The Odyssey

The Odyssey is the powerful sequel to The Iliad. Much debate is over the topic of whether or not the same Homer wrote both books. This is in many respects completely irrelevant, but I side with Richmond Lattimore and David Grene and Miss Ames (My heroes) in that there was One Homer. The works seem too similar to be otherwise. Perhaps the author of the Odyssey was merely extremely well versed in the Iliad but as I said, futile to debate. It is like unto debating whether or not Achilleus and Patroklos were lovers. Not important.

In many ways, The Odyssey deals with the same question as The Iliad - What does it mean to be human? But in another way, it is vastly different. For The Iliad also asks, "How do we deal with death?" but The Odyssey asks, "How do we deal with death?". The two main characters, Achilleus and Odysseus, are also vastly different.

The Odyssey opens with men from Achaia and Ithaka living in Odysseus's house and eating his goods, violating the sacrosanct host-guest relationship, disrespecting his heir and his wife and lording it over his servants. Odysseus meanwhile is trying to get back to Ithaka. The poem details his journey from Troy to Kalypso's island and then to the Phaiakians and finally to Ithaka, where he at last avenges himself on the suitors.

The most important part of The Odyssey for me was Odysseus's reaction to Kalypso's offer of immortality. She loves Odysseus and wants him to stay on Oneigya forever with her. But by that time, Odysseus knows what immortality is like and refuses, prefering the short and vibrant life of the mortal to that of the god, or immortal.

But remember in The Iliad when no one wanted anything less than immortality? Everyone wants eternal, everlasting glory, and wants to "be like a god". Very different now, with a mortal actually refusing immortality.

Odysseus travels the world in The Odyssey and sees many peoples, cultures, and ways of life. He meets the Lotus Eaters, the Cyclopes, the Phaiakians, and even his own homecoming on Ithaka. He even changes during the poem - after blinding Cyclops, he bursts out and tells the injured beast who it was that hurt him, thus incurring Poseidon's wrath. He wants everyone to know what Odysseus did - he still wants glory.

Through the epic, however, this opinion is tempered. Seeing his disaster at the Cyclops, and the destruction of his men at Zeus' hands, he tempers and controls himself, restraining his servants from glorying in the 108 bodies he has slain. "For it is impeity to glory so over the slain". Has he learned something in his journey? I would like to think so.

There is so much to learn from this poem, almost as much as The Iliad. To be honest, I preferred the former, but there is no mistaking Homer's genius in this later work. Odysseus's journey and development, the cunning of Penelope and her faithfulness to her long lost husband, and especially the maturation of Telemachos, together with the spectacular rejection of immortality made by Odysseus make this book (translated preferably Lattimore) a must-read.

Onwards, then, to Aeschylus and the Orestia.