Introduction to Homer, The Odyssey
by John D. Cox

Two long stories influenced ancient Greek civilization as profoundly as the Bible has influenced English-speaking culture. These stories have come to be called The Iliad and The Odyssey, respectively, and their authorship is ascribed to Homer.

In fact, they did not originate as written works at all but as oral compositions. This means they were told, or more precisely sung, by an especially gifted storyteller, called by the Greeks an aoidos. Such a person is pictured briefly in both The Iliad and The Odyssey. Phêmios is Odysseus' own aoidos (1.375-407) , for example, and in the palace of Alkínoös, where Odysseus tells the story of his wanderings, we meet another aoidos, Demódokos, who happens to be blind, as Homer was traditionally said to be. Demódokos takes his place to tell (or sing) a story at the end of a feast:

We can imagine an aoidos telling The Odyssey in a similar manner, and for convenience we can think of him as Homer, as the ancient Greeks did.

The Iliad and The Odyssey are both stories about the distant and heroic past. At the time they were first written down (in about the seventh century BCE), the events they recount were already long concluded. With no means of writing at the time the events occurred, the Greeks remembered them only through the stories of aoidoi, which thereby acquired enormous importance as the sole record of the cultural past. The Iliad deals with a ten-year war the Greeks fought at Troy in about the twelfth century BCE, while The Odyssey deals with the ten-year homecoming of a single Greek warrior at Troy, the hero Odysseus.

Most of Odysseus' homeward journey is recounted by him in Books 9 to 12, and this is the part of the story that everyone knows best. But it is only a small part of The Odyssey, and it is not where Homer begins. Odysseus begins with his sailing from Troy (9.4), the literal start of his homecoming, and proceeds sequentially, concluding with his arrival on the island of Ogýgia, where Kalypso lives (2.564-75). But Homer begins with the end of Odysseus' visit to Ogýgia, after Odysseus has lived seven years with the goddess. "Can mortals / compare with goddesses in grace and form?" Kalypso asks him, and he acknowledges that Penélopê, his mortal wife, "would seem a shade before your majesty" (5.221-22), but he longs to go home just the same, though twenty years have passed, and he has no idea what he will find there. Not all the obstacles to Odysseus' return are outside of him: he will have no homecoming until he wants to have one. For him, the good life apparently consists of more than endless pleasure with an immortal playmate. It is not hard to see why subsequent generations have read The Odyssey as a moral pilgrimage.

Literally speaking, the end of Odysseus' homecoming occurs in the middle of The Odyssey, for the hero arrives in Ithaka, his island kingdom, in Book 13. This raises the question of what Homer does with the second half of the story. From the beginning, it is clear that Penélopê has would-be suitors who are strongly urging her to marry one of them, now that her husband has apparently died or deserted her. These suitors in fact pose a major obstacle to Odysseus' successful homecoming, as the sobering example of Agamémnon makes clear (1.48-62). Agamémnon had led the Greeks in their assault on Troy, and his homecoming had been much speedier and less difficult than Odysseus', but on his arrival at home, Agamémnon was murdered by his wife, Klytaimnéstra, who had taken a lover in the meantime. (Odysseus knows this story, because he hears it from Agamémnon's ghost, when he visits the land of the dead [11.449-504].)

With Agamémnon's example in mind, Odysseus uses extreme caution in Ithaka, approaching his swineherd Eumaios, whom he thinks he can trust, before he approaches Penélopê. With the assistance of Eumaios, he disguises himself and enters his house as a beggar to see what is happening there. He discovers that Penélopê's suitors are behaving insolently, feasting at her expense and mistreating her guests. Odysseus is himself insulted and struck by them, when they think he is a mere beggar. Assisted by Eumaios and by his son Telémakhos, to whom he also reveals his identity, Odysseus cleverly disarms the suitors and then destroys all 120 of them in a fierce and bloody battle.

Still, he has not yet proved that Penélopê is trustworthy, and equally important, she is not sure that she can trust him. Many men have claimed to be her husband over the last twenty years, so how is she to know that this is not another imposter? And if this really is Odysseus, why has he remained away for so long, and what is he like after all these years? Book 23, "The Trunk of the Olive Tree," recounts how this dilemma for both man and wife is resolved. In a brilliant stroke of storytelling, Homer shows how the cleverest and most resourceful of heroes is himself outwitted but thereby establishes his identity.

As a narrative exposition of the good life, The Odyssey raises many thought provoking questions. Does Odysseus' attack on the suitors establish justice, or does it merely perpetuate violence? Do Odysseus and Penélopê achieve a good relationship in the end, in view of his having slept with virtually every woman he met on his way home, while she was trustworthy only if she fended off her suitors? Is it good for Odysseus to trust his swineherd and his son (who was an infant when he last saw him) before he trusts his wife? Can a man truly be called a hero when he is so accomplished at lying and deceiving, or when he is so dependent on interfering gods for his success? Is it good for the gods to be so inconsistent, vengeful, and promiscuous while at the same time insisting that human beings are responsibile for their own actions (1.48-51)?

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