the Mycenaean age when the war takes place.3 It is likely enough that Odysseus too was brought in at some stage from a different channel of story tradition. He is not, after all, a typical epic hero in the mould of Achilles, Diomedes, or Hector, whose appearance strikes terror into the enemy lines and whose onset is more or less irresistible. Odysseus has intellectual qualities that match and complement his fighting ability. There are tales and traditions about him that point away from the field of blood. He recedes under scrutiny into a misty and mysterious prehistory. He has been called an ‘enigmatic figure’, ‘probably the most problematic of all Homeric heroes’.4

ODYSSEUS’ NAME AND NATURE His name suggests a considerable antiquity, firstly by its -εύς ending, which is common in mythical names and those found in the Linear B tablets but is no longer productive in the historical period; secondly by its obscurity; and thirdly by its currency in several puzzlingly divergent forms. The d alternates with l, the y with i, the ss with s or t or tt or x, and the -eus with -es. With the various permutations of these variants the name appears in more than a dozen different spellings. ᾽Οδυσσεύς (with the metrical alternative ᾽Οδσεύς in poetry) is the normal form in literature, except that ᾽Ολίξης is attested for Ibycus (PMGF 305). In vase inscriptions spellings with λ are the norm in the earlier period, starting in the late seventh century; those with δ begin to appear after about 540, no doubt under the influence of the epics. Three Corinthian vases, dating from 620 to 560, all have Ολισευς, though another has a woman named Ολυττοι, i.e. ᾽Ολυττώι. Latin has Ulixes, very much as Ibycus heard the name 2 3 4

See C. M. Bowra, Heroic Poetry (London 1952), 519–36. West 2011b: 48 f. Schwartz 183; P. Philippson, Mus. Helv. 4 (1947), 9.

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in sixth-century Calabria, though with a genitive Ulixei beside Ulixi and -is. A d-variant, on the other hand, appears to underlie the Etruscan forms Utuśe, Utuze, Uθuse, etc.5 As regards the distribution of d and l forms, we can sum up the situation by saying that d is peculiar to the (Aeolic–)Ionian epic tradition and those dependent on it (including the Etruscans), while l is at home everywhere in mainland Greece and the west apart from Etruria. But the divergence is not explained by any normal dialect development, and it is often thought to indicate that the name is not Greek in origin. Kretschmer thought that the l might represent an Illyrian or Epirotic mutation.6 He later compared Odysseus’ name to Carian Λύξης, while more recent scholars have referred to evidence of variation between d and l in Anatolian languages, and to da-pu2-rito-jo = λαβυρίνθοιο at Cnossos.7 No form of Odysseus’ name is found in the Linear B tablets, but the general opinion that it is old and pre-Greek seems justified. The etymological association with δύσσομαι ‘be hated’, which is stated in τ 406–9 and played on in α 62, ε 340, 423, τ 275, must be secondary, as it leaves the widely current l forms unaccounted for. We must accept that the meaning of the name is lost in antiquity, and that we cannot even say whether its first consonant was originally d or l or some un-Greek phoneme that was neither the one nor the other. We can however draw one important conclusion from the divergence of forms: that Odysseus was not a figure known only to heroic epic. He must have been famous in other kinds of tradition, and for many centuries. It has long been inferred that his connection with the Trojan War is secondary and that he was earlier known for other things.8 What sort of things? There are two lines of approach to the question, and they do not clearly lead in the same direction. The first is based on local traditions, some of them going back to the sixth 5 For details of the vase inscriptions see F. Brommer, ZVS 96 (1982/3), 88–92; for Ολυττοι, O. Masson, REG 94 (1981), 544. E. Wüst, RE xvii. 1906–10, gives a fuller survey of forms and scholars’ attempts to explain them. The Ολιξεύς noted by Herodian i. 14. 14 L. (where Ο- represents Ŭ-) is probably constructed to account for the Latin genitive Ulixei, cf. Plut. Marc. 20. 4; Prisc. 6. 92 (ii. 276. 4 Keil). 6 Kretschmer 280–2. 7 P. Kretschmer, Glotta 28 (1940), 253 f.; Germain 482 f.; A. Heubeck, Minos 5 (1957), 151 f. = Kl. Schr. (Erlangen 1984), 513 f.; id., Lydiaka (Erlangen 1959), 20 f.; id., Praegraeca (Erlangen 1961), 24–7; Marzullo 74 f. 8 Wilamowitz 1884: 113, cf. 1927: 184.

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century bce, about Odysseus in north-west Greece. In the Cyclic Telegony he married a Thesprotian queen and had a son whom he left to rule over her people. Sixth-century Thesprotians, in other words, claimed that their kings were descended from Odysseus.9 A similar legend made him go to Aetolia, marry the daughter of Thoas, and father a royal son on her (Apollod. epit. 7. 40). Others made him the founder of the obscure town Bounima in Epirus, while at Trampya, not far away, he was venerated as a hero who could be summoned up from the dead to give oracles. He had another such oracle among the Eurytanes of Aetolia.10 These myths and institutions were variously connected with the mysterious mission laid upon Odysseus by Teiresias in λ 119–34, that he was to journey inland to people who knew nothing of the sea and there plant an oar in the earth and make sacrifices to Poseidon. On the basis of all this some scholars have supposed that, as Hartmann puts it, this Odysseus of the mainland genealogies and traditions was not imported through epic but existed independently of epic as a very old indigenous figure in north-west Greece. This Odysseus seems to have been a figure something like Amphiaraos, distinct from the sacker of Troy, from the wandering seafarer, and from the returning hero who slays the suitors and frees his wife. . . . Perhaps we have come close to the point from which the real nature and origin of the Odysseus figure might be explained if we had but more exact information.11

Bethe (iii. 180–8) went further, finding traces of Odysseus’ cult over a much wider area, in Arcadia, Sparta, Argos, and Boeotia, his adherents presently spreading the faith to Thrace and Italy too. But why should we believe that all these local traditions are of great antiquity? Certainly the Teiresias mission presupposes an inland cult 9 Cf. West 2013: 297 f. Lysimachus, FGrHist 382 F 15, gave variant versions with different names for the queen and the son. 10 Lyc. 799 f. with sch.; St. Byz. β 147; Arist. fr. 508; Nic. fr. 8; Eust. 1675. 35; Hartmann 92 n. 101, 139 f., 150 f. 11 Hartmann 228 f., ‘Dies alles scheint mir dafür zu sprechen, daß dieser Odysseus der festländischen Genealogien und Überlieferungen nicht durch das Epos importiert wurde, sondern unabhängig vom Epos als sehr alte einheimische Figur in Nordwestgriechenland existierte. Dieser Odysseus scheint eine Gestalt wie etwa Amphiaraos gewesen zu sein, verschieden vom Trojazerstörer, vom Seefahrer, der durch die Meere irrt und vom heimkehrenden Helden, der die Freier erschlägt und die Gattin befreit. . . . Vielleicht sind wir hier dem Punkt nahe gekommen, von dem aus das eigentliche Wesen und der Ursprung der Odysseusfigur sich erklären ließe, wenn wir genauere Kunde hätten.’ Cf. Schwartz 183 f.; K. Meuli, Hermes 70 (1935), 167 = Gesammelte Schriften (Basel 1975), ii. 869; Merkelbach 224–6.

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site of Poseidon, said to have been established by a retired seafarer, and that seafarer had been identified with Odysseus before our Odyssey was composed. But that is to say that it presupposes an Odysseus famed for his wanderings at sea, not one who held sway or gave oracles in the interior. If towns or tribes here and there in the north-west claimed Odysseus as their founder or as the ancestor of their rulers, it is simply that these communities, which were comparatively late to enter into the spirit of pan-Hellenic culture,12 became eager to acquire a respectable antiquity by linking themselves up with a Homeric hero, and Odysseus was the only one in hailing distance. As for the nekyomanteia, these were a feature of the region. Herodotus refers to one in Thesprotia.13 Typically it was famous seers from the past such as Teiresias or Trophonios or Amphiaraos who were consulted at them. Was Odysseus then originally a seer? There is no hint of it in the tradition, and it seems altogether more likely that the Eurytanes and the denizens of Trampya assigned oracular functions to him because he was a hero of repute who had already found a place in local mythology and who had in his own lifetime visited Hades and obtained wisdom from a seer there. The other line of approach starts from that aspect of Odysseus’ Homeric persona which is not characteristically heroic. I have mentioned his intellectual side. In the Iliad he is portrayed as a wise adviser, a steadying influence. People speak of his good counsels (βουλα γαθαί, Β 273), and in λ 512 he ranks himself with Nestor in this regard. He knows what to do in a crisis. But he is also noted for resourcefulness of an underhand variety, for deception and trickery. Helen characterizes him to Priam as ‘knowing all kinds of tricks and intricate wiles’ (Γ 202). A Trojan addresses him as δόλων $τε, ‘insatiable in tricks’ (Λ 430). He is not ashamed of it; he identifies himself to the Phaeacians as a man famous for it (ι 19 f.):

ε%μ᾽ ᾽Οδυσε&ς Λαερτιάδης, (ς π*σι δόλοισιν νθρώποισι μέλω, καί μεο κλέος οραν.ν /κει. The first person he meets on Ithaca he tries to deceive with a false story, ‘ever plying a crafty mind in his breast’ (ν 255). He does not know that it is Athena. She is amused and says, ‘it would take a 12 Even in the late fifth century the Eurytanes were, according to Thucydides (3. 94. 5), ‘the largest group among the Aetolians, but the most incomprehensible of speech, and said to be eaters of raw meat’. 13 See p. 123.

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cunning man to surpass you in all your trickery. Even now when you are back in your own land you keep up your deceits and frauds that you are so fond of’ (291–5). We do not see him being actively deceitful in the Iliad, but in the Odyssey it is what enables him to escape from the Cyclops’ cave, and later to enter his own palace unrecognized and get the suitors into his power. In the Cycle he tried to avoid recruitment for the war by feigning insanity, though he was outwitted by Palamedes (Cypria arg. 5b). He entered Troy in disguise and came to a secret agreement with Helen (Little Iliad arg. 4b–d, frr. 8–9). Above all, he was the author of the great trick by which the Achaeans finally overcame the Trojans, the Wooden Horse. So it was said of him that he took Troy βουλ0ι κα μύθοισι κα 1περοπη2δι τέχνηι (Ep. adesp. 11, cf. α 1 f., χ 230). This side of him is reflected in some of the epithets attached to him in Homer. On the one hand he is πτολίπορθος, ‘sacker of strongholds’, but this is a generic epithet in the Iliad, also used of Ares, Enyo, and several heroes whose names scan ð – – (Achilles, Oïleus, Otrynteus). He is also πολύτλας, πολυτλήμων, τλήμων, usually understood as ‘much-enduring’ but perhaps originally ‘muchdaring’.14 On the other hand he is the ν5ρ πολύτροπος (α 1, cf. κ 330), an adjective also applied to the deceitful Hermes (Hymn. Herm. 13, 439). He is πολυμήχανος (α 205, and twenty-two times in the formula διογεν6ς Λαερτιάδη, πολυμήχαν᾽ ᾽Οδυσσε7). Even more frequently he is πολύμητις; μ0τις means ‘resourcefulness’ in general, the ability to apply one’s mind to a practical problem and find a way to solve it. Zeus himself is μητιόεις, and Odysseus rivals him in this, being Δι μ0τιν τάλαντος. The scansion of this formula suggests that it is of Mycenaean vintage, going back to *Diwei mētin 15 16 ․hatalantos. In Homer it is used mostly of Odysseus, though it would be unsafe to infer that it was already applied to him in Mycenaean verse. Before he was incorporated as a warrior hero in the Trojan saga, then, Odysseus may have been essentially a trickster figure. This is a well known category in folk-tale studies. But the folk-tale trickster is usually a prankster, a man who plays mischievous tricks on other Marzullo 23–6, 59–67; Hainsworth 320. τλ0ν is to dare, to venture, to bring oneself to do something daunting, dangerous, or diagreeable. 15 Cf. West 2011b: 46. 16 Β 169, 407, 636, K 137; also of Hector, Η 47 = Λ 200. A secondary adaptation of it, θεόϕιν μήστωρ τάλαντος, is used of Priam, Peirithoos, and Patroklos. 14

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people for his own advantage or amusement and who sometimes gets into trouble as a result and comes to a bad end. The infant Hermes plays this kind of role in the Homeric Hymn. There were also the Cercopes, a pair of rascally brothers who were ‘liars, tricksters, schooled in mischief, deceivers; they used to travel far abroad and trick people, always roaming’; Heracles put paid to them.17 The Kobaloi were impish demons of similar character, associated with Dionysus. Odysseus belongs rather with certain mythological figures who were admired for the ingenious quality of their bamboozlings. At the divine level there was Prometheus, who benefited mankind by stealing fire from heaven and devising a way to transport it, and by tricking Zeus over the division of the sacrificial victim between gods and mortals. On earth there was the master thief Autolykos, a son of Hermes, who would change the colour of the horses he stole so that they could not be identified (‘Hes.’ fr. 67). There was Sisyphos, cleverest of men (Ζ 153, ‘Hes.’ fr. 43a. 51, Alc. 38. 6), who found a way of (temporarily) overcoming death and who outwitted Autolykos. Odysseus was brought into connection with both of these tricksters. His mother Antikleia was identified as a daughter of Autolykos (λ 85, τ 394–412); and some said that when she married Laertes she had already been made pregnant by Sisyphos, who was thus Odysseus’ real father.18 In this version (of which there is no hint in the Odyssey; it may be of later origin) Hermes, Autolykos, and Sisyphos have all contributed to Odysseus’ genes.

THE CYCLOPS All the examples of Odysseus’ μ0τις that we know about were manifested in the course of the Trojan War, or in the preparations for it (his attempt to avoid being drafted), or in its aftermath (his wanderings and homecoming). Whatever exploits he was known for before he was drawn into the Troy saga have either been forgotten or adapted to fit somewhere within that saga.

17 ‘Homer’, Cercopes; see my Homeric Hymns, Homeric Apocrypha, Lives of Homer (Cambridge, Mass. 2003), 228, 252–5. 18 For these various stories see Gantz 173 f.

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One of his major adventures, his encounter with the Cyclops Polyphemos, has a good claim to belong under the latter heading. It has nothing to do with the Trojan War. When Odysseus tells Polyphemos that they are Achaeans who have just come from sacking Troy under Agamemnon, whose fame is now world-wide, it means nothing to the ogre: he lives in a different world (ι 259–78). There is a functional mismatch between the twelve ships that Odysseus has brought and the single one that is all the adventure requires; the eleven surplus ones are just set aside, parked at an offshore island to be collected afterwards. But even a single ship’s crew are far too many for the story, and once they have reached the shore Odysseus selects twelve men to go with him while the rest stay at the ship. Of all the episodes that make up his wanderings, this is the only one in which he overcomes an adversary rather than just escaping from danger. It is also the one which stands out as a self-contained story that needs neither a post-Trojan nor any other context. Of all classical myths, it is the one that a modern child is most likely to be told.19 The poet has made links with prior and later events: Odysseus brings strong wine with him from a previous adventure, and by blinding Polyphemos he incurs Poseidon’s wrath, which will trouble him later, though it is brought into play only intermittently and is not integral. It has long been recognized that the story is a folk-tale, one recorded in numerous versions from all over Europe as well as Syria, Turkey, Armenia, the Caucasus, Turkestan, Mongolia, and north Africa.20 The essence of it is that a small group of men enter the dwelling of a one-eyed giant. He seizes, cooks, and eats them one after another. When he falls asleep the last survivor drives a spit or stake into his eye and blinds him. But escape is problematic, as the exit is blocked by a massive stone. The giant opens it a little to let his sheep out, checking

19 My wife once related it to two small Oxford boys, one of whom observed seriously: ‘There’s an Australian version of that.’ 20 W. Grimm, Die Sage von Polyphem (Berlin 1857) = Kleinere Schriften iv (Gütersloh 1887), 428–62; O. Hackman, Die Polyphemsage in der Volksüberlieferung (Helsinki 1904); see further e.g. G. Krek, Einleitung in die slavische Literaturgeschichte (Graz 1887), 665–752; J. G. Frazer, Apollodorus. The Library (Cambridge, Mass. 1921), ii. 404–55; A. B. Cook, Zeus, ii (Cambridge 1925), 988–1003; Germain 55–129; Page 1955: 1–20; Hansen 289–301 (with full bibliography). I use the concise and familiar term ‘folk-tale’ for what some, perhaps more aptly, call an ‘international tale’ (as in the subtitle of Hansen’s book) or ‘migratory oral narrative’.

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them by feel. The hero kills a ram, covers himself with its skin, and makes his way out on all fours, eluding the giant. He then taunts him, which brings him into renewed danger. Some of the versions undoubtedly derive from the Odyssey or have been modified under its influence,21 but that cannot be true of them all. This was not a story invented by a Greek epic poet, nor can it have originated in Greece; it is of a quite different character from the normal run of Greek myths. It must have been imported from abroad. When it was imported, its hero had to be given a Greek identity, just as the one-eyed ogre received a Greek name.22 He may have been identified as Odysseus from the beginning, for it would scarcely have been possible to transfer the story to him if it had once gained currency with a differently named protagonist. Why Odysseus? Not, surely, because a warrior making his way home from Troy needed an extra adventure to delay him; his sojourn with Calypso serves that purpose by adding seven years to the duration of his wanderings, while the Cyclops episode is over in two days. No, rather because Odysseus was a figure known for his clever tricks and ability to outwit others who seemed to have the advantage.23 Probably, then, the story of Odysseus’ encounter with Polyphemos was current not only before the composition of our Odyssey but before Odysseus had become attached to the Trojan War, when his fame was as a trickster. It was incorporated in the tale of his return from Troy not because it had a logical place there but because it was firmly attached to his name and could now be given what it had hitherto lacked, a context.

21

See Hackman (as n. 20), 169, 181–8; Meuli 69 f. = 639 f. Cf. Hölscher 1988: 226, ‘Bei den Griechen aber scheint es das eigentliche Märchen, mit seiner Zeit- und Ortlosigkeit, seinen namenlosen Figuren ohne Umwelt, nicht gegeben zu haben, es wurde ihnen unwillkürlich zum Mythos, zur Geschichte bestimmter Personen der Vergangenheit . . . Es gab—wenn wir von der Parabel absehen—nicht die fiktive Erzählung als solche; das Märchen wurde episch.’ In general on the epicization of folk-tales cf. ibid. 159–69. 23 Cf. Hennings 599, ‘Daß die Überlistung des dummen Riesen gerade dem Odysseus beigelegt wurde, erklärt sich aus dem Ruhme seiner Klugheit, durch den er sich vor allen trojanischen Helden auszeichnete’. Only the field was not limited to heroes who fought at Troy. 22

14

Resourceful Odysseus THE INCONTINENT HERON

It is typical of the trickster or cleverboots that after all his unheroic successes at the expense of others he finally gets his comeuppance. He is undone in a comical fashion, or condemned to suffer some unusual torment. The Cercopes were seized by Heracles and hung upside down from a pole on his shoulder as he carried them away, so that they realized that this was the Black-arse their mother had warned them against. Sisyphos, after cheating death once, was doomed to roll a rock uphill for all time without ever reaching the top. Prometheus was fastened to a rock-face with an eagle lunching daily on his liver. According to a legend used by Aeschylus in his Psychagogoi (fr. 275), Odysseus, after coming safely through all the perils that beset him on sea and land, perished at last in a droll manner. There fell on his bald pate the droppings of a passing heron that had eaten a stingray. The residual poison from the fish seeped into his scalp, and his aged constitution succumbed to it. I have argued elsewhere (2013: 307–15) that this was originally the ‘gentle death from the sea’ that Teiresias prophesied would visit him in his old age (λ 134–6). Its bizarre nature is to be explained in terms of a particular type of folktale: someone enjoys a set of immunities that appear to protect him from every eventuality, until a particular combination of circumstances is brought about that circumvents their seemingly comprehensive provisions. In Odysseus’ case they would have been something like, ‘he is not vulnerable to any living creature on land or sea or in the air, or to any of the diseases that roam the earth, or to shipwreck at sea’. These immunities might have been bestowed on him at birth by Hermes, or there might have been a tale in which he constrained a superhuman figure to confer them on him, for example by making him drunk and tying him up.24 This story about his death is another one that has nothing to do with the Trojan War; it is even less appropriate to a warrior hero than the Cyclops episode. It was given a more heroic twist in the Telegony, where Odysseus died in combat with Telegonos, his unrecognized son by Circe, who was fighting with a stingray spear. The original version with the incontinent heron can best be envisaged as the amusing closure to the career of a serial trickster.

24

This is itself a widespread folk-tale motif, cf. Meuli 71–3 = 641 f.

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THE RETURNING HUSBAND The main plot of the Odyssey is based on another widespread folktale, that of the Returning Husband.25 The essence of it is that a man goes on a journey to a distant land and does not return for many years. Meanwhile his wife, having received a false report of his death, or because the agreed time has expired, or simply under pressure from others, is about to take a new husband. The hero reappears, unrecognized, in the nick of time, at the wedding feast, and reclaims her. Many features of Odysseus’ return are paralleled in some of the folk versions. The hero’s absence is sometimes prolonged by his being held imprisoned, and this is analogous to Odysseus’ seven-year detention on Calypso’s island. Sometimes his journey home is effected with miraculous speed, with a supernatural helper transporting him overnight as he sleeps, or his horse covering leagues with each leap:26 Odysseus similarly is carried back to Ithaca sleeping on the Phaeacians’ magic ship. The hero typically conceals his identity under the guise of a lowly traveller, a minstrel or a beggar, but he may be recognized by one of his animals, a horse, a camel, or a dog, as Odysseus is recognized by his old hound Argos. When the time comes for the returning hero to prove who he is, it may be done by means of a birthmark or scar, as with Odysseus, though more often he carries a token such as a wedding ring. In the South Slavic tradition he often has one surviving parent at home, though it is regularly the mother, not the father as in Odysseus’ case.27 On the other hand he does not normally have a son, so Telemachos’ role in the Odyssey

25 W. Splettstösser, Der heimkehrende Gatte und sein Weib in der Weltliteratur (Diss. Berlin 1899); W. Crooke, Folk-Lore 19 (1908), 154 f.; Radermacher 47–58; J. Tolstoi, Phil. 89 (1934), 261–74; Lord 121, 242–65; O. Holzapfel, in Kurt Ranke et al. (edd.), Enzyklopädie des Märchens, vi (Berlin 1990), 702–7; Danek 10, 275; id. Wien. St. 109 (1996), 5–30; Hansen 201–11 with bibliography. G. K. Gresseth, TAPA 109 (1979), 63–85, discusses an example embedded in the Mahābhārata (3. 50–78) and compares it with the Odyssey. 26 G. Huet, Revue des traditions populaires 32 (1917), 97–109, 145–63; Hölscher (1988), 104 f.; Danek 331 f. Usually this motif is associated with the hero’s learning that his wife is on the point of remarrying (Hansen 208). 27 Lord 177. She usually dies after the recognition.

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is probably a development independent of the folk-tale.28 The killing of the rival suitor or suitors is likewise not an essential element of the traditional story.29 When the folk-tale reached Greece it was necessary for the hero to assume a Greek identity, as with the tale of the Blinded Ogre. In this case the Trojan War, which kept the Achaeans abroad for years, provided a natural context (Hansen 205). Of those who fought at Troy, Odysseus was the most suitable candidate. He had the furthest to go to reach home, which made diversions and delays more plausible. More importantly, he had the necessary combination of toughness to endure the tribulations abroad and guile to re-enter his house unrecognized and overcome the obstacles to regaining his wife. So whereas Odysseus may have been the man who outwitted the Cyclops before he was associated with the war, he was probably linked with the war before he took on the role of the Returning Husband.

The archery contest In the Odyssey the returning husband’s final recovery of his wife and discomfiture of his rivals involves a contest with a bow. Penelope announces that she will marry the man who can string Odysseus’ bow and perform a feat of archery that he used to perform. The motif that contenders for a woman’s hand must compete in a contest or test of skill is found in several story traditions. In the Indian epics it sometimes takes the form of stringing a powerful bow and performing a difficult feat of archery, such as hitting a target through holes in a revolving disc.30 Germain (49) cites a Russian bylina in which an ostensible suitor for a princess is required to prove himself among the

28 Cf. Bethe ii. 97, iii. 171; Lord 160 f., ‘In the South Slavic traditions the role of the son is highly variable. Most frequently he is not present at all in the story . . . The evidence of traditional patterns, therefore, points in the direction of a story of the return of Odysseus in which Telemachus played no vital role as son, even though he might be present.’ 29 Merkelbach 218 n. 2, ‘Daß der heimgekehrte Ehemann die Freier tötet, ist keineswegs selbstverständlich. In den meisten Parallelerzählungen tritt der neue Bräutigam ohne weiteres zurück, als der heimgekehrte Gatte sein Recht geltend macht.’ But there are certainly some versions in which he kills his rivals, cf. Tolstoi (as n. 25), 263. 30 Mahābhārata 1. 175–9; Rāmāyan ․a 1. 65 f., 2. 110. 37–52; cf. W. Crooke, FolkLore 9 (1898), 132; 19 (1908), 154; Germain 14–25, 30–4; Page 1973: 106–8, 133 f.; S. W. Jamison, Cl. Ant. 18 (1999), 243–58; West 1997: 433; 2007: 433 f.

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nobles of the court by shooting an arrow through a gold ring against a knife-edge so that it splits into two equal parts. A more striking parallel with the Odyssey, however, is provided by the story of Alpamysh, which is widely current among the Turkic peoples of central Asia, often in the form of a heroic poem.31 Here we find the archery contest in conjunction with the Returning Husband theme. The hero, Alpamysh, is a chieftain of the Kungrats. He wins his wife Barchin by excelling in a series of contests. He goes on an expedition to the land of the Kalmucks, where he is captured and spends seven years in captivity. After escaping and killing the Kalmuck khan he sets off to return home. On the way he learns that his illegitimate brother Ultontoz has usurped power and is preparing to marry Barchin against her will. As he proceeds, an old camel of his picks up his scent from a long way off and canters up to meet him. He arrives in the course of the extended wedding celebrations, disguised as a shepherd. He sees his aged father and mother compelled to do menial tasks, and his young son begging. Ultontoz invites him to take part in a contest for archers, who are shooting at a pumpkin and all missing. Alpamysh takes up a bow but when he draws it, it breaks. After he has broken a couple more bows, he calls for the mighty old bow of Alpinbiy, Alpamysh’s grandfather, that resides in Alpamysh’s old yurt. His son brings it for him. He alone is able to draw it, and to the general astonishment he shoots a branch off a distant tree. In a competitive exchange of improvised wedding-songs he signals his identity to Barchin, and soon everyone rejoices at the realization that it is Alpamysh who has returned. He kills Ultontoz and is reunited with his wife.

A NORTH EAST WIND? The tale of Alpamysh can be traced back for many hundreds of years. Of all the Returning Husband stories it is the one closest to the 31 V. Zhirmunsky, ‘The Epic of “Alpamysh” and the Return of Odysseus’, PBA 52 (1966), 267–86; H. B. Paksoy, Alpamysh: Central Asian Identity under Russian Rule (Hartford, Conn. 1989); K. Reichl, Turkic Oral Epic Poetry: Traditions, Forms, Poetic Structure (New York–London 1992); id., Das usbekische Heldenepos Alpomish (Wiesbaden 2001). A version by the Uzbek singer Fozil Yo’ldosho’g’li (1872–1955), in 13,715 verses with interspersed prose passages, was set down in writing in 1928. Reichl 2001 gives the text and translation of a shorter version (1,655 verses plus prose).

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Odyssey, but there is no likelihood that it somehow derives from the Greek epic. So far as we can see, it is indigenous to the steppes. The bow so strong that it takes great strength to string and draw it is the composite or Asiatic bow that is at home above all among the steppe nomads.32 It is remarkable that such a bow should play a crucial part in the story of Odysseus, seeing that in the Iliad he is portrayed as a normal spear-warrior, not an archer, and in the Odyssey a special explanation has to be given of how he acquired the bow and why he did not take it to Troy (ϕ 11–41). Indeed, until we reach τ there is no hint that he owns a bow or will use one against the suitors: before that point he seems to have been thinking in terms of a pitched battle with spears and swords (see pp. 136 f.). If these considerations suggest the possibility that the Returning Husband story may have reached Greece from the Pontic area, perhaps from early contacts with Scythian peoples, certain others might lead us to suspect that the tale of the Blinded Ogre came from a similar direction. There is no trace of it in the Near Eastern literary traditions—Mesopotamian, Levantine, Hurro-Hittite—from which the Greeks received so many mythical motifs and poetic techniques.33 It is unlikely to have come from the west, or to be indigenous; I have noted that it is of a character quite untypical of Greek myth. On the other hand it sits naturally in the mythical world of the north-east Pontic and Caucasus regions. North Caucasian mythology is transmitted in stories and ballads and takes the form of self-contained episodes, not long connected sagas.34 Its heroes are the Narts, a people 32 For the Greeks it was the ‘Scythian bow’ (Agathon TrGF 39 F 4. 3; Strab. 2. 5. 22; Eust. on Dion. Per. 157). On its construction and diffusion see Lorimer 276–89. For Odysseus cf. Germain 48 f., ‘Nous sommes ainsi ramenés à ce que nous pourrions appeler le monde de l’arc, dans lequel entrent: 1) Les nomades des steppes: TurcoMongols, Iraniens nomades dont les Scythes sont les mieux connus; 2) Les Iraniens fixés en Iran et les Aryas de l’Inde. En fait, de ces deux catégories de peuples, c’est peut-être aux nomades qu’il y a lieu d’attribuer, en même temps que l’invention de l’arc, la conception première de notre thème.’ 33 One-eyed figures can be found on early Sumerian seals. (West 1997: 424), but there is nothing to suggest a myth of their blinding. For the myth of a one-eyed monster slain by Nergal, and a clay plaque of the early second millennium apparently depicting the event, see A. R. George, Bibliotheca Orientalis 69 (2012), 422–5. 34 See G. Dumézil, Légendes sur les Nartes (Paris 1930); id., Le Livre des héros. Légendes sur les Nartes (Paris 1965); id., Mythe et épopée, i (Paris 1968), 441–575; A. Sikojev, Die Narten. Söhne der Sonne. Mythen und Heldensagen der Skythen, Sarmaten und Osseten (Cologne 1985); J. Colarusso, Nart Sagas from the Caucasus (Princeton 2002).

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supposed to have formerly lived high in the mountains. Their exploits are characterized by both intrepidity and cunning. Usually they do not act in concert but an individual hero goes off on a solitary quest and finds himself in strange places where giants or other fabulous beings are encountered. The giants are generally conceived as oneeyed. The Cyclops story appears in this part of the world in several versions.35 In a Circassian account the ogre lives in a hollow tree; there are no sheep, but after he has eaten two of the hero’s comrades the survivor blinds him with a spit and escapes over a glacier, while the giant hurls rocks after him. In an Abaza version the hero, Sosruquo, comes to a cave and finds there the ogre, his sheep, and two captive men whose companions have already been eaten. As the ogre snores they explain the situation to Sosruquo. He heats a spit in the fire and drives it into the ogre’s eye. The men escape by suspending themselves each between two sheep, which the ogre lets out of the cave. He pursues them, hurling huge stones in their direction. In an Ossetic version it is said explicitly that the giant blocks the cave entrance with a massive stone. On the first evening he cooks a sheep and shares it with the hero, Urysmag. The next day he goes off with his flock, leaving Urysmag in the cave. When he returns in the evening he announces that guests only receive hospitality on the first night: tonight Urysmag must make the meal. He drives an iron spit through Urysmag’s knee, hangs him above the fire, and falls asleep. Urysmag struggles free, heats the spit in the fire, and blinds the ogre. He, unable to locate Urysmag, pretends to tire of life and throws him the ring which, he says, contains his whole strength. But when Urysmag puts it on it begins to cry out: ‘He’s here! He’s here!’ And it will not budge from Urysmag’s finger. He sees an axe, seizes it, and chops his finger off.36 In the night, when the frustrated giant has fallen asleep again, he kills the ram and removes its skin, horns and all. In the morning the giant shifts the door-stone and calls on the ram to lead the flock out, while he keeps guard. Urysmag escapes wearing the ram’s skin. He then discards it and shouts mockingly at the ogre,

35

Frazer (as n. 20), 448–52; Colarusso (as n. 34), 163, 200 f.; Sikojev (as n. 34), 54–60. 36 The ring (or less often some other article that behaves in the same way) is a feature of the Blinded Ogre story all over Europe, but it normally comes into play after the hero has escaped from the giant’s dwelling.

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who rushes out, forgetting that his cave is on the edge of a chasm. He falls into its depths, while Urysmag drives the sheep back to Nartsville. The Caucasus is an ethnic patchwork, and the Nart legends are common to Circassians, Abkhaz, Ubykhs, Ossetes, and others. The Ossetes are descendants of the Alans, and some of their mythology is probably Scythian in origin. It was from somewhere beyond Scythia that Aristeas of Proconnesus brought to Greece the rumour of a oneeyed people, the Arimaspians.37 It is a plausible speculation that the Cyclops story too came from the north-east, whether by way of Scythia or along the southern shores of the Black Sea. Another myth with a strong link to the Caucasus is that of Prometheus, who stole fire for men and was punished by being shackled to a pillar or a rock face, where an eagle came and feasted on his liver. This corresponds to the Caucasian and Armenian myth of a giant who is fettered to a pillar or in a mountain cave as a punishment for his lawlessness or impiety, and whose struggles are the cause of earthquakes. His offence, in many versions, was to try to steal the water of life. Sometimes the water flows just out of his reach (Tantalos motif). Often he has an eagle or vulture pecking at his bowels. In a Circassian tale it was a one-eyed warrior giant who tried to learn the secrets of God and found his way to the mountain spring whose water gives eternal life. God did not tolerate such impudence from a mortal man and chained him to this rock by the neck. Many years passed, so that the warrior grew old and his beard turned as white as the glaciers of Wash’hamakhwa and reached to his knees. His once proud face grew wrinkled. To further punish him for his insolence, God sent a bird of prey. This eagle pecks at his heart every day. When the sufferer bends down to drink from the spring, the bird swoops down before him and drinks all the water itself, down to the last drop.38

In another one an evil demon called Paqua, who falsely claims to be God, deprives the Narts of fire. Nasran goes to get it back, but Paqua 37

Hdt. 3. 116. 1; 4. 13, 27. The name looks genuinely Iranian. Cf. Strab. 1. 2. 10

τάχα δ6 κα το&ς μονομμάτους Κύκλωπας =κ τ0ς Σκυθικ0ς ?στορίας (῞Ομηρος) μετενήνοχε· τοιούτους γάρ τινας το&ς ᾽Αριμασπούς ϕασιν, οAς =ν τοBς ᾽Αριμασπείοις Cπεσιν =κδέδωκεν ᾽Αριστέας D Προκοννήσιος. Ukrainian folklore knows of one-eyed cannibals to whom the Tatars would sell captured children: Krek (as n. 20), 751 n. 1. 38 Colarusso (as n. 34), 170; previously in A. Olrik, Ragnarök. Die Sagen vom Weltuntergang (Berlin–Leipzig 1922), 151 f.; Charachidzé 78.

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chains him to a mountain peak and sends a huge eagle to peck at his heart and lungs. He cannot reach any of the water in the many streams that cascade down the mountain all around. Pataraz goes to rescue him and succeeds in shooting the eagle and freeing Nasran.39 Axel Olrik, who drew attention to the Caucasian myth, argued persuasively that it lies behind the torments of Prometheus, Tityos, and Tantalos in Greek myth.40 Aristeas, the poet who wrote about the Arimaspoi after travelling (as he claimed) through and beyond Scythia, is one of a small number of figures in archaic Greece who have something of the shaman about them. Others are Abaris the Hyperborean, Hermotimos of Clazomenae, Epimenides of Crete, and Pythagoras. Older than these, though we cannot be sure how much older, is the Thracian Orpheus. They seem to represent another manifestation of ideas percolating down from the direction of Scythia.41 Direct contacts between Greece and the Caucasus cannot be traced before the sixth century. But Ionian mariners had begun to prospect the western and northern coasts of the Black Sea in the first half of the seventh century, and some reflections of north Pontic topography can be found in Odysseus’ wanderings in the Odyssey, mediated through an earlier Argonautic epic. (See pp. 119 f.) It would be facile, perhaps, to suggest that those very mariners brought back Scythian tales of the Blind Ogre and Returning Husband. But the fact of increasing contact with the north-east provided favourable conditions for new story motifs to find their way to Greece from that quarter.

A PROTO ODYSSEY The tale of the Returning Husband was contextualized within the larger framework of Greek myth through the identification of the

39 Colarusso (as n. 34), 158–63; Charachidzé 117, 247; cf. ibid. 245 for other versions involving the theft of fire. 40 Olrik (as n. 38), 133–290, cf. my summary in West 1966: 314 f. (where the remarks on the Argonauts should be ignored); Charachidzé passim. Prometheus’ torment is first attested in Hes. Th. 521–34, Tityos’ and Tantalos’ in λ 576–92. 41 Cf. West 1983: 146–50, and on the antiquity of Orpheus West 2011b: 120–2.

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hero as Odysseus—the Odysseus whose participation in the Trojan War conveniently matched the lengthy absence predicated of the Husband, and whose characteristic resourcefulness was suited to the challenges of his homecoming. A new, extended narrative about Odysseus invited epic treatment. Its embodiment in an epic poem created the first Odyssey, a direct ancestor of the one we have. In Chapter 5 I shall try to determine what has been added to the story in the course of its transmission and how it has been reshaped. How long is this period of transmission to be imagined? We should not think in terms of centuries. Probably no more than a generation or two passed between the creation of the proto-Odyssey and the making of the Odyssey that has come down to us. Artistic evidence for the events of the poem does not takes us any further back than the second quarter of the seventh century, when representations of the blinding of the Cyclops begin to appear.42 The hero is not labelled with Odysseus’ name, but it is very likely that he is so to be identified. However, this is only evidence for the currency of the Polyphemos episode, which, as I have said, will have circulated as a free-standing story before being embodied in a longer account of Odysseus’ wanderings after Troy. It does not presuppose the Returning Husband story. We are on firmer ground with the two references to Telemachos in the Iliad (Β 260, Δ 354). They imply a story in which Telemachos plays some significant role, and it cannot be anything but a story of Odysseus’ homecoming. It is not our Odyssey, because there is abundant internal evidence that this was composed after the Iliad (see Chapters 3 and 4). The inference is that the proto-Odyssey, at least, must pre-date the completion of the Iliad. But that again need not make it any earlier than 650.43 One further observation about the Iliad may be relevant. In The Making of the Iliad I have analysed the stages by which that epic was

42 An Attic jug of c.720 in Munich has been claimed to represent Odysseus riding the keel of his capsized ship with his crew all drowning (R. Hampe, Die Gleichnisse Homers und die Bildkunst seiner Zeit (Tübingen 1952), 26 ff., Taf. 7–11); but see G. Ahlberg-Cornell, Myth and Epos in Early Greek Art (Jonsered 1992), 27 f.; A. Snodgrass, Homer and the Artists (Cambridge 1998), 35 f. 43 On the dating of the Iliad see West 2011a: 15–19.

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composed, and noted that in what I identified as the primary layer underlying Α–Π the poet was working with a more narrowly limited circle of heroes than in the final version. There was as yet no mention of the Locrian Ajax, Teukros, Meriones, Aeneas, and various others. Odysseus was there; but I failed to notice that he was not yet called Laertiades. The passages where he is so called (Β 173, Γ 200, Δ 358, Θ 93, Ι 308, 624, Κ 144, Τ 185, Ψ 723) are all either in expansions (like the two Telemachos passages) or in the last part of the poem, composed after expansions had been made in Α–Π. This may be fortuitous, but it does leave open the possibility that Laertes originated in a pre-Odyssey which had come to the Iliad poet’s attention in the course of his creative activity: a pre-Odyssey, not necessarily the proto-Odyssey, as the presence of a father is an inessential embellishment to the Returning Husband story. But embellishment of that story seems to be Laertes’ whole raison d’être. He is not known in the mythical tradition for involvement in any particular event, unlike the fathers of Agamemnon, Achilles, Ajax, Diomedes, or Nestor.44 There is no real explanation of why he did not continue to rule Ithaca after Odysseus went to the war. Of course, it is appropriate for a Homeric hero to have a patronymic, and Odysseus might have borne his before acquiring his role as the Returning Husband. What about before he was attached to the Trojan War? Trickster figures and other actors in sub-heroic folk-tale need names, but they have less need of pedigree. Margites and the Cercopes have no named fathers; Autolykos was begotten by Hermes; Sisyphos lacks individualized parentage, being assigned to the omnium-gatherum family of Aiolos. Odysseus was sometimes, as mentioned earlier, made the son of Sisyphos. Laertes as his father perhaps does not go back to his earliest phase of celebrity.

44 Cf. Wilamowitz 1927: 185. The reference in ω 377 to his taking an obscure coastal town looks like an ad hoc invention.

3 The Odyssey in Context In Chapter 5 we shall examine the ways in which the proto-Odyssey that I have just postulated and defined was elaborated (by one or more poets) into the Odyssey we know. One might apply the name ‘the Odyssey’ to this developing entity as a whole, to embrace the whole family of variant versions that were generated in the course of the process. But in the present chapter (and generally elsewhere) I am using it strictly of the finished product, the Odyssey that we have in written form. In the nineteenth century the Iliad and Odyssey were not thought of as having any historical or literary context. They were seen as floating in space, much earlier than any other poetry of which there was any record, at a literally prehistoric epoch of which nothing could be said beyond vague propositions about the coming of the Dorians. The situation now is very different. To whatever century we assign the epics, we are in a position to sketch the general situation prevailing in Greece and the Aegean. And it has become increasingly clear that there is no clear blue water separating them from the rest of archaic Greek poetry. Other epics and epic lays existed before them and beside them. So did elegy, iambus, and various forms of lyric. In terms of both literary and national history it is now to a significant degree possible, and desirable, to put the Odyssey in context. The epic traditions relating to the Trojan War had reached an advanced stage of development by the time our Odyssey was composed. As the following pages will make clear, the Iliad was current in a stable form, already augmented by the Doloneia; the post-Iliadic episode of the coming of Memnon and his defeat by Achilles was also current, as were the scenes that followed it in the Cyclic Aethiopis: the death of Achilles, his elaborate funeral, the dispute over his armour between Odysseus and Ajax, and Ajax’s

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suicide. Q shows knowledge of all this, and of many of the events related in the Little Iliad. He knew a poem much like the Iliou Persis, and another much like the Nostoi.

Relationship to the Iliad It is often stated that the Odyssey makes no reference to the content of the Iliad. This is incorrect. It twice alludes to one of the pivotal events of that epic, the death of Patroklos (γ 110, ω 79), and his soul is one of those whom Odysseus sees in Hades (λ 468, cf. ω 16, 77). But what proves beyond question that Q knew the Iliad is the extent to which he borrows and adapts lines and passages from it. Various scholars have subjected the parallel passages in the two epics to close analysis. In many cases, of course, it is a matter of formulaic verses or typical scenes, from which no conclusions can be drawn. Many others, however, are not formulaic and represent significant intertextual links. Trained as we are in the oralist perspective, we may initially be disposed to resist this conclusion, but resistance crumbles as patent examples accumulate. And we are, I think, bound to agree with the almost unanimous conclusion of those scholars, that where one of the passages under comparison appears as the model and the other the copy, it is regularly the poet of the Odyssey who is drawing on the Iliad and not the other way round. Albert Gemoll identified 136 passages showing significant connections and found that in the only three cases where the Odyssey appeared to be the original, the corresponding lines in the Iliad were suspect. This result means, in my view, that the possibility of the Iliad’s having undergone any influence from the Odyssey before its completion is entirely excluded. All the remaining passages either clearly carry their Iliadic origin on their face or at any rate do not contradict it. Moreover, there is no part of the Iliad that is not made use of in the Odyssey.1 1

A. Gemoll, Hermes 18 (1883), 35, ‘Mein Resultat ist folgendes: unter den 136 Stellen sind nur drei und zwar in die Ilias später eingeschobenen . . ., in welchen sich die Odyssee als das Original erweist. Durch dieses Resultat ist meines Erachtens die Möglichkeit, dass die Ilias vor ihrer Vollendung von der Odyssee irgend welche Beeinflussung erfahren haben könne, völlig ausgeschlossen. Alle übrigen Stellen tragen den Ursprung aus der Ilias entweder deutlich an der Stirn, oder sie widersprechen wenigstens nicht. Und zwar ist keine Partie der Ilias zu nennen, die nicht in der Odyssee verwerthet wäre.’ He was disregarding the Doloneia, which he had treated separately in Hermes 15 (1880), 557–65 (cf. 18 (1883), 308–11) and reached the contrary conclusion, that it was later than and influenced by the Odyssey.

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Monro (327–31) based his comparisons only on what he regarded as the older parts of the two epics, but after leaving aside formulaic and interpolated lines he found two dozen passages ‘in which we have to recognize borrowing, or at least close imitation’ of the Iliad by the Odyssey poet, ‘even as Virgil imitates Homer and Lucretius, or as Persius imitates Horace’. Heubeck is equally positive: It is . . . a well-known fact that in the Odyssey in extraordinarily many places whole verses and groups of verses from the Iliad appear, whether in verbatim correspondence or with lesser or greater variation. In many of these cases the priority of the Iliad passages can be convincingly demonstrated; sometimes the formulations are equally appropriate in both epics, while dependence of the Iliad on the Odyssey can in my view never be established.2

More recently Knut Usener has devoted a book to the matter, taking pains to demonstrate that the passages compared are original in their Iliadic contexts and secondary in the Odyssey. The result of his detailed investigation is again that the Odyssey poet knew all parts of the Iliad except perhaps for the Doloneia.3 My own view is the same, except that I think it probable that Q knew the Doloneia too. There is one place, Κ 214, where it looks as if the Doloneia poet has adapted an Odyssean line, but generally the relationship seems to be the reverse.4 In the rest of the Iliad I have not found any instance of dependence on our Odyssey, though the poet evidently did know an Odyssey of some kind.5 The reader who wishes to assess some of the evidence for himself need not turn to other books, for in the next

2 Heubeck 1954: 11, ‘Es ist z. B. eine bekannte Tatsache, daß in der Odyssee an außerordentlich vielen Stellen ganze Verse und Versgruppen aus der Ilias, sei es in wörtlicher Entsprechung, sei es mit leichter oder stärkerer Variierung erscheinen. In vielen dieser Fälle läßt sich einwandfrei die Priorität der Iliasstellen nachweisen; manchmal passen die Formulierungen in beiden Epen gleich gut, während eine Abhängigkeit der Ilias von Odysseestellen m. E. niemals festzustellen ist.’ I have not seen a study that Heubeck cites, Walter Diehl, Die wörtlichen Beziehungen zwischen Ilias und Odyssee (Greifswalder Beiträge 22 (1938)). 3 Usener. He concludes (208) that the Iliad must already have existed in fixed form when our Odyssey was conceived and that the poet of the Odyssey must often have heard it recited in this fixed form. Dawe, in the notes to his translation, comments on many instances, listed on p. 877, ‘where it is argued that the Iliad has provided the model, and the Odyssey has been the borrower, imitating and in many cases trivialising what it found. . . . The converse, the Iliad borrowing from the Odyssey, must be much rarer and perhaps does not occur at all.’ 4 See West 2011a: 238–44, the notes on Κ 158, 243, 278–82, 290, 292–5, and 457. 5 Cf. p. 98.

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chapter I shall be setting out fifty-two cases in which Q takes over lines and passages from the Iliad and employs them inaccurately or inappropriately. So far as we know, the Odyssey was the only epic composed in the archaic period that came anywhere near the Iliad in length; the longest of the Cyclic epics, the Cypria, had only eleven books, and none of the others more than five. This probably reflects a deliberate ambition on Q’s part to produce something on the same vast scale as the Iliad. Jacoby diagnosed a ‘conscious rivalry’, a ‘creative imitation’.6 Heubeck similarly saw a poet who took the Iliad as given and aimed to set something comparable (‘etwas Gleichwertiges’) beside it. Indeed, with the many references scattered through the poem to the fall of Troy and the returns of other heroes he made it effectively a sequel to the Iliad.7

Relationship to the Cyclic epics As the Cyclic epics are lost, we cannot make direct textual comparisons as we can with the Iliad. It is clear that much of the matter contained in those poems was known to Q, in other words, that poems of similar content were already current at least in oral form. Some of them may have been stabilized in writing. As I see it, the appearance of a written Iliad sometime in the mid part of the seventh century stimulated other epic poets to commit their own productions to writing, and within two or three generations the poems of the Trojan cycle were all written down. The Odyssey was composed sometime during that period. Q probably knew other epics from hearing them recited, not from reading them in manuscripts, but the recitations he heard might in some cases have been of poems already stabilized in writing and more or less corresponding to the texts that were transmitted into the classical and Hellenistic periods.8

6 Jacoby 109, ‘Zur Ilias hat gerade der Odysseedichter in einem ganz besonderen Verhältnis gestanden, in einer bewußten Rivalität, die ich gern als schöpferische Imitation bezeichne. . . . Er hat in der Wahl des Stoffes, im Umfang wie mit dem Grundprinzip des Aufbaus eine Parallele zur Ilias zu schaffen versucht.’ Cf. Howald 166–81, esp. 166 f., 170 f. 7 Heubeck 1954: 92. 8 On the formation and transmission of the Cycle see West 2013: 16–26, 40–51.

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There are few references in the Odyssey to events preceding the action of the Iliad, and none that suggests a particular relationship with the Cypria.9 There is a more definite relationship with the Aethiopis. The first part of that epic, in which Achilles defeated the Amazon queen Penthesileia, may have had a separate origin from the rest (West 2013: 133), and there is no sign that Q knew it. But he did know the Memnon episode that followed, which was a postIliadic innovation in the tradition (West 2011b: 250–7). He refers to Memnon as the handsomest man that Odysseus saw at Troy (λ 522), and he mentions that the bones of Antilochos, whom Memnon killed (δ 187 f.), are with those of Achilles and Patroklos (ω 78); the Memnon poet had used Antilochos as Patroklos had been used in the Iliad, as a special friend of Achilles whose fall in battle provoked Achilles to go after the enemy hero. The fall of Memnon led on to the death of Achilles, the great battle over his body, the magnificent funeral and games in his honour, the dispute over his arms, and Ajax’s suicide after they were awarded to Odysseus. All of these episodes are alluded to in the Odyssey (ε 309 f.; ω 36–92; λ 543–60). They were no doubt more traditional elements than the battles with Penthesileia and Memnon, but we may assume that Q knew them from the same source as the Memnon narrative. In the Aethiopis Thetis transported Achilles’ body to the White Island in the Black Sea and made him immortal. This is an innovation unknown to (or rejected by) Q, who has Achilles in Hades like a normal ghost. He is familiar with many of the events related in the Little Iliad: Philoctetes’ fighting at Troy (θ 219); Odysseus’ bringing of Neoptolemos from Skyros (λ 506–9); Neoptolemos’ defeat of Eurypylos, whose presence was connected with gifts to a woman (λ 519–22); Helen’s marriage to Deiphobos (δ 276, θ 517); Epeios’ building of the Wooden Horse (θ 492 f., λ 523); Odysseus’ visit to Troy in disguise and meeting with Helen (δ 242–58). The Little Iliad, however, was not a unified epic but an artificial concatenation of episodes put together in a ‘cyclic’ spirit to continue the story of Troy from the death of Achilles to the sack of the city (West 2013: 166 f.). 9 Recruitment for the war, ω 115–19, cf. λ 447; Odysseus leaving home, σ 257–71, al.; the Achaeans’ sailing for Troy, τ 182–248; a Delphic oracle given at the time, θ 79–82; a quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles, θ 75–8, that is perhaps Q’s variation on the Iliadic quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles (see p. 192).

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We cannot assume that these episodes had yet been brought within the compass of a single poem when the Odyssey was being composed. In two passages Q seems to have given versions of events that differed slightly from what was in the Cyclic epic, though verses were interpolated to bring them into closer agreement; see p. 170 nn. 39–40. There is a more striking link between the Odyssey and the Iliou Persis. The song that Demodokos sings before the Phaeacians and Odysseus at θ 499–520 closely resembles in its scope and content what Proclus tells us of the Cyclic poem. It diverges in one detail: of the three options considered by the Trojans for dealing with the Wooden Horse, two are the same, but the third is different, to cut the thing open rather than burn it. Q must have known a poem similar to the Iliou Persis as it circulated later. It is hardly going too far to say that he represents Demodokos as singing the Iliou Persis. He was also well acquainted with ‘the Return of the Achaeans’ (JχαιKν νόστος) as a subject of epic, as it was in the Cyclic Nostoi. This is the theme of the song with which Phemios entertains the suitors in α 326, and it is one of the topics on which Aiolos questions Odysseus in κ 15. Odysseus’ homecoming is set against the background of the other heroes’ returns (cf. α 11–14). Nestor gives an account of some of them in γ 130–83, 276–312, and Menelaos relates more in δ 351–586. There is particular emphasis on the story of Agamemnon, which is brought in many times throughout the poem. The details given of the returns are in fair agreement with the content of the Cyclic epic so far as we know it from Proclus.10 Q evidently knows an epic account of all these events that was closely related to the Nostoi current in classical times. The Nostoi did not include the tale of Odysseus’ return, no doubt because a separate Odyssey was already current. That Odyssey might have been ours, or an earlier version. If it was an earlier version the Nostoi might pre-date the Odyssey. But then there is a difficulty, as the Nostoi included the story of Menelaos’ seven years of wandering, and these were evidently invented to answer the question that Telemachos raises with Nestor at γ 249–52: where was Menelaos when Agamemnon was killed and during the following years when 10 Proclus (but not Apollodorus) associates Ajax’s death with the Καϕηρίδες πέτραι in Euboea instead of the Γυρα πέτραι at Tenos (as in δ 500 f.), but this seems

to be an assimilation to the later mythographical vulgate and a misrepresentation of the Nostoi: West 2013: 260.

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Aigisthos was lording it at Mycene? Nestor explains about the years of wandering, but they look like a recently devised solution for a recently recognized difficulty.11 If it was not Q’s own solution, he perhaps took it over from another poet’s concurrent elaboration of the Nostoi. In any case it looks as if the two epics were being developed at the same time and with mutual interaction (if not actually by the same poet).12

Non-Trojan epic Like the poet of the Iliad (West 2011a: 29–31), Q knew epic on other themes besides Troy. He was particularly influenced by a poem on the Argonauts’ voyage to Aia, the land of the Golden Fleece. He makes one direct allusion to it in connection with the Clashing Rocks, which Jason passed through unscathed with Hera’s help but which Odysseus must avoid (μ 69–72). In fact, as will be explained in Chapter 5, he has adapted a series of Argonautic adventures in order to amplify Odysseus’ itinerary. It is from this source that he has brought Circe into the story, the sister of Aietes (κ 137). The Argonautic legend probably goes back to Submycenaean times (West 2011b: 113–22). It was popular in the archaic period, as many allusions in extant poetry show.13 We cannot identify a classic early version that Q might have known; perhaps none had yet been fixed in writing. Another popular epic subject was Heracles, as may be seen from the many allusions to his exploits in Hesiod and the Iliad.14 In the Odyssey we hear that he was a great archer, rivalling the immortals (θ 224); he was Zeus’ son, born to Amphitryon’s wife Alkmene 11

See further p. 109. Cf. G. Scafoglio, RPh 78 (2004), 294, who speaks of of ‘una dipendenza reciproca’ between the two poems. On affinities between them see further West 2013: 246, 249. 13 Hes. Th. 340, 956–62, 992–1002; Η 467–9, Φ 40 f., Ψ 746 f.; Mimn. frr. 11–11a W.; ‘Hes.’ frr. 38, 40, 63, 241, 253–5, 263, 299; Carmen Naupactium frr. 4–9; ‘Eumelus’, Corinthiaca frr. 17, 20–3. Epimenides is supposed to have composed an epic on the subject. 14 Hes. Th. 297–94, 313–18, 327–32, 526–32, 950–5; Ε 392–494, 638–51, Θ 362–9, Λ 689–93, Ξ 250–61, 323 f., Ο 18–30, 639 f., Τ 95–133, Υ 145–8. Cf. also Archil. frr. 286–8; [Hes.] Sc. and frr. 25. 17–33, 26. 32 f., 33a. 22–35. 7, 165. 9 f., 229, 230, 248, 250, 263–5; Creophylus’ Capture of Oichalia; Pisander’s Heraclea; Stesichorus’ Geryoneis, Kerberos, Kyknos. 12

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(λ 266–8); he was in thrall to an inferior man who imposed hard labours on him, one of which consisted in going down to Hades to fetch Cerberus, a task that he completed successfully with Hermes’ and Athena’s help (λ 601–27); Iphitos, son of Eurytos, came to Heracles’ house with his fine herd of mares, and Heracles violated the hospitality code by killing him and taking the animals (ϕ 24–30). The reference to the labours imposed by Eurystheus (as in Θ 362–9, Ο 639 f., Τ 95–133) presupposes an extended poem in which a whole series of adventures was narrated within that frame. Like the Iliad, the Odyssey shows the influence of Near Eastern traditions in various points of poetic technique and motifs. Most strikingly, both poems show the influence of one particular Akkadian classic, the Epic of Gilgāmesh. Many of the parallels are not just freefloating motifs but embrace whole scenic structures and sequences.15 The principal ones relevant to the Odyssey will be touched on in Chapters 5 and 6. They are mainly between the last third of the Babylonian epic, in which Gilgāmesh goes roaming to distant parts of the earth after the death of Enkīdu, and Odysseus’ remoter wanderings. The question for the moment is how it could come about that this foreign poem could independently influence the poets of both the Iliad and the Odyssey. What feature of their cultural milieu made this possible? We cannot imagine that they—or any Greek—could read cuneiform, a skill that involved years of specialized training in a scribal school. Their immediate models must have been a poem or poems in Greek. Was there then a Greek version of Gilgāmesh, made by a bilingual poet? I certainly think that the bilingual poet, or more likely a number of them, is an almost necessary postulate, not only for the Gilgāmesh problem but for the wider issue of interaction between the Akkadian and Greek traditions. And we know that at an earlier period, in the later second millennium, there were versions of Gilgāmesh in other languages than Akkadian, in Hurrian and Hittite. The hypothesis of a Greek one made in the eighth or seventh century would solve our problem. Yet the more one thinks about it, the less it appears conceivable. How would the names Gilgāmesh and Enkīdu have been treated? They could not simply be transliterated; no Greek shows any sign of

15

Cf. West 1997: 336–47, 402–17; 2011b: 308–11.

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having heard of such names before Aelian’s mention of Gilgamos in the third century ce (Hist. nat. 12. 21). Could Greek names have been substituted? For these two, perhaps, but what about Humbaba, Ūta-napishti, Ur-shanabi? What of the city of Uruk, or Mount Māshu with its scorpion-man gatekeepers? However anyone might try to Hellenize the story, it would inevitably have struck a Greek audience as a strange, alien tale that did not fit anywhere within the parameters of Greek mythology. The most plausible way out, it seems to me, is to assume that one of those bilingual poets introduced a whole series of Gilgāmesh motifs into an epic on a Greek mythical theme, an epic that then became popular and influenced other Greek poets, including those of the Iliad and Odyssey. There was one pre-eminently suitable subject for such treatment: Heracles, who, as noted above, was a popular subject of poetry at the relevant period. Here is a violent hero of semi-divine parentage who, like Gilgāmesh, roams the earth wearing a lion-skin and kills lions and monsters. He has a loyal comrade, Iolaos, who accompanies him through his earlier adventures. At a later stage he makes long excursions to remote lands, even to the ends of the earth, where he encounters the Sun-god and crosses the outer waters in the Sun’s own vessel. Like Gilgāmesh again, he faces issues of life and death. He merits immortality if anyone does, but he does not achieve it, at least in the oldest accounts. Certainly the figure of Heracles is not derived from Gilgāmesh: he was an indigenous Greek hero.16 But there were enough points of contact to make it easy for an Akkadiantrained poet to deploy Gilgāmesh motifs in telling his story.

Hesiodic poetry In a recent study (West 2011b: 212–26) I have argued that many echoes of Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days are to be found in the Iliad. I believe that the same is true of the Odyssey. As no more than ten passages are in question, I list them here. Hesiod’s priority is not clear in every case, but nothing conflicts with it.

16 For other oriental elements in Heracles myths see W. Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley–Los Angeles–London 1979), 80–3; id., Kl. Schr. ii. 52–8, 80–6; West 1997: 458–72.

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θ 170–3, sententious lines about the regard enjoyed by a man to whom a god grants eloquence, appear to be adapted from Th. 84–92.17 η 71–4 are less close but also seem to be related. κ 82–6 Pθι ποιμένα ποιμήν | 1πύει εQσελάων, ( δέ τ᾽ =ξελάων Rπακούει· | . . . =γγ&ς γSρ νυκτός τε κα Tματός εQσι κέλευθοι, ~ Th. 748 f. Pθι Νύξ τε κα ᾽Ημέρη Vσσον Qο7σαι | λλήλας προσέειπον μειβόμεναι μέγαν οδόν. λ 15–18 1έρι κα νεϕέληι κεκαλυμμένοι, οδέ ποτ᾽ ατούς | ᾽Ηέλιος ϕαέθων καταδέρκεται κτίνεσσιν, | οWθ᾽ Dπότ᾽ Xν στείχησι πρ.ς οραν.ν στερόεντα | οWθ᾽ Pτ᾽ Xν Xψ =π γαBαν π᾽ ορανόθεν προτράπηται, echo the same passage of the Theogony, 757 νεϕέληι κεκαλυμμένη . . . 759–61 οδέ ποτ᾽ ατούς | ᾽Ηέλιος ϕαέθων =πιδέρκεται κτίνεσσιν | οραν.ν εQσανιZν οδ᾽ ορανόθεν καταβαίνων. λ 612 RσμBναί τε μάχαι τε ϕόνοι τ᾽ νδροκτασίαι τε, is identical with Th. 228 except that the nouns are there in the accusative. The verse fits perfectly in the Hesiodic context, the list of Eris’ offspring, and is less natural as an appendage to the wild animals represented on Heracles’ baldric. ρ 347 αQδZς δ᾽ οκ γαθ5 κεχρημένωι νδρ παρεBναι, ~ Op. 317 αQδZς δ᾽ οκ γαθ5 κεχρημένον Vνδρα κομίζειν. Again the verse fits well in Hesiod’s train of thought; in the Odyssey context it makes good sense, but one has the feeling that a preexisting adage has been dragged in. σ 328 f. οδ᾽ =θέλεις ε\δειν χαλκήϊον =ς δόμον =λθών | 1έ που =ς λέσχην, ~ Op. 493 πSρ δ᾽ ^θι χαλκεBον θKκον κα =παλέα λέσχην. τ 203 ^σκε ψεύδεα πολλS λέγων =τύμοισιν DμοBα, ~ Th. 27 ^δμεν ψεύδεα πολλS λέγειν =τύμοισιν DμοBα. Q’s line is less satisfactory as Greek; see Russo 87. υ 394 πρότεροι γSρ εικέα μηχανόωντο, ~ Th. 166, 172 πρότερος γSρ εικέα μήσατο Cργα. In the Hesiodic lines the subject is understood from πατρός in 165/171, and ‘he started it’ belongs with the idea of just revenge that is explicit in 165 κακ5ν τεισαίμεθα λώβην. In the Odyssean passage we have to go back three lines for the subject, and the idea of revenge has not been expressed. 17 So most critics have judged, though some maintain the contrary. Cf. West 1966: 183; Dawe 317 f.

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ϕ 302 εσίϕρονι θυμKι is otherwise an exclusively Hesiodic phrase (Op. 315, 335, 646 εσίϕρονα θυμόν). Odysseus’ account of his encounters in Hades with a series of mythological heroines (λ 225–329) makes it apparent that Q is familiar with the same genre of poetry as is represented by the pseudo-Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. The passage about Tyro (235–59) closely resembles the fragmentary narrative that extends from ‘Hes.’ fr. 30. 24 to fr. 33a. 5. Cf. p. 218 n. 122.

Elegy, iambus In the study cited above I also collected over a dozen passages where I argued that the poet of the Iliad was influenced by martial elegy of the type composed by Callinus and Tyrtaeus (West 2011b: 226–32). Q too must have known elegiac poetry, and also iambic verse of the kind associated with Archilochus and Semonides. Seeck (331–4, 362 f.) cited a few parallels with these poets and in some cases judged Q to be the borrower. The most noteworthy are:

β 65 f. Vλλους τ᾽ αQδέσθητε περικτίονας νθρώπους | ο_ περιναιετάουσι ~ Callin. 1. 2 οδ᾽ αQδεBσθ᾽ μϕιπερικτίονας; As Seeck notes, the Ithacans have done nothing more shameful than leaving the suitors to their devices, and as they live on an island the reference to the peoples living around them is odd. It certainly looks as if Q has borrowed a trope from elegy, though Callinus will not have been the only poet to use it. ξ 228 Vλλος γάρ τ᾽ Vλλοισιν ν5ρ =πιτέρπεται Cργοις ~ Archil. 25. 2 λλ᾽ Vλλος Vλλωι καρδίην Qαίνεται. This is a truism, and neither passage need be derived from the other. σ 136 f. τοBος γSρ νόος =στν =πιχθονίων νθρώπων | ο`ον =π᾽ aμαρ Vγησι πατ5ρ νδρKν τε θεKν τε ~ Archil. 131–2 τοBος νθρώποισι θυμός, Γλα7κε Λεπτίνεω πάϊ, | γίνεται θνητοBς, Dποίην Ζε&ς =π᾽ 1μέρην Vγηι, | κα ϕρονέουσι τοB᾽ Dποίοις =γκυρέωσιν Cργμασιν. This is a more individual observation. In Archilochus it was prominently placed as the opening of a poem. In the Odyssey it is a dispensable and not completely appropriate appendage to what has preceded, and νόος is perhaps less accurate than θυμός (Seeck 362 f.). It may well be adapted from Archilochus. The phrasing of σ 137 is very close to that of Archil. 131. 2.

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υ 13–16 κραδίη δέ ο? Cνδον Rλάκτει· | bς δ6 κύων μαλ0ισι περ σκυλάκεσσι βεβKσα | Vνδρ᾽ γνοιήσασ᾽ Rλάει μέμονέν τε μάχεσθαι, | cς dα το7 Cνδον Rλάκτει γαιομένου κακS Cργα ~ Semon. 7. 33 f. λλS μαίνεται τότε | Vπλητον cσπερ μϕ τέκνοισιν κύων. ‘The simile is very fine in Semonides, positively ludicrous in the Telemachy’ (Seeck 333). Q’s deployment of similes is sometimes inept (see below, p. 62). But Semonides probably had no monopoly on this one. χ 412 οχ Dσίη κταμένοισιν =π᾽ νδράσιν εχετάασθαι ~ Archil. 134 ο γSρ =σθλS κατθανο7σι κερτομεBν =π᾽ νδράσιν. Seeck (332) finds this a thoroughly un-Homeric sentiment, and notes that Philoitios has exulted over his slaying of Ktesippos only 130 lines previously. A general principle of not mocking the dead is more defensible than the specific one of not exulting over the slain. He thinks that Q wanted to make use of Archilochus’ fine saying and did so at the first opportunity. But the idea may have enjoyed wider currency outside epic. In Eikasmos 23 (2012), 11–14, I have argued that ο 373, τKν Cϕαγόν τ᾽ Cπιόν τε κα αQδοίοισιν Cδωκα, ‘therefrom I have eaten and drunk and given to those worthy of respect’, is adapted from a sympotic elegy in which the poet said something like ‘what I have eaten and drunk and indulged my genitals, I count as my wealth’.

THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD; DATING Even if these examples do not all show Q’s dependence on specific passages known to us from poets of the mid seventh century, they tend to reinforce the impression that he was living in the same world as they. It was a world in which poets travelled about—the aoidos is among the skilled professionals that one might invite to a community from elsewhere (ρ 382–6)—and knowledge of poetry could spread quickly over large areas. Ionian epic and elegy flourished on both sides of the Aegean. Semonides in Amorgos (fr. 6) and Alcaeus in Lesbos (fr. 347, with Sapph. fr. 101 A) knew and adapted verses by Hesiod. Solon in Athens (fr. 20) knew and modified a verse by Mimnermus of Smyrna.

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In general the Odyssey reflects a Greece that is at peace with itself and in which, while people live in autonomous communities, excursions to neighbouring regions by sea or over land are nothing exceptional. Menelaos proposes taking Telemachos on a chariot tour of the Peloponnese and expects nothing but a friendly reception wherever they go (ο 80–5). If a man turns up in Ithaca from overseas claiming to be an old friend of Odysseus’, it is a notable but not an astonishing event. To the west, people may sail as far as Sicily (υ 383, ω 307). From the east, Phoenician merchants traverse the Aegean (ν 272–86, ξ 287–309, ο 415–84). Egypt and Libya, while beyond ordinary people’s horizons and pictured in slightly fabulous terms, are known at least by rumour. The Phoenician references do not help us with the question of dating. Q represents the Phoenicians or Sidonians (the two terms are equivalent) as the great merchant sailors of the Mediterranean, and he is not aware of any anachronism in projecting this back to the time of the Trojan War. It certainly goes back to the ninth century, and probably somewhat earlier.18 It has sometimes been argued that Sidon’s status as Phoenician capital points to a date before 677, when it was destroyed by Esarhaddon after its king threw off Assyrian vassalship. But this need not have affected a later poet’s view of its importance in the heroic age. In any case its name probably lived on, attached to Esarhaddon’s new foundation of Kar Aššurahiddin  (Honigmann, RE iia. 2219). Egypt is mentioned only once in the Iliad (Ι 381 f.: the legendary wealth of Egyptian Thebes). In the Odyssey it is much more conspicuous.19 Menelaos and Helen have spent time there and brought home to Sparta valuable things that friendly hosts have given them (δ 125–32, 219–32). Before they could get away they were held up by adverse winds at the island of Pharos, a day’s sail out to sea (δ 351–7). In one of his false tales (ξ 245–86) Odysseus affects to be a Cretan who had taken a small fleet to Egypt and anchored in the Nile. His men, disobeying orders, had gone raiding. There had been a hue and cry, the local king had led a force out from the city, and the Cretans had been killed or captured. He, their leader, had thrown himself on the king’s mercy and been protected, after which he had (rather like 18 See West 1997: 8 f. On the Homeric references cf. S. West 1988: 231; Hoekstra 180, 181. 19 See Dickie 42–4.

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Menelaos) remained in Egypt enriching himself for seven years. In Ithaca itself there is a bent old man named Aigyptios (β 15). There are elements of genuine knowledge in all this. Q knows that one reaches Egypt by way of Crete (cf. γ 286–300), and that the voyage takes four days (ξ 257). The island of Pharos with its harbour is real, though much nearer the coast than Q indicates.20 The name Thon borne by one of Menelaos’ Egyptian hosts (δ 228) is related to Thonis, an emporium by the Canopic mouth of the Nile.21 This picture of Egypt can hardly belong to any earlier period than the seventh century, and indeed the second half of that century.22 From the mention of a local king in ξ 278 it has been inferred that it dates from when there were twelve separate rulers in the Delta, before Psammetichos’ consolidation of his kingdom in the 640s. Dickie rightly objects that the story need not imply any particular concept of Egyptian political organization.23 His own plausible conclusion is that the picture of Egypt in the Odyssey reflects the period of friendly Graeco-Egyptian relations in the time of Psammetichos, who employed Ionian mercenaries and who, sometime before 620, allowed Greeks to set up a trading station at Naucratis, fifty miles up the Canopic branch of the Nile. Acquaintance with this channel is implied by the name Thon. Besides Cyprus, Phoenicia, and Egypt, Menelaos recalls in δ 83–9 that he reached the Aithiopes, the Eremboi, and Libya, where the sheep quickly grow horns, ‘for they give birth three times a year: there neither master nor shepherd goes lacking in cheese and meat, nor in sweet milk, but they ever provide abundant milk’. Who the Eremboi

20 Carpenter 98–100 gives a plausible explanation of the error: mariners approaching Egypt from the west, after stopping on Pharos, would have taken most of a day to reach the Bolbitinic mouth of the Nile, which was the one first known to the Greeks, where the Milesian pioneers established their fort in the time of Psammetichos (Strab. 17. 1. 18). 21 Hellanicus fr. 153 f.; ps.-Scylax 106. 1, 107. 1 (who gives the distance from there to Pharos as 150 stades); Strab. 17. 1. 16; Diod. 1. 19. 4; St. Byz. θ 81; Hesych. θ 1001. By the fifth century, Greeks living in the area had elaborated the legend of Menelaos’ visit and his reception by Thon. Cf. Jacoby on Hecat. 1 F 307–9; F. Pontani, Scholia Graeca in Odysseam, ii (Rome 2010), 248, on sch. δ 228g; R. Fowler, Early Greek Mythography, ii (Oxford 2013), 551. 22 Egyptian exports had been reaching Greece between the tenth and the eighth century, but through Phoenician intermediaries (Carpenter 91; Hölscher 1988, 216); there appears to have been little or no direct contact. 23 T. F. R. G. Braun in the Cambridge Ancient History (2nd edn.), iii (3). 33; Dickie 43 f.

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are, no one can say. The Aithiopes are evidently not the mythical Aithiopes who live at the ends of the earth (α 22–4) but a darkskinned people to be found in the same general area as Egypt, perhaps Nubians (Dickie 44). ‘Libya’, unmentioned in the Iliad, appears as a land known and famed for its flocks. There can be no doubt that the reference is to Cyrenaica, and that it dates from about the first generation of Greek settlement in that region, that is, the last third of the seventh century.24 The interests of colonists or potential colonists may also be reflected in Odysseus’ adventure at Ismaros in ι 39–61, cf. 196–211.25 He fights the local tribe, the Kikones, and is given twelve jars of strong wine by Maron the son of Euanthes, a priest of Apollo. The Thracian coast east of Chalcidice became an area of Greek settlement in the second quarter of the seventh century. Maron’s name points to the Chiot foundation of Maroneia. Ismaric wine is well known to Archilochus (fr. 2), who also mentioned a conflict between the Thasians and the Maroneans over the site of Stryme (fr. 291). Colonization in the west goes well back into the eighth century, and the Odyssean references to Sicily, few though they are, presuppose well-established contacts. There is naturally no suggestion of Greek cities in Sicily; everyone was aware that these dated from long after the heroic age. But Q evidently does not feel it to be an anachronism that the suitors should think of Sicily as a place where unwanted persons might be sold into slavery (υ 383), or that Laertes should have a Sicilian woman servant (ω 211, 366, 389). Another passage that has been thought to have a bearing on the date of the poem is ϕ 13–21, where it is related how Odysseus obtained his bow and arrows. They were a gift from a friend whom he met in Lacedaemon, Iphitos the son of Eurytos; they met in Messene, in Ortilochos’ house:

δKρα, τά ο? ξεBνος Λακεδαίμονι δKκε τυχήσας, ῎Ιϕιτος Ερυτίδης, =πιείκελος θανάτοισιν· τZ δ᾽ =ν Μεσσήνηι ξυμβλήτην λλήλοιϊν, ο^κωι =ν ᾽Ορτιλόχοιο δα2ϕρονος. Messene is here treated as part of Lacedaemon; there is no other way of taking the lines. It has been inferred that this presupposes the

24

Cf. Schwartz 260; Carpenter 102; Dickie 44 f.

25

Cf. Dickie 49 f.

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Spartan annexation of Messene in the First Messenian War, which can be dated to the late eighth century.26 It is not quite as straightforward as that, for Lacedaemon is a geographical term, and whatever the political situation, it does not include Messene, from which it is separated by the Taygetos massif. We must say that Q has made a mistake, one that shows that he was a stranger to the southern Peloponnese. Still, it was a mistake easier to make at a period when Messene was subject to Sparta, so that the two regions were closely associated in people’s minds. It is perhaps rather as if a Frenchman or a German were to say, ‘I met a woman in England, in Cardiff’. The reference in λ 14–19 to the Cimmerians, a people living by Oceanus under a pall of darkness, has been thought by some to yield a terminus ante quem for the Odyssey, by others a terminus post quem. The Cimmerians were a historical people whose home was to the north of the Black Sea, east of the Sea of Azov and down to the straits of Kerch, commonly known as the Cimmerian Bosporus. They impinged on the Greek consciousness especially in the mid part of the seventh century, when they came rampaging through Asia Minor. In antiquity there were those who inferred that Homer was to be dated after this event.27 In modern times Eduard Meyer and others have drawn the opposite conclusion, that the Homeric description is based on vague rumours of a remote people and the poet still knows nothing of their warlike presence on the Ionian horizon.28 Wilamowitz had already observed that as the Odyssey places the Cimmerians in their real homeland, it is a matter of indifference whether the poet had heard of them from their raids in Anatolia or from another source.29 In fact the probability is that he took them from the same Argonautic tradition that provided him with other material (West 2011b: 298 f.). 26 Wilamowitz 1927: 52, ‘Dieser Zustand traf erst seit dem Ende des 8. Jahrhunderts zu, was einen sicheren Terminus post quem für den Dichter ergibt’. 27 ‘The chronographers’ ap. Strab. 1. 2. 9 (cf. 1. 1. 10, 3. 2. 12), i.e. probably Theopompus, cf. FGrHist 115 F 205. It may have been to avoid so late a dating that Crates and others touted alternative readings to Κιμμερίων (Κερβερίων, Κεμμερίων, Χειμερίων); they are likely to be mere conjectures (Heubeck 1989: 79). 28 E. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, 2nd edn., iii (Stuttgart 1938), 335; P. Von der Mühll, Mus. Helv. 16 (1959), 145; Scheibner 93; Dihle 155 f. 29 Wilamowitz 1884: 165, ‘die Kimmerier . . . sind ein skythisches Volk, dessen reale Wohnsitze genau da liegen, wo der Zusammenhang der Dichtung sie ansetzt. Ob der Dichter die Kimmerier von ihren Raubzügen her kennt, oder woher sonst, ist dafür ganz gleichgiltig, da er sie eben in ihren heimischen Sitzen anführt.’

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This brings us back to the relationships between the Odyssey and other poems and the question of their relative and absolute chronologies. The Odyssey was composed after the Iliad was complete. That much is certain, and in my view it is very probable that it was composed after the Iliad had been augmented by the insertion of the Doloneia. The Iliad may be dated between 680 and 640,30 and the Doloneia was probably added before the end of the century. The Odyssey was, moreover, composed after the Aethiopis, or at any rate after that part of it (the ‘Memnonis’) which told of the Aethiop Memnon; and that Memnonis was itself a wholly new, postIliadic invention. This implies a slightly wider gap separating the Iliad and the Odyssey. Memnon does not certainly appear in art before c.580, but he was mentioned by Alcman (PMGF 68), and the Memnonis might be as early as 630.31 The fragments of the Little Iliad, with which the Odyssey shared much material, show some signs of comparative lateness, and I think it was more likely compiled after 600 than before (West 2013: 171 f.). But this does not help us with the dating of the Odyssey since, as I have said, Q did not necessarily find the material in question all together in one epic. The Little Iliad may have been a later compilation. The Iliou Persis was probably earlier than the Little Iliad, though as it included the recovery of Aithra from Troy by her grandsons, the sons of Theseus, one hesitates to date it much before 600 (West 2013: 225 f.). We have seen that Q knew a poem resembling it. But we cannot be sure that the poem he knew was the same as the one that was later read as part of the Cycle, or that it included the episode with the sons of Theseus. They appear to have played no part in the Nostoi, which I have argued to be contemporary with the Odyssey and composed in conjunction with it. The Argonautic poem from which Q drew much inspiration can hardly have been composed before the middle of the seventh century, as it appears to reflect knowledge of a sector of the northern Black Sea, from the Crimea to the Straits of Kerch, which so far as we can 30 I will not rehearse again my grounds for this dating. See West 2011a: 15–19, and for the Doloneia ibid. 234. 31 Cf. West 2013: 130, 135 f. Alcman belongs to the late seventh century, or early in the sixth; see my Hellenica ii (Oxford 2013), 17–27.

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judge from the archaeological material was first being explored at that period (West 2011b: 292–9, 302 f.). We now have several lines of argument converging with frightful unanimity towards the same conclusion. The Odyssey is Later than 640 (knowledge of Egypt). Later than 640–630 (knowledge of Cyrenaica). Later than 640–630 (because later than the Iliad and the postIliadic Doloneia and Memnonis). Later than 650–640 (because later than an Argonautica which cannot be older than that). There is one material object described in the poem that on archaeological grounds is unlikely to be older than the seventh century: Odysseus’ elaborate clasp (τ 226–31).32 I do not see how anyone in the face of these arguments can entertain a date for the Odyssey before 650, let alone the eighth-century dating that is often taken as a given by those who have not gone into the matter. I would set 630 as the realistic terminus post quem.33 What about a terminus ante quem? The Odyssey is clearly older than Eugammon’s Telegony, which is conceived as its sequel and which we place in the 560s (West 2013: 38 f., 289); older too than the poem of Stesichorus represented in P. Oxy. 2360 (PMGF 209), where the scene of Telemachos’ departure from Sparta (ο 120–81) is adapted.34 Two Homeric Hymns datable to the first half of the sixth century also show clear echoes of the Odyssey. We cannot make much of those in the Hymn to Demeter, as they are not very exact and the date of the poem is anyway impossible to fix within narrow limits.35

32

Cf. Lorimer 511–15; Russo 88 f. The Cyclops story is represented in art earlier than this, from about 670. But even if we accept that the hero facing the monster is Odysseus, it only shows that that story was already current, not that there existed an Odyssey anything like ours. An Etruscan amphora of c.630 shows a Siren and a ship in adjacent panels: M. Martelli, Prospettiva 50 (1987), figg. 17–20. But if this is intended as a mythical representation, it may as well be Jason’s ship as Odysseus’. 34 Stesichorus’ activity may be dated to 570–540: CQ 21 (1971), 302–6 = Hellenica ii. 79–85. 35 For the Odyssean echoes see N. J. Richardson, The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Oxford 1974), 32 f., 339–43. The most noteworthy is perhaps Demeter’s adoption of a Cretan false identity (122 ff.). As the poem does not mention Athens it is assumed to date from before Peisistratos, in whose time the Eleusinian Mysteries came under Athenian control. 33

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More numerous and significant are those in the Pythian Hymn to Apollo, which was composed shortly after the First Sacred War (591/0) and perhaps performed at the first Pythian Games in 586.36 One passage in particular shows a close dependence on the Odyssey. When Apollo hijacks a Cretan ship and directs it towards Pytho, the lines describing its progress up the west coast of the Peloponnese (425–9 with 434 f.) are clearly inspired by the corresponding section of Telemachos’ homeward voyage in ο 293–8.37 The Cretan ship diverges from Telemachos’ course, turning in to the Corinthian Gulf, but not before ‘Ithaca’s steep mountain, Doulichion and Same and wooded Zacynthus’ (= α 246, al.) have appeared to the sailors from below the distant clouds. I have not been able to identify significant echoes of the Odyssey in earlier poets. Aristarchus, dubious about the authenticity of ξ 244, αh γSρ =μο τοιόσδε πόσις κεκλημένος ε^η, saw an imitation of it in words sung by a girls’ chorus in Alcman (PMGF 81), Ζε7 πάτερ, αh γSρ =μ.ς πόσις ε^η. But the sentiment is not so situation-specific that our Odyssey has to be the source.38 A hexameter fragment that refers to Circe waxing the ears of Odysseus’ sailors (PMGF 80) is in my opinion wrongly ascribed to Alcman and is more likely by Alexander Aetolus (West 2011b: 36 n. 4). There are two fragments of Alcaeus, or rather testimonia, that might suggest acquaintance with the Odyssey. They are both found in the scholia to Apollonius Rhodius.39 One (fr. 440) states that Alcaeus mentioned the spring Artakia at Cyzicus; the other (fr. 441) cites him, together with Acusilaus (fr. 4 Fowler), for the origin of the Phaeacians from the drops of blood that fell to earth when Ouranos was castrated. As to the first, if Alcaeus located Artakia at Cyzicus, he can hardly have been thinking of the Laistrygonian Artakie in κ 108: the context, 36 For its relationship to the Odyssey see K. Förstel, Untersuchungen zum Homerischen Apollonhymnus (Bochum 1979), 211; R. Janko, Homer, Hesiod and the Hymns (Cambridge 1982), 129–31; N. J. Richardson, Three Homeric Hymns (Cambridge 2010), 16. 37 Seeck 314; Wilamowitz 1927: 134 n. 2; Förstel (as n. 36); for further detail see p. 243 n. 163. 38 Cf. Pind. Pyth. 9. 97–100 πλεBστα νικάσαντά σε κα τελεταBς | bρίαις =ν Παλλάδος ε%δον, Vϕωνοί θ᾽ bς iκασται ϕίλτατον | παρθενικα πόσιν j | υ?.ν εWχοντ᾽ k Τελεσίκρατες Cμμεν. 39 These scholia have no other citations of Alcaeus, though they have four from Sappho. Cuperus suspected that the Alcaeus citations were not from the lyric poet but from some later Alcaeus; cf. Welcker, Kl. Schr. i. 144 and ii. 45 n. 93.

