The Odyssey as a Song of Return

A) Odyssey 1.1-10: Tell me, O Muse, of that many-sided [polutropos] hero who traveled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the people with whose customs and thinking [noos] he was acquainted; many pains [algea] he suffered at sea while seeking to save his own life [psukhê] and to achieve the safe homecoming [nostos] of his companions; but do what he might he could not save his men, for they perished through their own sheer recklessness in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Helios; so the god prevented them from ever reaching home. Tell me, as you have told those who came before me, about all these things, O daughter of Zeus, starting from whatsoever point you choose. [11] So now all who escaped death in battle or by shipwreck had got safely home except Odysseus, and he, though he was longing for his return [nostos] to his wife and country, was detained by the goddess Calypso...

B) Iliad 1.1-7: SING, O goddess, the anger [mênis] of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills [algea] upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul [psukhê] did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs, and vultures, for so was the will of Zeus fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.

C) Iliad 9 (Achilles is speaking): My mother Thetis tells me that there are two ways in which I may meet my end [telos]. If I stay here and fight, I shall not have a return [nostos] alive but my glory [kleos] will be imperishable [aphthiton]: whereas if I go home my name [kleos] will perish, but it will be long before the end [telos] shall take me.

D) Odyssey 3.130-135: When however, we had sacked the city of Priam, and were setting sail in our ships as heaven had dispersed us, then Zeus saw fit to vex the Argives on their homeward voyage [nostos]; for they had not all been either wise or just [dikaios], and hence many came to a bad end through the anger [mênis] of Zeus' daughter Athena.

E) From Proclus' summary of the Ilioupersis (Destruction of Troy): ...those in the wooden horse fall upon their enemies. They kill many and take the city by force. Neoptolemos kills Priam, who has taken refuge at the altar of Zeus Herkeios. Menelaos murders Deiphobos, he finds Helen and leads her down to the ships. Aias son of Oileus takes Kassandra by force, dragging her away from the wooden statue [xoanon] of Athena. The Achaeans, angry at this, want to stone Aias to death, but he takes refuge at the altar of Athena, and so is preserved from the immediate danger. The Achaeans put the city to the torch. They slaughter Polyxena on the tomb of Achilles. Odysseus kills Astyanax, and Neoptolemos takes Andromache as his prize. The rest of the spoils are distributed... Then the Achaeans sail off, while Athena plots destruction for them on the seas.

F) Odyssey 1.88-95: In the meantime I will go to Ithaca, to put heart into Odysseus' son Telemakhos; I will embolden him to call the Achaeans in assembly, and speak out to the suitors of his mother Penelope, who persist in eating up any number of his sheep and oxen; I will also conduct him to Sparta and to Pylos, to see if he can hear anything about the return [nostos] of his dear father - for this will give him genuine fame [kleos] throughout humankind.

Part II: Telemakhos' Journey

A) Odyssey 1.325-355: Phemios was still singing, and his hearers sat rapt in silence as he told the baneful tale of the homecoming [nostos] from Troy, and the ills Athena had laid upon the Achaeans. Penelope, daughter of Ikarios, heard his song from her room upstairs, and came down by the great staircase, not alone, but attended by two of her handmaids. When she reached the suitors she stood by one of the bearing posts that supported the roof of the cloisters with a staid maiden on either side of her. She held a veil, moreover, before her face, and was weeping bitterly.

"Phemios," she cried, "you know many another feat of gods and heroes, such as poets love to celebrate. Sing the suitors some one of these, and let them drink their wine in silence, but cease this sad tale, for it breaks my sorrowful heart, and reminds me of my lost husband for whom I have grief [penthos] ever without ceasing, and whose name [kleos] was great over all Hellas and middle Argos."

"Mother," answered Telemakhos, "let the bard sing what he has a mind [noos] to; bards are not responsible [aitios] for the ills they sing of; it is Zeus, not they, who is responsible [aitios], and who sends weal or woe upon humankind according to his own good pleasure. There should be no feeling of nemesis against this one for singing the ill-fated return of the Danaans, for people always favor most warmly the kleos of the latest songs. Make up your mind to it and bear it; Odysseus is not the only man who never came back from Troy, but many another went down as well as he.

