A Guide to the Odyssey: A Commentary on the English Translation of Robert Fitzgerald (20 page)

138
in the treasure city, Thebes:
Mention of the wealth of Egypt and in particular of the fabled upper-Egyptian city, Thebes, very likely reflects renewed trade between Greece and Egypt in the eighth and seventh centuries
B.C.E
., near Homer’s time. It is possibly a reminiscence of the important contacts between Egypt and Mycenaean Greece much earlier.

146
dusky violet wool:
It is unlikely that the wool is already dyed. Rather, “violet” probably suggests a rich and lustrous sheen. It is notoriously difficult to correlate ancient color terminology with the modern spectrum, much less find entirely adequate translations.

Words describing colors provide an uncontroversial example of how the same “reality” is perceived and described differently in different languages. Scientists can establish the frequency of the light waves reflected by a range of substances, yet speakers of one language will call a certain range red which speakers of another language would insist is orange, purple, anything but red. Ancient Greek color vocabulary suggests that the Greeks responded as much or more to the reflectivity and brilliance of colors as to the frequency of the light waves, as here “violet” seems to describe the wool’s tone rather than its tint.

152–55
Never … likeness:
A further confirmation of Telémakhos’ identity as true son of Odysseus: although Helen didn’t witness Telémakhos’ reaction to her husband’s reminiscences (124–27), she independently and spontaneously recognizes Telémakhos. She is also smarter—and semidivine.

157
the wanton that I was:
Helen is frank about her shortcomings, indeed, so blunt and cold she might as well be talking about a different person. In fact, Helen pointing out the Greek forces from the walls of Troy refers to herself in exactly the same terms (
Iliad
, III. 180), to which the passage here alludes.

170
gentle:
“Sensible” might be a safer rendering of
saophrôn
[158]; in any event, there is no implication of softness in the Homeric adjective.

182
Meneláos feels a special responsibility, for it was to bring back his abducted but wandering wife that the whole Trojan expedition was undertaken.

186–89
We may well doubt whether the king of Ithaka would have taken up Meneláos’ offer (which was probably not meant to be understood as anything more than a conventional compliment).
Odysseus prefers rocky Ithaka to the blandishments of Kalypso in
Book V
, and he certainly would not have exchanged his Ithakan independence for fealty to Meneláos, no matter how rich the mainland soil.

193
envious
of “these things” [
ta
, 181], meaning the fantasy Meneláos has just sketched. Meneláos misses the mark in compassing the reasons the gods have not (yet) permitted Odysseus’ return.

201
the son of shining Dawn:
Memnon. His father was Titilonos, a mortal with whom the goddess Dawn fell in love and to whom (in some accounts) she was able to grant immortality. Kalypso has something like this in mind for Odysseus (see V. 142–43, 217–18).

208
Dawn will soon be here:
The implication is not that it is late but rather that on the morrow (and every subsequent day) there will be ample time for further expressions of grief. Given Peisís-tratos’ train of thought throughout the passage, his mention of Dawn (208), however standard, hardly seems casual. The balance of his speech (209–17) is about death and mourning, in particular the death of his brother Antílokhos, killed by Dawn’s son.

215
no mean soldier:
In Greek, “not the worst of the Argives” [199–200]. The figure of
litotes
or understatement occurs frequently in Homer and other epics and may bespeak the same kind of prudence we observe when characters speak as if the worst has already happened or when they seek to avoid envy of the gods.

215–16
Like Telémakhos, who does not know his father, Peisístratos has never known his older brother. Added almost as an afterthought, this fact doubles Peisístratos’ loss and brings the depth of his grief home to us.

227
sons:
Close to the surface is Meneláos’ regret that he, unlike Nestor or Odysseus, has no legitimate male heir.

235ff
. If there is any real substance behind Helen’s magic anodyne, it is more likely to be an Egyptian herbal concoction called
kyphi
than opium. (On the Egyptian connection, see IV.245–46). However, recourse to pharmacology is likely misguided. For all its subtle insights into the minds of its characters,
The Odyssey
is not “realistic” according to modern conceptions of the term. How could it be? Our notion of “reality” excludes the supernatural. Homer’s is a true representation of a world where gods and mortals interact and magic is potent. Helen’s epithet “sprung from Zeus” [219] (omitted from line 234 by Fitzgerald) recalls to our minds at the very beginning of this passage the fact that she is semidivine. (See also “Zeus’s daughter,” 243.)

250ff
. Although Helen ostensibly ministered her drug to relieve the pain her husband and her guests felt as they remembered their losses, the sequence here suggests that some sort of mind and judgment alteration is the ideal preparation—at least from the teller’s perspective—for the somewhat self-serving narrative which follows. As we will see, Helen’s picture of her loyalty to the Greeks even while she was in Troy is contradicted by the anecdote Meneláos tells (287ff.).

258–59
Amusing words to come out of the mouth of any singer of
The Odyssey
, even if he has here adopted Helen’s voice.

262–68
The disguise in which Odysseus penetrates the Trojan citadel is the same he will employ to return undetected to his home; here the beating is self-inflicted.

271–72
One of the internal contradictions of Helen’s account: if, as she seems to imply, Odysseus’ filthy condition and rags were essential elements of his disguise, why did he permit himself to be bathed, anointed, and given fine clothes, even by Helen? (She did first swear “on oath not to give him away,” 272–73.)

282
the mad day:
Helen does not deny her guilt but mitigates it somewhat by attributing her culpable behavior to
ate
[261], a folly or overwhelming passion. It is not quite the modern American plea of “innocent by virtue of insanity.” “Involuntary adultery” would be closer (on the analogy of “involuntary manslaughter”), or the idea of excusing adultery as the same sort
of “crime of passion” which, when it applies to men punishing their wives and their lovers caught
flagrante delicto
, can go unpunished in some societies.