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if mythical, will have been the Argonauts’ voyage.40 As to the Phaeacians, their origin from Ouranos’ blood reflects a Corcyraean myth which must be older than the Odyssey (see below, pp. 84 f.); Alcaeus has certainly not got it from the Odyssey. In sum, everything points to the last third of the seventh century as the time when the Odyssey was composed. Where? We shall ponder that towards the end of the next chapter.

EARLY RECEPTION Q produced his work at a time when at least some rhapsodes were familiar with the idea of a mega-epic that existed in written form, understood the desirability of preserving it, and were prepared to study it and base their performances on it. We can only speculate about the circumstances in which such an epic was taken up and disseminated after its author’s death, and I have done such speculating elsewhere (West 2001: 5 f.; 2011a: 69 f.). Reflexes of the Odyssey in the Hymns to Pythian Apollo and Demeter, the Cyrenaean Telegony, and Stesichorus give some indication of how widely knowledge of it spread in the first half of the sixth century. We cannot say whether an author’s name was attached to it consistently or at all.41 But at some point it, like the Iliad, was taken up by the Homeridai, a guild of travelling rhapsodes based on Chios. They deemed both poems to be the work of their legendary ancestor Homer. And when in 522 or thereabouts Hipparchus instituted the regular performance of the two epics at the Great Panathenaea, with each of them divided up into twenty-four recitation units (dαψωιδίαι), it was as the poems of Homer that they were officially designated. The Odyssey was by then eighty or a hundred years old.

40

Cf. G. Liberman, Alcée. Fragments (Paris 1999), ii. 260. See my remarks in West 2011a: 9 f., where I mention the possibility of an ascription to Melesigenes. 41

4 The Poet and his Art Although the epic style and language lend the Iliad and Odyssey a veneer of homogeneity, anyone who studies the two poems with attention becomes aware of many differences between them: differences in the worlds portrayed, the values, the focuses of interest, the narrative techniques, the types of poetic excellence and shortcomings. To some extent these differences might be explained by the divergent nature of the stories. But when all due allowance is made for that, and for the possibilities of stylistic development over a man’s lifetime, the open-minded critic remains unable to believe that both epics were produced by the same poet. Those who still cling to that belief do so from pious attachment to an ancient belief that was formed in an information vacuum.1 In this chapter I shall try to define and illustrate the habits and qualities of the Odyssey poet, ‘Q’, and also consider the question of where he lived. Hermann Fränkel (86) speaks of the poem’s ‘greater realism and contemporaneity’ in comparison with the Iliad. Society is more fully represented: the aristocrats are not the only object of attention, there is equal interest in humble people, herdsmen, domestics, beggars, dogs. Men are more exposed to the realities of nature. They have to take precautions against cold weather (ε 466–9, ξ 457 ff., ρ 24 f., 181) or the slipperiness of a mountain path (ρ 195 f.); if they hide under sealskins the awful smell will be a problem (δ 441–6); if they are shipwrecked and forced to swim for it, their clothes will weigh them down

1

Cf. Wilamowitz 1884: 351, ‘Heut zu tage kann nur noch aberglaube die Odyssee dem dichter der Ilias zuschreiben’, cf. 371 f.; id. 1927: 172, ‘Es wird immer Idioten geben, die versichern, der Wundermann Homer hätte Ilias und Odyssee gemacht, der Wundermann Moses den Pentateuch’. On the origins of the tradition cf. West 2011b: 408–36.

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(ε 321); in the wild they may be vulnerable to predatory creatures (ε 421, 473). Uvo Hölscher writes: When one comes from reading the Iliad, one finds oneself here in a different world. It is wider and more various; at the same time it is more intimate. Here there are noblemen’s seats and farmsteads, paths and roads that connect them, harbours and seafaring, the whole Mediterranean world with its peoples and islands, with trade and piracy, to say nothing of the world of wanderings and adventures.2

The whole Mediterranean world, yes: a world in which Phoenician traders, calling at Egypt or Crete or Elis, are a familiar concept, as they are not in the Iliad; in which a man may be sent to Sicily and sold (υ 383), or hear rumours of the excellent sheep in Libya (δ 85). Seafarers are assumed to be either merchants or marauders (γ 71–4 = ι 252–5).

VALUES The Trojan War is over, but it is still supposed to be the heroic age; Nestor, Menelaos, and others are back in their kingdoms, and heroes of a younger generation such as Orestes and Neoptolemos are flourishing. Yet the societies portrayed—Ithaca, Pylos, Sparta, Scheria— appear dedicated to peacetime virtues and easy living in a manner that surely reflects the ideals of Q’s own time. He likes to describe quiet, everyday domesticity governed by courteous dealings.3

2 Hölscher 1988: 20, ‘Wer vom Lesen der Ilias kommt, sieht sich hier in einer anderen Welt. Sie ist weiter und bunter; sie ist zugleich intimer. Hier gibt es adlige Herrensitze und bäuerliche Gehöfte, Wege und Straßen, die sie verbinden, Häfen und Seefahrt, die ganze mediterrane Welt mit ihren Völkern und Inseln, mit Handel und Seeraub; von der Welt der Irrfahrten und Abenteuer zu schweigen.’ 3 Cf. Müller 155, ‘Aber das ist ja eben das Charakteristische der Odyssee, daß der Sänger sich selbst gefällt, und ein inniges Behagen fühlt in der Schilderung des stillen, häuslichen Wochenlebens. Darum sind selbst seine Könige und Königinnen gute Hausväter und Hausmütter, und in den Palast des prächtigen Alkinoos führt er uns durch eine wahrhaft idyllische Wäsche’; Focke 66, ‘es ist ein im Grunde friedliebendes, erwerbsfreudiges und geschäftstüchtiges Dasein, das diese Menschen führen oder führen möchten’.

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Alkinoos tells Odysseus that the Phaeacians are good at running and sailing, but not at fighting; the things they love are feasting, music and dancing, clean clothes, warm baths, and bed (θ 246–9). The Phaeacians are hardly part of the real world, but there is no suggestion that they are namby-pambies whose eirenic culture is to be despised. Their bard Demodokos, who entertains them frequently with heroic songs, corresponds completely to Phemios in Ithaca and, we may assume, to Q and his fellow singers in their own communities. The greater part of Odysseus’ adventures are presented not as action that we follow as he experiences it but as a tale recollected in tranquillity and related by him in the manner of a bard to an audience (cf. λ 368 f.; Jacoby 113). He himself opines that there is no higher happiness than sitting and feasting and listening to a bard while the whole community is in good spirits (ι 5–11). Where the Iliad puts the highest premium on personal prestige (τιμή), Q’s characters seem more interested in the acquisition of wealth (Jacoby 124–7; cf. Focke 65 f.). When Zeus instructs Hermes to go and tell Calypso to send Odysseus off on his homeward journey, he adds that the hero will come to the Phaeacians and that they will bring him to Ithaca after giving him riches greater than those he would have brought back from Troy if he had not lost them (ε 38–40). When he wakes up on his native shore he is at once concerned that the sailors may have robbed him of his new wealth (ν 215 f.). In his false tale to Penelope he says that Odysseus would have been there already, only he is tarrying in Thesprotia to collect more riches (τ 272 f., 282–4). There is frequent emphasis on the consumption of his property by the suitors; it seems to be the worst of their offences. There is emphasis too on the wealth that Menelaos brought back from his travels in the Levant (γ 301, δ 90). He speaks much of the valuable gifts that he will give Telemachos (δ 589–92, 613–19, ο 75 f., cf. 103–30), but also offers to take him on a tour of Greece, where everyone they visit ‘will give some present, a bronze tripod or cauldron, a couple of mules, or a gold goblet’ (ο 80–5). We are reminded of Solon’s complaint that ‘those among us who possess the most, strive to double it’ (fr. 13. 72 f.). Telemachos declines, giving as his reason for immediate departure his fear that his unguarded property at home may suffer theft (87–91, cf. γ 313–16). Penelope wins esteem in the eyes of her husband and son by extorting gifts from the suitors (σ 274–303, cf. 160–2).

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Penelope is a central character in the story and naturally receives prominence. But women have a high profile in general: Helen at Sparta, the Phaeacian Arete and Nausikaa, the maids Eurykleia, Eurynome, Melantho, and the dead heroines in Hades, to say nothing of divine figures such as Circe, Calypso, Leukothea, and Proteus’ daughter Eidothea.4 The lady of the house enjoys a status and dignity all but equal to her husband’s. Laertes honoured Eurykleia no less than his wife, but refrained from making love to her for fear of his wife’s ire (α 432 f.). Family values are exalted. In his false tale to Eumaios Odysseus (pretending to be a Cretan) relates that after returning to Crete from the Trojan War he stayed at home for a month ‘rejoicing in my children, my wife, and my possessions’ (ξ 244 f.). He wishes Nausikaa a husband, a home, and marital harmony, for there is nothing better than that; it gives joy to friends of the house and pain to its enemies (ζ 180–5). Menelaos praises Nestor as a man upon whom Zeus has conferred good fortune at his birth and at his marriage (δ 208). In general Q appears as a believer in rightness and propriety.5 Ilos the son of Mermeros was reluctant to provide Odysseus with poison for his arrows ‘because he feared the gods’ disapproval’ (α 263). When Eurykleia makes to ululate in exultation over the death of the suitors, Odysseus checks her, saying ‘it is not proper to exult over men slain’ (χ 412)—a contrast to Achilles’ rejoicing over his killing of Hector (Χ 391–4; Jacoby 129). This does not mean that good people are always open and straightforward in their dealings. It is quite in order for them to use stratagem and subterfuge to attain their ends; indeed such resourcefulness is a creditable quality, and Athena often encourages it (Focke 67).

4

Cf. Jacoby 118, ‘Er hat die Frauen in den Vordergrund neben den Helden gerückt, alle Beziehungen zwischen Mann und Weib dargestellt: Mutter und Sohn, Gatten und Gattin, Liebesabenteuer in ihren verschiedenen Schattierungen’; Germain 637; Hölscher 1988: 118, ‘In der Tat, das Epos läßt sich lesen wie der Roman eines Mannes in einer Fülle von Frauenbeziehungen’. 5 Hölscher 1939: 63, speaks of ‘jenes Behagen am Richtigen und Schicklichen . . . das das ganze Epos auszeichnet’.

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The gods in the Odyssey show a collective concern for morality that they lack in the Iliad. In the older poem Zeus proposes saving Hector because he is a pious man who has regularly sacrificed to him, but the other gods will not support the suggestion (Χ 167–85). In the Odyssey Athena pleads for Odysseus’ rescue on similar grounds (α 60 f., cf. 66 f.), and Zeus can assure her that all the gods will agree except for Poseidon, who has his own grounds for opposing it. But Poseidon is absent, and the proposal can be implemented. In the Iliad the gods are characterized by a wilful individualism. They assist or obstruct men according to their own inclinations and allegiances, and it depends not on the man’s general goodness or piety but on what he has done for or against the deity in question. An individual god or a group may try to act behind Zeus’ back in opposition to his plans. They quarrel openly. In the Odyssey they are a much more unified body, supporting goodness and punishing wickedness (cf. Jacoby 133 f.; Rüter 56–63). A god may remonstrate with Zeus, as Athena does in α 48 ff. and ε 7 ff., Helios in μ 376 ff., and Poseidon in ν 127 ff., but in each case Zeus accommodates the plaintiff and the issue is resolved. Poseidon’s wrath against Odysseus, based on a personal offence, the blinding of his son Polyphemos, cannot be allowed to block the general consensus (which derives from the needs of the plot) that the hero must have his homecoming. Zeus assures Athena that Poseidon will abate his anger, as he will not be able to sustain it in opposition to all the other gods (α 77–9). She avoids direct conflict with her uncle, not coming to help Odysseus until Poseidon has done his worst and gone on his way (ε 380–2, cf. ν 314–23, 339–43; Hölscher 1939: 83). This principle of divine concord has the consequence that the Olympian scenes cannot have the lively and combative character that they do in the Iliad, and seem perfunctory. There is no place for the expression of contrary views, and hence none for multiple speakers. At the gathering in α 25 ff. all the gods are present but only Zeus and Athena speak. It is the same in ε 3 ff., except that Hermes also plays a part, silently receiving orders from Zeus. In μ 376–88 Helios speaks ‘among the immortals’, but only Zeus replies and there is no word of the others’ reactions. In Poseidon’s dialogue with Zeus in ν 125–58 the presence of other gods is not even mentioned, and it is the same with Athena’s brief exchange with Zeus in ω 472–86.

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When there is active divine intervention on Odysseus’ behalf it must of course be made by an individual deity. In most cases it is Athena. On her first descent to Ithaca in α 96 ff. and her last in ω 487 ff. she acts after consulting Zeus, but for the most part she just turns up beside Odysseus, Telemachos, or Penelope whenever she sees the need. It is the same when Leukothea appears out of the sea to help Odysseus at ε 333, and when Hermes intercepts him on the way to Circe’s house at κ 277. Proteus’ daughter Eidothea presents herself likewise to Menelaos after taking pity on his plight at δ 364. The first divine scene opens with Zeus commenting on the recent case of Aigisthos (α 32–43). He says it illustrates the fact that mortals blame the gods for their misfortunes, some of which, however, they bring upon themselves through their misguided actions (σϕ0ισιν τασθαλίηισιν). Aigisthos did things that the gods had explicitly warned him not to, and he paid the price. Athena agrees that he deserved his death and hopes that anyone else who behaves in that way may perish likewise. This makes a kind of programmatic portal through which we enter Odysseus’ story. The presupposition of the poem is that the suitors are bad men who deserve the fate that they will suffer at Odysseus’ hands. They receive something like a divine caution in the bird omen described at β 146 ff., which the town augur interprets as a dire warning for them; they dismiss him as an old fool. The same formula is applicable to Odysseus’ crew, who perished σϕετέρηισιν τασθαλίηισιν (α 7), having been warned against eating Helios’ cattle and having done so nonetheless. This moral dimension to the epic may have been enhanced, if not introduced, by Q. It was not an intrinsic feature of the Returning Husband story that the rivals for the wife’s hand were blackguards who deserved to be killed. Q accentuates the suitors’ culpability. He shows them making free with Odysseus’ property, behaving insolently towards guests of his house, and even plotting to murder Telemachos.6 The omen in β is by no means unique. Omens and prophecies are regular means employed to stimulate the audience’s anticipation of what is to come or to underline the significance of what is happening now.7 In two cases someone recalls a prophecy made long ago (to 6 Cf. R. Pfeiffer, Ausgewählte Schriften (Munich 1960), 16 f.; Schadewaldt 1970: 46 f., 72; Erbse 113–42; Rüter 64–82. 7 Prophecies: α 196–205; β 157–76, 283–4; θ 79–81, 564–71 ~ ν 172–8; ι 507–12; κ 330–2. Omens: β 146; μ 394–6; ο 160, 525; ρ 541; σ 112–17; υ 102–20, 242.

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Polyphemos, ι 507–12; Circe, κ 330–2) and now unexpectedly fulfilled by Odysseus’ arrival. It is similar with the old prophecy that Alkinoos recalls in θ 564–71, though he does not yet know that Odysseus’ visit will trigger its fulfilment. Prophecies made in the course of the poem are regularly either disbelieved or disregarded (Hölscher 1939: 25 n. 1)—a typical motif in storytelling, as the effect is all the greater when the prophecy comes true against expectation. Prophecy implies the notion of destiny. This too is something that Q invokes in various places. In η 197 f. the reference is to the destiny laid upon an individual at his birth by the spinning of the Moirai. In other passages the spinning (=πικλώθειν) is transferred to ‘the gods’ or ‘the daimon’ and used of outcomes that they have imposed on someone, not necessarily at birth (α 17, γ 208, λ 139, π 64). Elsewhere again expressions such as ‘it is his lot’ (μοBρα or α%σα) are used. Such language serves to indicate that a particular development has to take place; it nullifies possible obstructions and prevents anyone asking why. Thus at γ 269 Nestor relates that the μοBρα θεKν at a certain moment fastened on Aigisthos and set him on a fatal course. At ε 41 Zeus, after foretelling Odysseus’ return to Ithaca via Scheria, declares that it is his μοBρα to reach his home in this way (cf. 288; ι 532). After a year on Circe’s island his men urge him to think about sailing on, ‘if it is θέσϕατον for you to come safely through and reach home’ (as we are confident it is, because it is Q’s set plan) (κ 473). Athena reveals to him the hardships that it is his α%σα to endure in his house (ν 306). Theoklymenos speaks of his own α%σα that condemns him to a vagrant life (ο 276). And when Odysseus tells Eurykleia that it is not fitting to exult over the killing of the suitors, he explains that they were laid low by the μοBρα θεKν and their own bad deeds (χ 413). That was not a fate or destiny that they were born to: it was the bad deeds that made it their inescapable doom.

POETIC MERITS Presently I shall have some quite critical things to say about Q’s abilities, but let us first appreciate the aspects in which he shines.

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He has a great penchant and talent for descriptive passages.8 Someone making a film of the Odyssey would find far more guidance in the text on how the landscapes and interiors should look than he would in the Iliad. When Hermes arrives on Calypso’s isle he pauses to take in the whole scene, and Q pauses to describe it (ε 59–74): the nymph’s cave with a fire on the hearth and a pervasive sweet fragrance of burning cedar and juniper; herself weaving at her loom and singing; verdant woodland outside, alders, poplars, cypresses, with owls and hawks and cormorants nesting in them; a vine laden with grape-clusters; springs sparkling with clear water; meadows of violets and celery. Q does not take every opportunity to describe scenery; we hear nothing about the land of the Lotus-eaters, for example. But at Odysseus’ next landfall, the country of the Cyclopes, he gives us a full account of the offshore island where the ships put in (ι 116–41), and then a more succinct one of how Polyphemos’ cave looked as the men approached it (182–6). The features of the Laistrygones’ harbour are described (κ 87–94)—they are crucial for the story—and details of the surrounding area are sketched in in what follows (97–9, 103–8). Again on Circe’s island Odysseus climbs a hill and obtains a general view (κ 146–50, 195–7), and the picture gains in definition from successive touches in the ensuing narrative (158–60, 166, 210–13). When Circe instructs Odysseus about his voyage to Hades she mentions the scenery that will meet him there: the low-lying shore, Persephone’s groves of poplar and willow, the two rivers’ confluence at a rock (κ 509–15). When he crawls ashore half-dead on Scheria, we get an exact description of the bushes under which he finds shelter and heaps of leaves to cover himself with (ε 475–85). Before sending him to the town Nausikaa describes what he will see on the way: the city wall, the double harbour, the ships drawn up by the roadside, the stone-built agora where nautical activities take place (ζ 262–9). She tells him too of Athena’s poplar grove with its spring and meadow where he is to wait (291–4). As he proceeds to the palace he duly admires the harbour, the ships, the agora, and the walls (η 43–5). Later, as he begins his recital to the Phaeacians, he describes the location and character of his own island (ι 21–7); cf. δ 601–8, where Telemachos contrasts its ruggedness with Sparta’s fertile plain that

8

Cf. Hölscher 1988: 186–95; on recurrent elements in the scenic descriptions, Germain 540–5; on its focalization by the character faced with it, de Jong 128 f.

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bears clover and galingale, wheat, emmer, and barley. Elsewhere in the poem we get closer pictures of certain places on Ithaca: Phorkys’ Harbour and the cave of the Nymphs (ν 96–112); Ithakos’ fountain near the town with its circular grove of poplars and altar of the Nymphs (ρ 205–11). All of this contributes significantly to the charm of the poem. Q dwells lovingly on details of rustic living. We have the feeling that this is more than the townsman’s romantic taste for the bucolic, that this is a man who has lived on the land and knows it at first hand.9 He gives a graphic picture of the interior of Polyphemos’ cave with its racks of cheeses, its pails of whey, and its ordered sheeppens, with the technical terms for the three age-classes of lamb (ι 219–23); the whole episode presents a professional picture of the ogre’s pasturing and milking routines. When Odysseus approaches Eumaios’ piggery we get an expansive account of what he finds there, of how the place is constructed and run (ξ 5–22). As with the scene paintings cited above, the picture is deftly enhanced by subsequent details in the narrative. Eumaios is found making sandals for himself from cowhide (23 f.). He puts down brushwood and a shaggy goatskin for his visitor to sit on (49–51, cf. π 47). He lights a fire in the morning to prepare breakfast (π 2), and when Telemachos arrives unexpectedly, he serves up some of the previous night’s leftovers (π 49 f.). Again when Odysseus goes to find his father, Laertes’ household arrangements are first described (ω 205–12), and then, as the old man is not at home, further picturesque images are evoked as Odysseus goes to look for him: the dry-stone wall that Dolios and his sons have gone to make (223–5), and then Laertes himself found digging round a plant in his old mended smock and his leather leggings, gloves, and hat (226–33). This is followed up by references to the various fruit trees in the orchard (234, 246 f., 336–44). Q’s imagination is equally active in palaces. When Telemachos and Peisistratos come to Menelaos’ they are impressed by the shine and glitter of all its gold, silver, bronze, and ivory (δ 43–6, 71–5). Nausikaa gives Odysseus some idea of what he will find when he enters her

9 Cf. Wilamowitz 1927: 160, ‘Ihn reizte das Leben, auch das der niederen Stände, das Bukolische; der späte Kunstausdruck wird es am kürzesten sagen. . . . Die Darstellung ist so breit, das die Handlung in dem ξ, das einen Tag füllt, keinen Schritt weiter kommt’; Merkelbach 235 f.

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father’s house (ζ 300–9), and there is an extended description of it as he arrives (η 84–131). Like Hermes on Ogygia, he stands and admires the scene before going in. His own palace in Ithaca does not receive such treatment as this; his brief characterization of it when he comes into sight of it at ρ 265–8 hardly enables us to picture it. But we get a closer view of the storerooms and their contents (β 337–45, ϕ 5–56), and there are many incidental allusions to other rooms, passages, and so forth, which collectively make us feel that this is a real building, even if we are unable to put all the details together into a whole. The life of the palaces is skilfully evoked. When Athena arrives to speak to Telemachos, the whole scene is vividly painted (α 103–54). The suitors are playing board games before the door, sitting on hides. Their attendants are busy mixing wine, sponging tables down and setting them, carving meat. Telemachos welcomes the goddess, who leans her spear against a pillar, and seats her in a fine chair with coverings and a footstool. A bowl is brought for her to wash her hands, and bread and meat and wine. The suitors come inside and are similarly attended to, and when they have eaten and drunk they turn to music and dancing. All that was necessary for the advancement of the narrative was ‘Athena arrived and found Telemachos’, but Q has devoted fifty lines to filling in a background, introducing us to the suitors and showing us what goes on daily in the palace that is Telemachos’ home. There are many more such scenes showing aspects of everyday domestic life in this and other houses: Eurykleia helping Telemachos to bed, α 434–42; Alkinoos’ servants clearing away the dinner things, η 232; Circe’s spreading rugs on chairs, laying tables, preparing wine, heating water, and bathing, dressing, and attending to Odysseus, κ 348–75; his own maids lighting up the palace at dusk, σ 307–11, cf. τ 60–4; a roomful of women grinding corn through the night, υ 105–10; reviving the hearth fire in the morning, υ 122 f.; Eurykleia setting the maids to their morning tasks, six of which are detailed, υ 147–62. Many further examples of Q’s descriptive art could be cited, such as the sustainedly brilliant account of Odysseus’ struggles in the sea, ε 313–32, 388–493; the picture of the trotting mules, ζ 318; the vignette of the women of a household haggling with a Phoenician hawker, ο 459–63. But it is unnecessary to accumulate further material. Another manifestation of Q’s realism and closeness to life is the naturalism and psychological verisimilitude with which his characters tend to act and talk. Think of the girls squealing when one of

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them fails to catch the beachball and it falls in the water (ζ 117); their scuttling off in different directions when a rough-looking naked man appears (ζ 138); the way they hesitate and egg each other on when Nausikaa calls them to order (ζ 211); the herald hanging the blind bard’s lyre above his head and showing him where it is (θ 65–70); the terrified Eurylochos reluctant to go back to Circe’s house, Odysseus threatening to cut his head off, his companions saying ‘No, leave him here’, and he then tagging along with them after all rather than stay behind by himself (κ 429–48); Alkinoos carefully stowing Odysseus’ treasure under the rowing-benches and making sure it will not obstruct the rowing (ν 20–2); Penelope woken by her maids’ voices and rubbing her cheeks (σ 200); the maids giggling and exchanging glances when the supposed beggar speaks to them (σ 320), and joking among themselves as they go out to sleep with the suitors (υ 8). The portrayal of emotional reactions often goes beyond the formulaic repertoire and shows original resource. On being told that Telemachos has gone off on a voyage and that the suitors are plotting to kill him, Penelope is too overcome to find a chair to sit down on, though there are plenty around, but sinks straight to the floor (δ 716–18). When Eurylochos flees back to the ship after witnessing his comrades’ apparent disappearance in Circe’s house, at first he simply cannot speak (κ 246). When the disguised Odysseus reduces Penelope to tears with his tale of having spent time with her husband, he is moved and feels like crying himself, but maintains a poker face (τ 209–12). When the last of his false tales has an even more devastating effect on Laertes, he is again affected, but this time he cannot control his emotion (and there is no longer any need for concealment), and he gives way. It is described in the wonderful lines (ω 318 f.)

το7 δ᾽ lρίνετο θυμός, νS dBνας δέ ο? Tδη δριμ& μένος προύτυψε ϕίλον πατέρ᾽ εQσορόωντι. The characters’ speech sometimes takes a very naturalistic, almost modern turn, if we disregard the epic diction and attend to the essential meaning. At γ 211, after Telemachos has mentioned the suitors at home, Nestor takes up the subject with, ‘Dear boy, now that you remind me of this, . . .’. When Menelaos is with Telemachos and Peisistratos, and Helen joins them, she asks her husband, ‘Do we know who these visitors are?’, and the dialogue continues with the same easy informality: she voices her conjecture that this is the son of

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Odysseus, Menelaos agrees that there is reason to think he may be, and Peisistratos confirms that they are right, only Telemachos has been too reticent to say so (δ 138–67). The ‘do we know?’ idiom occurs again at δ 632, where Noemon, the owner of the ship that Telemachos has borrowed, asks Antinoos if they know when he will be coming back. When Odysseus approaches Eumaios’ hut and has a close escape from the four fierce hounds that guard it, Eumaios opens conversation with, ‘Old sir, the dogs nearly made short work of you, and you would have brought me into disgrace’ (ξ 37 f.). Several critics have noted Q’s interest in dogs and their behaviour, and he perhaps has a better claim than any other Greek poet to be considered a dog-lover.10 When Eumaios’ dogs run barking at Odysseus, he knows what to do: he sits down and drops the stick that they may see as an offensive weapon, while Eumaios for his part drives them off with shouts and stones (ξ 30–6). The next day, when Telemachos appears, they recognize him and greet him without barking, wagging their tails, and Odysseus infers that it must be a friend who has come (π 4–10). Later, when Athena appears to Odysseus, Telemachos does not see her, but the dogs do; they do not bark but retreat whimpering into a corner in fear of this supernatural presence (π 162 f.). Then there is Odysseus’ aged hound Argos, the most famous dog in all literature (ρ 291–327). He does nothing but recognize his master after twenty years, flatten his ears, and feebly wag his tail, being too weak to stand up from the filth in which he is lying. Odysseus pretends not to know him and wonders whether he was a good hunter or just a dining-room dog such as men keep for show. Eumaios assures him that he was an excellent hunter in his time, good at tracking, and his prey never escaped. This is in effect an obituary notice, as the poor creature, having had his moment in the limelight, expires a few moments later. Telemachos too keeps dogs: he is accompanied by a pair of them as he goes to the assembly (β 11), and again when he goes out to fetch Theoklymenos (ρ 62). Alkinoos has no live dogs in evidence, but his palace door is symbolically guarded by gold and silver ones fashioned by Hephaestus (η 91–4). Canine behaviour is further the subject of two un-Iliadic similes: the dogs that fawn on their master when he returns from a dinner,

10

Wilamowitz 1884: 87 f., ‘Die scenen hat ein hundefreund gedichtet’; Seeck 94–6; Finsler ii. 354; Schwartz 94.

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knowing that he always brings them titbits (κ 216 f.), and the bitch with puppies who snarls and barks at a stranger (υ 13–16). This latter simile generates an original metaphor, you may say a bizarre one: like that bitch, even so does Odysseus’ heart ‘bark’ within him as he broods on the fornicating maids. Q’s canvas is well populated with characters of high and low degree. Many of them belong to collectivities: the suitors, the domestics, Odysseus’ crewmen. But Q is not content to treat these as monochrome bodies. He picks out individuals, gives them names and backgrounds and personalities that differentiate them one from another.11 From the crewmen there emerge the inept young Elpenor who falls to his death off Circe’s roof and the emotional Eurylochos who hangs back when others go forward (κ 232, 429 ff.) and who leads the rebellion against Odysseus’ orders in the Thrinakia episode (μ 278 ff., 339 ff.). Among Odysseus’ servants there is a range from the completely faithful, trustworthy, and highly profiled Eumaios and Eurykleia, through the equally sound but less prominent Philoitios, Dolios, and Eurynome, to the ill-dispositioned and ill-mannered Melanthios and Melantho. Of the 108 suitors, some fifteen are identified by name, and of these a smaller number emerge as individuals as the narrative proceeds.12 Each has his own distinctive traits. ‘Antinoos . . . is an out-and-out blackguard, Eurymachos a black-hearted hypocrite, Amphinomos good-natured but weak-kneed, Ktesippos a vulgarian and thorough cad’, is one critic’s lapidary assessment.13 When a new character appears Q very often introduces him or her with a few lines of information. So with Atlas’ daughter in α 51–4 (though the opportunity could have been taken at 14, where she is named as Calypso); Eurykleia, α 428–33; Aigyptios, β 15–22; Mentor, β 225–7; Dolios, δ 735–7; Nausikaa’s chambermaid Eurymedousa, η 8–11; Echeneos, η 155–7; Demodokos, θ (44), 62–4; Polyphemos,

11 It is often apparent that personal names are invented ad hoc, as at α 154, 180; β 38, 386; γ 282; η 8, 155; θ 111–19, 373; ξ 449. So with place-names: ζ 4; η 9. And Dawn’s horses: ψ 246 (cf. μ 132).

12 K. Lehrs, De Aristarchi studiis homericis, 3rd edn. (Leipzig 1882), 461, ‘Wie allmählich in der Odyssee, je nachdem der Fortgang und die Scenerie es nöthig machen, aus der Schaar der Freier einzelne bestimmte und zu benennende in die Scene treten, auch hienach in ihrem Charakter modificirte, ist merkwürdig zu verfolgen’; Kammer 669. 13 Woodhouse 204, summing up a slightly ampler analysis; cf. Fenik 198–206.

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ι 187–92; Circe, κ 136–9; Teiresias, κ 492–5; Scylla, μ 85–100; Mesaulios, ξ 449–52; Theoklymenos, ο 223–55; Amphinomos, π 394–8; Iros, σ 1–7; Melantho, σ 321–5; Moulios, σ 423 f.; Ktesippos, υ 287–90; Leodes, ϕ 144–8; Aktoris, ψ 228.

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE Q aims to build a monumental epic on something like the scale of the Iliad, and he makes long sight-lines. To inaugurate action on two fronts he adopts a technique seen in the Iliad, by which two divine operatives are sent to speak to different addressees in furtherance of a single plan. But he has not managed to keep it under control; by letting Athena’s mission develop into the Telemachy he finds himself forced to make a new start with Hermes’. The initiative to release Odysseus from Ogygia, adumbrated in α, is thus suspended and taken up again in ε. The Telemachos narrative is similarly put into suspension in δ and resumed in ο; but when it is resumed, the threads are accurately picked up. Q has held the situation in mind over nearly five thousand lines and expected the same of his hearers. When Poseidon punishes the Phaeacians for bringing Odysseus home (ν 125–84), this ties up with the prophecy that Alkinoos cited four rhapsodies earlier (θ 564–71), and again we are expected to make the connection. When Athena near the beginning of the poem speaks of Laertes living out of town, tending his vineyard with an old woman to look after him (α 189–93), Q is looking ahead to and preparing us for Odysseus’ reunion with his father in ω. On the other hand we are given no programmatic previews of where the story is leading in the long term. The opening invocation to the Muse (α 1–10) gives no hint that the story will culminate in the killing of Penelope’s suitors. Nor does Zeus’ revelation to Hermes of how Odysseus will get home (ε 29–42). Athena tells Odysseus (and so us) that she is going to go to Sparta to bring Telemachos back, but she does not say what will follow from that (ν 404–15).14 It is partly that 14 Cf. Rüter 108, ‘Bei allen prädisponierenden Stellen dieser Art gilt, daß der Fortgang der Erzählung nie weiter als über den unmittelbar folgenden Abschnitt hin mitgeteilt wird, die größeren dieser Abschnitte reichen über vier Bücher. Einen programmatischen Überblick über das Ganze zu geben, ist wohl bewußt unterlassen worden.’

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Q has not always worked out in detail how he is going to shape his story, as we can tell from many fluctuations and inconsistencies (see below). But it is also the case that he likes to hold things back for greater effect.15 We see this on a small scale in passages where the identity of a person or place being spoken about is not revealed until interest has been aroused; see δ 104–7, 498/551–5; ν 237–49; ξ 39–44/144.16 We see it on a large scale in Odysseus’ preparations for overcoming the suitors, from his first discussions with Telemachos to his participation in the bow contest: until it happens, there is no indication that he is going to use the bow to shoot the suitors. In several places Q purposely breaks off at a crucial point to leave us in suspense over what is going to happen: with the suitors waiting in ambush for Telemachos’ return from Pylos (δ 847); with the Phaeacians anxiously praying to Poseidon to spare their city (ν 185–7); with Telemachos, having been warned about the ambush, sailing towards the area ‘wondering whether he would escape death or be caught’ (ο 300). At τ 392 Eurykleia, washing the beggar’s feet, suddenly recognizes the scar on his thigh. A crisis! But at this point the narrative is held up for seventy-four lines as Q digresses to the story of how Odysseus acquired the scar at a boar-hunt in his youth. Only then do we hear how Eurykleia reacted and how the situation was saved. Does Q deliberately prolong the account of the hunt to keep us waiting as long as possible? Perhaps it is just that he enjoys telling stories and, once started on one, will develop it freely. Given his ambition to create an epic of vast dimensions, he will have felt no inclination to curb the amplitude of these incidental narratives. It is surely this delight in storytelling that explains why Eumaios relates his own history at such length (ο 403–84), and why Odysseus tells a whole series of fictitious tales about himself to different people, each one full of interesting event and each one different in detail (even if essentially variations on a single story: Hölscher 1988: 212). All of these stories are Q’s inventions, examples of a genre that must have been popular at the time, the proto-romance involving travels in exotic regions, kidnappings and escapes, shipwrecks, and so on. The

15 ‘Suspense and retardation are employed in the Odyssey on a massive scale’ (Fenik 98, cf. 104). 16 Cf. Hölscher 1939: 74; Fenik 29.

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back-story of Theoklymenos in ο 225–55 is another case of a digression whose length may seem immoderate. Q’s taste for magnitude shows itself in several of the changes that he made to his story in the course of composition. As we shall see in the next chapter, there are indications that he increased the number of Odysseus’ years of wandering from three to ten, and the number of the suitors from twelve to 108. In the Phaeacian episode he added an extra day to his original timetable (see pp. 135, 219), and again when Odysseus reaches his own palace the original plan, by which he would kill the suitors the same day, was expanded, putting it off to the next day (p. 252). On the other hand, obtrusive duplication of material is avoided, sometimes by distributing it between different contexts (Hölscher 1988: 100 f.). The account of the other heroes’ returns from Troy is divided between Nestor in γ and Menelaos in δ, and divided on a rational principle, according to what each of the two was in a position to know about (assuming that they had never conferred). When Odysseus begins the story of his travels at ι 39 he avoids overlap with what Nestor has said of his departure from Troy in γ 162–4; and when he gets to his arrival on Calypso’s isle, he stops there, since ‘I was telling you and your lady wife about that yesterday: I abhor repeating tales that have already been explicitly told’ (μ 450–3; he is speaking for Q). The story of Neleus’ daughter Pero is partly told in λ 287–97, partly in ο 230–40; the two versions complement each other. Another kind of economy is seen when the narrator cuts corners and elides certain essential links in the sequence of the action. At α 96 Athena, having proposed Hermes’ and her own missions, at once sets out on hers without waiting for Zeus’ approval. In ε 99–115 Hermes explains to Calypso that she is to release the man who, after leaving Troy, had his ship destroyed by the storm that Athena sent upon the Achaean fleet, lost all his crew, and was carried to Ogygia by wind and wave. This eliminates the whole series of Odysseus’ intervening adventures in the interests of brevity. At ζ 50 Nausikaa, waking from her dream, goes through the house ‘to tell her parents’; but when she finds her father she omits mention of the dream and goes straight to the request that the dream prompted her to make. At θ 514 f. Demodokos is reported as singing of how ‘the sons of the Achaeans sacked the city, pouring out of the Horse, coming out of their enclosed concealment’. This omits the fact that those who came out of the Horse had first to open the city gates for the rest of the army to come

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in. It was the army as a whole that sacked the city. At π 336 a herald brings Penelope the news of Telemachos’ return; she is evidently just with her women attendants. Eumaios, who has arrived simultaneously, tells her all that Telemachos has told him to say, and departs. Then, with no explanation of how the news comes to the suitors’ ears, we are told of their reaction to it (342).

Typical scenes Like other singers in the early epic tradition, Q uses typical scene modules for certain recurrent activities such as sending a messenger, launching or landing a ship, and performing a sacrifice. But he uses them quite flexibly. For example, when Athena comes down with her message for Telemachos in α 102 ff. we see elements of the typical messenger sequence, but they are deployed in a rather free way.17 Instead of reporting a message from Zeus, she is bringing one she has conceived herself, and she expands on it.18 Where according to the standard schema we expect ‘she arrived’, we have ‘she took her stand’ (103); instead of ‘she found Telemachos’ we have ‘she found the suitors’ (106); instead of her taking her stand before Telemachos and addressing him, he sees her, goes and stands before her, and addresses her (113–24). When Hermes is sent to Calypso he does not simply repeat the instructions Zeus has given him, he reformulates them (ε 30–42/99–115). We find the same freedom with other types of typical scene. Jacoby points out that the sacrifice scene in γ 417–72 draws on the formulaic language used in Α 447–68 but is more than twice as long, yet has no significance for the plot, it is just a genre scene put in for its own sake.19 When Odysseus’ first day on Scheria comes to an end at η 335, there is no statement by host or guest that it is time to sleep: Arete simply tells the servants to make up a bed for the visitor, and when

17

Heubeck 1954: 47; de Jong 19. Cf. de Jong 126, ‘Whereas in the Iliad “delivery” speeches repeat verbatim or with minor adjustments “instruction” speeches, in the Odyssey messengers take more liberties’, and 434. 19 Jacoby 120 f., ‘Die Szene ist um ihrer selbst willen da, ein in sich ruhendes Genrebild. Man kann sie gar nicht anders nennen, weil man in Ausführung und stilistischer Ausgestaltung empfindet, daß sie der reinen Freude des Dichters an der Szene des Lebens entspringt.’ 18

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they have done so they themselves invite him to retire: ‘Go and lie down, sir, your bed is made.’ It is a naturalistic modification of the regular bedtime routine, which still shows through in many formulaic lines (336–9 = δ 297–300; 344 = ζ 1; 345–7 ≈ γ 399, 402 f.). When the ship that took Telemachos to Pylos returns to harbour in Ithaca, we find a hastily elliptical version of the standard landing sequence, just ‘when they arrived inside the deep harbour, they drew the black ship up onto the land’ (π 324–5 = Α 432, 485; cf. Kammer 611).

Transitions In passing over from one field of action to another Q sometimes shows a quite sophisticated technique of smoothing the transition by having parallel activities going on in both locations.20 Consider how he takes us from Sparta back to Ithaca at δ 620 ff. From the private dialogue between Menelaos and Telemachos the focus softens to the communal eating and drinking that takes place in the palace each day. Then we pass from the company of feasters at Sparta to the company of suitors in Ithaca, an equally generic picture. They are amusing themselves in front of Odysseus’ house (but this time with different pastimes), as they were at α 106 while dinner was prepared. Then the focus narrows again to the conversation of individuals. Then at 786–9, having made a ship ready for setting their ambush, the suitors take supper, and we pass to Penelope, who is lying in her chamber eating and drinking nothing, worrying whether her son will escape death at the suitors’ hands. At the beginning of ζ we pass from Odysseus asleep on the Scherian shore to Athena visiting the sleeping Nausikaa in her bedroom. Similarly at the beginning of ο, Odysseus and Eumaios having settled down for the night in Ithaca, Athena goes and appears to Telemachos who is lying in bed (though awake) at Sparta. In certain cases where one line of action is put on hold for a relatively short time, the transition back to it is made quite slickly in mid verse. So it is when we return to Odysseus at ν 187 after the digression on Poseidon’s punishment of the Phaeacians; when, after Telemachos has left Odysseus with Eumaios and come to the palace, we return

20

Cf. Page 1955: 66–70.

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after a short palace scene to Odysseus and the swineherd setting out from the piggery (ρ 182); and again a little later following their encounter with Melanthios on the road, after he has gone and seated himself in the palace, when we return to them (260).

Similes Similes were a traditional feature of epic narrative. They are far less abundant in the Odyssey than in the Iliad, for which Fränkel (86) offers an interesting but hardly sufficient explanation: ‘The use of similes is much reduced, for the real world, not a stylized one, enters freely into the narrative itself and does not have to lurk in little digressions.’ Certainly in the Iliad it is to similes that we must look for vignettes of contemporary life, while in the Odyssey we feel closer to it in much of the narrative.21 In the most heroic episode, the battle with the suitors, Q clearly emulates the Iliad poet’s manner, with a double simile in χ 299–306 (302 = Π 428) and two further heroic ones in 384–8 and 402–5. It must be said, however, that his similes often have a somewhat bizarre quality and can be downright inept. In the first category I put the comparison of Alkinoos’ fifty women workers to the leaves on a tall poplar (η 106); Odysseus and Telemachos, weeping in joyous reunion, likened to vultures lamenting over their stolen young (π 216–18); Penelope in tormented indecision compared to Pandareos’ daughter lamenting for the slain Itylos (τ 518–23); Odysseus’ angry, ‘barking’ heart to a bitch barking at a stranger (υ 14–16); his tossing and turning in bed to a haggis being roasted on a spit (υ 25–7); the noise of a door being unlocked to the bellow of a grazing bull (ϕ 48–50). If some of these teeter on the verge of incongruity, the following may be thought to topple over it: the extended simile that Menelaos embarks on in a speech at δ 335–40, where he prophesies that Odysseus will inflict an ugly death upon the suitors, as when a deer

21 Wilamowitz 1927: 76 wrongly implies that Iliadic similes are always grand and heroic: ‘Gleichnisse [in the Odyssey] sind sparsam, aber mit der sichtlichen Absicht so gewählt, daß sie sich als neue von der altepischen Praxis abheben. Sie streben nicht nach Erhabenheit, sondern greifen in das Leben der Gegenwart, Fischfang und Vogelstellen’ (cf. κ 124, μ 251–5, χ 384–8, but also Π 406–8, Ω 80–2).

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leaves her two fawns in a lion’s den and he comes in and kills them; Penelope, as she lies worrying about Telemachos’ safety, likened to a lion who is perturbed to find himself encircled by hunters (δ 791–3); Athena’s enhancement of Odysseus’ appearance compared to a smith plating silver with gold (ζ 232–5); Odysseus’ upset state on hearing Demodokos’ account of the sack of Troy compared to that of a woman who has rushed onto the battlefield to bewail her fallen husband, while enemy spears beat on her shoulders and back and she is taken into slavery (θ 523–30). In υ 63–79 Penelope wishes she could be carried away by the storm winds like the daughters of Pandareos: fair enough, but then their whole story, thirteen lines of it, is awkwardly inserted as a digression in the simile.

Dialogue Much of the poem is occupied by dialogue, which, as indicated earlier, often has a genuinely conversational quality in contrast to the generally more formal exchanges between characters in the Iliad. Often there are three or more persons present and the dialogue moves freely among them. We feel that if Q had been writing for the Attic stage in the early fifth century he would not have been slow to introduce the third actor. In δ 71–89 Telemachos makes a private remark to Peisistratos, and Menelaos overhears it and genially intervenes, addressing the two young men together. A little later Helen comes in and joins them (120 ff.). She asks Menelaos about the visitors, he answers her, and this prompts Peisistratos to speak up, confirming the identity of Telemachos, which Helen and Menelaos have speculated about. The conversation continues among the three of them, mainly taken up with Menelaos’ and Helen’s reminiscences about Odysseus, and finally Telemachos speaks to reconfirm his presence and suggest that it is bedtime (290–5). His inhibited silence while others talked across him is an example of what Schadewaldt (1970: 66 f.) labelled an Übereckgespräch, or hypotenuse conversation, where three people form a triangle and two of them speak about the third. He was discussing the scene in ψ 88–116, where Penelope sits facing Odysseus, too uncertain to speak to him; instead she speaks to Telemachos about him, and he to her, and then Odysseus speaks to Telemachos about her. Other cases are η 145–206, where after Odysseus’ appeal to Arete no one speaks to him, only about him, and π 56–89, where Telemachos asks Eumaios

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about the stranger who is sitting with them and Eumaios tells him what the stranger has previously told him.22 As in life, dialogue in the Odyssey does not always take a logical course. Questions that someone has asked may be forgotten or ignored as the conversation drifts off in other directions (Fenik 57–9). Someone may ask two questions together, and have the second answered at once but the first not till much later; both were significant in Q’s mind, and the answers had to come sooner or later, but he did not necessarily deal with it immediately. In γ 248–52 Telemachos asks Nestor how Agamemnon died, and where Menelaos was. Nestor answers the second question, but Telemachos must wait till δ 512–37 for Menelaos to tell him the details of his brother’s murder. At η 238 Arete asks Odysseus, ‘Who are you? And who gave you those clothes?’ He explains about the clothes, how he was washed up naked and taken care of by Nausikaa, but he does not disclose his identity until ι 19. As Hölscher noted, there is an analogy between these structures and Athena’s double proposal in α 81–95 for missions by Hermes and herself: the second is implemented straight away, the first not until ε.23 It is a favourite motif in the Odyssey that people fail to recognize what is in front of them or the real situation they are in. This is sometimes the case in dialogue contexts. A speaker does not realize the true identity of his interlocutor. Or someone whose identity is not known to those around him may find people spontaneously speaking of matters that concern him.24 It was a constraint of epic convention that the poet could not voice general truths in his own mouth but only in his characters’ utterances. Q’s characters frequently make sententious remarks,25 and as it does not appear to be associated with any particular speaker or class of speakers, it would seem not to be meant as a means of characterization but an expression of Q’s own sententiousness. But

22

Cf. Fenik 68–71; Hölscher 1988: 130, 288; de Jong 390 f. Hölscher 1939: 27 f.; 1988: 80, 132; de Jong 99. 24 Hölscher 1939: 64–7; Fenik 22–5, 53; de Jong 95 f., 386. 25 See α 32–4, 348 f.; β 276 f.; γ 236–8; δ 236 f.; ζ 29 f., 182–5, 188 f., 207 f., 286–8; η 51 f.; θ 138 f., 147 f., 167–75, 209–11, 329, 546 f., 552–4, 585 f.; ι 5–11; μ 286–90; ξ 57–60, 83–8, 156 f., 228, 444 f., 464–6; ο 54 f., 69–74, 343–5, 394, 400 f., 421 f.; π 423; ρ 18, 189, 218, 286–9, 320–3, 347; σ 130–7; τ 328–34, 360, 591–3; υ 195. 23

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the observations in question arise naturally in their contexts; they are not, as it were, excerpts from a mental wisdom poem. A speaking character may also serve as proxy for the poet by incorporating in his or her speech expository material that is not needed by the person addressed but by the poem’s audience (cf. Rüter 135). Examples are the information about Calypso and Atlas in Athena’s speech to Zeus in α 51–4, about Polyphemos in Zeus’ reply (69–73), and about Laertes’ present condition in Athena-Mentes’ speech to Telemachos in α 189–93.

WEAKNESSES AND INCONCINNITIES For all his tendency to amplitude, Q can sometimes be disconcertingly perfunctory. In π 335–41 a herald and Eumaios arrive from different directions to report to Penelope that Telemachos has returned from his voyage. The herald stands and speaks a single line: ‘Now, O queen, your dear son has come.’ Then the swineherd comes up and ‘told Penelope all that her dear son had bidden him say to her. When he had delivered the whole message, he went off to his pigs, leaving the hall and enclosure.’ Q could not omit to relate that Penelope was informed, but he does not trouble himself to compose more than this pathetically jejune statement. In σ 284–303, when Penelope has observed that proper suitors would bring her gifts, Antinoos makes a curt response, and within a dozen lines they have sent retainers off to fetch gifts, the gifts are brought and a selection of them listed, and Penelope retires to her room with her maids carrying the booty. Again Q seems to have lost interest in the proceedings. Another example is υ 241–6, where the suitors once more plot to kill Telemachos, with no indication of how they might do it. An unfavourable bird omen is seen, and Amphinomos says: ‘This plan isn’t going to work, lads. Let’s have dinner.’ The whole thing is over in six lines. Sometimes, where Q cannot ascribe his own purpose to the character, he provides him or her with a weak motivation. Alkinoos is made to put on athletic contests, ‘so that the visitor when he gets home can tell his friends and family how we excel over others at boxing, wrestling, jumping, and running’ (θ 101–3). As the Phaeacians never mix with other peoples, Alkinoos can have no reason to believe

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in their sporting supremacy or even to think in those terms. In π 31–5 Telemachos, who has come to the piggery because Athena instructed him to, tells Eumaios that he has come to see him and to ask whether Penelope has yet taken a new husband. The palace would have been the obvious place to go to establish that. At ρ 22–5 he is to go to the palace: Odysseus is to go too, but not until later, and he justifies his delaying by saying that it is a chilly morning and he needs to keep warm by the fire and wait till the sun is stronger. At the palace Eumaios brings him Penelope’s invitation to talk to her, and again Q has his reasons for postponement, but all Odysseus can say to justify it is that he is afraid of the suitors (ρ 564–73). In σ 158–62 we hear Athena’s (Q’s) reason for sending Penelope down among the suitors: it is to excite them and elicit gifts from them. But to Eurynome she gives her motive as to speak to Telemachos and warn him against associating with the suitors (166–8)—not something that there is any need to be telling him at this juncture. The whole narrative is pervaded by contradictions and inconsistencies that for over two centuries have provided carrion for the nourishment of analyst critics. But to postulate different hands is seldom a satisfactory explanation. A writer is just as likely to overlook discrepancies in his own composition as a reviser or interpolator is to introduce them. The fact is that Q is a chronically inconsistent narrator. He cannot ever be relied upon to make the details of what happens in one passage match what an earlier passage portended, or a later report of events agree precisely with what we were told when they happened. One reason is no doubt that, being a continually inventive artist, he has sung different versions at different times and they interfere with one another. Another is that he changes his mind in the course of the poem about how things are going to go. We can see this, for example, in the notorious matter of the removal of weapons from the hall. (See below, pp. 248 f.) In any case he is more concerned about the effect of each passage as he composes it than about overall coherence and precise compatibility with other passages elsewhere.26 Many illustrations of these generalities will be found in Chapter 6, but some particular areas of inconcinnity may be considered here.

26 Cf. Heubeck 1954: 66; Fenik 47, ‘Clear, logical cause and effect, air-tight motivation or strict verisimilitude are not his concern. His interest is in emotion, irony, and pathos’; Danek 358.

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First there is the series of cover stories that Odysseus tells about himself to various people: Athena (ν 256–86), Eumaios (ξ 199–359), Antinoos (ρ 419–44), Penelope (τ 172–202), and Laertes (ω 304–14). Every fraudster, criminal, or undercover agent knows that it is wise to keep one’s story consistent. Yet Odysseus tells a different tale each time, albeit with some common elements. Eumaios is present when he tells his story to Antinoos, and while much of it corresponds to what he told the swineherd, the ending takes a quite different turn. Eumaios ignores the new version when, shortly afterwards, he tells Penelope about the stranger’s claims (ρ 522–7). He reports his claim to have heard recent news of Odysseus in Thesprotia (this corresponds to ξ 321 ff.); but when the stranger himself comes into Penelope’s presence, he says nothing of this, only of having met Odysseus twenty years before. It is no use asking why she fails to press him on the much more immediate rumour from Thesprotia. Nothing hangs on her hearing this (untrue) report. It is the effect of the individual scene that matters to Q. He enjoys spinning stories, as we have noted before, and whenever there is occasion for one he makes it a new one. It would have been tedious if Odysseus had recited the same story each time.27 There is some inconsistency over the portrayal of individual characters. Odysseus has naturally fair hair (ξανθα τρίχες) in ν 399/431 (cf. ζ 231 κόμας Rακινθίνωι Vνθει Dμοίας), but a dark beard (κυάνεαι =θειράδες) in π 176.28 Athena transforms him into a bald beggar (ν 429–38), and repeats the operation after letting him appear in his true form to Telemachos (π 454–7). But after that there is unclarity about whether his body has actually undergone a metamorphosis or is just so degraded by time and suffering that it is hard to recognize.29 Eurykleia comments on his likeness to her old master (τ 380 f.), and Eumaios and Philoitios need only to be shown his scar

27 Cf. Focke 308, ‘man wird vielmehr zunächst im allgemeinen berücksichtigen müssen, daß die stofflichen Einzelheiten dieser so unterschiedlichen Lügenerzählungen im Bewußtsein des Dichters so locker gesessen haben werden, daß er es mit ihnen, bewußt oder unbewußt, nicht allzu genau nahm’. A table showing the common elements in the various stories may be found in de Jong 596 f. 28 Cf. Finsler ii. 369; Bethe ii. 69 n. 2, ‘Das ist nicht gerade ein Widerspruch, aber ich glaube gern, daß der Verfasser nicht aufgepaßt hat’; Focke 285–7. 29 Cf. Finsler ii. 377, 409.

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to convince them that it is he (ϕ 221 f.). At no point does Athena effect a retransformation as she did for the reunion with Telemachos. After the killing of the suitors Penelope half recognizes him, and it is the beggar’s garb that is identified as making it hard for her (ψ 94 f., 115 f.). When he takes a bath Athena does contribute to his enhanced looks (ψ 156–62), but that is no more than she did for him when he cleaned himself up on the Phaeacian shore (ζ 230–5). Penelope’s attitude towards the suitors is differently represented in different passages. Their attentions are unwanted (β 50, τ 133), and she remains faithful to Odysseus and pines for him (τ 136), supposing him to be still alive somewhere (τ 358 f., cf. δ 833). But elsewhere she appears to be convinced that he is dead or at any rate will never return (β 96 = τ 141; τ 257 f., 313). She tried to put the suitors off by saying she was unavailable until she had finished the winding-sheet for Laertes (β 93 ff., τ 137 ff., ω 128 ff.). On the other hand she has still not said a definite no to remarriage (α 249 f. = π 126 f.), and Antinoos claims that she keeps raising all their hopes and sending them encouraging messages (β 91 f.); there is no suggestion that he is lying. The context requires the suitors to be able to justify their conduct, but we would prefer not to know this about Penelope. We may argue that, given the pressures on her, a certain variability in her stance is psychologically plausible. I prefer to account for it from the pressures on Q from the needs of the story as a whole (cf. p. 105) and of changing contexts within it, and perhaps from his entertainment of different versions at different times. Telemachos fluctuates between diffidence (β 60–2, π 71 f., 128) and assertiveness (α 367–82, σ 406–11), and also, like his mother, between hope for Odysseus’ return (α 115 f., β 223) and conviction that he is dead (α 161–8, 354, 413, γ 241 f., ο 268). Again one may say that this has psychological verisimilitude, especially for a youth on the verge of manhood, and again it seems to me sufficient to explain it in terms of the varying requirements of individual scenes. After killing the suitors Odysseus instructs Telemachos to put the disloyal maids to death to punish them for their secret dalliances with the suitors (χ 444 f., cf. 424, 464), and indeed in υ 6–8 he had watched them leaving the palace in high spirits to sleep with their lovers. Yet this conflicts with other passages according to which the fault was all the suitors’, who took them by force (π 108 f. = υ 318 f.; χ 37, 313–15). Here it is very clearly a matter of context. When the subject is the wickedness of the suitors, they are the ones blamed for abusing the maids. When it is that of the maids, they are treated as enthusiastic fornicators.

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Q AS WORDSMITH Q is a fluent composer, but it is a fluency of invention rather than of expression. When he has the opportunity to use or adapt pre-existing verses, ones that he has composed earlier or ones that he knows from the Iliad, he usually takes it, often without being too meticulous about how appropriate they are to the new context. ‘The pressure to use pre-formed, standardized material was often stronger than any need felt to change it in accordance with the precise requirements of a given passage’ (Fenik 126). This is not just the oral performer’s ordinary recourse to formulaic language. In many cases it is clear that the repeated lines are not traditional formulaic ones but are taken from identifiable passages elsewhere in the texts. Sometimes whole blocks of lines are repeated, as in α 374–80 = β 139–45; β 94–107 = τ 139–52 = ω 129–42; β 230–4 = ε 8–12; γ 92–101 = δ 322–31; δ 425–31 = 570–6; δ 724–6 = 814–16; θ 93–7 = 532–6; θ 565–70 = ν 173–8; λ 110–12 = μ 137–9; λ 122–37 = ψ 269–84; μ 403–6 + 415–19 = ξ 301–9; ξ 158–62 = τ 303–7; ξ 316, 323, 325–33 = τ 287 + 293 + 294–9 + 288–90; ρ 419–24 = τ 75–80; σ 251–6 = τ 124–9; σ 414–17 = υ 322–5; χ 256–9 = 273–6; ψ 100–2 = 168–70.30 The crassest and laziest example is in ρ, where Telemachos is reporting to his mother on his visits to Pylos and Sparta. Instead of expressing in his own words the substance of what Menelaos had told him about Odysseus’ being stranded on Calypso’s island, he just writes out the relevant sections from Menelaos’ actual speech, ρ 124–46 = δ 333–50 + 557–60, with one new verse (142) paraphrasing δ 556. At the beginning of the passage the subject of Menelaos’ remark has to be supplied from δ.

30

Cf. Heubeck 1954: 68, ‘Kennzeichnend für den OD [= Odyssee-Dichter] scheint weiterhin zu sein, daß er in der Verwendung gleicher Verse und Versgruppen an verschiedenen Stellen des Epos freier und großzügiger verfährt als Homer [= the Iliad poet]. In der Schilderung “typischer” Szenen mit gleichem Versmaterial gehen allerdings beide Epen weithin überein. Während aber in der Ilias die für eine spezielle Situation geprägte Formulierung nur unter bestimmten Voraussetzungen wieder verwendbar ist, . . . zeigt die Odyssee verschiedentlich Wiederholungen langer Versgruppen, wie sie in der Ilias nicht möglich wären’; 70.

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Adaptation of other poets’ verses Q’s habit of taking over ready-made lines and passages from the Iliad when they roughly fit his needs, even if they do not do so accurately, is a fact of such importance that it needs to be illustrated at length. The reader who lacks the dedication to work through all of the fifty-two cases listed below is entreated at least to look up the passages cited in the first two and consider whether they do not sufficiently make the point.

α 96–101 and ε 43–9 are both modelled on Hermes’ descent to earth in Ω 339–45. The ε passage, where Hermes is the subject, is the closer of the two to the model, but its derivativeness is shown by his carrying the wand with which he puts men to sleep. This is relevant to his mission in Ω but not to his mission in ε. In α, where the lines are adapted to Athena, the wand is replaced by the spear with which she slays men with whom she is angry. This is merely an encumbrance on her visit to Ithaca, and it has to be left behind when she flies away. α 356–9, λ 352 f., and ϕ 350–3 are all modelled on Ζ 490–3, where Hector, about to return to the battlefield, tells Andromache to go home and attend to her work, leaving it to men, above all himself, to worry about the fighting. In the Odyssey passages ‘fighting’ (πόλεμος) is replaced by other nouns. The antithesis of ‘men’ to a woman addressee remains in α and ϕ but is hardly there in λ. The phrase ‘to all men, and most of all to me’ makes weak sense in λ and ϕ, none at all in α. εQς ο%κον Qο7σα has its natural sense in Ζ: in α it is awkwardly used of Penelope’s chamber. α 408. Eurymachos asks whether the stranger (Athena-Mentes) has brought some news about Telemachos’ father: 1έ τιν᾽ γγελίην πατρ.ς ϕέρει. This resembles Achilles’ question to Patroklos at Π 13, 1έ τιν᾽ γγελίην Φθίης oξ Cκλυες ο%ος; (sc. about his own father). That Q had the Iliad passage in mind is confirmed a few lines later when Telemachos denies Eurymachos’ suggestion and adds (415), ‘nor have I regard to a prophecy that my mother has obtained from some seer that she has invited here’. This is (partly verbatim) from Π 50, where Achilles denies having received a prophecy from his mother. The idea of a prophecy communicated by Penelope is completely new and arises from nothing in the context. As she has no prophetic gifts of her own, as Thetis does, Q has to speak of her inviting a θεοπρόπος to the house.

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α 437/β 1–8. Telemachos’ sitting on his bed and taking off his chiton is based on Β 42, and his rising the next morning and sending out heralds on Β 44–5, 50–2 (+ Α 57). This explains the scarcely appropriate use of κάρη κομόωντας ᾽Αχαιούς (β 7 = Β 51) for the non-combatant male population of Ithaca. β 70, σχέσθε ϕίλοι, καί μ᾽ ο%ον =άσατε is lifted from Priam’s appeal to the Trojans in Χ 416 to let him go out alone to plead at the Achaean camp. It rings oddly in Telemachos’ mouth. β 80, pς ϕάτο χωόμενος, ποτ δ6 σκ0κτρον βάλε γαίηι, is adapted from Α 245, with Πηλείδης replaced by a not entirely suitable χωόμενος. β 260–1. Telemachos goes off by himself to the seashore and prays. Q is again thinking of Achilles’ behaviour in Α (349 ff.; cf. Chryses in Α 34 ff., which is the source of πάνευθε κιών). β 420–8. The ship’s departure, with Athena sending a fair wind behind it, is modelled on Α 479–82. γ 98–101. Telemachos’ impassioned plea to Nestor, which he repeats in δ 328–31 to Menelaos, has a formal structure appropriate to a prayer, and it is in fact modelled on Achilles’ appeal to Thetis in Α 394–407. γ 245. The line about Nestor’s great age, τρς γSρ δή μίν ϕασιν νάξασθαι γένε᾽ νδρKν, is an egregiously unsuccessful attempt to reproduce the sense of Α 250–2, τKι δ᾽ Tδη δύο μ6ν γενεα μερόπων νθρώπων | =ϕθίαθ᾽, ο/ ο? πρόσθεν qμα τράϕον 1δ᾽ =γένοντο | =ν Πύλωι 1γαθέηι, μετS δ6 τριτάτοισιν Vνασσεν. It is simply not viable Greek. γένεα means ‘breeds’, not ‘generations’; νάσσω ‘be king’ is not otherwise used in the middle, and it is construed with the genitive or dative, not the accusative (despite the passive use in δ 177); and τρίς should mean that he had acceded to the kingship three times, not that he had ruled continuously over three generations of subjects. γ 382–4, 457–62. Nestor’s vow and sacrifice are modelled on Iliadic passages, Κ 292–4 and Α 460–5. δ 17–19. The tumblers at the wedding festivities are taken over from the dance scene on the shield of Achilles, Σ 603–6. Q inserts a singer between τερπόμενοι and δοιZ δέ.31 31 The addition also appears in editions of the Iliad since Wolf but has no ancient authority. See West 2001: 250–2.

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δ 104 f. are modelled on Χ 424 f., where the identity of the ‘one man’ for whom the speaker most grieves follows in the next line. δ 127, (Θήβηις) ΑQγυπτίηις, Pθι πλεBστα δόμοις =ν κτήματα κεBται, is borrowed from Ι 382, and 129, (δοιο&ς δ6) τρίποδας, δέκα δ6 χρύσοιο τάλαντα, from the same scene, Ι 264. δ 240 = λ 328, πάντα μ6ν οκ Xν =γZ μυθήσομαι οδ᾽ νομήνω, is adapted from Β 488, where the =γώ is better justified by the antithesis between singer and Muses. δ 294–305. The proposal for going to bed and the arrangements for it are modelled on Ω 635–6 + 643–8 + 673–6. There Priam and his herald Idaios are put to bed outside in the porch because Achilles’ κλισίη has no bedroom and because the poet plans for them to depart surreptitiously during the night. There is no comparable reason for Menelaos’ guests to sleep out of doors, but Q has taken this to be a regular heroic practice and assumed it also at γ 399 (cf. p. 165) and η 336. δ 462, τίς νύ τοι, ᾽Ατρέος υ?έ, θεKν συμϕράσσατο βουλάς, is adapted from Α 540, where Hera interrogates Zeus. συμϕράσσατο βουλάς is more appropriate to Thetis’ consultation with Zeus than to Proteus’ daughter’s advice to Menelaos. δ 661–2. Antinoos’ indignation is hyperbolically described with the lines used for Agamemnon’s heroic anger in Α 103 f. ε 13, λλ᾽ ( μ6ν =ν νήσωι κεBται, κρατέρ᾽ Vλγεα πάσχων, is adapted from Β 721, which refers to the pain-tormented Philoctetes (Usener 17–38). Odysseus is not suffering κρατερS Vλγεα. The scholiast comments that ‘it ought to have been τετιημένος aτορ’. ε 28–9, ῾Ερμείαν υ?.ν ϕίλον ντίον ηWδα· | ῾Ερμεία, = Ω 333 f. The coincidence is significant because the Ω passage is the one already identified as the source of ε 43–9 and α 96–101. ε 34, Tματι εQκοστKι Σχερίην =ρίβωλον /κοιτο, is adapted from Ι 363 Tματί κε τριτάτωι Φθίην =ρίβωλον ?κοίμην, with the modal particle squeezed out. Scheria is called =ρίβωλος for no other reason. ε 50, Πιερίην δ᾽ =πιβάς, is from Ξ 226, where Hera passes from Olympus via Pieria, Emathia, Thrace, and Athos to Lemnos. Hermes’ journey is to be over the sea to the far west, and the reference to Pieria is geographically inapposite. ε 87–90. Calypso’s greeting to Hermes is adapted from that of Hephaestus and his wife to Thetis in Σ 385 f. and 424–7.

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ε 118, σχέτλιοί =στε, θεοί, ζηλήμονες Cξοχον Vλλων, is adapted from Ω 33 σχέτλιοί =στε, θεοί, δηλήμονες. But whereas δηλήμων (~ δηλέομαι) is a regular formation that ocurs elsewhere in Homer, ζηλήμων (~ ζηλόω) is an irregular formation and a hapax, while Cξοχον Vλλων is a meaningless line-filler (Usener 150, 151). ε 273–5, the lines about the Great Bear, probably also, like 87–90, come from Σ, as they appear with the constellations that Hephaestus represented on Achilles’ shield (487–9). ζ 130–4. The lion simile is adapted from Μ 299–301. θ 15. Athena, impersonating Alkinoos’ herald, calls on the nobles to go to the assembly. This is followed by pς εQπο7σ᾽ sτρυνε μένος κα θάρσος tκάστου, which as Hainsworth notes is ‘properly a formula of the battlefield (10 times in Il.)’. θ 36, Pσοι πάρος εQσν Vριστοι, applied to the rowers who are to be recruited to take Odysseus home, is a phrase adapted from Λ 825 = Π 23 Pσοι πάρος aσαν Vριστοι, of the major heroes who are now wounded. In the present context it is hard to attach any meaning to it. θ 115. The Phaeacians’ best wrestler, Euryalos, is described as βροτολοιγKι %σος ῎Αρηϊ. We may agree with Schwartz (24) that ‘die Floskel der Ilias . . . [Α 295, Υ 46] steht einem Phäaken so übel an wie möglich’. θ 122. The runners in the foot race =πέτοντο κονίοντες πεδίοιο, an expression more aptly used of horses in the games for Patroklos (Ψ 372, 449). θ 193. Odysseus’ discus flies further than the rest, and Athena, taking the guise of an arena official, steps in to declare him the winner. Q uses the phrase Cθηκε δ6 τέρματ᾽ ᾽Αθήνη, which in the funeral games is applied to Achilles marking out the course for a race (Ψ 333, 358, 757). It is hard to say what Q wants it to mean. θ 403–5. Euryalos announces a gift to soothe Odysseus’ injured feelings. The lines are modelled on Achilles’ promise of a consolation prize for Eumelos in Ψ 560–2. θ 467. Odysseus tells Nausikaa that if he should get home safely he will pray to her as if to a divinity, θεKι pς εχετοώιμην. This is an extravagant application of the phrase used for the Trojans’ veneration of Hector on whom their hopes depended (Χ 394). ι 97, λωτ.ν =ρεπτόμενοι, ‘munching lotus’, applied to what some of Odysseus’ men want to stay doing among the Lotus-eaters, comes from Β 776, where it refers more fittingly to Achilles’ horses grazing.

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ι 241 f. The rock with which Polyphemos blocks the cave entrance is described as uβριμον· οκ Xν τόν γε δύω κα ε^κοσ᾽ Vμαξαι | =σθλα τετράκυκλοι π᾽ οWδεος χλίσσειαν. This derives from Μ 447 f., τ.ν δ᾽ οW κε δύ᾽ νέρε δήμου ρίστω | dηϊδίως =π᾽ Vμαξαν π᾽ οWδεος χλίσσειαν. The two strong men levering a rock onto a wagon for transport have turned into twenty-two (!) wagons which are themselves levering the rock off the ground (onto themselves?). This is a spectacular case of Q juggling with the words of an Iliadic passage to try to achieve a similar effect, and making complete nonsense. λ 524 f., =μο δ᾽ =π πάντ᾽ =τέταλτο, | 1μ6ν νακλBναι πυκιν.ν λόχον 1δ᾽ =πιθεBναι. Odysseus must mean that in the Wooden Horse he was in charge of opening and closing the hatch. 525 is adapted from Ε 751 = Θ 395, where the Horai are said to be in charge of the gates of heaven, 1μ6ν νακλBναι πυκιν.ν νέϕος 1δ᾽ =πιθεBναι. Q has absurdly conflated this with the phrase πυκιν.ν λόχον (Δ 392, Ω 779), which could not refer to what was opened and closed. ν 254. To fill out his line Q takes the phrase πάλιν δ᾽ P γε λάζετο μ7θον from Δ 357. There it introduces a speech; here it is redundant, as we have already had a speech-introduction in 253. ξ 317. Odysseus says that after he was washed up in Thesprotia the local king Pheidon took him in and cared for him πριάτην, ‘without payment’. The word comes from Α 99, where Calchas announces that Apollo will not stop the plague until Agamemnon restores Chryseis to her father πριάτην νάποινον. There πριάτην is a feminine adjective (as in Hymn. Dem. 133; cf. Pind. fr. 169a. 8 πριάτας). But Q has taken it as an indeclinable adverb (Leumann 167 f.). ο 45. Telemachos wakes Peisistratos λSξ ποδ κινήσας. The uncivil procedure seems more appropriate in Κ 158, where the same words are used of Nestor (who is already up) rousing Diomedes with a reproach for being too fond of sleep.32 ο 147–50. Menelaos comes with a cup of wine for a libation before the young men set off in the chariot. The lines are adapted from Ω 283–6, where Hekabe does likewise for Priam as he prepares to set out for the Achaean camp. She goes on to urge him to ask Zeus for a favourable omen. He does so, and Zeus sends an eagle. In the Odyssey

32

See Wilamowitz 1884: 15 n. 4; Seeck 126.

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passage Telemachos prays that he might find Odysseus at home, and at once an eagle appears as an omen. (The actual line, 161 αQετ.ς ργ5ν χ0να ϕέρων νύχεσσι πέλωρον, seems to be influenced by Μ 201 f. αQετ.ς . . . δράκοντα ϕέρων νύχεσσι πέλωρον, where πέλωρος ‘huge’ seems more appropriate to the snake than to a goose.) It swoops past on the right, and everyone is gladdened: 164 f. δεξι.ς Tϊξε . . . ο_ δ6 Qδόντες | γήθησαν, κα π*σιν =ν ϕρεσ θυμ.ς Qάνθη. This is again taken from the scene in Ω (320 f.). But whereas in Ω the joy is in place, as the bird comes in answer to a prayer for a propitious omen, in ο it is premature, as the portent has yet to be interpreted. Peisitratos wonders who it is meant for (167 f.), and Helen then interprets it. ο 299, Cνθεν δ᾽ αv νήσοισιν =πιπροέηκε θο0ισιν, of Telemachos’ ship heading for the Echinades, is a half-echo of Π 708, κεBνον μ6ν δ5 νηυσν =πιπροέηκα θο0ισιν, ‘I have sent him to the swift ships’. But it is unclear what the verb is supposed to mean in the Odyssey passage. ρ 240–2. Eumaios’ prayer to the Nymphs is adapted from Chryses’ to Apollo in Α 40–2. The bulls and goats are replaced by lambs and kids to suit the less august recipients. σ 152. The suitor Amphinomos is referred to with the inappropriate phrase κοσμήτορι λαKν, after the Iliadic κοσμήτορε λαKν applied to the Atreidai. σ 403 f. After Eurymachos hurls a stool at Odysseus the suitors blame the stranger for the commotion and complain that quarrels about beggars are spoiling their feasting. The two lines are based on Α 575 f. As there, the restoration of good cheer leads to departure to various homes and beds. τ 433 f., 1έλιος μ6ν Cπειτα νέον προσέβαλλεν ρούρας | =ξ καλαρρείταο βαθυρρόου ᾽ΩκεανοBο: Q has taken the lines from Η 421 f. without noticing that to give the second one its proper sense he should have taken the next hemistich too, οραν.ν εQσανιών (Kirchhoff 524). ϕ 125 f. τρς μέν μιν πελέμιξεν =ρύσσασθαι μενεαίνων, | τρς δ6 μεθ0κε βίης. This line and a half are taken from Φ 176 f., where Achilles’ spear has stuck in the river-bank and his adversary Asteropaios is trying unsuccessfully to pull it out. πελέμιξεν means ‘made it vibrate’, and it is hardly appropriate to Odysseus’ bow. Even less in place in the new context is =ρύσσασθαι, since Telemachos is not trying to draw the bow but to string it (Niese 156).

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ω 39 f., σ& δ᾽ =ν στροϕάλιγγι κονίης | κεBσο μέγας μεγαλωστί, λελασμένος ?πποσυνάων, addressed to Achilles, is probably adapted

from Π 775 f., where the fallen man is the charioteer Kebriones.

λελασμένος ?πποσυνάων is less apposite to Achilles. (But there are

certain complications; see West 2011a: 326.) ω 95. At Σ 80 Achilles concedes to Thetis that Zeus has done what he wanted, but asks ατSρ =μο τί τόδ᾽ aδος, =πε ϕίλος sλεθ᾽ tταBρος; In ω Agamemnon’s ghost congratulates Achilles on the undying glory he won, and continues ατSρ =μο τί τόδ᾽ aδος, =πε πόλεμον τολύπευσα; Meaning, ‘but what did I profit from seeing the war through, seeing that I was murdered when I got home?’ The borrowed phrase fits awkwardly into this train of thought. ω 205, ο_ δ᾽ =πε =κ πόλιος κατέβαν, τάχα δ᾽ γρ.ν /κοντο, is adapted from Ω 329, where κατέβαν is appropriate to going down from Ilios to the plain. The town of Ithaca, on the other hand, was close to the harbour, and one went up from it to the country estates (π 351 f., 471). ω 248, σ& δ6 μ5 χόλον Cνθεο θυμKι, with the aorist imperative in a prohibition, is abnormal syntax, influenced by Ζ 326 ο μ6ν καλS χόλον τόνδ᾽ Cνθεο θυμKι. ω 315–17, describing how Laertes is overwhelmed by grief, gathers up dust, and pours it over his head, is taken from Σ 22–4, which tells of Achilles’ reaction to the news of Patroklos’ death. It is an excessive reaction for Laertes, who has just been told that Odysseus was seen four or five years ago in good health and travelling under good omens. ω 535, θε*ς uπα ϕωνησάσης, ‘at the goddess’s voice’, is a hemistich found three times in the Iliad (Β 182, Κ 512, Υ 380), but always with uπα as the object of another verb, ξυνέηκε or Vκουσε. Its use as internal object of ϕωνεBν is unparalleled. This is by no means a comprehensive survey of Iliadic echoes in the Odyssey, but it is a sample of sufficient size to bring out the fact that certain parts of the Iliad exercised a particularly strong influence on Q. In the above cases he draws ten times on Α, five times each on Σ and Ω, four times on Β, three times each on Μ, Π, Χ, and Ψ, twice each on Ζ, Κ, and Ι. Of course he knew other epics, in oral if not in written form, and he may well have borrowed from them too. This we cannot check. We can see that he knew Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days, and

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some of his echoes of them are again not completely apt.33 But the Iliad was certainly the model of greatest importance to him.

Re-use of own verses If he tends to re-use lines inappropriately, it is not (or not usually) because he has misunderstood them, for the same thing is liable to happen when he recycles lines and language of his own.

α 425–6, Pθι ο? θάλαμος περικαλλέος αλ0ς | Rψηλ.ς δέδμητο περισκέπτωι =ν χώρωι, refers to Telemachos’ bedroom, which is mentioned only here. It is evidently secondary to ξ 5 f., where it is Eumaios’ αλή (his whole house and courtyard) that is ‘built tall in a place visible from all around’. Is Telemachos supposed to sleep in a separate building in the courtyard? How can it be περισκέπτωι =ν χώρωι? Q has re-used a verse that was in his mind for some reason, with little regard for sense. ε 8–24. Athena’s speech and the beginning of Zeus’ reply are thrown together almost wholly from lines used elsewhere: β 230–4, δ 557–60, 727, 700–2, α 63 f., ω 479 f. The reference in 8–12 to Odysseus’ being forgotten by his people is much less appropriate here than it was at the assembly in β. In 18, ‘they are eager to kill his son’, Q omits to supply the subject, which at δ 700 had been stated in the line before. As the issue is Odysseus’ liberation from Ogygia, the reference to his killing the suitors in 23 f. (< ω 479 f.) is premature. ε 141 f., ο γάρ μοι πάρα ν0ες =πήρετμοι κα tταBροι | ο/ κέν μιν πέμποιεν =π᾽ ερέα νKτα θαλάσσης, is adapted from δ 559 f. = ε 16 f., where it is ο γάρ ο? etc. In Calypso’s mouth the reference to her lack of tταBροι is absurd. ε 178–9, εQ μή μοι τλαίης γε, θεά, μέγαν Pρκον μόσσαι, | μή τί μοι ατKι π0μα κακ.ν βουλευσέμεν Vλλο, = κ 343 f., where ατKι and Vλλο have point in the context: Circe has bewitched Odysseus’ men and attempted to do likewise to him. In ε 179 neither word is intelligible (Kayser 35; Focke 267–9). ε 449, σόν τε dόον σά τε γούναθ᾽ ?κάνω πολλS μογήσας, is a bizarre way of supplicating a river. It is ineptly adapted from the

33

See pp. 32–4.

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appeal to Arete in η 147, σόν τε πόσιν σά τε γούναθ᾽ ?κάνω πολλS μογήσας. θ 4, τοBσιν δ᾽ wγεμόνευ᾽ ?ερ.ν μένος ᾽Αλκινόοιο, is a formulaic verse (= 421, cf. γ 386), but here τοBσιν has no reference. θ 398, pς Cϕαθ᾽, ο_ δ᾽ Vρα πάντες =πήινεον 1δ᾽ =κέλευον, is repeated from η 226, but now =κέλευον is oddly left without any following infinitive. μ 313–15. The onset of the storm is described in verses remodelled from ι 67–9. But 315 ρώρει δ᾽ ορανόθεν νύξ is inappropriate, as it is well into the night in any case (312 aμος δ6 τρίχα νυκτ.ς Cην κτλ.).34 ο 177, ο^καδε νοστήσει κα τείσεται, is adapted from ξ 163, where τείσεται has an object. π 25 f., uϕρα σε θυμKι | τέρψομαι εQσορόων νέον Vλλοθεν Cνδον =όντα, ‘recently back from elsewhere’. νέον Vλλοθεν is from γ 318, which refers to Menelaos’ relatively recent homecoming; it reads oddly in the present context. τ 440–3, the description of the thicket in which lay the boar that gored the young Odysseus, is adapted from ε 478–83, where the thick deposit of leaves is more relevant. τ 444, τ.ν δ᾽ νδρKν τε κυνKν τε περ κτύπος aλθε ποδοBϊν: the second hemistich is repeated from π 6, where the reference is to the footfall of the approaching Telemachos. The dual ποδοBϊν is no longer appropriate. υ 187 f. Philoitios arrives with a cow and some goats. They have been brought across from Cephallenia by ferrymen, ο/ τε κα Vλλους | νθρώπους πέμπουσιν, P τίς σϕεας εQσαϕίκηται. This is repeated from π 227 f., where Odysseus was telling Telemachos how he had been conveyed home by the Phaeacians. It is inept here as an explanation of what ferrymen do. ϕ 132 f. Failing to draw the bow, Telemachos exclaims, ‘Oh dear, I shall always be a weakling, or perhaps it is that I am still not fully adult’, 16 νεώτερός εQμι κα οW πω χερσ πέποιθα | Vνδρ᾽ παμύνασθαι, Pτε τις πρότερος χαλεπήνηι. These two lines are adapted from π 71 f., where the idea of standing up to an aggressor is

34

Admittedly 314 f. might be a concordance interpolation (K. Sittl, Geschichte d. griech. Literatur (Munich 1884–7), i. 110; Blass 138).

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relevant, as it is not here. 133, condemned by Payne Knight and others, might be a concordance interpolation, but in that case οW πω χερσ πέποιθα is left hanging without specific reference. ϕ 289 f., οκ γαπ*ις, ( iκηλος Rπερϕιάλοισι μεθ᾽ wμBν | δαίνυσαι; ‘With us arrogant fellows’ is a strange way for Antinoos to speak of his company. The phrasing derives from β 310, ᾽Αντίνο᾽, οW πως Cστιν Rπερϕιάλοισι μεθ᾽ RμBν | δαίνυσθαι (Dawe 767). ψ 365. Odysseus’ parting instruction to Penelope is to stay in her room with her maids, μηδέ τινα προτιόσσεο μηδ᾽ =ρέεινε. The words are repeated from η 31, Athena’s warning to Odysseus to avoid catching anyone’s eye as he goes through the Phaeacian town. They are much less apposite to Penelope sitting in her room (Focke 374 n. 2). ω 109–13. Agamemnon’s questions about how the suitors have met their deaths are adapted from Odysseus’ to him in λ 399–403. Q has changed the singulars to plurals. But he could not turn λ 403 μαχεούμενον into a metrical plural, and he was forced (if 113 is genuine) to substitute the nominative μαχεούμενοι in defiance of syntax. ω 308, νη7ς δέ μοι xδ᾽ iστηκεν =π᾽ γρο7 νόσϕι πόληος, is repeated from α 185, where Athena-Mentes went on to specify the harbour where her fictitious ship was lying. It is inept here, as the conversation is taking place precisely =π᾽ γρο7 νόσϕι πόληος, and Odysseus does not indicate any more definite location. ω 408, pς ϕάθ᾽, ( δ᾽ αvτις Vρ᾽ iζετ᾽ =ϋξέστου =π δίϕρου, is repeated from ρ 602. But αvτις is now inappropriate, as Dolios has not been seated hitherto (Liesegang 5). ω 450, pς ϕάτο, το&ς δ᾽ Vρα πάντας Rπ. χλωρ.ν δέος xιρει, is repeated from χ 42, where blood-draining fear is more appropriate than here (Liesegang 20). It may be observed that in all but three or four of these cases the primary passage that Q has infelicitously re-used occurs earlier in the text. This is consistent with the assumption that for the most part he built up his text working forward from the beginning. In the instances where the secondary passage comes earlier than the primary one, the explanation may be that the latter one, even if not yet set down in writing, was already formed in Q’s mind from previous recitations. It is also the case, as will appear in the next two chapters, that he often made insertions into passages that he had already written, and such

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an insertion might contain something recycled from a passage standing later in the poem but fixed in writing earlier.

