The Odyssey

Examining Ancient Greece through Homer’s Voice

Background to Homer

• The Iliad and The Odyssey are Epic Poems (super-long poems that tell a story about a hero)

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• Homer was Blind
• Memorized everything, not written down until much later (used epithets)

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• School used to be just memorizing this kind of stuff
• Ms. Parkinson had to do a little of that in college...

Terms to know

• Epithets: an adjective or phrase that is always used to describe something/someone (makes it easier to memorize)
• “Rosy-fingered Dawn”
• “Grey-eyed Athena”
• “Cunning Odysseus”

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• Hubris: over-excessive pride, usually what brings down an epic hero

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• Anthropomorphism: giving non-humans human-like feelings and motivations (making the gods act like people, talking animals, etc)

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Anthropomorphism

Background to the Story

• Curse on the House of Atreus (Tantalus served the other, other white meat to the gods)
• Helen and Menelaus (marriage for title, she was most beautiful woman and he was an old rich king)
• Helen and Paris (she ran away with the attractive prince of Troy)
• Agamemnon and Iphigenia (sacrifices kings make for war)
• Trojan War (Greeks fight to get Helen back)
• Achilles vs. Hector (Rivalry of the war, both die)
• Odysseus gets lost at sea because he was rude to Poseidon (lesson: don’t make the gods angry by killing their kids)
• Odysseus’ wife Penelope and son Telemachus are left to fend off the suitors (we will see them in a few slides)

The Odyssey

Translated by Robert Fagles

In the following slides, we are going to be closely reading the arrival of Athena to the home of Odysseus (who has been lost at sea since the end of the Trojan War).

The Odyssey

Translated by Robert Fagles

“So Athena vowed and under her feet she fastened the supple sandals, ever-glowing gold, that wing her over the waves and boundless earth with the rush of gusting winds.”

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• Who is Athena?

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• What can we see about fashion?

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The Odyssey

Translated by Robert Fagles

“She seized the rugged spear tipped with a bronze point— weighted, heavy, the massive shaft she wields to break the lines of heroes the mighty Father’s daughter storms against.”

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• What kind of weapons were available? How about metal?

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• What kind of a goddess is Athena?

The Odyssey

Translated by Robert Fagles

“And down she swept from Olympus’ craggy peaks and lit on Ithaca, standing tall at Odysseus’ gates, the threshold of his court.”

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• What was Olympus?
• What is the geography of Greece like?
• Where did Odysseus live? (city and type of building)

The Odyssey

Translated by Robert Fagles

“Gripping her bronze spear, she looked for all the world like a stranger now, like Mentes, lord of the Taphians.”

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• What kind of powers did the gods have?

The Odyssey

Translated by Robert Fagles

“There she found the swaggering suitors, just then amusing themselves with rolling dice before the doors, lounging on hides of oxen they had killed themselves.”

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• Are the suitors good guys or bad? How are they described?
• How did people have fun in those days?
• Why would “lounging on hides of oxen they had killed themselves” be a bad thing?

The Odyssey

Translated by Robert Fagles

While heralds and brisk attendants bustled round them, some at the mixing-bowls, mulling wine and water, others wiping the tables down with sopping sponges, setting them out in place, still other servants jointed and carved the great sides of meat.”

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• Why would the attendants be “mulling” (mixing) wine and water?
• What did people eat? Drink?
• What were the jobs of heralds and attendants?

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