The Odyssey

  BOOK 17

  1.Russo makes a good point here in Comm., 3: 21. H. has previously applied the comparison to chaste Artemis to the young and beautiful bride-to-be Nausikaa (6.102, 149-52); Penelope's twenty-year chastity is thus emphasized, but with an erotic twist. And she is also, by definition, a prospective bedfellow to the suitors who are now looking at her: hence the comparison to Aphrodite. Telemachos takes a very different view of his mother: he tells her to wash and put on clean clothes (which Russo doesn't mention), and we see instantly the rather dirty drabness that went with prolonged mourning. Telemachos also shows a very filial distaste for the thought of Penelope being eyed sexually, and his brisk dismissal should be viewed with this in mind.

  2.Most scholars (and translators) have assumed that the "unwinged answer" is that of Penelope (and in an identical formula, that of Eurykleia at 19.29, 21.386, and 22.398, in reaction to Telemachos and Eumaios): in each case orders are obeyed in slightly startled silence, without a response. But a recent trend has been to regard the muthos, the speech, as the orders given, and to then translate apteros not as "wingless" but as its opposite, "winged" or "swift," with the initial a intensive rather than privative. The line would then mean "So he spoke, and for her his words were winged/swift," hence she promptly obeyed them. I have to say that I far prefer both the sense and the psychological force of the older explanation and have adhered to it in my translation.

  3.She is not in the likeness of any mortal here, but (exactly as at Il. 1.194-222, when she is curbing Achilles' anger) invisible to everyone except Odysseus--and perhaps to him as well, since all we are told is that she puts an idea into his head.

  4."Sneezes, being inexplicable, involuntary and sudden actions, were commonly regarded as ominous in antiquity" (Stanford 1971, 2: 297; cf. Hdt. 6.107; Xen., An. 3.2.9).

  BOOK 18

  1.Both name and nickname are significant. "Arnaios," cognate with the verb arnumai, "to acquire," means "go-getter," while "Iros" seems to be a masculine version of "Iris," well-known as the messenger of the gods (Stanford 1971, 2: 300; Russo in Comm., 3: 47).

  2.According to a scholiast, there was a Cypriot law decreeing that any landowner who caught a pig devouring his crops had the right to pull out its teeth; but how such a law became widely enough known for so casual a reference to be generally understood is less clear. Russo (Comm., 3: 48) suggests that it may have been a guess, based on a widespread farming practice.

  3.What we have here is a remote ancestor of the modern European blood sausage. Stanford (1971, 2: 301) writes that "such membranes, stuffed with fat . . . and blood, and doubtless with various flavourings, are well known in various forms--sausages, haggis, black-puddings, drisheens, boudin, Magenwurst."

  4.Echetos is mentioned only by H., and only in the Odyssey (below at 116, and at 21.308). He sounds uncommonly like the wicked giant or ogre of myth who murders all comers; but ancient commentators regarded him as historical, named his wife and daughter, and located him in either Epiros or Sicily.

  5.Of course, what Odysseus most desires, the dearest wish of his heart, is the destruction of the suitors, so the speaker is, without realizing it, invoking his own death: "words of omen," indeed.

  6.It has often been noted that "beauty" (kallei) seems too abstract a concept to be a physical salve, even in the hands of a goddess. But a magical concentration of beauty, not too specifically defined, is in fact subtly effective: the text is sound.

  7.Kythereia (= "she of Kythera") is a regular titular epithet of Aphrodite, most probably because she traditionally stepped ashore on the island of Kythera after her mythical marine genesis from the bloody foam surrounding the severed genitals of Ouranos (Hes., Th. 10-306).

  BOOK 19

  1.This sounds like a proverb, but as such has no surviving parallels. One ancient commentator, Eustathius, plausibly connected the statement with iron's known magnetic qualities; and from the earliest times iron has always been associated with magic. Meteoric iron was also the substance of Zeus' immensely powerful thunderbolts. Cf. Russo in Comm., 3: 75, with refs.

  2.Apollo kourotrophos, the guide and protector of young men: Stanford 1971, 2: 318.

  3.Apparently a reference to the custom of wiping off the blood from the sacrificial knife onto the victim's head to transfer the guilt for the killing from the sacrificer to his victim (cf. Hdt. 1.155), but here the guilt is nontransferable. See Stanford 1971, 2: 318-19, developed further by Russo in Comm., 3: 79, with refs.

