The Odyssey Read online

  Most of this I had, as a historian, deduced for myself while reading and rereading the text of the Odyssey over the years, and, at long last, translating it. The two obvious (I thought) conclusions that could be drawn from this were, first, that the Odyssey was a later work than the Iliad; and, second, that it was very probably put into the form in which it has reached us at some point in the seventh century. I was uncomfortably aware that such a view ran counter to the opinions of a large number of Homerists, some of whom were not slow to remind me that, as a historian, I had no understanding of the way in which literature, poetry in particular, and, a fortiori, its critical interpretation, worked. Quite apart from the fact that I had been studying, and writing, poetry for long before I decided to become a professional historian, I saw, and see, no reason why literary critics, whether ancient or modern, should be mysteriously exempt from the normal constraints of historical evidence. No literary argument that I saw in any way shook my judgment on these two points.

  When I was about two-thirds of the way through my translation, by the kind of happy coincidence that would raise eyebrows in fiction, but that keeps obstinately turning up in real life, I received just the kind of support that I most needed from an unexpected quarter. I had been sent for review Martin West's The Making of the Odyssey, in the event the last book he was to produce before his wholly unforeseen premature death. I had kept putting off reading it, because, knowing the quality of West's scholarship, I was afraid of what I might find there. I need not have worried. There was plenty in this text over which we differed, but nevertheless, on the likely date of the Odyssey, its chronological relation to the Iliad, and the reasons for both, we saw eye to eye. Moreover, West furnished me with detailed evidence that added some much-needed precision to my own opinions. As will become apparent below, this is by no means the only debt that I owe to a remarkable book, and I was glad of the chance, when I wrote my review, to pay tribute to one of the twentieth century's truly great classical scholars.1

  Another discovery, gradually forcing itself upon me as my translation progressed, came as an unexpected surprise. I had assumed, from years of previous reading, that the Greek of the Odyssey would be both easier to construe and more enjoyable to turn into English than that of the Iliad. In fact, neither assumption proved to be the case. I found the Greek of the Odyssey consistently harder, and very often far more ambiguous,2 than that of the Iliad. Speeches (and a great deal of the Odyssey consists of dialogue) proved particularly difficult. Exchanges tended to be conversational and realistic, but lengthy monologues were another matter. I sometimes found sentence length and subordination of clauses looking forward to the sophisticated syntactical usages of fifth-century drama. Meaning tended to be more subtly nuanced. Formulaic phrases were far fewer, and--partly in consequence--the text was more tightly packed with particularist action and descriptions: as a result, finding room for line-by-line equivalency proved consistently harder than in the Iliad, and when I came to write the synopses of each book, these turned out, however hard I aimed for abbreviation, measurably longer than those of the earlier epic--despite the fact that the books of the Odyssey are, line for line, almost all a good deal shorter than those of the Iliad, where repetitive battle action, with formulaic phrasing, takes up a remarkable amount of space. The Odyssey has sometimes been described, misleadingly, as the first modern novel--seldom, as we shall see, can a greater strain often have been placed on the reader's suspension of disbelief--but the claim is at least true to the extent that in its narrative, whether direct or reported, the percentage of individual, original activity moving the story forward is unprecedentedly high.

  The essential incompatibilities between Iliad and Odyssey in fact go a good way beyond what can be explained solely by differences of subject and genre, considerable though these are: the Iliad is in essence a heavily formalized tragedy, if at times unexpectedly realistic, whereas the Odyssey is rather a semi-heroic romantic adventure story, with a strong, and at times disconcerting, element of folktale and fantasy. The clear chronological gap between them indicated by the various social and linguistic differences outlined above suggests a genesis for our Odyssey perhaps fifty years later than that of the Iliad. We also need to take into consideration the Odyssey's notably larger vocabulary than that of its predecessor. The formulaic phraseology is severely reduced, and sometimes, when used, seems awkward. Similes, so striking and brilliant a feature of the Iliad, are notably fewer in the Odyssey, and will on occasion strike the reader as strained or downright bizarre. When Odysseus reacts in anger at the lascivious maids (20.5-16), his heart within him growls like a bitch standing over her puppies and barking at strangers; Odysseus and Telemachos embracing in happy tears at their reunion (16.216-18) are likened to vultures mourning their stolen chicks.3 As I worked at the translation, I came to feel, more and more, that whoever was responsible for the Odyssey as we have it could not be the same creative mind that had produced our Iliad. And here, too (this time with prior knowledge of his position), I was in agreement with Martin West.

