CLAS203 Lecture 34 Notes
Saw in Iliad that the Heroic Ideal is exemplified by Achilles
Questions to think about:
o Who is the best of the Achaeans?
Odysseus or Achilles?
o Two different modes of agon (competition)
Odysseus competes with metis (mind);
Achilles competes with bie (strength)
o Would bie be able to overcome the challenges faced by Odysseus?
Odysseus’ Attributes:
o Odysseus’ epithets point to his “manyness”
Polumetis
Of many (polu-) wiles (metis)
A great cunning intelligence
Polumechanos
He will devise a stratagem (mechanos) to escape any snare
Polutropos
The man of many turns (tropos comprehends the full amphiboly
of “turns” – clever turns of mind, figures (tropes) of speech, and
endless actual turns of the wanderer
Polutlas
Much-suffering, much-enduring
o The repetition of the prefix polu- indicates the versatility, adaptability, and
mutability, that equip Odysseus for an unstable world
The structure of Odysseus’ Apologoi (stories/tales):
o Twin emphasis on the dangers of lingering beyond the time of one’s departure,
and of being eaten alive (forgetting nostos – returning home)
Three offices of Xenia:
To protect and house the guest;
To feed the guest;
To ensure the guest’s departure at their appointed time
o Explanation of the arrangement of Odysseus’ adventures
Opposite of proper xenia
They confront him with the two extreme versions of bad hospitality, the
ultimate perversion of Xenia
Defines the proper duties of Xenia through antipodal examples
o Improper xenia hinders/prevents nostos (returning)
Why tell these tales to the Phaeacians?
Book x:
o Odysseus arrives at Aeolus (King and master of the winds), where they are
welcomed and stays. After one month, Odysseus wants to leave, receives a parting gift of a “gift of winds” with everything except the western wind which is
what they need to get back to Ithica
Odysseus sleeps on the ninth day and his crew open the bag, releasing a
storm taking them back to Aeolus. This time, Aeolus is not fond of hosting
them again and so tells them to leave thinking they are cursed
o Odysseus arrives at island of Laestrygonians
Sends some of his men in, thinks whether they will encounter men like
him, what he finds instead a barbaric race who kill most of Odysseus’
men and eat them
Anthropophagous
Only Odysseus and the crew of his ship escape as their ship was outside
the harbour
o Odysseus and his only crew sail and make it to see Circe (magic): island of Aeaea,
Hermes, ‘moly’, Telegonus
Circe welcomes the men and offers them a meal (meal was stuffed with
drugs). When Circe taps them on the head, they turned into pigs.
Eurylochus, suspecting a trap stays behind, when he doesn’t see men
return, he returns to warn Odysseus
Odysseus goes to save his men, encounters Hermes on the way who tells
him to take the moly herb to protect himself from the potion of Circe and
to not sleep with her or she’ll castrate you. In addition, have her sware a
binding oath to do you and your crew no harm. Circe sees Odysseus and
does the same with his Odysseus and his crew but fails, recalls a
prophesy, asks him to sleep with her. He makes her sware the oath and
changes his men back who stay on the island for one year. Odysseus
remembers his nostos through his men. Circe tells Odysseus that before
he leaves, he must go to the gates of the underworld and talk to Theban
seer Tiresias to find out how to return to Ithica. Tiresias tells him that he
will encounter another island, and tells him to not harm the cattle or else
there will n
More
Less