Brachylogy; unclarity; metre A peculiarity of Q’s diction is his occasional tendency to produce an abbreviated or elliptical variant of a phrase that appears elsewhere (in the Odyssey or in other epic texts) in a fuller and more natural form:

δ 410 πάντα δέ τοι =ρέω λοϕώϊα τοBο γέροντος, after κ 289 πάντα δέ τοι =ρέω λοϕώϊα δήνεα Κίρκης. ε 476 =ν περιϕαινομένωι, equivalent to Hymn. Aphr. 100 περιϕαινομένωι =ν χώρωι. ζ 141 Vντα σχομένη, equivalent to α 334 Vντα παρειάων σχομένη λιπαρS κρήδεμνα. θ 47 σκηπτο7χοι, equivalent to 41 σκηπτο7χοι βασιλ0ες. θ 302 σκοπι5ν Cχεν, derived from 285 οδ᾽ λαοσκοπι5ν Cχεν. θ 542 σχεθέτω, equivalent to 537 σχεθέτω ϕόρμιγγα λίγειαν. κ 130 νέρριψαν, in the sense of η 328 and ν 78 νερρίπτουν qλα πηδKι. κ 152/155 πυθέσθαι, equivalent to ι 88 f. = κ 100 f. πεύθεσθαι Qόντας | ο/ τινες νέρες ε%εν =π χθον σBτον Cδοντες. κ 549 =πέϕραδε, equivalent to ‘has given me full directions for our journey’.

ν 427 λλS τά γ᾽ οκ 2ω, sc. τελέεσθαι. ο 22 κουριδίοιο, equivalent to ψ 150 πόσιος οz κουριδίοιο. ο 140 Βοηθο2δης, equivalent to 95 Βοηθο2δης ᾽Ετεωνεύς. ο 152 εQπεBν, sc. χαίρειν. ο 177 τείσεται, sc. μνηστ0ρας. ο 373 αQδοίοισιν, equivalent to ξείνοισιν or ?κέτηισιν αQδοίοισι (ι 271, η 165). π 199 εικέα iσσο, sc. ε/ματα, cf. ω 250. π 348 =ρύσσομεν, equivalent to θ 34 =ρύσσομεν εQς qλα δBαν. π 351 οW πω π*ν ε^ρητο, equivalent to 11 οW πω π*ν ε^ρητο Cπος. ϕ 112 and 336 uϕρα ^δωμεν, equivalent to ‘so we may see how things turn out’.

ϕ 279 πα7σαι τόξον, for ‘stop the bow contest’. ψ 132 ε/μαθ᾽ tλέσθαι, equivalent to καθαρS χρο{ ε/μαθ᾽ tλέσθαι (cf. ρ 58).

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From time to time we encounter seriously eccentric or unclear diction, for example in γ 97, δ 327, ρ 44 Pπως Tντησας πωπ0ς; η 69 τετίμηταί τε κα Cστιν; λ 338 iκαστος δ᾽ Cμμορε τιμ0ς; λ 584 στε7το δ6 διψάων; ϕ 42 θάλαμον τ.ν; ω 118 μην δ᾽ =ν οWλωι πάντα περήσαμεν ερέα πόντον; ω 511 τKιδ᾽ =π θυμKι. In some such cases we can see what meaning Q is trying to convey, in others we cannot. Finally metre. Q composes many thousands of perfectly good hexameters. In the description of Sisyphos effortfully pushing his stone up the hill and then seeing it go rolling down again (λ 593–600) he achieves, whether by accident or design, a brilliant matching of rhythm to sense. Yet there are a few places where, if the manuscript tradition is sound, he has given us verses that really do not scan properly. Metrical anomalies in epic verse are nearly always explicable in terms of (a) established licences, such as for hiatus or lengthening of short vowels under certain conditions, (b) the consequences of modifying a formula, for example changing a nominative formula into the vocative, or (c) diachronic linguistic change that has caused what was at one time metrical to become unmetrical. Otherwise the number of metrically problematic verses is extremely small. In the Iliad there is Λ 697, ε/λετο κρινάμενος τριηκόσι᾽ 1δ6 νομ0ας, where τρι does not really meet the criteria for metrical lengthening; and more seriously Ι 414, εQ δέ κεν ο^καδ᾽ /κωμαι ϕίλην =ς πατρίδα γαBαν, and Σ 458, υ?εB =μKι lκυμόρωι δόμεν σπίδα κα τρυϕάλειαν, which are surely corrupt.35 In the Odyssey we find: ‒

‒ ‒ ‒

ð ð

‒ ‒

ð

ð

‒

ð

ð

‒ ‒

ð

η 89

ργύρεοι δ6 σταθμο =ν χαλκέωι iστασαν οδKι.

ι 242

=σθλα τετράκυκλοι π᾽ οWδεος χλίσσειαν.

κ 493

μάντιος λαο7, το7 τε ϕρένες Cμπεδοί εQσιν.

ν 194

τούνεκ᾽ Vρ᾽ λλοειδέα ϕαινέσκετο πάντα Vνακτι.

‒ ‒ ‒

ð

‒

ð

‒

ð

ð

ð

‒

ð

ð

‒

‒

ð

‒

ð

‒

ð

‒

ð ð

ð

‒ ð—ð  ‒

ð

‒

‒ ‒ ‒

‒

ð ð

ð ð

‒

‒

‒ ‒

ð

‒

ð

ð

The second of these would be well mended by Bentley’s

τεσσαράκυκλοι. The fourth can be scanned if one accepts two synizeses in λλοειδέα; that of ο()ει is really harsh, though not much 35

See the apparatus of my Teubner edition for various conjectures.

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more so than that of ηου in ω 247 οκ uγχνη ο πρασιή. The other two lines, η 89 and κ 493, have resisted convincing emendation. It is not a matter of incompetence but of negligence. We have found Q to be slapdash in other matters, and there must be a suspicion that in these exceptional instances he has left faulty verses uncorrected. It would not be surprising if oral poets occasionally committed metrical errors in performance. But we should normally expect any such to have been put right when a written text was made.

GEOGRAPHY 36 The geographical outlook of the Odyssey is very different from that of the Iliad. The Iliad poet is clearly at home in Asia Minor, where he shows local knowledge of several districts: the Troad, the Hermos valley up to Sardis and beyond, the Cayster, Mykale. I have argued that he may also have visited Cos, Rhodes, Lycia, and Cyprus.37 He has heard of Sidon as the source of fine silverware, and of the wealth of Egyptian Thebes. He knows lists of towns in Crete, Euboea, and all over mainland Greece, as far as Ithaca in the west, and names of northern tribes; but he will have got them from a poetic tradition, not from personal research. Further north he knows of Thracian peoples and has even heard of Scythians who drink mares’ milk (Ν 5 f.). But it is from Asia Minor that he views the world. For Q, by contrast, Asia Minor (apart from Troy) lies quite outside his field of vision. He refers to the offshore islands Tenedos, Lesbos, Chios, and Psyra, but only in connection with the Trojan War and its immediate aftermath, where he is drawing on the Nostoi tradition; there is nothing to suggest that he is personally familiar with any of them. He is focused on mainland Greece. His world extends much further out than that of the Iliad poet, though with geography fading into mythical topography. Some critics have made a distinction between the ‘inner’ and the ‘outer’ geography of the Odyssey. It is perhaps useful to distinguish three zones:

36 37

Cf. Germain 555–79; Hölscher 1988: 135–44; Dickie 1995. West 2011a: 20–4.

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1. the known Aegean world; 2. remoter overseas lands that have a real existence but are known mainly by rumour and hearsay and may be invested with some fabulous features; 3. mythical places such as Oceanus or the islands of Aiolos, Circe, and Calypso, to be found somewhere in the yonder regions of the earth. Q may have had some vague conception of the directions in which such places lay and of how a traveller such as Odysseus might reach them from Zones 1 and 2. But if we attempt to reconstruct his conceptual map (he never saw a real map) it is no use trying to fit it into the framework of our own geography. We have to forget our modern knowledge of the Mediterranean and of the African and European land-masses.38 He knows that one can sail to the west beyond Sicily, or east through the Bosporus or towards Cyprus and the Levant. He does not know what limits there are to the great Eastern Sea (the Black Sea) or the great Western Sea. Not surprisingly, his picture of the earth is elongated to east and west. Foreign peoples are divided into easterners and westerners (θ 29, ν 240 f.). The mythical Aithiopes with whom gods sometimes go to feast, and who in the Iliad at least are located by Oceanus (Α 423, Ψ 205 f.), are now found in two separate areas, near the sunrise and the sunset (α 22–4). The real lands that border his world are: to the north-west, Thesprotia and Dodona; to the north-east, Thrace (Ismaros); to the east, Asia Minor; to the south-east, Cyprus and Phoenicia; to the south, Egypt and Libya; to the west, Sicily. The more distant parts of this area, however, belong in the second of the three zones defined above. Phoenicia, Egypt, and Libya (Cyrenaica) have an aura of the exotic and romantic. Egypt is seen as a country of great riches, wonder drugs, and outstanding healers (δ 220–32). Libya has marvellous sheep that lamb three times a year and provide everyone with abundant milk and meat (δ 85–9). Q knows Sicily as a place where slaves may be bought or sold (υ 383, ω 211), and its three main indigenous peoples, the Sikeloi, Sikanoi, and Elymoi, have perhaps all left their shadows in his text.39 But when Eumaios relates that his father was a

38

Cf. Germain 514 and his map on p. 536. Σικελοί, υ 383; Σικελή, ω 211, 366, 389; Σικανίη, ω 307; for the Elymoi cf. p. 179. 39

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king in the island of Syria, which is ‘above Ortygia, where are the turnings of the sun’ (ο 403 f.)—a paradise land free from sickness and hunger, where everyone dies a painless death in old age—the poet seems to be using or adapting two place-names that belong in Sicily, without having any clear idea of the connection.40 He has one possible mention of a place in mainland Italy, the Temese of α 184, where Athena-Mentes claims to be going to trade iron for bronze, and which some in antiquity identified with Tempsa in Bruttium (sch. ad loc. with the testimonia cited by Pontani). Even if this is correct, we should not imagine that Q had a notion of Italy anything like ours. More likely his conception was of a group of islands, like the ν0σοι ?εραί where Agrios and Latinos ruled over the Etruscans according to the poet of Hes. Th. [1013–16].41 Scheria, the island of the Phaeacians, seems to be in the same category as Ortygia, in that it is based on rumours of a real place but for Q has a fabulous status and is detached from its true location. The real place was Corcyra, which had a close connection with Syracuse in that both were settled by the Corinthians at about the same time in the later eighth century. The Phaiakes were a tribe on the nearby Chaonian mainland (Mela 2. 55); Hecataeus mentioned the town Baiake, which shows a form of the same name with Illyrian or Macedonian β for ϕ.42 Σχερίη properly signified Shoreland, meaning perhaps Mainland, the same as Epirus.43 Sometime before the end of the seventh century someone linked the island’s crescent shape with the Hesiodic myth of Kronos’ castration of Ouranos with a sickle: the implement was supposed to have been dropped in the sea at the site of Corcyra (Wilamowitz 1884: 171). Hesiod said that from the drops

40 For Ortygia as the Sicilian one cf. Wackernagel 247–9; ‘Hes.’ fr. 150. 26 mentions the name in conjunction with Etna. ‘Syria’ may echo Syrakousai (Wackernagel 248). That it is imagined to be somewhere in the west is implied by the choice of Taphian pirates as the agents who brought a captured Phoenician woman there and sold her to Eumaios’ father (ο 417–29). As for ‘the turnings of the sun’, we should have expected them to lie in some more distant mythical region than Eumaios could have come from. Was there once a verse *᾽Ωγυγίης καθύπερθεν, Pθι τροπα 1ελίοιο, which Q adapted into ᾽Ορτυγίης καθύπερθεν, Pθι τροπα 1ελίοιο? 41 So Nitzsch iii. xxv, ‘Die Erdcharte in seiner Seele aber, wo Sicilien schon heller erschien, hatte wahrscheinlich statt ganz Italien nur Inseln’. 42 Hecat. FGrHist 1 F 104. Cf. Kretschmer 281; Wilamowitz 1916: 503; Anton Mayer, Die Sprache der alten Illyrier (Vienna 1957–9), ii. 16 f. 43 Hesych. σ 2984 σχερός· κτή, αQγιαλός; F. G. Welcker, Kl. Schr. ii. 6; Kretschmer 281; Schwartz 225 n. 2; Marzullo 173–7.

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of Ouranos’ blood were born the Erinyes, the Giants, and the Meliai nymphs (Th. 183–7). According to the Corcyraeans this was also the origin of the Phaiakes (Alcaeus fr. 441; Acusilaus fr. 4 F.). Their association with the Giants in the Odyssey (η 56–9, 206) is evidently a reflection of this. Their petrified ship is based on the famous one off Corcyra.44 Q, then, or one of his predecessors, picked up a rumour of a strange people up in the north-west beyond Corcyra, the Phaiakes, who lived in a region called the Scheria; being unfamiliar with the dialect word, he took it to be the name of an island. Their origin was connected with the Giants, and they had a petrified ship off their coast. For Q at any rate Corcyra lay beyond his Zone 1, and as for Scheria its location was so ill defined that he could put it wherever in the west suited him; he imagines it as lying somewhere beyond Sicily. The Phaeacians, like other peoples on the outer limits of his world, are invested with some semi-utopian features. Q adds various fictitious details. He says that they moved to Scheria from ‘Hypereia’, near the Cyclopes (ζ 4), and that Nausikaa’s nurse was a woman captured from ‘Apeira’ (η 9). These are invented names, designed to suggest that Scheria is one of many unknown lands in the Western Sea. It is noteworthy that in Odysseus’ western wanderings he sees nothing of Sicily or Italy. From Scheria the Phaeacians convey him home on a non-stop voyage through the night, with no hint of what lands they are passing. When we analyse his peregrinations more closely in the next chapter, we shall see that if we leave aside a series of adventures adapted from the Argonautic tradition (Telepylos, Circe, the Sirens, etc.) there is a good measure of geographical coherence. The Lotuseaters and the Cyclopes are situated on a coast somewhere west of Cyrenaica. Calypso’s island is much further west, far from any land. From there Odysseus returns eastwards in the direction of Ithaca. Scheria is somewhere close to his route. All of this fits comfortably in the great Western Sea.

44 Cf. Plin. Hist. nat. 4. 53; Wilamowitz 1916: 502 f.; Hennings 396, ‘Den Korcyräern zu gefallen ist also die Episode ν 125–184 gedichtet’; Finsler ii. 348. To be sure, rocks resembling ships are to be found in various places, cf. Germain 552.

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Jason’s voyage was located in the great Eastern Sea. Q has Circe in the far east, near the sunrise (μ 3 f.), and we can find Pontic connections in the descriptions of Telepylos (κ 82–94) and the approach to Hades (κ 509–15, λ 14).45 But we cannot reconstruct a coherent geographical framework for Odysseus’ ‘eastern’ adventures as we can for his western ones, nor explain how his transitions between the two spheres may relate to the configuration of the world known to Q and his contemporaries. If he gave any thought to the question, he presumably imagined these transitions as being performed over northern seas that connected the eastern and western ones, somewhere beyond Epirus and Thrace. He brings Odysseus right up to Oceanus, the world-encircling river, and across it to Hades. But he is not concerned to take him on a grand tour of all earth’s outer regions. He comes to Atlas’ daughter, but not to Atlas himself, nor to Erytheia and the other western regions that Heracles visited. He comes to Circe’s island of Aiaia, but not to the Aia from which it is named, the land of the Golden Fleece beside the river Phasis. He does not approach either the eastern or the western Aithiopes. He does not encounter the Hyperboreans, or go near the Rhipaean Mountains.

WHERE DID Q LIVE? Scholars have often tended to assume that an Ionian epic poem will have been composed in Ionia, in Asia Minor. But Ionian elegy was composed on both sides of the Aegean, by Tyrtaeus in Sparta, Theognis in Megara, and Solon in Athens as well as by Callinus in Ephesus and Mimnermus in Smyrna. Among epic poets we hear of Kinaithon of Lacedaemon, Agias of Troezen, and Eumelos of Corinth. As for Q, his geographical outlook does not at all favour his having been at home in Asia Minor, a region which, as we have seen, he practically ignores. He must surely be situated somewhere further west. Nestor’s account of his return from Troy in γ 169–83 might indicate some knowledge of Cycladic sea routes, but it is evidently taken

45

West 2011b: 290–9.

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over from a Nostoi poet. The reference to the palm tree by Apollo’s altar on Delos at ζ 162–7 does look very much like something that Q has seen (Scheibner 96 n. 17). He also shows a noticeable interest in and knowledge about Crete.46 Seeck rightly infers that he had either been there himself or heard an account from someone who had been; but that he was not himself a Cretan, or he would not have treated it as he does in τ 172–8, as a fascinating land overseas.47 A Peloponnesian horizon appears when Nausikaa is likened to Artemis among her nymphs on Taygetos or Erymanthos (ζ 103); contrast the ninth Homeric Hymn, where the goddess is pictured driving through Smyrna to Klaros. Hermes is associated with Kyllene (ω 1), as he is not in the Iliad. Not that Q has any thorough familiarity with Peloponnesian landscapes, or he could hardly have pictured Telemachos and Peisistratos driving overland from Pharai to Sparta, with no regard to the problems of crossing the Taygetos massif.48 His knowledge seems to be more of the coastline.49 He is aware that someone rounding the infamous Cape Maleia will pass inside Cythera (ι 81 f.). He shows some acquaintance with the west coast too; in ο 295–300 he traces Telemachos’ course from Pylos up past Triphylia to the promontory of Phea and from there towards the

46 Cf. γ 291–6 (Kydones, Iardanos, Gortyn, Phaistos); τ 172–8 (peoples and languages); τ 186–8 (the cave of Eileithyia at Amnisos); τ 338 (snowy mountains); W. Burkert, Kl. Schr. i. 127–37, cf. 123. As will be seen in the next chapter, Q originally planned for Telemachos to proceed from Pylos not to Sparta but to Crete. 47 Seeck 280, ‘So redet man wohl von einem Lande, das man als wissbegieriger Fremder mit Interesse kennen gelernt hat, aber nicht von der eigenen Heimath’. 48 Cf. Seeck 344, ‘Aus persönlicher Anschauung kann diese Kunde nicht herstammen, denn wenn der Dichter Taygetos gesehen hätte, so würde er seinen Helden nicht quer über das Gebirge weg, sondern nördlich herumfahren lassen, wie man den Weg noch heute zu machen pflegt; der Ruhepunkt könnte also nicht Pherae, sondern nur irgend ein Ort im nördlichen Messenien oder im südlichen Arkadien sein’; Germain 555 f., ‘Récemment encore [Guide bleu, éd. de 1911, p. 436–7], il n’existait pour le franchir en cet endroit qu’un sentier muletier qui culminait à plus de 1.500 mètres. On comptait deux jours de cheval de Navarin (Pylos) à Kalamata (Phères), par Modon et Coron, plus une autre journée pour le franchissement de la montagne [Op. cit., p. 454].’—The place that Q calls Φηραί appears in other writers as Φαραί, which was its local name (presumably with a long alpha). I refer to it as Pharai to avoid confusion with the Thessalian Φεραί. 49 Cf. Blass 76, ‘Wenn noch so sehr der Dichter das Innere des Peloponnes nicht genau kennt: die Seefahrten um die Halbinsel herum sind ihm . . . ganz ordentlich bekannt’.

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islands.50 In picking on Pharai as the natural halfway point between (Messenian) Pylos and Sparta he makes a judgment that someone sailing across the Messenian Gulf might well make.51 It is a plausible inference that he had himself sailed round those coasts. There are indications that he knew Ithaca at first hand.52 Possibly he found a ruling family there that already claimed descent from a Telemachos.53 Such a family did apparently exist in the fourth century.54 If he sailed round the Peloponnese to Ithaca, who took him? Traders, no doubt, making for Corcyra or Sicily or beyond.55 And where was he coming from? Where was his home territory?

50 There are uncertainties about the details; see p. 243 n. 163. The agreement of the manuscript tradition with the imitation in Hymn. Ap. 427 indicates that instead of ΦεSς Q had ΦερSς, a name he will have known from the Argonautic tradition. Cf. his confusion of Pandion and Pandareos at τ 518, and perhaps his Olymoi or Solymoi for Elymoi at ε 283. 51 Cf. Wilamowitz 1927: 111 f. 52 Seeck 306–8, 309 f.; F. H. Stubbings in A. J. B. Wace and F. H. Stubbings, A Companion to Homer (London 1962), 414–16; Scheibner 94 f.; Hölscher 1988: 194. The description of Ithaca’s appearance and position in ι 21–7 has caused much perplexity to commentators, but it is in fact compatible with the impression that a traveller approaching from the south-east (after sailing up the west coast of the Peloponnese) might form: see Stubbings, op. cit., 399–402. It is difficult to dismiss as fortuitous the correspondence between the thirteen tripods that Odysseus brought back from Scheria and secreted in the cave of the Nymphs at the Phorkys bay and the thirteen tripods of the Geometric period that were found in another cave of the Nymphs above the Polis bay (Stubbings 419; M. Deoudi, Ithake: Die Polis-Höhle, Odysseus und die Nymphen (Thessaloniki 2008)). Scheibner 95 supposes that Q imagined Odysseus to have moved his treasure from its initial hiding-place to dedicate it to the Nymphs in their grotto nearer the town. Cf. his vow in ν 356–60, and West 2013: 293. The tripods make a difficulty for the engaging theory of Robert Bittlestone (Odysseus Unbound (Cambridge 2005) ) that the Homeric Ithaca was actually the western peninsula of Cephallenia, this having been anciently a separate island. He discusses them on pp. 258–60. 53 Cf. Scheibner 94, referring particularly to Theoklymenos’ augury in ο 533 f., Rμετέρου δ᾽ οκ Cστι γένεος βασιλεύτερον Vλλο | =ν δήμωι ᾽Ιθάκης, λλ᾽ RμεBς καρτερο αQεί; Hölscher 1988, 319. 54 Arist. fr. 507 R. It received annual tribute in kind from other families identified as the descendants of the suitors. Two other families, the Koliadai and Boukolidai, claimed descent from Eumaios and Philoitios respectively. This and the interpretation of the tribute were evidently inspired by the Odyssey. 55 Ithaca was an important station on the route to the west, whether for those coming out through the Corinthian Gulf or for those sailing round the Peloponnese (Scheibner 94). For Q’s personal experience of seafaring cf. Von der Mühll 713; Germain 601–17 (sceptical).

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Presumably somewhere on the east side, not too far from mainland Greece. The Argolid? Attica? Euboea? One requisite is that we should be able to account for his close acquaintance with the Iliad, the Memnonis and other Posthomerica, and, not least, a version of the Nostoi similar to the Cyclic poem that was current later. The Cyclic Nostoi was attributed to one Agias of Troezen, a man known for nothing else. We cannot verify the attribution, but I have argued elsewhere (2013: 26–40) that the ascriptions of the Cyclic epics to particular poets are not to be dismissed wholesale as fictions. Currency of the Nostoi at Troezen would fit well with Q’s activity in the region. As for the Iliad, the evidence of vase painting proves that it was known in the north-east Peloponnese and in Attica from c.630. Alcman in Sparta has heard of Ajax and Memnon simultaneously doing battle (PMGF 68; West 2013: 146). So there will be no difficulty about Q’s knowing the Iliad and Memnonis if he worked in any of these areas. We do not hear of any epic poets hailing from Attica or Euboea, but there is no reason to suppose that none existed. Certain passages in the Odyssey have been thought to point to an Athenian poet (cf. Scheibner 95 f.). Orestes returns to avenge his father from Athens (γ 307), not from Phocis as in the familiar version. Menelaos sailing homeward from Troy calls at Sounion to bury his helmsman Phrontis, who has died suddenly (γ 278–85); his tomb was presumably a local monument. When Athena leaves Scheria she goes to Marathon and Athens, into the old palace of Erechtheus (η 80 f.).56 There are several references to Attic myths that probably did not at the time enjoy Panhellenic currency: a trio of heroines with Attic connections in λ 321–5 (Phaidra, Prokris, Ariadne, with an annotation on Theseus’ expedition to Crete);57 the deification of Heracles (λ 602 f., if genuine); Theseus and Peirithoos (λ 631); Prokne and Itylos (τ 518–23).58 56

Seeck 335 finds it strange that a goddess coming from the west should have passed by Marathon. He infers that the poet (of this part of the poem) must have had a personal interest, and conjectures that Marathon was his home. R. Pfeiffer, SIFC 27/28 (1956), 426–33 = his Ausgewählte Schriften (Munich 1960), 1–7, connected the lamp that Athena carries in τ 33 f. (the only lamp in Homer) with the one that burned in the Erechtheion. 57 Note, however, that Phaidra and Theseus have an early connection with Troezen: W. S. Barrett, Euripides. Hippolytos (Oxford 1964), 2–9. 58 Prokne is not named but called the daughter of Pandareos, which is Q’s mistake for Pandion. The myth is already alluded to by Hesiod, Op. 568. Pandion had connections with Megara and was Theseus’ grandfather. On him cf. West 1985: 107 f., 132.

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It has sometimes been suspected that Peisistratos, the son of Nestor who accompanies Telemachos to Sparta, and who is absent from the list of Nestor’s sons in the pseudo-Hesiodic Catalogue (fr. 35. 10–13), was named in honour of the Athenian tyrant. We cannot date the Odyssey late enough for that to be possible, and it is an apt enough name for a son of the Achaean army’s wise counsellor.59 But the Athenian Peisistratos was not the first in his family; according to the archon list an earlier one had been archon in 669/8. It is quite possible that a client poet might have promoted the family’s claims to ancient nobility by inventing a Peisistratos son of Nestor, just as Eugammon of Cyrene, some decades later, gave Odysseus a son Arkesilaos for the benefit of the Battiads. There might already have been an infant Peisistratos in the house (the tyrant died γηραιός in 528/7), or if the Nestorid was created first the new child might have been named after him (as Herodotus believed, 5. 65. 3). Once the Nestorid was in place, the Peisistratidai could claim to be descended from Neleus, like the Kodridai who had ruled Athens in an earlier era and founded Ionian colonies (cf. Herodotus, ibid.). A Euboean home for Q would throw light on Alkinoos’ surprising remark at η 321, that Phaeacian mariners have spoken of Euboea as the most distant place known to them. Given its very central location in the Greek world, it is odd to conceive of it as being the furthest place from anywhere. But a Euboean poet might have reasoned that if the Phaeacians were the remotest of human peoples from his viewpoint, Euboea would be the most distant place from theirs.60 Indeed, from the point of view of someone living in Cumae or Pithecusae it would have made some sense to think of Euboea as being at the far end of the line. Certain linguistic and metrical features of the Odyssey favour the hypothesis that it was composed in the west Ionic area that consists, essentially, of Attica and Euboea. One is the relative frequency of ‘Attic correption’, that is, the failure of a plosive + liquid combination (τρ, κλ, etc.) to lengthen a preceding short syllable. This is a feature of

59

Schwartz 261; cf. Wilamowitz 1927: 111; Germain 487 n. 3. Cf. Schadewaldt 1966: 113, ‘eine doch wohl für ionische und gar euboiische Ohren berechnete Pointe’; West 2011a: 71; 2011b: 72. If we believed that Q lived in Asia Minor, we might follow Hölscher 1988: 141, in taking the point to be that the Phaeacians are so far away that they have never reached Ionia and can see no further east than Euboea. 60

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west as against east Ionic, and where metrical coercion is not involved, it occurs about three times as often in the Odyssey as in the Iliad.61 There are also two or three instances of the distinctively Attic form of the participle of εQμί, sν, instead of the normal epic =ών: η 94 θανάτους uντας, τ 230 χρύσεοι uντες (=όντες codd. pauci), 489 τροϕο7 οWσης. One could add an initial =- in each case and say that it suffered synizesis with the ο-vowel, but there is no justification for doing so. Of the early elegists, it is the mainlanders Solon and Theognis who have examples of sν, though they more often have =ών.62 As a bard active in this region, Q might well visit Delos, a festival centre to which people came from far and wide.63 In the same way the poet of the Iliad attended the Panionia at Mykale, as we can gather from the scene he evokes at Υ 403–5. At both places, no doubt, the large gatherings attracted bards eager to demonstrate their art and earn reward and celebrity. Delos is one place where Q might have heard the Iliad recited, or some of it. But he knew the poem more thoroughly than can be accounted for from a passing encounter. It was becoming known in mainland Greece, and that must surely mean that singers from across the Aegean had come and performed there. We cannot usually trace the routes by which heroic epic and other poetry spread across Greek lands in the seventh century. But there is no doubt that it did spread at a fair pace.

61 D. B. Monro, A Grammar of the Homeric Dialect, 2nd edn. (Oxford 1891), 342–4; P. Chantraine, Grammaire homérique (Paris 1942–53), i. 108 f. It is admitted more freely by Solon and Theognis than by Archilochus, Callinus, Mimnermus, and Tyrtaeus; see my Studies in Greek Elegy and Iambus (Berlin–New York 1974), 113 f. 62 Solon 4. 9; Thgn. 92, 102, 1133. (I am counting only the genuine Theognis, not the anonymous Theognidea.) See Studies in Greek Elegy and Iambus, 107 f. 63 Cf. N. J. Richardson, Three Homeric Hymns (Cambridge 2010), 104.

5 The Poem in the Making After the Trojan War Odysseus, perhaps delayed by adventures on the way, arrived back in Ithaca unrecognized and, by succeeding in some trial or contest, reclaimed his wife, who was on the point of remarrying. Such was the outline of the first embryonic Odyssey, from which, over perhaps only a few decades, one or more poets— probably quite a small number—developed their own variant Odysseys. Our task now is to define and analyse the secondary features that characterize the particular Odyssey which we have; to give an idea of the poem’s evolution, not from A to Zee, as an American would say, but from A to The. We shall not always be able to tell whether the secondary features were due to Q, the poet who shaped our particular version and got it fixed in writing, or to one of his predecessors, though sometimes we shall. Q and his predecessors, we may assume, were all oral poets, not necessarily in the sense that they were strangers to the art of writing or unfamiliar with books, but in the sense that they carried on the traditional practice of meditating epic songs and performing them before audiences, accompanying themselves on a phorminx, as Q portrays Phemios and Demodokos as doing. Our Odyssey, however, is not the transcript of one of Q’s performances or of a series of them. It is on a much larger scale, and it is the product of a sustained effort to create a major epic, approaching the Iliad in length, stabilized in written form as the Iliad had been. Its production may have extended over many years. It drew, naturally, on Q’s previous and current recitations: he no doubt continued to re-tell the tale, constantly introducing new variations in the detail, and many of the inconsistencies that we find in the text may reflect fluctuation between alternative versions that he had used in the past or was thinking of for the future.

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For an aoidos could only remain completely in unison with himself if he was either repeating his predecessor’s work unchanged or creating entirely de novo, perhaps making use of an existing song. A poet of that time never succeeded in partially recasting and elaborating an essentially conserved tradition without fissures opening up between the old and the new and contradictions emerging.1

So in the Odyssey we repeatedly observe false pregnancies and currents turned awry. When a programme is laid down for later action, the later action often turns out to diverge from what was planned. And when someone refers back to an earlier episode, what is recalled seldom tallies entirely with what we read before. Generations of analysts have puzzled over the inconcinnities and taken them as pointers to variant versions or to concurrent poems that have been worked together. It is better to acknowledge the simple truth that Q is seldom consistent from one part of his narrative to another and makes little effort to be so. His audiences probably noticed it no more than he did. After all, they usually heard only partial recitations from the whole. As in the case of the Iliad, it is apparent from study of the text that the Odyssey was not composed in one continuous sweep from beginning to end. In many places the poet made insertions in what he had already written. In analysing the Iliad I distinguished between tectonic, episodic, and sub-episodic expansions (West 2011a: 58). In the Odyssey I do not find tectonic expansions, that is, ones that significantly altered the architecture of the poem after it had been partly set down. There are a few, mainly in the second half of the poem, that may be classed as episodic, that is, they introduce a new, self-contained episode or scene. And there are a great many sub-episodic expansions, shorter passages added within or between episodes and ranging from one or two lines in length up to just over a hundred. It is characteristic of these added passages that they can be taken out without leaving any apparent lacuna. But this is not a sufficient criterion for diagnosing an insertion, for there are no doubt many

1 Seeck 212, ‘Denn völlig mit sich selbst im Einklange bleiben konnte ein Aöde nur, wenn er entweder das Werk seines Vorgängers unverändert wiederholte oder wenn er ganz neu schuf, sei es auch mit Benutzung eines vorhandenen Liedes; partielle Umgestaltungen und Erweiterungen einer im Wesentlichen bewahrten Ueberlieferung gelangen einem Dichter jener Zeit nie, ohne dass zwischen dem Alten und dem Neuen Risse klafften und Widersprüche hervorträten.’

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places in the Homeric poems where a line or a paragraph belonging to the primary layer of composition might be removed without leaving a trace. Reason to suspect a secondary insertion arises in one of two circumstances: a series of passages in different places, none of them firmly integrated in its context, make up a related set (as with the programming of Telemachos’ voyage, α 93–5, 279–92, β 208–23, 252–6; the Theoklymenos passages, ο 222–88, 508–46, ρ 45–106, 151–66, υ 347–89; the Melanthios passages, ρ 212–60, 367–410); or a section of text, besides being removable without leaving a scar, actually spoils the continuity of the narrative by breaking a logical connection between what precedes it and what follows. For almost all of the expansions so detectable I judge Q himself to have been responsible. Interpolation by alien hands seldom needs to be assumed except for the common category of concordance interpolation, where rhapsodes or scribes have added a line or lines from a parallel passage: such spurious verses are often betrayed by their absence in part of the manuscript tradition. Irrefutable evidence of Q’s intervention in his own written text is provided by the passage at η 103–31 describing Alkinoos’ servant women and his gardens. It is all in the present tense, and must therefore have been composed to stand in a speech in which the palace was described to Odysseus before he reached it. But it has been forcibly transposed into the account of his arrival there, breaking the sequence of past tenses in a wholly unparalleled and unconscionable manner. No one but Q can be responsible.2 It is one more example of his propensity, noted in the last chapter, to re-use a block of verses, once composed, in a context where they no longer fit properly. There are a couple of other places where we find short passages that look as if they were composed for a different context.3

THE OVERALL ORGANIZATION OF THE POEM Our Odyssey may be seen as having three major constituent parts: the Telemachy (α–δ with part of ο), the Wanderings (ε–μ), and the 2 Argued at length in Acta Antiqua Hungarica 40 (2000), 479–88 = West 2011b: 265–76. 3 Cf. pp. 234, 277.

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Homecoming (ν–ω). Some of the earlier analysts thought that these corresponded to three originally independent poems. This cannot be right. Neither the Telemachy nor the Wanderings can have originated as autonomous poems: both are logically subsidiary to the Homecoming, that is, to the story of the Returning Husband. The Wanderings form an organic part of that story, the Telemachy an inorganic appendage. As for the Telemachy, it has long been seen that it could never have existed on its own.4 It serves as a means of setting Odysseus’ return more graphically in the context of the other heroes’ returns that Telemachos learns about at Pylos and Sparta.5 After the Odyssey was established, the Telemachy might have been recited on its own to audiences who had a sense of the whole. But there was no point in telling of a fruitless journey by Telemachos except as a frame for Nostoi material, as background to Odysseus’ return. Without the Odyssean context a singer would have recited a Nostoi straight rather than in this fragmented and refracted form. Neither is an independent Wanderings poem credible. There was once, no doubt, an Einzellied on Odysseus’ encounter with the Cyclops. But none of the other adventures that he has on his homeward journey in the Odyssey is of sufficient substance to have ever been the subject of a separate song; nor could they collectively add up to a viable free-standing epic poem (as Kayser and Kirchhoff thought). For a series of separate adventures to be strung together in one narrative they needed to be framed within an overarching story. So Heracles’ Labours could be told as a series, but only within the overarching story of his servitude to Eurystheus. In the case of the Odyssey it is the Returning Husband story that provides the frame.6 4

Nitzsch i. xi; C. Heimreich, Die Telemachie und der jüngere Nostos (Progr. Flensburg 1871); Kirchhoff 556; Niese 148; Seeck 131; Germain 659; Heubeck 1954: 65. 5 Cf. the perceptive comment of an ancient critic in sch. α 284d, ‘As the Odyssey does not have sufficient diversity (ποικιλία) in itself, he makes Telemachos go out to Sparta and Pylos so that more of the story of Troy can be told in digressions through Nestor and Menelaos’. 6 Cf. Von der Mühll 699, ‘Da es von vornherein wie in allen Nosten der Achäer eben auf die Heimkehr schließlich ankam, hat es ein “Kleinepos”, das nur die Fahrten des O[dysseus] behandelte, nie gegeben’. Lord 167, however, reckons with the possible existence of versions in which Odysseus found all well at home and there were just dramatic recognitions. He cites a couple of tales of this sort from the South Slavic tradition (254 f., versions C and f).

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When the Returning Husband story was first attached to Odysseus (who had presumably already been brought into the Troy saga), the war might have been thought sufficient to account for his long absence from home, with no further adventures necessary for the purposes of the proto-Odyssey. But once there were stories about other heroes’ returns from Troy—especially Agamemnon’s—it was desirable that Odysseus’ return should be represented as having been longer delayed than the rest. It was easy to postulate that he was blown off course somewhere on the voyage between Troy and Ithaca and that he then suffered various setbacks that held him up further. The Cyclops story was available as one adventure that could be used in this context. Others had to be added if the duration of the peregrinations was to be extended significantly. The ones that we read in our Odyssey were not all conceived at once, as we shall see presently. Except for their final stages, from Calypso’s island to Scheria and then to Ithaca, Odysseus’ travels are narrated in the first person as he tells the Phaeacians about all that has happened to him since he left Troy. It is a reasonable assumption that this is not how they were presented originally. At first they were surely related in the regular third-person narrative format.7 One can envisage a proto-Odyssey in which Odysseus’ triumph over the rival suitors was adumbrated in the proem as the main theme, then his wanderings were related (in whatever form they took at that time), and after he reached Ithaca the domestic situation was set out in greater detail. At a later stage, we may suppose, Q or a predecessor reorganized the material so that most of the wanderings were related by the hero himself, thus drawing the poem into a much more compact chronological span. A further motive is suggested by Monro (299): But perhaps the chief advantage, poetically speaking, of making Ulysses tell his own tale lay in the character of the tale itself. The incidents, as has been already said, are not such as originally or properly belonged to epic poetry. A poet would naturally have shrunk from treating them as so much heroic

7 Thiersch §29; Kirchhoff 275 f.; Hennings 165 f., 263 f. Kirchhoff (292–314) held that only κ and μ were originally in third-person narrative; he cited certain passages that he thought betrayed this origin (κ 38–45, 78–132, 208 ff., 275 ff., μ 389 f). Nitzsch, however (ii. xxxvii), had denied the existence of any such indications: ‘Keine Spur verräth in der jetzigen Erzählung von den Irrfahrten, welche dem Helden in den Mund gelegt wird, die Umwandlung aus einer Erzählung in der dritten Person.’

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story. But in the mouth of Ulysses, and amid the ναθήματα δαιτός of the Phaeacian fairy-land, this dissonance is much softened.

Of course, Greek epic tradition may not always have had such fastidious standards as Monro here posits. And we must not make the mistake of supposing (as Monro indeed does not) that the placing of the adventures in Odysseus’ mouth is meant to raise any question about their reality status. Q several times alludes to them as factual in his own persona (α 8 f., 69 f., β 19 f., θ 448), and never suggests that Odysseus’ narration is anything but a truthful report of what happened. It was a bold step to let him relate his own wanderings, especially so when the first-person recital is as extensive as it is in our Odyssey. But it was not entirely without precedent or analogy. It was an established practice in heroic epic that a character might relate an older tale of which he had knowledge, as Nestor and others do elsewhere in the Iliad and Odyssey itself. (Cf. Monro 298; Finsler ii. 277.) There is an extended example in the Epic of Gilgāmesh, a work of which the Homeric poems often seem to show the influence.8 There are also Egyptian examples from the first half of the second millennium bce, the tales of Sinuhe and of the Shipwrecked Sailor.9 The first tells of travels in foreign lands extending over many years and of a happy homecoming, the second of a storm at sea that marooned the narrator for four months on an unknown island ruled by a great serpent: he was rescued and borne safely home, while the island became water and was never found again. The motifs seem remarkably premonitory of the Odyssey. Others have submitted that first-person narrative is at home in a journey to the other world, a Jenseitsfahrt (Bethe ii. 138 f.). Our knowledge of what it is like in the Jenseits depends on the reports of those few mortals who have been there and returned: in shamanistic cultures the shaman, in Greece especially Orpheus.10 The first-person 8 Gilg. XI 9–206; West 1997: 66, 414 f.; on Gilgāmesh and the Homeric poems, ibid. 335–47, 402–17. 9 Radermacher 38–42, cf. Germain 299–306, 318; Stella 138–40, 172; Reinhardt 58; Hölscher 1988: 110 f.; R. B. Parkinson, The Tale of Sinuhe and Other Ancient Egyptian Poems 1940–1640 bc (Oxford 1998), 21–53, 89–101. 10 A Descent to Hades (Κατάβασις εQς ῞Αιδου) was current under Orpheus’ name by the fifth century bce; in it he no doubt gave an account of what he had seen when he went down to recover his wife. Cf. West 1983: 6, 9 f., 12. We may refer also to the Arimaspeia, in which Aristeas of Proconnesus related his journey to a faraway country; cf. Schwartz 186.

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form was then particularly suitable for the Nekyia, and it might have been extended to cover all the material for which Odysseus’ own account was the only source for men of his time. There can be no certainty that the Phaeacians were the original audience. Odysseus’ recital must surely have been fitted in before the climactic part of the poem where he recovered his wife, but it is possible to conceive of a version in which there were no Phaeacians and he told his tale to Calypso, or to someone in Ithaca such as Telemachos. Nothing speaks for such a hypothesis, but we ought to bear it in mind that all kinds of rearrangement and recombination may have occurred in the course of the poem’s evolution. Certainly the Phaeacians, once they were installed in the story as Odysseus’ last hosts before he reached home, made the ideal audience. The last major modification of the poem’s architecture was the addition of the Telemachy as a kind of flying buttress. I shall argue below that this was Q’s own initiative.

BACKGROUNDS; THE ITHACAN SETTING The proto-Odyssey came into being when the story of the Returning Husband was contextualized within the larger framework of Greek myth through the hero’s identification as Odysseus. The contextualization has been greatly elaborated in our poem at three levels: (1) Odysseus is provided with a more complete family and environment—son, father, dead mother, married-away sister, servants, ξεBνοι πατρώϊοι— and a full biographical dossier;11 (2) he is situated within a Greek civic society; (3) his homecoming is viewed against the background of other heroes’ returns from Troy. The elaboration process may not all have been Q’s work, but we can see him active in the matter. (1) In our Odyssey a major role is played by Odysseus’ son Telemachos. Already in two passages of the Iliad (Β 260, Δ 354) Odysseus identifies himself as ‘father of Telemachos’, which presupposes the existence of poetry in which Telemachos did something of note; that can hardly have been anything other than an Odyssey in which he assisted his father’s return (Thiersch 15; West 2011a: 107).

11

Cf. Schwartz 273.

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The folk-tale of the Returning Husband does not typically have a place for the hero’s son, so Telemachos’ involvement may have been a secondary development. His existence may have been given by some other story concerning Odysseus.12 That old Laertes is still alive on the periphery of the action is of no consequence for the story; he is there purely for the sake of extra pathos and another joyous reunion, and while he is well integrated in our Odyssey, he may well have been absent from earlier versions. The motif that a hero who fought at Troy had an aged father living at home is paralleled with Achilles and others.13 There was no such parallel for an aged mother,14 and Q does not give Antikleia a place among the living. He compensates for this, however, by allowing Odysseus to see her in Hades. In one passage there is mention of a sister of Odysseus’, one Ktimene (ο 363 f.): she married abroad, and plays no part in the Odyssey narrative or, presumably, any other, being invented ad hoc. She is called the youngest of Antikleia’s children, implying that there was at least one further sister (as Odysseus was the only son, π 119). Again this is invented detail serving only to flesh out Odysseus’ background. Penelope too has a named father, Ikarios, a mother, brothers, and a sister. The parents do not appear in the action, but it is suggested

12 Cf. Wilamowitz 1916: 486, and above, pp. 15 f. On heroes’ sons in general cf. West 2007: 440–3. As a baby, Telemachos was used by Palamedes to expose the falsehood of Odysseus’ pretended insanity when he tried to avoid being drafted for the war (Cypria arg. 5b; West 2013: 102). In the pseudo-Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (fr. 221) he married Nestor’s daughter Polykaste (who bathes him at γ 464) and fathered one Persepolis. In the Telegony, on the other hand, he married Circe and became immortal (arg. 4b; West 2013: 305 f.). An Ithacan family claimed descent from him (Arist. fr. 507). None of this looks significant for his origins. His name may have been suggested by his father’s fighting in a distant war; cf. Nitzsch i. 168; H. Güntert, Von der Sprache der Götter und Geister (Halle/Saale 1921), 114. Wilamowitz 1927: 186, and Heubeck 1954: 95 n. 150, prefer to associate it with archery, though Odysseus does not appear as an archer at Troy. On heroes’ sons’ names cf. Germain 485. 13 Wilamowitz 1927: 85, ‘Man darf vielleicht vergleichen, daß Peleus, Telamon, Oineus auch noch lebten, als ihre Söhne von Ilios heimkehrten, diese Vorstellung sich also den späteren Dichtern unwillkürlich aufdrängte; lebte Laertes aber, so mußte er untätig bei Seite stehen’. Q takes no pains to suggest that Laertes had previously ruled over Ithaca; cf. Rüter 134 n. 57, ‘Die Odyssee hat keinen Raum für einen König Laertes, der sich mit dem zwanzigjährigen “Interregnum” während der Abwesenheit des Odysseus schwer vertrüge’. 14 Contrast the South Slavic Return songs, where the hero often has a mother (not a father) surviving at home: above, p. 15.

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that if Penelope wants to remarry she can go back to her father’s house for them to arrange it (α 276, β 52–4, 113 f., 132 f., 195–7); it is implied that they live somewhere not too far away. Brothers are mentioned in ο 16 as supporting her father in urging her to marry Eurymachos. The sister, Iphthime, appears to her in a dream, or rather Athena appears in Iphthime’s guise (δ 795 ff.), and she is invented for the purpose. She is further identified as wife of Eumelos of Pherai, a man noted in the Iliad for his excellent horses (Β 713, 763–7, Ψ 288 ff.). The family is provided with an abundance of servants, male and female, of whom a fair number are given names, a characterization, and in some cases a back history: Eumaios, Philoitios, Dolios, Melanthios, Melantho, Eurykleia, Eurynome. The male ones work out in the country, filling out our picture of the extent of Odysseus’ estates in Ithaca. We hear that he also has extensive flocks and herds on the mainland (ξ 100–2, cf. υ 187). His overseas contacts include various family friends, ξεBνοι πατρώϊοι, one or other of whom may turn up in Ithaca at any time. One such is Mentes, whose identity Athena assumes in α (105, 180–8, 417). Odysseus himself pretends to be another whenever convenient (ρ 522, τ 185, ω 266 ff.). His participation in the Trojan War is presupposed throughout, but Q ensures that his earlier life is not a blank. We hear of his naming at birth by his grandfather Autolykos (τ 399–412), a hunting expedition on Parnassos when he was gored by a boar (τ 413–66), domestic occasions on which he would fondle the infant Eurymachos (π 442–4), an expedition to Lacedaemon where Iphitos gave him Eurytos’ bow (ϕ 13–41), and another to Ephyra in search of arrowpoison (α 260–2).15 None of these episodes, probably, was given by any tradition. They may all be Q’s inventions.16 (2) In the tale of the Returning Husband the hero’s house was sufficient setting, and it required no civic context. Q, however, is unable or unwilling to ignore the circumstance that Ithaca must contain a population of men who are neither suitors nor went to Troy with Odysseus. There is no role for them in the main narrative, but he feels the need to account for their non-involvement in the story, and he

15 The wrestling bout on Lesbos (δ 341–3 = ρ 133–5) may be a new addition to his activities during the Trojan War, like the visit to Delos in ζ 162–5. 16 Pace Rüter 153–7.

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cannot let the mass slaughter of the suitors pass with no reaction from them. This is why Telemachos’ initial démarche against the suitors in β takes place not in the palace but at a public assembly. In response to his complaint the suitors put up a plausible justification of their conduct. The old augur Halitherses and Odysseus’ friend Mentor try to incite the people against them, but there is no enthusiasm for doing anything and the matter is left as it is. In the later course of the poem there are occasional mentions of the agora (π 361, ρ 52–83, υ 146) or of activity elsewhere in the town (υ 276–8). The suitors at one point express apprehension that Telemachos may summon another assembly and denounce them for having plotted his death, leading the people to drive them out (π 376–82). During the battle with Odysseus they think of sending to the town for help (χ 133), but there is no way for anyone to get out of the house. After killing them all Odysseus takes measures to prevent the news leaking out to the populace too soon (ψ 132–40). Given this consciousness of the community outside, it is clear that Odysseus’ reunion with Penelope could not be treated as the end of the story: he had to achieve a settlement with the suitors’ families, and several hundred verses at the conclusion of the poem had to be devoted to telling how this came about. This was also the appropriate place for the reunion with Laertes.17 (3) In his account of his departure from Troy (ι 39 ff.) Odysseus makes no reference to other heroes’ departures; it is as if he had separated from the rest at once. But Q has taken pains, in the account which he puts in Nestor’s mouth in γ 130 ff., to provide a more synoptic view in which the Achaeans set sail together but then split up by degrees, and Odysseus has his place in the process. Nestor’s and Menelaos’ discourses to Telemachos in γ and δ, taken together, paint in the essential background of nostoi against which Odysseus’ nostos is to be seen, and it was the principal poetic purpose of Telemachos’ journey to provide for this. The νόστος ᾽ΑχαιKν, the Return of the Achaeans, is also mentioned as the theme of Phemios’ singing in α 326 and as one of the subjects of Aiolos’ curiosity in κ 15. It is signalled from the start as the context for the story of Odysseus,

17 In South Slavic Return songs the recognition of the hero by his aged mother normally comes after that by the wife (Lord 178). In one case the hero goes out to the vineyard to find her.

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for the narrative begins with: ‘All the others who had survived were at home’ (α 11 f.). The other major nostos story, apart from the drowning of the Locrian Ajax, was the murder of Agamemnon by Aigisthos and Klytaimestra and his avenging by Orestes. Q refers to it repeatedly (α 29–43, 298–300, γ 234 f., 248–312, δ 512–37, λ 387–464, ω 19–34, 95–7) and treats it as a foil for the story of Odysseus. His successful homecoming is contrasted with Agamemnon’s disastrous one (λ 230–8, ν 383–5), and Penelope’s virtue and fidelity with Klytaimestra’s wickedness (λ 441–53, ω 194–200), while Orestes is held up as a role model for Telemachos (α 298–302; cf. Focke 27, 34). Finally Q promotes his own poem, in effect, as a counterpart to the tale of Agamemnon (ω 196–202, cf. β 125). It looks as if setting the two stories in parallel may have been his idea in the first place. At any rate he has given it emphasis.

THE DOMESTIC SITUATION The state of affairs at Ithaca before Odysseus’ return is expounded at an early stage. Athena-Mentes, finding the palace full of young men behaving as if they own it, asks Telemachos what is going on, and he explains (α 224–51). The picture is filled out at the assembly in β (45–128), as Telemachos and Antinoos put their respective views of the situation before the wider public. Odysseus will hear from Teiresias in Hades a laconic prediction that he will find arrogant men in his house eating up his substance and wooing his wife with the offer of gifts (λ 115–17), though he does not react to it and it seems not to be on his mind at all before he reaches Ithaca. There Athena explains the position to him and warns him not to go to his house openly (ν 306–10, 333–8, 375–81), and this is treated as if it is news to him. For several years Penelope has been beset by a crowd of men who, assuming that Odysseus will not be coming back, are eager to marry her, whether simply because she is such a lovely woman or because marrying her would confer social supremacy in the island. Telemachos has been growing up, but he has not yet done anything about the situation or asserted his position in the house. He has just been a passive bystander. As suggested in Chapter 2, there may have been earlier forms of the story in which he was not there at all.

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The period during which Penelope has resisted the suitors is given as three years or a little over.18 It is consistent with this that Antikleia’s ghost, speaking with Odysseus some seven years before his homecoming, knows nothing of them (λ 181 ff.). But why did so many years pass after the fall of Troy before they started their activities? The other survivors from the war (except for Menelaos) reached home in a matter of days or weeks. When Odysseus failed to appear in Ithaca, it would have been natural for people to assume after a few months that he had perished and for Penelope to be approached with offers of a new marriage. Now, it will be suggested below that in an earlier version of the Odyssey three years was the length of Odysseus’ wanderings, and that it was only when Q found himself constrained to invent seven years of wanderings for Menelaos that he extended Odysseus’ to ten by adding the seven years with Calypso. It is tempting to suppose that the three years assigned to the suitors’ activities are a hangover from the older version. There was no immediately obvious need to increase the period to match the new duration for Odysseus’ absence, and ten years might well have seemed excessive for the suitors’ wooing and Penelope’s weaving. The postulated revision of the chronology has important implications for the age of Telemachos. As he was a babe in arms at the start of the war (δ 112, 144), on the older scheme he would have been about 14 at the time of Odysseus’ return, whereas on the revised scheme he will be about 21. If he is 21 it is certainly high time he was conducting himself in a more manly way than he appears to have been doing. There is a telling detail when Penelope recalls before the suitors the instructions that Odysseus gave her when he set off for Troy (σ 257–71). If he should fail to return, he had said, she was to wait and look after the house until Telemachos started growing a beard; then she should take a new husband and leave the house (sc. with Telemachos in charge of it). That, she says, is now happening. So Telemachos is sprouting a beard. Only at 21? According to Solon (27. 3–6) it is on completing the second hebdomad of life that a lad displays the signs of puberty, and during the third his beard grows thicker: τ0ι τριτάτηι δ6 γένειον εξομένων Cτι γυίων | λαχνο7ται.

18 β 89, ‘this is now the third year, and the fourth will soon come’; 106–10 = ω 141–6, ‘for three years she tricked us, but when the fourth came we found her out’; similarly τ 151–6.

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So Telemachos’ new whiskers may be another relic of the earlier, shorter chronology. There is no suggestion that the number of the suitors grew or fluctuated over the three years of their presence. They are treated as a stable group. What may have changed over time is Q’s idea of their number. To Odysseus’ question on how many there are, Telemachos replies that the tally is very large: there are fifty-two from Doulichion, twenty-four from Same, twenty from Zakynthos, and twelve from Ithaca itself, plus retainers (π 247–53; cf. α 245–8). That makes 108. But other passages have led scholars to suspect that in an earlier version there were only the twelve from Ithaca and none from the other islands.19 At the Ithacan assembly Telemachos speaks as if the suitors are all sons of men present, and few enough to be easily restrained (β 50 f., 241; cf. σ 383). They are represented as all going home to sleep in their own beds each night (α 424, al.), and when Penelope asks them for gifts they can all quickly send home for them (σ 274–301). During the battle Melanthios fetches them twelve sets of arms (χ 144 f.; admittedly he could not have carried many more). Of Odysseus’ fifty female house-servants, just twelve have slept with suitors (χ 421–4). When he ponders the threat from the slain men’s families, he thinks only of Ithacans: wμεBς δ᾽ iρμα πόληος πέκταμεν, ο_ μέγ᾽ Vριστοι | κούρων εQν ᾽Ιθάκηι (ψ 121 f.). And it is only Ithacans who come after him in ω, though it is mentioned in passing that the bodies of suitors from the other islands are being sent home on fishing-boats (ω 418 f.). A further question is raised by Penelope’s dream in τ 535–53, in which an eagle came and killed her twenty geese. The eagle itself then told her that he was her husband, returned and about to kill all the suitors. This has been thought to imply a version with twenty suitors.20 If Q at first operated with a body of twelve (or twenty) suitors and later multiplied it ninefold, it is an example of the same nonchalant attitude towards his material as he showed in extending the wanderings from three years to ten. The question of the number of the suitors has implications for the nature of the engagement in which Odysseus overcame them, and I shall return to it in a later section. Jacob 369 f., 482, 518; Bonitz 87 n. 110; van Leeuwen 17 f. on α 245–8; Dawe 95, 607 f. 20 Jacob 497 f.; Hennings 513 n. 1; N. Wecklein, Epikritisches zur homerischen Frage (SBAW 1923 (6), Munich 1923), 45. 19

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Penelope’s attitude towards the suitors sometimes appears ambivalent, though we must understand this as a tactic to keep them at bay, for their attentions are unwelcome to her (β 50, τ 133) and her fidelity to Odysseus is unquestioned. It is true that (as Telemachos observes critically, α 249 f.) she has not openly rejected the idea of remarriage and sent her swains packing. But this is ruled out, as their continuing presence, and her eventual decision to take a new husband from among them, are essential to the story. They persist in pursuing her because, as Antinoos complains, she encourages them all with insincere messages and promises (β 91 f.). In σ 158–303 we see her going downstairs on purpose to excite them (160 f.) and extort gifts from them. Odysseus, watching her at it, is in no doubt that she is stringing them along (281–3), and we must take this as Q’s meaning. For three years she held them off by weaving what she said was a winding-sheet in preparation for Laertes’ death, that had to be completed before she could remarry; each night she secretly unpicked what she had woven by day (β 93–110, τ 138–56, ω 128–48). This was evidently an old folk-tale motif, and in an earlier version the fabric was probably a wedding garment for Penelope herself.21 The weaving and unravelling in a day–night cycle may ultimately go back to a cosmic myth.22 Q might have allowed Penelope to maintain the stratagem undetected until Odysseus arrived. His actual version, that she was found out and had to finish the shroud, has more dramatic point, as it means that the pressure on her to remarry has now become critical and she has no further defence against it (τ 155–61). In β and τ we have the impression that some time has passed since she finished the weaving, though it is not specified how much. In ω 146–5, however, Amphimedon’s ghost relates that no sooner had she washed the finished cloth and displayed it than Odysseus turned up on the island. This is certainly what the logic of the weaving story calls for, that Odysseus should come in the nick of time, just when Penelope has 21 Cf. W. Crooke, Folk-Lore 9 (1898), 122–30; R. Eisler, Weltenmantel und Himmelszelt (Munich 1910), 129–38; S. West 1988: 137 f., who suggests that the wedding garment was replaced by Laertes’ shroud ‘in order to strengthen Laertes’ rather insecure position in the plot’. On the possible association of Penelope’s name with πήνην λέπειν ‘strip the web’ cf. Wilamowitz 1927: 39; Germain 469; S. West 1988: 103; Hölscher 1988: 46, who notes that as the story spans years, like the Wanderings, it could only be treated in retrospect. 22 Cf. Eisler, op. cit., 134; West 2007: 372–4.

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run out of options.23 But Q has neglected to bring this logic out clearly—perhaps a sign that it is not his own construct. The palace in which these events take place is a building imagined by Q on the basis of such grand houses as he had seen in his own time.24 Unless he had one particular model in view throughout, we should not suppose that he had a complete plan of the edifice in his mind’s eye from the start. More likely he started with a half-formed conception that he modified or augmented with additional detail as he proceeded. In splendour it does not match the palaces of Menelaos (δ 71–5) and Alkinoos (η 84–132). But it has the useful property of expanding at need; the hall eventually accommodates 108 suitors, their tables, their servants, Telemachos, and temporary extras such as Melanthios and Odysseus. In χ 126 ff. it develops a rear door leading to a corridor. There are also workrooms and storerooms. Penelope has her chamber upstairs. Telemachos has his own high-roofed bedroom περισκέπτωι =ν χώρωι (α 425 f.), whatever that means. Somewhere on the ground floor there is the old marital bedroom built on an olive stump (ψ 183–201). Outside there is a walled courtyard that contains a roundhouse (χ 459). From just outside the courtyard wall there is a view of the harbour (π 343–53). How all this fits together is hard to say. But probably Q never pictured it all together.

TELEMACHOS’ JOURNEY A traditional way of beginning an epic narrative, in Greece as in the Near East, was to start from an unsatisfactory static situation that prompts a complaint to the chief god, deliberation among the gods, and a divine initiative to remedy matters.25 Such is the pattern used in the Odyssey. Out of the whole sequence of Odysseus’ adventures it is

23 Woodhouse 66–71; Page 1955: 120 f.; Lesky 116; Hölscher 1988: 46; Heubeck 1992: 375. 24 Cf. Stella 354, ‘ma il vero ed unico architetto del palazzo resta sempre il Poeta. E per questo la rappresentazione odisseica non corrisponde compiutamente ad alcun edificio che si è trovato o che si troverà.’ 25 See West 1997: 173 f., 417 f.

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his long stay with Calypso, from whom there appears to be no escape, that is taken as the point of departure. (This entails that he will have to relate his earlier adventures in the first person at a later stage.) At Ithaca too things are at an impasse, though a more precarious one. Penelope is holding out against the suitors, but she may not be able to for much longer. Telemachos, though now a young adult, remains a passive bystander. Athena brings the problem to Zeus’ attention and proposes a plan of action to be taken on both fronts. Let Hermes go to Calypso and bid her send Odysseus on his way; she herself will go to Ithaca and incite Telemachos to action. Off she goes, and this launches the Telemachy, which will occupy us through α–δ. Only then, following a second gathering of the gods, is Hermes sent to Ogygia and Odysseus enabled to set sail for home. Athena has two separate projects for Telemachos. One is to call the public meeting at which he will challenge the suitors for the first time and it will be established for us that the people of Ithaca are not going to intervene in the action. The other is to go on a journey to see if he can get any news of his father. If Athena were a real thinking being and not Q’s puppet, she would be aware that she is sending the young man on a fool’s errand, since it will not bring him any useful or cheering knowledge or advance the plot in any way.26 Its real purpose, as I have said, is to provide a frame for the background information on the other heroes’ returns that Nestor and Menelaos will supply. We must here take account of the extraordinary variants reported from Zenodotus’ text at α 93 and 285. In the first passage, where Athena is telling Zeus what she intends to do, his text made her say not ‘I will send him to Sparta and sandy Pylos’ but ‘I will send him to Crete and sandy Pylos’, and in the second one, where she is instructing Telemachos, after saying ‘first go to Pylos and question Nestor’, she continued in Zenodotus’ text not with ‘and from there to Sparta to fair-haired Menelaos, for he came home latest of the Achaeans’, but with ‘and from there to Crete to lord Idomeneus, for he came home latest of the Achaeans’. These variants of course make no sense in our Odyssey. The recommendation to go to Sparta is reinforced by Nestor at γ 317 ff., on the 26 Hölscher 1988: 44 f. The ostensible motive that it will bring him renown (α 95) is spurious, except in the sense that it will be celebrated in Q’s poem.

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explicit ground that Menelaos is the man who has most recently returned from abroad. Telemachos does go to Sparta in δ, he returns from Sparta in ο, and the notion of going to Crete never crosses his mind. It is inconceivable that there was ever a variant version of the epic (even one for Cretan consumption) in which a visit to Idomeneus in Crete took the place of the visit to Menelaos and Helen in Sparta.27 On the other hand Zenodotus’ variants—the oldest attested readings in the passages concerned—are evidently systematic and cannot be dismissed as casual mistakes. His texts of the Homeric poems contained much that is erratic and unacceptable, but also some precious survivals from an early stage of the tradition.28 There is only one plausible explanation.29 It is that the peculiar Zenodotean readings are the last tell-tale relics of a version that Q was planning while he composed α but never executed. By the time he reached γ he had changed his mind and substituted a journey to Sparta for the one to Crete. Most early copies were naturally corrected to bring the α references into conformity with the subsequent narrative, but Zenodotus happened to own an uncorrected one. It is apparent from several other passages that Q had a particular interest in Crete.30 He makes Crete and Idomeneus feature in Odysseus’ fictitious stories at ν 256 ff., ξ 199 f., and τ 172 ff., the last passage being notable for its statement about the island’s peoples and languages. He has Menelaos call there on his way to the Levant, γ 291. It is in accord with this interest in the island that he should imagine a visit there by Telemachos. But if its justification was that Idomeneus was the last hero home from Troy and might therefore know something about Odysseus’ movements, Q must have lacked all awareness of Menelaos’ seven years of roaming in the east; yet he will tell us about them in γ. So far from being a contradiction that wrecks the hypothesis of an aborted Crete version, this is the point where everything falls into

27 H. Düntzer, De Zenodoti studiis Homericis (Göttingen 1848), 42, thought that Zenodotus was following the Κρητικ5 Cκδοσις. But there is no evidence for local texts of Homer that diverged in substance from the vulgate version of the narratives. A series of readings cited from Zenodotus in δ show that his text had the usual version with Telemachos in Sparta. 28 West 2001: 33–45. Scholars have been much too prone to indiscriminate dismissal of his readings. 29 Cf. S. West 1981: 173 f.; 1988: 43; S. Reece, AJP 115 (1994), 166 f.; W. Burkert, Kl. Schr. i. 123 f., 133 f., 136. 30 Cf. p. 87.

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place. For that account in γ of Menelaos’ wanderings appears to spring into being in answer to Telemachos’ awkward question (249–52): where was Menelaos during the seven years that Aigisthos lorded it at Mycenae after killing Agamemnon? Why did he not intervene? Or was he abroad? Q has once more referred to the current tale of Agamemnon’s murder and Orestes’ revenge after seven years, and this time it has struck him that Agamemnon’s brother, who ought to have reacted decisively, played no role in it. The seven years of wandering are clearly invented to keep him off the scene till just after Orestes has dealt with the murderers; he arrives home on the very day of the funeral feast (γ 311). It is hard to resist the conclusion that the invention was made by Q (if not communicated to him by another poet)31 after he had brought Telemachos to Pylos, or not long before. He realized at once that it made Menelaos a much better candidate than Idomeneus for Telemachos to visit.32 He could leave at Pylos the ship that would have taken him to Crete and travel to Sparta overland. What would have been the point of the Cretan journey that Q originally envisaged? Could Telemachos have learned anything useful from Idomeneus? Idomeneus, according to γ 191 f. (cf. ξ 241 f.), got home from Troy without incident. Later sources tell that he was subsequently driven out of Crete by his adopted son Leukos, or left the island for some other reason.33 But the plan for Telemachos to go to Crete to consult him presupposes that he was still there, and there is no hint that he had been away since returning from Troy. So any knowledge that he had of Odysseus’ later movements would depend on Odysseus’ having appeared in Crete. Now, when I come to his wanderings I shall argue that in an earlier version they began in the eastern Mediterranean; that when he was blown off course at Cape Maleia he was driven first to Crete and then to Egypt, just as happens to Menelaos. When it became necessary to provide Menelaos with years of wandering, these eastern peregrinations were transferred from Odysseus to him, and Odysseus’ itinerary

31 It also appeared in the Nostoi (arg. 1c, 5); see West 2013: 252–4, 279–82, 284 f., and ibid. 248 f. for the problem of the relationship of that poem to the Odyssey. 32 Cf. S. West 1981: 174, ‘This plan to take Telemachus to Crete must belong to a period before reflection on the circumstances of Agamemnon’s death led the poet to devise Menelaus’ travels to explain his long absence’. 33 See Gantz 698.

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was shifted further to the west so that it did not overlap. In the earlier version Odysseus might have spent some time with Idomeneus before sailing further. In one of his false tales he tells Penelope that Odysseus was blown past Maleia to Crete on the way to Troy, and went and sought out Idomeneus (τ 186–91). Eumaios (ξ 379–83) recalls an Aetolian visitor who claimed to have seen Odysseus in Crete with Idomeneus, repairing his ships after they had been damaged by a storm. These passages are highly suggestive. They are not necessarily fragments from an earlier version of what happened, but they show that a stay of Odysseus in Crete and with Idomeneus is a notion that Q’s mind did actually entertain. In the τ passage it takes place at the beginning of the war, but in the ξ passage it is a much more recent episode. It is hard to see how it could have been accommodated in the latter phases of Odysseus’ wanderings as we know them. But Q must have had it in mind, in his original plan, that Telemachos’ visit to Idomeneus would not be altogether fruitless. The evidence of Q’s change of plan makes it apparent that Telemachos’ overseas expedition was not a theme current in bardic tradition but his own innovation. He embarked on the writing of his poem before he had properly thought out the details of the journey. Perhaps, indeed, before he had thought of it at all, for if we look back at the passages where it is first programmed, we notice that they all look as if they may have been added on. When Athena says to Zeus that she will go to Ithaca and encourage Telemachos to call a public meeting and tell the suitors to desist, the speech would end satisfactorily there, at α 92; lines 93–5, ‘And I will send him to Sparta . . .’, sound like an afterthought. Similarly when she counsels him in α 271–305, the section about the voyage (279–92) does not follow smoothly after 271–8 and is cleanly detachable.34 In α 443 f. he lies in bed thinking about the journey, but there are other indications that 428–44 is an expansion. The speech at the assembly in which he asks the suitors for the use of a ship (β 208–23) and the lines in which Leokritos responds to the request (252–6) are again easily removable without leaving scars. It appears that originally the matter was not mentioned in the debate, and indeed Athena did not propose it as part of the agenda for the debate but as a separate undertaking.

34

If it is a secondary insertion, 293 probably belongs with it.

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At a prior stage of Q’s thinking, I infer, Athena’s purpose in going to Ithaca was only to stir Telemachos into calling the public meeting. Once that was dealt with, Hermes’ mission to Calypso could go ahead. Telemachos remained in Ithaca. When Odysseus returned and lodged in Eumaios’ hut, Athena, instead of fetching Telemachos from Sparta, had only to appear to him at home and give him the impulse to go to the piggery.35 Analysts have long been exercised by the relationship between the two divine colloquies in α and ε. The way in which the first one is left unfinished and its business completed in the second has led them to suppose that the two Olympian scenes were originally one, with no Telemachy, and that it has been split in two. The first breaks off as Athena, after proposing the agenda for Hermes and herself, immediately departs for Ithaca. Olympus disappears from view, and the plan for Hermes to go to Calypso’s island is left hanging. Having made the Telemachy part of his plan, Q was faced with the same ‘two-messenger problem’ as arises in Α 306–487, Ο 53–262, and Ω 112–88 (cf. West 2011a: 91, 300). Two missions that in real life would be synchronous are in the epic announced together but carried out successively. In the Iliad passages the pair of missions can easily be accommodated within a single episode, but this was not so simple in the Odyssey.36 It could have been achieved by more active interweaving of the two narrative strands. Q would have done well to begin with Hermes’ mission and get Odysseus well on his way towards Scheria before setting Telemachos in motion (Germain 665); the few days required for Telemachos’ journey could then have been synchronized with the remaining days needed for Odysseus to reach Ithaca, and Athena could have set off on her chosen mission without the need for a second council of the gods. As it is, he has elected to start with Telemachos and then to stay with him until he is ready to return from Sparta.37 This leaves him no opportunity to initiate Hermes’ mission. 35

Cf. Bekker 105; Kirchhoff 503 f.; Von der Mühll 740; Focke 282 f.; Merkelbach 69. Cf. Heubeck 1954: 52, ‘Sie [the problems] erklären sich doch wohl aus der Tatsache, daß der OD [= Odyssee-Dichter] . . . einen für kleine Ausmaße berechneten Kunstgriff zum tragenden Gerüst eines ganzen Epos gemacht und eben durch diese Projektion ins Große die Tragfähigkeit dieses Gerüstes nicht richtig eingeschätzt hat und, wie nicht anders zu erwarten, mit dieser Übertragung, die zu einer Überlastung geführt hat, nicht ganz zurande gekommen ist’. Rüter 95–7 spells out the divergences from the Iliadic two-messenger technique. 37 In Nitzsch’s view (ii. xxxix) he wanted ‘the song of the absent Odysseus’ to precede the one that sets about bringing him home. 36

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By the end of δ six days have passed. By epic convention the narrator cannot go back in time. As he omitted to let Zeus instruct Hermes on the first day, it has to be done on the seventh. The gods are gathered anew. Athena is back, and she again raises Odysseus’ plight, adding that Telemachos has gone on his journey and that the suitors are planning to ambush him as he returns. Without further ado Zeus gives Hermes the commission that Athena had proposed six days before, and Hermes sets out to fulfil it. Audiences would perhaps not have been disconcerted by this duplication of divine business meetings, but it is shoddy building, forced on Q by his over-hasty, elliptical treatment of the first meeting and his introduction of the Telemachy into the story. How was it before he conceived Telemachos’ overseas journey? The problem of making the transition to Hermes’ excursion would not have been so acute, but it would still exist, as the Ithacan assembly could hardly be scheduled for the same day as Athena’s visit to Telemachos. Perhaps in one of his earlier versions Q managed with only one divine colloquy at the outset, but we can no longer reconstruct how he did it. It was a bold initiative to run concurrent strands of narrative, with Telemachos and Odysseus following separate itineraries. Q does not succeed in managing it without producing a chronological muddle that would have passed unnoticed in his own time but has long been picked apart by critics.38 If we construct a diary from the text, it comes out as follows: Telemachos Day 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8–11 12–28 29–31 32 33 34 38

Athena’s visit Assembly. Night voyage At Pylos Chariot departure. Pherai Journey continued to Sparta Talk with Menelaos Suitors set ambush

Odysseus (Languishing with Calypso)

Hermes to Calypso Boat-building Plain sailing Swimming; reaches land Found by Nausikaa Games. Apologoi Departure from Scheria

e.g. Koës, ch. 1; Thiersch 129–32; Müller 106; Nitzsch i. 288; Kirchhoff 190 f.; Seeck 213 f.

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Athena goes to Sparta In Ithaca; lodges with Eumaios Sparta to Pharai Pharai to Pylos; re-embarks Supper with Eumaios; bed In Ithaca. Goes to Eumaios With Eumaios. Telemachos walks in Both go to palace

According to this reckoning Telemachos stays in Sparta for a whole month. Yet his conversations with Menelaos and Helen are concluded on the second day, at the end of which he demurs at an invitation to stay for eleven or twelve days more, pleading that his rowers are waiting fretfully at Pylos for his return (δ 587–99). Clearly Q does not imagine him twiddling his thumbs for another four weeks while the rowers sit idly at Pylos and the suitors doggedly maintain their ambush at Asteris. We were not meant to make a diary. It is the wrong approach. Instead we must understand that when we leave the Sparta narrative at δ 624 the calendar is stopped for Telemachos, his rowers, and his would-be assassins. They are suspended in time until they are needed again, and when we return to them their calendar is re-set to synchronize with Odysseus’.39

ODYSSEUS’ WANDERINGS On leaving Troy with his small flotilla Odysseus comes first to Ismaros in Thrace, the city of the Kikones, and sacks it. Then he sails southwards for home, but in trying to round the dangerous Cape Maleia at the south-east corner of the Peloponnese he is blown off course, past Cythera. From this point onward he is off the regular map, and the places he comes to are fabulous places. His first landfall is in the country of the Lotus-eaters. The next is the land of the Cyclopes, from which he escapes after blinding Poseidon’s one-eyed son Polyphemos. The next is the floating island of Aiolos, the controller of the winds. Aiolos sends him off with a westerly wind to carry him home, and with the other winds tied up in a leather bag, but his sailors undo its fastening and the winds escape and blow them all back to Aiolos. Next they come to the land of the 39 Cf. Bekker 105–7; Seeck 217–21; Hennings 109 n. 2; Heubeck 1954: 58–62; Page 1955: 66 f.; Lesky 124; Fenik 67, ‘time “passes” for a character only when he is in action’; in general on poetic chronology and treatment of synchronicity, Blass 15–20.

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Laistrygones, cannibal giants who destroy all the ships except Odysseus’ own. He sails on in his one ship to the island of Circe, with whom he and his crew stay for a year. Then she sends him on a oneday excursion to Hades to consult the soul of the dead seer Teiresias. On his return she gives him directions for the continuation of his homeward journey. He passes the isle of the Sirens; he avoids the Clashing Rocks, and runs the gauntlet of Scylla and Charybdis; he comes to the island of Thrinakia, where the Cattle of the Sun graze. They are a protected herd that must not be touched, as Teiresias and Circe have impressed upon him, but he is unable to prevent his starving men from slaughtering some of them so that they can feed themselves for a few days. The consequence is that when they sail on, Zeus on Helios’ behalf raises a storm and destroys their ship. They all drown except Odysseus, who clings to some wreckage. After surviving another encounter with Charybdis and nine more days at sea he arrives on the island of Calypso. There he remains for seven years. Finally Calypso receives instructions from the gods to send him home. He builds a boat40 and sets off. Once again his vessel is wrecked in a storm, this time sent by Poseidon, who is angry with him for having blinded Polyphemos eight or nine years before. He swims to shore in Scheria. The number of his adventures or stopping places, after he is blown out of his way at Cape Maleia and before he reaches Ithaca, is twelve. They are very diverse in character, and it is not easy to see any logical connections linking one with another. They have evidently been drawn from various sources and strung together to account for Odysseus’ long absence from home. Many of them are more suited to a hero travelling in a single ship than to a fleet of twelve, which is what Odysseus left Troy with (ι 159, agreeing with the number given in the Iliad, Β 637). Q might have done better to eliminate the other eleven ships at the earliest opportunity, in the first storm after they left Ismaros. But he perseveres with them through several more episodes. They all land on the Lotus-eaters’ shore; they all come to the land of the Cyclopes, though here the extra ships are really an encumbrance, and they are parked out of the way at an uninhabited offshore island while Odysseus goes to investigate the mainland with his one ship. They all proceed to A home-made vessel (σχεδίη), but not a ‘raft’, as often translated: it has a hull with ribs and decking. 40

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Aiolos’ island, they all sail off together on his west wind (though at κ 32 Odysseus’ intent steering is mentioned, as if he were controlling the whole fleet), they are all blown back again without being dispersed when the other winds are let out of the bag, they all sail on to the country of the Laistrygones. At this point eleven of the twelve ships are destroyed as they lie in the Laistrygones’ harbour and the Laistrygones bombard them with great boulders from the surrounding hills. Odysseus has been prudent enough to moor his ship outside the harbour, and so it escapes. This one ship with its crew survives through the succeeding episodes until, after the violation of the Sun’s cattle, it too is destroyed by storm and the men drowned. After this Odysseus is alone, and shipless. Neither the individual adventures nor the travelling from one to the next occupied long periods of time. It was hard to make them fill up ten years in aggregate, and Q only makes it at all plausible by keeping his hero’s progress stalled for a year with Circe and for seven years with Calypso. It has struck more than one scholar that without that stay with Calypso the ten years would be reduced to three: just the length of time suggested by the references to the suitors’ threeyear presence in the palace and Penelope’s three years of weaving. The wind that blew Odysseus past Maleia and Cythera (that is, east of Cythera, as he wanted to pass north of it) would naturally have taken him towards Crete, or beyond Crete to Egypt: that is what happened to Menelaos, who was blown off course at the same place in the same week (γ 286–300), and what happens to Odysseus himself in one of his false tales (τ 187 f.). Some scholars have thought that his wanderings were originally located in the eastern Mediterranean,41 and there is a good deal to be said for this. In α 1–3 he is described as the man who wandered far and wide after sacking Troy, saw many men’s cities, and learned their minds: πολλKν δ᾽ νθρώπων ^δεν Vστεα κα νόον Cγνω. This does not very well fit the adventures described in our poem. To Q’s audience those words might have especially suggested a tour of the Levant. Menelaos uses similar language when he speaks of his own travels (δ 81 ff.): ‘I endured much and wandered much in my ships and came back in the eighth year after wandering to Cyprus, Phoenicia, and the Egyptians; and I came to the Ethiopians too and the Sidonians and the Eremboi and to 41

Woodhouse 126–36; cf. S. West 1981: 169–75 and CQ 53 (2003), 303 f.; S. Reece, AJP 115 (1994), 157–73; Grossardt 37–43.

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Libya.’ He does not actually say ‘I saw many men’s cities and learned their minds’, but it would have been as appropriate to his journeyings as it is inappropriate to those of Odysseus. The eastern Mediterranean was the natural arena for heroes who sailed beyond the Aegean. When Paris departed from Sparta with Helen, Hera sent a storm that drove them east, and they spent time in Cyprus and Phoenicia before returning to Troy (Cypria arg. 2d, Apollod. epit. 3. 4, sch.D Ζ 291). When Odysseus tells false stories about himself to various people he speaks of journeys to Egypt, where he stayed for seven years, to Phoenicia, where he spent a year, and to Cyprus. In this context he twice refers to himself as having wandered to many cities of men (ο 492, τ 170, cf. π 63). I have suggested above that it was only in the course of composition that Q found himself forced to invent seven years of wanderings for Menelaos. He started them off by repeating the motif of the Maleia storm that he had already been using for Odysseus, and he filled them out by transferring to Menelaos the eastern wanderings that had been Odysseus’. But if Menelaos was to roam the eastern Mediterranean for seven years, Odysseus’ adventures needed to be transferred somewhere else so that they did not overlap. So after he is blown past Cythera, instead of arriving in Crete as Menelaos does he is diverted further west, and after nine days on the open sea he arrives at the Lotus-eaters.42 Their shore must be conceived to lie somewhere west of the ‘Libya’ that Menelaos reached. Q had no real notion of geography west of Cyrenaica, but he certainly had some idea of a north African coast, whatever became of it further west. The Lotus-eaters’ way of life may indeed be based on a dim report of some African people.43 The Cyclopes, also a mainland folk, are situated ‘further on’, which we naturally take to mean further west along the same coast.44 Q also had the concept of a great sea opening out to the west of Sicily, and he is taking Odysseus in that direction. It is out in the Western Sea that 42 The nine days is a typical number, not a considered measure: Germain 491; Hölscher 1988: 142. 43 Cf. Hdt. 4. 177 with A. Corcella’s note; ps.-Scylax 110. 1; Page 1973: 11–14. Designations of the form -ϕάγοι, ‘-eaters’, are more typical of ethnography than of myth: cf. the Akridophagoi, Galaktophagoi, Hippophagoi, Ichthyophagoi, Moschophagoi, Ophiophagoi, Phtheirophagoi, Strouthophagoi. 44 Thiersch 101 f.; Wilamowitz 1884: 164. Et. Magn. 544. 10 (from a scholium on Hes. Th. 144–5) mentions a Κυκλώπειον uρος =ν Λιβύηι.

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Aiolos’ island is located, for when he sends Odysseus off he provides him with a westerly wind to carry him homeward; it blows steadily for nine days and brings him within sight of Ithaca. The introduction of Menelaos’ wanderings also meant that the duration of Odysseus’ had to be extended. Menelaos had to stay abroad for seven years, because it was established that Aigisthos ruled over Mycene for seven years before Orestes returned and killed him. Odysseus’ wanderings, therefore, had to last even longer, and they were extended from three years to ten by the simple expedient of having him stay seven years with Calypso. The new story of Menelaos’ wanderings did not, I suspect, simply displace Odysseus from the east Mediterranean sector: Menelaos actually took over adventures that Odysseus had had in those parts. The initial storm that blew him to Crete reduced his fleet from sixty ships to five (γ 297–300); this might represent a scaling up of the twelve-to-one reduction of Odysseus’ fleet, something that had to happen at some point, though in our Odyssey it does not happen till much later. Menelaos spent the following years touring the Levant and accumulating riches. He had his wife with him and there was no reason for him to hurry home so long as he was having a good and profitable time. It was different for Odysseus: he was eager to get home to Penelope. So even if he was blown all the way to Egypt, what happened to delay his return for three years, let alone ten? Part of the answer, I suggest, is what Menelaos says happened to himself. He found he could not get away from Egypt because of unremitting adverse winds that kept him pent up on the island of Pharos. He received help from a daughter of the Old Man of the Sea. She advised him how to seize hold of her father and extract from him the information he needed for his journey home. He and three of his best men should conceal themselves in sealskins and wait for Proteus to come, as he always did at midday to count his seals and take his siesta, and then jump on him, hang on to him while he went through his shapeshifting routine, and when he gave up, question him. This is just the sort of escapade that we should expect Odysseus to feature in rather than Menelaos, who otherwise moves in a normal civilized world. Proteus tells Menelaos about the murder of Agamemnon, gives him some information about what has happened to some of the other heroes, and foretells his eventual translation to Elysium. But as for dealing with his immediate problem, the adverse winds that are preventing him from sailing, Proteus’ advice is utterly banal: go back

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to the mouth of the Nile and offer hecatombs to the gods. We might have expected some deeper revelation from the Old Man of the Sea. I suspect that it was so in a version in which he gave advice to Odysseus, and that the advice went something like this: Sail from here in the direction of the setting sun, keeping the Great Bear on your right hand. First you will come to Libya, where the sheep quickly grow horns, for they give birth three times a year: there neither master nor shepherd goes lacking in cheese and meat, nor in sweet milk, but they ever provide abundant milk (δ 85–9). After that you will come to the land of the Lotus-eaters, who eat a delicious food that comes from flowers. Do not eat their lotus fruit, for whoever tastes of it will lose all desire to return home but will just want to stay in that land for ever. Sail on, and presently you will come to the island of Aiolos, who is the controller of the winds. It is a floating island that eludes men when they look for it, but I know all that goes on across the sea and I can tell you that that is where it is at present. Ask Aiolos, and he may give you the wind that you need to carry you safely back to your homeland. But I fear you will reach home only after a long time and in a desperate state, after losing all your comrades, and on an alien ship (λ 114 f.).

