The Odyssey

H. never mentions him by name. The title "Old Man of the Sea" is one he also applies to Proteus and Phorkys. Cf. HE, 2: 570.

2.Just such a tumulus still exists on a headland at the site of ancient Sigeion in the Troad, identified by later writers as the Achilleion referred to here: whether the association was early or a later assumption is uncertain. See Heubeck in Comm., 3: 369.

3.I suspect a tacit allusion here to the feigning of insanity by the young, recently married, Odysseus--not yet the city-sacker--to avoid going to Troy: Cypria, arg. 5.8-10 (West 2003, 70-73).

4.See 20.383 and n. 3 ad loc.

5.Hdt. (7.170) tells us that Sikanie was the ancient name for Sicily. The native Sikani seem to have been driven to the west of the island by invading Sikels from Italy; these in turn were forced to the island's inland center by colonizing Greeks. Alybas (?) ("Wandertown") is a fictitious name, like most of those Odysseus produces here; their meanings are uncertain. See Stanford 1971, 2: 423, and Heubeck in Comm., 3: 395-96.

6.There has been no indication that Dolios had stopped to sit down before approaching his master. The line is semi-formulaic: see 17.602, where it is said (correctly) of Eumaios. Similarly, line 407, as Heubeck (Com., 3: 404) rightly observes, "sounds more abrupt than intended" but then it is modeled on Il. 13.275, where it is wholly appropriate.





Glossary


NOTE: This glossary omits all characters, and many minor locations, that are solely referred to in the text of the Odyssey itself.

ACHAIA, ACHAIANSIn general, H. treats "Achaians," "Argives," and "Danaans" as interchangeable terms for the Hellenes who fought at Troy, but in the Iliad, he seems to have regarded Achaia as the northern Achaia in Phthiotis, home of Achilles. In the Odyssey, Achaia is extended, incorrectly, to include Odysseus' island kingdom of Ithake.

ACHERONFor H., a river of Hades (10.513). There was an actual river of that name in Thesprotia (southern Epiros).

ACHILLESAchaian warrior from Phthiotis in Thessaly, the central figure in the Iliad, son of Peleus (q.v.) and the sea nymph Thetis (q.v.). In the Odyssey, we see Achilles only as a resentful shade in Hades (11.467-540); he is famous for his remark (488-91)--in striking contrast to the honor code to which, with only fleeting doubts, he adheres in the Iliad--that he would rather be a hired day-laborer on earth than rule as king over the dead. He is glad to hear a tactfully edited account of his young son Neoptolemos' success as a warrior at Troy from Odysseus, who omits the boy's brutal murder of Priam (q.v.) at Zeus' altar (SI, arg. 2; West 2003, 144-45).

AEGEAN SEAThe extension of the Mediterranean delimited to the west by the Greek mainland, to the south by the great island of Krete (Crete), to the east by the coast of Asia Minor, and to the north by Macedonia and the Chalcidic peninsula, and enclosing numerous islands, in particular those of the archipelago in the southern Aegean known as the Kyklades (Cyclades).

AEGISA magical object, the exact nature of which is never fully clarified, but which possesses some of the qualities of the blazon on a shield: these include the deadly features of the Gorgon (q.v.). It is strictly a divine appurtenance, versions of it being possessed by Athene and Zeus. It is made of goatskin, fringed with gold tassels (Il. 2.447-49), and most often borne into battle, where it is shaken out like a standard (Il. 15.229-30, 17.593-96).

AGAMEMNONSon of Atreus, brother of Menelaos, married to Helen's sister, Klytaimnestra, and father of Orestes and at least three sisters, including Iphigeneia (or Iphianassa). Overall commander of the Greek expedition against Troy. Like Achilles, this leading figure of the Iliad in the Odyssey appears only as a ghost in Hades, bitterly recounting (11.405-34, 24.95-97) his assassination by his wife and her lover, Aigisthos, an episode also more than once recounted by others (1.28-43, by Zeus; 4.512-37, by the Old Man of the Sea), contrasting Klytaimnestra's infidelity with the loyalty of Odysseus' wife, Penelope. We note that Odysseus (who first learns the details of Agamemnon's death from his angry ghost) takes his warning advice to heart: go home in secret anonymity, and don't trust anyone, even Penelope, till you've thoroughly tested them.

AGELAOSSon of Damastor, one of the chief suitors for the hand of Odysseus' wife, Penelope, and their spokesman during the killing (22.131-34, 212-23, 248-54). He himself is killed by Odysseus (22.293).

AIAIAThe island of Kirke, daughter of Helios, the sun god (10.138), located by H. in the east (12.3-4), but in the vicinity of the stream of Ocean, according to Kirke's account (10.507-8). Later sources, beginning with Hesiod (Th. 1011-15) favored the west as its location, perhaps to fit better with other landings of Odysseus, by then associated with Italy and Sicily (see Romm in HE, 1: 19).