  4.For obvious reasons, Odysseus makes some fairly specious excuses for not answering these very pointed questions. But it is also noteworthy that Penelope is even more evasive in her reply, since Odysseus has made no reference whatsoever to his hostess' beauty.

  5.Penelope's vaguely proverbial remark has widespread mythic paradigms, for which Russo lists refs. at Comm., 3: 83. She's saying: "You must have some relatives, if you're not a freak" (Stanford 1971, 2: 321).

  6.By now Odysseus should have got his fictitious cover story well worked out. For deceptive purposes, discrepancies must at all costs be avoided. Yet despite common elements, there are still inconsistencies between this version and those he has already given to Eumaios (14.199-359) and Antinoos (17.415-44). It looks as though this Odysseus--and his creator--simply enjoys telling tales for the fun of it and would have found unaltered repetition a bore. Cf. West 2014, 67.

  7.This is not epic exaggeration. The wind in question, still known as the Bora (from Boreas, the ancient god of the north wind), can indeed knock people off their feet. When I lived in Molyvos (ancient Methymna) on the NW coast of Lesbos, we got the full force of the Bora coming down from the Black Sea and had a series of strong cords rigged through the narrow cobbled streets to cling to at need.

  8.Odysseus is here likened to the Muses, who made an identical boast: see Hesiod, Th. 27: "We know how to tell many lies as though they were the truth."

  9.See 409 with note.

  10.It was believed that "Zeus's voice was audible from the sacred oak at Dodone" (Russo, Comm., 3: 91). Cf. Parke, 11-13, 20-33.

  11.Odysseus' "prediction" of his own return is identical with that given to Eumaios earlier (14.161-62). To make sense of the timing requires taking the uncertain term lukabas as the "interlunar period" (the most probable translation); see Russo in Comm., vol. 3.

  12.It is not immediately apparent--though the realization, when it comes, is very effective--that Eurykleia begins what one would expect to be a speech to the beggar (or possibly Penelope) by apostrophizing the supposedly absent Odysseus. At line 370 she switches abruptly to addressing the beggar (who of course is Odysseus), and referring to her "absent master" in the third person. The problem of hidden identity is given a further twist when she ends by telling the beggar how closely he and Odysseus resemble each other. That they are one and the same will be almost immediately revealed by that tell-tale scar during the foot-washing session. H. squeezes the last drop of drama out of this confrontation.

  13.This is Laertes.

  14.Throughout the Odyssey there is repeated punning with Odysseus' name (impossible to match effectively in English) on a verb only mentioned in the aorist or perfect, but with the base form oduss-: odussamenos here. The essential meaning seems to be "inflicting hatred, anger, or pain," though the sense can also, it seems, on occasion be passive as well as active. For the enormous bibliography, with variant meanings, see Russo in Comm., 3: 97, and Stanford 1971, 2: 332-33.

  15.This is not a persistent archaism but a reference (unusual for H.) to popular medical magic, surviving in Europe till comparatively recent times. "I have heard a circumstantial description of the process from a Russian cavalry officer who witnessed an immediate stoppage of blood from a sabre-wound in this way," Stanford writes (1971, 2: 334). "The Odyssey is closer than the Iliad to this popular world," Russo says (Comm., 3: 98). Similar cases in the Iliad employ traditional medical applications, some of which are ascribed to Cheiron (Il. 11. 832, 846-48), but eschew magic.

  16.This is an ear
lier, and variant, version of a myth that we know better from its Attic version, for which see Apollod. 3.14.8. Later sources, chiefly H.'s scholia, help us to piece together the myth here referred to. Pandareus, king of Krete, has a daughter, here personified as the nightingale (aedon), married to Zethos, king of Thebai and twin son of Antiope by Zeus (11.260-65). Out of jealousy of the numerous children (six of each sex, Il. 24.604) of her sister-in-law Niobe (q.v.)--the daughter of Tantalos (q.v.) and wife of Zethos' brother Amphion (q.v)--she attempts to kill Niobe's eldest son, but mistakenly in the dark kills her own, only, son, Itylos. Zeus, out of compassion for her resultant grief, metamorphoses her into a nightingale. This is "the only place in H. where bird song (as opposed to cries) is mentioned," Stanford notes, but then undercuts the literary effect by pointing out H.'s "flagrant error in natural history: the female nightingale does not sing" (1971, 2: 336).

