Book I (A Goddess Intervenes)

Why does Homer begin not with Odysseus but with his son, Telemachos? Why does Homer makes the reader wait for 4 books to see Odysseus.

Three sacred rules of Greek society conern:

• blasphemy or sacrilege
• shedding of kindred blood
• rules of hospitality

The situation in Ithaka: men want to marry the wealthy Penelope, so, as suitors, they have come to ask for her hand in marriage. As she has no definite word about Odysseus's fate, she stalls with her answer; meanwhile, the suitors are eating Penelope's fortune away. Because of the sacred law of hospitality, Penelope can't throw the suitors out. Telemakhos is a "boy, daydreaming" ( 143) who isn't even sure of his parentage: "My mother says I am his son: I know not/ surely. Who has known his own engendering?" (252).

Athena disguises herself as a family friend, Mentes, and goes to Telemakhos to give him advice and heart.

Notice hospitality:

• Telemakhos hurries to greet Mentes as guest: "Straight to the door he came, irked with himself/ to think a visitor had been kept there waiting" (147).
• Do the suitors offer sacrifices to the gods as they feast?
• Telemakhos's gestures to Mentes (Athena): lines 344-351).

Attention to the rites of hospitality underscores the suitors's crime: hospitality is a two way street. Just as one must be gracious to guests, so must guests be respectful of their hosts. This is a sacred law.

Heartened by Mentes, Telemakhos admonishes the suitors: "If you choose/ to slaughter one man's livestock and pay nothing,/ this is rapine; and by the eternal gods/ I beg Zeus you shall get what you deserve;/ a slaughter here, and nothing paid for it!" (415-419).

Notice the idea of getting what one deserves. Is this a new idea?

Book I sets up certain tensions:

• What will happen to Telemakhos? Will he grow up and deal with the suitors?
• Where is Odysseus? What has happened to him? Is he alive or dead? The epic bears his name but we haven't seen him yet.
• What will happen to the suitors? As they are taking advantage of their position as guests ( a Greek crime) will they be punished or will one of them wed Penelope?
• How do we take Athena's intervention? Are we supposed to think that the mortal characters have no control over their lives as they seem to believe in Iliad? Or is Homer's vision of Athena different from his vision of the gods and goddesses in Iliad? Athena can be seen as Odysseus' mind, I think, his alter-ego.
• Penelope is a fully realized character. And there are many women in different guises in the Odyssey; far more than in Iliad which had more women than in Gilgamesh. Why?

See the Question of Women on the Iliad front page of the web site

Book V (Sweet Nymph and Open Sea)

Our first sight of Odysseus: is it at odds with our expectations of what a victorious hero from Troy would be like?

He is crying and longing for home. Is this different from the Iliad? Though Kalypso offers him immortality, he chooses home. But she is compelled by the gods to release him.

Four passages that tell the reader a good deal about Odysseus's character:

• When Kalypso goes to him with the offer of a boat to sail home, Odysseus's respone is this: "After these years, a helping hand? O goddess,/ what guile is hidden here?" (183-85). She replies, "What a dog you are! And not for nothing learned,/ having the wit to ask this thing of me!" (193-95). What do know about Odysseus from this interchange? (He's very intelligent.)
• Odysseus's reply to Kalypso when she jealously asks him how he could prefer his wife, Penelope to Kalyso, a goddess. (He's very tactful.)
• Odysseus's reponse to Ino's offer of her veil: lines 355-375
• Odysseus's thoughts when he reaches the shore: lines 490-96

Book VIII (The Songs of the Harper)

Scholars' only evidence for the tradition that Homer was blind: the blind poet, Demodokos, the minstrel at the court of the benevolent Alkinoos of the Phaiakians, the island on which Odysseus is washed ashore. The poet is mentioned by name line (265). Odysseus asks the poet to sing the song of the Akhaians' and the "wooden horse/ Epeios built, inspired by Athena --/ the ambuscade Odysseus filled with fighters/ and sent to take the inner town of Troy" (511-18).

"The splendid minstrel sang it./ And Odysseus/ let the bright molten tears run down his cheeks" (542-45). Is this surprising in view of the highest goals of the warrior class we have seen in Troy?

The tension established in this book is what has happened to Odysseus after he left Troy that makes him so unusual?

Notice Homer does not begin in chronological order. What is gained?