  THE NARRATIVE EXAMINED

  Exactly how the surviving text of the Odyssey was composed will never be agreed: there simply is not enough surviving evidence. The best we can do is to look closely at what's there and see what it can tell us. Two basic assumptions seem reasonable: first, that the Odyssey drew generously upon the oral lays of the past; second, that it was compiled in roughly its final form by a poet who had learned what could be done with the written word from the Iliad and sought to produce a work that matched it in length and scope. That goal was not achieved; the Odyssey is measurably shorter than the Iliad, notwithstanding the various lengthy digressions that occupy so much space: the reminiscences of Nestor (3.103-200, 254-328), Menelaos (4.333-592), and, later, Eumaios (15.390-484), the antecedents of Theoklymenos (15.222-82), the repetitive fictional cover stories of Odysseus, to Eumaios (14.199-359), Antinoos (17.415-44), and Penelope (19.165-202), parts indeed even of the seemingly interminable off-the-map disquisition to the Phaiakians that takes up all of books 9-12.

  The narrative of the Odyssey also differs fundamentally from that of the Iliad. Dramatically speaking, the world of the Odyssey is that of the Greek heroes' returns (nostoi) home after the Trojan War, but there is far less sense of historical reality than in the Iliad. No tantalizing hint of evidence that might authenticate the actuality of the events--or, better, the characters--lurks in the background. The Lotus-Eaters, the Laistrygonians, the Kyklops, the Sirens, the Cattle of the Sun, the remote islands of Kalypso and Kirke, even the idealized--and equally remote--Scherian court of King Alkinoos: none of these belong to the harshly human world of Troy, Mykenai, or even, indeed, to the corrupt postwar aristocratic society of the suitors' Ithake. After Odysseus has been telling the Phaiakians the names of famous heroines of olden time whose ghosts he has observed in the Underworld, it is hard not to sense a tone of deadpan irony in Alkinoos' voice when he reassures his voluble guest (11.356-76) that his listeners do not suppose for one moment that he's one of those "itinerant men who fashion false tales from what no man could really see!" Few modern readers can have reached this point without entertaining a similar suspicion. By contrast, in the heady and expansive days of the seventh century that saw the birth of the Odyssey--when beyond-the-horizon myths like those of Skylle and Charybdis, or the Sirens, or the Wandering Rocks, were being supplanted by less colorful geographical fact--there must have been many listeners who derived a certain quiet comfort from a narrative in which the reality of such myths was still vouched for, if only by a spellbinding teller of tales energetically singing for his supper.

  Nor indeed, in this last context, does the narrative always maintain a plausible realism. We may, like the original audience, be able, at a pinch, to accommodate traditional monsters such as the Kyklops or even the Sirens. But the Odyssey is also careless about practical details. As West stresses (2014, 66), "the whole narrative is pervaded by contradictions and inconsistencies," and its composer "is a c
hronically inconsistent narrator" who "cannot ever be relied upon to make the details of what happens in one passage match what an earlier passage portended, or a later report of events agree precisely with what we were told when they happened." A typical case is his confusion over the removal of weapons from the hall.4 He has only the vaguest notion regarding the specific structure of Odysseus' house (see, e.g., 22.142-43 and n. 2 ad loc.). Several times we are confronted by physically improbable incidents or situations. The goatherd Melanthios is credited (22.142-46) with the ability to heft at one trip no fewer than twelve full sets of armor for the suitors. The hanging of the errant maidservants produces nooses from nowhere, and puts a minimum of 1,200 lbs. weight on a single rope that seems simply looped round a column (22.446-73, with n. 5 ad loc.).