  17.As Russo reminds us (Comm., 3: 101), "she also knows clearly that the increasingly open hostility between Telemachos and the suitors can lead to his death." See, e.g., 16.411-12, 418-33.

  18."The symbolism of the dream is reinforced by the fact the single activity the characterizes the geese is eating (553), which is the most conspicuous activity of the suitors" (Russo in Comm., 3: 102).

  19.These famous lines (cf. Virg., Aen. 6.893-96) are rightly felt to hold a mysterious poetic power. Yet once again their force in Greek depends primarily on etymological paronomasia, connective punning: keras = "horn" and kraino = "fulfill" elephas = "ivory," and elephairo = "deceive." But why connect horn with truth and ivory with deception? The essential distinction seems to be between dreams that are, or are not, fulfilled. Despite generations of scholarly discussion, the symbolism remains obstinately obscure.

  20.On Penelope's decision at this critical point, see pp. 9-10 above.

  BOOK 20

  1.Like another myth (19.518-23) we have seen involving a daughter of Pandareus, this account is found in no other surviving source. Whether or not the metamorphosed nightingale was an exception to the general fate of Pandareus' daughters here described remains quite uncertain. Nor do we know for sure why both they and their parents were doomed to destruction. Pandareus himself is reported (see Stanford 1971, 2: 344) to have stolen a golden dog from a Kretan temple of Zeus, and though the lese-majeste involved might suffice to trigger one of Zeus' sulfurous rages, this hardly seems an adequate offense to justify the wiping out of an entire family; or indeed why the Furies, mainly concerned with intrafamilial crimes, should also--in opposition to a consortium of the major Olympian goddesses--have claimed these wretched girls as their own victims.

  2.This famous scene, one of the eeriest in all Greek literature--over and forgotten almost as soon as it has happened--is a terrifying conversion by Athene, to hysteria, weeping, and imagined bloodstains, of the cheerful laughter that has greeted Telemachos' announcement that his mother will, at long last, be free to remarry whichever of the suitors she wishes (well analyzed by Stanford 1971, 2: 353-54). Theoklymenos' outburst is also a characteristic ecstatic prophecy (Dodds 1951, 64-101), unparalleled elsewhere in H., with symptoms--darkness, vanishing sun, and dripping blood--common in European folk belief (Russo, Comm., 3: 224-25, with refs.) and with Greek parallels (see, e.g., Hdt. 7.140: Aesch., Eum. 378-80).

  3.This, with the reference to Laertes' woman servant (24.211, 366, 389) is the earliest surviving literary reference to Sicily and its earlier inhabitants, known to the Greeks who colonized the island as Sikels (see bk. 24, n. 5, to 24.307). They clearly had a bad reputation as slavers and worse: Echetos, the mainland ruler to whom the suitors also threaten to send Iros (18.85), is described in H.'s scholia as "tyrant of the Sikels."

  BOOK 21

  1.How Homeric keys and locks worked--whether, indeed, they even merited those names in our broad sense--is still largely a matter of speculation. Anything like a modern revolving key only appeared in Roman times. Stanford claims (1971, 2: 357) that H.'s "key" was probably "little more than a long hook for pulling back an inside bolt" whether this was the so-called swastika-shaped "temple key" depicted in later Greek art (OCD4, 784-85) remains uncertain. For how H.'s primitive device may have been operated, see n. 4 to lines 46-48 below.

  2.For H., Messene is the region of Messenia, not the city, which was not founded until 369 B.C.E., by Epaminondas. H.'s few references to Messene tend to be used as a key to the date of the passage in question, since after the First Messenian War (ended c. 680-670), Messenia became part of Spartan territory. Here the Messenians are clearly still very much independent.

  3.While Herakles' "violent labors" obviously puts one in mind of the famous Twelve Labors to the accomplishment of which he was condemned, it also refers to the kind of amoral criminal spree to which--not only in his occasional fits of insanity--he was all too prone, and one of which (the murder of his wife Megare and their children) had got him saddled as punishment with the Twelve Labors in the first place.

