[Alternatively, the essay may be accessed in the following two links:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lnxbdMCfo_ArKkhqWJNfa5t6x2pRwcPRuTasti3klTc/edit?usp=sharing
]
Classics 3220
Zhixian (Alex) Li
Professor Chiara Sulprizio
April 19th, 2020
Social and Religious Shifts in Odysseus’s Homecoming
The Odyssey can be divided into two parts. While the first narrates Odysseus’s wandering for ten years across the sea, the second part elaborates the final moments of his homecoming, especially fighting against the suitors to restore his status and glory. In the first part of the Odyssey, nostos for Odysseus is not just an adventure, but also a hope guiding him to never lose sight of his destination. His wanderings across the seas present him with challenges he must overcome to retain his status and escape death.[1] Reading through his homecoming, we can see an Odysseus constantly experiencing mental changes that mirror shifts in the Achaean society that adjust to a more settled down lifestyle. While nostos is mostly a human concern, divine interactions do play an important part in Odysseus’s homecoming, both in helping and harming him. The shifts in the roles of deities within a changing society also illustrate themselves in the wandering phase of Odysseus’s nostos. While the first part of the Odyssey illustrates shifts in social and religious structures of the ancient Greek world, the second part illustrates exceptions to these shifts within Odysseus’s homeland, Ithaca. This essay will place its focus on the first part of the Odyssey, elaborating how social and divine perceptions shift within the Achaean society. It will also expand on how these anomalies of these changes in the second part of the epic are explained in Homer’s narration.
CHANGES IN SOCIETY
The theme of nostos is often tied to kleos, or glory.[2] Since the Odyssey is a “tale about Odysseus”, it depicts our hero as “glorious” throughout. But the way Odysseus achieves this glory changes throughout the epic. Initially, such kleos is achieved through violence. In Book 9, Odysseus tells the Phaeacians how he “sacked the city” of Ismarus and “killed the men” at his journey’s start.[3] Violence of such kind is glorified in accordance to the Achaean warrior code. In a warrior society, the more prizes—gairas—one has, the more glory is bestowed upon him. This moment of Odysseus expresses a juxtaposition of two worlds—the world of his narration and the world in which he is situated. While violence is the pathway to glory in his narration, his current situation—being a guest at the Phaeacians and where he shares his experiences—illustrates the alternative way of gaining glory through good xenia, the guest and host relationship. These two worlds at different phases of his journey illustrate a change in his way of seeking glory. No longer the “marauder” in the earlier stages of his adventures home, Odysseus gains respect from his hosts through his noble behavior and willingness to share his story. The changes in Odysseus’s modes of gaining glory reflect how the perception and definition of glory shifts in Achaean society. After the historical “great war” that is presumably the Trojan war, ancient Achaean societies moved away from a warrior society into an agricultural society. As society’s structure changes, the ancient warrior codes begin to appear as dysfunctional. This dysfunctionality is implicitly discussed in Odysseus’s katabasis, especially in his encounters with Achilles. Achilles has earned all the kleos deserved by a warrior. Honored “like a god” before his death, Achilles even “lord[s] it over the dead” when Odysseus encounters him in the underworld.[4] But Achilles is not happy in the underworld, confessing that he would rather be the “slave” of a “dirt-poor tenant farmer” than “rule” over the “breathless dead”.[5] Achilles’s struggle and sadness with death reflects the dilemma of the warrior code. The only way to follow the warrior code strictly is to win great glory at the expense of life, but even the worst form of living is better than all the glory of the noblest death. While Achilles symbolizes the old warriors, Odysseus represents a new generation of hero who, through a successful nostos, can achieve glory even when he is alive without the feat of arms.
As trade and hospitality began to play increasingly important roles in agricultural societies, the memories and the ways of life in a warrior society must be abandoned for the better advancement of the entire community. Such a difficult transition is symbolized in the scene of the sirens. In Book 12, the sirens attempt to seduce Odysseus by hinting at a song “they would like to sing”, narrating “all the pains that the Greeks and Trojans once endured on the spreading plain of Troy”.[6] Such a song, as we know it, is the Iliad, the song of ancient warriors like Achilles and Ajax. In short, this is the song of “the warrior Odysseus”, a song that would bring him kleos if it has been sung repeatedly. Yet it is also the song that would push him and his crew to death, failing his attempt at homecoming—his current way of obtaining glory. Instinctively, Odysseus yearns with a “throbbing heart” to stay and listen to the song, to gain kleos from his warrior past.[7] At this point, he symbolizes the people who cannot outlive the past—such as Ajax’s ghost who still cannot let go the quarrel with Odysseus. It is very suggestive that if the crew members do what Odysseus ordered, they would all end up in the underworld where Achilles and Ajax—the warriors who cannot let go of their past—remained forever. The crew’s determined action of having “flung themselves at the oar and rowed on harder”, however, leaves no chance for such dangerous actions. In their disobedience to the stubborn part of Odysseus’s mind, the crew members reflect society’s steady, unrelenting movement towards the future—the only action that would “bring everyone home” on the ship. Forced to move along with the crew members, Odysseus transitions in this scene from the “marauder” to the “guest”, a change persisting throughout the rest of his homecoming until his arrival at Ithaca.
