Odyssey

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The Odyssey (Template:IPAc-en;Template:Sfn Template:Langx)<ref>Template:LSJ.Template:OEtymD</ref> is one of two major epics of ancient Greek literature attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest surviving works of literature and remains popular with modern audiences. Like the Iliad, the Odyssey is divided into 24 books. It follows the heroic king of Ithaca, Odysseus, also known by the Latin variant Ulysses, and his homecoming journey after the ten-year long Trojan War. His journey from Troy to Ithaca lasts an additional ten years, during which time he encounters many perils and all of his crewmates are killed. In Odysseus's long absence, he is presumed dead, leaving his wife Penelope and son Telemachus to contend with a group of unruly suitors competing for Penelope's hand in marriage.

The Odyssey was first composed in Homeric Greek around the 8th or 7th century BC; by the mid-6th century BC, it had become part of the Greek literary canon. In antiquity, Homer's authorship was taken as true, but contemporary scholarship predominantly assumes that the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed independently, as part of long oral traditions. Given widespread illiteracy, the poem was performed for an audience by an Template:Translit or rhapsode.

Key themes in the epic include the ideas of Template:Translit (Template:Lang; 'return', homecoming), wandering, Template:Translit (Template:Lang; 'guest-friendship'), testing, and omens. Scholars discuss the narrative prominence of certain groups within the poem, such as women and slaves, who have larger roles than in other works of ancient literature. This focus is especially remarkable when contrasted with the Iliad, which centres the exploits of soldiers and kings during the Trojan War.

The Odyssey is regarded as one of the most significant works of the Western canon. The first English translation of the Odyssey was in the 16th century. Adaptations and re-imaginings continue to be produced across a wide variety of media. In 2018, when BBC Culture polled experts around the world to find literature's most enduring narrative, the Odyssey topped the list.

Background

Dating

Many suggestions have been made for dating composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey, but there is no consensus.Template:Sfn Robert Lamberton says that the epics "[straddled] the beginnings of widespread literacy" from the middle of the 5th-century BC,Template:Sfn but the poems' language can be dated to long before this period.Template:Sfn The Greeks began adopting a modified version of the Phoenician alphabet to create their own writing system during the eighth century BC;Template:Sfn if the Homeric poems were among the earliest products of that literacy, they would have been composed towards the late period of that century.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn

According to Rudolf Pfeiffer, they were probably written down, but there is no evidence for their publishing or physical dissemination for consumption by a literate audience.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn Dating is further complicated by the fact that the Homeric poems, or sections of them, were performed by rhapsodes for hundreds of years.Template:Sfn

Composition and authorship

Template:Further Scholars agree that the Homeric epics developed as part of an oral tradition over hundreds of years.Template:Sfn In the early twentieth century, Milman Parry and Albert Lord demonstrated that they prominently contained the characteristics of oral poetry,Template:SfnTemplate:Efn which would allow even an illiterate poet to improvise large poems,Template:Sfn composing them through speech.Template:Sfn Scholars do not agree on how the poems emerged from this tradition,Template:Sfn and it is not clear whether oral tradition can claim full credit for their composition.Template:Sfn In the nineteenth century, a series of related questions about the epics' authorship became known as the Homeric Question.Template:Sfn Sources from antiquity created mythic narratives to explain Homer.Template:Sfn Debate still persists today over many of the Homeric questions;Template:Sfn for example, concerning the compositional relationship between the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the largely lost poems of the Epic Cycle; about whether Homer lived and, if he did, when;Template:Sfn and whether the poems reflect any geographical, historical or cultural reality.Template:Sfn While Homer is today attributed as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, other texts have historically been attributed to him—for example, the Homeric Hymns.Template:Sfn

Textual reconstructions indicates the poems have taken many forms.Template:Sfn As live performance involves feedback, the content of the poem may even have varied from telling to telling.Template:Sfn This context is important for understanding and interpreting the epics,Template:Sfn and John Miles Foley said that performance is crucial part of their meaning.Template:Sfn Performance of epic poetry is a subject of both poems, with the Odyssey actually depicting professional singers like Phemius and Demodocus.Template:Sfn Applying these in-narrative performances to our understanding of the epics' performance might indicate that they were performed at the houses of distinguished families as part of banquets or dinners in the 2nd and early 1st millennia BC,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn and that observers may have directed or participated in them.Template:Sfn They were probably recited—as in, not performed with music.Template:Sfn