B) Odyssey 1.88-95: In the meantime I will go to Ithaca, to put heart into Odysseus' son Telemakhos; I will embolden him to call the Achaeans in assembly, and speak out to the suitors of his mother Penelope, who persist in eating up any number of his sheep and oxen; I will also conduct him to Sparta and to Pylos, to see if he can hear anything about the return [nostos] of his dear father - for this will give him genuine fame [kleos] throughout humankind.

C) Odyssey 1.267-302 "But there! It rests with heaven to determine whether he is to return, and take his revenge in his own house or no; I would, however, urge you to set about trying to get rid of these suitors at once... You are too old to plead infancy any longer; have you not heard how people are singing Orestes' praises [kleos] for having killed his father's murderer Aigisthos? You are a fine, smart looking young man; show your mettle, then, and make yourself a name in story.

D) Odyssey 2.262-284: "Hear me," he cried, "you god who visited me yesterday, and bade me sail the seas in search of the nostos of my father who has so long been missing. I would obey you, but the Achaeans, and more particularly the wicked suitors, are hindering me that I cannot do so." As he thus prayed, Athena came close up to him in the likeness and with the voice of Mentor. "Telemakhos," said she, "if you are made of the same stuff as your father you will be neither fool nor coward henceforward, for Odysseus never broke his word nor left his work half done. If, then, you take after him, your voyage will not be fruitless, but unless you have the blood of Odysseus and of Penelope in your veins I see no likelihood of your succeeding. Sons are seldom as good men as their fathers; they are generally worse, not better; still, as you are not going to be either fool or coward henceforward, and are not entirely without some share of your father's wise discernment, I look with hope upon your undertaking. But mind you never make common cause [noos] with any of those foolish suitors, for they are neither sensible nor just [dikaioi], and give no thought to death and to the doom that will shortly fall on one and all of them, so that they shall perish on the same day."

E) Odyssey 1.113-118: Telemakhos in appearance like a god [theoeidês] saw her long before any one else did. He was sitting moodily among the suitors thinking about his brave father, and how he would send them fleeing out of the house, if he were to come to his own again and be honored as in days gone by. Thus brooding as he sat among them.

F) Odyssey 1.368-420: Then Telemakhos spoke, "You suitors of my mother," he cried, "you with your overweening hubris, let us feast at our pleasure now, and let there be no brawling, for it is a rare thing to hear a man with such a divine voice as Phemios has; but in the morning meet me in full assembly that I may give you formal notice to depart, and feast at one another's houses, turn and turn about, at your own cost. If on the other hand you choose to persist in sponging upon one man, heaven help me, but Zeus shall reckon with you in full, and when you fall in my father's house there shall be no man to avenge you."

The suitors bit their lips as they heard him, and marveled at the boldness of his speech. Then, Antinoos, son of Eupeithes, said, "The gods seem to have given you lessons in bluster and tall talking; may Zeus never grant you to be chief in Ithaca as your father was before you." Telemakhos answered, "Antinoos, do not chide with me, but, god willing, I will be chief too if I can. Is this the worst fate you can think of for me? It is no bad thing to be a chief, for it brings both riches and honor. Still, now that Odysseus is dead there are many great men in Ithaca both old and young, and some other may take the lead among them; nevertheless I will be chief in my own house, and will rule those whom Odysseus has won for me…"

"The nostos of my father is dead and gone," answered Telemakhos, "and even if some rumor reaches me I put no more faith in it now. My mother does indeed sometimes send for a soothsayer and question him, but I give his prophesying no heed. As for the stranger, he was Mentes, son of Anchialos, chief of the Taphians, an old friend of my father's." But in his heart he knew that it had been the goddess.