  4.The door had a bolt on the inside. This could be shot shut by means of a leather thong or strap attached to it through an aperture, and then tied to a hook outside. Eurykleia does this after seeing Telemachos to bed, but leaves the thong untied so as not to lock him in (1.441-42). The thong could not open the door from the outside. To do this the key had to be inserted (? through a second aperture), and aimed so that it engaged a groove or slot in the bolt, which could then be drawn back. See Stanford 1971, 2: 359; Fernandez-Galiano in Comm., 3: 149; OCD4, 784-85. The exact physical details of this procedure remain obscure.

  5.it is quite possible that H. himself did not know exactly how the shot was performed and adopted it as a traditional part of the narrative, simply not bothering (as so often elsewhere) about the physical details. See Intro., p. 15.

  6.The verb here used, aneneue, literally means "nodded upwards," a vivid gesture still current today in Greece to indicate "No."

  7.It is generally agreed (see, e.g., Comm., 3: 163-64) that the more correct spelling is "Leodes," and most editors print it thus; but as Stanford points out (1971, 2: 362), this spoils a neat pun on a "Significant Name," since Leiodes son of Oinops can be construed as "Smoothy son of Wineface," i.e., an effeminate son of a drunken father (leios = "smooth"). Given this, and the fact that "Leiodes" is the almost unanimous reading of the MSS, I prefer to retain it.

  8.This is a reference to the beginning of the famous war between Centaurs and Lapiths. Peirithoos was the king of the Lapiths; at his wedding feast Eurytion got very drunk and tried to rape the bride, Hippodameia. Cf. Il. 1.268, 2.741-44: H. refers to Centaurs as "mountain-laired beast-men."

  9.See 18.85-87 with note ad loc.

  10.Reading Protodikos' emendation kekoruthmenon rather than the reading of the MSS, kekoruthmenos. As Fernandez-Galiano (Comm., 3: 206) points out, in recommending it, Telemachos does not actually don full armor until 22.113, so cannot appear in it here; and Odysseus is at the door, not in his chair, until 22.99. It may, of course, be true that a popular early version of this scene simply missed the inconsistency; but the textual change is minute and solves the problem neatly.

  BOOK 22

  1.This sentence has occasioned a vast amount of controversy; but as Stanford (1971, 2: 378) rightly says, unless the reader "is particularly interested in house-planning" discussion is pointless, since H. is uncertain regarding the detailed topography of Odysseus' home, and in any case "this exit serves no purpose in the plot."

  2.The house plan (and indeed the passage as a whole) is very uncertain: cf. West 2014, 106. The word I (like Murray) have tentatively translated as "steps" (rogas) occurs once only elsewhere, being identified by Hesychios as the equivalent of rexeis, "clefts" or "vents." This is not helpful, and indeed may well be a false etymological guess. Some translators, nevertheless, have dutifully suggested that Melanthios ascends (we aren't told how) by means of the hall's "clefts" or "slits", though exactly what they may be we aren't told either. That Melanthios does ascend (anabainei) is certain, though the storerooms are generally assu
med to be on the ground floor. Also, the amount of gear that he carries is an impossible load for one person. Mythical lack of realism (here, but seldom so blatant elsewhere) can only be pressed so far as an explanation; but to account for such obvious inconsistencies by assuming gross rhapsodic carelessness is equally unconvincing. The enigma remains.

  3.We have come a considerable distance from the absurd total of 110 suitors listed at 16.245-53, where the dramatic effect was obtained by positing a vast opposition, which, as Fernandez-Galiano points out (Comm., 3: 263), "would not fit in the megaron [feast hall]." Now it is assumed that the majority have already fallen: it is the most important ones who are actually named. Antinoos, Eurymachos, and Amphinomos, the group's spokesmen, have already been killed (above, 16, 82, 93). Six more are mentioned here (241-43), and another nine at various points. Of these fifteen, eleven are individually noted (at 266-68, 284-85, 293-94, and 328). The numbers, both accounted for and assumed, are now manageable.

  4.Thus exhausting the supply brought for them from the storeroom by Melanthios (144).

  5.Characteristically, the narrator notes the hanging of these women without paying any attention to the physical details implied. The weight on the rope, one end of which seems only to have been looped round a column, will have been, at a minimum, about 1,200 lbs., and the looping of a dozen nooses--from another rope?--is glossed over without description. Still, the hanging is described, memorably, in a famously vivid line (473).

  BOOK 24

  1.Here, Nereus, son of Pontos (Hes., Th. 233-64: the deep sea personified), and father of the sea nymph Nereids (q.v. Gloss.) by Ocean's daughter Doris. 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.