MENELAOSKing of Sparta, married to Zeus' daughter Helen. He is Atreus' son, Agamemnon's younger brother. In the Iliad, he is a brave warrior, but older than most and never in the top rank. Aphrodite makes him look a complete comic fool in his duel with Paris/Alexandros, who provoked the Trojan War by cuckolding him and carrying off his wife (3.369-76, 448-54). He is captivated by Helen's striptease at the fall of Troy (LI, fr. 28; West 2003, 138-39). When we meet him in the Odyssey, he and Helen (q.v.) are both middle-aged, wealthy from his profitable sojourn in Egypt (4.43-46, 71-75, 81-82, 90-93), and only mildly uneasy with each other. The way they combine to impress the visiting Telemachos is one of the great comic set pieces of ancient literature (4.59-305).
MENTORSon of Alkimos, a friend and coeval to whom Odysseus entrusts the care of his household before departing for Troy (2.224-27). Although Mentor also appears in his own right (e.g., at 2.229-41, where he addresses the assembly, and at 17.67-70), he is regularly impersonated by Athene (e.g., at 2.267-69, 399-401; 3.13-28, 229-38; 4.653-56). Suspicion that this might be a divine likeness is aroused at 22.205-40, where Athene ends her impersonation with an extra flourish, flying up to the roof, seemingly unnoticed, and sitting there as a swallow, and 24.443-49, 502-3, 516-48, where she abruptly winds up not only the feud caused by the slaughter of the suitors, but also the poem. It is not surprising that his doppelganger should attract attention.
MESSENEThe westernmost, and shortest, of the three great southern peninsulas of the Peloponnese (BA, 58, B-C 3-4), bounded in the north by Triphylia, to the east by the Taygetos mountain range, and to the south and west by the sea. Originally, to H. and his successors, "Messene" meant the whole region, better known as Messenia. Both its central plain and its coastal strip were well watered and highly fertile: after the First Messenian War (c. 700-c. 670), eastern Messenia was conquered by Sparta and its inhabitants turned into agricultural serfs. The city of Messene was not built on Mt. Ithome until the fourth century b.c.e. (after Messenia's liberation from Sparta).
MIMASA prominent mountain range on the peninsula of Ionia immediately across the strait from N. Chios (BA, 56, C-D 4), a sailing landmark described by H. as "windy" (3.172).
MINOSLegendary king of Krete (Crete), traditionally the son of Zeus and Europa, brother of Rhadamanthys, married to Pasiphae, and father of Deukalion and Ariadne. He is seen sceptered and sitting in judgment over the dead in the Underworld by Odysseus (11.568-71). The pre-Hellenic inhabitants of Crete (whose actual name remains uncertain) are called "Minoans" today with reference to Minos.
MINYAN, -SEpithet applied by Odysseus in the Underworld to the inhabitants of what was later known as Orchomenos in Boiotia, notably to Amphion, father-in-law of Neleus (11.284).
MUSESTraditionally nine in number, the Muses were the divinities of song and music, invoked at the beginning of both Homeric epics, and were thought to guarantee the truth of poems they approved. H. has them sing in chorus for the Olympians and elsewhere, including a funeral lament in honor of the dead Achilles (Il. 1.603-4; Od. 24.60-62) that moves all who hear it to tears. Unlike later authors, H. does not differentiate their individual functions. In the Odyssey, they inspire Demodokos (8.64) to choose as his theme a famous quarrel between Achilles and Odysseus (8.72-82).
MYKENAI (MYCENAE)A city at the NE edge of the Argive plain, closely associated in the Iliad with Agamemnon and mentioned in the Odyssey in relation to the seven-year rule there of Aigisthos (q.v.). Mykenai (-ai only in the Iliad) is strategically situated on a rocky eminence, protected on two sides by ravines. It looks toward Argos (cf. 3.263) and is linked with neighboring areas by traceable roads. The famous Lion Gate was added comparatively late, c. 1270 b.c.e.
NAUSIKAAThe sole daughter (among six brothers, including Laodamas) of the Phaiakian ruler Alkinoos (q.v.) and his wife, Arete (7.64-77), Nausikaa is by descent a great-granddaughter of Odysseus' dangerous divine enemy Poseidon (7.53-66). Thus behind her obvious qualities of innocent kindness, maidenly decorum, and devoted affection for her parents, there lurks potential danger, kept at arm's length by her strength of character and aristocratic poise, evident throughout her first meeting with Odysseus on the beach. She has marriage on her mind, but keeps quiet about it; she is clearly attracted to Odysseus (6.240-45)--like many young girls, she prefers experienced older men, and she has no time for the younger sprigs of Scherian nobility who court her (8.34-35, 6.283-84)--but her arrangements for this stranger, however much she fancies him as a potential husband, are carefully designed to avoid any suggestion of scandal (6.273-99), quite unlike the sophisticated sexual advances made to him by Kalypso and Kirke. It is noteworthy that Alkinoos (who may well have already noted Nausikaa's fussiness over those courting her) very early on openly declares to Odysseus (7.311-14) that he would dearly like him as a son-in-law. Nausikaa's farewell to him, when arrangements have been made to convey him home to his wife, is loaded with unspoken feeling (8.461-69); and we recall, at this point, that it is to Nausikaa, on the beach, that Odysseus delivers, as part of his wish for her, one of the most beautiful, and penetrating, descriptions of a happy marriage ever written (6.180-85).
