« Tell me, Muse,
of that man of many resources,
who wandered far and wide,
after sacking the holy citadel of Troy.
Many the men whose cities he saw,
whose ways he learned.
Many the sorrows he suffered at sea,
while trying to bring himself and his friends back alive.
Yet despite his wishes he failed to save them, because of their own un-wisdom, foolishly eating the cattle of Helios, the Sun, so the god denied them their return.
Tell us of these things, beginning where you will, Goddess.»
In the first lines of The Odyssey Homer asked Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory to tell the story.
The Odyssey is the second book, after The Iliad, attributed also to the poet Homer. It is believed that to have been written in the 8th century BCE.
This long epic poem of 12 000 verses composed by 24 songs describes the adventures of the King of Ithaca, the clever Odysseus ( for the Romans Hercules) on his sail back to his kingdom of Ithaca after the Greek victory and the fall of Troy.
In the first act ( songs 1-4) : Homer retraces the quest of Odysseus’ son Telemachus.
Telemachus is searching for news of his father who has not been heard from since he left for war nearly 20 years earlier. Telemachus is looking for his father and go questioning the the wise king Nestor and the King Menelaus, now reunited with Helen.
Meanwhile on the Island of Ithaca, Penelope, Odysseus’ wife and Telemachus’ mother is keeping at bay a whole crowd of atrocious suitors who are getting more and more impatient to marry her in order to grab the throne.
Penelope has previously asked all her courtiers to wait for her to finish a delicate tapestry. As soon as her embroidery would be achieved, she has promised that her mourning will end and that she will select a new husband. No one has yet realised that the brilliant Queen is destroying her patient work every night in order to gain time.
Act 2 : the adventures of Odysseus on his way back from Troy to Ithaca.
The Lotus eating men
Odysseus and his twelve ships were driven off course by storms. Then they landed on an island where the men would eat Lotus : “the Lotus eating that put them in a happy but lethargic attitude.” Unfortunately Odysseus crew tasted this terribly addictive plant so Odysseus had to drag them back to the ships by force.
The blinding of Polyphemus by Nobody
Then the ships accosted a peaceful island with fresh water and sheep. With some members of his crew, Odysseus went exploring the island and found a grotto which seemed to be occupied with furniture and food. They decided to wait for its owner.
But when the owner came back. It was too late !They turned all paralysed with fear when he finally showed up : he was a ferocious giant cyclop, ravenous of human flesh as soon he smelled them.
The Cyclop Polyphemus locked the opening of the grotto with a huge rock. There was no way to escape and he immediately devoured two men alive for his dinner. The next morning he ate two more raw men, this time for breakfast. Odysseus, thanks the gods, had taken wine with him so he tried to negotiate with the Cyclop and more importantly he tried to make him drunk. The cyclop asked his name and the smart Odysseus answered”Nobody “. Polyphemus, now completely drunk, went to sleep and the prisoners were able to blinded him with a wooden stake.
As the door was locked, the other Cyclops alerted by his screams of pain could not entered and asked him nervously who had blinded him . Polyphemus could only answer the truth : “Nobody “.
“Nobody had blinded him”.
How extraordinarily smart is that?
How manipulative was Odysseus to devise such a clever scheme ?
Polyphemus had to let his sheep go out to graze. As he was now blinded, he stroke them each before letting them go. But the clever Odysseus and his men were hiding on the underbellies of the sheep and were all able to escape.
The Hubris of Odysseus : The Revenge of Poseidon
But here the clever, smart and cunning Odysseus was caught by his own “Hubris “: when he was finally out of harm from Polyphemus he shouted to him his true identity , omitting the fact that Polyphemus was the son of the mighty god of the seas Poseidon.
Polyphemus immediately begged his father to doom Odysseus’ journey back to Ithaca and what should have taken a couple of months would take almost 10 years, the death of all Odysseus men and the wreckage of all his ships.
Aeolus, the God of the Winds
After their escape, Odysseus met on another island Aeolus, god of the winds. He gave to Odysseus, a most precious gift, a leather bag containing all the winds, except the west wind, in order to ensure him a safe and swift return home.
Just as Ithaca came into sight, some greedy sailors opened the bag while Odysseus slept, thinking it contained a treasure. All of the winds flew out and the resulting storm drove the ships back all the way they had come. Aeolus, furious to see them back, understood immediately what had happened and refused any further help.
The men then re-embarked and accosted the Laestrygonians island, populated by cannibals. Trying desperately to escape, all Odysseus’ ships except his own, were destroyed.
Under the charm of Circe, the magician
With only but one boat, Odysseus and his crew reached the island of Aeaea, the home of the witch-goddess Circe, the daughter of the god of the sun Helios. Odysseus sent some men to explore the island.
The small group soon discovered a wonderful palace and the gorgeous Circe on its doorstep proposing a fresh drink.
But of course, it was too good to be true and after drinking this delicious but toxic drink all the men forgot who they were and were transformed into dirty, filthy and disgusting pigs.
Thankfully for Odysseus, one of the men, more cautious, had stayed away and observed the terrible fate of his friends. He went immediately back to Odysseus to warn him.
Odysseus was not only brave but he was definitely a trustworthy leader. He would not leave a man behind and fled.