Like the Iliad, the Odyssey is divided into twenty-four parts.Template:Efn Early scholars suggested these correspond to the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet, but this is widely considered ahistorical.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn The division was probably made long after the poem's composition but is generally accepted as part of the poem's modern structure.Template:Sfn There are many theories as to how they arose. Some suggest they were an authentic part of the oral tradition or invented by Alexandrian scholars.Template:Sfn Pseudo-Plutarch attributed the divisions to Aristarchus of Samothrace, but there is some evidence against this.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Some scholars connect the epics' segmentation to the tradition of performance, for example as a creation of rhapsodes.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Both epics assume some knowledge of their audiences—for example, concerning the Trojan War. This strongly indicates that the epics were engaging with a pre-existing mythological tradition.Template:Sfn Arguments exist for either epic having been composed first; it is not clear.Template:Sfn While the Trojan War is an important element for both, the Odyssey does not directly reference any events from the IliadTemplate:'s depiction of the war,Template:SfnTemplate:Efn and they are generally considered to have formed independently from one another.Template:Sfn

Influences

Terracotta plaque of the Mesopotamian ogre Humbaba, believed to be a possible inspiration for the figure of Polyphemus

Scholars note strong influences from Near Eastern mythology and literature in the Odyssey.Template:Sfn Martin West notes substantial parallels between the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Odyssey.Template:Sfn Both Odysseus and Gilgamesh are known for traveling to the ends of the earth and on their journeys go to the land of the dead.Template:Sfn On his voyage to the underworld, Odysseus follows instructions given to him by Circe, who is located at the edges of the world and associated with solar imagery.Template:Sfn Like Odysseus, Gilgamesh gets directions on reaching the land of the dead from a divine helper: the goddess Siduri, who, like Circe, dwells by the sea at the ends of the earth, whose home is also associated with the sun. Gilgamesh reaches Siduri's house by passing through a tunnel underneath Mount Mashu, the high mountain from which the sun comes into the sky.Template:Sfn West argues that the similarity of Odysseus's and Gilgamesh's journeys to the edges of the earth are the result of the influence of the Gilgamesh epic upon the Odyssey.Template:Sfn Classical folklorist Graham Anderson notes other patterns—the heroes of Odyssey and Gilgamesh meet women who can transform people into animals; are involved in the death of divine cattle; unhappily enjoy the presence of a "voluptuous lady in an other-worldly paradise" following a voyage through the underworld.Template:Sfn

Scholars have explored whether figures originate within the poem or belong to a tradition outside of it. Adrienne Mayor says that the Austrian paleontologist Othenio Abel made unfounded claims about the fifth-century BC philosopher Empedocles connecting the cyclops to prehistoric elephant skulls.Template:Sfn Whether the epic poem created, popularised, or simply retold the tale of Polyphemus is a long-standing dispute,Template:Sfn but Anderson says there is some amount of scholarly consensus that the story existed separately from the epic.Template:Sfn William Bedell Stanford notes there are some indications that Odysseus existed independently of Homer, although it is inconclusive.Template:Sfn

Geography

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Scholars are divided on whether any of the places visited by Odysseus are real.Template:Sfn The events in the main sequence of the Odyssey (excluding Odysseus's embedded narrative of his wanderings) have been said to take place across the Peloponnese and the Ionian Islands.<ref name="auto">Strabo, Geographica, 1.2.15, cited in Template:Harvnb</ref> Many have attempted to map Odysseus's journey, but largely agree that the landscapes—especially those described in books 9 to 11—include too many mythical elements to be truly mappable.Template:Sfn For instance, there are challenges ascertaining whether Odysseus's homeland of Ithaca is the same island that is now called Template:Langx (modern Greek: Template:Langx);<ref name="auto" /> the same is true of the route described by Odysseus to the Phaeacians and their island of Scheria.Template:Sfn British classicist Peter Jones writes that the poem was likely updated many times by oral story-tellers across several centuries before it was written down, making it "virtually impossible" to say "in what sense [the poem] reflects a historical society or accurate geographical knowledge".Template:Sfn Modern scholars tend to explore Odysseus's journey metaphorically rather than literally.Template:Sfn

Synopsis

File:Villa Romana de La Olmeda Mosaicos romanos 001 Ulises.jpg
A mosaic depicting Odysseus, from the villa of La Olmeda, Pedrosa de la Vega, Spain, late 4th–5th centuries AD

Ten years after the Achaean Greeks won the Trojan War, Odysseus, king of Ithaca, has yet to return home from Troy. In his absence, 108 boorish suitors court his wife Penelope. Penelope tells them she will remarry when she is done weaving a shawl; however, she secretly unweaves it every night.

The goddess Athena, disguised first as Mentes then as Mentor, tells Odysseus's son Telemachus to seek news of his father. The two leave Ithaca and visit Nestor, who tells them that Agamemnon, the commander of the Greek army at Troy, was murdered soon after the war. Telemachus travels to Sparta to meet Agamemnon's brother Menelaus, who in turn describes his encounter with the shape-shifting god Proteus. Menelaus says he learned from Proteus that Odysseus is alive, but held captive by the nymph Calypso.