In our Odyssey it is just by his native wit that Odysseus apprehends the danger of the Lotus-eaters, and it is just a lucky chance that he comes upon the floating island and finds there the one person who can solve his problems at a stroke and send him straight back to Ithaca. It would make better sense if he came to Aiolos on purpose, on Proteus’ directions, because he could not get the right winds. Aiolos receives Odysseus and his men hospitably and is happy to supply the wind they need and suppress all other winds. But it would be an anticlimax to the tale of adventures if this were to bring the hero straight home without further incident. He almost makes it: on the tenth day of the voyage Ithaca comes into view, they are close enough to see the smoke from people’s fires. But then the rascally sailors open the bag of winds, thinking that it contains treasure, the winds all burst out, and the resulting tempest blows them all the way back to Aiolos, who now wants nothing more to do with them and will give them no further help. We might have expected the escaped winds to drive them not back to Aiolos but on to a new destination. But this is a nodal point in the series of adventures. So far the geographical indications have been consistent (Meuli 53 = 627). Aiolos’ isle is (for the time being, at least) out in the western ocean, ten days’ sail westward of Ithaca. Eventually Odysseus will

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find himself on Calypso’s island. Calypso is the daughter of Atlas, who in early literature is located in the far west (Hes. Th. 517 f.; fr. 150. 25?). When she sends him on his way he steers an eastward course, keeping the Great Bear on his left. So here again he is conceived as roaming the western seas. But in the intervening episodes between Aiolos and Calypso there are indications that he is in a quite different part of the world. Circe’s island is explicitly located in the furthest east, ‘where are Dawn’s chambers and dancing-floors, and the risings of the sun’ (μ 3 f.). Sailing over from there to Hades’ shore he passes close to the land of the Cimmerians (λ 14), who belong to the north of the Black Sea, around the straits of Kerch. The scenery that greets him (κ 509–15 ~ λ 22) has been judged, by those who know it, to resemble that of the same area. The description of the Laistrygones’ harbour in κ 87–94 finds its best match at Balaklava in the Crimea.45 These apparent Pontic or eastern settings in this series of episodes are clearly connected to the fact that some of them have Argonautic associations: 1. When Q mentions the Clashing Rocks he refers to the Argo as the only ship that ever got through them (μ 69–72). In other words they existed only in the Argonaut story—there were no stories about ships that reached the Clashing Rocks but failed to get through them—and it must be from there that Q has taken them. 2. Circe too is linked to that story, as she is the daughter of Helios and sister of Aietes, the king who had the Golden Fleece (κ 137). The epithet ΑQαίη applied to her island and to herself derives, like Aietes’ name, from Aia, the traditional name of the land to which the Argonauts sailed in quest of the Fleece.46 3. Between Circe and the Clashing Rocks come the Sirens (μ 39–54, 166–200; cf. Danek 252 f.). While there is no indication in the Odyssey that they played a part in the Argo saga, they do so in later versions. The Argonauts are saved not by stopping up their ears, as might have been expected

45

On all this see West 2011b: 292–5, 298 f. Mimn. 11. 2, Hdt. 1. 2. 2, etc. It may originally have signified ‘Dawnland’; see West 2011b: 113–19, 283–6. 46

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if the episode had been borrowed from the Odyssey, but by having a singer of their own on board, Orpheus, whose sweet song equalled or surpassed that of the Sirens. If this was the primary version and Q the borrower, he had to provide Odysseus with an alternative means of defence.47 4. The Laistrygonian episode (κ 81–132) resembles one that the Argonauts experienced at Cyzicus, where giants rushed out from the hills and hurled rocks to block off the harbour and trap their ship. The name Artakie (108), perhaps Thracian, resembles several toponyms found in the Pontic area.48 5. Some have thought that the Cattle of Helios on Thrinakia should belong in the story of the Argonauts’ journey to the sunrise and their encounter with Helios’ children.49 In the Odyssey the wrath of Helios, provoked by the sailors’ violation of his cattle, may seem redundant beside the wrath of Poseidon that is (notionally) already in operation.50 It appears, then, that a number of Odysseus’ adventures have been adapted from or influenced by adventures of the Argonauts.51 The fact that the episodes in question all come in the stretch between Aiolos and Calypso, disrupting the otherwise consistent location of Odysseus’ wanderings in the Western Sea, suggests that they have been imported as a block, at the expense of geographical coherence, to increase the number of Odysseus’ adventures. Q has in fact given a sign that the transition from Aiolos to the Laistrygones represents a major sceneshift. The nine-day crossing from Maleia to the Lotus-eaters marked a passage out of the known world into the unknown. On leaving the Lotus-eaters Odysseus apparently reaches the land of the Cyclopes the same day, and a few days later when he leaves the Cyclopes he reaches Aiolos before nightfall. But when he leaves Aiolos for the second time 47 Cf. West 2011b: 286–9. For the prophylactic stopping of ears against enchantment as a folk-tale motif cf. Frazer on Paus. 9. 34. 3; Radermacher 21 f. 48 West 2011b: 291 f., 295 f. 49 Meuli 94–7 = 659–61; Von der Mühll 730 f.; Merkelbach 206; Danek 252 f., 262; cf. West 2011b: 300–2. 50 Apollonius’ Argonauts do pass by Thrinakia, and indeed by Scylla, Charybdis, and Ogygia too. But they avoid engagement with any of them. Apollonius locates all these sites in the west and has clearly borrowed them from the Odyssey. 51 The relationship has long been observed. See Nitzsch iii. xxiv, xxix, xxx, 373, cf. 363, 376; Kirchhoff 287–9; Wilamowitz 1884: 165–8; Meuli 52–118 = 626–76; other literature cited in West 2011b: 277 n. 1.

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he sails for six days—direction unspecified—before arriving at Telepylos on the seventh.52 Q seems to be deliberately blurring whatever notion we may have been forming of Odysseus’ whereabouts.53 In the following stages, Telepylos to Aiaia, Aiaia to Hades, Aiaia to Thrinakia (via the Sirens and Scylla/Charybdis), we are back to single-day journeys. After the departure from Thrinakia and the destruction of his ship, Odysseus is blown across the sea for ten more days before he reaches Calypso’s isle. Again the longer interval marks the transition to a new phase of the narrative. Each of the major transitions is associated with a storm. It is a storm that carries Odysseus’ fleet down from Greece to Africa. It is the storm resulting from the opening of the wind-bag that ruins their smooth homeward progress from Aiolos’ isle and blows them back there, though it is then a week’s hard rowing that brings them to their next port of call. And it is the storm raised by Zeus at Helios’ request that wrecks the last ship and leaves Odysseus on his own. What did the story of the wanderings look like before the block of Argonautic episodes was added? Take them out, and eliminate the superfluous return to Aiolos after the winds are let out of the bag, and the two storms at the beginning and end of the series fall together into one storm.54 What we are left with is that when the sailors open the bag of winds a furious tempest destroys the ships and drowns all the men except Odysseus. He clings to some pieces of wreckage and eventually after many days fetches up on the island of Calypso. Geographical coherence is restored: he remains in the Western Sea. To recapitulate: analysis of the wanderings as far as Calypso points to a hypothetical earlier stage of the composition in which the Maleia storm blew Odysseus past Crete and into the eastern Mediterranean. He spent time in Egypt and the Levant. He was marooned on an island with the daughter of Proteus. He engaged with Proteus himself and obtained advice from him about the continuation of his travels. He made his way westwards, via the Lotus-eaters and the Cyclopes, to

52

It is here, at the start of the Argonautic sequence, that the twelve ships are finally reduced to one. With the Argo story in the background the sense that there ought to be only one ship became acute. 53 There is nothing in the text to support the view of Meuli (56 = 629 f., 116 = 675) and others that Aiolos’ island is supposed to have changed position between Odysseus’ first and second visits, so mediating between the western and eastern hemispheres. 54 W. Kranz, Hermes 50 (1915), 109; cf. Merkelbach 216 f.; West 2011b: 305 f.

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find Aiolos, who provided him with the right wind to take him home. He nearly made it to Ithaca, but his men let the other winds out of the bag, causing a tempest which destroyed their ship and drowned them. Odysseus was carried far over the sea to Calypso. His wanderings lasted three years altogether. When Q became aware of the problem about Menelaos’ movements, it prompted a major revision. The eastern part of the itinerary was transferred to Menelaos. The Maleia storm now blew Odysseus direct to the Lotus-eaters. A group of adventures inspired by an Argonautica was brought in to fill out the depleted programme. It was inserted after the Aiolos episode; the storm caused by the winds let out of the bag was no longer so catastrophic, but it cancelled the advantage that the bag conferred and the men had to go on rowing, without direction. It was now the Thrinakia episode that triggered the fatal storm and brought Odysseus to Calypso. He stayed with her for seven years.

THE VISIT TO HADES In discussing the Wanderings I have passed over the visit to Hades (the Nekyia). It calls for separate treatment, as it stands outside the series in more than one respect. It is a side-trip from one of the stations on Odysseus’ itinerary, and after it he returns to where he was. In the Odyssey as we have it, Hades is the one place that he goes to on purpose, on the advice of a wise counsellor. He could never have been blown or sailed there by accident. It is the only station on his travels where he meets people known to him. Apart from the fact that he needs an adviser to send him there, there is no apparent reason why his visit to Hades should be attached to his stay with Circe. It is inconceivable that she had sent Jason on a similar excursion in the Argonautica, and it cannot have been a traditional idea that the land of the sunrise lay within close reach of the world of the dead. It has often been noted that the episode can be removed without leaving much of a scar. From κ 460 one could go straight on to μ 24, eliminating not only the Nekyia but the year’s stay with Circe.55

55

So H. Brausewetter, De Necyia Homerica (Königsberg 1863), 27 f., reported by Kammer 484.

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Alternatively, keeping the year’s stay, κ 489 could be followed by μ 23.56 In either case μ 32–5 would have to be altered, but the text would continue logically with Circe’s instructions for the following adventures (37 ff.). It is striking that in the two places later in μ (267, 272) where Teiresias and Circe are named together as having given warning about Thrinakia, Teiresias is easily treated as a secondary addition, and that the passage where Odysseus tells Penelope about Teiresias’ prophecies (ψ 241–88) also stands out as an insertion; their dialogue in ψ 300–43, in which the Hades visit has its place in his recital of his wanderings, was composed after that. (See pp. 294–6.) The other place where the Nekyia may seem to be presupposed is ν 383, where Odysseus shows knowledge of Agamemnon’s fate. On the other hand he simultaneously appears unaware of what Teiresias had told him about the situation in Ithaca. This all suggests that the Nekyia, while not an interpolation by a different poet, may have been a secondary insertion in its present place. The episode is a hybrid of two disparate things: (a) a necromantic ritual summoning up a dead seer or family member, (b) a descent to the world of the dead with a survey of what is to be seen there.57 The first (which is what the term nekyia properly denotes) corresponds to a practice that existed in parts of the Greek world and Asia Minor. It did not involve travelling to the ends of the earth but going to an oracular centre; it might be one where a particular seer was buried, for example Lebadeia where Trophonios could be consulted. There was an oracle of the dead in Thesprotia where the soul of a loved one might be raised, near two rivers, Acheron and Kokytos, that bore the names of rivers in Hades.58 These rivers are named in κ 513–15 as 56 So H. Köchly, De Odysseae carminibus dissert. (Zurich 1862–3), iii. 19; Bergk 688 n. 80; Niese 167 n. 2 (losing μ 32–5); Jacob 443. The beaching of the ship and stowing away of the cargo and tackle (κ 403 f. ~ 423 f.) point to a long stay, not just an overnight one, and the year makes a significant contribution to the requisite duration of Odysseus’ absence from home. 57 E. Norden, P. Vergilius Maro. Aeneis Buch VI (3rd edn., Berlin 1927), 200 n. 2; Hartmann 212. 58 Hdt. 5. 92η. 2, where Periander’s dead wife is summoned up; Paus. 1. 17. 5. For other sites see E. Rohde, Psyche (Eng. edn.), 133; T. Hopfner, RE xvi. 2232 f.; Germain 372 f.; M. P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion i (3rd edn., Munich 1967), 170. Teiresias is said to have formerly had an oracle at Orchomenos: Plut. De def. orac. 434c. He was at home in the Theban saga, and his appearance in the story of Odysseus is surprising. Cf. Reinhardt 93; Erbse 31, ‘Der Teiresias unseres Gedichtes entstammt der thebanischen Sage (oder dem thebanischen Epos), ähnlich wie die meisten Heroinenlegenden’ (in λ 225–327).

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roiling near the spot where Odysseus will perform his necromantic ritual. It has long been inferred that the scene has been transferred from a Thesprotian setting to the shore of Ocean.59 In two of his false stories Odysseus represents himself as having gone to Thesprotia and sought advice at its more famous oracular site, Dodona (ξ 321–30, τ 271–99). Perhaps Q adapted this from an earlier version of his composition in which Odysseus did land in Thesprotia before reaching Ithaca and consulted the ghost of Teiresias there.60 Alkinoos promises to send Odysseus to his homeland or wherever he wants to be taken (η 320). In our poem he is taken straight to Ithaca, but in an older version he might have chosen to go to Thesprotia first (cf. τ 281–4). From there he could have got a passage home on a Thesprotian ship, just as, in the tale he tells Eumaios, the Thesprotian king had promised would happen when Odysseus returned from Dodona. The other element of the compound is a Katabasis, a descent to Hades, something that was to be found in several epics: the Nostoi, the Minyas, the pseudo-Hesiodic Descent of Peirithoos; there may have been an early Katabasis of Orpheus. Q’s particular model may have been a Katabasis of Heracles, as Heracles refers to his own descent in λ 623–6.61 Such accounts of the underworld may often have been presented in the first person, as only the person who went there could truly say what he had seen. (Cf. Bethe ii. 138 f.) His purpose in going is usually to try to gain or regain possession of someone or something and bring him, her, or it back to the upper world: Heracles goes to capture Cerberus, Peirithoos goes in the hope of making Persephone his bride, Orpheus goes to recover Eurydice. The venturer would normally enter Hades through an entrance at Tainaron or wherever; the Oceanic location in the Odyssey is as anomalous as it is for the necromantic procedure.

59 Schwartz 137–50 argued that it came from a separate poem, a Thesprotis; so Wilamowitz 1927: 79; Von der Mühll 724; cf. Merkelbach 219–30. The lines with the rivers look like an insertion (see p. 213 n. 111), but probably one by Q. Pausanias (1. 17. 5) supposed Homer to have transferred the Thesprotian names to Hades: ῞Ομηρός

τέ μοι δοκεB τα7τα tωρακZς Cς τε τ5ν Vλλην ποίησιν ποτολμ0σαι τKν =ν

῞Αιδου κα δ5 κα τS νόματα τοBς ποταμοBς π. τKν =ν Θεσπρωτίδι θέσθαι; cf. Nitzsch iii. 157. 60 Woodhouse 144–50 thinks that in ‘the Saga’ he consulted both Dodona and Teiresias shortly before reaching Ithaca. S. West 1981: 172 and Danek 216–19 more persuasively take Dodona in the false stories as a substitute for the necromancy. 61 Von der Mühll, Phil. 93 (1938), 9 f. Cf. Θ 366–9 and perhaps Ε 395–7.

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The purpose of Odysseus’ mission is that Teiresias may tell him

Dδ.ν κα μέτρα κελεύθου | νόστον θ᾽, bς =π πόντον =λεύσεαι Qχθυόεντα, ‘the way, the measure of your return road over the fishy sea’ (κ 539 f.). This ought to mean the stages that he must follow to

find his way home to Ithaca. In the event Teiresias tells him very little about that, only that Poseidon is angry with him because of Polyphemos and that ‘when’ he comes to Thrinakia where Helios’ herds graze it will be crucial to avoid harming them. Circe herself will tell him this when he returns to her, together with much additional practical information about his route. The greater part of what Teiresias has to say does not concern his homeward journey at all but subsequent events, from overcoming the suitors to the end of his life (λ 113–37). The mismatch between this, which lies seven and more years in the future, and what Odysseus needs to know more immediately (and what Circe implied that he would be told) lends further weight to the argument that the proper time for the consultation of Teiresias was shortly before Odysseus reached home, and the proper place for it a location not far from Ithaca. In other words it was conceived for a Thesprotian setting and has been awkwardly transferred into the middle of the Circe episode. In the original Thesprotian version Odysseus may well have seen his mother as well as Teiresias (as Periander’s wife’s ghost appeared and spoke to his envoys at the Thesprotian oracle, Hdt. 5. 92η. 2), but not whole processions of other ghosts: they are a Katabasis motif. The seer will have warned him not to return home openly and not to reveal himself to Penelope.62 If the motif of Poseidon’s wrath played a larger role in that version than it does in our poem, it was appropriate also for Teiresias to advise Odysseus of the further journey he must undertake in order to lay the god’s anger finally to rest (λ 121–34 ~ ψ 248–81). He could look ahead to the end of Odysseus’ life in the same way as Proteus looks ahead to the end of Menelaos’ in δ 561–9. In order to relocate the encounter with Teiresias to the middle of the Wanderings it was necessary to conceive the notion that from

62 This may be the source of the ill-placed fragments of advice found in Agamemnon’s mouth at λ 441–3 and 454–6 (the latter absent from some ancient copies). Hölscher 1988: 107 f., 111, argues from folk-tale material that the underworld is properly the ultimate stage of the hero’s journeyings, that it is there that he learns of his wife’s impending marriage to another man, and that it is from there that he is magically transported home just in time.

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Circe’s island, which the Argonautic tradition sited somewhere not far from Oceanus’ shore, it was possible to sail over to the entrance to Hades. Here we must entertain the possibility of influence from the Gilgāmesh epic.63 There is a certain analogy between Circe and the divine alewife Shiduri, whom Gilgāmesh, having passed through the gates of the sunrise, meets in a shining garden by the sea.64 He desires to reach Ūta-napishti, the survivor of the Flood, to whom the gods have granted eternal life at the ends of the earth, and he asks Shiduri how he can cross the sea to reach him. Shiduri tells him it is very difficult; no one but the Sun-god has ever crossed that sea,65 and the way is barred by the Waters of Death.66 But Ūta-napishti’s boatman is nearby, and with him Gilgāmesh succeeds in making the crossing. On the further shore he meets that sage from the past, Ūtanapishti (and his wife), who gives him philosophical advice and directs the boatman to take him home. So Odysseus, after a day’s crossing, reached the foreshore of Hades. There, by using the established necromantic ritual, Teiresias’ ghost could be summoned up, and other ghosts too. Q took the opportunity to augment the episode with a wide-ranging survey of the inhabitants of the other world. He was able to draw material from one or more Katabasis poems. He tries to maintain the principle that it is not a Katabasis, Odysseus does not enter Hades, and the ghosts come out to drink the blood from the pit he has dug. But in the course of the episode the blood-drinking fades out of view and sights are described that Odysseus could not have seen without himself being in Hades. This is most obviously the case in the last section, where he sees Minos judging disputes, Orion hunting, and several famous sinners undergoing punishments. Such spectacles were no doubt typical of the Katabasis genre, and Q will be drawing on poetry of that sort.

63

Cf. West 1997: 404–10. Gilg. IX 169–X 91, cf. I 40. In the Old Babylonian version he also met the Sun-god himself. 65 Gilg. X 79–82. Cf. Odysseus’ question to Circe in κ 501 f., ‘who will guide me on this journey? No one has ever reached Hades by ship.’ 66 On the Waters of Death (mê mūti) cf. George i. 499 f.: ‘By virtue of their name, it is difficult to dissociate these lethal waters from the body of water that the dead traditionally crossed on their way to the Netherworld. . . . It seems reasonable to suggest . . . that the lethal river and the encircling ocean . . . could be identified with one another.’ 64

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This concluding section in fact stands out as an insertion, the original continuity of 564 with 628 being broken with a risible transition. (See the fuller discussion in the next chapter, pp. 222 f.) This was Q’s last addition to the structure. He had begun with the Teiresias and Antikleia scenes. At the end of Antikleia’s dialogue with her son she urges him to hasten back to the world of light without delay (223), and this looks like a sign that in an earlier version he did so; he had done what he needed to do in Hades. Then Q widened the picture to take in a much more extensive parade of ghosts. From Antikleia he passes on to a series of other women, longer dead and more famous. They will later be balanced by a group of outstanding male heroes, ones at whose side Odysseus fought at Troy. These bring us back closer to his personal concerns; the heroines were interesting to meet but of no relevance to him. The same applies to the figures who appear in the final expansion, Minos and the rest.

CALYPSO Calypso has a good deal in common with Circe. Like her she is a divine nymph living on a remote wooded island with only her maidservants; she sings at her loom; she shows affection towards Odysseus, keeps him on her island for a prolonged stay, and eventually helps him on his way, sending a following wind. As Circe has a background in the Argo story, while Calypso has no such credentials, it is often supposed that Calypso is no more than a doublet of Circe, created for the Odyssey.67 We have seen that the seven years that Odysseus spends with her appear to be a late addition to the tale. They pass entirely without event. Calypso does not try to bewitch the hero, as Circe does. They just live quietly together. She could have borne him four or five children in the time available, but she has none. Her island 67 Niese 184 f., 189; Wilamowitz 1884: 115 f.; 1927, 177 f.; Meuli 60–5 = 633–6; Schwartz 223 f.; Von der Mühll 712; Merkelbach 217; Reinhardt 77–87; Danek 200. Calypso shows further similarities to Shiduri in the Babylonian epic. Shiduri is described as ‘veiled with a veil’, which might be relevant to Calypso’s name. Before he can make his voyage Gilgāmesh, having smashed the boat’s usual means of propulsion, has to fell 300 trees to make enormous, single-use punt-poles to be used in crossing the Waters of Death (X 159–68). The scene recalls the one where Calypso sends Odysseus into the forest to fell trees for his boat (ε 63–75).

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serves simply as a kind of idyllic Alcatraz, a place to keep him imprisoned until the gods decide to do something about it and get him home. So before Q passed his seven-year sentence on Odysseus, was there any place for Calypso in the story? Some have posited a version in which, when Odysseus’ ship was destroyed after leaving Thrinakia, he was carried directly to Scheria: Calypso and her island had not yet been invented and played no role.68 They note that this agrees precisely with what the disguised Odysseus tells Penelope that he has heard in τ 273–82: that Odysseus lost his ship and his men after leaving Thrinakia, Zeus and Helios having been angered by the men’s violation of Helios’ cattle; that he clung to the keel and the waves brought him to the land of the Phaeacians, who treated him well, gave him many gifts, and were all set to bring him safely home. The story there diverges: Penelope is told that Odysseus asked the Phaeacians to land him in Thesprotia, which is where he is now. There may have been such a Calypso-less version, but I propose an alternative. Calypso is a daughter of the baleful Atlas, of him who knows all the sea’s depths and holds the tall columns that keep heaven and earth apart. Her island is at ‘the Navel of the Sea’, Pθι τ᾽ μϕαλός =στι θαλάσσης (α 50–5). What might the Navel of the Sea be? We are more used to hearing of the Navel of the Earth, which is the earth’s central point, located at Delphi. If you are in Greece there are seas to east and west and south, and perhaps north: would the centre of the sea not be somewhere in the Aegean? Q must mean something different. I take his Navel of the Sea to stand for the point that is most remote from all land. In an earlier version of the story, before the importation of the Argonautic adventures, it marked the extreme limit of Odysseus’ travels, the place at which his situation seemed most hopeless, furthest from any land and with no ship. I have suggested in Chapter 3 that Q knew and drew upon a poem about Heracles’ Labours. Heracles visited Atlas in his quest for the golden apples of the Hesperides. Before reaching Atlas himself, I suspect, he came to Atlas’ daughter, and she helped him in some 68 Niese 185–7, cf. Kirchhoff 213, 523; Wilamowitz 1884: 128, 136; Hennings 166; Finsler ii. 296; Reinhardt 91; contested by Focke 97–9. In Niese’s version the proem, with its reference to the Thrinakia episode (α 7–9), led straight to Odysseus’ landing on Scheria, and there was no Telemachy.

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way to find or deal with her father. It is a typical folk-tale motif that a wanderer in need, arriving in the realm of a powerful male figure, first encounters his daughter, who helps him to get what he wants. Medea helped Jason to get the Golden Fleece in spite of her father Aietes; in the Odyssey itself Nausikaa helps Odysseus to get a favourable reception from Alkinoos, and the daughter of Proteus helps Menelaos to get what he needs from her father, the Old Man of the Sea. So perhaps Calypso helped Heracles in regard to Atlas. Q had no thought of bringing Odysseus to Atlas, but he wanted a quiet location in the far west at which his hero could be marooned (for a shorter or longer time), and the Heracles poem might have provided him with Calypso’s island.

THE PHAEACIANS After leaving Calypso and before reaching Ithaca, Odysseus spends a couple of days among the Phaeacians on their island of Scheria. We saw in the last chapter that this people was not Q’s own invention69 but a real people of the north-west, made fabulous by rumour and moved far from their true location. Perhaps they had a place in Odysseus’ wanderings before Q, or perhaps he took them over from some other legendary context. Alkinoos in θ 31–3 says that it is their custom to transport castaways to their homes. This is what they will do for Odysseus, and it is the primary reason for their appearance in the poem. Once they have taken him home their occasional contacts with the Aegean cease, so that nothing is heard of them any more: this means that they have no place in the world known to Q. But who besides Odysseus had ever benefited from their repatriation service? It has the appearance of something invented for the Odyssey. In this case, if they had any prior existence in poetic tradition, it must have been in some different function. The mention of an occasion when

69 As Nitzsch thought, ii. 78, ‘ohne die Lage Scheria’s irgend genau zu fixiren, ohne die Berichte von einem bestimmten Volke im Sinne zu haben, schuf Homer für den Gang seines Gedichts ein Wundervolk’; 165, ‘überhaupt also spreche man doch nicht von den Phäaken, als wäre Homer in einer Episode seines Gedichts ihr Geschichtschreiber geworden, sondern erinnere sich wohl, dass sie nur für Odysseus und den Verlauf der Odyssee da sind’.

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they took Rhadamanthys past Euboea to view Tityos (η 321–6) may be a clue, but it is not one that we can build on.70 Welcker argued that the Φαίηκες, understood as the ‘Grey Folk’, were adapted from a northern barbarian myth of the ferrymen of the dead. He was thinking of the Frankish or Celtic myth related by Procopius (Bell. Goth. 4. 20. 48–57), in which ghosts are conveyed across the sea at night in a boat that travels with miraculous speed.71 This is certainly suggestive of the background from which the idea of the marvellous, self-navigating ships and the swift nocturnal passage might derive. It is these ships that set the Phaeacians apart from ordinary men and make Scheria an ideal halfway house between the more fantastic world in which Odysseus has been adrift and the real world that he is to re-enter. He makes the final transition wrapped in sleep as one of the magical ships speeds him home overnight.72 In other respects Q portrays the Phaeacians as a civilized people with a Hellenic-style culture, though they keep themselves to themselves. They do not appear to trade or to use their vaunted maritime skills for anything other than to transport occasional passengers over long distances. Their island lies out to the west, on the route between Calypso’s island and Ithaca; it is beyond all known settlements of men, so beyond Sicily, which Q knows of but avoids mentioning in the context of Odysseus’ wanderings. When Odysseus went west his first landfall, as we have seen, was on the north African coast, and no doubt his second, at the land of the Cyclopes, was imagined as being further west on the same land-mass. On his return from Calypso he will not be retracing the same route but taking a more northerly one.

70 See the remarks on the passage in the next chapter, p. 190. Cf. Danek 134, ‘Mit der Aussage, daß die Phaiaken fernab von allen Menschen wohnten, wird auch hier darauf verwiesen, daß es keine Erzählungen über den Kontakt zwischen den Phaiaken und anderen Menschen gibt; soviel sagt die Odyssee ausdrücklich, und damit ist belegt, daß die Phaiaken in keinem anderen Kontext als dem der Abenteuer des Odysseus bekannt waren. Das könnte aber auch bedeuten, daß es überhaupt keine Erzähltradition über die Phaiaken gab, der Hörer diese also auch nicht aus anderen Versionen der Odyssee kennen konnte.’ 71 Welcker, Kl. Schr. ii. 11–22, 65–79; cf. Reinhardt 121. In West 2007: 389 f., I have put the myth in a comparative Indo-European context. 72 Cf. Germain 289, ‘Ainsi Ulysse ne saura plus rien de la route tenue et ce coureur des mers lui-même ne pourrait, éveillé, retrouver la contrée disparue’; Marzullo 185, ‘Il sonno di Odisseo infatti impedisce più di ogni altra cosa di chiarire la strada e il rapporto che i Feaci legano ai mortali; permette insomma di isolarli completamente nel mondo di favola’.

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The Phaeacians, we are told, live well away from the Cyclopes, who used to be their neighbours (ζ 4–8). So Scheria should be somewhere in the more northerly waters of the Western Sea, somewhere in the region where the Phocaeans were to found their colony of Massalia/ Marseilles around 600 bce. Nothing much has to happen in this episode, and Q is able to shape it with a free hand. He composes fluently and on an ample scale, taking more than four hundred lines to bring Odysseus from the beach to Alkinoos’ palace and eight hundred more before he starts on the main account of his wanderings. Along the way we find further evidence of how he modified and expanded his narrative in the course of composition. After reaching the Phaeacians’ shore Odysseus has first to be brought into contact with them. We might expect him to allay the worst of his hunger pangs with some wild figs, make his way inland, and there encounter the king’s daughter as she is fetching water from a fountain. That is so much the conventional story pattern that one critic has felt that it must have stood in the original version.73 What Q gives us instead is something much more original and delightful, imaginatively worked out at a leisurely tempo in ζ. He starts not from Odysseus waking up in the bushes but from Nausikaa dreaming in bed. It all reads like fresh invention, not something borrowed from another bard. The motif of Odysseus’ nakedness, which is purposefully prepared for in ε 321–343–372, is integral to this version and would not have suited one in which he had to trek inland before meeting a Nausikaa who was not equipped with a pile of clothing. The fountain motif does appear in what follows. After Nausikaa has left him, Odysseus sees a girl carrying a water-pail and asks her for directions; it is Athena in disguise (η 19 f.). She gives him further information to supplement what Nausikaa has told him about the Phaeacians, the royal family, and what he will find in the palace. The genealogy given for Alkinoos and Arete is one place where Q has

D. Mülder, NJb. 17 (1906), 34, ‘Der ursprüngliche Zusammenhang der Vϕιξις εQς Φαίακας war der, daß der schiffbrüchige (bekleidete) Held auf eigene Hand den 73

zur Stadt führenden Weg einschlug, an der Quelle vor dem Stadttore Halt machte, bis er ein wasserholendes Mädchen traf, das sich seiner annahm’. The motif occurs at η 19 ff. and κ 105 ff. Fetching water from fountains was a conventional motif in contexts where girls were to be met or seen in public, cf. West 2013: 122 (on Polyxena in the Cypria); Hymn. Dem. 105–7; Thgn. 263–6.

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expanded on his original text, in which it was stated that Arete was born ‘of the same parents’ as Alkinoos, =κ δ6 τοκήων | τKν ατKν, ο/ περ τέκον ᾽Αλκίνοον βασιλ0α (η 54 f.). This cannot really mean anything other than that she is her husband’s sister, and she is said to have been so registered in ‘Hesiod’ (fr. 222).74 A brother–sister marriage would not be unique in the mythology of the Odyssey, for the sons and daughters of Aiolos are all married to each other (κ 6 f.). But there immediately follows in 56–66 a genealogy according to which Arete is not Alkinoos’ sister but his niece.75 It is not an alien interpolation, because it is presupposed later (146) when Odysseus addresses her as ‘daughter of Rhexenor’. And it is in keeping with Q’s general conception of the Phaeacians’ history and historical associations: the former king Nausithoos, from whom the line begins, was mentioned earlier at ζ 7, while the Gigantes, a daughter of whose king Nausithoos married, will be mentioned at 206, where the Phaeacians are said to have the same kind of relationship with the gods as the Cyclopes (their original neighbours) and Gigantes. The genealogy is evidently a secondary expansion by Q, made for the sake of fictional detail rather than from belated misgivings about the incest. In the earlier text 55 was perhaps directly followed by 103–30, the descriptive passage in the present tense which, as noted above, has been ineptly relocated in a narrative context. Both Nausikaa and Athena impress on Odysseus that he should make straight for Arete and address his supplication to her. So he does; but he widens his appeal to include Alkinoos and all the banqueters (η 147 f.), and our expectation that Arete will make a decisive response is not met. Others step in, and no reaction comes from her till 233, after Alkinoos has set out the agenda for the morrow and sent the banqueters home for the night. We discern a simpler and more coherent underlying narrative in which Odysseus found Alkinoos and Arete at home on their own (as Nausikaa seemed to anticipate in ζ 304 ff.) and there was no larger company of diners. 74 Cf. Kirchhoff 205, 320 f.; Hennings 187 f., 190 n.; Wilamowitz 1916: 499, 502; Schwartz 19; Bolling 236; Merkelbach 160 n. 1. 75 There would be no contradiction if the term τοκ0ες in 54 meant not just ‘parents’ but included grand- and great-grandparents. It may originally have had this inclusive sense, like γονεBς in Attic law (Isaeus 8. 32; W. Schulze, Kl. Schr. 332 f.). But it is not likely that a poet would introduce a marriage between uncle and niece (a common enough thing in mythology) with the statement that they came from the same τοκ0ες.

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Arete answered his appeal directly as in 237–9: ‘Who are you? Where are you from? And who gave you those clothes?’ This could have led straight on to the Apologoi.76 As it is, Odysseus does not answer the question about his identity and only explains how he had been marooned on Calypso’s isle, how he had reached Scheria in destitute state, and how Nausikaa had given him clothing and assistance. Q has rightly judged that he could not make him pour out the whole story of his adventures immediately after appearing so suddenly in the palace. It must come later, after he has enjoyed a day or two of relaxed hospitality.77 Alkinoos does not pursue the matter of the visitor’s name, but expresses the greatest good will towards him and promises to send him home the next day, that is, the next night, as it will be a night voyage and he will be sleeping (318 f.). Q will have to fill the day with other activities, culminating in Odysseus’ recital of his wanderings. Alkinoos has already arranged for the elders to come in the morning and feast with the stranger (189 f.). When morning comes he takes Odysseus to the agora, presents him (still as a nameless xenos) to the council, calls for a ship to be made ready for the voyage, and invites the rowers and the basileis to feast in the palace.78 The bard Demodokos is brought, and he sings of an event involving Odysseus. The hero is upset by it, and Alkinoos notices his distress. It will be a similar moment later in the day, a song by Demodokos bringing Odysseus to tears, that provokes Alkinoos to closer questioning and Odysseus then to give the full account of himself. Q may originally have intended the bard’s first song to have this effect. Odysseus’ recital would then have filled out the day nicely, and at nightfall he would have departed for home.79 But Q has thought of another diversion. Alkinoos takes his guest’s discomfort as a cue for abandoning the banquet and holding some athletic contests instead. This is a new theme (θ 22 f., which anticipate it, are no doubt an insertion); everything so far has suggested that after the meal the

76

Cf. Kirchhoff 208, 277–9; Schwartz 21; Schadewaldt 1970: 82, 84 n. 8. The diners are already anticipated in 49 f. 77 On the continued withholding of Odysseus’ name see the illuminating extended discussion in Fenik 5–60. 78 Originally it seems to have been just the latter; again we detect a modification. See p. 191. 79 Cf. Kirchhoff 212; Schwartz 24; Merkelbach 168.

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rowers will take Odysseus to the ship and depart for Ithaca. Moreover, as things stand, the games break a logical connection. Scholars since Nitzsch have noted that Odysseus’ complimenting Demodokos on his knowledge of the Trojan War (489–91), and his request to ‘change your path’ to the story of the Wooden Horse, ought to follow on his first song, not appear at a point where the bard’s last performance had been in a different place and on the completely non-Trojan theme of the love of Ares and Aphrodite.80 Other critics have suspected that his first song was originally meant to lead straight on to the questioning of Odysseus and the Apologoi; it was noted that one could join up 83 with 522 (Hartel), or 93 with 533 (Köchly),81 without leaving a detectable gap. These hypotheses eliminate from the original text the games, Demodokos’ second and third songs, and the duplication of Odysseus’ emotional reaction. But they miss the full significance of Nitzsch’s observation, which implies a text without the games but with Demodokos’ two Trojan songs. In the light of this we should divide primary and secondary layers as follows: Primary 62–70 Demodokos installed 71–82 His first song

Expansion 83–92 Odysseus moved to tears 93–104 Alkinoos proposes games 105–420 Games, gift-giving 421–70 Return to palace and feasting 471–3 Demodokos reinstalled

474–98 Od. compliments him 499–520 His second song 521–31 Odysseus moved to tears.

In order to introduce the games Q replicated after Demodokos’ first song the motif of Odysseus’ tears which he was going to use later to introduce the Apologoi. His motive for making the expansion was perhaps that when Demodokos first sang it was no later than midmorning and there was nearly a whole day to be filled before Odysseus’ transportation home, which was to be overnight (η 318). Q may have felt that the Apologoi, lengthy though they were to be, were not appropriate for filling up the main part of the day and that they belonged in an evening. So he introduced the games as a fitting 80

Nitzsch ii. xlviii, 225 f., 229. Or (what is essentially the same thing) 92 with 532 (Niese), or 95 with 535 (Hennings). 81

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episode of daytime activity. Incidentally they afforded various opportunities for showing Odysseus in a creditable light.82 There is a further substantial expansion within the games: Demodokos’ second song, the lay of Ares and Aphrodite.83 He has been taken along to the games (105–8), but when he is called upon to perform, it is to accompany dancers with lyre music (254–7, 261 f.; cf. δ 17–19). The dancing theme is continued from 265 at 370 ff. Q has seen fit to prolong the entertainment by inserting a complete song from his own repertoire.84 It makes a cheerful interlude that takes everyone’s minds off current concerns, with no risk of upsetting Odysseus. But it does not combine with the dancing, as if the dancers were accompanying it with mimetic movements. The feasting is resumed after the games. Demodokos is brought in, and here comes Odysseus’ complimenting of him together with the request that he now sing an Iliou Persis. This brings the hero again to tears, which leads at last to his telling his own story. It is already evening, and he is still due to take ship tonight. But as the recital unfolds for hour after hour, Q realizes that the timetable has become too tight. Odysseus may keep his audience up till midnight, but his departure will have to be postponed to the next night. The change of plan is artistically effected by means of the Intermission in λ 328–84. See pp. 219 f.

THE HOMECOMING; ODYSSEUS’ BATTLE PLAN The scene where Odysseus leaps up in the doorway, tips the arrows out of his quiver, and starts shooting the suitors (χ 1 ff.) was one with 82 Germain 314 suggests the influence of ‘quelque roman de la mer où le naufragé, accueilli par la fille du roi, la mérite par son triomphe à des épreuves physiques de vertu royale—ce qui expliquerait ces jeux en apparence profanes et les danses qui terminent la fête. La donnée fondamentale de l’Odyssée rendait le mariage impossible, mais il aurait été facile de conserver le thème général comme prétexte à des descriptions agréables.’ 83 Cf. Thiersch 63–8; Nitzsch ii. xlviii, 207 f., 219; Jacob 415–17; Hennings 227–9; Blass 269–72; Focke 146 f.; Dawe 333. 84 Where it might have formed the substance of a hymn to Hephaestus. It is influenced by the great Homeric Dionysus Hymn: Wilamowitz, Kl. Schr. v(2). 12–14; Merkelbach 172 n. 2; R. Janko on Ξ 256–61; West 2011b: 317 n. 9, and in A. Faulkner (ed.), The Homeric Hymns: Interpretative Essays (Oxford 2011), 37 f.

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which a rhapsode could count on thrilling his audiences (Pl. Ion 535b). It is all the more thrilling because, to anyone not familiar with the story, it comes as hardly less of a surprise than it does to Antinoos and his fellows. Up to this point, while we know that Odysseus plans to kill them, the means by which it is to be accomplished has been veiled in artful obscurity. That the hero stands and picks off the trapped, defenceless suitors one by one with his stock of arrows appears a clean and satisfying dénouement. But it turns out to be only the opening stage of a more complicated battle fought largely with spears. Indications earlier in the poem have mostly pointed towards a spear-fight, while inconsistencies between one passage and another suggest that Q had not fully worked out how it was to be. In α 255–66 Athena-Mentes pictures Odysseus appearing in the doorway fully armed with helmet, shield, and two spears, threatening the suitors with immediate death. This seems to foreshadow his fighting the suitors with the spear.85 In ν 393–5 Athena promises to stand by him when the time comes, and she foresees suitors’ blood and brains splattered on the floor, which again points towards a pitched battle (Danek 275). In π 281–99 Odysseus instructs Telemachos to make certain preparations: when he gives him the signal he is to take all the weapons off the walls of the hall and put them away in the storeroom, leaving only two swords, two spears, and two shields for the two of them. This is apparently to be done under the suitors’ noses.86 It envisages a battle between two armed men and an unarmed crowd. As in the surrounding context (π 260 f., 302 f.), Q is not yet reckoning with the assistance of Eumaios and Philoitios, who will support Odysseus and Telemachos in the event. When the removal of the arms takes place (τ 1–34), the circumstances are different from those anticipated in π: the father and son do it

85

Cf. Seeck 134, ‘in der Expositionscene und im Munde der Göttin, welche die Zukunft voraus weiss, sollte man dennoch erwarten, dass die Schilderung des rächenden Helden der Gestalt entsprechen werde, wie wir ihn später unter seine Feinde treten sehen. Insofern passen ja auch die Worte der Athene auf die Gesammtodyssee, als er bei dem Freiermorde wirklich =ν πρώτ|σι θύρ|σιν, d.h. auf der Schwelle steht’; Finsler ii. 264, ‘Das Bild des Odysseus ist dasjenige, das uns im zweiten Teile des Freiermordes entgegentritt, das des rittermäßig ausgerüsteten Helden, und ohne Zweifel weist der Dichter auf dieses Ende hin’. 86 Kammer 586. Lines 286–94, which conflict with this, are evidently a secondary expansion; see p. 249.

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together after the suitors have left. They do not set weapons aside for their own use, so perhaps Q is now planning for Odysseus to kill the suitors with the bow without further ado. It is towards the end of the same rhapsody (571–81) that the bow first comes into view, when Penelope mentions her intention of setting the suitors the archery test. Odysseus encourages her to do so. There is no hint that he has previously thought of using his old bow against the suitors, or that he thinks of it now. He lies awake that night brooding on how he is to fight them, being one against many (υ 5, 48–50). Athena appears and assures him that her help will enable him to overcome the odds, but she offers no advice on how to mount his attack. If he has formed his plan, he is not sharing it with Telemachos, who at υ 385 f. is watching for him to start the fighting, before the bow test has even been announced. Certainly Q by this time has decided what is to happen, but he is keeping it up his sleeve. Odysseus never uses a bow in the Iliad,87 and his expertise with it in the Odyssey seems to be an untraditional feature conferred on him so that Q can use a form of the Returning Husband story that involved an archery contest. Q spins a circumstantial tale about how Odysseus acquired his exceptional bow (ϕ 13–38), appending a lame explanation of why he did not take it with him to Troy (38–41). There are two earlier references to his archery, which appear to have been put in to prepare for his use of it against the suitors. In α 259–65, insinuated into the middle of the vision of his appearing in the doorway as a spearman, is a reminiscence of a journey he once made to Ephyra to obtain poison for arrows. And in θ 215–28 he boasts to the Phaeacians of his prowess with the bow, which he claims to have exercised at Troy, though the lines about Troy (219–28) may be an expansion. At κ 262, setting out to investigate Circe’s house, he takes a bow as well as a sword. By stringing the bow and shooting through the line of axes Odysseus, under the rules of the contest, becomes the only man with the right to claim Penelope’s hand. More may have been made of this in an earlier version. In our poem no one makes the point, and indeed Penelope has assured the suitors that she does not recognize the beggar as their competitor (ϕ 314–19). His success in the contest is

87

The poet of the Doloneia (260) equips him with Meriones’ bow for the night expedition, but he does not employ it, and it would have been of little use in the dark.

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treated as merely the prelude to the more momentous business of killing the suitors. This is the thrilling surprise. But Q is conscious that even if Odysseus has enough arrows, 108 suitors are not going to sit meekly awaiting their turn to die. Moreover, if they were all to be shot by Odysseus, that would leave no role for Telemachos, who has been groomed from the start, if not to kill the suitors himself, at any rate to assist his father when the time comes. Recently (ϕ 188–244) Eumaios and Philoitios too have been recruited as auxiliaries, so that there is now a band of four to face the enemy. The engagement is clearly going to be more than a turkey-shoot. And of course a proper battle between armed forces, with the ‘good guys’ heavily outnumbered, will have more dramatic interest than a onesided massacre. Because Q has muddled his preparations, however, the band of four is seriously under-equipped. Odysseus has his bow, Telemachos has a sword and a spear (ϕ 431–3), but the other two have no offensive weapon, and none of the four has a shield. The suitors too have swords (χ 79), but nothing more; they look to the walls for spears and shields only to find that they have all been removed (χ 24 f.). So for the battle to continue after the shooting phase it is necessary for representatives of both sides to go to the storeroom and fetch more weaponry, which destroys the point of removing it in the first place. It is evident that Q did not think things out properly in advance. The untidy mixture of bow-fight and spear-fight is not likely to have been a traditional feature of the story. The bow was surely the original element. In an earlier section we saw certain indications that in an older version there were only twelve suitors—a more suitable number, incidentally, to accommodate in a Greek dining-hall. It is not difficult to envisage a ‘pure’ version of the story in which Odysseus killed all twelve with his arrows. It would have been a version in which the hero was still unrecognized by everybody and triumphed by his own unaided efforts; there was nothing for Telemachos to do, which means there was no reason for him to exist.88 But Q has recklessly inflated the number of suitors to over a hundred, and when

88 Cf. van Leeuwen 18, ‘Ad adversarios autem duodecim trucidandos neque filii aliorumve auxilio neque hasta vel clipeo opus fuit, plane enim sufficiebant quas in pharetra habebat sagittae (cf. χ 101–104)’.

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it comes to killing such a horde he finds himself forced to reshape the story.89

THE MORNING AFTER Beneath the disorderly battle with the suitors we have discerned an older and neater version in which their number was much smaller, probably twelve, and in which Odysseus, still unrecognized by anyone, killed them all with his arrows. It was a version in which the hero’s familial penumbra was less developed than in our poem: there may have been no Telemachos, no Laertes. Nor was there a civic community in the background from which kinsmen of the suitors would come demanding retribution. Similarly, in the rhapsody that follows the killing of the suitors, we may discern, buried shallow, a neater and more coherent ending to the story than what the Odyssey offers. Odysseus’ identity was revealed to his wife and the household. Joy and festivity broke out, the reunion of the king and queen being celebrated like a second wedding with

89 Cf. Finsler ii. 370, ‘Wie bei den Streitkräften der Ilias und in den Epen aller Zeiten geschieht, nimmt der Dichter den Mund voll, ohne sich nachher darum zu bekümmern, was er mit diesen Massen anfangen soll’; ibid. 258, ‘Vor allem ist der Gipfelpunkt der ganzen Geschichte, der Freiermord, in einer Weise dargestellt, die in hohem Grade auffällt. Der furchtbare, mit dem unentrinnbaren Bogen bewaffnete Rächer hat nicht genug Pfeile, um alle Freier zu erschießen, und muß sich, um das Rachewerk zu vollenden, mit ritterlichen Waffen rüsten. In diesem Teile des Kampfes tritt Athene zu ihm, die beim Kampf mit dem Bogen fehlte. So geschickt die Verbindung beider Teile durchgeführt ist, so kann doch das Ganze nicht einheitlicher poetischer Konzeption entsprungen sein.’ Cf. also Seeck 369. Another viewpoint in Jacoby 112: (the poet of the battle) ‘vermochte, richtiger er wollte den alten Bogenkampf der Novelle nicht aufgeben und ließ lieber die “Unwahrscheinlichkeit” einer Rüstungsszene mitten im Kampf (χ 99 ff.) zu, um seinem Helden die heroischen Waffen der Ilias geben zu können, die sein eigenes Streben nach Heroisierung der Atmosphäre . . . forderte’; Merkelbach 123, ‘Für A dagegen haben sich die Anschauungen schon soweit gewandelt, daß ein Sieg im Bogenschießen kein besonderes Ruhmesblatt mehr für Odysseus war. A hielt es für nötig, daß Odysseus sich auch mit den Waffen als Held bewähre, welche der zeitgenossische Adel für allein standesgemäß erachtete. Wenn aber Odysseus sich als Hoplit hervortun sollte, so mußten auch seine Gegner mit den gleichen Waffen bewaffnet sein; denn ein Sieg des mit Helm und Schild ausgerüsteten Odysseus über die wehrlosen Freier wäre keine Heldentat gewesen.’

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music and dancing. When the time came they repaired to their bed. The long years of separation were over. the end. In our poem it cannot be the end, because Odysseus still has to be reunited with Laertes, whose continuing existence out in the country has been mentioned several times, and because a settlement has to be reached with the suitors’ families, whose angry response has been anticipated in more than one previous passage. These requirements follow from the fuller familial and civic contextualization of the Homecoming discussed in an earlier section of this chapter. They entail a further day of action. Q has also modified what had been the closing scenes. The music and dancing, instead of being a celebration of Odysseus’ and Penelope’s reunion, are now initiated before she has finally accepted his identity, and they are given a different, notably strained motivation: as a pretended celebration of a marriage of Penelope to one of the suitors, to prevent news of the slaughter from leaking out, so that Odysseus and his allies will be able to leave the palace the next morning before the suitors’ families can come after them (ψ 117–52). They are to leave the palace, not because the confrontation with the suitors’ kin is to be evaded but because Q has opted to stage it and the reunion with Laertes at the same location outside the town. There is some artificiality in this. The suitors’ kinsmen go out to Laertes’ place to fight Odysseus and his supporters, but it is not explained how they know where Odysseus has gone. Odysseus’ men are preparing for them, but it is not explained how they know they are coming. There are other unsatisfactory features in this last section of narrative, notably that Penelope is left behind at the end of ψ and not heard of again, and that the final scene, ending with the reconciliation of the opposing parties, is perfunctory. We have a clear sense that Q is eager to finish off. But everything that happens is necessary given his premises. Those scholars who have wished to dispense with part or all of what follows ψ 296 would leave his structure visibly incomplete.

BELOW THE SURFACE At various points in this chapter we have detected the lineaments of earlier versions underlying Q’s narrative. I list seven cases:

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Older version

Newer version

Odysseus has wandered for three years, partly in the eastern Mediterranean. Telemachos is still an adolescent.

The eastern Mediterranean is excluded from his wanderings. They are extended to ten years; Telemachos is in his early twenties.

Telemachos calls a public meeting.

He also goes on a voyage to Pylos (and initially Crete, replaced by Sparta).

A more compact Phaeacian section: Arete is Alkinoos’ sister; Odysseus finds them at home alone; there are no athletics; his departure is scheduled for the second night.

A longer, revised royal genealogy; Odysseus finds the palace full of banqueters; athletics fill much of the second day; his departure is delayed to the third night.

The Phaeacians bring Odysseus to Thesprotia, where he consults Teiresias.

They bring him direct to Ithaca. The Teiresias scene is transferred to an earlier stage in the wanderings and amplified in two stages.

Penelope has twelve suitors, all from Ithaca.

Many additional suitors from other islands: total 108.

Odysseus, still unrecognized by anyone, kills them all with the bow.

He has made himself known to Telemachos and two herdsmen. After his arrows are expended a spear-fight develops.

His reunion with Penelope is celebrated like a wedding, and the poem ends with their retiring to bed.

Wedding-style festivity is used to conceal what has happened from outsiders. There is a further day of action.

We should not suppose that at a certain moment in time there existed an Odyssey characterized by all the features in the left-hand column. We may think of the poem as an archaeological site, with items of interest buried at different depths. The upper layers represent Q’s workings. He never re-laid his floor as a whole but patched over areas of it as he saw opportunities for improvement, often leaving parts of a lower layer visible on the surface or showing through a thin covering of topsoil. Further down are pre-Q layers, representing the version or versions of the story that he received from others. At the bottom lies the proto-Odyssey defined in Chapter 2. We are not in a position to determine how far the tale had developed when Q took it up, and what parts, if any, Telemachos and Laertes had played in it. In some cases we can observe Q changing his plan as he goes. Telemachos’ voyage, I have argued, was not part of the design he started with, but neither is it something he added afterwards: he conceived it in the course of composition and integrated it in the poem as it grew. At first he envisaged Telemachos proceeding from Pylos to Crete, but that too he changed before he had got very far. Similarly he extended Odysseus’ stay among the Phaeacians from two days to

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three, not by making insertions in an existing two-day version but by giving the narrative a new turn at a certain point about three-quarters of the way through. The other alterations to the Phaeacian section are expansions that stand out as belonging to the latest stratum of composition, as it is apparent where they begin and end and where continuities are broken. They look like revisions to a written text; indeed the relocation of η 103–30 from a speech into narrative is really inconceivable except as an operation done on a written text. In the Nekyia we can see two layers of expansion. The first added troops of heroic ghosts to a scene in which Odysseus had spoken only with Teiresias and with his mother. This was not an insertion into a finished text; Q had already conceived it when he composed λ 146–9. (κ 529–37 may be another secondary insertion.) The second expansion, on the other hand, λ 565–627, clumsily breaks the continuity of the text and appears to have been made in a written draft. The reworking of the poem’s ending is another case in which one can see more or less exactly where the newer version abuts on the older. Read up to ψ 240, then 289–99, and you have a conclusion so perfectly fashioned that you feel it must once have served that function. But Q’s poem, as he has elaborated it, cannot end there, for reasons explained above. This may be another case where, as with the Phaeacian section and the end of the Nekyia, we may suspect that the older version was drafted in writing before being revised.

6 Proof of the Pudding Q has completed his Odyssey and left it to us. We receive it with gratitude, and trust he will take it as a compliment if we now subject it to a close examination. We will go through it from beginning to end, following the narrative line but at the same time analysing Q’s moves and explaining his aims and procedures. He is in effect one of the characters, one who has to be kept in view together with his creatures. We shall also deal en passant with various critical problems.

α In the first rhapsody foundations are laid for the later narrative. We learn of Odysseus’ situation and of that prevailing in Ithaca. We are introduced to a number of significant characters: Telemachos, Penelope, the two leading suitors, and the nurse Eurykleia; we also have a sight of the bard Phemios, and we hear about old Laertes’ situation. Athena establishes herself as an active mover of events on Odysseus’ behalf. The poem begins with an invocation of the Muse on the usual pattern. But there is a notable lack of explicitness about the story to be told. Its fame must have been established for some time, and Q’s audience no doubt knew that they were about to hear an Odyssey. So they could immediately identify, without his being named, the ‘man of many shifts who wandered far and wide after sacking Troy, and saw many cities of men and learned their minds’ (1–3). But this does not give any real idea of the narrative

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to follow.1 Q adds a brief mention of the fact that the hero had begun his wanderings with a company of men whom he did not succeed in bringing home. But he leaves aside the eleven shiploads who perished at Telepylos and refers only to the crew of the remaining ship, with a rather pointed statement of how they came to grief through their own folly and the wrath of Helios. The focus is on the immediate background to Odysseus’ presence on Calypso’s island. The Muse is asked to begin ‘from somewhere there’ (10), that is, from the stage where Odysseus had lost all his men and was on his own. The tale of how he reached Ogygia is left for later, and the seven years that he spent with Calypso are passed straight over. Q has chosen to follow a traditional way of beginning an epic by starting from an unsatisfactory, static situation that is resolved after someone complains to the chief god and the gods decide what action to take.2 The story begins, accordingly, with affairs at an impasse, both in regard to Odysseus’ progress and to the situation at Ithaca. Odysseus’ situation is at once set in the wider context of the Return of the Achaeans: all the other survivors from Troy were back at home, while he alone was detained by Calypso in her cave dwelling (11–15). If we have not heard the story before and do not know who Calypso is or how Odysseus came there, we must wait till later for clarification. In any case we take the essential point that he is in a plight. 1 Q may perhaps have been drawing on verses originally composed for the proem of an older version in which Odysseus’ wanderings were partly located in the eastern Mediterranean (see above, p. 115) and in which he did ‘see many cities of men’. For the expression cf. δ 267 f. (Menelaos), θ 574, ο 82, 492, π 63, τ 170, ψ 267. These opening lines, with their focus on Odysseus’ wide travels and the experience he gained in the course of them, have some similarity to the beginning of Gilgāmesh in the Standard Babylonian version, cf. West 1997: 403 f. In the translation of A. R. George (2003) it reads:

[He who saw the Deep, the] foundation of the country, [who knew . . . ,] was wise in everything! [Gilgameš, who] saw the Deep, the foundation of the country, [who] knew [ . . . ,] was wise in everything! [ . . . ] . . . equally [ . . . ,] he [learnt] the totality of wisdom about everything. He saw the secret and uncovered the hidden, he brought back a message from the antediluvian age. He came a distant road and was weary but granted rest. 2

See above, p. 106.

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So far there has been no hint that we are to hear not only of his wanderings but of his homecoming, his conflict with Penelope’s suitors, and his reunion with her. Now (17–19) it is mentioned vaguely that the gods brought him back to Ithaca, and that even there among his friends he had trials to contend with. It is as if Q is deliberately withholding any clear preview of the story he plans to unfold. The time has come for Odysseus to be freed from his isolation with Calypso. The initiative must come from the gods. Most of them pity him (19). They have not done anything till now because Poseidon is hostile towards him; we are not yet told why, it is all kept to the barest outlines. But now Poseidon has gone away on a visit to the Aithiopes at the ends of the earth, so the gods have an opportunity to act without opposition from him.3 They are assembled on Olympus (26 f.); they have not been summoned to consider a particular issue (as in Θ 2, Υ 4), they are just together in casual conversation. Q has not even troubled to show them feasting as in Α 597–602, Δ 1–4, Ω 101. The motif of the gods in colloquy was a traditional mechanism for initiating action.4 Unlike the corresponding scene in Iliad Α, there is no real debate—only Zeus and Athena are featured—and no quarrelling. The matter of Odysseus is not raised immediately. It is Zeus, as often, who initiates the conversation, and he is not the one particularly concerned about Odysseus. He comments on the downfall of Aigisthos, speaking as if this had just happened (35, 43), though it was actually two years earlier on Q’s chronology. The story of Agamemnon’s murder and Orestes’ revenge is the subject of recurrent attention in the Odyssey, making a foil for the happy homecoming of Odysseus, the fidelity of Penelope, and the earnest

3 The Aithiopes serve in the Iliad to motivate temporary absences of the gods collectively (Α 423, cf. Ψ 206). Q avails himself of them despite the oddity of Poseidon’s going there on his own. They are usually conceived as being located in the far east. The doctrine that there is another branch of them in the far west is invented ad hoc, because Poseidon will need to be coming from the west when he sees Odysseus on his way from Calypso towards Ithaca. See below on ε 282–3. Q neglects to specify which Aithiopes Poseidon is visiting, but it must be the western ones. The invention is probably based on the idea that the Aithiopes are black because of their proximity to the sun when it rises (or sets). 4 West 1997: 177–9; 2007: 150 f.

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efforts of Telemachos on his father’s behalf.5 The thesis that mortals are to a significant extent to blame for their own misfortunes through their foolish wickedness (cf. Solon fr. 4. 1–8) reinforces the earlier reference to the fate of Odysseus’ men and sets the moral keynote for the poem. Athena agrees that Aigisthos got his deserts but changes the subject to Odysseus, of whose situation we now hear a fuller account (48–59). We learn who Calypso is and what her island is like, though not yet how Odysseus came to be there. There is no reference to the problems on Ithaca. Zeus assures Athena that he is aware of Odysseus’ situation and in favour of getting him home; the only obstacle has been Poseidon’s opposition, the reason for which, we now learn, is that Odysseus blinded his son Polyphemos.6 (Background information about Polyphemos, as about Calypso in 52–4, is put into the speech for our benefit, not because the other interlocutor needed it.) Now that Poseidon is away, a plan can be made. He will find himself isolated and his anger will abate.7 The unsatisfactory static situation from which Q has chosen to begin his narrative manifests itself in two separate arenas. Odysseus is in the most helpless plight imaginable, marooned on an island at the ends of the earth where no ships exist or ever come. On Ithaca Penelope’s stratagem for holding the suitors off has been found out The use of the phrase μνάασθαι Vκοιτιν (39) for Aigisthos’ adulterous union with Klytaimestra points up the parallel with Penelope’s suitors, who will likewise be killed (cf. 47). The detail that the gods sent a messenger to dissuade Aigisthos is ‘surely an ad hoc invention, intended to underline his criminal folly, and perhaps partly suggested by Hermes’ forthcoming mission to Calypso’ (S. West; cf. Wilamowitz 1884: 13 f.; Hölscher 1988: 262). Klytaimestra’s involvement in Agamemnon’s murder is played down so that Orestes may be more easily represented as a role model for Telemachos (Focke 27, cf. 34). 6 Zeus speaks as if Poseidon were generally responsible for Odysseus’ difficulties in getting home, though they began with the Maleia storm (ι 80), which preceded the Polyphemos episode, and Helios is the only god that Odysseus is aware of as having obstructed his progress before he reached Calypso. It is after he leaves her that Poseidon will make trouble for him (ε 282 ff.), and it is with that in view that Q focuses on Poseidon now. The motif of Poseidon’s wrath is in fact only loosely integrated into the narrative, cf. Nitzsch ii. xxxvii; Jacob 423–9; Düntzer 409–28; Fenik 228 f. 7 Poseidon’s hostility does not in fact abate in the Odyssey; in ε he will do his best to sink Odysseus. He will eventually be propitiated, we presume, if Odysseus after getting home follows the instructions Teiresias gives him in λ 119–33 (~ ψ 248–80). But whether or not Q is looking so far ahead here, he has to posit Poseidon’s reconciliation, as the story cannot end with a god still hostile. 5

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and she has had to abandon it. Telemachos is now big enough to do something, but he remains inactive, his potentialities yet to be revealed; he just sits nursing the wan hope that his father might reappear to deal with the suitors (α 114–16). Q will show us the situation in both arenas, and from there develop two great narrative strands, the Odysseus strand and the Telemachos strand, that will alternate in α–ο and then be woven together in π when father and son are united. To set them in motion Athena proposes action to be taken on both fronts. Hermes should go to Calypso and tell her to send Odysseus on his way, while she herself will go to Ithaca and energize Telemachos. She will incite him first to call a public meeting and rebuke the suitors,8 and then to go abroad seeking news of his father. His voyage abroad might seem the more significant of the two undertakings, but although it will greatly enrich the poem, it will not further the plot. The more essential effect of Athena’s visit is that a hitherto passive Telemachos is switched on, becomes aware that he is an adult, begins to assert his position in the house, and from now on maintains a hostile attitude towards the suitors; he will be ready to assist his father when the time comes. We would expect to hear now that Zeus, or the gods collectively, approved Athena’s proposals. But Q dispenses with such process. The goddess at once sets about her visit to Ithaca; the Olympian scene disappears from view, and the plan for Hermes to go to Calypso’s island is left hanging. Days will pass as we follow Telemachos’ movements through α–δ, after which the Hermes mission has to be reactivated in a second divine assembly. See the discussion in Chapter 5, p. 112. Hermes’ mission is already present to Q’s mind when he describes Athena setting forth in 96–101, for the verses are adapted from the account of Hermes’ going forth in ε 43–9, which in turn derives from Ω 339–45.9 She has assumed the guise of a Taphian leader, Mentes 8 Her casual reference to ‘the suitors, who are constantly slaughtering his sheep and cattle’ (91 f.) is the first mention of them; their part in the story is assumed to be familiar. Cf. 114, 116, etc.; de Jong 13. 9 Didymus implies an athetesis of ‘the lines’ (97–101?) by Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus, and says they (97–101, or just 97 f.?) were absent from the Massalia text. 97 f. could be a concordance interpolation from ε 45 f. But in 100 f., to give Athena something to match Hermes’ rod, Q makes a no less inappropriate borrowing from Ε 746 f., where the spear and its use in felling lines of warriors are altogether more in place. So 97 f. too may be original here. In 127 Telemachos rests her spear against a pillar, for which cf. ρ 29; the two following lines, which refer to a wooden rack full of Odysseus’ spears, do not fit well with this, and look like an addition made in anticipation of the later references to weapons stored in the hall (π 284, τ 4, 17 f.).

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(105); the verse is adapted from Ρ 73, where Apollo takes the form of a Mentes who is a leader of the Kikones. The Taphian Mentes is a new invention. The father’s name given at 180, Anchialos, is suggested by the maritime character of the Taphians. Athena could have appeared to Telemachos and given him directions in her own person as he lay in bed or was otherwise alone, as she does in ο 1–43. But much is gained by disguising her as Mentes. It means that we are at once shown the suitors idling in the palace, with Telemachos disconsolate among them. Mentes can ask him what is going on, which gives him the opportunity to expound the situation for us (224–51). Besides, Athena speaking in her own person could not have forborne to give Telemachos the assurance that his father was alive and would be home before long. She could not plausibly have sent him to make enquiries in Pylos and Sparta, when she knew there was no useful information to be found there and when she herself could tell him much more, with an authority that he could not have queried. But Q did not want him to be enlightened until much later. Our first view of the suitors finds them at idle pleasures, with eating and drinking not far from their minds (106–12). But 106–12 and 144–9 appear to be secondary insertions by Q. In his original account the suitors were already at dinner when Athena arrived. Telemachos, who is sitting among them (114, 118), is evidently indoors in 119 f.; he and Athena are certainly inside in 130 ff., and the suitors seem to be there too (132 f.), while food and drink are already being busily served (136–43). With the insertions, they are initially outside (106–8) and only come in at 144. But the rest of the passage has not been harmonized to accord with this changed mise en scène. Telemachos, named for the first time in 113, is the first to see the stranger. This is poetically convenient, as he is the one Athena wants to speak with. At the same time it is appropriate that he is the one who is alert to the responsibilities of hospitality (119 f. imply that the suitors are being remiss in the matter), and it fits with his continual brooding on the possibility that his father might one day appear (114–16). Once the suitors have done their eating and drinking, they turn to other distractions (150–5), leaving Telemachos and Athena to talk in private. Telemachos first expresses his own bitter feelings about the situation and his pessimistic belief that Odysseus is dead. Then he asks the visitor who he is, where he has come from and how, and

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whether perhaps he was a friend of his father. ‘Mentes’ gives an account of himself, confirming that he is indeed a family friend; Laertes can vouch for him. Thus Q skilfully brings in mention of Odysseus’ aged father, a background figure in the poem, and of his present way of life (189–93).10 To account for his visit Mentes says he has heard a rumour that Odysseus is back in Ithaca. It appears that he is not; but Telemachos may be sure that he is alive and will return before long. He is perhaps being held on an island by savages, but he will certainly find a way to escape. Q has a weakness for prophecies, but this one serves no purpose and Telemachos takes no notice of it, though it is in fact a variant of the truth (197 f. κατερύκεται . . . νήσωι =ν μϕιρύτηι echoes 50, 55). Athena is in a position to prophesy truly; ‘Mentes’ has to say that although he has no professional qualifications as a prophet, he feels that the gods are inspiring him to prophecy. 206–23, in which Mentes asks if he is really speaking to Odysseus’ son, is perhaps an expansion; note the repeated line 206 = 224. Although Telemachos has not hitherto identified himself explicitly (if implicitly in 175), Mentes in 195 f. has not hesitated to identify him, so it is anomalous that he is now treating his resemblance to Odysseus as merely provisional evidence that calls for confirmation. Q wanted to bring in the motif that he will use again in γ 122–5 and δ 140–6, that Telemachos’ likeness to his father is great enough to impress at sight. It reinforces his worthiness in our eyes. 223 brings the first mention of Penelope by name. Mentes moves on to question Telemachos about the carousers in the house (224–9), allowing Q to explain the domestic situation more fully. Mentes makes appropriate comment, picturing how Odysseus would deal with the suitors if he were suddenly to appear at the door with his helmet, shield, and a pair of spears.11 But whether that will happen remains in the lap of the gods (267).

10 To make the first half of 183 Q has taken the second half of Η 88, resulting in an unparalleled treatment of πλέων as a monosyllable. 11 These lines (255 f.) may suggest that Q is thinking ahead to a scenario in which Odysseus will use spears against the suitors, not a bow. But then in 260–5, which could be an expansion, he is described as having been seeking poison for his arrows, as if to bring the bow to mind. Cf. Finsler ii. 264; Rüter 156; de Jong 32; above, pp. 136, 137. His visit to Ephyra (the place for poison, cf. β 328–30) is invented to account for his appearance among the Taphians and acquisition of a friend there.

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The remainder of Athena’s speech is devoted to advice for Telemachos. She makes three recommendations, one for the next day, one for the coming week, and one for the longer term: 1. (272–8). He should call a public meeting tomorrow12 and tell the suitors to go back where they came from. If Penelope wants to remarry, she can go back to her father’s house for him to arrange it. 2. (279–92). He himself should go abroad to seek news of Odysseus. If he hears that he is still alive, he is to hang on for a year in the hope that he will get home; if he learns that he has perished, he is to come home, raise a cenotaph, and find his mother a new husband. 3. (293–302). After completing the first two tasks (which, as Athena/Q knows, will have produced no change in the situation) he should act like a man and start planning to emulate Orestes by killing the suitors in the palace, whether by guile or in open fight. The first two sections correspond to Athena’s programme for Telemachos in 90–5 and to what he will do in β. The third does not correspond to anything that happens later, but Telemachos will assume the role of the suitors’ deadly foe (cf. β 314–17, 325, γ 205 f.) and eventually assist his father in killing them. The parallelism with Orestes is in line with other passages where the saga of Agamemnon’s homecoming is seen as a foil for Odysseus’ (α 29–47, γ 248–316, λ 440–64, ω 192–202).13 Telemachos thanks Mentes for his kindly advice, without remarking on its drastic and far-reaching nature (306–8). He completes his role as courteous host by offering the guest a bath and a leaving present. They are declined for obvious practical reasons, with equal courtesy. Athena makes her excuses and departs in the

12 Epic poets use nightfall to divide up the main phases of their narrative. Q has decided to reserve the current day for scenes in the palace and leave the assembly for the morrow. The phraseology of 272, εQς γορ5ν καλέσας xρωας ᾽Αχαιούς, is borrowed from Τ 34; xρωας ᾽Αχαιούς hardly suits the non-combatant Ithacans. 13 It is conceivable that Q once had the idea of having Telemachos kill the suitors and Odysseus arrive home immediately afterwards, even as Menelaos arrived home just after Orestes had killed his mother and Aigisthos (γ 311). If so, it is not surprising that he dropped this plan and reverted to the one given by the traditional Returning Husband story, which required Odysseus himself to play the major role in the slaughter.

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form of a bird.14 This heartens Telemachos by letting him guess that the visitor was a deity; no one else notices her transformation, cf. 410. The spear she brought with her, on which there was some emphasis earlier (99, 104, 121, 127–9), is forgotten. Telemachos goes to join the suitors (324). They are found as they were left in 155, attending to the bard Phemios’ song. Its theme is now specified: it is the very relevant one of the Return of the Achaeans, familiar to Q and his audiences. Q uses it to motivate an appearance by Penelope. This does not advance the narrative; she is introduced for her own sake, as a major character in the story whom we have not yet seen, and to show us the effect the sight of her has on the suitors.15 She calls upon Phemios to change to a less upsetting subject of song. Telemachos, however, intervenes, surprising his mother with a new assertiveness that Athena’s visit has given him. He says the bard should be allowed to sing on the topical theme he has chosen; Odysseus is far from being the only one who has perished.16 Penelope should go back to her room and resume her spinning and weaving.17 She goes without a word, and the scene is nicely rounded off by putting her to sleep. Athena reappears, as the favouring goddess of the house, to bestow this boon, a motif that Q uses again in several later passages (π 450 f., τ 603 f., ϕ 357 f.). The suitors’ reaction to seeing Penelope, which might in an earlier draft have been put after 335 (cf. σ 207–13), is now appended in a couple of verses probably already used in other contexts; For this motif cf. γ 371, χ 239 f.; West 2007: 152 f. The scholiast (329c) brilliantly compares the early presentation of Helen in the Iliad (Γ 121 ff.). Line 331 is probably based on Γ 143: the attendants are more appropriate for a lady going out of doors, and the image of three women descending the stairs together is a little awkward. 16 He speaks as if accepting that his father is dead; cf. 396, 413. Perhaps we are meant to understand that he is concealing the hope that Athena’s visit has given him (cf. 420). But he is not shown with a consistent attitude; it varies according to the needs of the context. 17 These lines, 356–9, are adapted from Ζ 490–3. Aristarchus athetized them on the ground that they were more appropriate in Ζ and in ϕ 350–3. This is no reason for doubting their authenticity; it is potentially more serious that they were absent =ν ταBς χαριεστέραις γραϕαBς, but perhaps these were copies adjusted to Aristarchus’ views even to the extent of omitting lines that he athetized. Cf. Kirchhoff 175. It is doubtful whether Penelope would have been represented as going back upstairs without a word if Telemachos had not told her to. It remains possible that 359 is a concordance interpolation (cf. Dawe): π*σι, μάλιστα δ᾽ =μοί is as nonsensical here as it is apposite in Ζ 493, while it suits the context somewhat better in the parallel lines λ 353 and ϕ 353, as does the claim to authority in the place. 14 15

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365 (= δ 768) is rather more appropriate in σ 399 (Kirchhoff 176), and 366 in σ 212 (Düntzer 441). Having fulfilled his agenda for the day, Q now, adapting a typical epic structuring device (cf. Η 370–8, Θ 502/530, Ι 705–9, Ψ 48–53), makes Telemachos set the programme for the morrow in line with Athena’s advice: ‘now we will feast, and in the morning we will hold an assembly and I will address you . . .’ (367 ff.). This comes a little early, as it is not yet evening (422); the rest of the day will be spent peacefully enjoying the bard’s singing. (This may be influenced by Α 601–4.) That Telemachos anticipates in detail what he is going to say at the assembly the next morning (374–80 = β 139–45) is hardly felicitous, and might be partly due to concordance interpolation. Hermann and others condemned the whole sequence of lines. But something is needed after 373 to give definition to the ‘harsh words’ and to account for Antinoos’ comment in 385.18 Antinoos and Eurymachos, who speak in response to Telemachos, are the two leading suitors (δ 629 ρχο μνηστήρων). Each is introduced with his father’s name (but in other respects casually), and each is answered by Telemachos. They regularly appear in this order (β 84–128/177–207, π 417–47), and with differentiated ethos, Antinoos being more offensive, Eurymachos more moderate and conciliatory, though two-faced.19 Eurymachos, like Athena in 267, uses the motif of ‘well, this lies in the lap of the gods’ to change the subject (400–11). The stranger’s visit, his conversation with Telemachos, and his abrupt departure have not passed unnoticed, and Q now takes the steps necessary to satisfy the suitors’ curiosity. He draws on Achilles’ dialogue with Patroklos in Π 5–100, firstly with the suggestion that the man may have brought some news of Telemachos’ father (408 ≈ Π 13), then more clearly with Telemachos’ odd and quite unprompted denial that he has obtained some prophecy through his mother (415 ≈ Π 50). He tells them that the visitor was Mentes, the family friend from Taphos, ‘but in his heart he recognized the immortal goddess’ (420): this assures us that he holds on to the intuition he had at 323, is concealing it from the suitors, and will pursue the course of action that Athena has enjoined upon him. The suitors are satisfied with the explanation and return to their merry-making. 18 Cf. Kirchhoff 257; Page 1955: 75; Besslich 13–15. Possibly the speech should end at 375. 19 For a fuller discussion of their characterization see Fenik 198–205.

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At 424–7 comes the typical epic bedtime sequence (Arend 100–5): first the main group retire to their quarters, and then the master of the house settles down. Telemachos’ chamber is described with odd and irrelevant details that are evidently adapted from those of Eumaios’ house in ξ 5 f. (Kirchhoff 177, Hennings 71 f.). There he goes to lie down, with much going through his head (427). This recalls the passages in the Iliad (Β 1–4, Κ 1–4, Ω 677–81) in which, while others sleep, one character lies awake turning things over in his mind. In those cases it leads him to initiate new action during the night. There is no call for that here: the pondering motif simply serves to indicate Telemachos’ state of arousal. It seems evident that Q initially concluded the episode at that point, meaning us to understand that Telemachos got into bed and lay there pondering. But in 428–44 we find that he has not yet undressed. The expansion is designed to introduce us to Eurykleia, another figure who will be important later in the poem.20 At β 345–7 she will be introduced again as if we had not already met her. We gather that she is of good family, and Laertes’ esteem for her testifies to her good character. In 434–42 Q exercises his taste and talent for domestic detail. In 443–4 he makes a new closure by repeating the motif of Telemachos’ pondering, which now continues through the night and focuses on his projected journey abroad.

β Q proceeds at once to the assembly programmed in α 272/372, but as he has just put Telemachos to bed we must first of all see him get up again; and it is he who must take action to bring the assembly about. The lines are partly modelled on Agamemnon’s rising in Β: 3–4 ≈ Β 44–5; 6–9 ≈ Β 50–2 + Α 57 (and α 437 ≈ Β 42: Wilamowitz 1884: 8). This explains the scarcely appropriate use of κάρη κομόωντας ᾽Αχαιούς for the non-combatant male population of Ithaca; cf. n. 12 above. Telemachos’ escort of two dogs (11) is modelled on Penelope’s handmaids in α 331. They are not mentioned again. Athena enhances his appearance (12), as he is to appear as a young man with presence 20

Cf. sch. 429a κριβKς διέξεισι τS περ ατ0ς, =πε πολλS μέλλει δι᾽ ατ0ς

γίνεσθαι.

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who inspires respect from the older citizens. He takes his place in Odysseus’ seat, thus asserting himself as his father’s heir and representative, a status that the elders willingly acknowledge. We are embarked on a story in which Odysseus returns home and overcomes the suitors without the people of Ithaca having any knowledge of it or playing any part in the action. He could no doubt have made things much easier for himself by enlisting their support, but that would have spoiled the story. Q is conscious of a problem here, and the assembly scene represents his attempt to deal with it. We are shown that Odysseus is well regarded and that if his return were to happen, it would be greeted with joy. On the other hand the suitors are able to make a fair case for themselves in view of promises or halfpromises that Penelope has given them over several years. We are not told how the people react on hearing these matters aired, but we have at least had a sight of them and may now be ready to accept their remaining passive and out of the picture until the killing of the suitors arouses their kinsmen to action in ω. The exceptional nature of the meeting is emphasized by an initial enquiry about its purpose from one of the oldest and most experienced men present, Aigyptios (15–34).21 He has been there since before Odysseus went away, and he knows that no assembly has taken place in all that time: political life has been in abeyance. The main debate follows. It consists of eight speeches: Telemachos (40–79) begins by answering Aigyptios and develops this into an emotional plaint to the Ithacans generally, in which he appeals to them to curb the suitors’ activities. Suitor 1: Antinoos (85–128) presents the suitors’ point of view and urges Telemachos to make his mother marry. Until that happens they will not leave.

21 The details in 17–20 about his son Antiphos confirm Aigyptios’ age and at the same time mark him as a friend of Odysseus’ house. As we know that Odysseus will not be bringing any of his companions home alive, Q sees fit to say what became of Antiphos. He does what he can to individualize him, letting him perish not in one of the collective disasters but as one of the six picked out singly by Polyphemos (ι 289, 311, 344). As in α 69, he anticipates the later account of this episode; when it comes, however, the victims are not given any names. Q re-uses the name Antiphos in ρ 68. The further sons in 21 f. serve simply to fill out the picture of Aigyptios and his family. The one who is a suitor is not identified later. Lines 17–24 (deleted by Hennings 32) may be an expansion, as Aigyptios’ speech in 25 ff. shows no sign of his concern for his son.

β

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Telemachos (130–45) says he cannot send his mother away; and now he does what Athena told him to in α 274 and what he told the suitors he was going to in α 373 ff., he tells them to stop plaguing his house. If they will not (as Antinoos has stated), he prays that Zeus will punish them. At this point Zeus sends an omen. Halitherses (161–76) interprets the omen and advises the suitors to leave. Suitor 2: Eurymachos (178–207), dismissing Halitherses’ warning, repeats Antinoos’ call to Telemachos to make Penelope marry and his avowal that otherwise the suitors will stay put. Telemachos (209–23) abandons his appeal to the suitors, announces his intention of going to Pylos and Sparta, and asks for a ship and rowers. If he finds out that his father is dead, he will then arrange for Penelope to remarry. Mentor (229–41) does not refer to any of the preceding speeches, but reproves the Ithacans for sitting silent and failing to remonstrate with the suitors. Suitor 3: Leokritos (243–56) arrogantly declares that the suitors cannot be dislodged. Telemachos can get his ship from the friends of his house who have spoken up for him, Halitherses and Mentor. Comparing this synopsis with the programmatic passages in α (90–2, 272–8, 372–80), we observe that the expected motifs appear— the suitors are told to leave the house, and it is proposed that if Penelope is willing to marry she should go to her father’s house to have it arranged—but not quite in the manner anticipated. It is not until his second speech that Telemachos addresses the suitors and tells them to go away, and the proposal about Penelope comes from them. His plan to go on a voyage, which was to follow the assembly as a separate undertaking (α 93–5, 279 ff.), is introduced into the assembly debate. As his narrative takes its course, Q freely reorders and recombines the given elements. Now for some more detailed observations. Telemachos’ opening speech is given a high profile by his standing ‘in the middle of the assembly’ (37) and being given a sceptre by a herald; the line about the herald is based on Η 278, but his name is taken from that of Eurykleia’s grandfather in α 429. Telemachos’ gesture at the end of his speech (80), when he throws the sceptre to the ground, is modelled on Α 245 (Usener 9–13).

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Antinoos in response presents the suitors’ perception of Penelope’s attitude (87–110). Instead of giving them a straight yes or no, she has temporized. She has even been sending encouraging messages to individual suitors: this is confirmed by Athena in ν 380 f., with an assurance that they do not represent Penelope’s real intentions. But what does she mean by them? We are surely not meant to think that she has been acting flirtatiously. Perhaps we are to understand that she has been trying to sow dissension among the suitors, but we could wish that Q had given us clearer guidance. The hypothesis of an earlier version in which Penelope had been readier to consider remarriage cannot be ruled out. Her sending of messages to different individuals suits a version where the suitors are not spending their days in the palace (F. Wehrli, Mus. Helv. 16 (1959), 231 n. 9). The three years of the suitors’ attentions22 probably reflect a three-year absence of Odysseus in an earlier version (see p. 103). The story of the web (93–110 ~ τ 138 ff., ω 128 ff.) does not harmonize very well with 91 f. and may be a secondary expansion here (Hermann and others).23 115–22 too may be an expansion, linked with the first (Von der Mühll 705); the allusion in 116–18 to skills and cunning imparted by Athena should have to do with the weaving of the shroud. The speech may originally have consisted of 85–92, 111, 113–14, 123–8. Telemachos rejects Antinoos’ call for him to arrange his mother’s remarriage, citing several reasons why he cannot contemplate it (130–7). Instead he demands that the suitors depart; this is the démarche he had warned them he was going to make (139–45 = α 374–80). Zeus responds to the appeal to his name by sending a dramatic omen that hints at death for those witnessing it. It fills them with true forebodings (156), but for greater certainty an old man skilled in augury, one Halitherses, speaks up and spells out the meaning of the sign. As it portends death for the suitors, he surmises that Odysseus is not far off. His inference is wrong but his practical advice sound. The suggestion of Odysseus’ proximity is poetically 22 The chronology in 89, ‘this is the third year, it will soon be the fourth’, suffers a shift in 106 to ‘for three years she did it, but when the fourth came . . .’; see S. West on 89. 23 The web ruse has no functional role in our Odyssey; it is treated as something in the past. It is evidently a leftover from older versions in which it was a more organic element in the plot. Originally the garment being woven was probably not a funeral shroud for Laertes but a wedding dress for Penelope herself (above, p. 105 n. 21).

β

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effective, as in α 194.24 As evidence of his vatic powers Halitherses claims to have uttered a prophecy at the beginning of the war about the circumstances of Odysseus’ return, which is now turning out to be true; this is an ad hoc invention by Q, modelled on Calchas’ prophecy in Β 301–30. His specification of ‘the twentieth year’ (175) is the first reference to this chronology, which is reasserted in η 259–61, ρ 327, τ 222, ψ 102, 170. The second suitor, Eurymachos, pours scorn on Halitherses’ prediction. It is a typical motif that those heading for disaster dismiss a seer’s warning; cf. υ 359–62 (Eurymachos again); Μ 231–43 (Hector similarly denies the significance of a bird omen); Soph. OT 345 ff., Ant. 1033 ff. He then repeats in different words the substance of the last part of Antinoos’ speech (194–207 ≈ 111–28; 195–7 echoes Athena’s words in α 275–8). Telemachos speaks again. He has done the first part of what Athena told him to do in α 272 ff.: he has called on the suitors to disperse and leave Penelope alone, and they have refused. He moves on to the second item on his agenda, his voyage to Pylos and Sparta. As noted above, this was presented in α 279 ff. as something for him to do on his own, apart from the assembly; Athena spoke as if he would have direct access to a ship and crew. His speech about it in the assembly, 208–23, in which he appeals publicly for the resources he needs, looks like an insertion, as it is ignored by Mentor in his following speech and only briefly answered at the end of the scene in 253–6. Cf. Bethe ii. 10, 15; Merkelbach 17–19. We have heard from two elderly supporters of Odysseus, Aigyptios and Halitherses; now a third speaks up. Mentor’s name is a variation on the Mentes of α. Athena will assume his likeness too (268), and it will remain her standard guise (401, χ 206, ω 503, 548). Mentor is introduced as a man to whom Odysseus on his departure had committed the care of his household (226 f.). There is no other reference to his having this responsibility. Danek 75 considers the possibilities (a) that he had played such a role in a variant version, or (b) that it is introduced here ad hoc, to lend plausibility to (Athena-)Mentor’s presently helping Telemachos to arrange his voyage and accompanying him on it. The second alternative is probably the true one. 24 Some have posited a variant version in which Odysseus was indeed already close, but this is unnecessary. The two eagles of the omen seem to portend the alliance of Odysseus and Telemachos (sch. 146a1).