  Though originally, according to tradition, there seem to have been no more than a dozen suitors, all from Ithake, a reasonable target for Odysseus' great bow (see West 2014, 104), nevertheless the composer of the Odyssey, who shows a liking for large numbers, at one point (16.245-53) has Telemachos list for his father over a hundred, from all around, islands and mainland, to emphasize the difficulty of dealing with them. Later, however, after a stretch of generalized slaughter, they have conveniently shrunk to a manageable number.

  Most notable of all is the feat to be emulated in the contest of the bow (21.75-76 and elsewhere). How does Odysseus, from a sitting position (21.416-23), so shoot an arrow that it somehow passes through no fewer than twelve iron axe heads in a row (19.577-78, 21.419-23)? No remotely credible explanation of this feat has ever been advanced: for a recent account of some of these, with their difficulties, see Comm., 3: 140-47. There are two main theories: that the arrow went through either (i) the empty sockets in the axe heads or (ii) the hanging rings, on double axes, at the base of the axe helves. In both cases, the holes would seem likely to have been far too narrow; indeed, it seems more than likely that the feat as described is a physical impossibility. Despite hopeful arguments and claims, no actual known hole in an ancient axe head or hanging ring is nearly large enough to sustain the trajectory of a fletched arrow, however accurately aimed, through twelve such spaced holes in a row, even granting the unlikely supposition that all twelve holes could be accurately aligned.5

  MESSING WITH THE LEGEND: MORAL CENSORSHIP, CHRONOLOGICAL FIXES, AND OVERINTRUSIVE PRETERNATURALISM

  There is one major event, referred to again and again in the Odyssey--first by Zeus during a conclave of the Olympians (1.29-43, 299-300), then by Nestor (3.193-98, 253-75, 301-10), Athene disguised as Mentor (3.234-35), and Telemachos (3.237-52) in discussion, then by Menelaos, again to Telemachos (4.512-37), then by the shade of Agamemnon to Odysseus (11.387-434) and Achilles (24.20-22, 95-97) in the Underworld--that has an all-too-realistic supposed historical context. This is the seduction, during Agamemnon's absence at Troy, of his wife Klytaimnestra by his cousin Aigisthos, the son of Thyestes, followed by their joint rule over Mykenai for seven years; their murder of Agamemnon on his return from the wars; and the retributive murder, in the eighth year, of both Aigisthos and Klytaimnestra by the latter's son Orestes.

  The immediate object of the repeated reminders of this event--which might be seen, in historical terms, as a characteristic and predictable consequence of the prolonged absence from a major Greek citadel of its normal defenders--is clearly to contrast Klytaimnestra with faithful Penelope, who holds out for years, through thick and thin, the embodiment of an ideally loyal wife, against the temptations presented by a crowd of lawless and importunate suitors. In addition, there is the implied comparison of Telemachos with Orestes. The motif of Agamemnon's betrayal and murder has rightly been interpreted thus by many scholars.

  But the episode as presented has also been responsible for one of the most bizarre--and, on the face of it, entirely unnecessary--modifications of the postwar returns. From a very early date, tradition had it that Aigisthos and Klytaimnestra jointly ruled Mykenai for seven years. At some point, it was decided, improbably, that this reign began with the murder of Agamemnon on the latter's return from Troy. The reason for this may well have been the awkward fact that Aigisthos' rule had been popular--his otherwise surprising formal epithet amumon, "blameless" (Il. 1.29) may be suggestive here; and, since he was not only a grandson of Pelops, but the son of Atreus' brother Thyestes, who had himself succeeded Atreus as king of Mykenai (Il. 1.102-8), he may well have been regarded as having as legitimate a claim to the throne (cf. 4.517-18) as his cousin Agamemnon (to whom, rather than to his own son, Thyestes had allegedly passed on the scepter of power).

  There is also the tradition, never mentioned in Homeric epic, but a prominent feature of the Epic Cycle (see Cypria, arg. 8; West 2003, 74-75), that at the very beginning of the expedition to Troy, Iphigeneia, Klytaimnestra's daughter, was sent to the port of Aulis at the request of her father Agamemnon on the pretext that she was to marry Achilles, but in fact to be sacrificed to Artemis in order to placate the goddess' wrath at Agamemnon himself and obtain a following wind for the fleet to sail to Troy. The sacrifice took place, the fleet got its wind and sailed.