Athena petitions Zeus to rescue Odysseus, and Zeus sends Hermes to negotiate his release. As Odysseus leaves Calypso's island, Poseidon destroys his raft with a storm. The sea nymph Ino protects Odysseus as he swims to Scherie, home of the Phaeacians, and Athena leads the Phaeacian princess Nausicaä to recover him. In the court of Nausicaä's parents Arete and Alcinous, Odysseus excels at athletic games and is overcome with emotion when the bard Demodocus sings about the Trojan War. Odysseus reveals his identity and recounts his adventures following the war.

On leaving Troy, Odysseus's men unsuccessfully raided the Cicones. Afterward, on an island of lotus-eaters, they found intoxicating fruit which made them forget about reaching home. On another island, they were captured by the cyclops Polyphemus. Odysseus, deceptively calling himself "Nobody", escaped by intoxicating the cyclops and blinding him. However, he boastfully revealed his true identity while escaping, and Polyphemus asked his father Poseidon to take revenge.

Odysseus's crew nearly arrived in Ithaca, but were blown off course after opening a bag of winds they received from Aeolus. Afterwards, all but one of their ships were destroyed by giant cannibals called Laestrygonians. On the island of Aeaea, the goddess Circe turned Odysseus's men into pigs. Hermes helped Odysseus resist Circe's magic using the herb moly, and Odysseus forced her to restore the crew's human forms. Odysseus and Circe then became lovers for a year until he left to continue home. Next, Odysseus traveled to the edge of Oceanus, where the living can speak with the dead. The spirit of the prophet Tiresias told Odysseus he would successfully return home, but must eventually undertake another journey. Odysseus also met the spirits of his mother Anticleia and former comrades Agamemnon and Achilles.

Odysseus and the Sirens, eponymous vase of the Siren Painter, Template:Circa (British Museum)

Odysseus's crew then sailed past the Sirens, whose enticing song lured sailors to their deaths. His crewmen plugged their ears with beeswax to avoid hearing them, while Odysseus tied himself to the ship's mast. Next, they navigated the narrow passage between the whirlpool Charybdis and the multi-headed monster Scylla. Finally, on the island of Thrinacia, Odysseus's men killed and ate sacred cattle belonging to the sun god Helios. Helios asked Zeus to punish them, which he did by destroying their last ship. Odysseus, the sole survivor, washed ashore on the island Ogygia. There he met Calypso, who took him captive as her lover until Hermes eventually intervened.

After hearing Odysseus's story, the Phaeacians take him to Ithaca, where Athena disguises him as an elderly beggar. Without knowing his identity, the swineherd Eumaeus offers him lodging and food. Telemachus returns home from Sparta, evading an ambush from the suitors. Odysseus reveals himself to his son and the two return home, where Odysseus's elderly dog Argos, long neglected, recognizes him through his disguise; the old dog had been faithfully awaiting his master and upon finally seeing his return, dies peacefully. The suitors mock and mistreat Odysseus in his own home. He and Telemachus hide the suitors' weapons in preparation for violent revenge. Odysseus also reencounters Penelope and her servant Eurycleia, who recognizes him from a scar on his leg.

Penelope announces she is ready to remarry, and that she will choose whoever wins an archery contest with Odysseus's bow. After each suitor fails to even string the bow, Odysseus successfully strings it and fires an arrow through a series of axe heads. Having won the contest, he kills the suitors; Telemachus also hangs a group of slaves who had sex with them. Odysseus reveals his identity to Penelope, who tests him by asking to move their bed. He correctly states that the bed, which he carved from the trunk of an olive tree, is immovable, and the two lovingly reunite.

The next day, after Odysseus reveals himself to his father Laertes, the families of the murdered suitors gather to get revenge. Athena intervenes and prevents further bloodshed.

Style

Structure

File:Odyssey-crop.jpg
15th-century manuscript of Book I written by scribe John Rhosos (British Museum)

The narrative opens in medias res; the preceding events are described through flashbacks and storytelling.Template:Sfn

In Classical Greece, some books or sections were provided with their own titles. Books 1 to 4, which focus on the perspective of Telemachus, are called the Telemachy.Template:Sfn Books 9 to 12, wherein Odysseus provides an account of his adventures, are called the Apologos or Apologoi.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Book 22 was known as Mnesterophonia (Template:Langx + Template:Langx).Template:Sfn Book 22 is generally said to conclude the Greek Epic Cycle, but fragments remain of a lost sequel known as the Telegony.Template:Sfn

Debate exists over what constitutes the "original" Odyssey. Some scholars regard the Telemachy as a later additional while others note that later parts do not make sense without those books.Template:Sfn Likewise, the poem's ending has been the subject of debate since antiquity—Aristarchus of Samothrace and Aristophanes of Byzantium regarded the epic's real ending as lines 293–295 of book 23. Similar debates over the poem's ending occur today.Template:Sfn

Narrative and language

The epic has 12,109 lines composed in dactylic hexameter, sometimes called Homeric hexameter—a metre with six metrical feet.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The form of hexameter is catelectic, meaning that it lacks an expected syllable in the last foot. Each line has between twelve to seventeen syllable and generally forms a grammatically complete sentence.Template:Sfn The poems may have inherited some stylistic traditions but invented others.Template:Sfn