NELEUSKing of Pylos (3.4), a son of Poseidon, married to Chloris (11.281-87), and father by her of various sons, including Nestor (q.v.), and a daughter, Pero, over whose marriage he exercises peculiar restrictions (see 15.228-38, and s.v. Melampous).
NEOPTOLEMOSAlso known as Pyrrhos; the sole child of Achilles, by Deidameia, daughter of King Lykomedes of Skyros. On learning that their young son, Achilles, was fated to die in the Trojan War, Thetis and Peleus sent him to Skyros to be brought up disguised as a girl among the children of King Lykomedes. He was discovered there by a search party led by Odysseus and Nestor, but not before he had used his advantageous position to impregnate Deidameia (Cypr., fr. 19; West 2003, 96-99, where it is noted that the story was well known in the Epic Cycle. Odysseus brought the boy--still an adolescent--to Troy after his father's death, and gave him Achilles' armor (LI, arg. 3; West 2003, 122-23). Having been chosen as one of the warriors in the Wooden Horse (11.523-32), he showed a sharp taste for savagery at the sack, killing Priam as a suppliant the altar of Zeus (SI, arg. 2; West 2003, 144-45), and hurling Hektor's infant son, Astyanax, down from Troy's battlements (LI, frs. 18, 29; SI, fr. 3; West 2003, 136-41, 148-49). H.'s few references to him are careful: e.g., Odysseus, reporting on his prowess to Achilles in Hades (11.504-37) carefully omits the killing of Priam, which Pindar, Paean 6, says led to Neoptolemos' death at Delphi in retribution for violating the sanctity of Zeus' altar.
NEREIDSDaughters of Nereus (q.v.) by Doris, daughter of Ocean, these sea nymphs are generally treated as a group (but see s.v. Amphitrite). They are much given to play and dancing, but also connected with mourning and lamentation (e.g., for Achilles, Il. 18.35-69, 24.78-84; Od. 24.47-59). Their leader, Thetis (q.v.), Achilles' mother, is a major and well-individualized deity, married to Peleus (q.v.).
NEREUSOne of several "Old Men of the Sea" referred to in the Odyssey (see also s.vv. Phorkys and Proteus). Married to Doris, daughter of Ocean, and father of the Nereids, including Achilles' mother, Thetis (24.58; Hes., Th. 240-64).
NERIKOSThe identity and exact location of this "well-built citadel, on the mainland cape" (24.377-78)--captured by Laertes (as he himself recalls) back in the days when he was "lord of the Kephallenes"--are quite uncertain. Various sites on Leukas or in Akarnania have been suggested, perhaps near the shallow channel linking Leukas to the mainland (BA, 54, C 4).
NESTORYoungest son of Neleus, king of Pylos, and Chloris. He and his father are the sole survivors of Herakles' raid on Pylos (Il. 11.687-93). He is the oldest Achaian leader at Troy, outstanding both for his great age--he has outlived two generations--and the wise persuasiveness that it has brought him (Il. 2.247-52). His rambling anecdotal loquaciousness is wittily drawn, especially in the Odyssey (3.118-29), when he is a good decade older than in the Iliad. Nestor's sons include Antilochos and Peisistratos (Od. 3.36-42, 411-15; 4.155-67). Telemach
os, who visits him to seek news of Odysseus, conspires with Peisistratos to dodge Nestor's relentless, long-winded hospitality by avoiding a second stop at Pylos on his homeward journey (15.195-201).
OCEAN (OKEANOS)An extreme example of the archaic personification of natural phenomena. At one level, in the Iliad, Ocean is the remote circular stream thought to encompass the frontiers of a disc-shaped world (Il. 3.5; 14.200-201; 18.607-8), and neighbor to distant, little-known, and thus fantasized peoples (e.g., Pygmies, 3.4-6; and Aithiopians, 1.423, 23.206). But in the Iliad, Ocean is also the son of Ouranos (Sky) and Ge, or Gaia (Earth), married to Tethys (14.201-2), and progenitor of all the gods (14.246), as well as of every sea, river, and spring (21.195-97). He has a house, and Here plans to visit him and Tethys there (14.301-11). In the Odyssey, however (one more indication of its later genesis than that of the Iliad), there is only one humanizing reference (10.139, where he sires Perse) to over a dozen treating Ocean simply as the remote world stream; and by Herodotus' day (2.23, 4.36), the very idea of a circumambient stream embracing the world was challenged.