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Mentor does not refer to Telemachos’ appeal, he merely adds his own rebuke of the suitors, and of the Ithacans for not restraining them (229–41). This provokes a third suitor to speak up, Leokritos son of Euenor.25 He dismisses Mentor’s suggestion that they are risking their lives by their assumption that Odysseus is not going to return: even if he did reappear, he would not be able to overcome so many opponents. Here we have an explicit statement of one of the presuppositions of the poem, that the suitors would not simply give way to Odysseus if he were to return, and it would be dangerous for him. The assembly has served its purpose, and Leokritos as the last speaker proposes ending it (252).26 As for Telemachos’ request for resources for his expedition, Leokritos suggests patronizingly that his friends such as Mentor and Halitherses will organize the journey, if he makes it at all. This prepares for Athena’s organizing it in the guise of Mentor. Telemachos goes off by himself to the seashore and prays. The model is Α 349 ff., cf. Α 34 ff. (Usener 10–12). The scholiast acutely notes that he prays to a deity he had not identified (262 ‘thou god that camest yesterday to our house’), while Q specifies that it was Athena. She comes at once in response to the prayer, in the guise of Mentor, and gives him encouragement in a speech that may have suffered expansion.27 She predicts that the suitors will all die at once in the near future: this is offered as a reason why Telemachos should not worry about their present conduct (266), but its real purpose is to stimulate the expectations of Q’s audience. Telemachos takes no notice of it, and he could only have taken it seriously if he had understood (as Q does not appear to make him do) that Mentor is Athena. More practically, she undertakes to find him a ship and to accompany him on the journey. He is to go home, converse with the suitors (preparation for the further dialogue scene 299–336), and make arrangements for provisioning the ship. He appears again only when killed at χ 294. Cf. West 2011a: 103 on Β 76–83. 27 The rambling sentences in 274–80, condemned by Payne Knight, may be secondary. To raise the possibility that Telemachos is not after all Odysseus’ son and will not achieve his aims is inept in the context and contrary to Athena’s purpose, which is to encourage him; he has himself expressed a touch of uncertainty about his paternity (α 215 f.). The sententious observation in 276 f. is inapposite to the argument; and 278–80 are awkwardly contrived to restore the assurance of 270–3 (278 ≈ 270). 25 26

β

159

Telemachos at once returns home. The suitors are found as usual making free with the household’s livestock. The following scene is designed to confront them more directly with the prospect of Telemachos’ voyage and show them reacting to it among themselves, as they could not have done at the public meeting. Antinoos is again the first suitor to speak (303–8), this time the only named one. He greets Telemachos with apparent bonhomie, urging him to enjoy the meal and not worry about the ship and rowers he wants: others (unspecified) will see to them. Telemachos rejects the invitation to fraternize and states his determination to try and punish the suitors. As to the voyage, he declares he has no need of the suitors’ assistance, even though he has no ship or rowers of his own: he will take passage on some passing vessel. Other unspecified suitors’ reactions are described in 324–36. Some are apprehensive that Telemachos’ journey may lead to his being able to do them harm, as he has plainly said he wants to. Others contemplate the more cheerful possibility that it will be the end of him. This hints at their later plot to intercept and murder him (δ 669–73). He goes off to see about provisions for the voyage, as Athena had advised. He finds Eurykleia and confides his plans to her. She is introduced in 345–7 as if we had not met her before, and in a different role from that in which she appeared in α 428 ff.; 347= α 429. This tends to confirm the suspicion that α 428–44 was a secondary expansion, made after the present passage was composed. It transpires at 357 that the voyage is to take place overnight. Besides being appropriate for a clandestine departure, this is poetically economical, as it means that the action at Pylos can go forward the next morning. Eurykleia is dismayed by the project. It will achieve nothing, she thinks, as Odysseus must have perished, and if Telemachos goes away the suitors will surely plot his death by guile. He reassures her that it is a divinely sponsored initiative (we know this is so, but Eurykleia has to take it on trust—Q could hardly have done otherwise); and he adjures her to avoid telling Penelope for at least ten days (a conventional unit, like our week: Focke 4), so as not to upset her. She does as she is told and sets about preparing the provisions. Telemachos rejoins the suitors till evening comes (381). Q spares him the trouble of obtaining a ship and crew himself. Athena (as she promised in 287) does it all for him, assuming his likeness. The ship is lent willingly by a man who did not appear in the

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assembly scene, Noemon, son of Phronios. The sharp-wittedness suggested by his name is manifested in δ 654–6, where it strikes him that Mentor appears to have been in two places at once. The expedition is now launched, with a fair amount of to-ing and fro-ing. 389–92 + 414–28 follow a typical scheme for embarkation and sailing (Arend 81–6). Q is attentive to all the nautical detail. After the ship has been taken down to the sea, the tackle put aboard, and the crew assembled, Athena, who has been supervising everything in her guise as Telemachos, leaves the harbour and goes up to the palace, where she makes the suitors sleepy and they go home to bed.28 Changing her appearance to Mentor’s, she summons Telemachos and leads him down to the quay. He takes the men back to the palace to fetch the provisions. All embark, including Athena, who continues to be Mentor. The departure in 420–8 is modelled on Α 479–82.29 There the following breeze is sent by Apollo, the god who has just been successfully appeased; here it is sent by Athena, as the deity sponsoring the enterprise. This is somewhat awkward given that she is herself a passenger on the ship, but Q has done what he can to make it plausible by seating her in the stern (417). As in Α, the wind is activated before the mast and sail are raised.

γ The ship sails through the night and reaches Pylos at dawn. Nestor is conveniently found right by the shore where the ship puts in, eliminating the need to seek him out in the town. He is sacrificing to his grandfather Poseidon, and does so appropriately by the sea. The Ithacans’ landing and disembarkation are briskly dealt with (10–12). Telemachos now needs to approach Nestor, but he is shy and has to be incited by the goddess. The divine initiative prompting human action is a typically epic mechanism, but here made entirely

28 The soporification of the suitors is not essential to the story and may be inspired by Ω 445, where Hermes puts the Achaean guards to sleep; we have seen the influence of Hermes’ mission in Ω at α 96–101. But instead of letting the suitors sink into slumber where they are, Q combines Athena’s intervention with their normal habit of going back to their own homes at night; 396–8 sit awkwardly with 395 (Dawe 120). 29 Α 483 has been added in part of the tradition as β [429].

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naturalistic by Athena’s identification with an older man who encourages the diffident youngster. Peisistratos, the young man who will replace Athena-Mentor as Telemachos’ companion when he goes to Sparta, is introduced immediately (36). He is an untraditional figure, not acknowledged in the list of Nestor’s children at ‘Hes.’ fr. 35. 10–13 (cf. p. 90). A few lines later there appears his better-established brother Thrasymedes, the only son of Nestor to play a part in the Iliad apart from Antilochos who did not survive the war. The visitors are hospitably received and join in the prayers to Poseidon and the feasting, after which Nestor enquires who they are and what their business is. Telemachos, emboldened by Athena, explains his mission. He has heard reports of the other heroes’ returns (86 f.; we remember that his in-house bard Phemios sings on the subject), but no one knows what has become of Odysseus. Has Nestor heard anything? Nestor replies in a long speech (103–200) that gives a more systematic account of the background against which the question of Odysseus’ fate is to be seen. He recalls the toils of the Trojan War, with summary mention of major Achaean heroes who perished.30 He goes on to tell of the special merits of Odysseus (120–9), the initial discord and confusion surrounding the Achaeans’ returns, with Nestor and Diomedes becoming separated from the rest and achieving safe homecomings (130–85), and a résumé of what has been heard of the returns of other heroes, culminating in the murder of Agamemnon and Orestes’ revenge (186–98). Some of this must overlap with the reports that Telemachos has heard at home (as acknowledged at 193), but it is here for the benefit of Q’s hearers and treated as if it were mostly news to Telemachos. So far as we can see, it largely agrees with what was related in the Cyclic Nostoi. But the detail in 161–4 of how Nestor and Odysseus became separated is no doubt fashioned for the needs of the Odyssey context. Q cannot ascribe his own omniscience to Nestor. He makes him careful to

30 In 109 the impression is given that Ajax fell in battle like Achilles and Patroclus. Q of course knew the tradition of his suicide (alluded to, though not explicit, in λ 544–60), but the present passage is more effective for not singling him out from other great heroes who died at Troy. Q has a tendency to gloss over discreditable deeds by heroes, as with the Locrian Ajax, whose offence against Athena is never specified (cf. 133, δ 502), and Orestes’ matricide.

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distinguish between what he saw at first hand, what he has heard since arriving home (186), and what he does not know at all. Overall he is able to give a fairly complete survey of the Returns. But the fate of the Locrian Ajax, which no mortal observed, has to be left for δ 496 ff., where Menelaos is able to give a report of it on Proteus’ authority. Menelaos’ own adventures are deferred until 254–312 and his own account in δ. Nestor ends, as did the Nostoi, with Orestes’ slaying of Aigisthos. We might have expected him to add ‘but as for Odysseus, no one knows what has become of him’.31 Instead he urges Telemachos to be a doughty young man like Orestes. The lines (199 f.) are repeated from α 301 f., and Aristophanes and Aristarchus condemned them. It is true that they have little point except in relation to the possible killing of the suitors, and the suitors are not in Nestor’s thoughts until he is reminded of them in what follows (211 f.). But they are in Q’s thoughts, the sentiment is in itself appropriate to the old hero, and it serves to lead in to discussion of Telemachos’ problems. Telemachos endorses the praise of Orestes’ achievement and wishes that he were in a position to emulate him by taking vengeance on the suitors, a notion previously aired in α 293–302. Ah yes, says Nestor, he has heard something of the situation at Ithaca. He enquires how much compulsion Telemachos is under, and what is the attitude of the Ithacans.32 With or without their support, given Athena’s record of favour towards Odysseus, the suitors might be made to pay for their misdeeds, who knows?33 Telemachos remains sceptical and pessimistic: Odysseus is surely dead (226–8, 240–2). But he wants to change the subject and ask Nestor 31

Page 1955: 175. These questions (214 f.) are repeated in Odysseus’ mouth in π 95 f., and there Telemachos answers them, which he does not do here. This may be a concordance interpolation (Bekker; Blass 59 f.). 33 With the standard readings in 216–17 (ποτείσεται, P γε) it is Odysseus that Nestor imagines coming and dealing with the suitors. Zenodotus’ text, however, had ποτείσεαι and σύ γε, making it Telemachos. ποτε . . . =λθών fits Odysseus better, and so do Athena-Mentor’s remarks in 231 ff. (231 om. Zen.) with Telemachos’ reply in 240–2. On the other hand 218–24 speak of Athena’s favour towards Telemachos as distinct from her past favour towards Odysseus, and Telemachos’ diffident reaction in 226–8 seems more appropriate to a suggestion that he himself should play the hero. A curious ambivalence pervades the passage. Cf. Merkelbach 38 n. 3; Page 1955: 175. It looks as if it has undergone revision to shift the emphasis from possible action by Telemachos to the prospect of Odysseus’ return, with remnants of the earlier version having survived in Zenodotus’ text. 32

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something else, this man with the wisdom of three generations.34 He wants to hear more about the death of Agamemnon. The bare facts have been mentioned several times and treated as being common knowledge (193–8; α 35–43, 298–300), but Nestor will now give a fuller account; there will be others in δ 514–37 and λ 405–34. Telemachos is curious in particular to know where Menelaos was while these events were taking place. The fact was that he played no role in the tradition about Agamemnon’s murder and Orestes’ revenge. He might have been expected to react to his brother’s murder at an earlier stage, even if he lived as far from Mycene as Sparta. The tale of his wanderings, which appeared in the Nostoi as well as the Odyssey, was evidently a new invention to account for his absence, which is exactly synchronized with the period of the Aigisthos saga (311). Telemachos at first surmises that Aigisthos had managed to do away with Menelaos too (forgetting that a person he had recognized to be a divinity had instructed him to visit Menelaos, α 285), and then he offers the (correct) alternative that Menelaos was roaming abroad at the time. Nestor confirms Telemachos’ assumption that Menelaos could not have been in Argos while Aigisthos was still flourishing. He relates how Aigisthos successfully seduced Klytaimestra (262–75, perhaps an expansion; note the repetition of μέγα Cργον and wμεBς μ6ν γάρ (Von der Mühll 709)), and then takes up from 168–83 the tale of how he and Menelaos were sailing homeward in company. Menelaos was delayed at Sounion by the death of his helmsman, and then caught by a gale off Cape Maleia (the natural and conventional place for ships circumnavigating the Peloponnese to have trouble with winds, cf. δ 514–16, ι 80 f., τ 187) and carried far away. In the Catalogue of Ships, which Q no doubt took as authoritative (he follows it for the number of Odysseus’ ships), Menelaos’ fleet comprised sixty vessels (Β 587); this needed to be reduced to a much smaller number for his eastern wanderings, so the greater part are driven to Crete and wrecked there, while Menelaos with five ships is blown all the way to Egypt, a land so distant that return from it could be no simple matter (Hölscher 1988: 217). For seven years he remained in eastern waters accumulating 34 As the scholiast notes, this is based on Α 250–2. The emphasis on Nestor’s immense experience and wisdom is more appropriate there, where he is to give counsel, than here, where he is to be asked for factual information about comparatively recent events, and 245 is wretched Greek (cf. p. 71).

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wealth, while Aigisthos ruled over Mycenae. In the eighth year Orestes killed the usurper, and Menelaos reappeared straight afterwards. Here (313) Nestor brings the subject back to Telemachos, making a somewhat forced connection between Menelaos’ long absence from home and Telemachos’ much shorter one, which he characterizes as ‘wandering’. If he stays away too long, the suitors may consume and divide up all the property. Lines 313–16 seem secondary to ο 10–13, where they are more appropriate in that Telemachos is there being urged to return home. Here his programmed journey to Sparta must go ahead, and in 317 ff. Nestor accordingly recommends it. His advice is strictly superfluous, as it coincides with what Telemachos planned to do anyway, but it adds substance to the reason for visiting Menelaos: he has returned ‘recently’ from remote parts—it is already two or three years ago now, but he is still the most recent homecomer (cf. α 286)—so he might have picked up some news of Odysseus. Nestor offers alternative facilities for the journey. Telemachos can go in the ship that brought him to Pylos, or overland if he prefers: a chariot will be at his disposal, and Nestor’s sons are available to escort him (323–6). The chariot option is the one that will be taken; Q was perhaps aware that someone going by sea would have been faced with a twenty-mile hike up the Eurotas valley to Sparta, though on the other hand he seems to have no concept of the difficulty of a chariot journey over Taygetos (a mountain that he mentions in a simile at ζ 103). It is presupposed that Telemachos will not be accompanied by Athena-Mentor. Q may have calculated that it would be awkward to send her to Sparta with Telemachos, as he would be needing her back on Olympus at ε 5 ff. The unspecified sons suggested as escorts later become a single son (369), and Peisistratos assumes the role with no special process (400, 482). Telemachos does not reply to Nestor’s proposal, which is treated as having set the agenda for the morrow. The sun sets and Athena initiates procedures for winding up the day’s business. Q spins them out with ritual activities and gentlemanly dialogue. Athena settles it that Telemachos will stay the night in the palace, but excuses herself on the ground that an older man’s presence is required at the ship to reassure the young crew. She will not return in the morning but go off on other business; Telemachos will proceed to Sparta by chariot. Thereupon, as in α 319–23, she takes her departure in bird form (372), allowing her divinity to be recognized; Nestor can even

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identify her as Athena, the goddess who used to show favour to Odysseus at Troy. He then leads the others to his palace, and after another round of wine and libations to Athena they retire to bed in line with the typical procedure (Arend 101–3). Telemachos, the guest, is given a bed in the porch, while Nestor and his wife sleep ‘in a recess of the tall house’ instead of in a bedroom. Similar arrangements will be seen in δ 297 and η 336 (though at δ 310 the host emerges from a thalamos). They seem to be modelled on Ω 643–76, where the scene is Achilles’ cabin (which has no separate bedroom) and Priam and his herald are put to bed outside for a special reason, so that they can get away in the night without disturbing anyone (Achilles provides his own justification in 650–5); contrast the accommodation of Phoinix indoors in the same building in Ι 658–68. There is no similar reason for guests to sleep out of doors in the Odyssey passages.35 Telemachos is given Peisistratos as a sleeping-partner, anticipating his role as travelling-companion. It is explained that he was Telemachos’ only coeval among Nestor’s sons. When morning comes Nestor appears in his kingly role and takes his place on his judgment seat, surrounded by his sons. The two previously named are joined by four others.36 Nestor is the only person who speaks in this scene, giving instructions for the fulfilment of his sacrificial vow in 382–4 and for fetching Telemachos’ crew from the ship so that they can be entertained in the palace during his absence, except for two men left to guard the ship. There follows a detailed account of the preparation and execution of the sacrifice. Each of the six sons is given a specific role, and the women of the house also participate (450–2). Lines 457–62 are modelled on Α 460–5. Telemachos has not yet appeared on the scene. He first receives a bath, to ensure that he cuts a fine figure when he appears among Nestor’s sons. As usual in bathing scenes (Arend 124–6), the bather is assisted by a woman, who pours water over him as he crouches in the basin. She is not necessarily of the slave class (see S. West ad loc.). Q perhaps picks on a daughter of Nestor because daughters and 35 M. Groeger, Rh. Mus. 59 (1904), 15; Karl Reinhardt, Die Ilias und ihr Dichter (Göttingen 1961), 492 n. 12, 500–4. 36 The list in 413 f. is related to that in ‘Hes.’ fr. 35. 10–13 (which is restored from the Odyssey passage). Antilochos is naturally present there; Peisistratos is not, but besides Polykaste there is another daughter Peisidike, whose name combines elements from Peisistratos and Eurydike (γ 452).

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daughters-in-law have appeared not long before (451); the ταμίη of 392 and 479 is the only slave mentioned. Polykaste reappears in ‘Hes.’ frr. 35. 13 and 221. According to the latter fragment Telemachos married her and she bore him a son Persepolis—doubtless a late fiction inspired by the present passage (fr. 221. 2 = γ 465). After the meal is completed Nestor moves on to the next business, preparing a chariot and provisions for Telemachos’ journey. Telemachos and Peisistratos mount the vehicle and they set out. The procedure is typical (Arend 86–91). The two days of travelling and the overnight stay with Diokles at Pharai are dispatched very rapidly. Q is in haste to move on to the Spartan scenes. If he had described Telemachos’ reception by Diokles, there would have had to be a considerable amount of dialogue, which could only traverse ground already covered. He does however spend a line on Diokles’ lineage. He is known from Ε 541–60 as a wealthy man who had sent two sons to Troy, where they were killed by Aeneas. His father Ortilochos had entertained Odysseus before the war (ϕ 16).

δ Telemachos reaches Sparta after sundown. As at Pylos, he finds a ceremonial feast in progress; it is the celebration of a double wedding, of which circumstantial details are given. Menelaos’ daughter Hermione (not named till 14) is being married to ‘Achilles’ son’, i.e. Neoptolemos, and his illegitimate son Megapenthes to an unnamed local girl, a daughter of Alektor (said by the scholia and Eustathius to have been a grandson of Pelops and of Amyklas). This Megapenthes also appeared in the Nostoi (fr. 13), and that can only have been at the end of the poem after Menelaos’ return. It is an attractive hypothesis of Welcker’s that the same two weddings took place there following the father’s happy homecoming. (See West 2013: 285 f.) Q has postponed them by three years for his own purposes. The singer and tumblers in 17–19 are borrowed from Σ 603–6. After 19 the weddings entirely evaporate (though Megapenthes will reappear briefly in ο 100–41), just as the sacrifices in γ 5–8, with their 4,500 celebrants, are forgotten in the following narrative (Jacob 376 f.). Telemachos and Peisistratos are seen outside. It is appropriate

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that the unidentified visitors be first received, and their horses taken care of, by attendants. Eteoneus asks whether his master wishes this to be done (26–9). From Menelaos’ point of view it is a foolish question: of course hospitality is to be freely offered. His response establishes him at once as the magnanimous and gracious host that he will be throughout the visit. On entering the palace the young men are struck by its splendour; it is evidently in a different class to Nestor’s.37 After they have been bathed and given food, and Menelaos has stated a programme (‘first enjoy your meal, and then we will ask who you are’), and they finish eating and drinking, Q employs an artful shift from the formulaic pattern. Instead of making Menelaos ask about their identity, as anticipated, he sets the conversation going in a more naturalistic manner: Telemachos makes a private remark to Peisistratos on the magnificence of the palace (71–5), Menelaos overhears it, and his comments lead easily to the subject of his travels in the eastern Mediterranean where he acquired his great wealth, as already indicated summarily by Nestor in γ 301 f. Nestor mentioned only Egypt, but Menelaos lists a wider range of countries and peoples. They include the Aithiopes, who are here no longer the mythical people visited only by gods (as in α 22), and Libya, the praise of which in 85–9 must reflect rumours reaching Greece shortly before or after the foundation of Cyrene (cf. p. 38). Menelaos (like Nestor in γ 301 ff.) couples his roaming in distant seas with the synchronous murder of Agamemnon (90–103). Lines 94–6 (condemned by Bekker) interrupt the connection between 93 and 97 and look like an insert made to acknowledge the likelihood that the young men have heard something of Agamemnon’s murder, and incidentally to raise the question of their parentage. Line 99, obelized by an ancient critic, also disconcerts, as the men ‘who then perished’ ought to be those killed with Agamemnon (536, λ 388 f., 412–20), not those who died at Troy. But a few lines later it becomes apparent that Q has altered the original tenor of the speech. Originally 100–3 referred to Menelaos’ grief over the loss of the loyal retainers, and 104 f., ‘but all of them I do not lament as much as I lament one’ (after Χ 424 f.), referred to Agamemnon; it was his

The motif is repeated when visitors behold Alkinoos’ (η 84–102) and Odysseus’ (ρ 264–8). For the image of the palace shining like the sun or moon cf. West 1997: 251 f. 37

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murder that affected Menelaos with loss of sleep and appetite. Q has adapted it so that the ‘one’ is Odysseus. ‘All of them’ (100/104) are reinterpreted as all who perished in the Trojan War, and 99 is added in order to give that same reference to the men mentioned in 98. Q has imposed quite a violent diversion on the train of thought in order to bring the subject round to Odysseus and Telemachos in a way that will lead on to the disclosure of Telemachos’ identity. Menelaos’ avowal in 109 f. that he knows nothing about Odysseus’ fate is not properly integrated with the rest of δ. It rather unfortunately pre-empts Telemachos’ plea for information in 322 ff., and in 551–60 it will be virtually contradicted. This may be an indication that 99 and 106–12 belong to a revision made after the main part of the episode had been composed. The whole speech may be based on an original consisting of 78–93, 97–8, 100, 104–5, with expansions that modify its purpose. Instead of speaking up and saying who he is, Telemachos reacts as Odysseus does in θ 83–92 and 521–31 on hearing songs that refer to himself: he weeps, and tries to conceal it. As there, the host notices the visitor’s grief but refrains from questioning him. The Phaeacian scenes may be the model for this one (cf. Merkelbach 179). While Menelaos is wondering whether to question Telemachos or ‘leave him to think of his father’ (as if he understood that he was Odysseus’ son; but he is at best speculating), Helen comes in. From now on she will play an active part in the dialogue. The visit to Sparta would have been seriously incomplete without her presence. She has been in her chamber—so completely has the initial wedding scenario been forgotten (Finsler ii. 280). Her appearance from there recalls Penelope’s in α 328 ff., but is more fully elaborated to convey a sense of her opulence. She is attended by three servants and provided with accoutrements that bear witness to her highly lucrative sojourn in Egypt. Telemachos’ identity is now ascertained. This is managed in a remarkably indirect and naturalistic way. He himself remains speechless till 291, this being put down to his modesty and diffidence (158– 60). Helen asks whether Menelaos has yet learned who the young visitors are and, without waiting for him to answer, guesses from his looks that one of them is Odysseus’ son Telemachos. Menelaos agrees that the likeness is striking, and adds that when he was talking of Odysseus the lad reacted emotionally. Peisistratos speaks up and confirms that it is indeed Telemachos.

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Telemachos’ likeness to his father (cf. α 208) confirms for us that he is truly his son and a budding hero in the same mould. By epic convention Q could not describe it in his own voice but only through the speech of others. In 163–7 Peisistratos gives a provisional explanation of Telemachos’ motive in coming to Sparta. But it does not correspond to what we are told elsewhere. He speaks as if Telemachos were seeking, not information about his father, but help for his difficulties in Ithaca (the nature of which is left vague). Here again we may be dealing with a secondary revision, as Menelaos reacts only to the revelation that it is Telemachos, taking no notice of the last part of Peisistratos’ speech. Next morning (312–14) he will ask him about the purpose of his journey as if nothing had yet been said on the subject. Here he speaks of his special affection for Odysseus, something not foreshadowed in the Iliad. The thought of the missing hero prompts general lamentation (183). To give Peisistratos a reason for joining in, Q refers to his brother Antilochos, whom he never knew and who was killed at Troy by Memnon (Aethiopis; cf. γ 111 f., λ 468, 522, ω 16, 78).38 The lamenting is terminated by means of a proposal, put in Peisistratos’ mouth because he is the person most recently mentioned. Further talk can be left for tomorrow (194 f.). Q wants to keep Menelaos’ main account of his wanderings for a new day. Menelaos compliments the young man on having inherited Nestor’s good sense and agrees that they have lamented enough. He proposes resumption of the meal (which seemed to be done with at 68, cf. 194) and further talk with Telemachos the next day. This prepares for their one-to-one dialogue in 310–620. Menelaos’ programmatic statement leads us to expect that the company will shortly retire to bed, but Helen comes up with a new initiative (219) that results in a prolongation of the scene, with further talk of Odysseus. This probably represents new inspiration on Q’s part, not planned for before this point. Helen and Menelaos each relate an exploit of Odysseus’ at Troy that illustrates his cunning and shrewdness. The one that she recalls is a version of an episode that appeared in the Little Iliad (arg. 4 and frr. 8–10). Odysseus entered Troy in disguise as a spy but was recognized by Helen. She did not The motif of people crying together for different reasons is Iliadic: Τ 301 f., 338 f., Ω 509–12 (de Jong 99). 38

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betray him but came to some agreement with him regarding the capture of the city, perhaps that she would send a signal to the Achaeans when the Trojans had taken the Wooden Horse in.39 Menelaos follows this with his own recollection of sitting in the Horse with Odysseus and other heroes. Helen had come and, knowing or suspecting that they were hidden inside it, called to them individually, imitating their wives’ voices, and Odysseus had stopped them from responding. This episode too may have stood in the Little Iliad. Helen’s mischievous behaviour here is at odds with her desire for the Achaeans’ success as avowed in 259 ff. Menelaos ascribes its irrationality to the prompting of the Trojans’ (unidentified) protecting deity.40 A proposal from Telemachos then triggers the bedtime procedure (294). It might more naturally have been put in Menelaos’ mouth, but after he and Helen have told their tales of Odysseus it was Telemachos’ turn to speak, and it is given to him; cf. above on Peisistratos’ ending the lamentation. Helen gives orders to the servants to prepare bedding for the guests. The passage is modelled on Ω 635 f. + 643–8 + 673–6. Cf. my previous comment on the sleeping arrangements in γ 397–403. Dawn comes; 306–10 are adapted from β 1–5. Menelaos’ rising and dressing do duty for everyone’s. He finds Telemachos sitting ready for conversation, which he initiates with the direct question why he has come to Sparta. What Peisistratos told him the previous evening is ignored (cf. above on 163–7). Peisistratos himself is absent from this scene, as is Helen; they do not reappear till ο 46 and 58 respectively. Telemachos replies with a speech largely made up of verses used previously (291; α 91 f., 368; γ 92–101). Odysseus’ house is full of boisterous suitors. Can Menelaos throw any light on what has happened to him? Menelaos responds with the longest speech in Homer apart from the Apologoi in ι–μ, with which it belongs in respect of its subject 39 West 2013: 198 f. There is some reason to suspect that δ 246 ερυάγυιαν–249 Τρώων πόλιν is an insertion designed to bring the text into agreement with the Little Iliad: L. Friedländer, Phil. 4 (1849), 580 f.; cf. Von der Mühll 708. 40 Here again one may suspect alterations in the text to bring in Cyclic material. Line 276, according to which Helen was accompanied by Deiphobos, may be interpolated, as the story makes more sense if she is alone. Deiphobos is the man who married her in the Little Iliad after Paris was killed. Lines 285–8 look like an alternative to 282–4 and do not sit well together with them. The Antiklos who appears in them came in the Cycle according to the scholiast. Cf. Blass 72 f.; Hennings 93 f.; Bethe ii. 260 n. 18; Von der Mühll 708; West 2013: 207.

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matter (333–592). He begins by expressing his indignation about the situation in Ithaca. Q puts a strangely inept simile in his mouth, to awkward effect (335–40), and then a wish in the same form as α 255–66, ‘if only Odysseus could appear among the suitors as he was when he . . .’, but here with reference to a different, little-known story.41 Menelaos then turns to answering Telemachos’ appeal for news of his father. He says he will tell him what he was told by Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea, and launches into the story of how he came to encounter this well-informed personage. I have argued in Chapter 5 that the Proteus adventure was originally one of Odysseus’. Its transfer to Menelaos allows Q to use it as a means of allowing some rumour of Odysseus’ actual situation to percolate to the Achaeans’ world. Telemachos’ journey to see Menelaos in quest of information thus turns out not to be altogether in vain, though what he learns is not of such a nature that he can put much reliance on it or make any use of it. It merely allows him to keep his hopes alive. The likeliest place to encounter the Old Man of the Sea would be an unfrequented island. Q has heard of an island Pharos in Egyptian waters and sets the adventure there to suit Menelaos’ movements, making Proteus an Egyptian (385). The story begins at the point when Menelaos has decided to return to Greece. He found himself detained at Pharos for weeks by unrelenting adverse winds. His men were starving and reduced to fishing, while he wandered off by himself.42 A daughter of Proteus took pity on him and came up to talk to him. This is the common folk-tale motif of the helpful daughter of a dangerous king or ogre who gives a hero the means to get what he wants. The name that Q gives her, Eidothea, is perhaps influenced by that of Leukothea, the marine deity who assists Odysseus in ε 333 ff. She tells him that her father Proteus, who frequents the island and knows all the secrets of the deep, has all the information that Menelaos requires. She advises on how to catch him and make him reveal what he needs to know: not only how to get home, but what has been going

41 According to the scholiast Philomeleides was a king of Lesbos who challenged visitors to wrestle with him, and did so when the Achaeans were there at some point. In Lesbian tradition as formulated by Hellanicus (fr. 150 Fowler) Odysseus and Diomedes deceitfully compassed his death. 42 This motif may be borrowed from the Thrinakia episode, μ 260–365 (Merkelbach 180). 363 ≈ μ 329; 369 = μ 332.

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on there in his absence (391–3). This, we would imagine, goes beyond Proteus’ natural competence, but it is appropriate to Menelaos’ situation. Eidothea will personally assist in setting the ambush.43 It is planned for the next morning (407), in accordance with the usual epic instinct to allocate a new day to a new phase of action. So when Menelaos returns to his men they make their supper (on fish, presumably) and settle down for the night (428–30). The stratagem works, and Proteus finds himself caught. ‘Which of the gods has been plotting with you?’ he asks (462), adapting Hera’s question to Zeus in Α 540, and Menelaos replies as Achilles does to Thetis in Α 365, ‘You know, why need I tell you?’ This exempts him from answering the question who has advised him, but he still has to state his needs, as Achilles does. Proteus tells him that his difficulties are due to his having omitted to sacrifice to the gods before leaving Egypt. He just needs to go back and do so. The banality of the advice betrays the artificiality of the whole construction, the real aim of which is not to explain how Menelaos was able to get home but to let him receive information on other heroes’ returns. At 486 he turns to questioning Proteus on this topic, for which there has been no previous preparation. His reference to himself and Nestor parting from the other heroes picks up what Nestor related in γ. Proteus warns him that he will find the tale upsetting. By way of a heading he states that two heroes have perished since leaving Troy, while one is alive but still at sea. He proceeds to tell of the two who have perished: the Locrian Ajax (whose fate he alone is in a position to report) and Agamemnon (of whose death Menelaos would otherwise have remained ignorant until he got home).44 He ends his speech with the advice that Menelaos should hurry back to Greece: he may yet be in time to catch and kill Aigisthos, if Orestes has not done it 43 What she means by ‘I will lay you down in a row’ (408) remains obscure until it is amplified in 435–40. The motif of the men’s concealment under skins (i.e. disguise as Proteus’ own creatures) may be adapted from the Polyphemos episode, where the men hide under sheep. In most versions of the Blinded Ogre folk-tale the escaper slaughters an animal and covers himself in its skin. 44 There is severe geographical obscurity in 514–20, and it looks as if some lines (514–16 and 519–20) have been inserted from an alternative version, perhaps one designed to locate Agamemnon’s palace in Laconia: West 2013: 265 f. Dawe suspects 526 too, and it might have been inserted in order to bring in details from the Nostoi. Proteus’ account, reported by Menelaos, supplements what Telemachos has heard from others; it omits mention of Klytaimestra and of Aigisthos’ motives (Besslich 53).

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first, in which case he will be there for the funeral. We know from γ 309–12 that the latter is what happened, but for the time being Menelaos was left in uncertainty. He asks Proteus about the identity of the third man, the one still wandering at sea, and Proteus tells him it is Odysseus, stranded on Calypso’s island. Q might have let him go on to prophesy that Odysseus would eventually get away (cf. Merkelbach 52), but he leaves it as things currently are, Hermes having not yet gone to arrange for the hero’s release. So even if Telemachos believes what he is being told, all he is allowed to learn is that three years previously, when Menelaos was on Pharos, Odysseus was still alive, out of danger but with no apparent prospect of ever getting home. Proteus ends his revelations with Menelaos’ final destiny (561–9). This might have come better after 480 as the sequel to his homecoming, but it is also effective as the close of the whole account. Proteus then returns to the sea, while Menelaos goes back to his ships for the remainder of the day; 570–6 are repeated from 425–31, with a variation in the first line to take account of the companions. The next morning they set sail according to the typical procedure (Arend 81–6), return to Egypt to perform the required sacrifices and set up a cenotaph for Agamemnon, and then sail back to Greece with a fair wind. Menelaos has no need to describe the situation he found there, as we have been told about it previously. Telemachos has now got such information as is to be had. Q does not, as we might expect, go to the trouble of making him comment on it, but at once sets about arranging for the end of his visit. Menelaos invites him to stay longer, eleven or twelve days (588 ≈ β 374), and promises him fine gifts when he does leave. Telemachos graciously declines; his rowers are waiting for him at Pylos and will already be becoming impatient, and the proffered chariot team would not be much use to him in Ithaca. Menelaos offers a more suitable gift instead, a fine silver krater of Phoenician workmanship—a further reminder of his eastern peregrinations and his friendly relations with oriental royal houses. At 620 Q makes a masterful transition back to Ithaca, leaving Telemachos looking forward to his departure; he will not bring us back to Sparta to continue this strand of the narrative until ο 1.45 He 45

On the mechanism of the transition see p. 61.

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may once have planned to prolong Telemachos’ stay to match the time it would take to bring Odysseus from Calypso to Ithaca (hence Menelaos’ invitation to stay much longer). If so, he abandoned the idea. As things are, there is a month in Odysseus’ timetable that is not accounted for in Telemachos’ (above, pp. 112 f.). Ithacan scenes occupy the remainder of δ. Their purpose is firstly to bring it to the suitors’ notice that Telemachos has gone on the journey he planned, and to set up their attempt to intercept and kill him on his return voyage, for the sake of drama and suspense; secondly to show Penelope’s anguished reaction to the news of her son’s enterprise and the suitors’ plot. The two themes are interlaced: 625–74 suitors, 675–767 Penelope, 768–86 suitors, 787–841 Penelope, 842–7 suitors. Antinoos and Eurymachos continue to feature as the ringleaders (629). Antinoos plays the leading role throughout the episode (631, 641, 660, 773). Q shows his characteristic artistry in the way he lets them learn of Telemachos’ voyage. The man whose ship he borrowed, Noemon (β 386), asks casually: ‘Do we know when Telemachos is coming back from Pylos? I lent him my ship, and I need it for another piece of business.’ The suitors had registered Telemachos’ absence but supposed he was somewhere out in the countryside, perhaps with the swineherd (640)—a first casual reference to Eumaios, a figure who will be prominent after Odysseus’ return. Q might be thought remiss in alluding to him here without having introduced him previously (Kirchhoff 193). In answer to questioning by Antinoos Noemon gives him details of Telemachos’ embarkation. It seems to strike him while he is speaking that the Mentor who sailed with him may possibly have been a god in disguise, as he had seen Mentor in Ithaca more recently. With that he departs; we shall hear no more of him. Antinoos, overcome with anger,46 addresses the suitors. As in β 325–36, Telemachos’ journey provokes apprehension that he will make trouble for them, but also the idea that he might himself perish en route. A plot against him, hinted at earlier as a possibility (β 332–6, 367 f.), now takes shape. It is quickly reported to Penelope, and subsequently adverted to in 773–86, 842–7, ν 425–8, ξ 180–4, ο

The lines describing this, 661 f., are borrowed from Α 103 f., as Aristarchus recognized. 46

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27–32, π 342–70, 462 f. The herald Medon who informs Penelope is an ambivalent character: he is aligned with the suitors in π 252, ρ 172 f., but in π 412 he again divulges their counsels to Penelope, and in χ 357 Telemachos will speak up for him as one faithful to Odysseus’ interests; cf. ω 439. This is the first Penelope has heard of her son’s journey abroad, and she is left sitting on the floor and weeping amid her maids. She calls for someone to summon Dolios, an old servant who will appear in ω associated with Laertes and is introduced here with a brief notice of where he came from and what he does (736 f.). She wants him to go and take the news to Laertes. The proposal serves to remind us of Laertes’ existence in the background. But Q spares himself the trouble of taking it any further by making Eurykleia intervene. She confesses that she knew of Telemachos’ undertaking but had been sworn to secrecy, and urges Penelope not to add to Laertes’ woes.47 Let her wash, put on clean clothes, and go upstairs and pray to Athena there. This is what Penelope does. The suitors proceed with their plot. Twenty men are chosen and a ship made ready for sailing. They make their supper and wait for evening. Penelope by contrast lies in her chamber without eating or drinking, worrying whether Telemachos will survive or be killed; this spelling out of her anxieties serves to create suspense in our minds. Q attempts to embellish the passage with a heroic lion simile, but it is not at all apt. Finally she falls asleep. Athena, who does not deal in person with Penelope as she does with Odysseus and Telemachos, sends her a reassuring dream as proxy, visiting her in the guise of her sister.48 But for the phantom sister’s comforting words to have any authority, she has finally to reveal herself as an emissary of Athena (829). Penelope then asks, since the dream figure claims divine insight, whether Odysseus is still alive. But she has to be left in uncertainty on this point: the phantom declines to say, and leaves. Penelope starts up from her sleep, cheered by the dream.

47 The two passages relating to Laertes, 735–41 and 754–7, are easily detachable and may have been added secondarily. 48 On the epic conventions for representing dreams see West 1997: 185–90; de Jong 120 f. The sister whose guise Athena takes may be invented ad hoc (Von der Mühll 710. 51); she is not heard of elsewhere. Her husband Eumelos of Pherai is a figure known from Β 713 f.

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Meanwhile the suitors put out to sea and set their ambush. With Telemachos now parked in Sparta, preparing to sail home, and the suitors lying in wait for him, Q leaves these two narrative strands in unresolved tension and prepares, by means of another council of the gods, to take up the third strand, the tale of Odysseus’ adventures.

ε The divine council is not a continuation of the one in α: events have moved on, and it takes account of Telemachos’ journey and the suitors’ ambush (18–20). But it makes no reference back to the previous council (unless indirectly in 23 f.) and avoids the question of the relationship between the two. This time Athena speaks at once. Her speech is thrown together from borrowed lines.49 As in α, she raises the matter of Odysseus’ plight, to which Telemachos’ peril is now added. As to the latter, Zeus is confident that she can take care of it. As to the former, he does what she had proposed in α 84–7 without her having to suggest it again, and sends Hermes on his mission to Calypso. The three lines 29–31 would have sufficed, but Zeus goes on in 32–42 to give a preview of what will happen to Odysseus from the time he leaves the island to his return to Ithaca. The nearest parallel is the prospectus of future developments in Ο 64–71, which I regard as a rhapsode’s interpolation (West 2011a: 301), but the present lines seem to be genuine; 41 f. are echoed in 114 f. Although formally addressed to Hermes, they are perhaps to be understood as answering Athena’s concerns about Odysseus’ plight. This may account for the emphasis on the wealth that he will bring home from the Phaeacians, of whom this is the first mention in the poem. Hermes’ preparations in 43–9 are copied from Ω 339–45, where the wand for putting people to sleep has a relevance that it lacks here. It was noted earlier that the lines about Athena in α 96–101 are Lines 8–12 are repeated from β 230–4, where the reference to Odysseus’ being forgotten by his people is more appropriate (Kayser 36; Von der Mühll 711); 13 is after Β 721, where the κρατέρ᾽ Vλγεα are more appropriate to Philoctetes (Usener 17–38); 14–20 are from δ 557–60, 727, 700–2, but notice the failure to specify the subject in 18. Then 21–2 are repeated from α 63 f. 49

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secondarily derivative. When Hermes alights in Pieria and then plunges into the sea (50), Q seems to be remembering on the one hand Hera’s flight from Olympus towards Athos and Lemnos (Ξ 226) and on the other Iris’ journey to convey Zeus’ instructions to Thetis (Ω 79). We would suppose him to have descended on the northern Aegean. But then he skims across the waves like a gull all the way to Calypso’s isle, which he reaches in no time. He finds the nymph at home, with Odysseus conveniently out (cf. de Jong 129). But before presenting himself he pauses to admire the scenery, of which Q provides an extended and idyllic account, not omitting to mention the abundant trees that will be essential for Odysseus’ boat-building. This account comes oddly after the description of what Hermes saw inside the cave (58–62), and it divides ‘he found her at home’ from ‘but he did not find Odysseus at home’ (81), so it looks as if 63–80 is a secondary expansion. Calypso greets the divine messenger with lines adapted from Thetis’ reception by Hephaestus and his wife in Σ 385 f., 424–7. He does not answer her enquiry as to his business until he has eaten and drunk; in the Σ scene the feeding of the visitor is managed more deftly (387, 408) and does not delay her explanation of why she has come. Hermes expands on his instruction to demand ‘the homecoming of Odysseus’ (31), offering a highly compressed and seriously unsatisfactory summary of what has befallen the hero since the fall of Troy (108–11). It elides his three years of wandering before he reached Calypso, giving the impression that he was driven straight there following the storm that Athena sent upon the Achaeans shortly after they set out for home. Calypso in her answering speech shows a more accurate knowledge of the circumstances of his last shipwreck (130– 4). The scholiast records an athetesis of uncertain extent: ‘the lines are superfluous and in conflict with the saga, for it was not at the time when the wind was aroused by Athena and the others perished that Odysseus was carried to the island; the last two lines (110–11) have been transferred from below (133–4)’. If 107–11 or 108–11 were removed, the remaining text would be acceptable. Yet it is unclear why an interpolator would have seen fit to add them, and Q cannot be acquitted from all suspicion of having perpetrated the ineptitude. In α 326 f. (Phemios’ song) he mentions Athena’s storm as if it had been a comprehensive disaster for the Achaeans’ returns, and it is possible that he associated it in his mind with the storm that blew Odysseus off course at Maleia (ι 80 f.). In this case his fault lies in his having

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jumped from that to the much later storm that destroyed Odysseus’ last ship. We may also refer to α 7–9, where he speaks of the Thrinakia storm as if it accounted for all the losses of Odysseus’ comrades: there too the three years of wanderings are represented by a single crisis. We must still give Q a black mark if this was his way of working. Calypso complains bitterly at not being allowed to keep her mortal lover; her opening line (118) is adapted from Apollo’s complaint about the unjust treatment of Hector in Ω 33. But she acknowledges that Zeus’ will must be done. Hermes has passed over the practical question of how Odysseus might be able to leave the island, omitting mention of the σχεδίη that Zeus had spoken of. Calypso first says she cannot send him anywhere because there are no ships or crew. Then she says she will give him all the necessary instruction. Again the composition is shoddy. Lines 141 f. are repeated from δ 559 f. and ε 16 f., but κα tταBροι is now inappropriate. Hermes departs, and Calypso goes to find Odysseus. This is our first direct view of him. He is sitting on the shore gazing tearfully out to sea, as he does every day. She goes straight to the point. She says nothing of Hermes’ visit, she simply tells him to fell some trees and build a boat, as she is going to send him home. The canny hero is naturally suspicious of her sudden change of attitude and asks her to swear a solemn oath that she means him no harm (178 f.). The lines are probably secondary to the parallel passage in the Circe episode, κ 343 f., where ατKι and Vλλο seem to have better point (Kayser 35 and others) and Odysseus has greater reason to fear trickery. She smiles and swears the oath, which is copied from Ο 36–8. Then she takes him back to her cave and they have a meal. We note that he is served with mortal food, whereas she consumes ambrosia and nectar (196–9). She had hoped to make him immortal (135 f., 209), and would have done so presumably by converting him to her own diet. She warns him that he has many more tribulations to face before he reaches home—Q allows her to know of them qua immortal—and she reminds him of the amenities he could enjoy by staying with her. He acknowledges them, but it is still Ithaca and Penelope that he longs for. If some god strikes him on the way (this anticipates what will actually happen), he will put up with it as he has put up with so much else. The sun sets: the next phase of activity will begin on a new day. Calypso and Odysseus settle down for lovemaking and sleep. The effect is as if they were spending a last night together, though in fact it will be another four days before he is ready to leave.

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When morning comes Calypso gives him an axe and an adze and leads him to the place where he is to fell trees. He sets to work. When he has cut and planed his timbers she brings him a drill, and when his craft is ready for a sail she brings him cloth. The whole job is finished in four days, and on the fifth she supplies him with provisions for the voyage and sends him off with a fair wind.50 She has instructed him to keep the Great Bear on his left (the three lines referring to it, 273–5, are lifted from Σ 487–9), and this confirms that Ogygia is conceived to be in the far west. So far west is it that he sails eastwards for seventeen days before coming in sight of any land, and that is the land of the Phaeacians, who live on the outer fringe of the inhabited world. At this point he is overtaken by Poseidon, who is returning from the western Aithiopes (cf. above, n. 3). He is travelling by chariot and heading for his home at Aigai (380 f.). He is imagined making his journey across a succession of mountain peaks, as in Ν 17–20 he crosses from Samothrace to Aigai in four giant strides and as Hera in Ξ 225–30 bounds from peak to peak to reach Lemnos from Olympus. According to the transmitted text it is from the far-off ‘Solymian mountains’ that he sees Odysseus (283). But this makes geographical nonsense, as the Solymoi and Solymian mountains were located in Asia Minor, between Lycia and Pisidia: if Odysseus is sailing eastwards anywhere in that region, he has left Ithaca far behind and is heading towards Cyprus. I have argued in a recent paper that Q must have written, or at any rate meant, =ξ ᾽Ελύμων ρέων, the Elymian mountains, that is, Eryx at the northwest corner of Sicily, which affords magnificent views out to sea.51 Poseidon surmises correctly that during his absence the gods have had a change of heart regarding Odysseus: here he is near Scheria, where he is destined to escape the bonds of misery (288 f.). As Q has made Zeus affirm this in 33–42, he can conveniently treat it now as a destiny that other immortals are aware of, as Leukothea is in 345. Poseidon raises a storm, and Odysseus realizes that Calypso’s warnings are about to be fulfilled. He does not yet know it is Poseidon’s doing—he ascribes 50 Lines 262–3 τέτρατον aμαρ Cην κα τKι τετέλεστο qπαντα, | τKι δ᾽ Vρα πέμπτωι πέμπε look like deliberate word-play, suggesting that these days were

exactly right for the purposes. The wind is essential for Odysseus’ progress, as he has no oars. Rowing is beneath a hero, and anyway he needs his hands for steering. 51 ‘Poseidon’s Viewpoint’, Eikasmos 22 (2011), 11–14. Perhaps this was one of Q’s mistakes over names, like Pherai for Pheai at ο 297 and Pandareos for Pandion at τ 518.

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it to Zeus in 304—but Leukothea will tell him so in 339, and by 423 and 446 (and η 271) he can acknowledge Poseidon’s malignity. A wave washes him overboard. He loses the steering-oar, and the mast is broken, so that even when he manages to clamber back onto the vessel it is uncontrollable, driven this way and that by the competing winds. Succour appears unexpectedly in the form of the marine goddess Ino-Leukothea, who takes pity on him. Her intervention provides another opportunity for Odysseus to show his mistrust of apparent helpers and his preference for relying on his own resources as long as he can. She tells him to shed the clothes that Calypso had given him (which were weighing him down in the water, 321), abandon ship, and swim for land using her mantilla to support him. The emphasis on Odysseus’ clothes prepares for his nakedness on arrival at Scheria, which will make it necessary for Nausikaa to provide him with new garments that Arete will subsequently recognize (η 234; Merkelbach 210 after Rothe and others). The mistrustful Odysseus does not immediately take Leukothea’s advice but decides to stay on his vessel as long as it holds together. But Poseidon at once sends another huge wave that smashes it to bits, and then he does as she told him and swims for it. Poseidon leaves him to his plight and drives on to Aigai (381 ≈ Ν 21). Athena (who had been reluctant to oppose Poseidon: ν 341–3, cf. ζ 329 f.) is now free to help Odysseus, bringing the winds and waves under control so that he is carried in the right direction. But it still takes two days before he can reach land, and even then he has to wrestle with great difficulties despite the goddess’s intermittent help. The shore that he approaches consists of jagged rocks, impossible to climb onto from the turbulent sea, and he skins his hands in trying to hold on to them.52 He then swims up the coast looking for a more 52 In the text as we have it he ponders the alternatives of trying to climb out on the rocks or swimming on to look for a better place (408–23). As in 365 ff., a powerful wave overrides his deliberations. It flings him towards the rocks, and he would have been lacerated and smashed up if Athena had not inspired him to cling on till the wave subsided. But his hands are skinned anyway, and the next wave submerges him. Again he would have perished but for Athena, who now prompts him to let go, surface, and swim further up the coast (424–40). It is odd that she gives him two successive ideas (427 ≈ 437), of which the first proves useless and the second is one he had already considered; and that after reading that he would have suffered a skinning but for her first inspiration, we find that he does suffer one because of it. Nitzsch ii. 66 f. athetized 427–36, but we shall have to suppress 417–23 as well to leave a smooth original text; 424 need not imply pondering of alternatives, cf. 365. These passages may be suspected of being expansions by Q.

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favourable landing-place. At last he finds the mouth of a river and a sheltered place where he can crawl out of the water. The river is essential for the meeting with Nausikaa, as that is where the palace washing is done. Odysseus returns Leukothea’s mantilla to the waters, as instructed in 348–50, looks for somewhere to rest where he will not die of exposure, and falls into an exhausted sleep.

ζ He will wake up to a much more agreeable day. Naked and destitute, salt-caked and starving, wild-eyed, his hands torn by sharp rocks, stranded on an unknown shore, he is not in an ostensibly promising position. If he appears like this in a human society he will not easily be identified as a deserving suppliant. But Q, projecting himself as Athena, arranges for him to be found by a princess without flaw— tall, beautiful, brave, kind, level-headed, provident, discreet—who has the means to feed and clothe him immediately to hand and who can then mediate his reception by her parents, a benevolent royal couple who are in a position to organize his swift and safe return to Ithaca. We have met in Menelaos’ encounter with Eidothea on Pharos in δ the folk-tale motif of the hero in a strange land to whom the boss’s daughter provides essential help. Usually her father is a dangerous or hostile figure, but with the Phaeacian king it is quite the opposite. Odysseus has not set eyes on a male person since the loss of his crew seven years before. He has known only female company and female helpers: Calypso and her maids; Leukothea; Athena. It continues with Nausikaa and her attendants; and she instructs him in 303–12 that when he enters her parents’ house it is to Arete that he should look for assistance. In the event, when he supplicates her (η 139 ff.), Alkinoos intervenes to give him a seat and hospitality (cf. below, introduction to η). But it is Arete’s recognition of the clothes that Nausikaa has lent him that will lead to his giving an account of himself and his adventures. From Odysseus slumbering in the undergrowth Q makes his transition to Nausikaa asleep in her chamber. The Phaeacians, already mentioned in ε 280, 288, 345, 386, are now introduced properly (3–12), with the information that Alkinoos is their current king. The

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account of their earlier history may, for all we can tell, have been entirely Q’s invention.53 Their distancing from the Cyclopes (4–8) perhaps serves to symbolize the fact that by reaching them Odysseus has left the world of ogres, monsters, and other perils.54 Athena initiates the action by appearing to Nausikaa in a dream and urging her to wash her stock of clothes. In Penelope’s dream in δ 795 ff. she took the form of a sister; to Nausikaa she appears as a friend and coeval, a daughter of Dymas.55 The need to have the laundry done is pressing because Nausikaa will shortly be married. A groom, however, has not yet been identified from among the many local suitors (of whom we never see anything). The marriage motif continues to resonate in 66, 180, 244, 277, η 313. Odysseus himself is seen as the kind of man who might step into the groom’s role. ‘It adds a certain piquancy to the relations of Odysseus, Nausikaa, and Alkinoos, but it is otherwise superfluous to this part of the Odyssey’ (Hainsworth 295). Nausikaa will need to ask her father for a mule-cart, as Athena does not omit to advise her. Having delivered her message she departs to Olympus, and here we are treated to several lines about the gods’ idyllic life there (42–6). They recall the description of Elysium in δ 563–8. It is impossible to say why Q took it into his head to put the passage here rather than anywhere else. The impression that Athena has finished with earthly matters for the day is contradicted when we find her continuing to manage things in 112, 139, 229. Dawn comes. Nausikaa wakes up, recalls her dream, and goes to find her father. Q wants to show us both parents at their proper occupations: Arete (who is not needed for the dialogue) is seen spinning at the hearth, while Alkinoos, whose business is at the council, is caught just as he is on his way out. Nausikaa presents her request. She argues as if washing the household fabrics were an exceptional event, only undertaken in case of special need. Being a new development in the poem, it is felt to require thorough motivation. The five sons in 62 f. are evoked merely for circumstantial detail of the family, though 53

He did not invent the people itself; see p. 84. Cf. Danek 130 f. 55 Q appears to have adapted a verse that referred to Hekabe, ‘daughter of famed Dymas’ (P. Oxy. 5094 fr. 1. 8 ]κλειτοBο Δύμαν[τος), perhaps from a Cyclic poem such as the Iliou Persis (cf. ZPE 183 (2012), 11–13). The girl says she will go along on the washing expedition to help, but Q does not follow this up later; it would have been a pointless complication. 54

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it is essential for what follows that Nausikaa will have some men’s clothing with her (Focke 99). It is a nice human touch that she is too modest to mention the matter of her marriage but that her father understands what is in her mind (66 f.). He responds concisely, gives the orders, and the expedition is mounted, all in a few lines. Arete provides food, wine, and a flask of olive oil (in preparation for 96 and 215). The laundry is quickly done, but with picturesque detail (90–5). The girls proceed to bathe, have their picnic, and play with their beachball in bare-headed abandon. Nausikaa is effectively likened to Artemis dancing among mountain nymphs. Helen was compared to Artemis at δ 122, and Penelope will be in ρ 37 = τ 54, but the simile seems apter to Nausikaa, and Odysseus in 151 will be struck by her resemblance to the goddess. It is already well into the afternoon, and Odysseus is still asleep (η 288 f.). Nausikaa and her party are nearly ready to pack up and go home. Before it is too late Athena returns to engineer the hero’s awakening. Nausikaa mis-throws, the ball goes into the water, and the girls squeal. It is a wonderfully realistic image, and Q avoids representing the goddess’s intervention in physical terms and saying that she diverted the ball in flight. Odysseus is woken by the hullabaloo. He at once feels his typical anxiety about what sort of people he has landed among (119–21 = ν 200–2, cf. ι 175 f.). Their name was mentioned by Leukothea in ε 345, but he has not taken it in; Nausikaa will tell him who they are at 195. But the sounds that have woken him are like the voices of mountain or river nymphs, something that he associates with Greece. He infers that there are human habitations not far away.56 He will get up and investigate. The picture of him emerging from the bushes is impressive and memorable. The lion simile in 130–4 is adapted from Μ 299–301 and not entirely apposite, as Odysseus is by no means in predatory mood. It is nevertheless not ineffective. The girls scatter, but the king’s daughter (emboldened by Athena) shows her mettle and stands her ground. Odysseus ponders how best 56 The logic is somewhat obscure, and Nitzsch, Bekker, and others have taken 123–4 to be an interpolation (124 = Υ 9, Hymn. Aphr. 99). Cf. Kirchhoff 202; Hennings 174; Von der Mühll 714. In that case Odysseus just says ‘I hear voices as of girls’. But these girls have just been likened to the nymphs of Artemis’ entourage, and it is quite appropriate if the numinous atmosphere carries over into Odysseus’ waking impression. On the other hand the preceding simile might have inspired an interpolation.

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to approach her (the typical μερμηρίζειν motif: Arend 106–15). Should he do the full suppliant thing and clasp her round the knees? He opts for the more diplomatic alternative. Q allows him to anticipate being given clothing and shown a town (144, 178 f.). He addresses Nausikaa with fulsome compliments which we have no reason to think insincere. The beginning of his speech (149–52) resembles that of Anchises when Aphrodite presents herself before him in Hymn. Aphr. 92–9.57 Then he gives a very abbreviated statement of where he has come from and appeals for sympathy and help. Nausikaa replies sententiously that he must put up with whatever misfortune Zeus sends. But as he has arrived here, he will certainly have his needs seen to, and she will show him the town. The people, by the way, are Phaeacians, and she happens to be the daughter of their ruler Alkinoos. Line 196 is adapted from 7, but the need to include ‘I am’ results in Nausikaa’s actual name being squeezed out. Odysseus will hear it at 276. She then calls to her maids to come back and attend to the stranger.58 The speech incorporates further information about the Phaeacians that is less for the maids’ benefit than for Odysseus’ and ours. They are dear to the gods and have no enemies; they live on a remote island and have no intercourse with other men. The maids are told to bathe the visitor. We have seen Nestor’s daughter bathe Telemachos, but it would clearly be inappropriate for Nausikaa to perform this service for Odysseus out of doors. In the event the maids give him the oil and tell him to bathe himself, while he makes it clear that he would be embarrassed to have them in close attendance. The whole episode is an object lesson in gentlemanly and ladylike behaviour and tact. He bathes, oils himself, and puts on the clothes provided. To enhance his appearance Athena intervenes again, in the same role as in β 12 but with fuller elaboration, including a not very felicitous simile. He then goes and sits apart (236) so that Nausikaa has an 57 For the motif that a man encountering a beautiful female wonders if she is a goddess or nymph cf. West 2007: 287. 58 Line 209, in which they are told to give him food and drink, anticipates 246; some prefer the plus-verse in one fifteenth-century manuscript, ‘Come, give him a laundered cloak and tunic’, which is more appropriate and cannot stand beside 209 (Kirchhoff 203; Von der Mühll 714). If it is a Byzantine conjecture, it is a very acute and skilful one (for the phrasing cf. θ 392). If it is an ancient variant, it has a good chance of being genuine.

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opportunity to comment on him to her maids without his hearing. She is now greatly impressed by the man, even to the point of wishing for someone like him as a husband.59 Once he has eaten and drunk, she prepares for the homeward journey and addresses him in a long speech (255–312) that sets the agenda for his entry into the town. It includes a description of the town’s principal features and informs him of the Phaeacians’ eminently maritime interests. After voicing her apprehension that tongues may wag resentfully if he is seen in her company,60 she tells him what they must do to avoid this. There is a sacred grove where he must wait while she goes on ahead. The grove is assigned not to the Phaeacians’ chief god Poseidon but to Athena, the deity who is assisting Odysseus and who will guide him from there to the palace. Nausikaa does not know that the goddess is going to play this role, but she assures Odysseus that anyone will be able to direct him; the royal residence cannot be mistaken for anyone else’s. Nausikaa can predict exactly how her parents will be found when Odysseus goes in. We last saw Alkinoos going out to sit in council, but now evening is approaching and he will be back at home, on his throne and quaffing wine. Arete will be sitting spinning just as before (305–6 ≈ 52 f.). Odysseus is to make straight for her and supplicate her. She is due to play the decisive role by recognizing the clothes he has been given, which will prompt him to tell his story. Q dispenses with any reply from Odysseus. Nausikaa sets off in the mule-cart, the others accompanying on foot. The sun sets as they reach the grove of Athena. Odysseus will not have to wait very long there and he will be able to reach the palace without having to stumble through darkness. He prays to the goddess that the Phaeacians may receive him kindly. The four lines that follow the prayer, 328–31, have been seen by some as an addition by a rhapsode concluding his recitation. But we expect Athena’s reaction to the prayer to be recorded, as it is in 328 (= γ 385). It is not quite consistent with other passages that she is represented as still inhibited by a Poseidon who is doing his best

59 In 244 it is ‘a man like this’, but 245 implies that it is Odysseus himself she has in mind. Cf. η 311–14. 60 The evocation of a coarser class of Phaeacian in 274 f. is kept in play in η 16 f., 31–3. It is an invention for the context. The idea that they might suspect Odysseus of being a god (280 f.) echoes 149 but comes in oddly here, especially the notion that this god may take Nausikaa to wife.

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to obstruct Odysseus’ homecoming (330 f. ≈ α 20 f.): he has passed on and left him to make his own way. But it is poetically effective to maintain this element of tension at the divine level.

η Odysseus will spend two nights in Alkinoos’ palace and be conveyed home during the third night. But Q has expanded his narrative in the course of composition. When Nausikaa gives Odysseus his instructions in ζ 303–12 it is envisaged that he will find Alkinoos and Arete at home with their servants. He is to pass Alkinoos by and go straight to Arete and supplicate her, and then he may expect a swift repatriation. The supplication ought to lead directly to the queen’s questioning of him (η 233 ff.), and this to his recounting of all his adventures. His voyage home is programmed for the next day (η 191 f., 222, 318, θ 9, 34, 48–55, 150 f., 423–48, 457–68, etc.). In the event he will find the company in the palace augmented by many dinner guests (49 f., 98 f., 136–8). When he supplicates Arete, her response is postponed until one of them has advised Alkinoos what to do, Alkinoos has made arrangements for the reception of the guest, Odysseus has addressed a speech to him, the drinking has been concluded, and the nobles have gone home (153–229).61 Then in answer to Arete’s enquiries Odysseus will give only a short and partial account of his experiences (244–97), the complete account being put off till the following evening (ι 19 ff.). When it comes it takes up so much of the night that it is eventually decided to delay his departure by another day (λ 330–2, 339, 350 ff.). After leaving Odysseus Nausikaa completes her homeward journey (2–13). She might naturally have been represented as going to tell her parents of the approaching stranger, but this would have been to sacrifice the effect of his sudden appearance in the hall. Instead she is removed from the scene as quickly as possible. The mules and clothes are put away, and she withdraws to her room. Her brothers (cf. ζ 62) 61 The expansion is necessary in order to accommodate the visitor’s proper reception in line with epic convention. It restores a sequence of themes that matches that in δ: ‘Arrival—Being Noticed—Initial Minor Discourtesy—Welcome—Meal— Questions—Stranger’s Story’ (Hainsworth 317).

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and nurse (with her curriculum vitae) provide circumstantial detail.62 She has fulfilled her function and now disappears from the narrative except for her brief exchange with Odysseus at θ 457–68. Odysseus now moves on from the grove of Athena. The goddess lends him a perhaps superfluous invisibility in case he encounters abusive Phaeacians. The idea, developed from ζ 273 ff., ‘creates a certain element of suspense’ (Hainsworth 321). He will remain unseen until he is inside the palace (140–3), though the disguised Athena talks with him in 18–77 as if he were fully visible. She appears in the guise of a teenage girl, whose presence out alone on the street is explained by her carrying a water-pail. (We note that Odysseus’ contacts and helpers remain for the time being exclusively female.) He asks her politely to direct him to Alkinoos’ house. Nausikaa told him in ζ 300 that a child could show him the way, and this now proves to be so. The danger of hostile burghers is still emphasized, and as Athena cannot tell him ‘stay invisible’, her advice is to avoid eye contact and speech. She adds irrelevantly that although xenophobic, the Phaeacians are excellent sailors, with ships of extraordinary speed—a first anticipatory mention of the type of vessel that will take Odysseus home. Following the goddess, and again invisible, he passes unnoticed through the town, admiring the features that Nausikaa had told him about (43–5 ~ ζ 262–9). When they reach the palace the girl addresses him at greater length. Like Nausikaa in ζ 305 ff., she is able to say exactly what he will see inside the palace and what he should do. The promised scene is now enlarged to include a company of nobles dining (49 f., cf. above). He will immediately find Arete, whose lineage, virtues, and prestige are set out at length.63 If she takes kindly to him, he will have a prospect of getting back to his own country. After imparting this information Athena leaves, to remain off the scene till the following morning (θ 7). As in ζ 41–7, there is detail of where she goes, but this time it is Athens. She may as reasonably go there as Poseidon to Aigai (ε 381), Hephaestus to Lemnos (θ 283), Ares to Thrace (θ 361), or Aphrodite to Cyprus (θ 362). However, it is surprising that she goes by way of Marathon if Scheria is imagined 62 Eurymedousa’s name relates to that of Nausithoos’ grandfather Eurymedon (58) and perhaps Telemachos’ nurse Eurykleia (Wilamowitz 1884: 7 n. 1). Her homeland Apeira seems to be as imaginary a place as Hypereia in ζ 4. 63 On the expansion of the text following 55 see p. 132.

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to be located in the west. It may be an indication that the passage is adapted from one where she was coming from Olympus. There may have been such a passage in the Nostoi if, as I have suggested (West 2013: 282), it contained a divine council after which Athena went to Athens to stir Orestes to action, as in the Odyssey she goes to Ithaca to stir Telemachos. Odysseus arrives at the palace and pauses before the threshold (83). Here there is an awkward transition to a descriptive passage that extends over almost fifty lines, the first two lines being adapted from δ 45 f. It has been swollen to more than twice its length by the incorporation of a passage in the present tense (103–30) that must have have been composed to stand in a speech.64 In 131 it slips back into the requisite past tense. Before the passage was transposed here, 132 would have followed directly after 102, which gives a good connection.65 Odysseus stands and admires the wonderful interior (133 f., adapted from ε 75 f.), and then goes in. The guests are making their last libations: bedtime is approaching, and they will not be staying much longer. He makes for Arete and clasps her knees in supplication. Simultaneously the aër that has hidden him from view dissolves. (Athena would no doubt have dispersed it herself if she had not so recently been removed to Athens.) As everyone stares in surprise, he makes his appeal to the queen. It is compressed and awkwardly phrased, and the address to Arete is immediately widened to include Alkinoos and all the banqueters; the speech has perhaps been altered to suit the fact that one of the guests and Alkinoos will speak and act before Arete does. We noted above that this separation of Odysseus’ address to her from her reply is an expansion made in order to make room for the proper courtesies of a visitor’s reception. It is obvious what Alkinoos should do, but Q resorts to the typical device of letting a man with the wisdom of age, one Echeneos, speak up and advise him of it. The same sage will be brought in again in a similar advisory role at λ 342. His is the first male voice that Odysseus has heard for seven years. Alkinoos initiates the formulaic acts of hospitality (172–6 = α 136–40, δ 52–6, al.; 177 ≈ ε 94), and then sets out the agenda for the rest of the day and the next one: now the diners 64

See pp. 94 and 132, where I have suggested that it originally followed 55. But the references to the banqueters in 98 f. and 136–8 would come too close together. As these banqueters seem to be an addition to the original plan (absent from Nausikaa’s description in ζ 304 ff. of what Odysseus will find), it may be suspected that 98 f. and/or 136–9 are secondary. 65

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should go home to bed; tomorrow the stranger will be entertained on a grander scale and thought will be given to sending him safely home, even if he comes from far away (194 ≈ ζ 312). It is possible, he adds, that he is a god, though if so, the gods are up to something new, as in the past they have consorted with the Phaeacians quite openly without concealing their identities. The programme as announced is a jejune one that fails to prepare for the games in θ. The apparent announcement of bedtime is necessary in order to get rid of the guests, but misleading inasmuch as there is to be a further, more intimate dialogue scene between Odysseus, Arete, and Alkinoos. The mechanism would not have been necessary if the royal couple had been at home on their own, as Nausikaa seemed to anticipate in ζ 304 ff. (cf. above). Odysseus deprecates the suggestion that he is an immortal. He is a mortal, one who has suffered as much mortal misery as anyone. (This might be seen as pointing the way towards the Apologoi, as if they were to come tonight.) Now he would like to be allowed to eat his fill (a justification for his staying up longer), and tomorrow will they please send him home. He yearns to see his house, estate, and servants before he dies (224 f.).66 The company approve his sentiments, complete their potations and libations, and depart. Now that Odysseus is left alone with the royal couple, Arete finally speaks up, asking him who he is and how he has come by the clothes that she recognizes as belonging to the palace.67 He answers the second part of her enquiry with an account of the last section of his adventures, from the point when he lost his ship and crew and was washed up on Calypso’s island. A number of verses are repeated or adapted from the narrative in ε.68 The question about his identity remains unanswered until Q is ready to unroll the full Apologoi, at ι 16. 66 It may be thought odd that he does not mention his wife. But in 311 ff. Q is going to make Alkinoos offer him Nausikaa’s hand, and a preceding mention of Penelope would not sit well with that. In θ 243 and 410, however, Alkinoos and Euryalos assume that Odysseus has a wife and children at home. 67 Perhaps this was originally meant to introduce the Apologoi, and Q subsequently decided to postpone the main account of them to the following day. Cf. Kirchhoff 277–9. If Arete’s speech once followed straight upon Odysseus’ appeal to her, it would have been introduced by a verse different from 233, which implies preceding activity without dialogue; we cannot treat 155–232 as a simple insertion. 68 Lines 259–51 = ε 131–3; 256–7 ≈ ε 135 f.; 266–9 ≈ ε 268, 278–80; 281–2 ≈ ε 442 f. Lines 251–8 are perhaps an expansion drawing on ε 133–6; note 251 Cνθ᾽ / 259 Cνθα, and the repetition of 245 f. Καλυψώ | ναίει =ϋπλόκαμος, δειν5 θεός in 254 f.

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Odysseus’ recital ends with how he got the clothes from Nausikaa, neatly completing the answer to Arete’s second question. Alkinoos comments that Nausikaa ought to have brought Odysseus with her. Odysseus explains why she did not, but his account is inaccurate: it was her idea, not his as he now says, that they should separate to avoid giving a bad impression, and it was not Alkinoos’ disapproval that was feared. The inaccuracy is not disingenuity on Odysseus’ part but negligence on Q’s: he contents himself with an approximation to the story he told 350 lines before. Alkinoos has very quickly come to the conclusion that Odysseus would be an ideal husband for his daughter if he were willing to stay (311–15). But no one will detain him if he prefers to leave. As the first alternative is not going to be taken up, Q can make Alkinoos move straight on to the assurance that Odysseus’ transport is guaranteed for the morrow. He will be conveyed home while he sleeps, and so superb are the Phaeacian ships that he will be there within the night, however distant it may be—even if it should be far beyond Euboea, the most remote place known to Phaeacian mariners, who once took Rhadamanthys there to see Tityos. These are lines of great interest for their bearing on Q’s geographical outlook (see p. 90). It is hard to know what to make of the voyage alluded to. Was there some fuller story known to Q (cf. Welcker, Kl. Schr. ii. 26; Danek 140 f.), or is he improvising these tantalizing bits of data? Rhadamanthys was mentioned in δ 564 as dwelling in Elysium, and the scholiast infers that the Phaeacians lived somewhere not far from there. Rhadamanthys was famous for his justice, whereas Tityos was a notorious sinner; he will be seen suffering his punishment in Hades in λ 576. What did either of them have to do with Euboea? Hainsworth notes that Rhadamanthys had Boeotian and Tityos Phocian associations, and that the Phaeacians might have been imagined as sailing up the Euripos and landing Rhadamanthys at Aulis. Odysseus utters a brief prayer that Alkinoos’ promises will find fulfilment, and that ends the day’s converse. A bed is made up for Odysseus in the portico, and the royal couple retire to their quarters.

θ In the morning Alkinoos and Odysseus get up and go straight to the assembly, without the circumstantial description that attends

θ

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Telemachos when he does likewise in β 1–14. He sent out heralds in advance: here Athena, back from Athens at an early hour, does the herald’s job, going about and telling each man the purpose of the meeting. As they gather they see and admire Odysseus, whom she has made more impressive to look at (as she did in the Nausikaa episode: 19 = ζ 235), taller and bulkier. According to 22 f. this was not just so that the Phaeacians should take to him but so that he should be fit for the athletics that take place presently; but Athena ought not to have had any foreknowledge of these (a later initiative by Alkinoos), and the lines are most likely a secondary addition. Alkinoos addresses the gathering. He admits that he does not yet know who the stranger is or where in the world he comes from, only that he wants to be sent home. He urges that this be undertaken, as is the Phaeacian custom, and that a ship be straightway launched and made ready for sailing; a crew is to be assembled and come to the palace for a meal. The nobles too are to come and help entertain the visitor, and the bard Demodokos is to be summoned to sing for them. Originally it appears to have been just the nobles who were to go back to the palace; this is the banquet for the Seniors anticipated in η 189–91, and they are the only guests mentioned in what follows (47, 91, 97, 108). The rowers were no doubt meant to wait on the quay until evening, when (on the original timetable) Odysseus was to depart.69 But after deciding to postpone the departure to the following day, Q altered the text, bringing the rowers to join the banquet; he is conscious that this will make the palace unusually thronged (57 f.).70 Demodokos is introduced with some personal information: he is a blind bard, but a gifted one. Q, who clearly knows from experience or observation how blind singers are treated, gives a realistic description 69 Note that 51–5 are repeated from δ 780–3 + 785, where Rψο7 δ᾽ =ν νοτίωι τήν γ᾽ cρμισαν is continued by =κ δ᾽ Cβαν ατοί | Cνθα δ6 δόρπον iλοντο, μένον δ᾽ =π iσπερον =λθεBν.

70 There are signs of a revised text in the double invitation, 38–9 / 40–2. Perhaps 37–9 and 55–7 (+ [58]) are secondary: then in the original text 36/40 made a transition from ‘Let fifty-two κο7ροι be assembled’ to ‘Those are my instructions for the κο7ροι’, and 59 τοBσιν δέ referred back to the σκηπτο7χοι in 47. This leaves a slight but tolerable awkwardness in 48 ff., where the rowers set to work as if they have heard Alkinoos’ speech, their recruitment having been elided. The twelve sheep slaughtered in 59 would have been sufficient for the twelve barons; 60–1 will have been added to cater for the increased number of guests.

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of how he was settled in place ready to perform. Presently he sings, on the theme of a quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles. The story is said to have been celebrated at that time, but it is obscure to us and only elliptically summarized. Where we have other allusions in the Odyssey to events connected with Troy, they fit in with what we know from elsewhere, though Odysseus’ own part in them tends to be played up, as in γ 163, 219–22, δ 240–57, 269–89, θ 517. In the present one we notice a feature characteristic of Q: his fondness for the motif of a person realizing that an old prophecy is being fulfilled (ι 507–12, κ 330–2, ν 172–8). The oracle here in question—the only one of Delphic provenance in early epic outside the Theban cycle—must have said, ‘When the noblest of the Achaeans shall quarrel, you shall know that the war is close to being won’. It was pronounced at the time of Helen’s abduction and the Atreidai’s preparations for the war.71 It must have been invented at a time when the Iliad was celebrated, and the quarrel it foretold was surely meant to be the Iliadic one between Agamemnon and Achilles. But Q does not want to represent Demodokos as singing Iliad Α; it would be too blatant an allusion to the greatest of current epics, one from which he was constantly borrowing lines.72 So he modifies the theme by making it Odysseus who quarrelled with Achilles, not Agamemnon (leaving the latter free to rejoice at the fulfilment of the prophecy), and by setting the quarrel at a feast, perhaps thinking of the quarrel that arose at Tenedos when Agamemnon was slow to invite Achilles to a sacrificial banquet (Cypria arg. 9; Sophocles’ Syndeipnoi). Q has chosen a song theme involving Odysseus so that it will move him to tears. The considerate Alkinoos promptly abandons the banquet in favour of a series of athletic contests. This is a new theme, not anticipated in the programme sketched in η 189–94, and as argued in the last chapter (pp. 133–5), the whole episode of the games is a secondary expansion. The reason that Alkinoos gives is a scratch one: he wishes the stranger to see the Phaeacians’ excellence at boxing, wrestling, jumping, and running (103). But it serves to get the games

71 That must be the meaning of 81 f. τότε γάρ dα κυλίνδετο πήματος ρχή | Τρωσί τε κα ΔαναοBσι; cf. Ε 62 f. ν0ας . . . | ρχεκάκους, etc. The clause explains why Agamemnon was consulting the god. 82 Δι.ς μεγάλου διS βουλάς may allude to the plan for the war that Zeus made with Themis, as in Cypria arg. 1. 72 Cf. Rüter 248 f.; O. Taplin in E. M. Craik (ed.), Owls to Athens: Essays on Classical Subjects Presented to Sir Kenneth Dover (Oxford 1990), 112.

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started. Demodokos is taken along too, as he will be called upon to perform.73 The funeral games for Patroklos in Ψ are drawn upon for phrasing at several points, but not for the plan of the episode. The Phaeacian competitors are all listed at the beginning (111–19; Q invents a series of suitably nautical personal names) instead of under individual events. Five events take place, including one, the long jump, that does not appear in Ψ. They are disposed of in eleven lines; Q is not interested in emulating the Iliad poet’s extended descriptions of athletic endeavour, he wants to get on to Odysseus’ display of his prowess. No prizes are mentioned. There is no question of Odysseus’ being more than a spectator until one of Alkinoos’ sons, Laodamas, comments on the stranger’s physique to one of the other athletes, Euryalos, and suggests asking him what he can do. Euryalos encourages him to ask, and he does so.74 We note that Odysseus is still expected to take ship the same day (150 f.). He demurs, whereupon Euryalos riles him by saying that he does not after all look like an athlete, more like a merchant. Odysseus rebukes his incivility and declares that he is by no means incompetent in athletics. Without troubling to throw off his cloak, he seizes a discus, a bigger and heavier one than the Phaeacians have been using, and hurls it well beyond theirs, making them all duck as it flies past. Athena, taking the form of a Phaeacian official, hails him as the winner. Cheered to find someone on his side, Odysseus now challenges the Phaeacians to compete with him in one of the other sports. He is an expert archer, for example.75 He dilates on this at length (215–28); it is a skill very relevant to the end of the Odyssey, but one that he never displayed at Troy in the Iliad. Here, however, he claims to have fought there with the bow and been surpassed only by Philoctetes. The 73 It is not clear why he is made to leave his lyre behind—Alkinoos in 105 puts it back on the peg on which the herald hung it in 67—so that it has to be fetched later. Did Q not at first envisage making him perform at the games (Jacob 414)? But in that case why take him there at all? Just so as not to leave him alone in the palace? Cf. Blass 269–72; Dawe 333. 74 Euryalos has been characterized as the best of the Phaeacians in physique apart from Alkinoos (116, where the θ᾽ given by many manuscripts is intrusive). He is perhaps chosen as the second speaker (140, and again in 158) by subconscious analogy with the Ithacan suitor Eurymachos, who typically speaks up after Antinoos. 75 There has been no archery contest in the Phaeacians’ games, and at ζ 270 we heard that they do not practise the art.

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revelation that he fought at Troy is inapposite at this stage, before he has disclosed his identity, but it is not picked up by the Phaeacian audience (cf. 581–5). He further spoils the proportions of his speech by going on to evoke two greater archers of an earlier generation, both figures that Q refers to elsewhere: Heracles (cf. λ 607 f.) and Eurytos (the former owner of Odysseus’ bow, ϕ 32 f.). It may be suspected that 219–28 are an expansion; 229 connects well after 215–18. Alkinoos mollifies the piqued hero and deprecates Euryalos’ offensiveness. He now admits (as against 102 f.) that athletics is not after all the Phaeacians’ strong point, except for running. For the rest, apart from their seamanship, they specialize in the comforts of civilization: eating, dancing and song, changes of clothes, warm baths, and bedding (248 f.).76 The clean clothes link up with Nausikaa’s laundry in ζ; the baths look forward to the one that Odysseus will enjoy at 450 f.; the singing and dancing lead on to the next episode, as Alkinoos at once calls upon the best dancers to put on a show for the visitor and sends someone to fetch Demodokos’ instrument, which ‘is lying somewhere in our house’ (255)—Q artfully allows him to forget that he had himself hung it up on its peg. Demodokos’ second song (266–369) is a secondary expansion; originally Q had him just accompanying the dancers (261–5), with the further balletic display in 370–80 following straight on.77 The song is given in full, not just summarized as are the bard’s other two. Q has inserted an independent piece from his own repertoire. Then comes the special display by two of Alkinoos’ sons, using a ball that is individualized with the details of its colour and its maker’s name (373). Odysseus compliments Alkinoos: he has made good his boast about the quality of Phaeacian dancers. The king is pleased, and calls for all the nobles to bring the visitor gifts, from each a tunic, a cloak, and a talent of gold. Let him have it all by supper-time. And Euryalos is to make amends for his incivility. The nobles send their heralds to fetch the gifts. Euryalos and Odysseus make up their differences like gentlemen. The various gifts are brought to the palace and deposited with Arete. Alkinoos and Odysseus return there. Alkinoos instructs Arete to find a fine coffer 76 77

The list is paralleled in the Gilgāmesh epic: West 1997: 414. See p. 135.

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for all the gifts and to heat water so that Odysseus can have a bath and then enjoy supper and more song from Demodokos. Arete sees to all this, gives Odysseus the coffer, and invites him to apply his own security fastening, which he does, using a special knot that he learned from the witch Circe.78 He then takes his first warm bath for three weeks. Emerging all spruce in fine Phaeacian garments, he passes Nausikaa, whom he has not seen since she left him at the grove the previous evening. Q has had no further use for her, but it would have been poetically unsatisfactory if Odysseus had left Scheria without seeing her again. They exchange gracious words (457–68). It is the last we hear of her. Odysseus takes his place for supper. Demodokos is brought in, and Odysseus sends him some food with his compliments. After the meal he compliments him further, in particular on his ability to tell of the Trojan War.79 As already noted, this, with the request in 492 to ‘change his path’ to a different theme, would follow so much more naturally after his first song in 73–82 that it looks as if the two passages have been sundered by substantial expansion. The story that Odysseus now asks to hear is the one about the Wooden Horse that Epeios built, with which he himself brought about the sack of Ilios. Demodokos obliges with a song that in scope very much resembles the Iliou Persis as we know it from Proclus’ summary (499–520). The account of the sack serves as a fitting prelude to Odysseus’ recital of his return from Troy (de Jong 195). It is highly compressed, however: in 514 (cf. 495) we read that ‘he sang how the sons of the Achaeans sacked the city, pouring out of the Horse’, as if it had been those in the Horse who did all the killing; their opening the city gates for those returning from Tenedos is elided. As in other Odyssean references to ‘Cyclic’ material, Odysseus’ part in the events is highlighted or amplified. He is represented as having accompanied Menelaos to Deiphobos’ house to find Helen and won a tough fight there with Athena’s help. As before, Odysseus is moved to tears. This time his crying is described with an extravagant and hardly appropriate simile, inspired by the city-sack theme of the song. As before, Alkinoos is the one who 78

This anticipation of an episode to be related later in the poem is of the same sort as the anticipations of the Polyphemos story in α 69 and β 19 f. Cf. above, n. 21. 79 The bard has only sung of a single episode, but Odysseus extrapolates from it to ‘all that the Achaeans did and suffered and toiled’ (490) so as to have a basis for his request for another theme from the Trojan saga.