The narrative is primarily related through speech—that is, characters talking to themselves or to somebody else.Template:Sfn Consequently, they frequently serve as narrators alongside the Homeric narrator, and their speech is the primary method of characterisation.Template:Sfn

The language is simple, direct, and fast-paced.Template:Sfn It is also literary in style—the vocabulary was likely never the vernacular of any Greek population.Template:Sfn An important characteristic of the language is the Homeric simile. These are comparative metaphors that can be longTemplate:Efn or short,Template:Sfn typically deriving from the natural world or everyday life. Irene de Jong describes them as "omnitemporal"—they may use the simple present tense, or the epic tense (blending past and present), or they may present a timeless truth (gnomic aorist).Template:Sfn Their functions vary; examples include characterisation and the reinforcement of theme.Template:Sfn Traditionally, the Homeric simile was regarded as a predecessor of European literary similes. This has been contested—for example by Oliver Taplin.Template:Sfn Modern scholars generally agree that the Homeric similes formed as part of the epics' oral tradition, but earlier writers sometimes said they were added by one or more later poets.Template:Sfn

An important element of Homeric texts is their use of epithets—in English, these are often translated as compound adjectives like much-nourished or much-nourishing.Template:Sfn

Themes and patterns

Homecoming

File:Homerus - Odissea, 1794 - 3939651 F.jpg
1794 student edition of the Odyssey including the Batrachomyomachia

Homecoming (Ancient Greek: νόστος, nostos) is a central theme of the Odyssey.Template:Sfn The Greek word nostos signifies both a homecoming voyage by sea and narratives involving the homecoming.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Classicist Agathe Thornton notes that nostos to the victorious Achaeans following the fall of Troy, but the narrator focuses on Odysseus and provides other Achaeans' homecomings as part of his narrative.Template:Sfn

Following Agamemnon's homecoming, his wife Clytemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus, kill Agamemnon. Agamemnon's son, Orestes kills Aegisthus for vengeance, paralleling the death of the suitors with the death of Aegisthus; Athena and Nestor famously use Orestes as an example for Telemachus, motivating him to action.Template:Sfn During Odysseus's trip to the underworld, Agamemnon tells him about Clytemnestra's betrayal. After reaching Ithaca, Athena transforms Odysseus into a beggar so he can test the loyalty of his wife Penelope.Template:Sfn

Agamemnon eventually praises Penelope for not killing Odysseus, and her faithfulness ensures Odysseus both fame and a successful homecoming compared to the other Achaeans. Agamemnon's failed homecoming caused his death; Achilles achieved fame but died and was denied homecoming.Template:Sfn

Wandering

Before Odysseus's arrival in Ithaca, only two of his adventures are described by the narrator. The rest of Odysseus's adventures are recounted by Odysseus himself. The two scenes described by the narrator are Odysseus on Calypso's island and Odysseus's encounter with the Phaeacians. These scenes are told by the poet to represent an important transition in Odysseus's journey: being concealed to returning home.Template:Sfn

Calypso's name comes from the Greek word Template:Langx (Template:Langx), meaning 'to cover' or 'conceal', which is apt, as this is exactly what she does with Odysseus.Template:Cn Calypso keeps Odysseus concealed from the world and unable to return home. After leaving Calypso's island, the poet describes Odysseus's encounters with the Phaeacians—those who "convoy without hurt to all men"Template:Sfn—which represents his transition from not returning home to returning home.Template:Sfn

Also, during Odysseus's journey, he encounters many beings that are close to the gods. These encounters are useful in understanding that Odysseus is in a world beyond man and that influences the fact he cannot return home.Template:Sfn These beings that are close to the gods include the Phaeacians who lived near the Cyclopes,Template:Sfn whose king, Alcinous, is the great-grandson of the king of the giants, Eurymedon, and the grandson of Poseidon.Template:Sfn Some of the other characters that Odysseus encounters are the cyclops Polyphemus, the son of Poseidon; Circe, a sorceress who turns men into animals; and the cannibalistic giants, the Laestrygonians.Template:Sfn

Guest-friendship

Statue representing the Odyssey, Museum of the Ancient Agora of Athens.

Throughout the course of the epic, Odysseus encounters several examples of Template:Translit ('guest-friendship'), which provide models of how hosts should and should not act.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The Phaeacians demonstrate exemplary guest-friendship by feeding Odysseus, giving him a place to sleep, and granting him many gifts and a safe voyage home, which are all things a good host should do. Polyphemus demonstrates poor guest-friendship. His only "gift" to Odysseus is that he will eat him last.Template:Sfn Calypso also exemplifies poor guest-friendship because she does not allow Odysseus to leave her island.Template:Sfn Another important factor to guest-friendship is that kingship implies generosity. It is assumed that a king has the means to be a generous host and is more generous with his own property.Template:Sfn This is best seen when Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, begs Antinous, one of the suitors, for food and Antinous denies his request. Odysseus essentially says that while Antinous may look like a king, he is far from a king since he is not generous.Template:Sfn

According to J. B. Hainsworth, guest-friendship follows a very specific pattern:Template:Sfn

  1. The arrival and the reception of the guest.
  2. Bathing or providing fresh clothes to the guest.
  3. Providing food and drink to the guest.
  4. Questions may be asked of the guest and entertainment should be provided by the host.
  5. The guest should be given a place to sleep, and both the guest and host retire for the night.
  6. The guest and host exchange gifts, the guest is granted a safe journey home, and the guest departs.