AIAKOSA son of Zeus, possibly by the nymph Aigina; father of Peleus and thus grandfather of Achilles.

AIAS (1)Son of Telamon, and the greatest Achaian warrior at Troy after Achilles. When Achilles was killed, Aias and Odysseus successfully rescued his body and brought it back to the Achaian camp for burial (Aeth., arg. 3-4, fr. 3; LI, arg. 1, fr. 2; West 2003, 112-13, 120-21). At Achilles' funeral games, the prize for bravery was awarded to Odysseus rather than Aias, who never forgave his rival, even when they met in Hades (11.543-64).

AIAS (2)Son of Oileus, a Lokrian, often described as "the lesser" to distinguish him from Aias (1). He was notorious for the rape of Kassandre at the sack of Troy (SI, arg. 3; West 2003, 154-55), not mentioned by H.; Poseidon caused him to be wrecked and killed on the rocks of Gyrai (q.v.) in the Kyklades when nearly home from Troy.

AIETESSon of Helios by Ocean's daughter Perse; thus brother of Kirke (10.135-39; cf. Hes., Th. 956-57): king of Kolchis. H. does not refer to his connection with Jason and the myth of the Golden Fleece, but from the reference at 12.70 to the ship Argo, it is clear that he was acquainted with it.

AIGISTHOSSon of Atreus' brother, Thyestes, and thus Agamemnon's cousin. His liaison with Agamemnon's wife, Klytaimnestra, and seven-year rule over Mykenai (q.v.), their subsequent murder of Agamemnon on his return from Troy, and Aigisthos' own murder by Agamemnon's son, Orestes, in revenge, form a leitmotif throughout the Odyssey (1.29, 35-43, 299-300; 3.193-98, 234-35, 249-75, 301-10; 4.512-37; 11.387-434; 24.20-22, 95-97). His motive in the myth (revenge for the crimes of Atreus against his own father and brothers) is not stressed by H., who rather sets the fate and actions of these various Atreids in repeated moral contrast to those of Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachos as the royal dynastic family of Ithake. As Friedrich says (HE, 1: 21-22), "the contrast highlights the deserved good fortune of Odysseus and his family; and the similarity underscores this in that it connotes the possibility that things could have turned out in Ithaca the same way as in Argos."

AIOLOS, AIOLIAAiolos son of Hippotas is a human appointed by Zeus as keeper of the winds: he lives on a floating island (Aiolia), which for H. is of uncertain and essentially imaginary location (10.1-79), and makes Odysseus a present of the winds themselves, shut into a leather bag. This is in striking contrast to the winds in the Iliad, where the west and north winds are minor gods (Il. 23.198-211; cf. Mackie, HE, 1: 23, who also points out that in Virgil's Aeneid 8.416, Aiolia is clearly identified with Lipari, off the north coast of Sicily).

AISONSon of Tyro and Kretheus (11.258-9), father of Jason (q.v.) and half-brother to Pelias and Neleus, Tyro's sons by Poseidon (11.241-57); king of Iolkos prior to Pelias, who succeeded him (11.256) by usurpation (Pind. Pyth. 4.109-10).

AITHIOPES, -IANSA mysterious and remotely located race, not necessarily to be identified with Ethiopians in the historical sense, though generally regarded in antiquity as being dark-skinned. In the Iliad (23.205), H. places them by the stream of Ocean; in the Odyssey (1.22-24), they are two groups, dwelling respectively in the furthest east and west, at the points of sunrise and sunset. Their main function in both epics for H. is to play host to the Olympian gods when the narrative requires them to be remote from the action and unaware of what is going on (e.g., Poseidon in bk. 1 when Zeus and Athene are planning Odysseus' homecoming; cf. Romm in HE, 1: 10-11). See also s.v. Memnon.

AKARNANIARegion of western Greece, NW of the Corinthian, and S of the Ambracian, gulfs (BA, 54, C-D 4), directly facing the Ionian Sea and the island of Leukas.

ALEXANDROSAn alternative name in antiquity for the better-known Paris.

ALKINOOSKing of the Phaiakians on Scheria; his father, Nausithoos, a son of Poseidon, was the founder of their city (6.7-10). He is married to Arete, and by her the father of Laodamas and other sons and one daughter, Nausikaa (6.62-63). His function in the Odyssey is to provide the background of hospitality against which Odysseus narrates his previous adventures (on which he comments with what has sometimes been taken as a certain deadpan irony, 11.363-76), and subsequently to convey him, together with generous guest-gifts, to his homeland of Ithake. This act, viewed in the context of his familial link with Poseidon, always hostile to Odysseus, results in the petrification of the ship that conveyed the latter, while the city itself is only saved by timely prayer and sacrifice (13.174-83).