He went immediately to rescue his crew. On the way he met a young man who is none the less than the god Hermes who not only warned Odysseus about Circe but gave him an antidote against Circe magic, an herb called moly, which unfortunately has never been categorically identified.
So Odysseus was able to force Circe to put an end to her evil spell against his men, who were transformed back into their usual selves.
But by doing so, Odysseus himself felt under the spell of Circe and became passionately in love with her.
For an entire year, Odysseus and his men stayed blissfully with Circe and her priestesses .
But even a year full of pleasures can become boring. That is exactly what happened to Odysseus and his men : they got bored, missed their beloved and decided to go back home.
The Songs of the Sirens
But they had to sail by the kingdom of the sirens, and Circe had warned Odysseus about their enchanting songs that forced the sailors to steer toward the rocks provoking ship wreckage and the drowning of the sailors.
Homer described the sirens not as wonderful sea creatures but as birds.
Odysseus was so intrigued by their song that, while he ordered to all his crew to block their ears with beeswax, he requested them to tie him tightly to the mast as he wanted to hear their enchanting song without succumbing to it.
It was a success. They all survived.
Scylla and Charybdis
Immediately after, they had to face at the same time the 2 deadly perils : Scylla and Charybdis, hence since then the expression
“ to choose between Scylla and Charybdis “.
They had to pass a narrow strait, where on one side was waiting Scylla, a six headed monster and on the other side was a deadly whirlpool. The two perils were so close to each other that if you tried to avoid one you would get dangerously too close of the other.
For the cunning and logical Odysseus, the best solution was to get close to Scylla. It was wiser to sacrifice some men than to have your whole ship and everyone aboard destroyed. So six men aboard were snatched by Scylla.
They arrived on the island of Thrinacia and while Odysseus isolated himself to pray and pay his respects to the gods, his unruly crew committed the sacrilege of hunting the sacred cattle of the Sun- god Helios.
To punish this outrage, no one was allowed to mess with a god’s property, Zeus threw his thunderbolts and Odysseus ship sank.
Everyone but Odysseus drowned and he was washed ashore on the island of Ogygia where he was made prisoner by the beautiful and loving Nymph Calypso.
The Nymph Calypso
He spent 5 years with Calypso and they had a son Nausithous.
Despite the blissful life, full of pleasures , Odysseus refused Calypso’s fantastic proposal of immortality and eternal youth and stayed determined to go back to Ithaca.
Calypso had to accept to release Odysseus after the intervention of Hermes , Athena and finally Zeus. Helped by a sad Calypso, Odysseus built a raft on which he set off for Ithaca one more time.
Poseidon, however, once more spitefully intervened and caused a fearful storm to smash the raft to pieces. Odysseus then washed up battered and naked on the island of Scheria, home of the Phaeacians, was rescued by Nausikaa, the daughter of the King.
Restored to full health and vigour, the hero was given one of the magical Phaiacian ships which needed no captain to steer.
Back to Ithaca
Odysseus’ protectress, the goddess Athena , decided to grab the opportunity of an absence of Poseidon from Olympus and convinced Zeus to let Odysseus returned to his home.
With this magical vessel, Odysseus finally made it back to Ithaca. However, just as the Cyclop Polyphemos had promised, all was not well in the king’s palace where the patient Queen Penelope was literally besieged by an army of horrific suitors who all wanted to marry her in order to sit on Odysseus throne.
Odysseus was helped there by Athena who made him disguised as an old beggar so he could understand what is really going on in his own palace with more than a hundred of conniving suitors who wanted to marry his wife to grab his throne.
One has to admit that after 10 years of peregrinations, every one was convinced that he was dead.
A Man’s Best Friend
Under his disguise, no one recognised Odysseus except his dog. Since then dogs have won the title of being the best friend a man could have. The dog who must have been a puppy when his master left for the Trojan War was now an old dog. Still he recognised immediately his master, came to him and then succumbed as if he had been waiting for the return of his master to allow himself to die.
Odysseus, still disguised as an old beggar started being bullied by the suitors in his own home. His faithful wife Penelope didn’t recognise him but his old nanny Eurycleia did because of an old scar but as Odysseus requested, she kept silent.
Penelope challenged the suitors that if one of them could string the huge bow that had belonged to her previous husband and then shoot an arrow through twelve axe-heads, she would marry him.
Not one suitor had the strength to string the bow, let alone shoot with it. Then out of nowhere the old beggar shot and won with ease. When Odysseus revealed his identity all the suitors panicked as none was a match to the already legendary warrior.
There was to be no escape for the interlopers, though, because Telemachos had closed all the doors and removed the weapons mounted on the walls. Odysseus then casually picked off the suitors one by one with his fearsome bow and so reclaimed his rightful kingdom.
The Odyssey ends .
Homer demonstrated clearly that there was no achievement , no success to celebrate without determination.
To fight all the obstacles that life, fate or the gods throw at you is the man’s sole honour.
If continued : A Greek Tragedy
Now that The Odyssey had ended with Odysseus back on his throne, reunited with his family, was the royal couple going to live happily ever after ?
The Greek epic is never a fairytale.
There was evidently to be a tragic final twist :
Telegonos, the own son of Odysseus and Circe as a young warrior would landed on Ithaca and in the battle that followed unknowingly killed his own father.
The ancient Greeks did invent the tragedy after all.