CHANGES IN PERCEPTION OF THE DIVINE
Apart from Athena, most of the deities Odysseus encounters in his nostos are depicted to live in separate spheres from humans. This segregation between humans and the immortals persists in their attempts to detain our hero with either tricks or outright threats, both of which potentially menace his successful homecoming. The failure of Calypso in detaining Odysseus lies in the difference between divine and human spheres. The most fundamental difference lies in their perception of the eternal. What Calypso offers Odysseus is a godly eternality, becoming deathless if he does not leave the island.[8] Odysseus’s persistence in his nostos despite Calypso’s entreaty of making him immortal reflects, to a deeper level, the human perception of weighing spiritual kleos over physical existence. While Odysseus will continue his mortal life when he returns to Penelope, he gains glory in front of his countryman by narrating his clever tricks and experiences on his ten year return journey. On the other hand, though staying with Calypso will make him immortal, his image will die in the Achaean people. If he does not guard his status, he will be soon forgotten. The loss of his kleos—the loss of people remembering him—marks his spiritual death. Odysseus’s choice reflects how homecoming serves as an entirely human business separate from the sacred sphere. While the deities gain glory through their immortality, the human counterpart of immortality must be gained through a successful nostos, through which he can have his memories and legend passed down over the generations.
Calypso is not the only deity who imperils Odysseus’s homecoming. Most divine interventions that directly threatens Odysseus’s survivals in his homecoming are without a reason. The deathless harmers, notably the Cyclops Polyphemus, impose ordeals upon Odysseus’s journey out of simple, animalistic instincts to destroy. The lack of human civilization illustrates itself in the scenic descriptions of the Cyclops’ island. The Cyclops “never plant with their own hands or plow the soil”, which makes them less civilized than the newly agrarian Achaeans. Their status as immortals—however—still guarantee that they have “all they need, wheat, barleys and vines”.[9] The “unmappable, fantastical” nature of this landscape suggests its departure from mortal perception.[10] The landscape of the earth is marked by sense. The more a community of mortals devote to the advancement of agriculture—the hard work in taking care of crops and plowing the land—the more they would expect to harvest in return. This belief is essential in establishing order for society. But in the landscape of the immortals restrained by no common laws, such beliefs fail to function. Thus, it is no surprise that Polyphemus violates xenia, which serves as the bedrock of new Achaean culture.
The deities are not only represented as lacking sense and order, but also overriding and unescapable. In response to Odysseus’s wishes to “fight Scylla off when Scylla strikes my men”, Circe taunts him as a “stubborn hero” and warns him that to “flee the creature” of “immortal devastation” is “the only way” for him to survive, which serves as the key to a successful nostos.[11] Circe’s remarks reflect a common theme in the Odyssey that involves “the more or less arbitrary persecution of a mortal by an angry deity”.[12] This theme could be applied to Poseidon’s interventions, the most major force behind Odysseus’s failure in achieving a faster nostos. While arguably, Poseidon’s punishment spring from the fact that Odysseus blinded his son Polyphemus, the “excessiveness” Poseidon enacts such a punishment upon Odysseus’s action of self-defense makes it nevertheless an arbitrary deed.[13]
The tendency to characterize deities as omnipotent yet irrational illustrates the restoration of hierarchy of deities, mortals, and animals. In warfare, such hierarchies are broken. The Iliad begins with the scene of the “great fighters’” bodies discarded to be the “feast for dogs and birds”.[14] Animals lording it over humans shows the utter breakdown of order and civilization. This type of chaos is mirrored in Book 5 of the Iliad, where Diomedes fights the gods in his aristeia. Not only did he wound Aphrodite under the double motivation of Athena—the impression of Aphrodite as “a weaker goddess”, Diomedes also attempts to charge against Apollo’s protection of Aeneas.[15] Indeed, the final reminder by Apollo on the fact that “the deathless gods and men who walk the earth” will never be “of the same breed” restores the overpowering status of gods over humans, but it is highly suggestive that human warriors in their best moments can mirror the performance of gods.[16] Such an effect is further illustrated in the interactions between Athena and Achilles. Talking to him more like a revered peer than a dread goddess speaking to a mere mortal, Athena’s divine intervention between the quarrels of Achilles and Agamemnon is not done by overpowering force, but a convincing statement on equal grounds that seemingly eliminates the hierarchical separation between gods and men.[17]
Since upheavals of the hierarchy are caused by the chaos of war, the theological order begins to be restored as society settles down. Stories and literary works describing the postwar scenes often place a heavy focus on the theme of religious order. Subsequently, the relationship between religious power and the journey back home becomes increasingly apparent. Aeschylus’s Ajax ascribes the hero’s failure in embarking on his homecoming to the hero’s hubris. Ajax’s shameful death—killing himself on Trojan soil, never able to even embark upon his homecoming—is mainly caused by the double motivation of Athena, who controls his soul. Punishing Ajax for his “boastfulness” in asserting that he can “gain glory without them [the gods]”, Athena is depicted not as a caring helper, but the enactment of religious order.[18] A similarly imposing role can be found of the Athena represented in Aeschylus’s Oresteia. After the murder of his mother, Orestes is forced—by the chasing furies—to embark on a journey towards Athena’s temple. It is up to the goddess to settle the tension between the tenets of “newer gods” and the more ancient deities through her “restorative justice”.[19] More importantly, Athena’s act of restoring Orestes “to [his] home” guarantees both his physical nostos back home and a symbolic return to his status as prince in the house of Atreus.[20] While presenting the divine as without “justice” and “moral[s]”, the Odyssey’s presentation of the gods as powerful stakeholders in the mortal’s nostos follows the conventions of classical works depicting post Trojan war scenes by its positioning of an inherent power relationship between the mortals and the gods in the hero’s homecoming.