ODYSSEUSSon of Laertes (q.v.) and Antikleia, daughter of the thievish trickster Autolykos (q.v., 19.392-466); married to Penelope, father of Telemachos, and lord of a small kingdom centered on the Ionian island of Ithake (q.v.). Despite this marginal background and dubious ancestry, he is one of the most distinguished leaders at Troy: a fine warrior (see, e.g., Il. 11.310-488; Aethiopis, arg. 3; West 2003, 112-13), a quick, clever thinker (Il. 2.269-335), and a persuasive diplomat (Il. 9.223-306). Antenor gives us a vivid picture of him (Il. 3.209-24): short, yet broad-shouldered and massively built, with a great booming voice, "the words resembling some driving wintry snowstorm." Yet his reputation for trickiness and deceit is not unknown at Troy (Il. 3.200-202; 4.33), and emerges more fully in his ruthless dealing with Dolon (Il. 10.371-458). It is significant that in the Iliad there is no mention of his extraordinary skill with the bow (Od. 21.366-430): he does not even compete for the archery prize at the funeral games of Patroklos (Il. 23.850-83). The reason is clearly because this weapon was shunned by aristocratic heroes as operating at a comparatively safe distance from its target, and thus not compatible with true hand-to-hand valor: doubly so, if the arrows were smeared with deadly poison (as Agamemnon fears: Il. 4.149-50). In the Odyssey (1.260-64), Athene remarks on Odysseus (her special favorite throughout the poem) having once gone to Ephyre in search of poison for his arrows--and being refused it by a man who feared "the wrath of the gods," which suggests that poisoned arrows, like lethal gas after World War I, had already been outlawed as an unacceptable combat weapon--and that Odysseus was unscrupulous enough to ignore the ban. There is, too, scant justification for his lying tales on Ithake, which (as Athene again remarks, 13.291-95) he retails for the fun of it. Yet it is striking how well, throughout, however justified the criticisms of him by Eurylochos (q.v.) and others, he contrives to retain the sympathy of his audience. For all his trickery, rash curiosity, lying fantasies, excesses (the slaughter of all the suitors, etc.), and solipsistic self-indulgences, there is a huge streak in this survivor of the decent and the humane: when he is finally reunited with Penelope, it is his disquisition on marriage (6.180-85; see s.v. Nausikaa), spoken from experience, that we remember, not his dalliances with Kalypso, whose offer of immortality he has refused, and Kirke. Like Walt Whitman, he is large, he contains multitudes: between Troy and Ithake, we get a generous survey of his powerful, multifaceted character. Athene's persistent (and often irritated) liking for him becomes steadily more understandable as the epic moves on.
OGYGIAThe rugged wooded island that is the home of Kalypso (q.v.) It is clearly mythical, and its location (as described by H.) confirms this: it lies "where the sea's navel is" (Od. 1.50)--but what sea? and what does "navel" mean here, if not "center"? It is also remote and isolated (Od. 5.55, 101-2). That would suggest Ocean, but "Ocean had no known boundaries and therefore no center," as Romm says in HE, 2: 594. The etymology of the name Ogygia is likewise uncertain; in antiquity it was treated adjectivally as an epithet meaning "primordial" or "of great antiquity," and this makes sense (Kalypso was the daughter of the Titan Atlas).
OLYMPOS, OLYMPIANSAt nearly ten thousand feet, Mount Olympos is the highest peak in Greece, an impressive natural landmark, often veiled in clouds, and snow-capped annually from late fall to spring. For H., most notably in the Iliad, it is also the abode of the gods, who not only use Olympos and Mount Ida as vantage-points from which to observe human activities but have houses and workshops there, built by Hephaistos. Olympos is their home: most of them feast and sleep and quarrel there "in a kind of rowdy extended family" (HE, 2: 600-601). In the Odyssey, partly because of its later appearance, the gods play a far more limited role. Criticism of their misbehavior in the Iliad by early critics such as Xenophanes (cf. OCD4, 1580; West 2014, 48-49) had clearly had a considerable effect. As West says, the "gods of the Odyssey show a collective concern for morality that they lack in the Iliad." And except for Poseidon, whose Iliadic-style persecution of Odysseus at least has an arguable justification in the blinding of his son the Kyklops, the Odyssey's general sense of rather dull divine concord contrasts strikingly with the competing, quarrelsome individualism it has replaced. Apart from Athene, ubiquitous and interfering, none of the Olympians, even Zeus himself, constitute more than a vague and intermittent background to the human narrative, even--indeed, especially--when this strays into the world of fantasy.