ALKMAIONSon of Amphiaraos (q.v.) and leader of the expedition of the Epigonoi against Thebai: famous for the murder of his mother, Eriphyle (q.v.), whom he held responsible (with good reason) for the premature death of his father (11.326, 15.244-48, with note ad loc.)

ALKMENEDaughter of Elektryon, wife of Amphitryon, and mother of Herakles by Zeus, who seduced her by assuming the likeness of her husband (Il. 14.323-24). One of the heroines of old whom Odysseus gets to see in the Underworld (11.266-68). Determined to thwart Zeus' plan for Herakles to become king of the Argolid, Here held up his birth until after that of his cousin Eurystheus (Il. 19.95-125). Antinoos rates Penelope as shrewder than Alkmene (2.120-21); he mentions her conceiving Herakles by Zeus, but without any reference to the god's deception.

ALPHEIOSThe largest river in the Peloponnese, and the eponymous god identified with that river, twice mentioned by H. (3.489, 15.187) as the grandfather of Diokles, overnight host to Telemachos and Peisistratos on their journey between Pylos and Sparta.

AMNISOSA harbor town on the N. coast of Krete, near modern Iraklion (Herakleion), mentioned by Odysseus (19.188) in the fictitious cover story he tells Penelope. It was the site of a Minoan settlement. Linear B tablets found there record dedications of honey to Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth.

AMPHIARAOSA famous seer, descended from Melampous (also a seer), married to Eriphyle (q.v.), the father of Alkmaion (q.v.), and much favored by Zeus and Apollo.

AMPHIMEDONSon of Melaneus, and one of the half-dozen most distinguished of Penelope's suitors (22.241-45). He is also one of the last to survive, being killed by Telemachos after having slightly wounded him (22.277-84). Recognized by Agamemnon (who had once been his guest-friend) as a shade in the Underworld (24.102-4), he gives him the suitors' version (understandably slanted) of their recent slaughter (120-90).

AMPHINOMOSSon of Nisos, from Doulichion (16.395-96): one of the less objectionable suitors. He is against the plan to murder Telemachos (16.400-406, 20.240-47), and Penelope enjoys his intelligent conversation (16.397-98). He treats Odysseus, in his disguise as an old beggar, well enough for Odysseus to give him a veiled warning of the fate in store for the suitors (18.125-50); but nevertheless Athene dooms him to die with the rest, and he is killed by Telemachos (22.89-96), as has been foreseen (18.154-56).

AMPHIONSon of Zeus and Antiope, daughter of Asopos, and twin brother of Zethos, with whom he built Thebai's city walls. He married Niobe (q.v.), the daughter of Tantalos, on whom he sired six sons and six daughters, a rich progeny that, through their mother's boasting, incurred famous, and fatal, divine jealousy.

AMPHITRITEIn H.'s few references to her (3.91, 5.422, 12.60, 97), Amphitrite is little more than the sea personified, mother of dolphins and dogfish, and there is no hint of Poseidon's Nereid (sea nymph) bedmate, treated as very real by Hesiod (Th. 243, 930).

ANTIKLEIADaughter of Autolykos (q.v.), married to Laertes, and mother of Odysseus. She figures in the Odyssey only as a shade with whom Odysseus converses in the Underworld (11.84-89, 141-224). From her he learns that his prolonged absence has led to her premature death from grief, and had then driven Laertes to retire to the country in misery and live a mean and solitary existence (cf. Nancy Felson in HE, 1: 60). Odysseus tries to embrace her, but as an insubstantial ghost, she can no more be embraced than the air in which she moves (11.205-7; cf. 218-22).

ANTILOCHOSThe son of Nestor, a fine warrior and an elegant young aristocratic friend of Achilles' to whom he famously breaks the news of Patroklos' death in the Iliad (18.2-21). He is the only character in the entire epic who, just once (23.785-97), makes that testily solipsistic hero smile. In the Odyssey, by contrast, he is already dead. Casual references by Nestor at Pylos and Menelaos at Sparta recall his death at the hands of Memnon (q.v.), king of the Aithiopians, and son of the Dawn (3.108-12, 4.106-8); we also learn (24.71-84) that his ashes were interred in the same tumulus as those of Achilles and Patroklos, though separately; his shade is glimpsed, along with theirs, in the Underworld (11.467-70). All this shows that H. was well acquainted with the main elements of the Aethiopis, a poem of the Trojan part of the Epic Cycle now lost (for testimonia, argument, and fragments, see West 2003, 108-17: Antilochos' death is recorded in arg. 2-4.).