EXCEPTIONS IN ODYSSEUS’S RETURN IN STATUS
Athena’s relationship to Odysseus serves as an exception in front of all the separations between the gods and humans. It is Athena who, at the end of Odysseus’s nostos, aids him to restore his status as king of Ithaca through the scheme of disguise. While seemingly disruptive of the rigid hierarchy between mortals and humans, the close relationship between Athena and Odysseus is justified by their like-mindedness and Odysseus’s exceptional, godlike disposition with respect to metis. The exceptional relationship between the two makes Athena the only major deity that provides genuine help to Odysseus’s homecoming.
Odysseus foils Athena as the human representation of metis in the epic. Athena’s appreciation of Odysseus’s like-mindedness manifests in her tolerance. In Book 13, despite knowing that it was Athena behind her disguise, Odysseus does not “tell the truth”, attempting to mislead her with the “Cretan” lie he made up to tell Eumaeus. Normally, such acts of offense towards the higher beings would be severely punished. Athena, however, is not angry with Odysseus. To some extent, she is even praising him with her oxymoronic phrases. Stanley Lombardo’s translation provides a most concise version of this praise with complex emotions, calling Odysseus a “wily bastard”.[21] Although Athena denounces his hubristic deeds by calling Odysseus a “bastard”, she seems at the same time pleased at Odysseus’s “wily” attempts to disguise himself. After all, Athena’s own plans are of a similarly “wily” nature, ordering Odysseus to continue his disguise as a beggar to understand the situation with the large number of suitors in his house.
To justify this anomaly in human-god relationships, Homer elevates Odysseus’s metis and use of disguise to be “godly” in several parts of the Odyssey. In particular, after Athena transformed Odysseus from his disguised form of a beggar to a “fresh and clean” human, Telemachus exclaimed that he is surely “some god who rules the vaulting skies”, refusing to believe that he is really the long lost father.[22] Indeed, Odysseus’s refuge in a disguised form is not only a part of his character, but also the ideas and efforts of his protector goddess Athena. The similarity between minds of Athena and Odysseus breaks down the rigid religious boundaries faced between them. While the deity tolerates human mischief, the mortal is willing to listen to her because Athena’s similar mind operates upon a rationality he understands. Such a cooperative bond between the goddess and the man helps Odysseus’s homecoming with divine power.
Odysseus’s bloodthirsty fight against the suitors to complete his restoration of status contradicts the paradigm’s transition set up in the earlier books—the peaceful exchange of good xenia—through a gruesome bloodshed that is reminding of warrior combats throughout the Trojan war. By providing graphic imagery of “skulls cracked open” and “the whole floor awash with blood”, book 22 carries on the traditional narrative of the Iliad where violence is made into a type of art.[23] Arguably, it contradicts the trend of Odysseus becoming more and more fitting to a society founded upon trade and hospitality throughout the epic. Odysseus’s essential goal of achieving a successful nostos, however, justifies his cruelty. Homecoming, after all, is all about “saving oneself”.[24] Just as Odysseus’s name suggests, the willingness to endure as well as to inflict pain upon others is key for ultimate survival. There are many occasions in which Odysseus, consciously or unconsciously, inflicted pain upon others to survive. While knowing that Scylla will devour some of his crew members, Odysseus still chooses the crossing with the two divine destroyers over the “Clashing Rocks”, where it is granted that he would die with his crew members. Furthermore, despite the possibility of overkill, Odysseus’s slaughters are depicted as “just”. Following Telemachus’s pleading innocence for the “bard and the herald”, Odysseus spares their lives.[25] Despite the cruelty of his acts, the Odysseus in book 22 does not slaughter innocent individuals as the Odysseus at the start of the epic commits.