Another important factor of guest-friendship is not keeping the guest longer than they wish and also promising their safety while they are a guest within the host's home.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Testing

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Penelope questions Odysseus to prove his identity, 1802 painting by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein

Another theme throughout the Odyssey is testing.Template:Sfn This occurs in two distinct ways. Odysseus tests the loyalty of others and others test Odysseus's identity. An example of Odysseus testing the loyalties of others is when he returns home.Template:Sfn Instead of immediately revealing his identity, he arrives disguised as a beggar and then proceeds to determine who in his house has remained loyal to him and who has helped the suitors. After Odysseus reveals his true identity, the characters test Odysseus's identity to see if he really is who he says he is.Template:Sfn For instance, Penelope tests Odysseus's identity by saying that she will move the bed into the other room for him. This is a difficult task since it is made out of a living tree that would require being cut down, a fact that only the real Odysseus would know, thus proving his identity.Template:Sfn

Testing also has a very specific type scene that accompanies it. Throughout the epic, the testing of others follows a typical pattern. This pattern is:Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

  1. Odysseus is hesitant to question the loyalties of others.
  2. Odysseus tests the loyalties of others by questioning them.
  3. The characters reply to Odysseus's questions.
  4. Odysseus proceeds to reveal his identity.
  5. The characters test Odysseus's identity.
  6. There is a rise of emotions associated with Odysseus's recognition, usually lament or joy.
  7. Finally, the reconciled characters work together.

Omens

File:Odysseus and Euryclea by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein.jpg
Odysseus and Eurycleia by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein

Omens occur frequently throughout the Odyssey. Within the epic poem, they frequently involve birds.Template:Sfn According to Thornton, most crucial is who receives each omen and in what way it manifests. For instance, bird omens are shown to Telemachus, Penelope, Odysseus, and the suitors.Template:Sfn Telemachus and Penelope receive their omens as well in the form of words, sneezes, and dreams.Template:Sfn However, Odysseus is the only character who receives thunder or lightning as an omen.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn She highlights this as crucial because lightning, as a symbol of Zeus, represents the kingship of Odysseus.Template:Sfn Odysseus is associated with Zeus throughout both the Iliad and the Odyssey.Template:Sfn

Omens are another example of a type scene in the Odyssey. Two important parts of an omen type scene are the recognition of the omen, followed by its interpretation.Template:Sfn In the Odyssey, all of the bird omens—with the exception of the first—show large birds attacking smaller birds.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Accompanying each omen is a wish which can be either explicitly stated or only implied.Template:Sfn For example, Telemachus wishes for vengeanceTemplate:Sfn and for Odysseus to be home,Template:Sfn Penelope wishes for Odysseus's return,Template:Sfn and the suitors wish for the death of Telemachus.Template:Sfn

Reception

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Pre-classical period to late antiquity

Homer was widely celebrated in Greek society as an impressively talented and didactic poet, instructing audiences on topics ranging from philosophy to science.Template:Sfn Audiences were primarily exposed to the epics through performances in both Archaic and Classical Greece,Template:Sfn but their status among audiences in the early Archaic period (840–700 BC) is not understood.Template:Sfn Scholars of at least two ancient libraries—the Library of Alexandria and the Library of PergamumTemplate:Efn—studied ancient versions of the Homeric epics.Template:Sfn Alexandrian scholars included Zenodotus of Ephesus (early third century BC), Aristophanes of Byzantium (early second century BC) and Aristarchus of Samothrace (mid-second century BC).Template:Sfn

Ancient scholarship explored a variety of topics. Some explored narrative inconsistencies,Template:Sfn for example. Allegory was a particularly common interpretation.Template:Sfn Wilson says this interpretation allowed scholars "to make sense of puzzling or disturbing scenes in the Odyssey".Template:Sfn Allegorical arguments also defended from Homer allegations that he had disrespected the godsTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn—a criticism famously made by the fifth/sixth-century BC philosopher XenophanesTemplate:Sfn—but were rejected by Alexandrian scholars as too convenient.Template:Sfn Pergamon scholar Crates of Mallus explored the epics as containing allegorical insight into cosmology and geography.Template:Sfn Heraclitus (late sixth/early fifth century BC) and Porphyry (third century) also wrote allegorical interpretations.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Porphyry's Homeric Questions is the sole surviving large Homeric essay of the classical era. He limited his analytical scope to only explore questions that the Homeric text answered—he called this the Aristarchan principle.Template:Sfn Porphyry saw the nymphs' caves as representing human life,Template:Sfn and Heraclitis argued that Telemachus' encounter with Athena represented "the development of rationality" as he becomes a man.Template:Sfn