  Klytaimnestra may well have been thought by the rhapsodes who transmitted the oral legend to have had a very good reason to hate her husband--something that could indeed have influenced her when his cousin Aigisthos came calling. So when was that? Surely at a fairly early point during the Trojan War. Nestor's reminiscences (3.262-75) of how Aigisthos seduced Klytaimnestra, as well as the version told to Menelaos by the Old Man of the Sea (4.517-37, esp. 524-29, with a watch set to provide advance warning of Agamemnon's return) are clearly based on just such a tradition. Klytaimnestra's initial reluctance, like the claim that a deer was substituted for the human victim, reveal a later determination to expunge the entire episode as morally repugnant, and to remove any hint of approval from the account of Aigisthos' behavior throughout. For this, two changes were regarded as absolutely indispensable: the sacrifice of Iphigeneia was suppressed, while the commencement of Aigisthos' seven years' rule in Mykenai was set at a point after the murder of Agamemnon. Aigisthos was thus rendered wholly culpable, and Agamemnon could be seen as the conventional cuckolded husband, whose murder directly facilitated both his murderer's seven-year reign and the liaison with the (violently widowed) queen that went with it. Significantly, the reported degree of Klytaimnestra's own direct involvement in the actual murder remains variable (though Agamemnon himself, as a shade, is angrily convinced of it, and loses no opportunity of comparing his own unhappy marital position with that of Odysseus: see 11.409-11, 421-30; 24.93-98, 192-202).

  But the chronological displacement of Aigisthos' rule over Mykenai had an unlooked-for, and most unfortunate, narrative consequence. Nestor takes it for granted (3.256-61) that, had Menelaos returned while Aigisthos was still alive, he would surely have avenged his brother's murder. But--as everyone knew--it was Orestes (who is thus, like Telemachos, given time to grow up) who, in the eighth year of Aigisthos' rule, came back and did the deed, killing not only Aigisthos but also his own mother (3.302-10). Menelaos himself arrives, bringing much treasure, on the very day of the funeral feast (3.311-12), having spent eight years, after leaving Troy, trafficking round the Levant and Egypt with Helen (4.78-96, 227-32), and carefully emphasizes (4.90-92) that it was while he was thus occupied that his brother was killed. In fact, of course, the only reason for the existence of this unbelievably prolonged postwar business tour is to keep him out of the way until the murder has been avenged by Orestes, since any earlier appearance would raise the question of why he had not then done the job himself.

  The seven-year sojourn of Odysseus chez Kalypso--during which, as West (2014, 127-28) remarks, nothing at all happens--is equally incredible. Originally, Odysseus was thought to have taken no more than three years after the fall of Troy to get back home.6 Kalypso has no real function other than to give Telemachos, like Orestes, time to grow up--in his case with a view both to providing his mother with a compelling motive for remarriage, and to playi
ng a creditable role himself in helping his father overcome the suitors. Poseidon inflicts shipwreck on Odysseus in revenge for his having blinded the Kyklops, Poseidon's son (albeit in self-defense), but the resulting seven-year haven for Odysseus will not have formed part of his original three-year nostos (journey home). As a chronological device, these multi-year segregations are both obvious and singularly lacking in contextual plausibility.

  In the first book of the Iliad (1.188-222), at a point when Achilles, infuriated by Agamemnon, is debating in his mind whether or not to draw his sword and kill him, the observant goddess Here notices and quickly dispatches Athene earthward to prevent such violence. Athene comes up quietly behind Achilles, invisible to everyone except him, and grasps him by his long hair. Astonished, Achilles swings round, instantly recognizes Athene, and enquires if she's come to witness Agamemnon's "arrogant gall" (203), for which he's likely to lose his life. No, the goddess responds, she's been sent to curb Achilles' own wrath, to stop his violence, make him restrict his fury to verbal abuse. Abashed, Achilles exclaims: "Needs must, goddess, respect the words of you both,/however angry at heart one may be. It is better so--/and those who comply with the gods are listened to in return" (216-18). By the time he has resettled his sword in its scabbard, Athene, her task done, is already on her way back to Olympos.