In conclusion, the change in Odysseus’s way of gaining kleos throughout his nostos reflects the change in accepted behavior following society’s shift from war-oriented to agriculture-oriented. As people gradually adjust to a more settled lifestyle, the religious power relationship between gods and mortals also begins to stabilize. The characterization of divine beings that interferes with Odysseus’s homecoming as been separated from human spheres yet overriding in power follows a stratification of the hierarchy between immortals and mortals. Seeming contradictions to social and divine norms are justified in the epic by Odysseus’s godly nature and ultimate strive for homecoming. Since he does not commit the acts of overkill prevalent during wartime, Odysseus’s main goal of saving himself in order to come back to his deserved status justifies the slaughter of suitors in his house. While Homer characterizes Odysseus primarily as the “ultimate survivor”, Odysseus’s endurance of pain casted by the higher beings and his characters of metis make him the symbol of human efforts for a newly agrarian society to rebuild itself as it walks away from the shadows of war.
Bibliography:
- Bonifazi, Anna. “Inquiring into Nostos and Its Cognates.” American Journal of Philology 130, no. 4 (2009): 481-510.
- Alexopoulou, Marigo. The Theme of Returning Home in Ancient Greek Literature: The Nostos of the Epic Heroes. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2009.
- Homer. Odyssey. Translated by Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin Books, 1996.
- Schur, David. “The Silence of Homer’s Sirens.” Arethusa 47, no. 1 (2014): 1-17.
- Purves, Alex. “Unmarked Space: Odysseus and the Inland Journey.” Arethusa 39, no. 1 (2006): 1-20.
- Loney, Alexander C. “Narrative Revenge and the Poetics of Justice in the Odyssey: A Study on Tisis.” PhD diss., Duke University, 2010.
- Homer. Iliad. Translated by Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin Books, 1998.
- Hooker, J. T. “The Visit of Athena to Achilles in Iliad I.” Emerita 58, (1990): 21-32.
- Kennedy, Rebecca Futo. “Athena/Athens on Stage: Athena in the Tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles.” PhD diss., The Ohio State University, 2003.
- Dugdale, Eric, and Gerstbauer, Loramy. “Forms of Justice in Aeschylus’s Eumenides.” Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek Political Thought 34, no.2 (2017): 226-250. https://doi.org/10.1163/20512996-12340125.
- Aeschylus. Oresteia. Translated by Peter Meineck. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co., 1998.
- Homer. Odyssey. Translated by Stanley Lombardo. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co., 2000.
[1] Anna Bonifazi, “Inquiring into Nostos and Its Cognates,” American Journal of Philology 130, no. 4 (2009): 492;
[2] Marigo Alexopoulou, The Theme of Returning Home in Ancient Greek Literature: The Nostos of the Epic Heroes (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2009), 2–5;
[3] Homer, Odyssey, trans. Robert Fagles (New York: Penguin Books, 1996), 212;
[5] Homer, Odyssey, 265;
[6] Homer, Odyssey, 277; David Schur, “The Silence of Homer’s Sirens,” Arethusa 47, no. 1 (2014): 3;
[8] Homer, Odyssey, 158-159;
[10] Alex Purves, “Unmarked Space: Odysseus and the Inland Journey,” Arethusa 39, no. 1 (2006): 2-3;
[11] Homer, Odyssey, 275;
[12] Alexander C. Loney, “Narrative Revenge and the Poetics of Justice in the Odyssey: A Study on Tisis” (PhD diss., Duke University, 2010), 84;
[13] Loney, “Narrative Revenge”, 84;
[14] Homer, Iliad, trans. Robert Fagles (New York: Penguin Books, 1998), 77;
[16] Homer, Iliad, 178-179;
[17] J. T. Hooker, “The Visit of Athena to Achilles in Iliad I,” Emerita 58, (1990): 28-30;
[18] Rebecca Futo Kennedy, “Athena/Athens on Stage: Athena in the Tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles” (PhD diss., The Ohio State University, 2003), 107-109;
[19] Eric Dugdale and Loramy Gerstbauer, “Forms of Justice in Aeschylus’s Eumenides,” Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek Political Thought 34, no.2 (2017): 229-230, https://doi.org/10.1163/20512996-12340125;
[20] Aeschylus, Oresteia, trans. Peter Meineck, (Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co., 1998), 149;
[21] Homer, Odyssey, trans. Stanley Lombardo (Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co., 2000): 347-348;
[24] Bonifazi, “Cognates”, 491;
[25] Homer, Odyssey, 449-450;
Athena and the Trojan War 