ORCHOMENOSCity of NW Boiotia overlooking Lake Kopais, and powerful and wealthy in the Bronze Age (hence known as "Minyan" Orchomenos, 11.284). In historical times, a competitor with Thebai for the control of Boiotia.
ORESTESSon of Agamemnon and Klytaimnestra, reared in luxury as a child in Mykenai (q.v.) during his father's absence at Troy (Il. 9.142-43, 284-85), who fled when Aigisthos (q.v.) moved in as his mother's lover. With Klytaimnestra's connivance and help (3.235, 4.91-92, 11.380-84, 409-11, 24.96-97, 199-200), Aigisthos murdered Agamemnon on his return from Troy (1.32-43, 24.20-22). On coming of age, Orestes returned from exile in Athens and avenged his father's death (1.30, 40-41, 298; 3.306-10; cf. 4.546-47) by killing both Aigisthos and his mother. H. finds it undesirable, though he is well aware of it, to emphasize Orestes' matricide: he gets round this by saying that "he held a funeral feast for the Argives/over his hateful mother and the cowardly Aigisthos" (3.309-10): even enemies and criminals are entitled to proper burial. Orestes is used regularly in the Odyssey as a model for Telemachos to follow in dealing with his mother's invasive suitors, so to stress this aspect of his vengeance would hardly be appropriate.
ORIONMythical hunter, allegedly of women as well as wild beasts (see OCD4, 1048). He was famously handsome (11.310), and when Eos, the Dawn, took a fancy to him (5.121-22), Artemis slew him. Odysseus saw him in the Underworld, herding the shades of the game he had killed in life (11.572-75), and later he was catasterized into the constellation that bears his name (5.272-74 = Il. 18.487-89).
OSSA:See s.v. Pelion.
OTOSSee s.v. Pelion.
PAIEONFor H., a healing deity (4.232), later assimilated to Asklepios or Apollo.
PALLASA name, or epithet, of Athene: its origin or derivation is quite uncertain, as the wild guesses of Apollodorus (1.6.2, 3.12.3) make obvious.
PANOPEUSA town in Phokis, on the plain of Chaironea (BA 55, D 3-4), where Tityos raped Leto on her way to Pytho (Delphi, 11.580-81).
PAPHOSOld Paphos, or Kouklia-Palaipaphos (BA, 72, B3)--a s distinct from modern (Nea) Paphos (BA, 72, A 3)--on the SW coast of the island of Cyprus, immediately below the Troodos mountain range, was the site of a precinct and shrine of Aphrodite dating back to the Late Bronze Age. Striking remains survive at the site, which reveal clear connections with Minoan civilization (see s.v. Minos). H. refers to it casually at 8.362, indicating that it was already well known throughout the Mediterranean.
PARNASSOSMountain range west of Lake Kopais and the plain of Chaironea (BA, 55, C-D 3), famous in myth and linked to Apollo a
nd the Muses, but mentioned by H. (19.394, 411, 432, 466; 21.220; 24.332) solely in connection with Odysseus' wounding by a boar there in his youth, when out hunting with the sons of his grandfather Autolykos. This wound left the scar on his thigh by which his old nurse, Eurykleia (q.v.), was able to recognize him on his anonymous return to Ithake more than twenty years later.
PATROKLOSSon of Menoitios, of Opoeia in Lokris. Fiery-tempered (as a boy he kills a playmate over a game of dice), he is exiled, taken in by Peleus (q.v.), and brought up with the (slightly younger) Achilles, to whom he is devoted. At Troy he dons the armor of Achilles when Achilles himself still refuses to fight, but is slain by Hektor, who takes the armor. Once dead, Patroklos is the instrument of Achilles' return to the battlefield, and, ultimately, of his concessions to Priam. In the Odyssey he has a brief moment as a ghost in the Underworld (23.68-92), notable chiefly for a series of peevish complaints and demands about his treatment there. The last word on him is that his bones are mingled with those of Achilles (24.73-77).
PEIRITHOOSA Lapith prince, son of Zeus, notable for his marriage to Hippodameia, recalled by Nestor (Il. 1.263-75; cf. Od. 21.295-304). The Centaur Eurytion (q.v.) got drunk at their wedding and tried to rape the bride, thus starting the great conflict between Lapiths and Centaurs (see, e.g., Diod. Sic. 4.70.3-4).
PEISISTRATOSThe youngest of Nestor's six living sons (3.413-15), too young to marry (3.400-401), or to remember his older brother Antilochos (q.v.), who died at Troy (4.187-202). Slightly older than Telemachos, he escorts him to Sparta, and tactfully helps him to avoid a second stay with the garrulous and demanding Nestor (15.195-214).
PELASGIANSFor H., a generic term for any notable pre-Greek ethnic group: the one mention in the Odyssey (19.177) refers to such a group in Krete (Crete).