G) Odyssey 2.229-234: "Hear me, men of Ithaca, I hope that you may never have a kind and well-disposed ruler any more, nor one who will govern you equitably; I hope that all your chiefs henceforward may be cruel and unjust, for there is not one of you that remembers Odysseus, who ruled you as though he were your father. "

H) Odyssey 3.184-209: "Therefore, my dear young friend, I returned without hearing anything about the others. I know neither who got home safely nor who were lost but, as in duty bound, I will give you without reserve the reports that have reached me since I have been here in my own house. They say the Myrmidons returned home safely under Achilles' son Neoptolemos; so also did the valiant son of Poias, Philoctetes. Idomeneus, again, lost no men at sea, and all his followers who escaped death in the field got safe home with him to Crete. No matter how far out of the world you live, you will have heard of Agamemnon and the bad end he came to at the hands of Aigisthos - and a fearful reckoning did Aigisthos presently pay. See what a good thing it is for a man to leave a son behind him to do as Orestes did, who killed false Aigisthos the murderer of his noble father. You too, then - for you are a tall, smart-looking young man - show your mettle and make yourself a name in story."

"Nestor son of Neleus," answered Telemakhos, "honor to the Achaean name, the Achaeans will bear the kleos of Orestes in song even to future generations, for he has avenged his father nobly. Would that heaven might grant me to do like vengeance on the insolence of the wicked suitors, who are ill treating me and plotting my ruin; but the gods have no such happiness [olbos] in store for me and for my father, so we must bear it as best we may."

I) Odyssey 4.113-119: Would that I had only a third of what I now have so that I had stayed at home, and all those were living who perished on the plain of Troy, far from Argos. I often grieve, as I sit here in my house, for one and all of them. At times I cry aloud for sorrow, but presently I leave off again, for crying is cold comfort and one soon tires of it. Yet grieve for these as I may, I do so for one man more than for them all. I cannot even think of him without loathing both food and sleep, so miserable does he make me, for no one of all the Achaeans worked so hard or risked so much as he did. He took nothing by it, and has left a legacy of sorrow [akhos] to myself, for he has been gone a long time, and we know not whether he is alive or dead. His old father, his long-suffering wife Penelope, and his son Telemakhos, whom he left behind him an infant in arms, are plunged in grief on his account." Thus spoke Menelaos, and the heart of Telemakhos yearned as he bethought him of his father. Tears fell from his eyes as he heard him thus mentioned, so that he held his cloak before his face with both hands. When Menelaos saw this he doubted whether to let him choose his own time for speaking, or to ask him at once and find what it was all about.

J) Odyssey 4.219 : Then Zeus' daughter Helen bethought her of another matter. She drugged the wine with the herb nêpenthes [= anti-penthos], which banishes all care, sorrow, and anger. Whoever drinks wine thus drugged cannot shed a single tear all the rest of the day, not even though his father and mother both of them drop down dead, or he sees a brother or a son hewn in pieces before his very eyes.

Homeric Odyssey and the Cultivation of Justice: "Homeric Odyssey and the Cultivation of Justice" is an exploration of the Homeric Odyssey, with a particular emphasis on the heroic search for the goal of social justice. In the poetic imagination, this goal is pictured through the metaphor of a beautifully cultivated garden. Homeric poetry links this paradisiacal metaphor with the hero's efforts to win back his or her own "soul" (psyche). The Odyssey itself is such a heroic journey of a soul. [This site is espcially recommended for those of you who have taken Classics 3307: Greek and Roman Myths of Heroes.]

Visit the Greek Mythology Link for more myths concerning Odysseus' son Telemakhos.

For more myths, attributes, and primary sources concerning Odysseus' divine antagonists see the Perseus Encyclopedia entries for Poseidon, Athena, and Hermes.

The Trojan War: An Illustrated Companion unites a variety of primary source texts and images from ancient Greek and later European art. For this lecture I recommend especially the section on the Fall of Troy, but see also the extensive section on the Odyssey.

The Rape of Cassandra, by the Altamura Painter, 470-460 BC

The Rape of Cassandra by Laura Fitton discusses the various ancient accounts of this crucial episode in the sack of Troy and Athena's subsequent anger.

An electronic text of Proclus' summaries of the Epic Cycle is available here. A handy outline of the poems of the Epic Cycle is available here.

Click on the image to link to the entry for Cassandra in Mortal Women of the Trojan War in Latin Literature.