Many ancient editions of the Homeric epics existed; the Alexandrian library possessed some.Template:Sfn In material derived from the commentary of the fourth-century scholar Didymus, ancient versions were divided into "city editions" and "individual editions".Template:Efn City editions were likely created within the city (perhaps as "official" versions) while individual editions were prepared independently by scholars.Template:Sfn He mentions individual versions owned by Antimachus, Aristophanes of Byzantium, Sosigenes,Template:Sfn Rhianus of Crete, Callistratus, and Philemon.Template:Sfn City editions are known in Argos, Chios, Crete, Cyprus, and Marseille.Template:Sfn Both the Iliad and the Odyssey were school texts in places where the Greek language was spoken.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn They were probably part of the curriculum for the elite of Classical Athens,Template:Sfn and in the Roman Empire. They were regarded as instructive for rhetorical skill,Template:SfnTemplate:Efn and reading.Template:Efn The Trojan War and its participants were already important mythological and historical references for the Roman Empire,Template:Sfn and the Romans readily absorbed Homer into their culture, transmitting the epic east and west.Template:Sfn

Alexander the Great's conquests spread Hellenistic cultural influence throughout the Eastern Mediterranean; it became read by every school child in the Greek world.Template:Sfn By the sixth century, the Homeric poems had a canonical place within the institutions of ancient Athens.Template:Sfn The Athenian tyrant Peisistratos or his son Hipparchus instituted a civic and religious festival, the Panathenaia, which probably featured performances of Homeric poetry;Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Efn a "correct" version had to be performed, possibly indicating that a version of the text had become canonised.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn They may only have performed sections of the poems,Template:Sfn and it is not likely that they were performed without a break.Template:Sfn

Post-classical

Beyond classical antiquity and into the Byzantine era, the spread of the Greek language—and the consequent internal translation of the Homeric texts as it spread—maintained the OdysseyTemplate:'s relevancy and status.Template:Efn Armstrong says both epics may have dropped from knowledge otherwise, citing Beowulf as an example of this fate.Template:Sfn The orthodox Byzantine view was that Homer wrote the two epics alongside the Homeric Hymns and the Batrachomyomachia, with some philological scepticism over the latter.Template:Sfn The Iliad and the Odyssey remained widely studied throughout the Middle Ages and were used as school texts within the Byzantine Empire.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Homeric Greek was difficult for Byzantine students, requiring paratexts to explain grammatical and mythological references.Template:Sfn Much of the surviving Byzantine scholarship was originally intended as educational material.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn Students probably did not have physical copies of the epics, but certain manuscripts might have been made available to talented students. They primarily learned via dictation and repetition.Template:Sfn

According to Lamberton, the audience of the epics changed in the middle Byzantine age. Once the domain of grammarians and students, adults began to read them for pleasure and wondered the narratives of the Iliad and the Odyssey related to the wider Trojan narrative.Template:Sfn The twelfth-century poet John Tzetzes produced Homeric Allegories for Manuel I Komnenos's consort, which summarised Odyssey and other texts.Template:Sfn Mavroudi says Tzetzes' work married cultural concepts from the Homeric and Byzantine periods; Tzetzes compared Manuel I to the kingly figures of Zeus and Agamemnon,Template:Sfn and depicted Odysseus with a protruding stomach.Template:Sfn

Byzantine interpretation was influenced by the Homeric Questions of Porphyry by way of Neopythagorean and Neoplatonic scholars.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The Byzantine scholar and archbishop Eustathios of Thessalonike (Template:Circa) wrote exhaustive commentaries on both of the Homeric epics that were seen as authoritative by later generations;Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn his commentary on the Odyssey alone spans nearly 2,000 oversized pages in a twentieth-century edition.Template:Sfn The first printed edition of the Odyssey, or the editio princeps,Template:Efn was produced in 1488 by the Greek scholar Demetrios Chalkokondyles, who was born in Athens and studied in Constantinople.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn His edition was printed in Milan by a Greek printer named Antonios Damilas.Template:Sfn

Early modern

File:Thomas Degeorge Ulysse.jpg
Ulysses and Telemachus kill Penelope's Suitors by Thomas Degeorge (1812)