ANTINOOSSon of Eupeithes, and one of the two leading suitors, with Eurymachos, for Penelope's hand in marriage. He is a prominent, outspoken, indeed aggressive, character throughout the poem. In response to the early complaints of Telemachos (2.84-128), he blames the suitors' incursions into the latter's domain entirely on Penelope's inability or unwillingness to make up her mind over the matter of remarriage. He is furious when he learns of Telemachos' trip to Pylos and Sparta and is the leading proponent of ambushing and murdering him on his way home (4.660-72, 777-78) or on Ithake after his return (16.363-92). He treats the old beggar who is in fact Odysseus (17.448, 462-66, 479-80, etc.) with particular abuse and violence. After a couple of nervously jocular interventions during the bow contest (21.256-68, 287-310), he is understandably Odysseus' first target after the axes (22.8-23). For a good survey, see Louden in HE, 1: 61-62.

ANTIOPEDaughter of the river god Asopos and mother (by Zeus) of Amphion and Zethos. She is one of the heroines of old seen as a shade in the Underworld by Odysseus (11.260-65).

APHRODITEAccording to H., perhaps by way of bowdlerization, the daughter of Zeus and Dione (Il. 5.370-417); but in an older, more primitive version recorded by Hesiod (Th. 190-206), born of the foam (aphros) round the severed genitals of Ouranos, thrown into the sea near Paphos (q.v.) on the W coast of Cyprus, by the latter's son Kronos after he had cut them off. Aphrodite's frequent appearances in the Iliad (where she figures, appropriately enough, as a disconcerting mixture of dangerous power and adolescent silliness, with a weakness for Trojans) are not matched in the Odyssey. The few references to her here are for the most part (4.14, 261; 17.37; 19.54; 20.68, 73; 22.444) restricted to erotic euphemisms and as a yardstick for comparisons of beauty. But she takes center stage in a lay sung by the minstrel Demodokos about her adulterous affair with the war god, Ares, and its embarrassing exposure by her husband, Hephaistos (q.v.), the lame smith, god of fire, narrated at length, and wittily, in bk. 8 (266-366). This was the object of much scholarly objection in the ancient world on grounds of its indecency and social impropriety--"an obvious ironic resonance with the themes of the Odyssey," Currie says in HE, 1: 63, but is today more remarkable for its hints of aristocratic class prejudice (the cuckolded husband is clearly seen as a social joke) than for any overt impropriety.

APOLLOSon of Zeus and Leto, Apollo plays a more substantial role than Aphrodite in the Iliad (like her, he is consistently on the side of the Trojans), but in the Odyssey he is restricted to a two-line question to Hermes (8.335-37) in Demodokos' account of her affair with Ares. All other references to him are casual allusions or invocations, the latter often in oaths.

ARESSon of Zeus and Here, Ares is the god of the more brutal and thuggish aspects of warfare, but hardly a distinguished fighter (on the side of the Trojans: Il. 5.859-61, 21.406-14). He is disliked and despised by his divine father (Il. 5.887-93), and the other gods who come to witness his capture in flagrante by Hephaistos (8.325-27) jeer at him--but also, as good aristocrats, at the cuckolded, and unsightly, artisan husband.

ARETEThe sole daughter of Rhexenor, married to his brother Alkinoos (q.v.), and thus both her husband's niece and queen of the Phaiakians. She is the mother of five sons, Laodamas, Halios, Klytoneos, and two others (6.62, 8.118-19), and one daughter, Nausikaa (q.v). Both Arete and Alkinoos are great-grandchildren of Poseidon (7.55-66, 146). It becomes clear during Odysseus' time at the Phaiakian court that Nausikaa's earlier advice to him (6.308-15) that he should approach her mother, Arete, rather than Alkinoos, the king, is sound: several touches highlight his comparative weakness and her overriding authority. In a clever analysis, Felson observes that "the poem is self-conscious about gender hierarchy, especially in a royal marriage" (HE, 1: 83).

ARGOLIDExtended peninsula south of Korinthos (Corinth) and west of the Saronic Gulf, mostly mountainous except for its coastal region and the large, fertile, Argive plain at the head of the Gulf of Argos. This plain was the site of several major Mycenaean sites, including Mykenai (Mycenae) and Tiryns. For H., the Argolid was divided into two dominant kingdoms, which extended beyond its boundaries: Diomedes ruled from Argos, and Agamemnon from Mykenai (q.v.).

ARGOS, ARGIVESArgos was a city at the southern end of the Argive plain in the NE Peloponnese. It was not occupied by Dorians until post-Mycenaean times, and it remains unclear how much of its Mycenaean past, as known to H., was appropriated by these newcomers. "Iasian Argos" (Od. 18.246) was in antiquity thought to allude to an ancient king, Iasos (HE, 2: 390, s.v. Iasos [4]). H. calls the Greek troops overall at Troy "Argives," as well as "Achaians" or "Danaans." For him, Argos, with Tiryns, was the domain of Diomedes, while Mykenai (q.v.) was that of Agamemnon; but heroic epic also treats Argos as representing the Peloponnese, or, in a vaguer sense, mainland Gre