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notices. He makes a lengthy and sententious speech in which he finally asks the visitor’s name (550) and provenance (555), so that the self-navigating ships will know where to take him. He adds more detail about these ships and the absolute safety that Odysseus will enjoy in transit. At the same time he recalls the old prophecy that a ferrying mission will one day end with Poseidon ‘smiting’ a ship at sea and burying the city under a mountain.80 Finally he asks Odysseus to relate all the vicissitudes he went through before arriving in Scheria, and to explain why tales of the Trojan War distress him so. He takes no account of the stranger’s earlier mention of fighting at Troy (219 f.) and offers humane, realistic guesses at why he may be upset by talk of the war. The speech prepares for the Apologoi and at the same time, apparently, for Odysseus’ departure. We still have the impression that this will follow immediately after he has told his story, and this is no doubt still what Q anticipates: he has not yet realized how much actual and dramatic time the Apologoi are going to take up. Eventually he will decide that they have used up too much of the night and that Odysseus’ embarkation had better be postponed by a day.

ι Odysseus’ reply will occupy the whole of the next four rhapsodies, interrupted only by the intermission scene at λ 328–84. He will relate all of his peregrinations from his leaving Troy to his arrival on Calypso’s island; he has already told how he came from there to Scheria (η 241–97). By way of a preamble (2–13) he connects and contrasts his impending recital with the performance of Demodokos that they have recently enjoyed. That bardic recital fitted perfectly in the cheerful domestic setting. Odysseus’ is going to strike a different note, certainly more painful for himself.

80 Poseidon’s motive is given as resentment over the Phaeacians’ ferrying everyone about immune from harm (565 f.). In the event (ν 125 ff.) it is because of his wrath against Odysseus. But that could not have found expression in Alkinoos’ speech, so Q must for the moment provide the deity with a vaguer and less rational motivation.

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First he answers Alkinoos’ initial questions as to who he is and where he comes from. The disclosure of his identity has been long delayed, for when Arete asked about it at η 238 he avoided telling her. Now he will declare it, he says, so that in future he may be their xeinos— an appropriate aspiration in the context, but one that does not correspond to anything that can come about afterwards. Naming himself as Odysseus son of Laertes, he claims world-wide fame not for heroic warrior deeds but for his δόλοι (cf. γ 122, Γ 202). The Phaeacians, however, will recognize him as one of the major heroes who fought at Troy, one who featured in Demodokos’ third song. His home is Ithaca, which he describes at some length, expatiating on his love of his native island, a love that neither Calypso nor Circe could overcome (21–36).81 As the Phaeacians already know what he did at Troy, he begins his account from his departure at the end of the war. Telemachos heard something about this from Nestor in γ 162 f.; Q makes no effort to tie this passage up with that one. Odysseus’ first adventure is at Ismaros in Thrace. The summarily narrated episode shows him as a typical hero-marauder in the realworld Aegean.82 It serves a particular purpose in relation to the later narrative, for it is from Ismaros, as we shall learn presently (163–5, 196–211), that he obtains the supplies of powerful wine that he will use to overcome Polyphemos.83 The battle against the Kikones brings the first losses for his men, six from each of his twelve ships. As they sail on they are hit by a storm that forces them to put in to land and wait two days until it has blown itself out (67–75). Its purpose is perhaps just to furnish the Aegean part of the voyage with the same kind of danger and event that will feature in the later adventures. Alternatively it may be meant to correspond to the storm that afflicted the other Achaeans further east, the one that resulted in the death of Ajax.84 This would have been a convenient opportunity for Q 81

This is the first mention of Circe in the poem apart from the passing mention in

θ 448. In the account of Odysseus’ stay with her in κ–μ she is not represented as

wanting to detain him: he can leave whenever he wants to. 82 ‘Eine Szene aus dem Piratenleben der Kolonisationszeit’ (Jacoby 112). 83 It was mentioned in the Nostoi (arg. 4b) that Neoptolemos, travelling overland, encountered Odysseus at Maroneia, the harbour site below Mt Ismaros. Q may have known nothing of this; see West 2013: 263 f. 84 Cf. Merkelbach 182 f.; Danek 165–9. In the Nostoi it was for two days that Thetis told Neoptolemos to wait before setting out on his journey (Apollod. epit. 6. 12). But he caught up with Odysseus at Ismaros after the two-day wait, so the storm does not come at the same point in the two narratives. Danek 168, disregarding Neoptolemos but otherwise making plausible assumptions, finds that the timetable works.

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to reduce Odysseus’ fleet to the single ship which is all that the subsequent adventures require (cf. Danek 169, 170); but perhaps he felt that that would have been too major a disaster at so early a stage of the nostos. On the third day they continue on their way, and all is well until they attempt to round the dangerous headland of Maleia at the southeast corner of the Peloponnese. This is where Menelaos was blown off course towards Crete and Egypt a few days earlier, losing most of his ships (γ 298 f.), and now it serves to send Odysseus astray, but again Q passes up the opportunity to dispose of the surplus vessels. The fleet stays together, but it is blown southwards for nine days (82), implying the traversal of a vast sea that takes Odysseus beyond known shores. His first landfall is in the country of the Lotus-eaters. This episode is probably based on some rumour about a north African people who eat a certain flower (cf. p. 116), made fabulous by combining it with the folk-tale motif of the food that binds one to a place or makes one forget one’s past.85 Like the episode of the Kikones, it is very briefly treated. There is no mention of the country’s scenery. Odysseus simply relates that some men sent to explore were given lotus to eat, lost all will to return, and had to be fetched back under duress. They sail on again, presumably westwards, in the opposite direction from Libya and Egypt, as the subsequent adventures are set in uncharted waters. There is no mention of days and nights, and as they reach the Cyclopes’ neighbourhood after dark (142 ff.) we may suppose that this was on the same day as they left the Lotus-eaters. The narrative now becomes much more expansive. This is to be a major episode, related at length. Odysseus begins by describing the Cyclopes’ land and society. They were mentioned earlier (ζ 5) as the Phaeacians’ predatory former neighbours. Odysseus is only going to encounter one of them, and the story is basically about a solitary ogre (Nitzsch iii. xxviii), but there have to be others for the sake of the trick by which Polyphemos is led to complain that Nobody is killing him (Finsler ii. 322). To explain why Odysseus does not encounter them as a community Q informs us that each family lives apart from the others (114 f.). The original story was appropriate to a hero roaming on his own. It is less suited to a whole shipload of men, let alone twelve shiploads, and as Q has not yet seen fit to reduce Odysseus’ fleet to a single

85

See Radermacher 10–13; Page 1973: 14–19.

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vessel, he parks eleven of the ships at an offshore island while Odysseus takes his own ship over to investigate the mainland. Q follows his introductory account of the Cyclopes with an ampler one of the island, giving rein to his talent for natural description (116–41). Only then does the narrative go forward. It is a pitch-dark, overcast night when they arrive, and without seeing any sign of land ahead they run safely aground on the shore of the island’s harbour. They spend the next day enjoying the island and feasting on its wild goats. Attention is drawn to the wine that they took from the city of the Kikones, supplies of which have not yet run out (162–5). They observe that there is an inhabited coast not far off, but the initiative of visiting it is left for the following morning. Odysseus then announces his intention and takes his ship and crew across. Before anything happens, there is further description: of the situation of Polyphemos’ cave, and of the ogre himself (in advance of his being seen). Q neglects to mention his single eye, a feature presumably common to all the Cyclopes (as to the three in Hesiod, Th. 139–46). It is implicit in the story, and it was no doubt overfamiliarity with the story that caused the omission.86 The agents are now reduced further. Odysseus picks twelve men to go with him and leaves the rest to look after the ship. He takes a skin full of the extra-strong Ismaric wine that will prove helpful for his salvation, and gives an account of how he acquired it that differs from what was related in 164 f. (196–211). He now says he was given it by a priest at Ismaros called Maron, the son of Euanthes, a fitting name for an important wine-dispenser in the area of Maroneia.87 He took it with him, he explains, because he had an inkling that he might encounter a powerful and unruly savage (213–15), and he must have anticipated that it might come in useful in dealing with him. They enter Polyphemos’ cave and find the proprietor absent (a typical folk-tale motif: Meuli 17 = 605). Its interior is described. The men beg Odysseus to take a few cheeses and leave, rounding up some kids and lambs as they return to their ship. He admits it was a mistake 86 It is not a feature of all versions of the Blinded Ogre folk-tale, but found in the majority. 87 The scholiast cites ‘Hesiod’ (fr. 238) for a genealogy Dionysus—Oinopion— Euanthes—Maron. But Maron was probably Q’s invention and figured in no other tradition. He gives Odysseus the wine in gratitude for his having spared his house in the raiding expedition (199); he is made a priest to account for Odysseus’ sparing his house (Nutzhorn 112 n.).

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not to listen to them, only he was curious to meet the man and perhaps get guest-gifts. They help themselves to cheese and wait for Polyphemos. His arrival late in the afternoon is the cue for some picturesque rustic scene-painting. He brings a huge pile of brushwood for his fire, drives in his ewes and nanny-goats, leaving the rams and billies outside, milks them, sets the lambs and kids to their mothers, divides the milk into two to make cheese with half of it, and lights his fire. Meanwhile he has closed the cave entrance with a mighty block of stone that Odysseus’ party will have no hope of shifting. Seeing the visitors in the firelight, Polyphemos asks them who they are: a conventional enquiry (252–5 = γ 71–4), but it would have been normal etiquette to give them a meal first. Odysseus replies truthfully that they are Achaeans on their way back from Troy, though he avoids giving his own name, as that would have prevented him from later using the ‘Nobody’ trick, and also reminded Polyphemos too soon of Telemos’ old prophecy (507 ff.). He refers to Agamemnon’s victory at Troy as if assuming that news of it will have reached Polyphemos’ ears. He appeals to him for charity, claiming the privileges appropriate to strangers and suppliants, who enjoy Zeus’ protection. Polyphemos, however, declares that the Cyclopes have no regard for the gods, to whom they are far superior. If he were to spare Odysseus and his men it would not be from fear of Zeus but at his own whim. He does not react to the mention of Agamemnon and the Trojan War, which evidently mean nothing to him: Odysseus is in another world now. Finally he asks where Odysseus has left his ship (a typical motif in the poem, cf. α 171/185, ξ 188/356, ω 299/308), but Odysseus is too canny to give this away; he tells him it has been wrecked. There is no point in further dialogue. Without more ado Polyphemos proceeds to seize a couple of men, dash their brains out, and devour them, washing them down with milk. He then lies down to sleep among his sheep. Odysseus’ immediate heroic instinct is to slay him, but he thinks better of it, realizing that they would then be trapped in the cave. They endure a wretched night. When dawn comes Polyphemos goes through his morning routine, milking his sheep, killing two more men for breakfast, and departing with his flocks. Odysseus tries to think of a way of getting his own back. He conceives a plan, and preparations are made for carrying it out. A suitable length is cut off a huge staff that Polyphemos has left

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lying about, and it is smoothed, sharpened, and fire-hardened.88 It is hidden in dung, and finally (331–3) we learn its purpose: it is for blinding the ogre. Four men (of the eight surviving) are chosen by lot to help Odysseus drill the stake into his eye. We must wait till later to find out how they will then manage to escape. At the end of the day Polyphemos returns. This time he brings the male animals into the cave as well as the females. Q needs this to be so for the escape next morning, but he is unable to motivate it convincingly: he says that the giant ‘either suspected something, or a god so advised him’ (339). After he has blocked the entrance, milked his sheep and goats, and eaten a couple more men, without making any conversation, Odysseus offers him wine to wash down his meal, while reproaching him for his unsocial behaviour. He says he hopes it may induce him to be merciful and let him go home. Polyphemos finds the wine very much to his taste and asks for more. If the stranger will tell him his name, he will give him a guest-gift that will gratify him. Each speaker is trying to fool the other, but Odysseus is the cleverer. He plies him with more draughts of wine, and when he is starting to be fuddled by it he tells him his name is Nobody.89 Polyphemos promises to eat Nobody last—that will be his gift. With that he sinks into a belchy slumber, his neck twisted sideways so that his eye is accessible. Odysseus heats the stake in the ashes of the fire and encourages his men. They take it and drive it into Polyphemos’ eye, while Odysseus rotates it like a drill. The operation is graphically described, with two vivid similes. Polyphemos wakes with a mighty roar, sending the men running for cover. He pulls the gory stake out of his eye and hurls it from him, shouting to his neighbours for assistance. They come and gather round the cave entrance and ask him what is the matter. Is someone stealing his sheep, or killing him?90 He replies that Nobody 88 Q does not explain where the tools came from; Odysseus has his sword (300), but swords would hardly have been adequate for the job (pace Eur. Cycl. 456). They would have been adequate for blinding Polyphemos, but the stake or spit is what is regularly used in the folk-tale. 89 Neither the wine nor the trick name is integral to the folk-tale. Usually the giant falls asleep without an intoxicant. The trick name (generally ‘Myself’) is an independent folk-tale motif used in stories where a demon is harmed and calls in vain to his fellows for help. It has no place where the victim is a unique being, as in most versions of the Blinded Giant story. 90 Some think that the repeated μή τις in their questions (405 f.) is a pun on Odysseus’ characteristic quality of μ0τις (cf. 414) and/or on his pseudonym Οvτις. This is gratuitous.

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is killing him. They conclude that he is suffering from some health problem, a god-sent affliction about which there is nothing to be done (411). Then, in a line that may be a secondary addition,91 they suggest that he pray to his father Poseidon; this anticipates what he will do in 526 ff. With that they depart. Odysseus is delighted at the success of his trick. Polyphemos opens the cave exit and squats in it, groping around to catch any men who try to leave. Odysseus works out a plan to get past him. As all the animals were brought in, there are big sturdy rams there, and a pile of withies that Polyphemos sleeps on. The animals are bound together in threes, the middle one of each three carrying a man.92 Odysseus himself, being unable to tie himself into position, clings underneath a single ram. Having described the stratagem as if it were being implemented directly, Q seems to have belatedly become aware of a timetabling problem. He has been telling the story as if Polyphemos’ blinding, the neighbours’ call-out, the opening of the cave, and the men’s preparation to escape concealed under rams all happened during the day. But it is night, and the animals will not be going out till morning. So now the men are apparently left clinging to their rams for hours till dawn comes, while Polyphemos sits all the time in the open exit. (See Fenik 91.) When dawn does come, however, Q adjusts the details to the situation. Polyphemos’ normal morning routine of lighting the fire, milking, and breakfasting (307–11) is eliminated. The rams head straight away for the pasture, while the ewes remain unmilked. Their owner feels their backs, not realizing that the men are hidden underneath. Odysseus’ personal egress receives special treatment (444–61). Polyphemos’ extended speech to the sluggish ram shows his tender side. Once they are safely away from the cave Odysseus frees his men and they make for the ship, not only escaping with their lives but taking a good supply of Polyphemos’ sheep with them. The rest of the crew have been lamenting them for dead and now rejoice to see them. Odysseus curbs their jubilation, aware that Polyphemos may hear them and come after them, and instructs them to sail away at once. 91

See below on 518–36 (n. 94). 429–31 read as if the man rides on the ram’s back, safely because Polyphemos only feels the outside ones. But 443 and 463 show that they are tied underneath the middle ram. 92

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When he judges he is at a safe distance, he shouts a taunting message to Polyphemos. The enraged Cyclops breaks off an enormous rock and hurls it in the direction of Odysseus’ voice. Such is his mighty strength that it overshoots the ship, creating a wave that washes it back towards the shore. They row out again, twice as far as before,93 and despite his crew’s attempts to dissuade him Odysseus again shouts to Polyphemos, finally revealing his real name. This allows the Cyclops to realize that an old prophecy, that he was to lose his sight at the hands of Odysseus, has been fulfilled. To account for his knowledge of a prophecy Q invents the unlikely tale of a seer who formerly lived among the Cyclopes. Polyphemos calls Odysseus back to receive a guest-gift; we know from his earlier offering (356/370) what sort of guest-gifts are to be expected from him. He adds, ‘and so that I can ask Poseidon to see to your homecoming’, explaining that Poseidon is his father. Odysseus replies that he only wishes he could kill him. Not even Poseidon will be able to restore his eyesight. Polyphemos then prays to his father, calling upon him to see to it that Odysseus does not get home or, if he is destined to, that he gets there ‘belated, in poor condition, all his comrades lost, on a ship not his own, to find trouble in his house’. These will be the definitive terms for Odysseus’ nostos. ‘So he prayed, and Poseidon hearkened to him.’ By the time he tells his tale to the Phaeacians Odysseus has suffered enough to be in no doubt that Poseidon responded to the prayer, even though his homecoming has yet to be completed (Danek 190 f.). This whole passage about Poseidon (518–36) may be a secondary addition, to link the Polyphemos episode with the rest of the Wanderings through the motif of Poseidon’s wrath.94 Polyphemos hurls another rock, much bigger than the first; before the insertion of the Poseidon passage this would have appeared as an earnest of the gift promised in 517 (cf. υ 296). The ship is now out of 93 This ought to have put them out of earshot, since their distance the first time was ‘as far as a shout is heard’. The oldest manuscript, G, even makes it ‘three times as far away’ as before. 94 Cf. Düntzer 420 f.; Bethe ii. 116 f.; Dawe 386. Line 412, which anticipates the prayer, will have been added at the same time. Lines 520 f., ‘he will heal (the eye) if he chooses—no other god or man will’, look as if they were composed for Odysseus’ mouth, then displaced by the stronger affirmation ‘not even Poseidon will heal your eye’. This slighting reference to Poseidon exposes Odysseus more surely to the god’s anger (Nitzsch iii. xv), though this is nowhere made explicit.

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range, so the rock falls short, and this time the wave it creates carries the ship onward towards the island instead of back to the mainland.95 There the men rejoin the rest of the fleet and spend the rest of the day feasting on Polyphemos’ sheep. Odysseus sacrifices to Zeus, ‘but he took no account of it: he was planning destruction for all the ships and my comrades’ (554 f.). Again the god’s response to a prayer is inferred from later events (Danek 190). The next morning they sail on . . .

κ . . . and arrive (the same day, we should suppose) at the floating island of Aiolos. He is the keeper of the winds, though this is not explained till 21.96 The episode is treated summarily, without dialogue. After a description of the island and its fourteen inhabitants (who take in their stride the appearance of over five hundred unexpected guests), a month-long stay is dispatched in three lines. Aiolos asks, and Odysseus tells, about ‘Ilios, the ships of the Argives, and the return of the Achaeans’ (15). These are a poet’s headings. The first stands for the Sack of Troy (the theme of Demodokos’ third song in θ), and the second for a Catalogue of Ships. Together with the Return of the Achaeans (which Odysseus was not qualified to describe), these make up the main epopoeic background to the Odyssey. When Odysseus is ready to leave, Aiolos sees to it, and he provides the special boon that is his to confer, a steady wind blowing in the right direction. He fastens the other winds up in an oxhide bag, which he places on board Odysseus’ ship. The story requires this, but it is not explained why he puts the bagged winds under Odysseus’ control 95 In 542, where the medieval tradition repeats θέμωσε δ6 χέρσον ?κέσθαι from 486, the Ptolemaic papyrus P. Sorbonne inv. 2245A (p31) appears to have νηο [̣ for χέρσον. The original text was surely ν0σον. χέρσος can be used of islands, but in this context it could only be understood as referring to the same land as in 486, the mainland. 96 The floating island is a folk-tale motif (Radermacher 19; A. B. Cook, Zeus (Cambridge 1925–40), iii. 975–1015; Germain 154 f.); it has no special connection with the winds. Aiolos’ twelve immortal children, six of each sex, may once have represented twelve different winds, or six pairs (O. Gilbert, Die meteorologischen Theorien des griechischen Altertums (Leipzig 1907), 540; cf. the twelve-point windrose of Timosthenes, ibid. 548), or the twelve months.

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rather than keeping them under his own. The story is probably influenced by real-life transactions in which magicians sold knotted cloths and the like to sailors and others to control the winds with.97 Aiolos fails to warn Odysseus—or rather, Q fails to tell us that he warned Odysseus—that the bag must on no account be opened. They sail for nine days, the same length of time that it took them from Maleia to the Lotus-eaters’ coast. Aiolos’ island is thought of as being (at the moment) a similar distance west of Ithaca; it is about half of the distance from Ogygia to Scheria (ε 279 f.). On the tenth day, having apparently sighted neither Sicily nor any other place, they near Ithaca. As in ε when Odysseus has almost reached Scheria, the land is already in view when a tempest strikes and frustrates the approach. In this case it is caused by the sailors’ own action. Odysseus, having held the tiller throughout, is at last overcome by sleep, and they, suspecting that the bag he has received from Aiolos is full of treasure, open it and let all the winds escape.98 We might expect this to result in the ships being scattered and blown to new destinations. In fact they remain together and are swept back to Aiolos’ island. As in the Polyphemos episode, Q is telling a story suited to a single ship, not a whole fleet. Once again we see him hampered by his unwillingness to dispose of any ships till a later point.99 Odysseus goes to Aiolos’ mansion with two companions and they sit humbly on the threshold. The ensuing dialogue is short, only eight lines being spoken, and to the point. Aiolos asks what has happened. Odysseus gives a highly elliptical explanation and begs for help. After the typical silence Aiolos sends him packing, as he is evidently hated by the gods. The inference is only true in a general sense. We know that Poseidon wants to obstruct Odysseus’ homecoming, but he has not been involved in what has happened either in Q’s narrative or in Odysseus’ interpretation of it. There is nothing for it but to sail ‘onward’, προτέρω (77); as before when this adverb has been used, no indication of direction is given. 97

W. Crooke, Folk-Lore 19 (1908), 185; Radermacher 18–21; J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough (3rd edn., London 1911–36), i. 319–31, esp. 326 f.; Germain 180–2, 188 f.; Page 1973, 74–8. 98 The opening of the forbidden container, with disastrous results, is another folk-tale motif. Cf. Pandora’s jar in Hesiod; Psyche’s box in Apul. Met. 6. 19 f.; Radermacher 20. 99 The scholiast and Eustathius (1644. 57) explain that the winds have to return to their master, but Q does not indicate that this was in his mind, nor whether the floating island is supposed to have changed its location since Odysseus’ first visit.

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The next station, Telepylos, stands in no conceptual relation to the great Western Sea that we have been in up to now. It appears to lie on a mainland, the last that Odysseus will see (apart from the one he visits in the Nekyia). It introduces the block of Argonautic-inspired adventures. Q judges six days to be appropriate for the voyage: not long enough to bring Odysseus and his men anywhere near home, but enough to take them somewhere remote from the regions in which the preceding adventures have been located. The new place is individualized with topographical features and an abundance of proper names: Lamos, Telepylos, Laistrygones, Antiphates, Artakie. Its greatest peculiarity, its extraordinarily short nights, plays no part in the story, and it is not explained how Odysseus learned about it (Nitzsch iii. 106). Its enclosed harbour, on the other hand, is crucial. The ships gratefully enter its sheltered waters— except for Odysseus’, which for reasons undisclosed he keeps outside by the entrance. This is the converse of what happened in the Polyphemos episode, where eleven ships were kept in safety off the scene and one went to the danger area. The consequence is that the eleven are destroyed and the one escapes. There are other motifs in common with the Polyphemos episode. Smoke is seen, indicating that the land is inhabited (99 ~ ι 167). A small party goes to investigate, but this time, as in the country of the Lotus-eaters, Odysseus stays behind (100–2 = ι 88–90). The principal inhabitant turns out to be a man-eating giant, liable to seize and devour visitors on sight. The lucky ones escape, and the scene ends with huge rocks being hurled at the ships. The Laistrygones, however, have a slightly higher level of culture than the Cyclopes. They live in proper houses and use wagons for transporting timber. The scouts first encounter the king’s daughter fetching water from the fountain. They converse with her civilly and she shows them the way to her father’s house. He is not in, but they are received by the queen, who sends for him. The episode is an amalgam of elements from different sources. 1. The very short nights must reflect a rumour somehow filtered down from northern Europe, perhaps from the shores of the Baltic from which amber came.100 2. The description of the harbour, as noted in the last chapter, may have been inspired by the harbour of Balaklava in the Crimea. This 100

Cf. Page 1973: 41–8; West 2011b: 294 f.

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place was in fact inhabited, at least in later centuries, by piratical barbarians who attacked those who took refuge in their harbour,101 so it seems likely that this was another rumour from the north that became linked with the one about the short nights. Perhaps the names Lamos and Laistrygon came with it. 3. Such rumours from the Black Sea area are likely to have been associated with the Argonauts before Odysseus, and in later sources the Argonauts were at one point in danger from local giants hurling great rocks into the harbour, near which was a spring Artakie. But this was located at Cyzicus in the Propontis. I have discussed elsewhere the problem of how this relates to the Homeric episode (West 2011b: 295 f.). Whatever the answer, I think it likely that Q had the harbour description and the rockthrowing giants from his Argonautic source, where they were set in the great Eastern Sea and not yet at Cyzicus. 4. Combined with this we have what seems to be an independent folk-tale: a traveller meets an ogre’s daughter, who takes him to her home. Her father is out, and he is received by her mother (or other women of the family). The paterfamilias returns in the evening and turns out to be a cannibal.102 5. In shaping his narrative Q adapted some details from the Polyphemos episode; see above. Polyphemos failed to catch Odysseus’ ship with his boulders, but in the enclosed harbour at Telepylos there is no escape from the bombardment, and the other eleven ships, which have long been something of an embarrassment, are finally eliminated. Odysseus hastily cuts his mooring-ropes and his men row out to sea. They come next to Circe’s island, apparently on the same day. The narrative now becomes much more leisurely and ample. It inaugurates a new phase of the wanderings. Hitherto Odysseus has managed to stay alive thanks to his own resourcefulness. But now he will face a series of dangers that he would have no hope of overcoming without advance warning. Hermes’ intervention will save him from Circe’s witchcraft, and Circe herself will give him advice about the Sirens, the

101

Strab. 7. 4. 2; cf. West 2011b: 294. Leo Frobenius, Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes, i (Berlin 1904), 376–9, 388; Radermacher 16–18; Page 1973, 28–31. 102

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Clashing Rocks, Scylla, Charybdis, and Thrinakia. She may have performed a similar service for Jason in the pre-Odyssean Argonautica. (For her connection with that saga see p. 119.) In the Odyssey she appears as a sorceress living deep in the forest, a figure such as we more commonly meet in European folk-tales of the sort collected by the brothers Grimm.103 Was she so portrayed in the Argonautic source, or has Q bestowed this persona on her? It is hard to imagine that Jason had to contend with his comrades being turned into pigs. For two days they lie exhausted and miserable on the shore (142–4 ≈ ι 74–6). On the third morning Odysseus does as he did at Telepylos, climbing a hill to see what he can see. This time he takes his spear and sword; the spear will presently come in useful. As before, he sees smoke rising, but it is from a single dwelling in the forest. His first idea is to go to investigate it, and we may take it that this was also Q’s first idea. In an earlier version he may have gone alone to Circe’s house (cf. Danek 204). As it is, he decides to postpone the expedition and first go back to the ship, have brunch with the men, and then send scouts according to the usual pattern. On the way back he encounters a stag and kills it with his spear. ‘A god’, he says, ‘took pity on me’; this is repeated from δ 364, where Menelaos’ men were running out of provisions. We have not been told that Odysseus is short of food, but ‘took pity’ suggests it, and in 174 f. he speaks to his men as if the killing of the stag is a salvation. ‘Friends,’ he says, ‘we are not going to be going down to Hades’ halls before our time’—an assurance that will unexpectedly turn out to be mistaken. The killing of the stag is in no way integral to the story and may be a secondary inspiration, though it cannot be lifted out cleanly. It enhances our sense of the island as a nature reserve tinged with supernatural elements, but beyond that it is hard to see any particular point in it.104 As a result of it the brunch becomes a feast that lasts all

103

Cf. Monro 292; Radermacher 4–9; Meuli 112 = 672; Page 1973: 57–69. Cf. Kammer 469 f., 474. C. Alexander, CQ 41 (1991), 520–4, thinks that it comes from a folk-tale version in which the animal led the hero to Circe’s house. Cf. the Georgian (Khevsur) story in Charachidzé 166 f.: a hunter was tracking a stag, when a rock opened up and a woman appeared from it. She asked why he was following an animal of her herd to her dwelling: what harm had it done him? He replied that he did not know it was hers, he thought it was just a wild creature, and he was a hunter. He then declared that he was her guest and she his hostess. They became lovers, feasted, and spent the night together. 104

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day, and the scouting expedition is displaced to the next morning (when no meal is taken). This seems to be one of several cases where Q has extended his programme by an extra day.105 When morning comes Odysseus addresses his men and reports on what he saw from the hilltop the day before. He has seen that they are on an island in the middle of a featureless sea, so there is no way of working out for themselves which way to go; they do not even know which way is east or west.106 But he has seen signs of habitation on the island. The implication is that by investigating them they might obtain some useful information. After their experiences with Polyphemos and the Laistrygones the men are dismayed at the idea of seeking out the natives. But they have no alternative. Instead of sending a delegation of three men, as on previous occasions, Odysseus determines to send half of the whole company. It will certainly be more of a crisis if so many men are turned into pigs than if only a couple are. He divides them into two groups, putting Eurylochos in charge of one, and casts lots to decide which party is to go. The result is that, as with the Lotus-eaters and the Laistrygones, Odysseus will stay behind and others will be sent on the mission. This is necessary because, as in those episodes, those who go will run into difficulties from which Odysseus must then rescue them, or in the Laistrygonian case make his own escape. At the same time the lotcasting procedure absolves him from the charge of shirking possible danger. Eurylochos is introduced (205) with no personal details. He will play a further role in λ (23) and μ. He sets out into the forest with twenty-two followers. If his party represents just half of the surviving men on Odysseus’ ship, there are forty-six altogether. If they were originally fifty-two (cf. θ 48), they have lost six. But six were eaten by Polyphemos, six from each ship had been killed by the Kikones (ι 60), and the man eaten by Antiphates in 116 also seemed to be from

105 Kammer 473 f. eliminates the extra day by deleting 183–7 (= ι 556–60). But there was no motive for anyone to interpolate the lines. 106 Q fails to account for this disorientation; the previous day at least had been sunny (160, 185), and it would have been clear which way was east. The lines would have been more appropriately spoken on the Cimmerians’ shore (λ 14–19). Had the Argonauts landed there?

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Odysseus’ ship (Danek 206). Q has apparently done a sum but remembered only one of the losses of six men.107 Odysseus proceeds to relate the fate of the scouting party. This lies outside what he himself witnessed, but there is no narratological problem; we readily understand that he is relating what he afterwards learned had happened to them. They find Circe’s house, and its immediate surroundings are described. The tame wolves and lions characterize Circe as a Mistress of Animals. By hearing how she has tamed them we are notified in advance of her expertise with magic ϕάρμακα. The men are alarmed at the sight of the animals, notwithstanding their friendly behaviour, but when they hear a lady singing inside the house as she plies her loom they feel it is safe to make their presence known. They do so on the proposal of one Polites, who is not mentioned otherwise; Q avoids making it Eurylochos who takes the initiative, as he is the one who is going to show greater circumspection. Someone has to stay outside when Circe invites the others in, to avoid their fate and to take the news back to Odysseus, and this is Eurylochos. He does not see his companions turned into pigs, but when after a considerable time they fail to reappear he runs back to the ship in great distress and reports what he knows. He does not mention the wondrously tame wolves and lions, and he has not discovered Circe’s identity, so Odysseus has no forewarning of the nature of the danger. He determines to go and sort the matter out. He takes up weapons— this time a sword and a bow108—and tells Eurylochos to lead the way back to the house. But Eurylochos is too terrified and begs to be left at the ship. He recommends immediate departure from the island with the remaining men. Odysseus allows him to stay there but sets out on his own towards Circe’s place. In the circumstances he cannot succeed without divine help. It comes not from Athena (who remains out of the picture throughout

107 Cf. A. Gemoll, Homerische Blätter i (Progr. Striegau 1885), 9 ff., quoted by Hennings 271 f., who argued that the Kikones episode was interpolated. The scholiast/Eustathius reckon differently, as if the twenty-two men included Eurylochos: 50 – 6 = 44. ‘Die Zahl von 50 Mann schwebte ihm wohl etwa vor’ (Nitzsch iii. 117). Danek 206 notes that the figure of twenty-two might be just ‘metrische Erweiterung zur “typischen” Zahl Zwanzig’; he cites ι 241 and Β 748. 108 He will draw his sword on Circe at 321, but what is the point of the bow? May it be a relic of a version in which he shot and wounded the stag on the way and it then led him to the house? Cf. above, n. 104.

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the Wanderings until Odysseus reaches Scheria) but from Hermes, the only god, apparently, who ever visits Calypso’s and Circe’s remote islands (cf. ε, and κ 331, μ 390; ‘Hes.’ fr. 150. 31). He appears to Odysseus in the form of a young man, as he does to Priam in Ω 347 ff. (279 = Ω 348; 281 f. ≈ Ω 362 f.). How Odysseus found out that it was Hermes, Q does not trouble to explain. The god addresses him, asks him where he thinks he is going, and informs him what has happened to his men and what danger he is in. Then he tells him exactly what to do when Circe tries her wiles on him, and provides him with a rare plant that will protect him from her magic. The gods know it as môly; it does not have a name among mortals because they cannot get at it (305 f.). Hermes departs to Olympus without waiting for a response from Odysseus, who proceeds to Circe’s door. She invites him in, sits him down, and prepares one of her life-changing cocktails. He drinks it, but when she touches him with her wand, expecting him to turn into a pig, he remains in human form and, as Hermes has instructed him, rushes at her with drawn sword. (There is no mention of the môly.) She screams, ducks under the sword, and clasps his knees in supplication. ‘Who are you, and where from? Where are your community and parents?’ The formulaic enquiry that follows the provision of food is ineptly used here, but it prepares for Circe’s own recognition of Odysseus’ identity (which he perhaps would not have revealed to her himself). Like Polyphemos in ι 507 ff., she realizes that this must be the Odysseus whose coming has been predicted. It is Hermes who has told her of him, an unconventional source for a prophecy; how could he have known what vicissitudes Odysseus was to undergo? But there is no place for a resident seer on Circe’s island, as there was among the Cyclopes. Hermes is chosen as being her only contact with the company of gods. Without further ado she proposes that they go to bed and make love, ‘so that we can trust one another’ (335). Her desire for love gives Odysseus something to bargain with. Hermes’ instructions have provided for everything. After making her swear that she will do him no harm, he lets her take him to bed. Meanwhile her servants (whose existence has not hitherto been hinted at) are preparing an elegant meal. Q diverts himself and us with a description of them and their domestic activities. Odysseus is then bathed, oiled, and dressed in fine clothes before being comfortably seated and served with food. But he will not eat until Circe releases his men from their piggy plight.

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Accommodating as ever, she fetches them in and restores them to their proper form, none the worse for their experience, indeed somewhat improved. There is an emotional reunion. Circe herself is moved. She now invites Odysseus to go back to his ship, beach it, stow everything away in caves, and bring the rest of his men up to the house. She evidently expects to look after them for a prolonged period. He takes her at her word and returns to the ship, where he is greeted with joy by the troubled men. They ask how the others met their end. He tells them to beach the ship, stow everything away, and follow him to Circe’s place, where they will find their comrades living it up. They respond with alacrity, except for the traumatized Eurylochos, who is convinced that Circe will turn them into animals and tries to dissuade them, recalling what the Cyclops did when Odysseus in his foolhardiness took some of the men to his dwelling. Odysseus thinks about slicing his critic’s head off, despite his being a kinsman by marriage,109 but the others restrain him. ‘We’ll leave him here to look after the ship. Just show us the way to Circe.’ Once they set off, Eurylochos decides to go too. Meanwhile the men at the house have been receiving the same treatment as Odysseus did earlier: baths, fresh clothes, and so forth. The others find them feasting, and there is another joyous reunion. The hospitable goddess declares that she knows all about their sufferings during their wanderings (we may if we like suppose that Hermes has told her), and she invites them to stay and restore themselves for as long as it takes. They are happy to fall in with the proposal. A year passes in this way, void of event. Q passes abruptly on to the next part of the story (469). At the end of a year the men urge Odysseus to think about home, ‘if it is your destiny to be saved and reach your house and fatherland’; the formulation anticipates the fact that he alone is going to make it (Danek 212). He accepts the idea. But these days, apparently, he only talks to Circe in bed at night, so the day must be filled out with feasting before he can broach the matter. When night falls he goes and petitions her to fulfil her promise to send them home. No such promise has been mentioned earlier,

109

This (441) is a detail invented ad hoc to enhance the effect. Scholia here and on

ο 363 say that Eurylochos was married to Odysseus’ sister Ktimene (who married someone in Same, ο 363–7).

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though she has at least implied in 461 that they will be free to go when they feel ready. She has no wish to detain them, but advises Odysseus that they must next call at Hades to consult the soul of Teiresias. She does not immediately say why, but later she says it is so that he can give advice about finding the way home.110 Odysseus asks how such an unprecedented voyage is to be accomplished. Circe gives him instructions both on how to get to Hades and what to do when he gets there so as to engage with Teiresias. No rowing will be required; the wind (which Circe herself will send, λ 6–8) will carry the ship on the right course. To find Hades they must enter a mouth of Oceanus and sail up it (508, 511, λ 13, 21). Circe describes the scenery that will identify the landing-place111 and specifies the rituals that Odysseus must perform there to propitiate the dead and Teiresias. She has implied in 493–5 that Teiresias’ ghost is the only one capable of intelligent speech, and the blood ritual presumably reflects ritual at a shrine where he alone was conjured up. But in 529–37, which may be a secondary expansion, she provides for other ghosts to play a role. In λ they will do so, and Teiresias is differentiated from others only in having the power of prophecy, as he did in life. When morning comes Odysseus gets his men moving, saying only that Circe has given him directions. He does not disclose their destination till after we have heard about Elpenor falling from the roof and breaking his neck; this could not easily have been fitted in at a later point. Elpenor’s accident, which passed unnoticed at the time, prepares for the appearance of his ghost at λ 51–80, a scene that serves to illustrate the fate of the unburied dead in the other world. His need for burial will provide an overt motive for Odysseus’ return to Aiaia after the Hades excursion. But Q is in any case set on continuing the wanderings from there.112 Circe provides the animals needed for the sacrifices in Hades. That she does it unseen (though she is not actually said to have made 110 As Proteus did for Menelaos; 539 f. = δ 389 f. But it will be left to Circe herself to provide fuller information on the route in μ 39 ff. 111 The lines about the rivers in 513–15 interrupt the connection between 512 and 516 and are out of keeping with the rest of the picture given. They are ignored in 529, where ‘the river’ is Oceanus (though Antikleia at λ 157 mentions the existence of others). Nitzsch condemned the lines (iii. 160, 173), and they were probably inserted, whether by Q or another, from a different source. Acheron and Kokytos were the names of rivers near the Thesprotian oracle of the dead; cf. p. 123. 112 Cf. Wilamowitz 1884: 144; Finsler ii. 333; Focke 199 f.

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herself invisible) is a further illustration of her supernatural powers, poetically much preferable to having her trek through the forest with the sheep beside the men.

λ The ship is relaunched. There is no mention of retrieving whatever was to be stowed in caves in κ 404/424; Q has forgotten about it. The sacrificial animals are put on board, and off they go. All day long the wind supplied by Circe carries them over the sea, and they reach the mouth of Oceanus at nightfall, which suits the sunless associations of Hades. Sunlessness is also the condition of the Cimmerians, who are oddly brought in at this point. The lines about them (14–19), which could be removed without leaving a trace, have no function in the narrative; they are put in because Q (if it was he) had heard of them as a people living in a gloomy region beside a mouth of Oceanus.113 He may have had the notion that the Cimmerians’ northerly country lies beyond the sun’s reach, with Hades beyond it. If the lines about the Cimmerians are original, it is apparently on their shore that Odysseus and his men beach their ship before walking up the river to the Groves of Persephone (which is where Circe told Odysseus to beach his ship). When they leave, however, the ship is close by and they have to sail down river for a stretch (636–40), the Cimmerians being no longer mentioned. Odysseus is assisted in the sacrifices by Eurylochos, who was prominent in the Circe episode, and by Perimedes, who is new. The same pair will appear at μ 195. The blood flowing into the pit attracts a horde of ghosts out of Erebos. They are listed in categories—young married women, young men, old men, tender girls, warriors slain in battle—reflecting the eschatological motif that different categories of the dead are separately situated in the other world (West 1997:

113 This would suit W. E. Gladstone’s idea that the entrance to the Sea of Azov, adjoining the Cimmerian Bosporus, was taken as an outlet of Oceanus (Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age (Oxford 1858), iii. 288, 294 f.); cf. West 2011b: 298 f. On the well-known Babylonian map of the world in the British Museum one of the regions beyond the world-encircling Bitter River, the one at the top, is labelled ‘where the sun is not seen’: West 1997: 145.

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164–6). Odysseus’ helpers complete the ritual (44–7) and at once disappear from the narrative. Odysseus guards the blood-pit to prevent any of the ghosts from drinking from it before Teiresias. But first Elpenor appears. He is able to speak without drinking blood, and the idea will be that he is loitering on the fringes of Hades, not yet a proper resident, though he does not complain of being kept out as Patroklos does in Ψ 71–4.114 Odysseus is surprised to see him, as his fatal mishap passed unnoticed in the bustle of departure and he has not been missed. He has to explain what happened to him. He begs to be buried when Odysseus returns to Circe’s island, as he knows he is going to (69; the knowledge is actually Q’s). The return to Circe has not been anticipated previously; Elpenor’s plight itself provides the motivation for it. But Q has an ulterior motive, in that Odysseus will need further guidance for his journey from Circe. Elpenor asks for a tumulus on the shore to catch the attention of future men. This recalls the description of Achilles’ tomb in ω 80–4, and the one that Hector envisages for his antagonist in Η 86–91. But it will bring Elpenor no fame unless, as Wilamowitz and others have thought, his tumulus was identified with a real landmark on a known shore.115 Odysseus promises to perform the requested service. Next there is an advance sighting of Odysseus’ mother. He did not know she was dead, and he weeps to see her. But his dialogue with her must take second place to that with Teiresias, and he does not let her approach the blood. Now comes Teiresias. He recognizes Odysseus, presumably because he is a seer, not because they had ever met.116 He asks him why he has come to this unlovely place, but after being allowed a drink of the blood he is able to answer his own question: ‘you are in search of a sweet homecoming.’ His speech is mainly concerned with Poseidon’s wrath over the blinding of Polyphemos, which will make Odysseus’ homecoming difficult, and with how that wrath will eventually be allayed.117 He also speaks of the other divine wrath that may 114 Doctrine was flexible in the poets’ hands. In the Second Nekyia in ω the suitors’ souls arrive and converse with the inmates while their bodies still lie unburied. 115 See West 2011b: 296. Contra E. Rohde, Kl. Schr. ii. 270 n. 2; Reinhardt 106. 116 Kammer 491. Yet Heracles too will recognize him at 615. Other ghosts who speak to Odysseus recognize him first (153, 390, 471), having known him in life. The heroines are represented as responding to his questioning (234), but only in indirect speech. 117 Odysseus has in fact had no trouble from Poseidon since leaving the Cyclopes, and he will not have any until seven years later when he is approaching Scheria.

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yet (and in fact will) prove a factor to be reckoned with: that of the Sun-god, which will be incurred if his cattle on the island of Thrinakia are harmed. Odysseus must avoid this at all costs, otherwise he will lose his ship and his comrades and be lucky to escape with his own life. Circe will have more to say on this subject when he sees her again in μ 127 ff. The passage about Thrinakia, besides being otiose in view of Circe’s later admonitions, interrupts the connection between the disclosure of Poseidon’s wrath (101–3) and the advice on how Odysseus is to appease it (121 ff.). Bethe (ii. 128–31) argued acutely that the Teiresias episode was adapted from an older poem in which the wrath was more fundamental and in which Odysseus had to appease it by making his journey inland before he could accomplish his safe return to Ithaca. In this poem he related his wanderings not to the Phaeacians but to Penelope, as implied in 223. The poet of our Odyssey, Bethe supposes, accommodated the Teiresias scene in his narrative by shifting the focus of the seer’s advice to a warning against the wrath of Helios and by putting Odysseus’ inland journey after his homecoming. In this changed version—the version we have—the final appeasement of Poseidon will not be achieved until after Odysseus re-establishes himself in his house, in fact until after the conclusion of the Odyssey. Teiresias must therefore say something about what comes in between. If and when Odysseus succeeds in reaching Ithaca, he will find arrogant men in his house consuming his property and wooing his wife. But he will overcome and kill them, either by trickery or in open combat. The prophet then passes on to what is to happen later, up to the end of Odysseus’ life. There is an analogy with Proteus’ foretelling of Menelaos’ end in δ 561–9. We may take it that Q never intended to relate the fulfilment of these prophecies; they are here as an assurance that Poseidon will eventually be appeased and that Odysseus will end his days in peace and prosperity.118 These substantial revelations receive only a perfunctory acknowledgment from Odysseus, who is more immediately concerned about 118

Rohde, Kl. Schr. ii. 272–7, gives reasons for regarding 116–37 as an insertion. In

ν 42 f. Odysseus will express his hopes to the Phaeacians, and in ν 375 ff. hear about the suitors from Athena, as if he knew nothing about the matter (Kammer 492); and his question about Penelope to Antikleia in 177–9 shows no consciousness of what Teiresias has said. But without this passage Teiresias’ advice is reduced to almost nothing, not worth coming to Hades for. For the apposition in 116 cf. ο 375 f. On the riddling prediction about Odysseus’ death in 134–6 see p. 14; West 2013: 307–15.

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speaking to his mother. How can she be made to recognize him? Teiresias explains the key to making conversation with ghosts— letting them drink of the blood—and departs. Antikleia reappears, drinks, recognizes her son, and asks what he is doing here when he is still alive. Having worked out that he must have come in a ship, she surmises correctly that it is the one in which he went to Troy, and that he has not yet returned to Ithaca. He explains why he had to come and confirms that he has not yet been able to get home. He then asks her a series of questions: how she died, and how things are with Laertes, Telemachos, and Penelope. Antikleia’s knowledge will not be up to date, but it will be more up to date than his own. She answers the questions in reverse order. She says nothing about the suitors, but at the time of the dialogue they have not yet begun their activities. Penelope is waiting, faithful and sorrowful. Telemachos is enjoying all the benefits of his princely status.119 Laertes is already in the humble condition that he will be found in on Odysseus’ return (188 ≈ α 189, 193 ~ α 193). She attributes her own death to pining for her son.120 Odysseus makes three attempts to embrace her, but there is no substance to her, just a wraith that slips from his arms like a shadow or a dream. He asks why she is being so elusive. Is it not really her at all, just a phantom image that Persephone has sent to upset him? She explains that this is how it is with the dead. The body is consumed by the funeral pyre, while the soul hovers about like a dream. This and the parallel scene in Ψ 62–107, where Patroklos’ soul appears to Achilles in a dream and he tries to embrace it, echo Gilgāmesh’s attempt to embrace the soul of Enkīdu in Tablet XII of the Gilgāmesh epic (West 1997: 344 f.). With that, Antikleia urges her son to hasten back to the world of light and bear in mind all that she has told him so that he can tell it to his wife (223 f.). This would seem to presage his immediate return to 119

The description of his situation in 184–7 is the antithesis of that of the orphan portrayed in Χ 490–9 (Danek 230). Cauer 636 observes that Q has made ‘a respectable attempt’ to suit what Antikleia says to the dramatic date of the encounter, but that with regard to the age of Telemachos and the condition of Laertes he has lapsed into anachronism, thinking of them as they are elsewhere in the poem. 120 The account that Eumaios gives in ο 358–60 may suggest that she committed suicide (Nitzsch iii. 222 f.), but as Jacob (437) observes, this does not seem to be in Q’s mind in the present passage.

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his ship (Wilamowitz 1884: 159), and his real business in Hades is now done. The prolongation of his visit to bring in more and more ghosts may represent a secondary expansion of Q’s plan, though it is already prepared for by Teiresias’ instructions in 146–8.121 Antikleia, the one woman of personal concern to Odysseus, is followed by a series of famous women from the past who have no relevance to him. Similarly the heroes with whom he has had close dealings (387–564) will be followed by a series of famous (or notorious) men from the past in 568–627. The treatment of the two secondary series is different from that of the primary series. Instead of reacting emotionally to the approach of familiar figures, Odysseus becomes a curious tourist who interrogates the women and ‘wants to see’ the men of old; the latter do not come to him, and mostly cannot, being fixed at the sites of their punishments, but he views them without speaking to them (though Heracles speaks to him). The later passage looks like an insertion, but the heroines are dovetailed in with the Intermission (328–84) and not cleanly detachable. Both of the subsidiary sections had cognates in the Hades scene of the Nostoi, and the heroines section also had an intimate connection with the Hesiodic Ehoiai.122 The heroines appear in a body, and Odysseus applies the prescribed procedure, letting them drink of the blood one by one and questioning them in turn. The first he interviews is Tyro, already mentioned as a model of the heroic woman in β 119 f. together with Alkmene (266) and Mykene. As is typical in catalogues, the first entry is treated at the greatest length (235–59). Tyro is followed by two more women, Antiope and Alkmene, who were likewise loved by gods and gave birth to twin boys, though only one of Alkmene’s sons was Zeus’ offspring. That was Heracles, and his wife Megara is appended (269). Theban associations continue with Epikaste, the mother of Oedipus, whose story is briefly recalled. 121 Cf. Bergk 690, ‘Nachdem Odysseus den Schicksalsspruch aus dem Munde des Tiresias empfangen und im Zwiegespräch mit der Mutter seines Herzens Sehnsucht befriedigt hat, war der eigentliche Zweck der Hadesfahrt erfüllt; aber wer möchte den Dichter tadeln, daß er noch eine ganze Reihe berühmter Heldengestalten vorführt.’ Von der Mühll (726. 64, and earlier in Phil. 93 (1938), 7) suggests that 223 f. originally ended Teiresias’ prophecy in the ‘Thesprotis’. 122 See West 2013: 277. These relationships are complex and puzzling. Nitzsch (iii. 191, 227 f.) argued that Q resorted to a catalogue of women because this was the form in which he knew the heroic mythology of the pre-Trojan era, and it provided him with a rich and concise means of evoking the saga.

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One of Tyro’s sons was Neleus, and next comes his wife Chloris. Their children include Nestor, but the focus is on the story of his sister Pero and her wooing by the seer Melampous. It is however told very allusively, with important details left unexplained. Q will give a fuller version in ο 226 ff. Then come more mothers of twins: Leda, mother of Castor and Polydeukes,123 and Iphimedeia, mother of the giant Aloadai who tried to mount to heaven. At 321 the recital begins to speed up. Odysseus rattles off the names of half a dozen more heroines, with only brief annotations on the two who come at line-ends,124 and then gives up, saying that the night is not long enough to tell of all the women whom he saw.125 This is the cue for an intermission. There are a few minutes of conversation, after which Odysseus is pressed to continue his story. We recall that Demodokos had stopped singing from time to time, resuming when the listeners urged him to carry on (θ 87–91). The parallel is hardly accidental. Demodokos’ practice doubtless reflects that of Q as a performer.126 But Q has a particular purpose in interrupting Odysseus’ narration here. He has been aware for a while that it is growing too long to be plausibly accommodated in the evening on which Odysseus is represented as telling it, given that he is supposed to be taken home to Ithaca during the same night. He decides that the voyage had better be put off till the following night. To bring this about he makes Odysseus break off, not at any natural stopping point in his narrative but in the very middle of it (in the middle of the Hades episode, at his very furthest point from home), and suggest that it is time either to go to bed or to embark on the ship (330–2). Embarkation tonight is no longer the agreed programme, it has become just an option. For the first time the possibility is raised that Odysseus may sleep over 123

That she was also the mother of Klytaimestra and Helen is passed over (de Jong

282). 124 The first three belong to Attic myth, with a Theseus connection in Ariadne’s case. The remaining three all connect with earlier parts of the catalogue (Nitzsch iii. 254 f.). Maira, according to Pherec. fr. 170 Fowler, was loved by Zeus and bore Lokros, who helped Amphion and Zethos (λ 262) to found Thebes. Klymene was mother of Iphiklos (290). Eriphyle again brings us back to Theban legend (260–80). Maira and Klymene, and perhaps Eriphyle, also appeared in the Hades scene of the Nostoi (frr. 5, 4, 7). 125 It is a recurrent trope in epic that the poet or speaker apologizes for not continuing with further detail; cf. West 2011a: 267. For 328 cf. δ 240 and Β 488. 126 Cf. H. Fränkel, Gnomon 3 (1927), 9; Focke 141.

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another night on Scheria. Neither alternative, going to bed or sailing, can be implemented immediately without bringing the Apologoi to an abrupt and premature end, but the posing of them leads to the framing of the third option that Q has decided on: continuation of Odysseus’ story now, leaving his departure for the next evening. Everyone is silent for a few moments. This is a formulaic reaction to a challenging utterance, but in this case it is presented as an expression of contemplative satisfaction at Odysseus’ tale. Arete is the first to speak, maintaining the feminine perspective that has prevailed since 152 (cf. de Jong 272). She makes no comment on the tale but supplies a motivation for the change of plan that Q has decided on: the visitor is an estimable man and her guest, so they should be in no hurry to dispatch him but rather find more gifts to honour him with. After all the gifts already collected in θ 387 ff. and 438 ff., a further round may seem excessive, but it is the best Q can think of as a ground for the Phaeacians to detain Odysseus for another day. Echeneos speaks up (as in η 155 ff.), seconding Arete’s proposal but referring it to Alkinoos for a decision. Alkinoos makes a vague avowal of agreement, and proposes that Odysseus stay till tomorrow, ‘until I can complete the giving’. (This will be picked up in ν 7–15.) His conveyance home will be taken care of. Odysseus declares blithely that if they wanted him to, he would be happy to stay on for months accumulating gifts, if only he is taken home eventually (354–61). Alkinoos compliments him on his apparent sincerity and the charm of his tale, and leads back into the Apologoi by asking him if he saw any of his former fighting comrades in Hades. He rejects Odysseus’ suggestion in 330 f. that it is time for bed: the night still has long to run, and he would be happy to go on listening till dawn. Odysseus affably agrees that there is time for talk as well as sleep. He will tell what Alkinoos has asked about, and also the fates of comrades who perished after the fall of Troy. He then carries on at 385 from the point reached in 329. The women, many still unnamed (328), are sent away. The heroes that Alkinoos has enquired about follow conveniently on. Q reverts to his earlier formula aλθε δ᾽ Cπι ψυχή, ‘and there came the soul of . . .’, instead of ‘I saw’, but apart from a variant reading in 390 there is no more mention of drinking blood. First comes Agamemnon. Odysseus opens the conversation and so does not have to explain his presence in Hades (as he did to his mother and will again to Achilles). He did not know Agamemnon

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was dead. He asks him how it came about, suggesting the most likely alternatives. Q can now present the story of the murder once more, this time from the victim’s point of view. Agamemnon’s account presupposes and supplements those given by Nestor and Menelaos in the Telemachy. It includes Cassandra, who was not mentioned before. But Orestes’ avenging of his father’s murder can only be hinted at as a future possibility. The story provokes reflections from both speakers. Agamemnon affirms that Klytaimestra has brought disgrace on her whole sex, for now and for the future. (He presupposes that the story will be told through the ages.) Odysseus observes that women have been the bane of both sons of Atreus.127 Agamemnon then draws the contrast with Penelope, who will pose no such threat to Odysseus. His happy homecoming is thus, as elsewhere, set in relief against Agamemnon’s fatal one. Agamemnon goes on to reflect that Odysseus left Penelope with a baby son with whom his father will have a happy reunion, unlike Agamemnon himself, whom Klytaimestra did not even allow to see Orestes. Does Odysseus have any idea whether Orestes is alive, for example at Orchomenos, at Pylos, or at Sparta with Menelaos? The last two places, at least, are seats of friendly rulers who could be imagined as protectors of Orestes, and Q has used them in the Telemachy; Agamemnon’s reference thus reinforces the parallel between Telemachos and Orestes (cf. Danek 238). (He does not know that his brother has not yet returned home from Troy.) But there is no likely shelterer of Orestes at Orchomenos, and it is probably mentioned only because it was associated with Pylos in 284 f. above. For Q Orestes was at Athens. Odysseus of course knows nothing of Orestes’ whereabouts or whether he is alive or dead, and says so candidly. Next Achilles arrives, with his friends Patroklos and Antilochos in tow, and also Ajax in preparation for the following scene. (Cf. γ 109–12 for the grouping of these four together.) Achilles asks what Odysseus is up to this time. Odysseus has again to explain that he came to consult Teiresias, and that he has not yet got home from Troy. He contrasts his own continuing tribulations with Achilles’ happy status in life and death. This gives the cue for Achilles’ famous declaration that he would rather be a poor serf among the living than 127

He fails to make the point that the women in question, Helen and Klytaimestra, are sisters. And he did not mention them as children of Leda in 298 ff.

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ruler of all the dead (488–91). Q clearly knows nothing of, or anyway ignores, the story in the Aethiopis of Achilles’ translation to the White Island (Nitzsch iii. 284). Like Agamemnon, Achilles wants to know about his son: did Neoptolemos go to fight at Troy? And does Odysseus know anything about his old father Peleus? Is he still honoured among the Myrmidons?128 Odysseus knows nothing about Peleus, but he can give a glowing report about Neoptolemos, whom he himself brought to Troy from Skyros. He was good in counsel—this is perhaps Q’s own idea; we do not know, and would not expect, that he exercised this ability in the epic narratives—and a champion in battle, who slew Telephos’ son Eurypylos among many others. (This was a major episode in the Little Iliad.) When the chosen few sat in the Wooden Horse, Neoptolemos stood out from the rest by his fearless demeanour; this is again developed by Q ad hoc. He survived the final battle for the city unscathed and fittingly honoured with prizes of war. Odysseus passes over his killing of Priam (and in one version Astyanax). Achilles is delighted to hear all this. He says nothing more but strides off over the Asphodel Meadow in high humour. Other unspecified heroes come and enquire about their loved ones. This has been a constant theme in the heroes section, which is now concluding. Only Ajax, whose approach has already been registered, remains to be dealt with. He holds back and refuses to engage with Odysseus, incurably bitter over his defeat in the contest for Achilles’ arms. The famous story was told in both the Aethiopis and the Little Iliad. The recollection of it here is an example of Q’s tendency to work in mention of the main episodes in which Odysseus was involved at Troy.129 Odysseus tries to conciliate Ajax with a fine speech, but he goes away without a word. Finally comes the section on earlier heroes, of which something was said above in connection with the catalogue of heroines. It is introduced by a frankly ludicrous transition at 565–7: ‘He [Ajax] still would have spoken to me in his anger, or I to him, but I wanted to see the souls of the remaining dead.’ Ajax departed in 563 f., and there is 128 The idea that he may be oppressed by his neighbours, and that Achilles could be or could have been his salvation, echoes Ω 488–92. It may possibly have been a theme in the Nostoi, cf. West 2013: 264. 129 The statement that the adjudication was made by ‘sons of the Trojans’ (sc. prisoners of war) with Athena (547) does not agree with the Little Iliad version; it may have been that of the Aethiopis. Cf. West 2013: 175 f.

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no place for the idea that dialogue with him might have been taken further. Originally it looks as if 564 was followed by 628 f., ‘but I stayed there steadfastly to see if there would also come any of the heroes who died earlier’. Odysseus has seen heroines of former times, and some heroes of his own time: older heroes remain as a category not dealt with. Q had no plan for dealing with them, and he initially avoided it by saying that the gathering horde of ghosts frightened Odysseus into terminating his visit (632 ff.). Later it occurred to him to import a group of older figures whom he found together in another poetic account of the underworld, perhaps an account of Heracles’ descent to Hades to capture Cerberus.130 The section begins with a series of five figures seen performing or undergoing their routine activities or torments: 568–71 Minos; 572–5 Orion; 576–81 Tityos; 582–92 Tantalos; 593–600 Sisyphos. The settings exclude any dialogue. Tityos, Tantalos, and Sisyphos are famous sinners being punished; only in Tityos’ case is the sin stated. Other celebrated sinners such as Ixion and the Danaids are absent. After them Odysseus sees Heracles.131 He too is pursuing a characteristic activity, prowling about looking for enemies, but roaming free enough to be able to speak to Odysseus. A daunting picture is drawn of him as he aims his arrow at frightened ghosts, and his baldric is described in detail. He recognizes Odysseus (we wonder how) and addresses him. He takes him to be working through some series of trials like his own. He alludes briefly to the labours imposed on him by an inferior man (whom he does not name), one of which was to come to Hades and ‘fetch the dog’. He achieved it with help from Hermes and Athena. After delivering this peculiar speech, without waiting for any response from Odysseus, he goes back into Hades.

130 F. Dümmler, Kl. Schr. ii. 143 f.; P. Von der Mühll, Phil. 93 (1938), 8 f.; Merkelbach 191. Von der Mühll connects the frightened ghosts that surround Heracles in 605 f. with those in the Cerberus episode as related by Apollod. 2. 5. 12, and he sees Heracles’ own reference to his descent in 623–6 as analogous to Circe’s reference to the Argo in μ 69–72: ‘a kind of source-quotation.’ 131 Someone, whether Q or another, has added two lines (602–3) to accommodate the idea of Heracles’ reception in Olympus and marriage to Hebe; cf. ‘Hes.’ Th. 950–5, fr. 25. 28–33, 229. 7–13. A scholiast states that the addition was said to be the work of Onomacritus; it was presumably a Pergamene who dreamed up this ascription. Cf. Wilamowitz, Der Glaube der Hellenen, ii2 (Berlin 1955), 198 n. 1. Line [604] is a later interpolation from Hes. Th. 952 = fr. 25. 29, 229. 9.

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After the insertion of 565–627 Q left the original continuation, ‘but I stayed there steadfastly to see if anyone else would come of the heroes who died earlier’, and added two more new lines to suggest what further heroes from the past might yet appear: ‘I might have seen yet earlier men, the ones I wanted to—Theseus and Peirithoos, glorious children of gods’ (630 f.). They do not stand well after 629, and they introduce a further juxtaposition of the two competing concepts, waiting for people to come to Odysseus and ‘I saw’. ‘Yet earlier men’ is not really appropriate for Theseus and his friend. Theseus was another, like Heracles, who came down to Hades while alive; the story was told in the Minyas and (if it was not the same work) a Hesiodic poem. Heracles on his visit may have seen him there with Pirithous (cf. Apollod. 2. 5. 12). But now, as the eerily twittering hordes of the dead crowd about him, Odysseus becomes afraid that Persephone may send up the Gorgon’s head, which, we may suppose, would bind him to the spot for ever and prevent his return to the world of the living.132 He returns to his ship (the men who assisted him with the sacrifices must have gone back earlier), and they cast off and row with the current down to the mouth of Oceanus. As they emerge from the river channel the wind rises, enabling them to cross the sea without effort, as on the outward voyage.

μ They arrive back at Circe’s isle, which is now stated to lie ‘where are the house and dancing-places of Dawn, and the risings of the sun’. Why are these details given here and not at κ 135? They would be fitting if the sailors who reached Hades at sunset arrived back at Aiaia at sunrise. But Q has a timetabling problem: the outward voyage took all day with a following wind (λ 11), and the return voyage ought to take just as long. Odysseus must have spent several hours with the

132 The Gorgon again is mentioned in Apollodorus’ account of Heracles’ descent. He says Heracles drew his sword against her, but Hermes advised him that that was pointless, as she was an empty phantom.

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ghosts, and then we should expect the men to have waited for light before sailing away. They would then have reached Aiaia towards evening. Q blurs all this by omitting indications of time and more or less eliding the voyage. They arrive at the Island of Dawn, but there is still some of the night to run, as they take a brief sleep while waiting for morning (6–8). The impression is given that this is still the same night as was falling when they reached Hades. Men are sent to fetch Elpenor’s body from beside Circe’s house, which they do without contacting her. Odysseus apparently had no intention of revisiting her (cf. Danek 250). The funeral is carried out briskly. Circe, however, is aware of their return from Hades and comes down to the ship bringing plenty of food and wine. We understand that these are supplies for the following voyage (cf. 302). She proposes that they spend the rest of the day eating and drinking and set sail again the next morning; she will provide the necessary information to keep them safe. The programme is accepted. Q’s purpose in bringing Odysseus back to Aiaia was in fact not just so that he could bury Elpenor but so that he could receive instructions from Circe for the next adventures that he was to face. Why did he need to have advance notice of them? In the case of the Sirens, at least, he had to know what was coming so that he could take prophylactic measures. Circe may have played a similar advisory role in regard to the Sirens in the Argonaut story. When night comes the men bed down on the shore; Circe leads Odysseus apart, asks him about the visit to Hades, and gives him directions for the next stages of his journey as far as Thrinakia (where, if they had done the right thing, they would presumably have continued without further problems, but where in fact it will all go wrong, with consequences that Circe cannot be expected to predict). First he will come to the isle of the Sirens. (It is not mentioned in which direction he will be sailing.) They come from the Argonautic saga, but Circe does not mention the Argo, as she will do when it comes to the Clashing Rocks, because the factor that saved the Argonauts, their possession of a rival singer, is inapplicable to Odysseus’ case (West 2011b: 289). She advises him of a different means of escaping their enchantment without forgoing the pleasure of hearing them. After that he will face choices. In one direction stand the Clashing Rocks, in the other lies the strait between Scylla and Charybdis. Circe says she will not decide for him. But in what follows she assumes that

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he will avoid the Clashing Rocks, and she advises him to go for Scylla rather than Charybdis. The only ship that ever got through the Clashing Rocks, she says, was the Argo (69–72). This is tantamount to saying that the Argo story was the only one they had previously featured in, at any rate in heroic poetry.133 Odysseus will not take this option; Jason was helped through by Hera, but Odysseus has no currently active divine helper (Danek 256). He must therefore brave Scylla and Charybdis. This cannot have been an option for the Argonauts (Danek 257); there was no point in mentioning them in a story in which they were not actually to be faced. It is an innovation by Q to make them an alternative route to the one through the Clashing Rocks. It is probably also his innovation to make them alternatives to each other, as they are in principle independent items from sailors’ lore. He has transferred the motif of the perilous channel from the Clashing Rocks to them (Von der Mühll 729). In the end he will make Odysseus contend with both of them. Scylla gets the lion’s share of Circe’s description (73–100). Her cave faces the western darkness, so it is the west face of the cliff that overlooks the sea channel, which therefore runs north–south. It is a south wind that will blow Odysseus back to the spot at 427 f. So if Q has a consistent scheme of orientation—a big if—the inference is that they will be approaching from the north, with Scylla’s rock on their left. Her cave will be in shadow. Charybdis is described only very briefly, but the later narrative at 431 ff. will compensate for this. The fig tree that grows on the rock above is given special mention (103) in preparation for its eventual role in saving Odysseus. Circe advises keeping well away from Charybdis and staying on Scylla’s side, as it is better to lose six men than everyone. Six is the number that Scylla can grab at a time; it is also a recurrent number for losses from Odysseus’ crew (Kikones, Polyphemos). The hero asks whether he cannot defend his men against the monster, but Circe tells him that is hopeless. If he wastes time taking up arms against her, she may take another six men. The

133 The doves that bring ambrosia to Zeus from a source beyond (62–5) have IndoEuropean antecedents (West 2007: 158–60). But the Argo story was the only epic context for mentioning the birds before the Odyssey. Did the Argo wait for their daily transit to seize the moment for getting through? Cf. Danek 255.

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best he can do will be to get past as quickly as he can, and to call upon Scylla’s mother Krataiis to restrain her from a second swoop.134 Lastly Circe tells of Thrinakia and the Cattle of the Sun (her father, though this does not cross Q’s mind, any more than it crossed his mind at 70 that Aietes was her brother). She gives more detail than Teiresias did in λ 106–9, and hers is evidently the primary account. The warning to Odysseus is cast in the same words in both passages (137–9 = λ 119–12; [140–1] are a concordance interpolation from λ 113 f.). By the time Circe has finished talking it is almost dawn (as at κ 541). Odysseus rejoins his crew and they set sail. As before, Circe sends a following wind to help them on their way. Odysseus tells the men about the first item on the programme, the Sirens, and gives them their instructions. As they approach the island the wind drops, a sign that it is time to make preparations (Meuli 93 f. = 658; Danek 253). ‘Conditions are now ideal for hearing the Sirens’ voices’ (Dawe 480). The Sirens see the ship and direct their singing towards it, addressing Odysseus by name and inviting him to land and listen to them at leisure. No sailor has ever passed by, they claim, without hearing their honey-sweet voices and going on his way entertained and better informed. (As before, Q suppresses mention of the Argo’s passage.) For they know all of the Argives’ and Trojans’ toils at Troy, and all that happens on earth. Even here the story of Troy is taken as the prime subject for song. But the Sirens, like the Muses (Β 485), know all of men’s doings everywhere. We hear no more of their singing, only that Odysseus was tempted and tried to induce his men to untie him from the mast. But his precautions are effective: Perimedes and Eurylochos (the two named at λ 23) get up and tie him all the tighter, until the danger is past. The next adventure comes hard on the heels of the first. They straightway perceive a ‘smoke’ (meaning probably a cloud of spray, cf. 238), a great swell, and a crashing sound. These emanate not from the Clashing Rocks, which never come into view (though at 260 it is 134 A Krataiis was mentioned at λ 597 as the demon who frustrates Sisyphos as he tries to roll his boulder uphill. She is otherwise unknown. There she might be taken as a personification of the malicious force of gravity. Here Q has used the same name for an unrelated figure whom he has probably invented ad hoc. In the event (259) Odysseus neglects to invoke her.

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noted that they have escaped them), but from Charybdis, as is clear from 219. Odysseus addresses his men, but he is less candid than before they approached the Sirens. He does not tell them the names or natures of the twin dangers they face. One of these is already alarming them, and he wisely keeps quiet about the other in case they stop making an effort and simply huddle together in a bunch.135 He just tells the rowers to row as hard as they can and the helmsman to steer close to the cliff, away from the commotion. Unmindful of Circe’s advice that it is useless, he dons his armour and takes his stand on the foredeck in the hope of defending his men against Scylla. Charybdis meanwhile is distracting their attention with a terrifying performance. Odysseus describes its whole cycle as if they had time to watch it several times through (237–42). Suddenly Scylla seizes six of the men. By the time Odysseus glances back it is too late, they are already disappearing up into the gloom. Shortly after leaving Scylla and Charybdis behind, they come within sight and earshot of Thrinakia. From the lowing and bleating that he hears, Odysseus recognizes that this is the island that Teiresias and Circe have warned him to avoid. He tells his men that it holds great danger for them and that they should sail on past it. Eurylochos, the best-established individual in the crew, protests. Night is approaching, and they are weary. Let them land and make supper, and in the morning they will sail on. The rest support him, and Odysseus realizes that he cannot prevail. He makes them swear that they will content themselves with the supplies that Circe has provided and not kill any cow or sheep that they may find on the island. All goes well that evening, but during the night a powerful southerly begins to blow, preventing their departure in the morning. Again Odysseus impresses on the men that they are well provisioned and that they should not touch the island’s livestock, which, he now explains, belongs to the Sun, a formidable god. They are agreeable to this. But the wind continues to blow for a month, and their food supply runs out. They are reduced to catching birds and fishing. Odysseus goes off by himself to pray to the gods for help. The motif is repeated from the story of Menelaos in δ 360 ff.: his ship too was detained at an island for several weeks by adverse winds, provisions

135

But in 234 f. he speaks as if they were all aware of both dangers.

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ran out, his men were reduced to fishing, and he wandered off by himself, only he found the divine help that Odysseus seeks in vain. Odysseus’ return to the ship is disastrously delayed by his falling asleep. Meanwhile Eurylochos persuades the men to take a few of the Sun’s cows. They will do their best to propitiate the god, but even if he causes them all to drown at sea, that will be better than a slow death from hunger. The motif of the untimely sleep that overcomes Odysseus and allows his men to get up to mischief is repeated from κ 31, where it is much better motivated. By the time he wakes up and comes back, the cows have been killed and the meat is nearly cooked; he smells it before he sees it. He exclaims to heaven in despair, blaming the gods for sending him to sleep, as indeed they did. At this point (374) Odysseus relates how the news was brought to the Sun-god and how he protested to Zeus, who promised to destroy the ship. Q conscientiously supplies an explanation of how Odysseus knew about this celestial dialogue: he was told about it by Calypso, who heard it from Hermes. Arriving back at the ship, Odysseus finds the men already locked in recriminations. Alarming portents are seen and heard.136 They nevertheless feed on the meat for six days, until the storm abates. At last they can set sail. Zeus waits till they are out of sight of land and then sends the tempest. The ship is wrecked. The men fall into the sea and are pictured bobbing about on the waves like birds; that is the last anyone sees of them. Odysseus grabs hold of the floating mast and keel and manages to pull them together and ride on them. The wind, which has been blowing from the west, changes to south, driving him back towards the north. All through the night he is carried onward, and at sunrise he finds himself back at Scylla and Charybdis. He avoided Charybdis before; now he must contend with her. Zeus saves him from a second encounter with Scylla, whom he had no possible means of dealing with. As for Charybdis, the fig tree mentioned by Circe (103) is his only salvation, the only thing he can hold on to as his mast and keel are sucked down into the abyss.137 He has to cling there till late afternoon, 136 On the lowing of the slaughtered cows (395 f.) that convicts the guilty men cf. Germain 198 f. 137 It recalls the elm that Achilles clings to in Φ 242 ff. to save himself from the Scamander.

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when the timbers reappear and he is able to clamber back onto them and paddle away. For nine days more he is carried across the sea. There is no indication of direction, but he is being diverted away from the true homeward route (which would have taken him past Thrinakia again), and he fetches up a very long way from Ithaca, at Calypso’s isle.138 He says nothing of his first meeting with her, simply that she gave him tender loving care from then on. Here his long narration to the Phaeacians concludes, as he has already told them how he got from Ogygia to Scheria (η 241–97).

ν The next four rhapsodies cover the portion of the narrative in which Odysseus is back in Ithaca but stays away from the palace. In ν the Phaeacians bring him to Ithaca and he receives orientation from Athena. In ξ he comes to the swineherd Eumaios and converses at length with him. In ο Telemachos returns from Sparta. In π he and Odysseus meet at the piggery and have a preliminary discussion about proceeding against the suitors. Q is showing great facility in extending his composition, especially by the ample use of dialogue. A generous critic might see in his work the ‘heavenly length’ that Schumann acclaimed in Schubert’s Great C Major Symphony. The listeners react at the end of Odysseus’ recital as they did when he stopped earlier (1–2 = λ 333–4). Alkinoos arranges for a further round of gifts, as anticipated in λ 335–61, and the long-delayed retirement to bed is soon effected. In the morning the promised tripods and cauldrons are swiftly produced and loaded onto the ship. Alkinoos’ careful attention to their proper stowing under the thwarts so as not to be in the rowers’ way (‘like an airline stewardess’, as Dawe remarks) is a picturesque touch. However, this is still a ship that will sail only at night, and now there is a whole extra day to fill. Q does not exert his 138 Schwartz 271 thinks he has gone back through the Charybdis strait into ‘das äußere Weltmeer . . . Denn nur so kann Odysseus um den nördlichen Erdrand herum zu dem Phäakenlande im fernen Westen geschafft werden’.

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imagination over the problem but sets the Phaeacians once more to their default activity, feasting at the palace, with Demodokos singing. This time he does not even trouble to specify a theme on which the bard sang. Odysseus keeps checking the position of the sun, longing for it to set. ‘Here the poet himself feels the awkwardness of the empty day.’139 When the time comes, Q does not stint on the departure scene. Odysseus voices warm wishes for the Phaeacians. There are last libations, and he bids a special farewell to Arete. (He had said his goodbyes to Nausikaa the day before, and she does not appear.) A little procession makes its way to the ship: Odysseus, a herald, and three women carrying things (63–9).140 Odysseus is made comfortable for sleeping on the stern deck. No further words are spoken as the vessel sets off. The voyage is dispatched in a few lines, but they convey a beautiful picture of the speeding ship and the peacefully sleeping hero whose warmaking and wanderings are over (81–92). They arrive at Ithaca a little before dawn, with the Morning Star shining in the sky. There is a detailed description of the harbour where they land and of the nearby cave of the Nymphs where Odysseus will hide his treasure. Q uses the present tense and is probably recalling things he has himself seen. The Phaeacian sailors know the place (113), and we are allowed to suppose that they know every coast and harbour.141 The landing is not described with the usual formulae: the wondrous vessel aims straight for the shore, and its impetus carries it up the beach to half its length. Odysseus, still sleeping, is carried ashore with his bedding and laid on the sand. His goods are stowed off the road, under an olive tree. The sailors depart, again with none of the conventional formulae, just ‘they went back homeward’ (125). So the Phaeacians pass out of Odysseus’ story, but it remains to complete theirs. Alkinoos earlier (θ 564 ff.) told us of the old prophecy 139 Jacob 447, ‘hier also hat der Dichter selbst die Mißlichkeit des leeren Tages gefühlt’. 140 The cloak and chiton in 67 are those of θ 425/441. But there the clothes were put in a coffer with the gold, and Odysseus sealed it up. Here the clothes and coffer are separated, the gold is not mentioned, and Odysseus is also provided with food and wine: typical provision for a passenger on a ship, but Odysseus will not need it on board and it is not mentioned afterwards. 141 As their ships themselves do, θ 560 f. ‘Here the magical knowledge of the ships is transferred to the sailors’ (de Jong 318).

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that Poseidon would one day smite a Phaeacian ship and bury their city, angered at their safe ferrying of travellers. It was in fact to be the ferrying of Odysseus that aroused his ire. He speaks now to Zeus, complaining that the Phaeacians have failed to hold him in respect.142 He knows and accepts that he cannot prevent Odysseus’ return home, since Zeus has approved it (133), but he was determined that he should suffer many woes on the way, and now the Phaeacians have given him this easy passage, and moreover laden him with riches. Zeus is sympathetic and says that Poseidon may punish the Phaeacians as he pleases. Poseidon, still nervous that Zeus might be angry (148), sets out what he wants to do: ‘smite’ the ship as it returns, and bury the city under a mountain. This corresponds to the terms of the prophecy that Alkinoos heard from his father. ‘Smite’, dαBσαι, is naturally taken to mean ‘shatter and sink’ (cf. ε 221, ζ 326, ψ 235). Zeus, however, does not reply ‘Very well, do it’, but ‘Let me tell you what I think is best’. He advises Poseidon to turn the ship to stone when it is in sight of the shore, so that all are struck with wonder. This is clearly a modification of what Poseidon had in mind, whether or not it can still be covered by ‘smite’.143 He continues, if we accept (as we should) the reading of Aristophanes of Byzantium in 158, ‘and do not bury their city under a mountain’.144

142

The speech parallels Helios’ complaint to Zeus some 200 lines before (Danek

267). 143

Alkinoos in 175–7 sees the petrifaction as matching the prophecy. Aristarchus and all manuscripts read not μηδέ but μέγα δέ, making the line a feeble repetition of 152. There are decisive arguments for μηδέ: (i) the petrifaction of the ship is to take place in full view of the people, which suggests a visible warning sufficient to deter them from ferrying people about in future (cf. Danek 267); (ii) in 164 Poseidon turns the ship to stone and goes away, νόσϕι βεβήκει, leaving the Phaeacians to react anxiously to the miracle and pray for deliverance; (iii) 160 Pθι Φαίηκες γεγάασιν (≈ ε 35) implies that there are still Phaeacians on Scheria (and surely not in an underground city); (iv) it is easy to see how μ5 could be replaced by μέγα through assimilation to 152. It is true that if the city is not buried, the prophecy turns out to be inaccurate, and ‘Orakel werden ja gegeben, damit sie ohne Einschränkung in Erfüllung gehen’ (Erbse 146). But the possibility was left open in θ 570 f. that Poseidon might fulfil it or not, as he chose. So the Phaeacians still exist, but no longer in contact with the rest of mankind. ‘Längst vorüber ist die Zeit, wo Menschen aus dem Phaiakenlande mit dem Wunderschiff über Nacht zur Heimat gebracht werden und von seiner Herrlichkeit erzählen konnten; jetzt kommt niemand mehr dahin, sicher niemand zurück. So steht der Engel mit dem feurigen Schwert vor dem Paradies, so deckt der Rhein den Nibelungenhort, und nie wieder findet der Glückliche, der einmal ins Wunderschloß oder in die Höhle der unendlichen Schätze kam, den Weg zurück’ (Bethe ii. 128). 144

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Poseidon goes at once to Scheria and waits for the ship to return; it went very fast, but he could go much faster. When it comes he strikes it with his hand, turning it to stone and rooting it to the spot, and departs. The Phaeacians on shore are disconcerted by the miracle. Alkinoos at once recalls the prophecy and concludes that it is in process of fulfilment. He calls on the people to cease their ferrying activities from now on and to sacrifice a dozen bulls to Poseidon in the hope that he will have mercy and not implement the second part of the prophecy by burying the city. They prepare the sacrifice, and Q leaves them at 185–7 anxiously praying as he turns back to Odysseus. The transition is deliberately crafted to leave us in suspense, as at δ 847 and ο 300. It glosses over a time discrepancy, for in Scheria it must be at least afternoon, while in Ithaca it is still early morning (de Jong 321). Odysseus wakes up in his native island but does not recognize it; he has been away a long time, and it is shrouded in mist. In Q’s original draft it was an ordinary morning mist, due to an indefinite θεός (189).145 Subsequently he inserted 190–7, having decided to make it a mist produced by Athena. Her purpose is not just to mystify Odysseus but to stop him running straight off home, and to lay a basis for the conversation (375 ff.) in which she will warn him against appearing openly in his palace. He is dismayed, and thinks the Phaeacians must have tricked him and left him in some unknown place.146 He checks to see that his possessions are all there. They are, but he is still miserable. Athena appears before him in the guise of a shepherd lad. He appeals for help and asks where he is. She replies with a description of the island’s features, building up to the revelation of its name: Ithaca. He is delighted, and proceeds to spin the first of a series of cover stories that he will tell to different people (256–86). As there is no deceiving the goddess, its only utility is to show his instinctive recourse to concealment, but Q enjoys composing these fictions. He draws on his interest in Crete (cf. Hoekstra ad loc.) and in the Cretan hero Idomeneus. As elsewhere, homicide is given as a man’s reason for leaving his homeland,147 and Phoenicians appear as the typical agents of overseas conveyance. 145 For similar uses of indefinite θεός see 317, γ 158, 183, η 286, θ 44, ι 158, μ 419, ξ 227, 242, ο 168, ρ 218, σ 37, 265, τ 485, ϕ 280, χ 347, ψ 222. It is abnormal for θεός to be combined with ΠαλλSς ᾽Αθηναίη as in 189 f. 146

Lines 200–8 may be another expansion, but they do not affect the sense. The name of the victim, Orsilochos, is perhaps borrowed from the Orsilochos or Ortilochos of γ 489, the father of Diokles of Pharai. 147

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The goddess smiles and strokes Odysseus, revealing herself now in a truer form (as she might as well have done from the start) and identifying herself as Athena, his constant helper. She has come now, she says, to apprise him of the trials yet facing him at home and to warn him to keep his return secret. In reply he acknowledges that she helped him at Troy and on Scheria, but says he never saw her in the intervening years of wandering. Is this really Ithaca? He does not believe it, and suspects that she is deceiving him. Her answering speech (330–51) does not follow a clear train of thought, and seems not to have been composed in one sweep. In 330–8 she says that anyone else would have gone straight off to find his family, but Odysseus is so wily that he is not even minded to enquire about them until he has made his own investigation of how it is with his wife. But this does not suit a situation where he does not believe he is in Ithaca; it suits the picture given earlier in 250 ff., where he did believe it on the strength of the shepherd lad’s assurance. Evidently different layers of composition have not been fully harmonized. In the earlier version the mist that made Ithaca hard to recognize was a natural one, and as soon as Athena in the guise of the country lad had told Odysseus he was in Ithaca, he believed it. In the expanded version the mist was ascribed to Athena’s agency, and it needed her removal of it in 352 for him to be convinced. His expression of doubt in 324–8 belongs to this latter version, whereas 330–8 belong to the earlier one; the lines might originally have been composed to follow 295. As to Odysseus’ complaint about the goddess’s apparent abandonment of him during his wanderings, she explains that she knew all along that he would have difficulties in getting home and lose all his men on the way, but that she did not feel able to defy her powerful uncle Poseidon (339–43). Lifting the mist, she points out Phorkys’ Harbour and the cave of the Nymphs, and Odysseus rejoices for the second time at finding himself in Ithaca. From here on Athena sets about giving the practical advice and assistance that he needs. She helps him hide his treasure in the cave.148 She explains about the suitors and about Penelope’s 148

Where it will remain for the remainder of the poem. He perhaps recovered it in the Telegony (West 2013: 293). It has to be left behind at this point because there was an irresoluble contradiction between the motif of the traveller returning home laden with riches (cf. τ 272, 284) and that of the indigent beggar who turns out to be the long-lost husband and king (Bethe ii. 72).