287
An excellent tale, my dear
…: This is deliciously polite irony. No need to have a scene in front of the guests! Meneláos simply relates an anecdote which gives Helen’s the lie. The wooden horse (see VIII.533–47) was brought beneath Troy’s walls after the scene Helen has just described, yet she had claimed to have “repented” and “come round” “long before” (280) that time. Under the pretense of merely telling another story about Odysseus, he effectively contradicts her. Perhaps through his years with Helen, Meneláos has developed some resistance to her drugs. The young men, under their influence and polite to boot, notice nothing. As listeners and readers, we have only heard of Helen’s drugs, not imbibed them, so we can exercise some discretion. Of course, we cannot give more credit to Meneláos’ account simply because it comes second or because he is a man and Helen a woman (although many Greek men would have been inclined to do so for the latter reason).

295–98
On the one hand, attributing Helen’s aid to the Trojans to some “superhuman power” [
daimôn
, 275] would seem to clear her or would at least mitigate the guilt. On the other, to mention “Deïphobos, that handsome man” is a jab, since after Paris’ death Helen took up with Deïphobos.

301
making your voice sound like their wives:
Ancient scholars ridiculed the implausibility of this idea: among obvious problems, how did Helen know which heroes were inside so that she could know which voices to imitate? How and when had Helen met all these wives so that she knew their voices well enough to imitate them? However, we are not to seek logical answers to all questions: there’s something magical about Helen. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that we have only Meneláos’ testimony for this; it could be that he and the others heard their wives’ voices in Helen’s voice and inferred her intent from their experience.

In the 1954 film of
The Odyssey
, with Kirk Douglas as Odysseus, this idea is transferred to the Seirênês. (In Homer, there is no hint of this aspect of the song of the Seirênês, see XII.220–45.) The film is not Homer, of course, but it is great fun and well worth seeing. And it represents a piece of modern mythography that is in essence no different from the transformations that the Homeric material was undergoing all the time at the hands of the bards.

306–11
This brief episode, even down to the detail of Antiklos’ name, foreshadows Odysseus’ squelching of Eurýkleia, when she almost blurts out his name (XIX.557ff.). It is not in all ancient texts, and ancient scholars advanced reasons to excise it. If it is not original to the conception of the first singer of
The Odyssey
, it has been added along the way to flesh out and harmonize this narrative of the wooden horse with material described elsewhere in the epic cycle—as well as for the sake of the foreshadowing. (This brief excursion into Homeric textual criticism may stand for hundreds of other similar points; the reader, particularly the modern reader, will often be unaware of the fact that behind the text editors print, or a translator translates, lie many thousands of decisions. It seems that we will have to add to the list of questions that cannot be answered with absolute certainty not only “Who was Homer?” but “What was the real Homeric text of
The Odyssey?”
Fortunately, the poem itself withstands the uncertainty, like a painting which is a recognized masterpiece despite centuries of accumulated grime.)

360–61
Fawns … lion’s … doe … sucklings:
Similes are less frequent in
The Odyssey
than in
The Iliad
, but those the poet employs are almost always drawn (as in
The Iliad
) from nature; animal life is the richest source for similes in both epics.

375
Ancient of the Sea:
Proteus, as Meneláos explains in the next passage.

378
Egypt:
For the Greeks the source not only of wealth but also of wisdom.

379
hekatombs:
Sacrifices, strictly speaking, of one hundred
oxen each, but even the gods didn’t count the animals per sacrifice, only the number of sacrifices.

394
The seashore is again the site of an epiphany. The wisdom that Telémakhos gleans from Meneláos is greater, not lesser, for coming to him at second hand (like epic tales handed down from singer to singer). Meneláos needs Eidothea’s help even to learn how to seize and interrogate Proteus, indeed, even to learn that Proteus exists and has significant wisdom. (The name “Eidothea” may mean either “knowing goddess” or “goddess of many forms;” for both name and helper function, see Leukothea, V.346ff.)

In the “miniepic” of the first four books, the entire episode of Meneláos and Proteus corresponds to the
nekuia
or underworld voyage of the larger structure. As in the case of the underworld journey, the traveler must follow a strict set of prescriptions. (In Vergilian terms, Eidothea is Meneláos’ Sibyl, who guides Aeneas through Hades in
Book VI
of
The Aeneid.
) Proteus himself is a shape changer or djinn—once held, he is compelled to answer Meneláos’ questions.

411ff
. A young girl, taken to be a goddess, and a marooned sailor meet on the strand, and in response to his request for aid she tells him how to obtain substantive assistance from her father. As we shall see, the encounter here bears an uncanny resemblance to the one between Nausikaa and Odysseus (Book VI), and Meneláos’ companions donning sealskins to trick Proteus foreshadows in some details Odysseus in Polyphêmos’ cave (Book IX). Story elements serve comparable functions, motifs recur, multiple scenes are of the same type—all this is characteristic of popular traditional literary forms, whether folk-or fairy tales or oral-formulaic poetry. This said, however, the anticipations remain noteworthy and further bind the first four books, the so-called Telemachy, to the story of Odysseus. Indeed, as we have seen, Odysseus is never absent from these books.

471–76
The “stench” of the sealskins may seem a surprising touch
of “realism” in so fantastic an episode, but it is not uncharacteristic of authentic folktales, or dreams for that matter. Later critics found the use of divine ambrosia, as a sort of pomade against the foul smell of the sealskins, an even more serious breach of decorum, and Vergil, when imitating the episode, has the goddess Cyrene anoint her son Aristaeus’ entire body (
Georgics
IV.415–16).