During the quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns—a late 17th- and early 18th-century artistic debate in France—the Odyssey and Iliad were two of the primary subjects. The Homeric texts were criticised by the writers Jean Desmarets, Pierre Bayle, and Charles Perrault;Template:Sfn Howard Clarke says that Perrault refrained from directly castigating the poems in the absence of a French epic, with Perrault granting Homer "ritual praise" by describing him as "Father of all the Arts". Defenders of the epics and Homer included Jean de La Fontaine and Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux.Template:Sfn The debate subsided briefly in 1700, later reigniting between the French scholars Anne Dacier, a translator and staunch defender of Homer, and the Moderns proponent Antoine Houdar de la Motte.Template:Sfn Dacier's Homeric translations included a 90-page introduction addressing the criticisms of Perrault and other Moderns; in his abridged translation of Homer, Houdar de la Motte responded, and Dacier produced a 600-page rebuttal. A rhetorical ceasefire was called in 1716.Template:Sfn

As part of the quarrel, questions arose over the traditional view of Homer as a singular poet.Template:Sfn François Hédelin, Abbé d’ Aubignac criticised Homer's sustenance of theme; his language; and observed that nothing was known about his life.Template:Sfn Perrault posited that the epics were written by different poets, possibly from each city that claimed to be Homer's birthplace, and then assembled; he credited the theory to the late Hédelin.Template:Sfn Richard Bentley argued that the Athenian tyrant Pisistratus assembled different songs five-hundred years after initial composition.Template:Sfn His research also showed that Homeric Greek did not resemble the Greek of the classical period.Template:Sfn

Modern

In the early 20th century, Milman Parry and Albert Lord demonstrated that illiterate singers could exploit formulaic language to improvise large poems, much like the Homeric Greek.Template:Sfn Of the 27,803 lines in the original texts, around 9200 are repetitions, ranging from groups of words to entire sections.Template:Sfn Their research decisively showed that the Homeric texts formed as oral poetry.Template:Sfn Parry and Lord were investigating the South Slavic epic tradition, inspired by the work of philologist Matija Murko.Template:Sfn Parry's doctoral thesis had explored traditional Homeric epithets, drawing from the work of French linguist Antoine Meillet, but he did not comprehend the significance completely until travelling to Yugoslavia to conduct field work with Lord.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn Scholarship became increasingly interdisciplinary in the late twentieth century, synthesising literary research with archaeological and religious findings.Template:Sfn

Legacy

File:JoyceUlysses2.jpg
Front cover of James Joyce's Ulysses (1922)

Template:See also The influence of the Homeric texts can be difficult to summarise because of how greatly they have affected popular imagination and cultural values.Template:Sfn The Odyssey and the Iliad formed the basis of education for members of ancient Mediterranean society. That curriculum was adopted by Western humanists,Template:Sfn meaning the text was so much a part of the cultural fabric that an individual having read it was irrelevant.Template:Sfn Robert Browning says that the scholarship Alexandrian library "laid the foundation" for "European literacy and philological studies".Template:Sfn The epics mark the beginning of the Western literary tradition and, according to Corinne Ondine Pasche, have unrivalled influence.Template:Sfn The Odyssey has reverberated over a millennium of writing; a poll of experts for BBC Culture named it literature's most enduring narrative.Template:Sfn

Translation

Template:See also Livius Andronicus produced a Latin translation, Odusia.Template:Sfn Little is known about the full work, which was probably not simply a translation,Template:Sfn but surviving fragments are more formal than the original, and he reappropriated Homeric imagery from one part of the poem to another.Template:Sfn Livius' Odusia eventually became a school text for Latin students; Michael von Albrecht says his translation was "beaten into" a young Horace.Template:Sfn Nicholas Sigeros provided Petrarch with manuscripts of the Iliad and the Odyssey in 1354.Template:Efn Petrarch's correspondent Giovanni Boccaccio persuaded a monk to called Pilato to produce translations in Latin prose—he finished the Iliad, but only came close to finishing the Odyssey.Template:Sfn The first printed edition in Greek was published in Milan 1488 by Demetrios Chalkokondyles, a Greek scholar resident in Florence.Template:Sfn

Printed translations for modern European languages surged in popularity in the 16th century,Template:Sfn although many were only partial translations.Template:Sfn The most popular edition of the century was a word-for-word Latin translation by Andreas Divus.Template:Sfn The first completed Italian Odyssey, written by Girolamo Baccelli in free verse, was published in 1582.Template:Sfn The first completed French translation was composed in Alexandrine couplets by Salomon Certon and printed in 1604.Template:Sfn It lost public favour following the Académie Française language reforms in the 1630s and 1640s.Template:Sfn Arthur Hall was the first to translate Homer into English: his translation of the IliadTemplate:'s first 10 books, which was published in 1581,Template:Sfn relied upon a French version.Template:Sfn George Chapman became the first writer to complete a translation of both epics into English after finishing his translation of the Odyssey.Template:Sfn These translations were published together in 1616, but were serialised earlier, and became the first modern translations to enjoy widespread success.Template:Sfn He worked on Homeric translation for most of his life,Template:Sfn and his work later inspired John Keats' sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" (1816).Template:Sfn Emily Wilson writes that almost all prominent translators of Greco-Roman literature had been men,Template:Sfn arguing this impacted the popular understanding of the Odyssey.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn