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prevarications. He rightly infers that he would have been in danger if he had gone home openly. ‘I would have suffered Agamemnon’s fate’, he exclaims, not too accurately, but reflecting Q’s abiding interest in that story. Athena assures him of her support, and foresees some killing.149 She will alter his appearance to that of an unprepossessing, poorly dressed old man, so that neither the suitors nor his wife and son will recognize him.150 But before he appears among them he is to go to the piggery and stay there for the time being with his swineherd, getting himself fully briefed (411 Cνθα μένειν κα πάντα παρήμενος =ξερέεσθαι: the phrase anticipates the long leisurely dialogues that will take place in ξ and ο). The piggery is introduced with circumstantial detail (407–10); Odysseus needs to be told where it is, as it was after he left Ithaca that Eumaios established it (ξ 8). ‘The swineherd’ was mentioned earlier at δ 640, but he remains nameless till ξ 55, and he receives little introduction here apart from the certification of his loyalty. We shall find in due course that his piggery serves as a safe, quiet forward location where Odysseus can meet up with Telemachos and plan his moves at leisure.151 Athena, however, does not explain why Odysseus is to go there. And although she tells him that while he is there she will go to Sparta, where Telemachos has gone in search of news, and call him back (412–15), she does not reveal that they are to meet up under Eumaios’ roof.152 Odysseus questions the point of his son’s journey. Surely Athena could have given him the information he sought. She

149 The terms in which she speaks of it in 395 point towards a pitched battle rather than killing with Odysseus’ arrows (Danek 275). Cf. α 255–66, π 281–98. It is not until τ that the idea of the bow contest comes into view. 150 This is indeed how he will appear in ρ–ω; yet his likeness to Odysseus is observed by Eurykleia (τ 380 f.), and he has the scar on his leg that proves his identity to her and to others who see it. There is nothing to indicate that his degraded physique is the result of anything other than natural ageing over years of hardship—Penelope remarks at τ 359 f. that Odysseus by now probably looks much as the beggar does— and apart from the temporary reversal in π 172–459 Athena never acts to restore his earlier appearance. The transformation in ν is an expedient to effect the transition from the heroic figure that Odysseus cut among the Phaeacians to the unrecognizable one that he must have on Ithaca (Kirchhoff 538–42; Bethe ii. 48–59; Merkelbach 62). 151 Hölscher 1988: 187, adduces parallels from German and Russian tales to suggest that the hero’s preliminary visit to an old servant and adoption of a humble disguise may have been a traditional element in such stories. 152 Indeed Q does not seem to have this in mind, as in 403 Telemachos is included among those to whom Odysseus is to be unrecognizable. For the reunion scene in π Athena has to temporarily remove his ‘disguise’.

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explains that it was to bring him renown, the same motive as she originally gave in α 95, and that he has suffered no hardship. She mentions that some of the suitors are waiting in ambush with a view to killing him, but opines that they will fail. Everything having been arranged, Athena performs the necessary transformation on Odysseus by touching him with a wand153 and departs for Sparta. We shall stay with him through ξ, and pass to Sparta at ο 1.

ξ This rhapsody describes a day almost entirely occupied in conversation between Odysseus and Eumaios; the speeches amount to 402 out of 526 genuine lines. It runs fluently and without raising serious critical problems. Odysseus makes his way to the piggery, which is now described more fully (5–22). Eumaios is sitting there making himself some new sandals, but the four men who work under him are out on the job. There are four dogs, who rush barking at the approaching stranger. Q’s abiding interest in dogs and their behaviour was illustrated in Chapter 4 (p. 55). Odysseus knows how to defuse their aggression by sitting down, while Eumaios drives them off with a shower of pebbles. This is a poet who knows the countryside, and he is generous with the rustic realism. From the first words he speaks, the swineherd’s constant preoccupations are apparent. The naturalistic opening, ‘The dogs nearly savaged you to death, old fellow’, is deftly turned into a manifesto of his allegiance to his lost master, his resentment at having to raise pigs to feed those who have taken his place, and a welcome to the stranger. He imagines Odysseus wandering among foreign peoples, if indeed he is still alive (44 = δ 833). But when he goes indoors and expands on his first speech, he speaks of him as having perished after going off to fight at Troy (68–71). Like Telemachos, he is shown oscillating This recalls the magic wand that Circe used in effecting transformations in κ 238, 293, 319, 389, but also the one with which Hermes puts people to sleep or wakes them (Ω 343). Athena uses hers again at π 172 and 456. But in ζ 229 ff. and ψ 156 she transforms Odysseus without it, so it probably owes its intermittent existence to the influence of the Circe episode. 153

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inconsistently between recognizing a possibility of Odysseus’ survival (145–7, 171 f., 371, 423 f.) and the conviction that he is dead (89 f., 133–6, 167). Before the dialogue continues, Eumaios prepares and serves a meal: pork souvlakia, with wine that he mixes in a wooden bowl (78). In his third speech—each has been longer than the last—he waxes indignant about the suitors’ conduct and describes the (former) extent of Odysseus’ flocks and herds, upon which the suitors make daily depredations. Odysseus eats and drinks in silence, meditating evil for the malefactors. When he has finished he asks who the munificent master is that has gone missing after fighting at Troy; perhaps he may be able to give Eumaios some news of him, for he has travelled widely. Eumaios, however, is thoroughly sceptical of beggars coming with false claims of that sort and expecting reward. He has no doubt that his master has perished. But he does mention his name: Odysseus. Like the name of Ithaca in Athena’s mouth at ν 248, it is held back to the end of his speech with climactic effect. Eumaios longs for him, so kindly did he use to treat him, and still calls him 1θεBος, familiaris. Throughout the poem Eumaios, although a slave, comes close to being treated as a family member. Odysseus avers on oath that the missing lord will return at the end of this very month154 and that he asks for no reward until that comes to pass (148–64). Eumaios’ response falls into three parts; we see Q moving forward through his agenda. (166–73:) I am completely unpersuaded by your assertion. I will not hold you to your oath. I would rather not talk about Odysseus’ fate. May he come back, as I and Penelope wish, and old Laertes and Telemachos.155 (174–84:) But I am now anxious about Telemachos, who has taken it into his head to sail to Pylos; the suitors have set an ambush for him. (Odysseus has already heard this from Athena, ν 425–7.) (185–90:) Now then, who are you, where are you from, and how did you get here? In reply Odysseus presents his second cover story. The preamble in 192–8 indicates that it is going to be a long tale, and indeed it extends for some 160 lines. It answers Eumaios’ questions (except that the On the rare word λυκάβας see Glotta 89 (2013), 253–64. The line naming Laertes and Telemachos (173) looks like a secondary addition, as Telemachos is mentioned two lines later as if a new topic, and in ο 348 f. Odysseus asks if Laertes is still alive. 154 155

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narrator does not give himself a name), and it also includes some second-hand information about Odysseus to support his prediction of an early return. We recognize in it various motifs drawn from the Apologoi. As in his tale to Athena in ν 256 ff., Odysseus claims to be a Cretan, the illegitimate son of a distinguished man (whose name, however, is fictitious). When the war came, he and Idomeneus led the Cretan contingent. (He thus takes the place of the Iliadic Meriones.) After the war he spent seven years in Egypt (this is borrowed from the story of Menelaos) and a year in Phoenicia, and then he was deceived into taking a voyage to Libya. He survived a shipwreck and, after nine days clinging to wreckage, reached Thesprotia. There the king’s son found him and took him to the palace, where he was given clothes. (This adapts Odysseus’ reception by the Phaeacians.) He was told that Odysseus had recently been there, and he saw the treasure he had amassed. Odysseus had gone up to Dodona to consult the oracle, but a ship was waiting ready to take him home as soon as he returned. The narrator had been sent off on an earlier ship that was heading for Doulichion, whose ruler should on Iliadic terms have been Meges (Β 627) but is here identified as one Akastos. But the sailors had seized him, planning to sell him as a slave and giving him his present rags to wear instead of the fine clothes the king had given him. He had given them the slip when they put in at Ithaca. Eumaios still refuses to believe in Odysseus’ return (360–89). If ever Penelope sends for him because someone claims to have news, everyone else eagerly questions the informant, but he does not care to, having once been misled by an Aetolian visitor who said he had seen Odysseus on Crete with Idomeneus and promised he would arrive within months, which did not happen. Having earlier sworn an oath that Odysseus was on his way home, the visitor now stakes his life on it, proposing an agreement that he shall be rewarded if Odysseus does come as he predicts, but thrown off a cliff if he fails to (390–400). Eumaios’ response is consistent with his previous attitude. He good-humouredly declines the wager, and remarks that supper-time is approaching; the other swineherds will soon be back. We realize that the main dialogue is over and that the day’s activities, such as they are, will shortly be wrapped up. The swineherds appear on cue, amid much oinking and squealing of the pigs they are herding into their pens. Eumaios tells them to bring in a good one to sacrifice for the visitor. This is done, and the

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meal is prepared and served with all due process, a portion being set aside for Hermes and the Nymphs, the herdsmen’s deities. One of the men is picked out for individualization and a little back history (Mesaulios, 449–52). Bedtime follows swiftly. There is no talk of what might be on the next day’s agenda. But instead of treating the couching down as the conclusion of the episode, Q continues with an entertaining incident giving further illustration of Odysseus’ resourcefulness: he gets himself warmer bedding for the cold night by means of an α%νος, a story from which the hearer is meant to draw a lesson. It is set at Troy, and the narrator now represents himself as having been an associate of Odysseus and Menelaos (470); Odysseus, the hero of the tale, used his cunning to get a cloak for him. The α%νος is presented as a test which Eumaios passes.156 After attending to his guest’s need he goes out to sleep with the pigs, gratifying Odysseus with this evidence of his devotion to duty.

ο We return to Athena, picking up from ν 440. Her arrival in Sparta has been held back till night-time (and Odysseus’ conversation with Eumaios accordingly made to fill out the day) so that she can stand over Telemachos’ bed and address him in the manner of a dream figure, though he is not actually asleep. (Compare her visitation to Odysseus in υ 30 ff.) She does not, as dream figures usually do, identify herself either truthfully or under an alias, or say she has a message from Zeus. She has consistently refrained from telling Telemachos which divinity it is that is helping him (cf. α 323, β 262), though Nestor identified her at γ 378. She finds Telemachos and Peisistratos bedded down in Menelaos’ porch, and we have the impression that they are just a few hours older than when we last saw them in δ 620–4. But Odysseus meanwhile has lived through twenty-nine days. This does not mean that Telemachos is supposed to have stayed twenty-nine more days at Sparta, with the 156 The passage has suffered from additions. 503–6 (athetized by Athenocles and Aristarchus) do not make a logical conclusion to the story and spoil its status as an α%νος. 515–17 have intruded from ο 337–9. 512–14, suspected by Dawe, may be an afterthought.

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suitors waiting all that time in their ambush. That is unthinkable. We must say that in effect they have been frozen in time, their calendar stopped, until we were ready to return to them.157 In δ 594 ff. Telemachos had already turned down Menelaos’ invitation to stay for eleven or twelve days, and was evidently set on an early departure. He is lying awake turning things over in his mind. In the Iliad this motif is used when a character is to initiate new action in the night (West 2011a: 100). Here it is Athena who gives him the impulse, adapting lines previously addressed to him by Nestor at Pylos (10–13 ≈ γ 313–16). She tells him that he should hasten home, as Penelope’s father and brothers (the latter not mentioned elsewhere) are urging her to marry Eurymachos, and she may well decide to do so. This does not correspond to anything we believe to be happening in Ithaca; but it is perhaps not correct to say that Athena is lying. The situation she describes is Q’s improvisation for the present need: it does not have to be measured against anything found elsewhere in the poem. She could have told Telemachos that Odysseus had returned and was waiting for him, but that would have spoiled the drama of the recognition in π (Seeck 220). She does warn him about the suitors’ ambush and advise him how to evade it. The advice is very vague, ‘Keep away from the islands’, but poetically sufficient. He is to sail from Pylos by night (34); that will be the next night but one, as he needs two days to get back to Pylos. This will mirror his nocturnal outward voyage and leave the following day free for action. Athena promises that he will get a following wind from ‘that one of the immortals who is guarding and protecting you’ (35: she continues to conceal her identity from him), and at 292 she will duly supply it. The divinely sent wind is a typical motif (Α 479, β 420, κ 7). Any god relevant to the context is able to produce one. On reaching Ithaca Telemachos is to disembark at the first headland, sending the ship on to the town, while he goes up to the piggery, where he is spend a night (36–42). Athena does not give any reason. Q wanted to keep the meeting with Odysseus as a surprise, but she might have told him it was for his safety from the murderous suitors. He makes no reply to the apparition, but wakes Peisistratos with a kick158 and, without mentioning his divine visitant, says they should 157

See p. 112. The phrase is borrowed from Κ 158, where it is more appropriate; cf. Wilamowitz 1884: 15 n. 4, and above, p. 74. 158

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depart immediately. Peisistratos reasonably points out that it is still dark: they must wait for morning, and make sure of collecting the gifts Menelaos has promised and of hearing his farewell. When dawn comes and Menelaos gets up, Telemachos rather brusquely asks him to let him leave. Again he says nothing of the divine prompting, he just says his heart is longing for home. Menelaos assures him that he does not want to detain him any longer than he wants to stay (68 ≈ δ 594), but presses him to wait for his gifts and for a meal to sustain them on the long journey. He even offers to accompany him on a chariot tour of Greece to accumulate more gifts. Telemachos insists that he wants to go straight home, as he has not left anyone to guard his property. (He did in fact charge Mentor to do this, β 226 f.) He might have mentioned the rowers restlessly waiting at Pylos, as he did in δ 598 f. Menelaos calls for the meal to be prepared. He and Helen and his son Megapenthes (δ 11) go to find gifts from their storeroom. The herald Eteoneus, whom we met in δ 22 ff., reappears and is put to work. From the store Menelaos and Megapenthes bring a cup and a silver krater, corresponding to the special krater of Sidonian workmanship that Menelaos promised Telemachos in δ 613–19.159 Helen, in lines adapted from an Iliadic passage (105–8 ≈ Ζ 289, 293–5), picks out a fine peplos. The three of them go and present the gifts. As Helen’s is a feminine garment, she designates it as being for Telemachos’ future bride; until he marries it can be stored in his mother’s room (125–9).160 The meal is taken, with Eteoneus and Megapenthes again brought into service. The young men’s departure is elaborated with gracious speeches and a bird omen, an eagle carrying off a large goose from the yard. Helen interprets this as presaging Odysseus’ homecoming and revenge on the suitors, and she raises the possibility that he is already back and making his plans. But it is not very satisfactory to have one goose (however big) standing for all the suitors, and the omen is evidently secondary to Penelope’s dream in τ 535 ff., where an eagle comes and kills a whole yardful of geese. What Helen and the others But the repetition of those lines in ο 113–19 is a concordance interpolation; see Apthorp 200–16, Dawe 566. PMGF 209 ii 1–2 is hardly evidence that Stesichorus heard the lines recited in ο. 160 The prospect of Telemachos’ marrying was also raised by Athena in 26, but has no further significance for the poem. 159

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see is an actual incident and not a dream, so the eagle is limited to carrying off a single fowl. Telemachos prays that Helen’s interpretation may prove true, and they drive away. The journey back to Pylos is dispatched as swiftly as the journey out, and indeed in the same verses (184–92 = γ 486–94). Q wants to get Telemachos quickly back to his ship and avoid the delay of a reunion with Nestor (although Telemachos promised to convey Menelaos’ greetings to him, 155 f.). Telemachos asks Peisistratos, who is driving as in γ 482 f., to drop him at the ship, and after reflection Peisistratos complies. He gives him advice corresponding to what Telemachos intends to do anyway: to embark and sail quickly before Nestor hears that they are back. Q conveniently forgets that in γ 423–4 the rowers were to be entertained at Nestor’s palace during Telemachos’ absence. Now they are at the ship and ready to go. Peisistratos drives on to the palace and passes out of the story. Telemachos is preparing to sail and sacrificing to Athena161 when a stranger comes up and begs passage. This is Theoklymenos, introduced at surprising length with his background and genealogy. He comes from a family of seers and has an ancestral connection with Pylos through his great-grandfather Melampous, whose story is told rather allusively in 226 ff.,162 but he is now fleeing from Argos after killing an unnamed man. His identity is held back till 256. In urgent tones he asks Telemachos who he is and where he comes from. We might have expected Telemachos to be asking this of the newcomer, but he has just been identified by Q, who can now cut corners. Even in his next speech he does not name himself, and Telemachos never addresses or refers to him by his name; cf. de Jong 372. Telemachos accepts him as a passenger, and the ship sails. Athena provides a following wind as she promised, indeed quite a strong one to speed the vessel on. The sun sets. We are given geographical details that were omitted on the outward voyage (‘so as to create suspense’,

161 In β 261 he was said to pray to Athena while identifying her only as ‘the god who came yesterday’, and so here we need not infer from ‘he was sacrificing to Athena’ that Q is now representing him as aware of his helper’s identity. 162 Cf. λ 287–97, ‘Hes.’ fr. 37. 1–15. Q presupposes knowledge of the story and does not name the daughter of Neleus in 233 (Pero) or the brother of Melampous in 237 (Bias). For Melampous’ descendants cf. ‘Hes.’ frr. 25. 34 f.; 136. 4–6, 16.

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de Jong 374). They pass the promontory of Pheai163 and then head up towards the small islands off Acarnania, keeping east of Ithaca and away from the area where the suitors are lying in wait. At this point Q switches back to Odysseus, leaving Telemachos ‘anxious as to whether he was to escape death or be caught’ (300). Odysseus and Eumaios are still at supper despite the late hour, and they will have further extended converse before retiring for a short sleep at 494. The interruption of the Telemachos narrative enables Q to leave us in suspense about the ambush (as in δ 847, cf. ν 187) rather than give a less exciting account of its failure; and it makes an opportunity to see something of Odysseus on a day when we would otherwise see nothing of him. Q probably thinks of this as Odysseus’ second day at the piggery, as he will stay there two more nights, and in ρ 515 Eumaios speaks of having had him for three nights and days. But to synchronize him with Telemachos, who needed two days to get from Sparta to Pylos, there would have to be another day between the one described in ξ and the one now ending in ο 301 ff. As is appropriate to the hour, Odysseus broaches a plan for the morrow. He proposes to go to the palace and try his luck with the suitors as a beggar. This is in fact the next positive action he will take. But the next day will be taken up with the reunion with Telemachos, which he cannot plan for, and only on the day after that will he get to the palace. So Eumaios is made to veto the proposal out of concern for his guest’s safety, and as if Odysseus is expecting this he is represented as putting the idea forward as a test of Eumaios’ hospitality (Danek 298). Eumaios urges him to stay put till Telemachos returns. This anticipates Telemachos’ appearance at the piggery next morning. Odysseus gratefully accepts the kindness offered, and takes the mention of Telemachos as a cue to enquire whether Odysseus’ parents 163 Mistakenly called Pherai, or at any rate so transmitted (297; cf. p. 88 n. 50). In the manuscripts this is followed by a line about Elis (= Hymn. Ap. 426, where it precedes the line about Phe(r)ai, contrary to geography but with good syntax, which it lacks in ο 298). It was rightly deleted by Blass 166. The line numbered 295 in our editions, which adds mention of Krounoi and Chalkis, is not in the manuscripts but was read here by Strabo (8. 3. 26 and 10. 1. 9). It resembles Hymn. Ap. 425, where however Dyme is also included. It is probably a plus-verse due to some rhapsode; otherwise its absence from the vulgate is hard to understand. Cf. Bolling 245. It is suspicious that it is divided by the sunset from the other geographical references. The Odyssey passage seems to have influenced the Hymn (note also 293 ≈ Hymn. Ap. 434 f.), but then there was cross-contamination between the traditions of the two poems.

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are still alive. He knows, of course, that Antikleia is not, as he conversed with her soul in Hades seven years before. As for Laertes, Eumaios has mentioned him in ξ 173 as being alive, though that verse may be a secondary addition. Odysseus’ question gives us another reminder of Laertes’ existence in the background. It also leads Eumaios to speak of how Antikleia brought him up together with her youngest child, Ktimene.164 Odysseus would have known all about this; but it is newly invented by Q, and it is not surprising that there is no echo of it elsewhere. It reinforces Eumaios’ status as almost family (Danek 299). This in turn prompts Odysseus to ask about the swineherd’s origins and parentage. Q is making himself the opportunity for another long story (eighty-two lines) of the same character as Odysseus’ cover stories, only this one is represented as true. There is even a story within the story (452–9). In ξ the extended dialogue was needed to fill out the day: there is no such need now, and indeed Q is aware that the protracted talk is eating into the night, as we see from Eumaios’ justificatory remark α/δε δ6 νύκτες θέσϕατοι (392), which echoes Alkinoos’ similar one in λ 373. Q has not forgotten that the other swineherds are still present (cf. 302). He decides to send them out to sleep and leave Odysseus and Eumaios talking à deux. Eumaios invites them to do so, at the same time giving them their instructions for the morning, which will ensure that they are out of the way when Telemachos arrives. We are left to assume that they silently leave the room. Eumaios was born as a king’s son on an island that we cannot identify from the way he specifies it (403 f.) and that, if not wholly fictitious, lies on the indistinct margins of Q’s geography;165 it has utopian features. As in Odysseus’ stories, Phoenicians play a role, transporting the central character from place to place over long distances. For further exoticism he actually had a Phoenician nurse at home, who herself had been taken from Sidon by Greek pirates— Taphians, the typical Greek marauders, though one would have thought that Sidon was far beyond their range. After Eumaios’ tale there is a very brisk transition to Telemachos’ landing. The two talkers take their brief sleep; dawn comes; and there 164

On Odysseus’ sisters cf. p. 99. It should be somewhere in the west, as Ithaca is near the route between it and Phoenicia (482). See further p. 84 n. 40. 165

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is Telemachos’ ship making its landfall. He, mindful of Athena’s instruction (36 ff.), announces that he is going to visit his herdsmen. She told him to stay a night with Eumaios, and in the event he does so, but here he tells his crew he is going to return to the city in the evening. In 543–6, however, it is implied that he may stay away longer. Theoklymenos speaks up (508) and asks where he is to go when they reach the town. Should he go to the palace? Telemachos explains why that is not a good idea, and proposes that he go to Eurymachos, here presented as an excellent man and a promising suitor for Penelope (cf. 17 f.)—although, he adds, Zeus only knows if the suitors will live to see her married. This is the cue for a bird omen, which is wanted so that Theoklymenos can exercise his mantic art once before he disappears from the scene. He interprets it as a sure sign that Odysseus’ line will remain supreme in Ithaca. This seems to put paid to Eurymachos’ prospects and the desirability of associating with him. At any rate Telemachos now forgets his first proposal and instead calls upon one of his rowers, Peiraios, to take the seer in and look after him till he comes back. Peiraios gladly agrees. The others sail on to the town; Telemachos sets off to the piggery.

π Instead of staying with him, Q jumps ahead of him so that his arrival may be seen from Eumaios’ and Odysseus’ viewpoint (de Jong 385). They are making breakfast. They have sent the under-herdsmen off to work (as arranged at ο 396 f.); they had to be cleared out of the way for the Telemachos scene. His arrival is treated with delightful originality and naturalism. Just as when Odysseus came in ξ, the dogs are the first to react, but they know Telemachos and fawn on him instead of barking and snapping. Noticing their behaviour and hearing the footsteps on the gravel, Odysseus remarks to Eumaios that some friend is approaching. Before he has finished speaking, his son is standing there in the doorway. Eumaios greets him joyfully, like a father greeting his only son after a long absence. Telemachos says he has come to find out whether his mother has already married. This is a scratch motive, suggested by what Athena told him in ο 15 ff.; she had not told him to ask Eumaios

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about it, only to go and stay with him. Eumaios assures him that nothing has changed. He goes inside, and there is a charming display of courtesies as Odysseus gives up his seat for him and he says no, stay where you are, Eumaios will find me another one. In a unique touch of domestic realism Eumaios serves up some of last night’s leftovers. After they have eaten, Telemachos asks about the visitor. Eumaios answers with a very brief summary of the story that Odysseus told him in ξ, and says it is for Telemachos to decide what to do with him. As with Theoklymenos in ο 513 ff., Telemachos explains regretfully why he is in no position to accommodate guests at home. The uncertainty of Penelope’s marital situation remains on his mind despite Eumaios’ assurance. He will give the stranger some material assistance and see him off to wherever he wants to go; or if Eumaios is willing, he can stay at the piggery. But he should not go among the suitors, who are likely to abuse him. (This anticipates what will happen later.) Odysseus himself speaks up. He is sorry to hear about these suitors, and asks whether Telemachos is putting up with them voluntarily. Does he have no support from the people or from his brothers? (95–8; he pretends not to know that Telemachos is an only child.) If he himself were a young man in that position—either Odysseus’ son on his own or at his father’s side, if he were to turn up166—he would certainly cause the suitors grief, and if he were alone and outnumbered, he would still rather die defending his property than put up with their shameful behaviour.167 Telemachos negates Odysseus’ suggestions in 95–8, going on to explain that he has no brothers, the family having produced only one son in each generation. He repeats what he told Athena-Mentes in α 245–51 about the multitude of the suitors and his mother’s indecision. The mention of Penelope then prompts him to do what Athena told him to do in ο 40–2, send Eumaios off to inform her of his safe return from Pylos (130–4). Q needs the swineherd off the scene so

166 This parenthesis (100–1) was deleted by Payne Knight. It is very strained and illogically expressed, but perhaps more likely as a rendering of what was in Q’s mind than as an interpolation by someone else. 167 The catalogue of the suitors’ misdemeanours in 108–11 goes beyond what Odysseus should know about, but Q was not necessarily conscientious about that. Knight condemned all four lines, and Nitzsch the first two, which recur in υ 318 f.

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that Odysseus may reveal himself to Telemachos. Eumaios asks if he should also tell Laertes, but Telemachos says no, just as Eurykleia quashed Penelope’s proposal to send him word of Telemachos’ journey at the outset (δ 735–57). Now, however, we are to understand that he knows about it. Q is taking pains to keep his existence in view (de Jong 394), but there are to be no scenes involving him until ω. Eumaios is instructed to come straight back from Penelope; he can tell her to send Laertes a secret message (152–4, perhaps an afterthought, as 147 implies leaving the old man in ignorance). As soon as Eumaios is out of the way Athena initiates the recognition scene, appearing to Odysseus while remaining unseen by Telemachos. Q does not omit to describe the dogs’ reaction to the supernatural visitant. With a silent signal she calls Odysseus outside to talk. It seems that Telemachos does not see her because she keeps out of his line of sight (159 f.), though 161 may suggest that she has the power of selective invisibility. In any case Q does not want to go as far as the Iliad poet in Α 198 ff., where the goddess is able to come and converse with Achilles without those around him seeing or hearing anything. It is a brief encounter. Athena tells Odysseus that it is time to reveal himself to his son and plot the killing of the suitors. She is eager for the fray and will be with them. With a touch of her magic wand she restores his heroic form and departs. Odysseus goes back into the hut. Telemachos is frightened by his changed appearance and thinks he must be a god. Odysseus assures him that he is no god, he is his father. Telemachos is initially unbelieving, in line with Q’s usual artistic procedures. His scepticism has to be overcome, but there is no proof that Odysseus can offer, he can only persuade him by force of words, and this he succeeds in doing with his next speech (202–12). After a bout of unrestrained hugging and crying, Telemachos asks what ship has brought his father to Ithaca. Odysseus answers briefly and truthfully, referring to the Phaeacians but not saying anything of the sequence of events that brought him to their shore. He mentions also the treasure that he has hidden in the cave ‘by the will of the gods’ (232), so alluding to (while obfuscating) Athena’s help in concealing it. As he is not going to give Telemachos a longer account of his wanderings (and indeed it is not the place for it), he at once turns to the other topic on which they can make conversation: the business of

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planning the suitors’ downfall. Q has not thought it out at all well. He seems at this stage to be envisaging a straight battle, in which Odysseus and Telemachos may or may not be assisted by others. There is no hint of the bow contest, which will be mentioned first in τ 571 ff. (and as Penelope’s initiative, not Odysseus’). First Odysseus will go to the palace in the guise of a beggar and suffer maltreatment. At some point he and Telemachos will remove the arms that are in the hall and might be used by the suitors when it comes to the fight. And at some point there will be an inquisition into the loyalty of the servants. Odysseus first wants to know how many suitors there are. In 238 f. he envisages recruiting further allies if the number is large; this seems to foreshadow the eventual participation of Eumaios and the cowherd Philoitios in the fight. But after learning from Telemachos that the tally is very large—over a hundred—he opines that they need no other helpers than Athena and Zeus (260 f.). Critics have understandably been disconcerted by the inconsequentiality.168 He proceeds to frame a plan for the morrow. Telemachos is to go early to the palace, Odysseus will follow later with Eumaios, in his beggar guise. (Q allows him to assume that Athena will transfigure him again when necessary.) If the suitors mistreat him, drag him out by his feet, or throw things at him,169 Telemachos is to put up with it. He should reprimand them in moderate terms, though they will take no notice.170 At a certain moment Odysseus will give him a signal, and he is then to remove all the weapons from the hall and stow them away in the storeroom, leaving only spears, swords, and shields for the two of them so that they can overcome the suitors (281–98). The repetition of line 281 at 299 may indicate that the passage is an expansion. But it is not an alien interpolation: it was composed while the poem was still evolving, because it outlines a plan of action that will be superseded in τ 1–43, where Odysseus and Telemachos together remove the weapons at night after the suitors have gone, without leaving any for themselves. Q must have inserted the present passage before

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‘Wenn etwas albern ist, so ist es dieses Gerede!’ (Kammer 606). This is preparation for ρ 445 ff. Odysseus will not be dragged out by the feet, but the motif recurs at ρ 480, σ 10, 101, 224. 170 This last sentence about reprimanding them, 278–80, does not cohere too well with the preceding lines and may be a secondary addition by Q. Kammer 610 n. excises it. 169

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reaching that point; the imprecision of τ 4 as against π 284 f. implies a previous exposition (Kirchhoff 573 f.). His original idea was that Telemachos alone should remove the arms while the suitors are present, with Odysseus looking on. The implication is a battle of two armed against many unarmed men, to take place on the same day as the removal, that is, without Odysseus having spent a night in the palace. Q later realized that this was an unsatisfactory scheme, and he modified it in two ways: firstly, Odysseus was to stay overnight, and he and Telemachos would together remove the arms after the suitors had gone home; secondly, the suitors would be overcome with arrows, not spears, so there was no need to reserve weapons for Odysseus and Telemachos. The passage as it stands contains a mixture of the earlier and later scenarios. In 282–5 Telemachos is removing the arms under the suitors’ noses, whereas 286–94 (= τ 5–13), where he is advised what to say when the suitors miss the arms and ask where they have gone, presuppose the situation in τ, where the suitors do not see them being removed but may miss them the next day. (In fact they never enquire about them, so the prepared answer is not needed.) These lines (286– 94) must be a secondary importation from τ, whether by Q in a fit of delirium or by a rhapsode. Finally Odysseus insists that no one is to know he is back, not Laertes, not any of the servants, not even Penelope. He and Telemachos alone will ascertain the loyalties of the women, and perhaps of the men too. Telemachos is for confining the inquiry to the women for the time being. They are concentrated in the palace, whereas the men are scattered round the countryside and an inquiry into their loyalty would take up too much time. Hoekstra notes that it ‘would have been impossible from a compositional point of view’. In the event it is the women on whom the sword of judgment will fall (τ 497 f., χ 417 ff.). Perhaps the reason why the idea of interviewing the men is raised, only to be rejected, is that a man in Odysseus’ situation, seeking to expel those who have usurped his position, might have been expected to make his attempt with a larger following then he does.171

171 Wilamowitz 1927: 146, ‘Wenn zur Zeit der Dichter ein vertriebener Tyrann oder Parteiführer einen Putsch machte, folgten ihm seine λαοί. So hat es Odysseus nicht gemacht. Hier erfahren wir, weshalb, und die Begründung überzeugt.’

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Enough planning has been done, and Q now takes us across to the docking of the ship (322). The next section of narrative is distinctly hurried. Lines 324 f. (= Α 432, 485) give a hastily elliptical version of a formulaic landing sequence (cf. Kammer 611, de Jong 381). The gifts that Telemachos has brought back are taken to the house of Klytios, who is the father of Peiraios, the man appointed as Theoklymenos’ host (ο 540). A messenger goes to Penelope to tell her that Telemachos is back in Ithaca, which he does in a speech of one line in the hearing of the slave women. Eumaios, who has arrived simultaneously with the same message, speaks to Penelope more privately, no doubt telling her what is not to leak out to the suitors, that Telemachos is at the piggery. He at once departs, having no part to play in the following scene. The rowers’ messenger is forgotten. Penelope seemed to be just among women (336), but now the suitors are treated as having heard the news with her: a convenient elision. Perhaps we are to understand that they quickly learned it from the maids (Bergk 706, Kammer 614). They go outside to confer on their own. Antinoos, their usual first speaker, is away with the ambush party, so it is Eurymachos who opens this dialogue. He proposes sending another boat to tell the ambushers to come back. Q shortens things by having them return of their own accord; they are sighted as Eurymachos speaks. (The harbour turns out to be visible from where they sit.) The man who sees them is one Amphinomos, not previously mentioned and not fully introduced till 394–8.172 He will reappear a number of times from now on. They go down to help beach the ship, and then hold a conclave. Antinoos reports that Telemachos has somehow evaded them, and proposes that they kill him while he is still out of town; otherwise he will denounce them to the people and they will be sent packing. If they choose to spare him and leave him in possession of his estate, they had better stop infesting the palace and consuming his property, and instead go home and woo Penelope by sending gifts. Amphinomos counsels against killing a royal prince. At least they should consult

172 This is one thing that raises the suspicion that 351–8 is a patch that has replaced something else. Another is that 354 looks secondary to σ 35, where laughter is more appropriate to the situation. Cf. Bethe ii. 45. Wilamowitz 1927: 147 thinks that ‘Amphinomos’ in 351 was a rhapsode’s error for e.g. Eurynomos.

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the gods’ will first. The proposal, which is accepted, serves to close the subject, and it will not be raised again; no consultation of the gods takes place. They return to the palace. Penelope appears before them. Their ambivalent herald Medon has leaked their murder plan to her, as he did with the ambush in δ 696 ff. She addresses Antinoos, the ringleader, and rebukes him with passion. She recalls his family history, how his father had arrived as a fugitive and been given protection by Odysseus (424–30). Eurymachos makes an emollient but insincere speech, assuring her that he loves Telemachos and that no one is going to lay hands on him while he is there to stop it. He is a friend of the family; when he was a young child Odysseus often used to sit him on his knee and feed him (442–4). Like the story about Antinoos’ father, this is Q’s invention ad hoc, modelled on Phoenix’s reminiscence of caring for Achilles in Ι 488 f. (cf. 455). Penelope retires upstairs and, as in similar cases, falls asleep weeping for Odysseus. This concludes the scene. Eumaios arrives back at the piggery. It is now evening, and supper is being prepared. Athena turns Odysseus back into the old tramp whom Eumaios saw before. Telemachos asks about the only development likely to have taken place during the day, the suitors’ return from the ambush. Eumaios had not stayed after delivering his message, and so did not witness their arrival. But Q enables him to give a useful answer anyway. He reports that on his way back he saw from the hill a ship full of armed men putting in to the harbour, and he guessed it was the suitors but does not know for certain. Telemachos says nothing, but gives his father a secret smile. The day’s business is done. Supper is concluded and they go to bed. Q had at some point envisaged sending Telemachos back to the palace this evening (ο 505, contra ο 40, π 270). But that would have entailed his welcoming by Eurykleia and Penelope, as in ρ 31–60, if not other encounters. It was better left for the next day.

ρ It is time for Odysseus to move to the palace. Yet there are still five rhapsodies to go before he fires his first arrow at the suitors. We saw above that Q originally conceived the killing as taking place on the same day as Odysseus’ arrival. But as with the stay among the

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Phaeacians, he decided in the course of composition to extend the timetable by an extra day. The approach of the climax does not bring an acceleration of tempo. On the contrary, Q dwells on the gradual intensification of the situation. He takes 900 lines to reach the evening of the first day, but then he is far from ready to move on to the morning of the second: he devotes another 720 lines to that evening, mainly taken up by the meeting of Odysseus and Penelope, and after they finally go to their beds there are ninety further lines describing their troubled thoughts during the night. We can observe the process of expansion going on as the narrative progresses. In ρ especially it is possible to identify a series of secondary amplifications. The main agenda is as follows: Telemachos goes to the palace and reports to Penelope on his journey; the suitors enter for their morning feast; Odysseus and Eumaios walk to the palace; Eumaios goes in and joins Telemachos; Odysseus enters shortly afterwards and goes round the suitors begging; there is a confrontation with Antinoos, which culminates in the latter’s throwing a footstool at Odysseus. The expansions bring in the seer Theoklymenos, who was brought to Ithaca in ο, the ill-disposed goatherd Melanthios, and the dog Argos, and they perhaps include the scene in which the arrangement is made for Odysseus’ later meeting with Penelope. As soon as morning comes Telemachos acts on the plan made with his father (π 270 ff.) and, after instructing Eumaios to bring the visitor later to try his luck at begging, sets out briskly (27) for the palace. Q makes Telemachos go first so that he can talk with Penelope before the others come on the scene. Telemachos does not offer a reason why the others should not accompany him at once, but a scratch reason is put in Odysseus’ mouth (23–5): he does not want to expose himself to the frosty morning chill. At the palace Telemachos is greeted warmly, first by Eurykleia (who is found engaged on a suitable morning domestic task, 32) and the other servants, and then by his mother, who asks how his journey went. This must originally have been followed by his reply and report in 107–49. As it is, he rebuffs her and sends her off to wash and pray, only a minute after coming to see her, while he goes off to find Theoklymenos (whom he could have collected before coming to the palace) and brings him back before resuming the conversation. This is obviously an expansion made so as to have the seer on the scene in preparation for his intervention at 151–66 (Volkmann 91–3; Hennings 460–3).

ρ

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Telemachos tells Penelope he is going to the agora to fetch a visitor whom he brought from Pylos. She accepts her dismissal without a word, and he goes out; two dogs materialize to accompany him, because some lines from an earlier context are being adapted (62–4 ≈ β 10–13). He might have been expected to make for Peiraios’ house, where Theoklymenos is lodging, but instead Peiraios brings Theoklymenos out and they meet in the agora where the suitors and other townsmen are sitting about. There Telemachos finds three friends who question him before Peiraios appears. Q draws again on the assembly scene in β for the names of the friends, Mentor, Antiphos, and Halitherses (68 f. ≈ β 253 f.); but he has forgotten that Antiphos was not someone present there but a son of Aigyptios whom Polyphemos had eaten (cf. Kirchhoff 513). Peiraios suggests that Telemachos send some women to fetch the gifts that Menelaos gave him. It is on Q’s mind that they are at Peiraios’ house (π 327). But for narrative convenience they are best left there, just as Odysseus’ treasure has been left in the cave of the Nymphs, so Telemachos says he will leave them until the situation is clearer. He takes Theoklymenos to the palace, where they have baths and a meal is served.173 Penelope comes and sits spinning opposite them. The newcomer is not introduced to her. When they finish eating she oddly announces that she will go upstairs and rest, since Telemachos has not brought himself to tell her what if anything he has heard about Odysseus’ homecoming, as she had asked him to.174 This completes the expansion, and Telemachos now tells her about his journey. Q is here disgracefully lazy. Instead of making Telemachos relay in his own words the substance of what he had learned from Menelaos, he simply reproduces long excerpts from Menelaos’ speech in δ (124–41 = δ 333–50; 142–6 ≈ δ 556–60) ‘quite superficially and mechanically’, as Kirchhoff (513) says.175

173 Hennings 462 notes that line 86, where they lay their cloaks on couches and chairs, is taken from 179, where it is more aptly used of the crowd of suitors than of two individuals. 174 101–4 seem secondary to τ 594–7 (Kirchhoff 513). 175 The first excerpt begins with Menelaos’ response to what Telemachos told him in δ 318 ff. about the suitors’ behaviour; in ρ 124 f. we are left to supply the subject (Friedländer 481 f.). There is a further ineptitude in 148 f.: the lines are repeated from δ 585 f., but τα7τα τελευτήσας is now obscure, and it is made to look as if Telemachos sailed direct from Sparta (Kirchhoff 513).

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Now comes another expansion (151–66): the intervention of Theoklymenos, for the sake of which he was fetched in the previous expansion. He speaks up, affirming on his mantic authority that Odysseus is already back in Ithaca: such was the omen he saw on the ship and interpreted to Telemachos. This is presumably meant to recall the omen that appeared after they had landed, ο 525, and that he had interpreted in rather different terms. Penelope’s brief response in 163–5 replicates Telemachos’ response to the earlier prophecy in ο 536–8. Before the expansion it was said simply that his report, with its news that Odysseus was last heard of stranded on the nymph Calypso’s isle, ‘stirred her heart’ (150). The business for which Telemachos came alone to the palace is now completed, and Q turns his mind to bringing Odysseus.176 First the suitors must be installed in the palace for the day. They are entertaining themselves outside with discus and javelin (167–9 = δ 625–7) until the animals for their morning meal arrive and their herald Medon calls them in. They at once set about preparing their feast. Odysseus’ progress to the palace is treated much more amply than Telemachos’ was, with expansions on the way (de Jong 409, 416). He and Eumaios set out from the piggery (182). This is initiated by a wordy proposal from Eumaios, who repeats his earlier assurance that he would have preferred Odysseus to stay there and guard the place. Odysseus, clad in his rags, takes up a walking-stick and a battered old satchel, the perfect picture of a poor beggar. They come to a fountain and grove close to the town, described with circumstantial detail. The location is analogous to the one on Scheria where Odysseus waited while Nausikaa preceded him to the palace (ζ 291 ff.), and originally it served a similar purpose here as the spot where he waited while Eumaios went ahead: 211 was followed directly by 261. But the encounter with Melanthios has been inserted (cf. Hennings 465–9). It is not perfectly integrated, as Melanthios reaches the palace with his goats at 255, but the livestock for the morning meal, including goats, has already arrived in 170 f./180–2.177

176 We shall return to Telemachos at 328; Penelope reappears among her servants at 492; Theoklymenos simply fades out, to reappear suddenly next day in mediis rebus at υ 350. 177 Melanthios’ insulting words to Odysseus in 223–8 appear to be secondary to those of Eurymachos in σ 356 ff., and his prediction in 231 f. that Odysseus will have

ρ

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Melanthios goes on his way, leaving Odysseus and Eumaios standing within earshot of the palace. (The grove of Athena on Scheria was likewise within shouting distance of the city, ζ 294.) The sound of Phemios’ lyre reaches Odysseus’ ears. He says he can tell that this is the palace, and he gives a brief account of its architectural features and other sensory data coming to him from it. They discuss which of them should go in first, and decide that Eumaios should. Before they part there is another little incident (290–327). Odysseus’ aged dog Argos, lying in the dung, recognizes him and feebly lifts his head, flattens his ears, and wags his tail; he is too weak to get up and greet him in a way that would have alerted Eumaios to his identity (Danek 334). Odysseus remarks that it is a fine-looking animal. Eumaios replies with a summary of its life story, and continues to the palace. The dog expires, happy, having no further part to play in the narrative. Its death passes unnoticed.178 The episode may be another expansion: why does it come after Odysseus and Eumaios have prepared to separate?179 Telemachos is the first to see Eumaios, who takes his place in the hall and is given food. But he really has nothing to do at the palace. Telemachos uses him as a go-between in 342 ff., and so does Penelope in 507 ff. (expansion?), but his presence was hardly needed for that. Perhaps it goes back to the stage when Q expected this to be the critical day. Odysseus arrives (336) and sits on the threshold. Telemachos sends Eumaios to him with generous helpings of bread and meat and instructions to encourage him to go round the suitors begging. He first has to eat what Telemachos has sent him, and the time this takes is filled by what is left of Phemios’ song (358; theme unspecified).

footstools thrown at him is based on what will happen in 462 and σ 394. Cf. Wilamowitz 1884: 46. Line 260 is an awkward verse composed to lead us back from Melanthios, who is now among the suitors, to Odysseus and Eumaios. 178 Cf. Lord 177, ‘For some reason the return of the hero is associated with the death of one of the characters in his immediate circle upon recognition. (In the case of the Odyssey it is the dog Argus who dies when he recognizes his master; in the Yugoslav songs it is the mother!)’ 179 If the expansion begins already at 280, then 324 f. may be the original sequel. Otherwise we must suppose that the lines originally describing Eumaios’ entry to the palace have been altered.

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Then Athena (physically present, Vγχι παρισταμένη) prompts him to start begging. It will be a test of the individual suitors’ characters— as if Odysseus were going to distinguish between good and bad suitors at the final reckoning, though Q at once nips that idea in the bud by noting that none of them will be spared when the time comes. In fact Antinoos is the only one unwilling to give something. The next expansion runs from 367 to 410. It presupposes the earlier one in which Melanthios was introduced. After delivering his goats he rather anomalously took a seat among the suitors (255). Now they are wondering who the beggar is and where he comes from. Melanthios speaks up and says he saw him earlier accompanying the swineherd, but he does not know who he is. Antinoos rebukes Eumaios for bringing an unwanted vagrant; do they not have enough beggars spoiling their feasts?180 Eumaios defends himself, and Telemachos speaks up for his guest. Antinoos hints at his readiness to throw a footstool. After the expansion the narrative continues from the point reached in 366: Odysseus is going round begging, and most of the suitors are giving him scraps of food. At last he approaches Antinoos and appeals to him in an extended speech. He tells his tale, the one he told Eumaios, but in shorter form, omitting his Cretan origin and ending with a transportation to Cyprus, ‘from where I have come here’(!). The latter part of the tale (424–44) goes well beyond what the circumstances require: once again we see Q delighting in the opportunity for story-telling. He repeats 427–41 from ξ 258–72. The man named as king of Cyprus, Dmetor Iasides (443), may be invented ad hoc. It was the celebrated Kinyras who held that position at the beginning of the war (Λ 20). There follows a brief altercation between Odysseus and Antinoos, who now does throw his footstool. Odysseus stands firm as a rock (as he did when Melanthios kicked him in 234) and the stool bounces off him. He returns to his place with his satchel full of meat and denounces Antinoos in measured terms, with a curse. Some of the suitors too reprove their fellow, while Telemachos looks on in silent anger. So the episode ends.

180 There has been no sign of any beggars hitherto, but one will appear in the first scene of σ.

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Our attention turns to Penelope, who is in her chamber among her women. Q is planning for her to have a private meeting with the beggar stranger; we have heard previously that she regularly receives and questions arrivals from elsewhere in her eagerness for news (ξ 126–30). The initiative will have to be hers, not his. But she was absent from the hall when he appeared. How is she to become aware of his presence, and of the fact that he may have interesting information to impart? Q tells us that she heard the stool-throwing incident (492 f.), and that she judged the visitor to be a man much wandered (511), as if she had also heard the story he told Antinoos in 419–44. She curtly voices her own curse on Antinoos, addressing him as if she were in his presence (494). It is seconded by Eurynome, a new character who will reappear several times later. She seems to be a kind of doublet of Eurykleia, whose name no doubt partly suggested hers, and like her she is addressed as μαBα, ‘Nanna’ (499).181 Penelope tells her about the stranger and the stool-throwing as if she alone had been in a position to take cognizance of them. She next summons Eumaios and tells him to fetch the stranger. She wants to ask him if he has heard anything of Odysseus, as he seems to be someone much wandered. When Eumaios affirms that the man has indeed a beguiling tale to tell, she becomes all the more eager to talk to him herself. Eumaios conveys the invitation. But Odysseus says he is afraid of the suitors, and it will be better to wait till evening: then Penelope may question him about her husband’s return, seating him close to the fire.182 Eumaios takes the message back and approves its prudence, as does Penelope. We are thus prepared for her meeting with Odysseus in τ. Eumaios returns to the hall and tells Telemachos that he is going back to the piggery, which he does after taking some more food. Telemachos tells him to come back in the morning with animals for sacrifice. This is the best available motivation for getting him on the scene for tomorrow’s conflict, though normally he sends pigs daily

181 Some have thought she was the same person, cf. Hennings 477; but the two appear side by side in ψ 289–94. Cf. Jacob 477 f. They do in fact have differentiating features (cf. J. A. Scott, CQ 12 (1918), 75–9; Fenik 189–92): Eurykleia is more intimately associated with Odysseus and Telemachos, Eurynome with Penelope and the bedchamber. 182 This prepares for his recognition by Eurykleia; ρ 572 ≈ τ 506.

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and does not bring them himself. He will appear as instructed at υ 162 f. The suitors are now diverting themselves with dancing and song. Several scholars have argued that this last portion of ρ (492–606) is secondary, and that originally Penelope approached Odysseus in τ without prior arrangement.183 What Eumaios tells her about him in 522 f. appears secondary to τ 178 ff. But the prearrangement is assumed in τ 45 and 93–5. If ρ 492–606 is an expansion, as it may well be, it was presumably put in before τ was composed. A curious feature of the passage, noted by Schwartz 102, is that although it begins with Penelope explicitly located in her chamber (506, cf. 492 f.), in what follows she seems to be in the hall. Eumaios is directly accessible, he implies that the suitors are making too much noise for Penelope to hear the stranger’s talk (513), she refers to them as οzτοι (530), Telemachos is in view (545, if Dράαις is taken at face value), and Odysseus proposes that she ‘stay in the hall’ (569 f.). It looks as if Q has worked in a passage composed on the premise that she is in the hall. Or perhaps, as at υ 387–9, he thinks of her as sitting just outside, able to hear everything that is being said.

σ Eumaios’ departure in ρ 593–604 (with his instructions for the morrow) and the suitors’ dancing (605, cf. σ 304–6) look like signs that the day is drawing to its close. So perhaps in an earlier version this led straight to the evening scene at the end of σ. In ρ 599 and 606 we find strangely emphatic references to its being afternoon (δειελιήσας, δείελον aμαρ), a time of day seldom noticed in epic narrative. It may be that Q, having decided to accommodate further episodes before nightfall, put in these ‘afternoon’ references as an explicit adjustment of his earlier scheme in which the day was ending. One might well ask what the point of rhapsody σ is. In ρ, notwithstanding the various expansions, we had the impression of purposeful progress through an agenda. In σ the day’s action is prolonged with a 183

Volkmann 101 f.; Niese 158; Kammer 633 f.

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series of what seem relatively inconsequential episodes and dialogue. They contain nothing essential to the plot except for the suitors’ departure at the end of the day. But Q does make some capital out of them. They give him space to complement Odysseus’ exchange with Antinoos in ρ with exchanges with the two other principal suitors, Eurymachos and Amphinomos; and he shows us Penelope appearing among the suitors, as she did briefly in α 328–66 and π 409–48, but this time with Odysseus present and observing. Perhaps it was necessary for him to see that the suitors were close to succeeding (Von der Mühll 746). Yet the Penelope scene in particular, in its present form, does not seem to justify its presence and may represent the relic of a more momentous one, as I shall argue below. First comes the episode in which the local beggar Iros appears, quarrels with Odysseus, fights him, and is discomfited and expelled. It is an entertaining interlude that must have given Q’s audience the same kind of satisfaction as they derived from the discomfiting of Thersites (also by Odysseus) in the Iliad. It has no bearing on the main narrative, except that it leads the suitors to look upon Odysseus with greater respect and better humour. The dialogue with Amphinomos arises out of it. The new arrival is fully introduced (1–7). He is well known to the suitors, and this gives substance to Antinoos’ complaint of beggar nuisances at ρ 376 f., which stands in a secondary expansion made probably after the present scene was conceived. Iros is annoyed to find Odysseus occupying his pitch and at once threatens him with violence. He is a vulgar ruffian of the sort that Hipponax for poetic purposes affects to be; his boast that he will punch his enemy with both hands and knock all his teeth out (28 f.) are distinctly Hipponactean motifs.184 Antinoos hears their quarrel and brings the suitors out to watch them fight. He proposes, and the rest agree, to reward the victor with haggis and give him sole begging rights at their meals. Odysseus will benefit from this. But he affects to be daunted by the prospect of fighting a younger man,185 and extracts an oath from the suitors that

184

Hippon. 73. 4, 121. Cf. Von der Mühll 745, ‘der Dichter kennt schon fast das Milieu des Hipponax’. 185 He is impelled, he says, by (his/a) γαστ5ρ κακοεργός, a phrase that overtly refers to his own hungry belly but that could also, by a double entendre, apply to Antinoos (West 1966: 162).

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Iros will receive no assistance from them. Telemachos speaks up, asserting his status as host to guarantee Odysseus’ immunity. Odysseus strips down for action (66 f.), and Athena, standing close as before when he started begging, enhances his physique. The suitors are impressed, and Iros alarmed, all the more so when Antinoos taunts him and threatens to deport him, if he loses, to the brutal tyrant Echetos, who will mutilate him cruelly.186 The two combatants square up to each other. Odysseus ponders whether to kill the man outright with a single blow or just knock him down. He decides for the latter, not out of human compassion but for fear of giving himself away to the suitors. The business is swiftly concluded. Iros is felled, and Odysseus drags him out by a leg, props him up against the courtyard wall, leaves him with a rough warning, and returns to his place on the threshold. The suitors, who have been laughing delightedly, acclaim him as a benefactor and pray that the gods may fulfil his dearest wish. He rejoices at this happy omen. He gets the promised haggis from Antinoos, while Amphinomos brings him a couple of bread rolls as a bonus, and a swig from his golden cup, with his good wishes. Odysseus responds with a long, friendly, sententious speech; some of his gnomic wisdom has parallels in seventh-century elegy and iambus.187 He says he thinks that Penelope’s husband is not far off, and he hopes that Amphinomos may be somewhere else when the showdown comes, as it is not likely to pass without bloodshed. Amphinomos is disturbed by this, and goes back to his place without replying. Yet, Q advises us, he was not to escape death from Telemachos’ spear. Now begins the second major episode of the rhapsody: Penelope’s appearance among the company (158–303). It is Athena who prompts her to it. The goddess’s motive is ‘that she should open up the suitors’ hearts, and make her husband and son value her more highly’. The meaning may be that they will value her more highly when they see how much the suitors want her, or when they see her skill at extracting treasure from them, as she will do in 274 ff. However, the desire to excite them cannot be attributed to the modest lady, and she cannot go 186 Echetos is an obscure figure, vaguely located on ‘the mainland’. It is doubtful whether the tales told about him in later sources had any currency in Q’s time. He reappears at ϕ 308. 187 With 132 cf. Semon. 1. 6–10, Solon 13. 33 ff.; with 136 f., Archil. 131.

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and stand there in silence; she needs something to say. In α 328 ff. she went down to tell Phemios to change his song, and in π 409 ff. to remonstrate with the suitors for plotting against Telemachos’ life. Here she explains to Eurynome that she has some advice for Telemachos. It is a weak piece of motivation, and Q does not succeed in finding anything important for her to say to him, or even in harmonizing what she tells Eurynome she wants to say (167 f.) with what she does say (215–25). The dialogue with Telemachos is left looking pointless. But without it her going downstairs would have appeared unaccountable. In an earlier version she may at this juncture have announced her readiness to choose a new husband.188 Several arguments may be adduced in favour of this: 1. Eurynome’s approving words in 171 and 175 f., ‘Go then, tell your son, do not hide it from him . . . For now he is old enough, the son whom you prayed to see growing a beard’, suggest a message of greater import than what Penelope has mentioned. In 269 f. it will be disclosed that the growth of Telemachos’ beard was to be the cue for Penelope to remarry. 2. In 257–73 she tells Eurymachos (and the suitors) of Odysseus’ instructions about remarrying and concedes that the time has come. She only stops short of naming the day and setting the selection procedure. 3. It would make good sense for her now (towards evening) to announce that she will choose a new husband tomorrow. 4. Her solicitation of gifts in 274 ff. would make better sense if they were to be brought the next day; this would eliminate the ridiculous passage (291–303) in which they are hastily sent for and brought from the suitors’ homes while she waits. 5. Such an announcement by Penelope would have provided a more substantial reason for Q to prolong the day from the end of ρ than the Iros episode or anything else in σ. The scene is by no means a smooth and unified piece of composition. At the outset, when Athena first puts the idea into Penelope’s head, she ‘laughs pointlessly’ (163)—evidently her reaction to what

188

Cf. Seeck 37–52; Reichert ap. Hennings 488.

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she feels as an irrational impulse. She speaks to Eurynome of ‘appearing to the suitors’, but then gives as her more specific reason for going down her desire to advise Telemachos not to consort with the suitors, whose friendly words are insincere. This is a vacuous message, and there is an intrinsic disharmony between the private communication for her son and the idea of ‘appearing to the suitors’. Eurynome’s answering remark about a disclosure which Telemachos is now old enough to receive is an illogical response to what Penelope has proposed. After the proposal of the venture, its execution is curiously delayed. Eurynome advises that Penelope should first wash and make herself up, not go down looking tear-stained. Penelope rejects the advice and tells Eurynome to go and fetch two specified maids to attend her excursion. While this is happening, Athena sends her to sleep for a few minutes, enhancing her beauty in the process. Q’s intention is that she should look her best for the suitors without condescending to do anything about it on her own account. All of this appears to be secondary amplification, as the lines in which Eurynome advises washing and making up (172–4) break the logical connection between 171 and 175 f. (quoted above). If one removes them and 177–205 and makes a small adjustment in 206, the narrative proceeds much more smoothly and at a more natural tempo. Penelope goes down and poses demurely before the suitors, who are overcome with desire. She proceeds to converse with Telemachos just as if there were no one else there (214–42; note especially his cursing of the suitors in 236 ff.). She admonishes him, but not in the terms that she proposed in 167. Q has decided to make her rebuke him for something specific. She stresses his maturity of age, but reproves his having allowed the xeinos to be mishandled. ‘What if a xeinos sitting in our house were to be dragged around like that? You would be disgraced.’ There is a serious unclarity in this distinction between a visitor who has been mishandled and one who might be on another occasion. Who is she referring to? ‘The xeinos’ ought to mean Odysseus, as always elsewhere; he has had a stool thrown at him, and Penelope was shocked by that at the time (ρ 492–504). But it is Iros, not Odysseus, who has suffered ‘dragging around’, and when Telemachos answers in 227–42 he refers only to the fight with Iros. He says it was not the suitors who brought it about, and Odysseus just turned out to be the stronger of the two. He presupposes that Penelope knows about the Iros fight, and it need not worry us that she does. So

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it appears after all to be Iros whose mistreatment she is indignant about.189 It is tempting to emend τ.ν ξεBνον in 222 to τ.ν πτωχόν, supposing it to have been miswritten in anticipation of ξεBνος in the next line. On the other hand it remains the case that it is Odysseus’ mishandling, not Iros’, that we should expect Penelope to be concerned about. It looks rather as if Q started with a version, composed perhaps before the Iros episode was added, in which Penelope was to protest about Odysseus’ treatment, and he then tried to adapt it to the more recent bother with Iros but failed to harmonize 221 f. with 223 ff. After this exchange between Penelope and Telemachos, Eurymachos addresses her, chosen to speak first, perhaps, as being less obnoxious than Antinoos. He compliments her fulsomely on her beauty and prudence. This connects so well with the lines describing the suitors’ reaction to her epiphany (212 f.) that the intervening dialogue with Telemachos really does look like an insertion.190 In what follows (244–303) Penelope deals with the suitors, and Telemachos is ignored as completely as they were when she was talking to him. She relates the instructions that Odysseus gave her before leaving for Troy in case he should fail to return. He had told her that once she saw Telemachos growing a beard, meaning that he was old enough to take over the house, she should leave it to him and marry whoever she wished. This, she says, is now coming to pass. There is a hateful wedding night in prospect. This looks like the preamble to an announcement of the bow test, or at any rate of Penelope’s decision to choose a husband the next day; and we have seen that Q may originally have planned this as the purpose of the episode. But the speech takes a different turn (274): ‘You suitors, however, are not following the traditional custom. You should be providing your own animals for our dinners, and fine gifts.’ Before giving us the suitors’ reaction to this, Q briefly gives us Odysseus’. He is confident that Penelope is simply soliciting treasure and is not about to give herself away to a new husband. This is sometimes seen as implying a version of the story in which he had

189

Cf. Wilamowitz 1927: 21, 23, 25. Wilamowitz 1884: 30; Merkelbach 93; Schadewaldt 1970: 77 f. Besslich 143, however, objects that without 214–43 one would expect a pronoun instead of Πηνελόπειαν in 244. 190

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previously disclosed himself to her and plotted with her. However, it does not entail such a version, as after what Athena (ν 379–81) and Eumaios have told him, Odysseus might be represented as having complete trust in his wife’s fidelity.191 Antinoos responds that any suitors who wish may bring her gifts, but they will not stop coming to the palace until she marries. The suitors at once send their attendants to fetch gifts, several of which are described (292–300). The process is completed in no time, and with nothing further being said Penelope goes back upstairs, her maids carrying the loot. This absurdity may, as suggested above, be the replacement for a version in which the gifts were to be produced the next day. The next significant action will take place after dark when the suitors have left. Q now starts working towards this. He might just have said ‘Penelope returned to her chamber. The sun set and all the streets grew dark.’ He is more sophisticated than that. It is an indoor scenario, so he speaks of evening rather than sunset, and he allows a little more time for its approach. As feasting is no longer in progress, the suitors fall back on their other default activity, dancing and song, till evening comes. The braziers are set up to light the hall. The suitors will go home before long. How can it be made plausible that the beggar stays behind? Firstly he volunteers to look after the braziers, telling the women they can withdraw. In this way he assumes the temporary status of one of the household staff.192 Q may also be thinking ahead to the removal of the arms, when the women need to be kept away, though in τ 15 ff. that is dealt with by means of an instruction to Eurykleia. The women exchange glances and giggle—a nice touch of realism. One of them is granted individuality: Melantho, a sister of the goatherd Melanthios, and as uncivil as he is; mistress of Eurymachos.193 She

191 Hennings 490, ‘auch ohne daß Penelope und Odysseus einen Racheplan abgekartet hatten, konnte Odysseus aus den Angaben des Eumäus es wissen, wie die wahre Gesinnung seiner Gattin war’; L. Allione in Latacz 275; Fenik 120, ‘The situation demands that he know his wife’s real intentions. . . . He is therefore simply made to know by the poet.’ 192 Cf. Wilamowitz 1884: 35. 193 Named as her lover perhaps because Q has him in mind as the focal figure of the following scene, 349 ff. We have heard that Melanthios is especially friendly with him (ρ 257).

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accuses Odysseus of arrogance and not knowing his place, and warns him that he will suffer if someone stronger than Iros comes along. He answers fiercely and frightens the women into doing what he has told them.194 His bald pate gleams bright in the torchlight—a wonderful stroke of imagination on Q’s part—and Eurymachos makes a joke about it. He proceeds to make him an offer of work that he expects him to be too idle to accept. Odysseus replies robustly, and goes on to anger Eurymachos, who throws a footstool at him as Antinoos had done earlier. This time Odysseus ducks and it hits a wine-waiter, knocking him down, making him drop his jug, and causing a commotion. Other suitors blame the stranger and complain that quarrels about beggars are spoiling their feasting. This is an echo of the scene in the Iliad (Α 573 ff.) where Hephaestus reproves the gods for letting their feasting be spoiled by quarrels about mortals. There too the restoration of good cheer is followed shortly by departure to various homes and beds. In the present scene Telemachos rebukes the suitors for their rowdy behaviour and suggests that they have dined well and may think about going home. Being a gentleman, he adds ‘when you feel like it; I am not chasing anyone away’ (409). As once before, they are taken aback by his boldness. The decent Amphinomos says that they cannot quarrel with the justice of his words. ‘Let us make a last libation and go home; as for the stranger, let us leave him here for Telemachos to deal with, as it is his house he has come to.’ The proposal is accepted. Amphinomos’ own servant does the honours, and they depart to their several homes.

τ Left to themselves, Odysseus and Telemachos set about removing the weapons from the hall. Odysseus already planned this in π 281–98, but there it was envisaged as taking place during the day with the 194

Von der Mühll 747 is probably right in seeing this whole section, 311–42, as secondary (or rather 311–45, as otherwise the pronoun in 343 lacks reference). In 307–10 the braziers are lit by unspecified menials; if 311 had not been appended, we should take them to be the male attendants who otherwise look after the suitors’ needs.

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suitors still present. Now that the timetable has been extended by a day, it can be done more plausibly in their absence. Odysseus proposes it anew, with a brevity of expression in 4 f. that presupposes the fuller version in π; he refers to ‘the weapons’ without further specification, and speaks vaguely of moving them ‘inside’. He does not, as in π, say anything of reserving weapons for their own use: Q is now thinking in terms of killing with arrows, though there has not yet been any mention of the bow. Telemachos calls Eurykleia and tells her to keep the maids shut in. Odysseus has already sent them to their quarters in σ 313 ff.; now it is a matter of making sure they stay there. The operation is to be secret, though really there is no reason why the maids should not have been given the same explanation that Telemachos gives Eurykleia, the one which Odysseus has provided for him to use with the suitors: protection of the weapons from the smoke. Eurykleia takes this as a sign that Telemachos is at last starting to take up his responsibilities for looking after his property. She enquires who is going to light the way for them in the unlit inner rooms if the maids are shut away. Telemachos says that the stranger will perform this service; he must expect to lend his host a helping hand. In the event both men set to work together and Athena (invisible) holds a lamp for them. Telemachos is surprised at the unexplained illumination (but what did he expect to happen if neither of them carried a light?), and suspects that some deity is present. Odysseus, who no doubt recognizes that it is Athena, confirms that divinity is at work but tells Telemachos to ask no questions. Once the job is done he sends him to bed, saying that he himself has still to have words with the maids (this in anticipation of the scene in 60–88) and with Penelope (as arranged in ρ 560 ff.). Telemachos goes to his bed. Odysseus remains, meditating the suitors’ death. Penelope comes down and seats herself in a queenly chair by the fire. (The firelight will be significant for Eurykleia’s recognition of Odysseus later on.) The servant women, who have been shut away for a while,195 now pass through the hall, clearing up after the suitors and stoking the braziers. Once again, as in σ 321 ff.,

195 So Q would have done better to avoid mentioning that Telemachos went to bed ‘by the light of torches’ (48) and that ‘they set a chair’ for Penelope (55). But he has kept the expressions as vague as possible.

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Melantho scolds Odysseus and tells him to clear out. In his reply he gives another version of his privileged background, the first part of what he told Antinoos (75–80 = ρ 419–24). He advises her to be aware that her fortunes, like his, may collapse; her mistress may grow angry with her, or Odysseus may yet return, or if he does not, there is Telemachos now old enough to deal with errant women. Here Penelope intervenes and tells Melantho off: ‘You knew I intended to talk with the stranger, you heard it from my own mouth’.—This episode, 60–95, may be an expansion (with an adjustment in 96). It interrupts the incipient scene between Penelope and Odysseus, and there is confusion about the movements of the women. When we last heard of them they were being kept confined by Eurykleia. Now that the arms have been put away, this is forgotten. There are already attendants present setting Penelope’s chair in place at 55. Then in 60 the women come ‘out of the hall’, and the following lines about their clearing up apparently describe what they have been doing up to this moment. After the exchange with Melantho they are out of the way until Penelope calls upon them in 317. The rest of the rhapsody is taken up by Odysseus’ interview with Penelope, with a hiatus for the washing of his feet by Eurykleia. What is the purpose of this lengthy meeting? Its postponement to this late hour implies that privacy was important. It has often been argued that in an earlier version this was when Odysseus’ recognition by his wife was achieved.196 As it is, the episode is made up of (1) the stranger’s tales of his wanderings, with which he convinces Penelope that he met Odysseus at the outset of the war, but fails to persuade her that he has knowledge of his impending return from Thesprotia;197 (2) a near recognition, confined to Eurykleia and excluding Penelope; (3) Penelope recounting a dream which clearly points to Odysseus’ return and slaughter of the suitors, and announcing, regardless of that, that the next morning she is going to set the bow test and marry the winner. If we are not to find this impossibly irrational, we must

196 See especially Wilamowitz 1884: 55–8. But id. 1927: 47 observed that ‘the tale of the returning husband requires him to bring deliverance to his wife as an unknown’. 197 Fenik 155 points out that the trajectory of this scene—Penelope, unaware that she is with Odysseus, speaks lovingly of him and unknowingly demonstrates her fidelity to him, and is full of sorrow for him; then the stranger assures her that Odysseus will soon return, but she remains unpersuaded and pessimistic—repeats that of the dialogue with Eumaios in ξ.

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accept that she is psychologically unable to believe in Odysseus’ return, however powerful the indications of it may be. In terms of poetics, we may say that continual predictions and portents of the return are appropriate, whereas the plot demands that Penelope press ahead with preparations for remarriage. We have seen reason to suspect that in an earlier version she announced her newly fixed intention to the suitors when she appeared to them in σ. Why has the announcement been postponed in favour of her confiding it to the stranger? If she had made it during the day there would have been little zest left in the dialogue with Odysseus. His attempts to arouse her hopes would have come too late to have any dramatic point; these and her dream have to be presented while she still seems to be in two minds, even if she announces her resolve immediately afterwards. We may add that the evening is by epic convention the appropriate time to formulate a plan for the next morning’s action, and that it is very helpful for Odysseus to know what she intends to do; he sees at once that it is ideal for his own purpose, and he can encourage her to go ahead. He is given a chair (96–102) and the dialogue begins. Penelope asks him the standard question, who he is and where he comes from. In reply he praises her effusively198 but pleads to be asked any other question but that, to save him from further woe. She expounds her own situation, the absence of her husband, the importunate suitors, her attempt to deceive them with her weaving stratagem, and its detection that leaves her with no escape from a remarriage. Much of the speech is made up from repetition of earlier passages: 124–9 ~ σ 251–6 (but σ 254–6 is probably a concordance interpolation); 130–3 = π 122–5; 139–56 ~ β 94–110. In 158–61 she claims to be under pressure from her parents and Telemachos, but this is Q inventing ad hoc. She ends by reiterating her request to know the stranger’s identity. He presents another cover story. As in his account to Eumaios in ξ 199 ff., he is a Cretan, but this time he is a son of Deukalion, grandson of Minos, and younger brother of Idomeneus (whose fellow

198

The lines about the just king (109–14) seems to be one of those digressive, erratic-block passages, like 172–9 on Crete and the bird myths in 518–23 and υ 66–78, that Q puts in because they have recently taken his interest rather than because of any real relevance to the context. Its content is similar to that of Hes. Op. 225–37; see West 1997: 136 f., 321 f.; 2007: 422–4.

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commander he was in ξ 237). For the first time in the series of cover stories he gives himself a name, Aithon. He was too young to go to Troy with Idomeneus, but ten days or so after Idomeneus had gone, Odysseus had turned up, having been blown off course, and had come to the house because he was a friend of Idomeneus’. Aithon had entertained him and his men for another twelve days. Penelope weeps, while Odysseus, himself moved, waits pokerfaced. She asks him for evidence to confirm his story. What had Odysseus been wearing? He is able to provide a detailed answer, and he adds further circumstantial evidence, a description of the herald Eurybates (who figures in the Iliad, Β 184). Penelope is persuaded that the stranger did indeed meet her husband twenty years ago, and she welcomes him as a friend of the house. But she is not comforted: she is sure that Odysseus will never return. ‘Aithon’ assures her that there is hope. He has reason to believe that Odysseus is not far off. He has lost his ship and crew, as they had angered the Sun-god by killing his cows, but he reached the Phaeacians,199 who gave him much treasure, and he is now in Thesprotia. He will be back very soon. The story resembles the one he told Eumaios, and many of the verses are re-used, though not in the same sequence: 287–99 ~ ξ 316, 331–5, 323, 325–30; 303–7 = ξ 158–62. But he omits to explain how he himself came to be in Thesprotia or how he reached Ithaca.200 Penelope is unconvinced. Odysseus will not be coming home. She now calls on her women to wash the visitor—this prepares for the recognition by Eurykleia—and make up a warm and comfortable bed for him. In the morning they are to spruce him up fit to eat in the hall with Telemachos. We must understand this to include the provision of better clothes. She speaks as if the interview is over, and it would have been possible to let her leave at this point and have the recognition by Eurykleia go ahead in her absence. But she stays in place throughout the foot-washing (inconvenient as this is) for the sake of the further dialogue in 508 ff. Why, though, does Q embed the foot-washing

199

The years with Calypso are elided. This is not to spare Penelope’s feelings, as she hears about Calypso in ρ 142–4 and ψ 333–7. We noted a comparable elision in Hermes’ summary of Odysseus’ wanderings in ε 108–11. 200 Lines 291 f. contain only a part of the answer, and in any case are probably a concordance interpolation from ξ 334 f., as they are omitted by some manuscripts.

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scene in the dialogue wth Penelope instead of putting it afterwards? He can never have meant it as the means of bringing Odysseus’ identity to Penelope’s attention. Presumably he wants to create an effect by making it so nearly happen (cf. Bergk 712). Odysseus disdains the luxury bedding, as he has long become used to sleeping rough. Nor will he submit to having his feet washed by supercilious servants. He will only have it if there is some old woman as familiar with hardship as he is. This is of course a contrivance to bring about the recognition by Eurykleia. But it is Q’s contrivance, not Odysseus’, as it is very evident that he does not want to be recognized. It was necessary because Eurykleia would not naturally have been set to such a menial task. Penelope is impressed by the visitor’s excellent sense and sensibility and calls upon Eurykleia. She remarks that Odysseus’ hands and feet probably look like this by now. Eurykleia apostrophizes the absent (as she supposes) Odysseus. She imagines him being made fun of by maids in foreign palaces, just as this stranger has been here. (This is not logical except on the premise that Odysseus would naturally disguise himself as a tramp when visiting other heroes.) She ends by commenting on his likeness to Odysseus in build, feet, and voice. He agrees that others have remarked on the resemblance. She brings and fills the basin (386–8). He suddenly realizes the danger that she will see and recognize the scar on his thigh, and he turns away from the firelight. But as soon as she starts to wash him she spots it. With an effect similar to that of his transitions at δ 847, ν 185–7, and ο 300, Q abruptly leaves us at this point of suspense to tell at length the tale of how Odysseus got the scar; as usual, he welcomes the opportunity to spin a new story. It is the story of Autolykos’ hunting expedition—not a traditional epic theme; it only existed to account for Odysseus’ scar (Danek 383)—and there is a further story within the story, that of Odysseus’ birth and naming, in which Eurykleia has a place. A much shorter tale would have served the purpose, for example without 399–428, 440–3, 459–66. On seeing the scar Eurykleia reacts with astonished joy, dropping Odysseus’ leg; the basin clangs, water is spilt, and she exclaims ‘you are Odysseus!’ He stifles her noise and urges on her the need for secrecy. Otherwise he will not spare her when he slaughters the unfaithful domestics (as he will do in χ 417 ff.). She assures him that she will not betray him, and moreover that if he succeeds in killing

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the suitors she will tell him just which of the women fail to respect him and which are guiltless. He dismisses this as something she need not think about.201 She goes off to fetch more water and completes the foot-washing. Penelope has failed to notice any of this, being distracted by Athena. In rationalizing terms we might imagine her dozing off for a few moments. The other women have faded out of view and remain so until 601. With the washing finished, Penelope turns her attention back to Odysseus. She observes that the time for sleep is approaching, for those able to sleep, but she has one more small question for him. At nights she lies debating whether to stay as she is or remarry. Telemachos, now that he is grown up, prays for her to leave so that the suitors stop eating up their wealth. (Again this is formulated for the context, not a true statement of Telemachos’ attitude.) Now, she has had a dream that she would like him to interpret. An eagle came and killed her twenty geese, and she was upset, but then it came back and sat on the overhang of the roof and announced that it was Odysseus, returned and about to kill all the suitors.202 What does the stranger make of that? He answers that Odysseus himself, in the dream, has told her what it portends. It admits of no other interpretation. She replies that not all dreams are truthful. It would be nice if this one were, but she does not believe it. She goes on to declare that she has made her decision. Next morning she is going to set the test that will consist of stringing Odysseus’ bow and shooting through the twelve axes that he used to shoot through. She will marry whoever performs best at it, and leave Odysseus’ house. This announcement may perplex us, as it does not follow logically from anything that has preceded; indeed it flies in the face of what the dream indicated. But it is the next, necessary step in Q’s programme, and he goes ruthlessly forward to it.

201 In π 316 f. Telemachos advised him to discriminate between the guilty and innocent women. In χ 417 ff. he does ask Eurykleia to tell him which are which. Cf. Erbse 20 f., who argues that in the present passage Odysseus is only concerned to terminate the unwanted dialogue. 202 Compare the omen at Sparta that Helen interpreted in ο 143–81. Von der Mühll 750 thinks that the twenty geese represent the twenty years of Odysseus’ absence. Jacob 497 f. more plausibly suggests that it implies a version of the story in which twenty was the number of the suitors; cf. Hennings 513 n. 1.

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‘Aithon’ encourages her to go ahead, assuring her that Odysseus will be back before the suitors can accomplish the tasks. She says she could listen to his sweet talk all night, but people need to sleep. She will go to her bed, and he can have a bed made up (as she proposed earlier) or sleep on the floor, as he prefers. She then goes upstairs and cries herself to sleep as usual with Athena’s assistance. Her exit is accompanied not just by the two maids of α 331 and σ 207 but by ‘the other maids’, evidently a residue from the squadron of maids mentioned earlier.

υ Odysseus persists with his self-imposed austerity and beds down in the porch on a cowhide, under fleeces. But the palace’s hospitality does not go for nothing: the kindly Eurynome puts a woven bedspread over him after he has snuggled down.203 Q might have gone straight on to dawn (91). Instead, to convey the tension of this last night before the suitors’ slaughter, he gives us first Odysseus lying awake in a turmoil,204 as he watches the women going out to sleep with the suitors,205 and has a visit from Athena; and then, when he gets to sleep, Penelope wakes and does more weeping, with a prayer to Artemis that turns into a soliloquy of lament. As Odysseus tosses and turns, pondering how he can attack the suitors, being one against many (28–30), he seems not yet to have any particular plan of action or to be envisaging assistance from Telemachos or others. Athena comes to him as she came to the sleepless Telemachos at the beginning of ο. She asks why he cannot sleep. He is in his own house, and his wife and his fine son are there. He tells her his worries: not only how he is going to overcome the suitors but

203 Why she rather than Eurykleia? It looks like simply metrical convenience. In 143 Eurykleia tells Telemachos that ‘we’ did it. 204 Described with two bizarre similes in quick succession, 14–16 and 25–7. The first, the heart barking as a bitch barks at a stranger, reflects Q’s general interest in canine behaviour, the second recalls the haggis of σ 44 f./118 f. 205 We have heard that Melantho slept with Eurymachos. Now it appears that there is a whole group of the women behaving similarly. Odysseus somehow knows where they are going.

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how, if he does, he can escape their families’ vengeance. This (41–3) is the first anticipation of that theme, looking forward to ω, and it may be a secondary addition. Athena assures him that with her help he can overcome any multitude. There is no point in worrying all night. She puts him to sleep and returns to Olympus, not staying to attend to Penelope, who has been asleep but now wakes up again. After crying her fill she prays for immediate death, or to be carried away by a stormwind to the waters of Ocean (that is, as far away as possible from the present scene), just as the daughters of Pandareos were carried away. Into the simile Q inserts a twelve-line outline of the myth, which is not familiar to us and too summarily presented here to be fully intelligible.206 Whatever story underlies it, Q seems to have shaped it into an analogy for Penelope’s situation: a woman blessed with all good qualities, left bereaved at home, and on the brink of marriage, but (she prays) suddenly carried off to perdition instead. It is not a successful piece of composition. Penelope ends her lament by recalling that before waking again she had a dream of joyous reunion with Odysseus (88–90). We understand it as a good, prophetic dream, but she classes it as a bad one because vain. Dawn comes, but we do not move on immediately from the realm of visions and omens to that of action. Odysseus, hearing Penelope’s crying from below, has an impression that she already recognizes him and is standing over him. He prays to Zeus, requesting both an omen from him and a propitious utterance from someone in the house. It seems rather much to ask for two omens, but both are vouchsafed: Zeus thunders, and a miller-woman, who has been slaving away all night to fulfil her quota for the suitors’ needs, is overheard praying that this day’s dinner may be their last. The twelve miller-women are a fresh invention. The new morning’s activities begin with a further touch of domestic colour as other women relight the hearth fire (122 f.).207 Telemachos rises and dresses. His first thought is for Odysseus’ comfort overnight, as Penelope in her distraught state cannot be relied on to treat

206

A different myth about a daughter of Pandareos has been used in another simile 150 lines previously, τ 518–20, only there we evidently have a confusion between Pandareos and Pandion. 207 The return of the women who went out to sleep with suitors is passed over; it could hardly have been fitted in without inconvenience.

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visitors as they deserve. Eurykleia reassures him on the matter. He goes out towards the agora. His previous excursion in that direction, at ρ 52 ff., was to fetch Theoklymenos, and it must have been in Q’s mind that he needed to fetch him again in preparation for today’s mantic performance at 350 ff., though he omits to deal with this (Kammer 657). Telemachos is back in the palace at 257, and Theoklymenos is there at 350 without explanation. Eurykleia meanwhile is organizing the household in readiness for the suitors’ return: more domestic colour (147–62). The company will be arriving soon, as it is a public feast-day (156). It is indeed going to be a special day, though not in the way that people are expecting.208 The festival is for Apollo, and centred on his grove, as will appear in 276–8. It is mentioned again at ϕ 258, and scholars have connected it with the precise calendar date for Odysseus’ predicted return, ‘at the end of one month and the beginning of the next’ (ξ 162, τ 307), as the New Moon was sacred to Apollo. But the festival remains marginal to the story. Did it have a greater significance in an earlier version? Uvo Hölscher was probably right in hypothesizing that it had been the day for the confirmation of Telemachos’ adulthood.209 There have been repeated allusions to his maturity since his return from Sparta, cf. σ 175, 217, τ 88, 160 f., υ 309 f. The description of the various preparations leads easily to the arrival of Eumaios, bringing pigs for sacrifice as he was instructed at ρ 600. He is the first in a series of three herdsmen arriving with their respective animals for the feasting. The second is the nasty Melanthios; the third is a new character, the cowherd Philoitios, who has not seen the stranger before. There is an appropriate passage of dialogue with each one. The longest is with Philoitios, who gets no introduction, though we hear a little of his background at 209 f. He asks Eumaios

208 Cf. Hennings 523, ‘Weil hier der letzte Tag der Freierwirtschaft beschrieben wird, ist es dem Dichter dieses Liedes wohl zweckmäßig erschienen, die Eurykleia recht umständlich alle einzelnen Zurüstungen, welche er erfordete, anordnen zu lassen’; de Jong 491, ‘These are the most detailed preparations [for a festive meal] in the Odyssey; the amplification is actorially motivated by the circumstance that this is a festive day for Apollo . . . and narratorially motivated by the narrator’s desire to increase tension through retardation, here in the form of a slow down of the rhythm: this is to be the Suitors’ last supper, and it will end with their death.’ 209 Hölscher 1988: 251–8; cf. Danek 353 f., 362 f. Kirchhoff 525 thought that in one version the bow contest took place in the grove; cf. Wilamowitz 1927: 92.