Johann Heinrich Voss' 18th-century translations of the epics are among his most celebrated works,Template:SfnTemplate:Efn and profoundly influenced the German language.Template:Sfn Johann Wolfgang von Goethe called Voss' translations transformational masterpieces that initiated interest German Hellenism.Template:Sfn Anne Dacier translated the Iliad and Odyssey into French prose,Template:Efn appearing in 1711 and 1716, respectively;Template:Sfn it was the standard French Homeric translation until the late 18th century.Template:Sfn Antoine Houdar de La Motte, who could not read Greek, used Dacier's Iliad to produce his own contracted version of the Iliad and criticised Homer in the preface.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn Dacier's translation of the Odyssey profoundly influenced the 1720s translation by Alexander Pope,Template:SfnTemplate:Efn which he produced for financial reasons years after his Iliad.Template:Sfn He translated twelve books himself and divided the other twelve between Elijah Fenton and William Broome; the latter also provided annotations.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn This information eventually leaked, harming his reputation and profits.Template:Sfn The first Odyssey in the Russian language may have been Vasily Zhukovsky's 1849 translation in hexameter.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Luo Niansheng began translating the first Chinese language Iliad in the late 1980s, but he died in 1990 before completing it; his student Wang Huansheng finished the project, which was published in 1994. Huansheng's Odyssey followed three years later.Template:Sfn

Literature

Classicist Edith Hall says the Odyssey has been regarded as "the very birthplace of literary fiction"; in T. E. Lawrence's 1932 introduction to the epic, he called it "the greatest novel ever written".Template:Sfn It is widely regarded by western literary critics as a timeless classic,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and it remains one of the oldest pieces of literature regularly read by Western audiences.Template:Sfn Brian Stableford, who described it as a kind of forerunner to science fiction, says it has been reconfigured as science fiction more than any other literary work.Template:Sfn

In Canto XXVI of the Inferno, Dante Alighieri meets Odysseus in the eighth circle of hell: Odysseus appends a new ending to the epic in which he continues adventuring and does not return to Ithaca.Template:Sfn Edith Hall suggests that Dante's depiction of Odysseus became understood as a manifestation of Renaissance colonialism and othering, with the cyclops standing in for "accounts of monstrous races on the edge of the world", and his defeat as symbolising "the Roman domination of the western Mediterranean".Template:Sfn Some of Odysseus's adventures reappear in the Arabic tales of Sinbad the Sailor.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

The Irish writer James Joyce's modernist novel Ulysses (1922) was significantly influenced by the Odyssey. Joyce had encountered the figure of Odysseus in Charles Lamb's Adventures of Ulysses, an adaptation of the epic poem for children, which seems to have established the Latin name in Joyce's mind.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Ulysses, a re-telling of the Odyssey set in Dublin, is divided into eighteen sections ("episodes") which can be mapped roughly onto the twenty-four books of the Odyssey.<ref>Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref> Joyce claimed familiarity with the original Homeric Greek, but this has been disputed by some scholars, who cite his poor grasp of the language as evidence to the contrary.Template:Sfn The book, and especially its stream of consciousness prose, is widely considered foundational to the modernist genre.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Modern writers have revisited the Odyssey to highlight the poem's female characters. Canadian writer Margaret Atwood adapted parts of the Odyssey for her novella The Penelopiad (2005). The novella focuses on Penelope and the twelve female slaves hanged by Odysseus at the poem's ending,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> an image which haunted Atwood.<ref name="auto2">Template:Cite web</ref> Atwood's novella comments on the original text, wherein Odysseus's successful return to Ithaca symbolises the restoration of a patriarchal system.<ref name="auto2"/> Similarly, Madeline Miller's Circe (2018) revisits the relationship between Odysseus and Circe on Aeaea.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> As a reader, Miller was frustrated by Circe's lack of motivation in the original poem and sought to explain her capriciousness.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The novel recontextualises the sorceress' transformations of sailors into pigs from an act of malice into one of self-defence, given that she has no superhuman strength with which to repel attackers.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Film and television

Opera and music

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Sciences

  • Psychiatrist Jonathan Shay wrote two books, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (1994)<ref name="Achilles">Shay, Jonathan. Achilles in Vietnam: Combat trauma and the undoing of character. Scribner, 1994. Template:ISBN</ref> and Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming (2002),<ref name="Odysseus">Shay, Jonathan. Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming. New York: Scribner, 2002. Template:ISBN</ref> which relate the Iliad and the Odyssey to posttraumatic stress disorder and moral injury as seen in the rehabilitation histories of combat veteran patients.

Notes and references

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Bibliography

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Journals, news and web

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The Odyssey in ancient Greek

  • The Odyssey (in Ancient Greek) on Perseus Project
  • Odyssey: the Greek text presented with the translation by Butler and vocabulary, notes, and analysis of difficult grammatical forms

English translations

Other resources

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