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who the stranger is; he sees something regal in him. Without waiting for an answer, and getting no explanation from anyone, he turns to Odysseus and greets him warmly. He quickly goes on to show his devotion to his absent master and indignation at the suitors. Odysseus compliments him on his evident good qualities and swears that his master will return while he is still there, and that he will see the suitors slain with his own eyes. Philoitios gives an assurance of the strength he would deploy on Odysseus’ behalf if that were to happen. This is the first explicit indication that Odysseus may receive physical assistance in the fight.210 We turn to the suitors. They are still outside: doing what? Q has them once again plotting Telemachos’ death. But there will be no further opportunity for them to launch an attempt against him, so the idea must be aborted almost as soon as it is mooted. The abortion is clumsy and perfunctory: an unfavourable bird omen is seen, and Amphinomos immediately puts it to them that their plan will not succeed and they may as well go in to dinner. The last time they plotted against Telemachos it was Amphinomos who persuaded them not to go ahead without consulting the gods (π 394 ff.). The feasting gets under way. The three herdsmen take the place of the suitors’ usual attendants (253–5). Was it that these had to be excluded on account of the coming battle (Hennings 528), or that the herdsmen had to be present (Finsler ii. 410)? The latter consideration is the more likely to have been on Q’s mind, but both might have been. In what I take to be an expansion (256–75) Telemachos (whose return to the palace has not been registered) sets Odysseus in his place. Today he is still near the threshold—this will be important when the shooting starts, cf. χ 2—but he has his own lowly chair and table and is served with meat and wine, admitted as one of the company (‘drinking wine among the men’, 262). Telemachos promises him security from insult and injury and warns the suitors not to commit any. They are taken aback at his boldness (268 f. = α 381 f., σ 410 f.), but Antinoos, albeit with a bad grace, proposes that they acquiesce. I take the passage to be an expansion because without it we get a more continuous account of the feasting (250–5 eating of the

The verse in question, 237, recurs at ϕ 202, where it comes more naturally after Odysseus’ question. So it may be secondary here. 210

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splanchna, 279 ff. the main course), and because the mention of the festival in 276–8 appears an irrelevancy as it is but not if read immediately after 253–5: it explains why the suitors’ usual servants (here called κήρυκες; cf. σ 291, 424) are not on duty.211 The purpose of the expansion is to have Odysseus more explicitly installed at the feast. It is noted that when the meat is served he gets as big a portion as everyone else: Telemachos insists on it (281–3). To re-establish the suitors’ image in the previous day’s pattern, Q quickly has one of them throw something at Odysseus. He varies the formula by making it a man we have not seen before, one Ktesippos, and by having him throw not a footstool but a cow’s hoof, an inedible item from his table, saying facetiously that he is giving Telemachos’ guest a present to add to the equal share of the meat that he has already received. Odysseus moves his head slightly and the missile flies past. Telemachos rebukes Ktesippos and tells them all he has had enough of their bad behaviour. Let them kill him if they want to, it would be better than putting up with that. In what may be a further expansion (320–44) another new figure, Agelaos, agrees that they ought to stop mistreating their inferiors; but, he continues, it is unreasonable for Telemachos and Penelope to go on holding out now that there is no longer any prospect of Odysseus’ return. He should tell his mother to marry whoever has most to offer. Telemachos replies that he is all for her marrying, only he does not want to drive her away against her will.212 The outcome of this opening scene, then, is a re-statement of the suitors’ and Telemachos’ positions. We are ready for Penelope’s intervention with the challenge of the bow test. But first something extraordinary occurs, enabling Theoklymenos at last to come into his own and fulfil the purpose for which he was brought into the poem. The suitors are laughing in misguided merriment, but then suddenly the meat they are eating appears defiled with blood, their eyes fill with tears, their hearts with foreboding. Theoklymenos cries out with his

211

Cf. Kammer 663; Hennings 528. The reason for suspecting that this passage is an expansion is that, as Fenik 85–7 points out, the suitors’ derisive laughter in 346 is more easily paralleled as a reaction to Telemachos’ previous speech (304–19), which is more confrontational. He compares β 322 and ϕ 376. The addition of the passage, with Agelaos’ concilatory speech after Telemachos has reacted angrily to the throwing of an object at the stranger, follows the pattern of σ 394–421 (Fenik 184). 212

υ

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view of it: darkness is swirling round them, there is weeping and groaning, the palace runs with blood, the porch and yard are crowded with ghosts flying off to Hades, the sun is blotted out by their evil fog. The chilling weirdness of the scene is unique in archaic literature. But in a moment it is all over. The suitors have no recollection of it. They scoff at Theoklymenos’ apocalypse, assume he is mad, and call for him to be sent out of the house if he finds it so dark. He retires with dignity, predicting that none of them is going to escape disaster. He returns to his host Peiraios and disappears from the story. The suitors criticize Telemachos for the poor quality of his guests: first a useless beggar, and now this would-be seer. He would do better to deport them to Sicily and earn something for them. Telemachos ignores them, and sits waiting for his father to start the attack.213 Though poetically effective, the scene has changed nothing, and like the others in which Theoklymenos appears, it is evidently an overlay.214 Originally the statement in 346 that Athena deluded the suitors’ minds was picked up by 390–4, which now stands in logical isolation: they were enjoying a cheerful and liberal deipnon, but there could be nothing more disagreeable than the dorpon, the later meal, that they were going to experience. At the end of the insertion we learn that Penelope was sitting just outside, listening to the men’s conversation (387–9). So she has heard Telemachos say that he is in favour of her choosing a new husband, and this is meant to prepare us for her imminent decision to set the bow test. But the lines are awkwardly placed, as they make 390 even more of a non sequitur than it would be without them, and they are cut off from both of the passages they are meant to link. They would sit much better after 394, leading straight on to ϕ (ϕ 2 would then need to be removed). There seems to have been a redactional error: either Q somehow got the segments of text in the wrong order when he added 347–86, or an inept alteration was made at the time of the division into rhapsodies. (Cf. Schwartz 330.)

213 He does not know about the bow challenge that is to be set (Danek 402). He is probably expecting some other form of aggression from Odysseus in which he will play a supporting role. 214 Kirchhoff; Blass 229. It perhaps looks forward to the arrival of the suitors’ souls in Hades in ω 1–204 (Heubeck 1954: 39).

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ϕ Athena now prompts Penelope to commit herself to the bow test, the winner of which she will agree to marry. She has already spoken of her intention to Odysseus (τ 572 ff.). Q underlines the significance of the step she is taking: it will be ‘a contest and the beginning of bloodshed’ (ϕ 4). She goes to the storeroom to fetch the bow, a process drawn out with much elaboration. First she has to go upstairs to get the key, of which we are given material particulars, then she proceeds to the furthest room where Odysseus’ treasure is stored. There lie the bow and the quiver full of grievous arrows. The bow has a distinguished history, which is related at length (13–41). Odysseus was given it by Iphitos in Messene at the house of Ortilochos (with whose son Telemachos stayed on his way to and from Sparta, γ 488–90, ο 186–8). Circumstantial stories are spun to explain how Odysseus and Iphitos chanced to cross paths at this unlikely venue. Iphitos’ story is continued to his subsequent murder by Heracles, a tale told in the epic Capture of Oichalia, before we revert to the Messenian encounter. Odysseus and Iphitos exchanged weapons to establish a guestfriendship, despite neither having received the other at home and their never having the opportunity subsequently. This leads to a contrived explanation of why Odysseus never appears with his bow at Troy: he valued the gift so much that he kept it at home and only used it in his own land.215 With Penelope’s approach to the bow time seems to stand still. Q devotes three lines to characterizing the room, five to her inserting the key and opening the door, four to her climbing onto a shelf and taking the cased bow down from its peg. Having got it she sits down and cries with it on her knees. Finally she takes the bow and quiver to the hall where the suitors are. Her maids bring a basket full of metal objects that Odysseus has won. These evidently include the twelve axes to be used in the trial. Addressing the suitors, Penelope announces the contest and, in some of the most poignant lines in Homer, says she will marry the

215 The bow was clearly part of the Returning Husband story, only secondarily attached to Odysseus. On the artificial linkage of Odysseus with the Iphitos myth cf. Hölscher 1988: 68.

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man who can string the bow and shoot through the axes, leaving the fair, prosperous marital home that she will remember in her dreams (75–9 are repeated from τ 577–81). She tells Eumaios to set up the contest. He and Philoitios weep at the sight of their master’s bow. Antinoos reacts as spokesman for the suitors, abusing the two herdsmen while voicing apparent sympathy for Penelope; they should stop blubbing, or else leave the hall. (This prepares for their actual exit at 188.) In what may be a secondary expansion (91–5)216 he acknowledges the difficulty of the task set, as none of the suitors is the equal of Odysseus, whom he saw as a child.217 Privately, Q tells us, he was hoping to succeed in it, while in fact he was to be Odysseus’ first victim. Telemachos speaks up. He has not been forewarned of this turn of events, but he must rapidly come to terms with it; Q does not want him to delay things by a show of protest or distress. It is not explained what he thinks Odysseus is going to do. He condemns his own irrational cheerfulness (we recall Penelope’s ‘pointless laughter’ in σ 163), and goes on to encourage the suitors to respond to the challenge. But first he wishes to try stringing the bow himself. If he succeeds, he will know he is ready to take over the house as Odysseus’ heir, and he will not mind his mother leaving to marry another man. Laying aside his cloak and sword, he sets up the axes; this is simpler for Q than bringing Eumaios back to do it. Although he has never seen it done before, he makes a perfect job of it. He makes three attempts to string the bow, without quite succeeding. We see that he is not his father’s equal, but coming close (as none of the suitors does); it would only have taken him one more try, and he would have done it, but Odysseus signalled to him to desist (129). Nothing would have been lost if he had carried on and succeeded, but it would have detracted from the effect of Odysseus’ doing it after everyone else had failed. He pretends that he has tried his utmost,218 and hands over to the suitors.

216 In 91 Vεθλον άατον looks like a phrase mindlessly taken from χ 5, where άατος has its due meaning of ‘without loss’. 217

For this construction of a pre-war existence for the suitors cf. the stories told in

π 424–30 and 442–4.

Lines 132 f. are ineptly repeated from π 71 f. to express the idea ‘or I have still not reached my full adult strength’. Deleting 133 (Hinrichs) mitigates the ineptitude. 218

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Antinoos proposes an order of play, which is accepted. The first to take his turn is Leodes, a new character, introduced with a few lines. He is a diviner and (perhaps for that reason) the only one out of sympathy with the suitors’ misdemeanours.219 He will reappear pleading unsuccessfully for his life at χ 310 ff. His soft hands are defeated by the bow. He makes a resigned speech that portends disappointment for the suitors, though its logic is hard to follow (152–62). He tells them that after they have all tried the bow and seen how it is (i.e. that Penelope is not to be won in this way), they should revert to the usual system of offering gifts competitively. They will all have proved unworthy of her, and will bid for other women instead by means of gifts. Penelope will take someone else, whoever offers the most. Antinoos rejects Leodes’ negative attitude: he is clearly no archer, but others will soon succeed. He tells Melanthios to make a fire and fetch a cake of wax that they can use to soften the bow. This is done. A series of suitors try and fail. Antinoos and Eurymachos, the two most likely to succeed, are still to take their turns (186 f.). At this point Q fits in a scene in which Odysseus reveals himself to Eumaios and Philoitios. This is the last opportunity to bring them on side (Danek 409). So that he can get them on their own, they must leave the hall. They now do so—no motive is given, but they may be seen as taking up the suggestion of Antinoos in 89 f.—and Odysseus follows them out. He asks them whose side they would take if Odysseus should suddenly appear and take his stand against the suitors. They leave him in no doubt as to their fidelity to their old master, whereupon he declares his identity and proves it by displaying his scar. They weep and embrace him. He gives them their instructions for what follows. Eumaios, whom Penelope appointed to manage the contest, is to make sure that Odysseus is given a turn with the bow; he is also to tell the women to close the hall doors and to stay quietly at their work if they hear any commotion. Philoitios is to secure the yard doors. They return separately to the hall. We revert to the situation as it was when the herdsmen went out. Eurymachos is warming the bow and trying to draw it (245). He laments his and the others’ failure. He is less upset at not being able 219 But we should recall Amphinomos in π 394 ff. The motif of the seer who has reservations about the common enterprise, knowing that it will end disastrously, may perhaps be derived from Amphiaraos in the Theban saga.

ϕ

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to have Penelope—there are plenty of other women (this thought echoes Leodes’ words in 160)—than at their all proving so much inferior to Odysseus. Antinoos, whom we have not seen try his hand, is still optimistic. It is a festival day, he observes, not ideal for drawing bows. Let them try again tomorrow after propitiating Apollo with the best goats that can be found. The axes can remain in position. Q wants to bring the suitors’ attempts to an end without waiting for all 108 of them to have a go. The feast-day makes a rather artificial reason for breaking off (Bekker 130; Kammer 678), but it serves. Certainly the idea of a special sacrifice to Apollo when better victims are available makes sense. So far as Antinoos is concerned, the proceedings are concluded for the day. He calls for a round of libations and for Melanthios to be instructed to bring the goats in the morning. The libations are made with due formality. Now Odysseus speaks up (274). He craftily approves Antinoos’ proposal to defer the contest till tomorrow, but asks to be allowed to try the bow himself now, just to see how much of his former strength remains. This provokes an argument that continues for nearly a hundred lines. There is general disapproval of Odysseus’ request, based on anxiety that he might actually succeed in drawing the bow. Antinoos articulates the reaction. The beggar-stranger should be grateful for being allowed to feast with the fine company and listen to their discourse.220 The wine is going to his head, a phenomenon that Antinoos illustrates with a digression on the myth of the Centaurs and Lapiths. Q is indulging his taste for bringing in further stories. In making a character use a myth as an exemplum he imitates something more characteristic of the Iliad, not very dextrously (cf. Heubeck 1954: 25 f.). The treatment meted out to the bumptious Centaur Eurytion is described in 299–302 in terms designed as a warning to Odysseus (cf. σ 85–7; Danek 414). If he gets above himself and strings the bow he will be deported and given to Echetos, the cruel tyrant with whom Iros was threatened earlier (above, n. 186). Penelope speaks up for the stranger on the ground that he is a guest of Telemachos’. She assures Antinoos that if the man does succeed in drawing the bow, there will be no question of his having her for his

220

The assertion in 291 f. that no other beggar is allowed to hear their conversations was perhaps composed before the addition of the Iros scene in σ (Goold 26).

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wife. Eurymachos replies that they are not afraid of that but of their loss of face if none of them is capable of stringing the bow and then some vagrant comes and does it. Penelope replies that they have already forfeited their good repute. The stranger is a sturdy fellow and claims to be of good birth (in the tale he told her at τ 181), so let him try. If he does string the bow she will give him some good clothes and sandals, and a sword and spear, and send him wherever he wants to go. Telemachos intervenes, asserting his own right to dispose of the bow as he sees fit and telling his mother to go up to her room and leave the men to concern themselves with the bow. This may seem illogical, since he himself wants the stranger to be given the bow as Penelope has urged. But Q needs to remove Penelope from the scene before the killing starts, and only Telemachos can bring this about.221 Taken aback, but recognizing the sense of her son’s words, she retires with her maids and cries herself to sleep—Q’s usual way of putting her away until she is needed again. She will remain asleep throughout the killing of the suitors, to be woken at ψ 4 ff. to hear the glad news. Eumaios, in obedience to Odysseus’ privy instruction, picks up the bow to take it to him. The suitors object and threaten him. He is intimidated and puts the bow back. This heightens the suspense. Is Odysseus’ scheme to be frustrated? But no, Telemachos asserts himself again with a counter-threat, ordering Eumaios to go on bringing the bow. While the suitors are disarmed by merriment at Telemachos’ pomposity, Eumaios brings the bow and gives it to Odysseus (379). He then proceeds with the other part of his orders, summoning Eurykleia and telling her to do what Odysseus had told him, though he represents the instructions as being Telemachos’; he does not know that she knows Odysseus’ identity. She obeys, dumbstruck. Philoitios also slips out of the hall and does what he was told, securing the yard gates with a ship’s rope that is conveniently lying in the portico. Then he returns to the hall, resumes his seat, and watches Odysseus, who is now checking out the condition of the bow. The suitors comment to one another, some apprehensively, others

221

Wilamowitz 1927: 60. In the original Returning Husband story she would have remained: ‘Im Märchen hat Penelope sicher nicht geschlafen: sie war ja Veranstalterin, Zeugin und Preis des Wettschießens, für sie geschah die Enthüllung. Die Freier erkannten den König—und die Gattin den Gatten’ (Hölscher 1972: 391; cf. id. 1988: 281–3).

χ

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dismissively, expressing the unwise hope that he may get as much benefit from it as he has chance of stringing it. After inspecting the bow Odysseus strings it with one easy movement and tests the tension by plucking the string, which gives out a clear note (411). Now the suitors are alarmed. Zeus sends a thunder omen, boosting Odysseus’ confidence. He fits an arrow to the bow—Q notes that he has a quiverful more, destined for the suitors—and without standing up completes the test of firing through the line of axes. He speaks to Telemachos, satisfied with the confirmation that his strength is undiminished. Now, he says, although it is still daylight, it is time to make the men’s supper, and after that to enjoy music and song. We saw at the end of υ that Q associates the killing of the suitors with a transition from the earlier to the later meal, from deipnon to dorpon. Odysseus now announces this transition in veiled language. It will be the suitors’ last supper, and it will be followed by celebration in the palace. He nods to Telemachos, who girds on his sword, which he laid aside in 119, grasps his spear, and stands by Odysseus’ chair ready to fight. Eumaios and Philoitios, who are to assist them in the battle, remain out of the picture for the moment.

χ Odysseus has now to be represented as killing a multitude of suitors that according to an earlier passage numbered over a hundred. Q deals well with the problem of describing this, pacing his narrative and not staying with the killing all the time but alternating it with subsidiary activity. He cannot name every single victim, but he does supply a fair number of names, including all those previously mentioned. Three principals, Antinoos, Eurymachos, and Amphinomos are dealt with first. Odysseus continues to shoot arrows, without details of victims, while arms are being fetched from the store (95–118), so an indefinite number have already fallen by the time the spear-fight gets under way at 241. Then more victims are named in groups (265–9, 283–96); then comes a wholesale slaughter (302–9). After dealing with the individual cases of Leodes, Phemios, and Medon (310–80), Odysseus looks around to see if there are any survivors lurking, but is faced only by heaps of corpses.

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The start is dramatic. Odysseus casts off his ragged clothes, leaps to take up position in the doorway, and empties the arrows out at his feet. It is the first of the Homeric scenes that Plato (Ion 535b) picks out as guaranteed to excite or move a rhapsode’s audience. The first arrow is fittingly directed at the suitors’ ringleader, Antinoos, whose death is described in loving detail. The rest jump up and at once look for shields and spears on the walls, as if realizing that they are all in danger (23–5). It is not consistent with this that they are then represented as being under the misapprehension that the stranger has killed Antinoos by accident. The explanation is probably that 23–5 are a secondary addition meant to do justice to Odysseus’ and Telemachos’ earlier removal of the arms, which otherwise goes unremarked.222 Odysseus disabuses them of their error by declaring his identity. He lists their sins: plundering his household, forcing themselves on the slave women, and wooing his wife while he is still alive. The second of the three charges finds echoes elsewhere (π 108 f. = υ 318 f.; χ 313 f.), though in other passages the women are represented as the suitors’ willing mistresses (υ 6–8, χ 424, 445). Thus sexual guilt is made to attach both to the suitors and to the maids. Eurymachos tries to appease Odysseus, blaming everything on Antinoos and promising compensation for all that the suitors have consumed (44–59). Odysseus is implacable. He rejects all offers of compensation and declares his determination to punish every one of them. Their only options are to fight or flee; but he does not think any of them will escape. This fills them with terror. Eurymachos comes to terms with the reality. He sees that Odysseus is going to shoot from the doorway till they are all dead. He tells his comrades they must fight, drawing their swords and using the tables as shields;223 they must charge Odysseus and try to drive him from the doorway, break out to the town, and raise a hue and cry. Suiting his action to (some of) his words, he draws his own sword and rushes at Odysseus with a loud cry, but without taking a table for a shield. He

222 The lines were condemned by Kirchhoff. Note how κατS δKμα in 23 falls ineptly after κατS δώματα in 22. 223 It is only in this section (74, 79, 90) that the suitors have swords to hand. Odysseus’ original proposal for the removal of arms from the hall (π 295) implied that they would not have them and that it was the custom to dine unarmed (Seeck 18).

χ

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is felled by Odysseus’ next arrow, collapsing dramatically and, like Antinoos, knocking food and wine to the floor (84–8). Amphinomos, who previously appeared as one of the less evil suitors,224 makes a similar charge, but Telemachos brings him down with a spear between the shoulderblades. We may suppose that his attempt was either simultaneous with Eurymachos’ or came too quickly after it for Odysseus to have another arrow ready. In any case the important thing is that Telemachos joins in the action. The turkey-shoot is augmented by the first movement towards a spear-fight. This leads on to the arming of Odysseus and his three supporters in readiness for the pitched battle. Not having time to pull his spear out of Amphinomos’ body, which it has gone right through, Telemachos runs over to his father and asks whether he should now fetch weapons and arm Eumaios and Philoitios. Odysseus says yes, hurry while I still have arrows. Telemachos goes and brings four sets of armour: for each man a helmet, a shield, and two spears. He arms himself and the two herdsmen, and they stand protecting Odysseus, who continues to kill suitors until he runs out of arrows; he then lays his bow aside and arms himself like the others (122–5). This is the only arming scene in the Odyssey, and it is modelled on Ο 479–82, where Teukros arms himself after laying aside his bow, its string having broken. Fighting in the hall is now suspended until 255 while other developments are described. Q had earlier envisaged a battle in which the suitors lacked arms: that was the point of the removal of the arms from the hall in τ. Now, to heighten the drama, he has decided that the suitors should obtain arms after all. For this he needs to devise another way out of the hall besides the main one that Odysseus is blocking. That is the point of the postern door that is introduced at 126. The following narrative implies that Odysseus’ view of it is blocked by the mass of suitors. From it the suitors must not be able to escape from the palace or send for help from the town (as Eurymachos

224 In π 400–5 he dissuaded the others from a second attempt to kill Telemachos before seeking and obtaining divine approval. In σ 122–56 he spoke nicely to Odysseus, who judged him πεπνυμένος, and after hearing the stranger’s strictures on the suitors’ behaviour he had premonitions of disaster, ‘though not even so did he escape death’ (with a trailer for the manner of it). In σ 414–21 he accepted the justice of what Telemachos had said and persuaded the rest to go home. At υ 245 f. he again dissuaded them from proceeding with a plot against Telemachos after seeing an unfavourable omen.

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had hoped to do via the main door in 77). Lines 127 f. serve to explain why that might be possible with difficulty. From the postern there is a corridor that leads past the edge of the main entrance to a lane outside the palace. The exit to the lane is closed by a sturdy door. Anticipating the suitors’ next idea, Odysseus tells Eumaios to stand near this exit and watch it. There is only one approach to it, and he will suffice to defend it. Agelaos (a suitor previously seen at υ 321 ff.) proposes that someone should slip out through the postern and raise the alarm in the town. Melanthios tells him that the idea is impracticable, as the way out passes too close to the doors where Odysseus is, and the exit to the lane will be difficult to force: a single man could defend it against a crowd. (Eumaios, as we know, has already been posted there.) Instead of trying to get out of the palace Melanthios says he will go to the storerooms, where he surmises that Odysseus and Telemachos have hidden the weapons, and bring some. He goes and fetches twelve sets and gives them to the suitors (146). This is no doubt as much as he can carry, though it is scarcely realistic that he could manage that quantity.225 The dialogue between Agelaos and Melanthios has evidently been inaudible to Odysseus, who is dismayed on seeing that the suitors have acquired weapons. He infers that either one of the women or Melanthios is behind it. Telemachos admits to having inadvertently left the storeroom open. He sends Eumaios to go and secure it and to see who is getting the weapons. When Melanthios sets off on another trip, Eumaios sees him. He tells Odysseus it is Melanthios and asks if he should kill him or bring him back as a prisoner. Odysseus says that the two herdsmen are to tie him up and let him suffer. Q does not want to make any further use of him in the fighting, so he needs to be incapacitated off stage.226

225 It is hardly significant that twelve is the same as the number of victims named after 241 (Galiano 263): Agelaos, Eurynomos, Amphimedon, Demoptolemos, Peisandros, Polybos, Euryades, Elatos, Ktesippos, Eurydamas, Leokritos, Leodes. 226 The details of what the herdsmen are to do to him are problematic. I suspect that in the original draft they were just to tie him up, throw him into the storeroom, and bar the door so that he could not escape: 174 e.g. δήσαντ᾽ =ς θάλαμον βαλέειν, σανίδας δ᾽ =πιθεBναι. Then Q modified this line and added 175–7 to bring it into line with the more exquisite torment that he had made the herdsmen actually impose in 189–93. We can compare 465 ff., where Telemachos substitutes a more painful execution of the maids for what Odysseus had told him to do.

χ

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The herdsmen catch Melanthios coming out of the storeroom and string him up from a pillar. This time he is carrying only one helmet and shield, a dilapidated old one that Laertes used in his youth; this is mentioned as a reminder of Laertes’ existence (de Jong 532) and former hero status. Eumaios treats the prisoner to a mocking speech, telling him that he is going to hang there all night. (This does not correspond to what happens to him later at 474–7.) They put their armour back on, secure the storeroom door, and return to support Odysseus and Telemachos. Here (203 f.) we are given a summary of the situation: four at the doorway facing a multitude within. At this juncture Athena makes an appearance in the guise of Mentor. She had promised to help when the time came (ν 393 f., π 171, υ 47 ff.), and Odysseus was counting on it (π 260). He greets her as Mentor while guessing that it is the goddess, calling upon her to help in the fight. Agelaos warns ‘Mentor’ not to, or he will regret it. Angered by this, Athena reproaches Odysseus for failing to match up to his achievements at Troy. She calls upon him to ‘stand beside me and see how Mentor in the face of an enemy repays kindnesses’. Q balks, however, at the challenge of showing her contributing effectively to the battle while in the body of an old man. She abandons her Mentor guise and flies up to a roof-beam in the form of a swallow. Q explains that she does not want to confer immediate victory but first to put Odysseus’ and Telemachos’ valour to the test. In the suitors’ perception Mentor has made off after making vain boasts (249).—The Athena-Mentor episode (205–40 with 249 f.) is probably an expansion.227 It gives Odysseus good heart but provides him with no material help; Mentor disappears as implausibly as he appears, provoking the suitors’ ridicule; and it fits ill with the goddess’s less visible but more effective presence above the fighting in 256 ff. and 297 f. The conflict now moves fully into its spear-fight phase. The six principal surviving suitors are listed in 242 f. in the manner of an Iliadic mini-catalogue (cf. West 2011a: 166). Those first named in each line have appeared before, and the verses are filled out with new names (Danek 435), though one of these, Polybos, is a homonym of Eurymachos’ father. The deaths of all except Eurynomos are

227

Kirchhoff 529 f.; Wilamowitz 1927: 65, 83; cf. Focke 359–62. The scene is presupposed in ω 443–9.

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registered in what follows. The narrative accounts for all the individual suitors previously mentioned in the poem (Danek 435). Agelaos encourages six men (not the same six) to hurl their spears at Odysseus. The spears are thrown, and Athena, acting from above, makes them all miss. Odysseus then proposes that they four throw their own spears. They all hit their targets, two of the seven men listed in 241–3 and two previously unheard of. The rest of the suitors retreat to the back of the hall, allowing Odysseus’ men to recover their spears from the corpses. Another volley comes from the suitors.228 Two of their spears inflict scratches on Telemachos and Eumaios, the rest miss altogether. Odysseus’ men reply and bring down four more victims, three of them named recently, the fourth at σ 297. Philoitios makes a triumphant moralizing speech over his victim Ktesippos, reminding us of the hoof that he threw at Odysseus in υ. At 292 the battle turns briefly to a more Iliadic mode, with the problem of recovering spears now ignored. Agelaos falls, and the Leokritos previously mentioned only at β 242. Athena, still in the rafters but presumably no longer to be imagined in a swallow’s body, holds up the aegis. The suitors flee in panic. Odysseus’ men pursue and slaughter them, both sides’ behaviour being highlighted with similes. There is another typical scene from the Iliadic battlefield: Leodes the diviner (ϕ 144–68) supplicates Odysseus for mercy, pleading his innocence, but is beheaded. The passage is modelled on Lykaon’s supplication in Φ 64 ff. (Usener 131–40). Leodes’ failed supplication is balanced by a successful one from the bard Phemios, whose presence has not been mentioned since the previous day. He is hovering at the back of the hall with his lyre in his hand, wondering whether to duck out through the postern and make for the altar of Zeus Herkeios in the courtyard or to dash forward and supplicate Odysseus. He decides for the latter, and Q notes precisely where he sets his lyre down before making his dash (340 f.). He tells Odysseus that he will regret it if he kills a bard, one who sings for gods and men. Telemachos will vouch for the fact that it was only under compulsion that he sang for the suitors. Telemachos speaks up for him, and also for the herald Medon if he has not already been killed, as he always used to look after him when he was a boy (358, an

228

Again, presumably, of six spears. This exhausts the stock of twelve that Melanthios had brought them (Schwartz 129).

χ

289

improvisation by Q). Medon is in fact an ambivalent character: he was aligned with the suitors in π 252, ρ 172 f., but in δ 675 ff. and π 412 he divulged their counsels to Penelope. It turns out that he has been hiding under a cowhide behind a chair, and he now springs up and supplicates Telemachos. Odysseus smiles benignly and tells him and Phemios to go out to the yard while he completes his business. They go out and crouch fearfully by the altar where Phemios had thought of taking refuge. Odysseus looks round the hall to see if there are any other survivors, but there are only corpses lying in their gore in heaps like beached fishes. The next thing on his agenda is to dispose of the unfaithful slave women. He tells Telemachos to fetch Eurykleia, and he brings her in. She is greeted with the sight of a bloodied Odysseus presiding over a hundred and more cadavers like a lion. She makes to ululate, but Odysseus restrains her, passing brief judgment on the suitors: they had respect for no one, and their wrongful behaviour has combined with divine destiny to bring about their deaths (413–16). Now it is for her to identify the bad women, meaning those who have shamelessly slept with the suitors (cf. 444 f., 464). She replies that of the total of fifty—the number replicates that of Alkinoos’ household (η 103)—twelve are bad. Telemachos has not disciplined them previously because he was still young and his mother would not let him give orders to the women. ‘But let me go up and tell your wife what has happened.’ Eurykleia is eager to bring Penelope the glad news, but Q is not quite ready for that. There is more killing to be done before Penelope can be woken from her sleep to find her world transformed. ‘Do not wake her yet,’ says Odysseus, ‘but tell the bad women to come here.’ As Eurykleia goes to find them, he sets Telemachos and the two herdsmen to start work on tasks that the wretched women will share, carrying the corpses out to the yard and sponging down the chairs and tables. When everything is clean, they are to take the women out and put them to the sword. The women come in, crying, and are set to work on the cleaningup operation. Once this is complete they are taken out to a confined space within the precincts. Telemachos tells them they have brought shame on him and his mother and he is not minded to kill them cleanly. Instead of putting them to the sword, he fastens a ship’s cable across the enclosure above head height and hangs them all from it;

290

Proof of the Pudding

there they dangle in agony, their legs twitching, until they expire. Then Melanthios is brought in from the room where he was left, and subjected to the most savage mutilations (475–7). Telemachos and the two herdsmen wash and go back to Odysseus in the hall, where everything is now restored to order, though it still requires purification with fire and sulphur. Odysseus tells Eurykleia to bring these and also to fetch Penelope and the rest of the maids. Instead of obeying immediately, Eurykleia proposes bringing him some proper clothes: he should not be standing there in his ragged beggar garments. All he says in reply is, ‘Bring the fire first’. This exchange (485–91) may be a secondary expansion.229 We have been given the graphic picture of an Odysseus who is not only poorly clothed but filthy with gore (402–6). At some point before he is reunited with Penelope he will have to be cleaned up. This would be a suitable moment. But Q has made a conscious decision to postpone it till after the first part of the recognition scene in ψ, so that Penelope is at first confronted with a figure that it will be harder for her to recognize as her husband.230 These lines reflect that decision. Eurykleia goes to carry out her instructions, the three parts of which are dealt with in ascending order of importance: (1) the fire and sulphur, which Odysseus at once deploys to purify the house and courtyard, (2) bringing the servant women, (3) bringing Penelope. Whoever made the division into rhapsodies made the division before (3), recognizing the reunion with Penelope as a major unit on its own. The women come bringing torches; Q wants to indicate that evening is drawing in. They fall upon Odysseus with kisses and embraces. He recognizes them all, and is moved to tears.

ψ This rhapsody is mainly concerned with the blissful reunion of Odysseus and Penelope, and so long as this is the focus the narrative continues to show the fluent brilliance that has characterized ϕ

229

Merkelbach 131 n. 1.

230

Hölscher 1972: 401; 1988: 292.

ψ

291

and χ. Its smooth flow is disturbed, however, as Q begins to prepare for the events of the following day that are to be narrated in ω. It looks likely that there had been an earlier Odyssey in which these later episodes did not appear and which ended with Odysseus and Penelope happily sleeping together for the first time in twenty years. We can still discern this beautiful romantic ending in our text. But Q found it necessary to add a further day of action to deal with certain unresolved issues. Odysseus had still to be reunited with his aged father, whose continuing presence in Ithaca is repeatedly adverted to throughout the poem. And Q is aware that realistically he must deal with the problem of the slain suitors’ families and their inevitable desire for retribution. This motif is much less well integrated in the poem than Laertes: it looks secondary where it first appears in υ 41–3, and we shall see that the same is the case in ψ. Penelope’s recognition of her husband is wonderfully managed. Q artfully portrays her reluctance to accept that it is really Odysseus despite Eurykleia’s and others’ assurances, a reluctance that is only gradually overcome: 10 ff., she thinks Eurykleia must be out of her mind; 32 ff., 59 ff., she rejoices at the suitors’ death, but finds it incredible that Odysseus could have done it—it must have been some god; 81 ff., the scar that Eurykleia has seen may be a cunning contrivance of the gods; 86 ff., she sees Odysseus but remains full of doubt and will not speak to him; 174 ff., she speaks to him as Odysseus but tests him by telling Eurykleia to bring his bed outside; 205 ff., she is finally convinced and apologizes to him, explaining that she had always been afraid of being tricked by impostors. At the start she is still peacefully asleep, as she has been throughout the killing of the suitors. It has been, she will say in 17–19, the sweetest sleep she has had in all the years since Odysseus left for Troy. Eurykleia bustles gleefully up to her chamber, stands over her like a typical epic dream figure, and bids her wake to see what she has always been longing for: Odysseus has come home, and he has killed the suitors. Penelope at first refuses to believe it, and the dialogue continues for eighty lines as Eurykleia insists on the truth of what she has said, adding further circumstantial detail and finally (78 f.) offering to stake her life on its veracity, much as the disguised Odysseus did with Eumaios in ξ 398–400. She urges Penelope to come downstairs and see for herself. Penelope agrees to go down ‘to my son’—he is still the only accredited family member downstairs, and he will initially be the

292

Proof of the Pudding

only one to speak to her—‘so I may see the suitors dead, and the one who has killed them’.231 She goes down debating with herself ‘whether to question her dear husband while keeping her distance, or to go up and kiss his head and hands’ (86 f.). Q’s formulation suggests that she has already accepted Odysseus’ identity; but this anticipates. She finds him sitting in the firelight (another indication that it is now evening), his eyes downcast, waiting to see if she will speak to him. She takes a chair opposite to him and sits in silence inspecting him, now with direct gaze (as at someone well known), now in doubt about this grimy, dishevelled fellow. Telemachos remonstrates with her, accusing her of having a heart harder than stone. She replies that she is in a daze, unable to speak to this man or look him in the face. If he is really Odysseus, they will recognize each other more surely by means of secret tokens known only to them (108–10). This foreshadows the test that she will set him in 177 ff. and which he will pass. Odysseus smiles; he shares Q’s insight into what Penelope’s words mean for the development of the story. He does not reply to her but speaks to Telemachos, saying, ‘Leave your mother to make trial of me in the hall. She will soon come round. It is my dirty and ill-clothed state that is putting her off’ (113 f.). Then he abruptly changes the topic, and what follows is such a distraction from the recognition programme that Kirchhoff and others were moved to excise 117–70 or 117–72. Besslich and Hölscher, however, have argued effectively that the recognition would go too quickly without this retardation; Odysseus could not have been sent to bed at 177 after so short an exchange.232 The fact is that Q has a couple of other matters to arrange before completing the recognition. Odysseus’ bathing and reclothing, which were postponed at the end of χ, can be delayed no longer. A background of festive music and dancing is to be set up and maintained through his reunion with Penelope; it will be slightly premature as a celebration of the renewed marriage bond, but Q provides a different rationale for it, as a first precaution against the potential danger from the suitors’ families. The construction is a little clumsy, but purposeful. 231 In fact the bodies have been taken outside, and Eurykleia has told her so (49). She never does see them. 232 Kirchhoff 552–9 (Liesegang 7 had condemned 117–52); Wilamowitz 1927: 70 f., 74; Page 1955: 114; Besslich 83–96; Hölscher 1972: esp. 403 n. 30, 405; 1988: 288–96.

ψ

293

Odysseus raises the problem of this danger and invites Telemachos to consider what to do. Telemachos sensibly throws the question back at him, and he then sets out his plan. A sham wedding will be staged. Everyone is to bathe and put on chitons, and there will be music and dancing. The merry noise will prevent those outside from wondering why the suitors have not come out now that night has fallen. They will think that Penelope is finally remarrying (as indeed she announced earlier in the day that she was going to), and word of the killings will not get out before Odysseus and Telemachos have the opportunity to withdraw to their country estate and consider their options. The plan is carried out to the letter. Passers-by are duly misled into thinking that Penelope has consented to marry one of the suitors. The sham wedding is an odd solution to an artificial difficulty. There was no need to consider the possibility of the news getting out before the next day, and it is not clear how the bathing and dressing up of those inside the palace contribute to the effect for passers-by who cannot see in. The motif probably derives from an earlier version in which the poem ended without the business of the suitors’ kinsmen and the further day of action and in which the music and dancing represented a real household celebration of the reunion.233 Meanwhile Odysseus is bathed, oiled, and reclothed (153–63). This fits in well with the general bathing and dressing for the sham wedding. Athena adds lustre to his form, so that when he returns to his seat opposite Penelope he is looking magnificent. He is now alone with her (except that Eurykleia is in attendance), as Telemachos has gone off to take part in the dancing (cf. 297). She is as before, sitting in silence; she does not react to Odysseus’ changed appearance. He utters a remonstrance resembling Telemachos’ in 96–103 (168–70 are repeated from 100–2). She assures him (apparently accepting his identity) that she is not being haughty or contemptuous of him; she well remembers the Odysseus who went away. Then she makes trial of him (181), as he anticipated in 113 f.: she calls on Eurykleia to bring the bed out from its chamber that he himself built234 and make it up for him. Odysseus’ indignant reaction to this convinces her finally that he is who he claims to be, and the reunion proceeds. 233

Cf. H. Fränkel, Gnomon 3 (1927), 9; Merkelbach 132; Dawe 814. So the transmitted text, but it is perhaps better to follow van Leeuwen and read in 178 =ντ.ς, in 179 =νθεBσαι (or with J. J. Hartman Cνθ᾽ Vρα ο? θεBσαι), ‘make up his bed, taking it in to the chamber that he himself built’. Cf. Merkelbach 134 n. 2. 234

294

Proof of the Pudding

The reason why he is indignant when she speaks of moving his bed outside the chamber is that that ought to be an impossibility. An old olive stump, as thick as a pillar, was an integral part of the bed frame, though this fact was concealed from view by metal and ivory facings and was known only to Odysseus himself, Penelope, and a chambermaid who (we must assume) is now dead (227–9). The exact account of the bed’s construction that Odysseus gives in 190–201 serves Q’s audience’s needs rather than Penelope’s, but its accuracy and detail help to convince her completely. She capitulates, and runs in tears to embrace and kiss her husband. She apologizes for her previous reticence, explaining that she has always been on her guard against the wiles of plausible strangers.235 Odysseus weeps in turn, and they cling to each other in joyful reunion. The next section, 241–88, appears to be an expansion.236 If we leave it aside, the text continues (289–99): Meanwhile Eurynome and the nurse were making their bed of soft covers by the light of torches. When they had made it, the old woman [= Eurykleia] went back to her room to sleep, while Eurynome the chambermaid, with a torch in her hand, led them to their bed. Having brought them to the chamber she withdrew. They then happily returned to their ancient bed’s ordinance; Telemachos, the cowherd, and the swineherd ended their dancing and that of the women, and they too settled down for the night in the darkened halls.

This makes such an excellent conclusion that I find it hard to resist the hypothesis that that was once how it all ended.237 But this 235 Lines 218–24 are a puzzling appendage to this confession. They refer to the case of Helen, who was led astray by a stranger’s cajoling words as Penelope was determined not to be. But there seems no relevance in the observation that Helen would not have made this error if she had known what was to come of it. The lines were athetized by Aristarchus. But if they are an interpolation, what was its point? 236 Wilamowitz 1884: 68 f., 84 f.; 1927: 72, 74. 237 The scholia and Eustathius tell us that Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus set the Odyssey’s limit (πέρας) or end(-goal) (τέλος) at line 296, ‘they then happily returned to their ancient bed’s ordinance’. Erbse 166–77 shows convincingly that τέλος is the correct variant and that it was a piece of Aristotelian literary analysis, not meaning that the poem actually ended here. An earlier version, as I have said, may well have stopped here, only not at 296: it must have gone on at least to 299, as the dancing which was started in 143 has continued (albeit in the background) and needs to be brought to a conclusion, and Telemachos and the rest of the household need to be put to bed too, as Eurykleia has been in 292. It is the rule in epic that when anyone goes to bed for the night, everyone goes. Merkelbach 133 regards 289–99 as the true ending of his ‘A’ poem.

ψ

295

potentially delightful ending has been spoiled by a series of additions, partly consequent on Q’s decision to have a further day of action in which Odysseus will visit Laertes and the animosity of the suitors’ families will be laid to rest. The first addition, 241–88, is independent of this factor. When Odysseus was in Hades he heard from Teiresias about a journey into Epirus that he must undertake after getting home and killing the suitors; in the end his life will come to a peaceful close as he rules over his prospering people (λ 119–37). Q has no plan to continue his poem to include these events: it was enough to have the prophecy of them. But Odysseus will not have forgotten the prophecy, and Q feels that he must share it with Penelope and not let her be under the illusion that they will now live happily together for ever after. It is awkwardly fitted in here before she has heard the tale of Odysseus’ adventures hitherto; what is she to make of his casual reference to having visited the house of Hades and met the seer’s soul there (251 f.)? It would all have gone better after 353. There is a further complication at the beginning of the passage (241–7). It begins with a variant on a formula that has appeared twice previously (π 220, ϕ 226), ‘And they would have continued crying till sunset, if it had not been that . . .’; this time, as the sun has already set, it is ‘till dawn’. In the two earlier passages what brings the crying to an end is that one of the participants speaks and a new dialogue starts up. That is what we would have here if the εQ μ5 Vρ᾽ of 242 were combined with 247 [κα τότ᾽ Vρ᾽] ν Vλοχον προσέϕη πολύμητις ᾽Οδυσσεύς, leading straight in to his revelation about Teiresias (Blass 221 f.; Focke 370). But Q has parted these elements that belong together by inserting the statement that Athena decided to lengthen the night and delay the dawn. This ruins the sense, which becomes in effect ‘they would have gone on crying all night, if Athena had not made the night too long for them to do so’, and when we come to ‘And then Odysseus spoke to his wife’, we ask in vain when ‘then’ was. The proper purpose of the extended night motif is to give more time for lovemaking and sleep,238 and in 344–8 Athena allows Dawn to appear ‘when she reckoned that Odysseus had had his pleasure of his wife’s bed and of sleep’. Her earlier interference with the timely running of nature must have been 238 Finsler ii. 435. Sappho prayed for a night to last twice as long (fr. 197); when Zeus was lying with Alkmene he persuaded the sun not to rise for three days (Pherecydes fr. 13c, Plaut. Amph. 113 f.).

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Proof of the Pudding

designed to stand after 299, after Odysseus and Penelope have gone to bed. Q evidently removed it from there in favour of Odysseus’ recital of his adventures. Seeking somewhere else to work it in, he lit on 242/7 because of the mention of dawn in 241. This is an unusually clear example of his way of working. It is a nice stroke that Odysseus does not relate Teiresias’ prophecy all in one piece. At first he just says that the prophet has told him of another long and difficult trial that he must face, ‘but now let us go to bed and sleep’ (248–55). He does not seem to anticipate a recital of his adventures since leaving Troy. Penelope’s curiosity is engaged, and she asks for further details, arguing that she may as well be told now as later. He warns her that she will not like it, but agrees to tell her. Q then makes it easy for himself by adapting λ 121–37 with minimum alteration to become 268–84. Penelope’s reaction is remarkably equable. She fastens on the good bit, the promise that Odysseus will enjoy a comfortable old age, and all she says in effect is, ‘Ah well, all will be well that ends well’ (286 f.). After they have gone to bed and made love, instead of going to sleep they divert each other with accounts of their experiences during the past ten years (300–43). As indicated above, this section appears not to have been conceived until after the inserted passage about Teiresias’ prophecy and after Athena’s delaying of the dawn. It may itself have been added in two stages.239 The first, it may be suspected, consisted of 300–8 + 343 (with uϕρα for οδέ in 308) and concluding ‘and Odysseus told of all the troubles that he had made for men [sc. at Troy] and all those that he himself had suffered [subsequently]; and she took pleasure in listening, until sleep that dissolves the heart’s cares overcame her’. Then the ending was altered to ‘and she took pleasure in listening, and sleep did not fall upon her eyelids until he had related everything’, and a full résumé of Odysseus’ post-war wanderings was added. Q must presuppose that his audience remembers them from his earlier narrative. He may have thought that the recapitulation would help to give a synoptic view of the whole epic.240

239

Cf. Liesegang 8 f.; Kammer 741; Hennings 578; Blass 217 f. According to Lord 177 such résumés ‘are perfectly normal in oral poetry, and numerous examples can be found’. 240

ω

297

In the morning Odysseus tells Penelope his plans: to restore his depleted flocks and herds, but more immediately to go to the outof-town orchard (γρ.ς πολυδένδρεος) and find his father. In 138–40 he anticipated going to this place to take counsel in the face of the danger from the suitors’ families. These two items on Q’s agenda for the last day of the narrative, the reunion with Laertes and the accommodation with the suitors’ kin, are to be awkwardly combined at a single location (cf. Danek 488). As to the latter issue, Odysseus warns Penelope that word of the suitors’ death will soon be spreading, and he tells her to stay in her chamber out of sight. With these instructions he leaves her. She appears no further in the narrative. Odysseus, Telemachos, and the two herdsmen arm themselves and leave the palace. It is already getting light, but Athena keeps them invisible as they make their way out of the town.

ω Following the Iliad poet’s technique of interposing an episode between a departure and an arrival, Q here inserts the so-called Second Nekyia, describing the reception of the suitors’ souls in Hades (1–204). It may indeed be a secondary expansion, as it could be taken out without leaving a scar (Seeck 83 f.), and when the account of Odysseus’ excursion is resumed in 205 we find a pronoun ‘they’ whose reference has to be understood from ψ 366–72. In a version of the poem that lacked the last day’s action the episode might have stood after ψ 299 as a kind of epilogue—not a Goethian Vorspiel im Himmel but a Nachspiel im Hades. The souls’ journey to Hades would then have taken place on the night of their owners’ demise (as in κ 560, λ 425, and the Iliad a man’s soul flies there immediately at his death) and not been held back till the following morning. The purpose of the episode is to enable the story of Odysseus and Penelope to be put beside that of Agamemnon and Klytaimestra and the moral antithesis made explicit. This will be done by Agamemnon in 192–202 after he has heard an account of the events on Ithaca from one of the suitors.

298

Proof of the Pudding

The souls are conducted to Hades by Hermes. He does not appear with this function elsewhere in Homer, though he did escort Heracles on his mission to capture Cerberus (λ 626). Possibly he appeared in this role in the underworld scene that we know occurred in the Nostoi. That poem, or a pre-form of it, may perhaps have been Q’s source both for Hermes and for some of the novel topography mentioned in 11 f., the White Cliff, the Gates of the Sun, and the Community of Dreams. Other features of this Hades are shared with the Hades of λ: it is located beyond Oceanus, while at the same time below the earth (106, 204), and there is an Asphodel Meadow (λ 539, 573). As it is Agamemnon who is to pass judgment on the suitors’ story, they must be brought to where he is, which is in the company of other great Achaean heroes. Before they arrive we hear a substantial dialogue between Achilles and Agamemnon (in which their Iliadic quarrel is forgotten) (23–98). They speak of deaths and funerals, which set the seal on heroic lives. Achilles laments the manner of Agamemnon’s untimely death—the only thing he is noted for in the Odyssey—and the fact that he did not die even sooner at Troy, where he would have been honoured with a fine tomb. Agamemnon in reply felicitates Achilles: his speech is entirely concerned with Achilles’ death and funeral, whose unsurpassed grandeur is the measure of Achilles’ unsurpassed glory. In the earlier part of the poem Q has taken pains to set the story of Odysseus’ return in the wider context of the Nostoi. Here he puts the suitors’ deaths against the background of major heroic ones. Nitzsch conjectured that the occasion of the Nekyia in the Nostoi was the arrival of Agamemnon and his followers in Hades after their slaughter, that they were greeted there by Achilles, and that this was the source from which Q has derived their dialogue in ω.241 Certainly Achilles greets Agamemnon in 24–34 very much as if he is just arriving; he does not ask him how he died, as Odysseus did in λ 397 ff., but in the Nostoi that was unnecessary, as the poet had already told the tale.242 He speaks as if Agamemnon’s son has missed out on

241

Nitzsch 1830–7, ii. 36 f.; cf. F. Dümmler, Rh. Mus. 45 (1890), 189–92 = Kl. Schr. ii. 390–3. 242 In West 2013: 278–82, I have preferred to connect the Nostoi Nekyia with a visit to Hades by the living Menelaos, conducted by Hermes, to see his brother, of whose death he had been told during his wanderings.

ω

299

glory because of the manner of his father’s death, though by the time of Odysseus’ homecoming Orestes has achieved fame by avenging his father: this too favours Nitzsch’s hypothesis.243 The account of Achilles’ death, the battle for his body, and his funeral is certainly based on a para-Homeric epic, the Aethiopis, or perhaps rather the Memnonis that became part of the Aethiopis; see West 2013: 133, 151–7. When Agamemnon comes to the disposal of the bones of Achilles, Patroklos, and Antilochos in 76–9, Q forgets that the souls of Patroklos and Antilochos are supposed to be standing nearby (16). When the suitors arrive Agamemnon and Achilles are the only two still on the scene (101 τώ . . . θαμβήσαντε). They are surprised to see such a crowd of fine-looking young men all coming in together. Agamemnon recognizes one of the new arrivals, Amphimedon, whom we have met in χ 242 ff. He appeared as one of the most reasonable of the suitors, and this may be why Q chooses him as their spokesman. His explanation of Agamemnon’s acquaintance with him (104, developed in 114–19) is an ad hoc invention.244 Agamemnon asks him how he and his comrades have died, adapting lines that Odysseus used to him in λ 399–403, but with a forced change of case in 113 that spoils the syntax (Kirchhoff 535). Amphimedon relates the whole story at length from the suitors’ point of view. His account of Penelope’s deceit with her weaving (128–46) is repeated verbatim from β 93–110 (cf. τ 139–56). It is needed here to justify Agamemnon’s praise of her virtue in 194–8. The next forty lines give a fair summary of the events of ξ–χ. The statement in 167 that it was Odysseus who put Penelope up to setting the bow test has often been seen as evidence for a variant version of the poem in which the recognition took place at an earlier stage and the two acted in collusion.245 But it was natural for the suitors to suppose that they had (Finsler ii. 438; Danek 480); and the fact is that

243 One might argue that news of this has not reached Hades; in λ the heroes’ souls have to ask Odysseus for news about events on earth since they died. But Orestes’ deed ought to have become known with the arrival of Aigisthos and his followers. 244 Liesegang 14. As there was no reason why Amphimedon should ever have gone to Mycenae, the recruitment for the Trojan War suggested itself as a possible occasion for Agamemnon to have come to Ithaca, though in standard versions the recruiting was done by others. For Odysseus’ reluctance to join up (118 f.) cf. Cypria arg. 5b (where Palamedes was present and tricked him); Aesch. Ag. 841; Soph. Phil. 1025, and his €δυσσε&ς μαινόμενος. 245 So Kayser 41 (from 1835); Page 1955: 122–8; well criticized by Fenik 45 f.

300

Proof of the Pudding

Penelope did discuss the bow test with Odysseus in τ 570–87 and he approved the idea, so there is not much of a discrepancy.246 Amphimedon ends by saying that the suitors’ bodies are lying unburied in Odysseus’ house, as their families do not yet know what has happened. This presupposes that the families’ reactions are going to be related later. If, as I suggested earlier, the Second Nekyia was originally composed as an epilogue to end the poem following ψ 299, we may suppose that these lines (186–90) were added after it was set in its present position. Agamemnon reacts to the story with felicitations of Odysseus. He has regained his wife with a great display of heroic virtue. What a sensible woman Penelope is, and how well she kept him in mind! Consequently her fame will never die: the Muses will compose for mortals an attractive poem in her honour. Not like Klytaimestra, who wickedly killed her husband247—there will be a poem about her to make one shudder. In other words, the Odyssey is going to take its place beside the Nostoi. At 205 we return to Odysseus and his companions. They are arriving at Laertes’ establishment, of which a short description is given. The old woman servant mentioned in α 191 now receives greater definition as a Sicilian, and male serfs are also mentioned. Odysseus will need to be alone with Laertes for the recognition scene, so Laertes is out gardening on his own and Odysseus gives his companions something else to do, namely prepare the lunch they will shortly all eat together. (The poetic contrivance recalls that in ξ 24–8.) He gives them his weapons, as he does not want to appear armed before his father. Apart from this mention of the weapons they have brought, the expected conflict with the suitors’ kin remains out of mind for the time being. Laertes’ associates are not with him but occupied elsewhere (222–5). Odysseus comes to the orchard and finds his father with his 246 Cf. Wilamowitz 1927: 46. Bergk 713 f. argues that in an earlier version of τ, when Penelope told the stranger of her problems, he proposed the bow test to her without disclosing his identity, and that this is what ω 167 refers to. The theory has some attractions, only how could the stranger have accounted for his knowledge of Odysseus’ bow and his practice of shooting through axes? 247 The antithesis of Klytaimestra and Penelope appeared earlier at λ 435–46. Antinoos in β 125 acknowledged that Penelope was winning fame for herself by her resistance to the suitors; there too Q was thinking of his own and others’ poetry on the subject.

ω

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head down, digging round a plant. His working clothes are picturesquely described: the dirty, patched tunic, the leather leggings, the gardening gloves, the goatskin cap. Odysseus stands with moist eyes, debating with himself whether to kiss and embrace him and tell him the good news or first make exploratory conversation. That he decides for the latter option is hardly a surprise. As Thiersch observed in 1821, ‘it was against Odysseus’ nature to reveal himself straight away. Another poet would perhaps have let the son immediately fall on his father’s neck and be beside himself with joy . . . But then it was all over.’248 In fact Odysseus has anticipated his decision in 216–18, where he told his men he was going to try Laertes out and see whether he would recognize him or not. He compliments the old man on the good order of his orchard, contrasting it with the neglect apparent in his person. He asks whose serf he is, and whether this is Ithaca; he has passed a man who said so but who seemed a bit of a halfwit. He is wondering whether an old friend of his is still alive, a son of Laertes, a visitor on whom he showered abundant gifts. Laertes, with a tear in his eye, confirms that it is Ithaca, but that the situation is such that the stranger will not find his generosity requited. Your visitor was my son, but he is missing, presumed dead. How long ago was it that you gave him hospitality? Who are you, where do you come from, how did you get here? Odysseus answers with another of his made-up stories. Laertes is overcome with grief. Odysseus can bear it no longer. He falls upon his father and tells him the happy truth. Laertes asks for proofs; not because he is congenitally as mistrustful as his son, but because another opportunity to exploit Odysseus’ scar is not to be passed up. He displays it, reminding his father of the occasion when he acquired it. But the scar is the identifying token that serves for everyone. As with Penelope, he supplements it with a special proof for his addressee: he lists the details of all the trees in the orchard that Laertes gave him when he was a boy. Q enjoys dwelling on these rural settings. Laertes faints with emotion.

248 Thiersch 97, ‘daß es wider den Charakter des Odysseus war, sich geradezu zu entdecken. Ein andrer Dichter vielleicht würde den Sohn sogleich dem Vater haben um den Hals fallen und in der Freude außer sich seyn lassen . . . Dann war aber auch die ganze Dichtung zu Ende.’ Cf. Kammer 744; Lord 178; de Jong 576.

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Proof of the Pudding

When he comes round he exclaims that the gods really still exist if Odysseus has truly punished the suitors. Q now thinks to remind us of the parallel strand of narrative. Laertes voices anxiety about the suitors’ kinsmen (353–5). But the crisis must wait till the rustic idyll is finished. Odysseus tells him not to worry but to come to lunch. They go back to the house, where Telemachos and the others are carving meat and mixing wine. Like Odysseus the day before, Laertes has been doing dirty work, and he is likewise bathed and oiled by his old servant, dressed in nice clothes, and enhanced by Athena (365–71, cf. ψ 153–63). He reappears looking more like the hero he used to be, and Odysseus comments on it. Laertes, echoing the typical opening of the Iliadic speeches in which Nestor wishes that he were as in his youth when he accomplished this and that, recalls his capture of the coastal stronghold of Nerikos—a feat no doubt invented by Q ad hoc—and says that if he were still as he was then, and if he had been there to help Odysseus in his fight with the suitors, he would have accounted for a good number of them. All of this helps to prepare us for the engagement with the suitors’ families, in which Laertes will prove a warrior still to be reckoned with.249 The meal is ready, and those present take their places and start to attack it. Laertes’ men come in: the elderly Dolios, who was mentioned by Penelope at δ 735 and who has also been named as the father of the unpleasant Melanthios and Melantho, and with him his other sons. The old Sicilian woman, who turns out to be their mother (389),250 had gone to fetch them. They are astonished to see Odysseus, and need no lengthy persuasion of his identity; Q and we have had enough of that. They greet him with love and reverence. Dolios is at once concerned over whether Penelope knows he is back and whether someone should be sent to tell her. He presumably has not been apprised of the grisly ends of his two bad children; that matter is simply ignored for the purposes of the present narrative. He and his sons sit down to their lunch. Meanwhile word of the suitors’ fate has spread through the town (413 f.). A crowd of lamenting kinsmen has gone to the palace; the

249

Cf. Heubeck ad loc., ‘The bath scene serves to present the “rejuvenated” Laertes as a worthy fellow combatant alongside the younger men, and to fit him for his ριστεία’. 250 This has no significance for the story and may be an impromptu idea of Q’s; he likes filling in family connections.

ω

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bodies are being taken away for burial or sent back to their native islands on fishing boats. These funerals are dealt with in a mere couple of lines, and the story proceeds as if they have hardly taken any time at all.251 Q is becoming more slapdash as he hastens towards the end.252 An assembly forms in the agora, with the kinsmen now joined by other citizens; the motif is repeated from β. Eupeithes, the father of Antinoos, addresses the gathering, condemning Odysseus both for failing to bring home those who sailed with him to Troy and for killing ‘the best of the Cephallenians’ when he returned. Now they must act to avenge their sons and brothers before he escapes to Pylos or Elis. ‘Let’s go!’ he cries. Q does not trouble to explain how he knows where Odysseus is to be found. At this juncture (439) the herald Medon and the bard Phemios emerge from the palace, where we left them the previous evening cowering at the altar of Zeus Herkeios (though Phemios was called in for the sham wedding, ψ 133/143). To explain why they have not been present at the assembly from the start, Q blandly informs us that they have slept late. Medon addresses the crowd as if he had heard Eupeithes’ speech, declaring that Odysseus had divine assistance, and therefore divine approval, in killing the suitors. This makes the audience afraid. The passage is evidently an expansion.253 It is ignored in Halitherses’ following speech, and the fear that has seized everyone is promptly forgotten. The purpose of the insertion will be to account for these two men who have been left behind in the palace and would otherwise be a loose end. Halitherses is the old augur who spoke to the assembly in β 157 ff.; lines 451–4 are repeated from there. On that occasion he warned of Odysseus’ returning and causing havoc. Now he stands up and says, ‘You should have listened to me before and restrained your arrogant

251 Cf. Schwartz 149, ‘Sie [= die Bestattung der Freier] wird . . . mit flüchtigster Kürze berichtet und stört dort empfindlich; denn sie hält den Rachezug gegen Odysseus und seinen Sohn auf, der Eile verlangte’; Von der Mühll 767, ‘B hat sich die Konsequenzen, die eine Bestattung zeitlich ergeben würde, nicht klar gemacht’. The funerals were also performed at the beginning of the Telegony, but we cannot infer, with Liesegang 8 and others, that Eugammon did not know our ω. Cf. Hennings 595; West 2013: 292. 252 Cf. Hennings 595, ‘Wie eilig der Erzähler von ω es hat, zu Ende zu kommen, merkt man immer deutlicher’. 253 Cf. Wilamowitz 1884: 70 f.; Hennings 596.

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sons. Let us not follow Eupeithes and bring more trouble upon ourselves.’ Two contrary recommendations have been made. The assembly is divided, but the majority supports Eupeithes. His name suggests persuasiveness, and Q plays on it in 465 f., λλ᾽ Επείθει | πείθοντ᾽. They arm themselves and reassemble outside the town, with Eupeithes at their head. We are told in advance that he is ill-advised and will not come out of it alive. Before the two parties meet in conflict, and between the Ithacans’ departure and arrival, the scene changes to Olympus. The action of the poem was initiated in α by Athena asking a question of Zeus. Now she asks another to determine its ending. What does Zeus intend: more fighting, or reconciliation? He replies that it was her will that Odysseus should kill the suitors, so the whole matter is her business. She may do as she pleases; but the fitting outcome is for Odysseus to remain as king indefinitely, ruling in peace and plenty, while the gods make the people forget the slaughter and live in amity as before. This measured response from Zeus, giving guidance but leaving the decision to Athena, recalls the passage in ν (145 ff.) where he gave Poseidon leave to do as he pleased with the Phaeacians but then (after Poseidon showed some diffidence) advised him on what was best.254 ‘With these words he encouraged the already eager Athena, and she darted down from the peaks of Olympus’ (487 f., borrowed from Δ 73 f. = Χ 186 f.). The impression is given that she is going to follow Zeus’ advice and reconcile the opposing parties, but she instigates a battle first. We return to Odysseus and his party. When they finish their meal, Odysseus sends someone out to see if his enemies are approaching. Just as Q neglected to tell us how the Ithacans know where to find Odysseus, so he neglects to tell us how Odysseus knows they are coming. But they are, just when he thinks they may be. He gives the order to his supporters to take up arms. They do so, and we get a muster of their force. They are twelve in all: Odysseus, Telemachos, Eumaios, Philoitios, six sons of Dolios, and the two older men, Dolios and Laertes. Q has given Dolios as many sons as he reasonably can, to make up a presentable little army (Eust. 1965. 7; Liesegang 16).

254

The parallel is noted by Danek 504.

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Odysseus leads them out. There is no parleying: the aggrieved Ithacans do not present their demands (none of them speaks at all in the scene), it is mutually understood that they are to fight. Athena appears, in the familiar guise of Mentor. Odysseus at once recognizes her and is filled with confidence. He turns to Telemachos and puts him on his mettle. Telemachos assures him he will prove worthy of his lineage. Laertes rejoices to see his son and grandson vying with each other in ρετή. Athena encourages Laertes to pray to her and to Zeus and to throw his spear. He does so, immediately killing Eupeithes, the ringleader of the opposing party. There is not even a token duel in the Iliadic manner, though Iliadic formulae are used to describe Laertes’ easy victory. Thus the father of Odysseus kills the father of Antinoos. The feat allows him to recapture something of his heroic prime, which was evoked in passing by the mention of his shield in χ 184 f. If Eupeithes deserves to die, it may be because he failed to restrain his insolent son (cf. 455–60), or because he has instigated this attack on Odysseus. The fall of the enemy leader signals the start of a rout. But Athena steps in to halt the battle. She calls out and tells them to stop it and to settle their differences without bloodshed (though it is a little late for that). She is presumably imagined as stepping out of her Mentor identity, at least in respect of her voice, as her utterance terrifies the Ithacans and puts them to flight in fear for their lives. But it takes more than that to stop Odysseus, who charges after the fleeing men. Zeus has to send a thunderbolt, as in Θ 133 he sends one to halt Diomedes’ pursuit of the Trojans with Nestor. But it lands not in front of Odysseus but of Athena; the effect is to notify her that she must curb him too. She tells him to desist lest he incur Zeus’ wrath. He obeys, inwardly glad, presumably at having to do no more fighting. Q rounds things off with the simple statement that Athena afterwards arranged a pact between the two parties. This is what Zeus called for in 483 to provide for the permanent peace in which Odysseus is to continue his reign. The pact needs to be divinely administered, and Athena is the obvious deity to do it. The closing line, ‘appearing like Mentor in body and voice’ (548 = 503), seems lame, but it is understandable that she will again adopt her human guise as Mentor to preside over the formalities. So the poem totters dizzily to its ending, which, in an unsympathetic mood, one may find almost as comical as that of the Battle of

306

Proof of the Pudding

Frogs and Mice (Spohn 34; Thiersch 122). But let us put on a sympathetic one and see what credit we can give the poet for what he has set out to do. He had a sense of right and wrong, and he lived in a civic community ruled, if not by a written law code, by norms of custom, fairness, and propriety (νόμος, δίκη, θέμις). He was not happy with an Odyssey in which the hero, after massacring the flower of the local youth, who had indeed abused his property and plotted to kill his son but had not in fact shed any blood, simply resumed his domestic life and his kingship with no questions asked. Anyone who conducted himself like that in real life would have consequences to face. In some later versions Odysseus was actually forced into exile. Our poet did not want to contemplate any such miserable outcome, which would have negated the whole thrust of the epic. But he felt it necessary to address the problem of the suitors’ families’ grievances and somehow see to it, without drawing the narrative out too long, that amity was restored between Odysseus and his subjects. He has dealt with it by portraying the Ithacans’ indignation and their readiness to take up arms against Odysseus, and then employing a deus ex machina—not exactly in the tragic manner, since she begins by joining the fight on Odysseus’ side, but then, as would happen in Euripides, she calls a halt to the deviant action and imposes reconciliation. It is an original solution that adds to the poet’s record of artistic innovation in epic.

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Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth. Baltimore 1993 George, A. R., The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts, vols. i–ii. Oxford 2003 Germain, Gabriel, Genèse de l’Odyssée. Le fantastique et le sacré. Paris 1954 Goold, G. P., ‘The Nature of Homeric Composition’, Illinois Classical Studies 2 (1977), 1–34 Grossardt, Peter, Die Trugreden in der Odyssee. Bern 1998 Hainsworth, J. B., ‘Books V–VIII’, in Heubeck et al., i (1988), 249–385 Hansen, William, Ariadne’s Thread: A Guide to International Tales Found in Classical Literature. Ithaca–London 2002 Hartmann, Albert, Untersuchungen über die Sagen vom Tod des Odysseus. Munich 1917 Hennings, P. D. Ch., Homers Odyssee: ein kritischer Kommentar. Berlin 1903 Heubeck, Alfred, Der Odyssee-Dichter und die Ilias. Erlangen 1954 Heubeck, Alfred, ‘Books IX–XII’, in Heubeck et al., ii (1989), 3–143 Heubeck, Alfred, ‘Books XXIII–XXIV’, in Heubeck et al., iii (1992), 313–418 Heubeck, Alfred, et al., A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, vols. i–iii. Oxford 1988–92 Hoekstra, Arie, ‘Books XIII–XVI’, in Heubeck et al., ii. 147–287 Hölscher, Uvo, Untersuchungen zur Form der Odyssee. Szenenwechsel und gleichzeitige Handlungen (Hermes Einzelschriften, 6). Berlin 1939 Hölscher, Uvo, ‘Die Erkennungsszene im 23. Buch der Odyssee’, in E. Römisch (ed.), Griechisch in der Schule (Frankfurt 1972), 156–65; cited from Latacz 1991: 388–405 Hölscher, Uvo, Die Odyssee. Epos zwischen Märchen und Roman. Munich 1988 Howald, Ernst, Der Dichter der Ilias. Erlenbach, Zürich 1946 Jacob, August, Ueber die Entstehung der Ilias und der Odyssee. Berlin 1856 Jacoby, Felix, ‘Die geistige Physiognomie der Odyssee’, Die Antike 9 (1933), 159–94; cited from his Kleine philologische Schriften i (Berlin 1961), 107–38 Jong, Irene de, A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey. Cambridge 2001 Kammer, Eduard, Die Einheit der Odyssee nach Widerlegung der Ansichten von Lachmann. Leipzig 1873 Kayser, K. L., Homerische Abhandlungen, ed. Hermann Usener. Leipzig 1881 Kirchhoff, Adolf, Die homerische Odyssee. Berlin 1879 Koës, G. H. C., Commentatio de discrepantiis quibusdam in Odyssea occurrentibus. Copenhagen 1806 Kretschmer, Paul, Einleitung in die griechische Sprache. Göttingen 1896 Latacz, Joachim (ed.), Homer. Die Dichtung und ihre Deutung (Wege der Forschung, 634). Darmstadt 1991

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Leeuwen, J. van, Odyssea. Cum notis criticis, commentariis exegeticis, indicibus ad utrumque epos pertinentes edidit. Leiden 1917 Lesky, Albin, Homeros (repaginated reprint from RE Supp. xi. 687–846). Stuttgart 1967 Leumann, Manu, Homerische Wörter. Basel 1950 Liesegang, Helmuth, De extrema Odysseae parte dissertatio. Bielefeld 1855 Lord, A. B., The Singer of Tales. Cambridge, Mass. 1960 Lorimer, H. L., Homer and the Monuments. London 1950 Marzullo, Benedetto, Il problema omerico, 2nd edn. Milan–Naples 1970 Merkelbach, Reinhold, Untersuchungen zur Odyssee, 2nd edn. Munich 1969 Meuli, Karl, Odyssee und Argonautika, Berlin 1921 = Gesammelte Schriften (Basel 1975), ii. 593–676 Monro, D. B., Homer’s Odyssey, Books XIII–XXIV. Oxford 1901 Müller, Wilhelm, Homerische Vorschule. Leipzig 1824; cited from the 2nd edn. (Leipzig 1836) Niese, Benedictus, Die Entwickelung der homerischen Poesie. Berlin 1882 Nitzsch, G. W., Erklärende Anmerkungen zu Homers Odyssee, vols. i–iii. Hanover 1826–40 (cited as Nitzsch i, ii, iii) Nitzsch, G. W., De Historia Homeri maximeque de scriptorum carminum aetate meletemata, fasc. i–ii. Hanover 1830–7 Nutzhorn, F., Die Entstehungsweise der homerischen Gedichte. Untersuchungen über die Berechtigung der auflösenden Homerkritik. Leipzig 1869 Page, Denys, The Homeric Odyssey. Oxford 1955 Page, Denys, Folktales in Homer’s Odyssey. Cambridge, Mass. 1973 Radermacher, Ludwig, Die Erzählungen der Odyssee (Sitzungsber. d. Kais. Ak. d. Wiss. in Wien, Phil.-hist. Kl., 178. 1). Vienna 1915 Reinhardt, Karl, Tradition und Geist. Gesammelte Essays zur Dichtung. Göttingen 1960 Russo, Joseph, ‘Books XVII–XX’, in Heubeck et al., iii (1992), 3–127 Rüter, Klaus, Odysseeinterpretationen. Untersuchungen zum ersten Buch und zur Phaiakis (Hypomnemata, 19). Göttingen 1969 Schadewaldt, Wolfgang, Von Homers Welt und Werk, 4th edn. Stuttgart 1966 Schadewaldt, Wolfgang, Hellas und Hesperien, vol. i, 2nd edn. Zurich– Stuttgart 1970 Scheibner, Gerhard, ‘Ein Versuch, Entstehungszeit und -ort der Endform der Odyssee zu bestimmen’, Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der FriedrichSchiller-Universität Jena (Gesellschafts- und sprachwissenschaftliche Reihe). 14 (1965), 93–6 Schwartz, Eduard, Die Odyssee. Munich 1924 Seeck, Otto, Die Quellen der Odyssee. Berlin 1887 Spohn, F. A. W., Commentatio de extrema Odysseae parte. Leipzig 1816

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Index Acheron 123–4, 213111 Achilles 5, 28, 221–2, 298–9 Aethiopis 24, 28, 40, 169, 222, 299 Aetolia 8 afternoon 258 Agamemnon’s murder 29, 102, 109, 145–6, 150, 163, 221, 298 Aia 119 Aiolos 118, 121, 204–5 Aithiopes 37–8, 83, 145, 167 Ajax (Locrian) 2910, 16130, 162 Ajax (Telamonian) 6, 16130, 222 Alcaeus (frr. 440–1) 42–3 Alcman (PMGF 68, 80–1) 40, 42, 89 Alpamysh 17–18 ambrosia 178, 226133 Amphinomos 260, 265, 275, 285 animal recognizes returning hero 15, 17 anticipation of later episode 19578 Antikleia 11, 99, 127, 217 suicide? 217120 Antiklos 17040 Antinoos 56, 152, 251 Apollo festival 274 Apollonius Rhodius 12050 apology for curtailment of detail 219125 archery contests 16–17 Archilochus 34–5 Arete 132–3, 181 relationship to Alkinoos 132 Argonautica 2–3, 21, 30, 39–43, 119–20, 122, 207–8, 209106, 225–6 Ariadne 89 Arimaspians 20 Aristarchus 1479, 15117, 162, 294237 Aristeas of Proconnesus 20, 21, 9710 Aristophanes of Byzantium 1479, 162, 232, 294237 arming scene 285 Artakie 42, 120, 207 Athens 89–91, 187–8 Attic myths 89, 219124 Atlas 119, 128–9 Autolykos 11, 23

Babylonian world map 214113 bad Greek 71–6, 79, 81 Balaklava 119, 206–7 bathing scenes 165, 184 Bittlestone, Robert 8852 Black Sea exploration 21, 40–1 book division, see rhapsodies Bounima 8 bow, Asiatic 18 brachylogy 80 brother–sister marriages 132 Callinus 34 Calypso 115, 119, 127–9 Capture of Oichalia 278 catalogues 218, 287 Cattle of Sun 120, 216, 228–9 Caucasian mythology 18–21 Cercopes 11, 14, 23 characterization 56 new characters introduced 56–7 Charybdis 225–8, 229–30 Cimmerians 39, 119, 209106, 214 Circassian myths 19–21 Circe 30, 86, 115, 119, 122–3, 126, 197, 207–8, 210–14, 224–7 Clashing Rocks 119, 225–6 concordance interpolation 7834, 79, 94, 1479, 15117, 152, 16232, 227, 239156, 241159, 268, 269200 Corcyra 84–5 Crete 87, 108, 115, 233, 268–9 Odysseus in Crete? 108–10 plan for Telemachos to visit 107–10 Cyclic epics 2, 24–5, 27–30, 18255 see also individual titles Cyclopes 116, 130–1, 198 see also folk-tales, Polyphemos Cypria 28 Cyprus 256 Deiphobos 17040, 195 Delos 87, 91 Demodokos’ songs 133–5, 192, 194, 195

312

Index

descriptive passages 51–3 destiny 50, 179 deus ex machina 306 dialogue 54–5, 63–5, 167 ‘hypotenuse’ conversation 63 questions left unanswered 64, 189 Diokles of Pharai 166 Dodona 124 dogs, poet’s interest in 55–6 Argos 255 Dolios 175, 302, 304 Doloneia 1, 24, 251, 26, 40 dreams 175, 182, 239, 271, 273 ‘-eaters’ (-ϕάγοι) 11643 Echetos 260 Egypt 36–7, 83 Egyptian literature 97 elegy 34–5, 260 Elpenor 213, 215 Elymoi 83, 179 emotional reactions portrayed 54 Eryx 179 Etruscans 7 Euboea 90, 190 Eumaios 235, 237 birth story 83–4 descendants in Ithaca 8854 Eurykleia 153, 159, 270–1 Eurymachos 56, 152, 251, 264 Eurynome 257 Eurytanes 8, 9 expansions, see insertions family values 47 fate, see destiny ferrymen of dead 130 first-person narrative 96–8 folk-tales, folk-tale motifs Blinded Ogre 2, 12–13, 18–21 floating islands 20496 forbidden container opened 20598 king’s daughter assists hero 129, 171, 181, cf. 207 Returning Husband 2, 3, 15–18, 49, 95–6, 99, 137, 278215, 282221 stag leads hunter to Mistress of Animals 208104 travellers find empty dwelling 199, cf. 207 trick name (Nobody, Myself) 20189

weaving unpicked 105 witch living in forest 208 food, mortal and immortal 178 Gemoll, Albert 25 geography 82–6, 118–21 Giants, Gigantes 85, 132 Gilgāmesh epic 31–2, 97, 126, 12767, 1441, 19476, 217 girl encountered at fountain 131 Glaukos 5 gods beautiful woman suspected of divinity 18457 departure in bird form 15114, 164, 287 indefinite θεός 233145 provide wind for ships 160, 213, 227, 240, 242 treatment in Iliad and Odyssey 48–9 Gorgon 224 Hades, see Nekyia Helen 168 Heracles poems 2, 30–1, 32, 95, 128–9, 278 deification of Heracles 89, 223131 expedition to Hades 124, 223, 224132 Hermes 211, 239 as psychopomp 298 heroic saga draws in new heroes 5–6 heroines 218–19 Hesiod 2, 32–4, 268198 Catalogue of Women 218 Heubeck, Alfred 26 Hipponax 259 ‘Homer’, Homeridai 43 Homeric Hymns Demeter 41 Pythian Apollo 42, 243163 homicide motivates exile 233 iambus 34–5, 259, 260 Idomeneus 6, 107–10, 268–9 Iliad date 40 diffusion 89, 91 geographical outlook 82 imitated or misused 2, 25–7, 70–6 stimulated production of written epics 27 Iliou Persis 25, 29, 40, 195 inconsistency 58, 66–8, 92–3

Index individualization of characters 56–7 insertions, authorial 4, 93–4, 127, 131–2, 133–5, 142, 1479, and passim invisibility 187–8, 247 Iros 259 Ismaros 38, 197 Italy 84 Ithaca 88, 231 civic society 100–1, 154 poet’s knowledge of 88, 231 Klytaimestra 1465, 221, 300 Kobaloi 11 Kokytos 123–4, 213111 Krataiis 227 Laertes 23, 99, 139–40, 149, 175, 217, 244, 247, 287, 291, 300–2, 305 Laistrygones 86, 119, 120, 206–7 Leodes 280, 288 Libya 37–8, 83, 167 Little Iliad 25, 28–9, 40, 169–70, 222 Lotus-eaters 116, 120, 198 λυκάβας 237154 maids, Odysseus’ 68, 249, 270–2, 289–90 Marathon 89 Maron, Maroneia 38, 19783, 199 marriage esteemed 47 Medon 175, 288–9, 303 Megapenthes 166 Melanthios 254–5, 286–7 Melantho 264, 267 Melesigenes 4341 Memnon, Memnonis 24, 28, 40, 89, 299 Menelaos’ wanderings 29–30, 108–9, 115–18, 163–4 Mentor 157 Messene 38–9 metre anomalies 81–2 Attic correption 90–1 Monro, D. B. 26 motivation, weak 65–6, 10726, 140, 192, 245, 252, 261 myth as exemplum 281 names confused 8850, 17951, 243163, 273206 held back for climactic effect 237 invented ad hoc 5611, 148, 155, 193 narrative technique 57–65

313

beginning from static situation 106–7 distribution of material 59 elisions 59, 177, 250, 269199 first-person narrative 96–8 information held back 58, 136, 145 suspense 58, 175, 187, 242–3 transitions 61–2, 181 typical scenes 60–1, 153, 160, 165, 166, 173 see also dialogue, nightfall, timetabling Narts 18–21 naturalism 53–5, 61, 167, 168, 236 Nausikaa 181 potential marriage to Odysseus 182, 185, 18966, 190 Navel of the Sea 128 Nekyia 98, 122–7, 214–24 dead divided by categories 214 Second Nekyia 297–300 nekyomanteia 8–9, 123–4 Neoptolemos 166, 19783, 84, 222 night prolonged for lovemaking 295 nightfall used to punctuate narrative 15012, 169, 172, 178 action proposed for morrow 152, 188–9, 243 Nostoi 25, 29–30, 89, 161, 162, 166, 188, 19783, 84, 222128, 300 underworld scene 124, 218, 219124, 298 numbers, typical six men perish together 226 nine days 11642 ten days 159 Oceanus 214 Odyssey area of origin 86–91 as foil to Agamemnon epic 102, 297, 300 author’s name 43 dating 35–43 dependence on Iliad 2, 25–7, 70–6 differences from Iliad 44–5 earlier versions 21–3, 92, 96, 103–5, 109–10, 115–18, 121–2, 124–5, 128, 134, 139–42, 15623, 291, 293, 294–5 moral dimension 49, 306 oral background 92 τέλος according to ancient critics 294237

314

Index

text adjusted to Cyclic material 17039, 40, 17244 values 45–7 Odysseus as trickster 9–11 bed, built-in 293–4 bow 137, 278 death legend 14 false tales 36, 58, 67, 108, 110, 116, 124, 233, 237–8, 256, 268–9, 301 family and background 98–9, 100 in Epirus 8–9 in Iliad and Cycle 5, 10 Laertiades 23 name 6–7 oracles 8–9 origins 2, 5–11 πολύμητις, πολύτλας 10 quarrel with Achilles 192 reluctance to join Trojan War 299244 sisters 99, 244 transformations 67–8, 235–6, 247, 251 see also wanderings Olrik, Axel 21 Olympian scenes 48, 145 omens 49, 75, 156, 241, 245, 254, 273, 275, 283 oracles Delphi 192 of dead 8–9, 123–4 Orestes as role model for Telemachos 102, 1465, 150, 162, 221 exile at Athens 89, 221 matricide glossed over 1465, 16130 Orpheus 21, 97, 120, 124 Ortygia 84 Ossetes 19–20 palaces, palace life 52–3, 167 Odysseus’ palace 106, 285–6 Panathenaea 43 Pandareos’ daughters 273 Peisistratos (Nestor’s son) 90, 161 Athenian tyrant 90 Peleus 222 Penelope attitude towards suitors 68, 105, 156 collusion with Odysseus? 263–4, 267, 299–300 contrasted with Klytaimestra 102, 221, 300

family 99–100 name 10521 weaving 103, 105, 156 perfunctoriness 65, 303 Phaeacians 42–3, 46, 84–5, 98, 129–35, 231–3 Phaidra 89 Pharai (Φηραί ) 8748, 88, 166 Pharos 36–7, 171 Phemios 151, 288–9, 303 Philoitios 274–5 descendants in Ithaca 8854 Philomeleides of Lesbos 17141 Phoenicians 36, 233, 244 Polykaste, daughter of Nestor 166 Polyphemos 12–13, 22, 4133, 95, 198–204 Poseidon’s wrath 48, 120, 125, 146, 19680, 203, 215–16, 232 Prokne, Prokris 89 Prometheus 11, 20–1 prophecies 49–50, 149, 192, 196, 203, 211, 231–2 Proteus 117–18, 171–3 Psammetichos 37 recognitions 15, 10117, 247, 270, 280, 292–4, 300–1 removal of the arms 136–7, 248–9, 265–6 re-use of existing verses 69–80 Rhadamanthys 190 rhapsodies (dαψωιδίαι, recitation-units) 43, 290 rivers of underworld 213111 rusticity 52 Sarpedon 5 scenic description 51–2, 177, 199 Scheria 84–5; see also Phaeacians scholiast’s insights 15115, 15320, 16334 Scylla 225–6, 228 Scythians 18, 20–1, 82 seafaring, poet’s experience 8855 seer’s warning dismissed 157 Semonides 35 sententiousness 64–5 shamanistic figures 21, 97 Shiduri 126, 12767 ships Odysseus’ twelve 114–15, 12152, 198, 205, 207 Phaeacians’ turned to stone 85, 232–3 Sicily 36, 38, 83–4, 130

Index Sidon 36, 244 similes 55–6, 62–3, 73, 171, 175, 183, 195–6, 272204 Sinuhe 97 Sirens 4133, 119–20, 225, 227 Sisyphos 11, 14, 23 sleep guests sleep in porch 72, 165 Penelope’s daytime sleeps 151, 251, 262, 282 sleeper woken by kick 240 sleepless person thinks 240, 272 untimely sleep 229 Solymian mountains 179 Stesichorus (PMGF 209) 41, 241159 suitors duration of presence 103, 156 individualization 56 number 3, 59, 104, 138, 271202 vices 46, 68, 284 Syria (island) 84 Tantalos 20, 21 Taphians 244 Taygetos 87, 164 Teiresias 9, 123–5, 213, 215–16 Telegony 14, 41, 43, 234148, 303251 Telemachos 15, 98–9, 102, 147, 217 age 103–4 bedroom 77, 153 characterization 68, 151 coming of age 274 descendants in Ithaca 88 in Iliad 22, 98 likeness to Odysseus 149, 168–9 marriage prospects 166, 241 name 9912 Telemachy 2–3, 94–5, 98, 106–13, 141 chronology 112–13 Telepylos, see Laistrygones Temese 84

315

Theban myths 218, 219124, 280219 Theoklymenos 242, 245, 252–3, 254, 274, 276–7 Theopompus 3927 Theseus 89, 224 his sons 40 Thesprotia 8, 9, 123–5 Thon, Thonis 37 Thrinakia, see Cattle of Sun timetabling extra days added 59, 135, 141–2, 186, 191, 196, 209, 219–20, 249, 251–2 narrative strands not synchronized 112–13, 174, 239–40, 243 problems in structuring day 202, 224–5, 233, 258 Tityos 21, 190 Trampya 8, 9 transposed passages 94, 142, 188, 277, 295–6 tricksters 10–11 tripods in cave of Nymphs 8852 Troezen 89 two-messenger problem 57, 111 typical scenes, see narrative technique underworld journeys 97–8, 124, 126, 223 Usener, Knut 26 wanderings of Odysseus 3, 21, 94–8, 109–10, 113–35 duration 59, 103, 115, 117, 157 of Menelaos 29–30, 108–9, 115–18, 163–4 wealth, obsession with 46 wind-knots 205 women, prominence in Odyssey 47 word-play 7, 17950, 20190, 259185, 304 Zenodotus’ text 107–8, 16233