Odysseus as Culture Hero

The Odyssey is the second of the Homeric epics, the sequel to the Iliad. Scholars believe it was probably composed near the end of the 8 th century BCE, somewhere in Ionia.

The Mycenaean Age BCE Trojan War 1184 BCE Homeric epics composed (orally) 8 th century BCE (700s) Homeric epics first written down in late 700s-early 600s BCE Classical (Hellenic) Period 4 th -5 th centuries BCE

Ὀδυσσεύς Odysseus (Roman name: Ulysses)

The three storylines of the Odyssey: 1.Odysseus's son, Telemachus, searches for his father. 2.Odysseus’s wife, Penelope, is besieged by suitors who think Odysseus is dead. 3.Odysseus’s wanderings: his long journey home.

νόστος Nostos Returning home after a long journey

The Homeric epics came to function as important cultural texts for Archaic and Classical Greek civilization. Cultural texts function as educational tools as repositories for the collective history shared by a people, nation, or group as stories which stage, teach, and test the moral frameworks on which a given culture depends

The Iliad vs. the Odyssey: some important differences The Iliad focuses on the events of a few weeks near the end of the Trojan War. The Odyssey tells of Odysseus’s 10-year journey from Troy to his home in Ithaka. The focus of the Iliad is concentrated … …whereas the Odyssey is more dispersed, temporally and geographically. Achilles seeks honor and fame on the battlefield. Odysseus’s heroic trait is his cunning: careful planning and strategy.

SPEAK, MEMORY— Of the cunning hero, The wanderer, blown off course time and again After he plundered Troy’s sacred heights. Speak Of all the cities he saw, the minds he grasped, The suffering deep in his heart at sea As he struggled to survive and bring his men home But could not save them, hard as he tried— The fools—destroyed by their own recklessness When they ate the oxen of Hyperion the Sun, And that god snuffed out their day of return. Of these things, Speak, Immortal One, And tell the tale once more in our time.

RAGE: Sing, Goddess, Achilles’ rage, Black and murderous, that cost the Greeks Incalculable pain, pitched countless souls Of heroes into Hades’ dark, And left their bodies to rot as feasts For dogs and birds, as Zeus’ will was done. Begin with the clash between Agamemnon – The Greek warlord – and godlike Achilles.

SPEAK, MEMORY— Of the cunning hero, The wanderer, blown off course time and again After he plundered Troy’s sacred heights. Speak Of all the cities he saw, the minds he grasped, The suffering deep in his heart at sea As he struggled to survive and bring his men home But could not save them, hard as he tried— The fools—destroyed by their own recklessness When they ate the oxen of Hyperion the Sun, And that god snuffed out their day of return. Of these things, Speak, Immortal One, And tell the tale once more in our time.

Ajax and Odysseus compete for the armor of Achilles

ξενία Xenia = Code of Hospitality A script laying out the responsibilities of hosts and guests A divine obligation to Zeus himself A way of managing otherness in a period of cultural encounter Practicing Xenia marks one as a member of the civilized world.

Travel, colonization, and cross-cultural encounters From the 8 th -6 th centuries BCE the Greeks established many colonies, from the Black Sea to the coast of Spain. Technological innovations in ship-building enabled the expansion of trade routes, and Greeks made contact with Near Eastern civilization. Increased population, transformation of economic institutions, and overseas expansion took place alongside the development of poleis, Greek city-states. Institutions like the Olympic Games were designed to unite these disparate Greek communities by reinforcing a shared Greek (PanHellenic) cultural heritage.

I want to find out what these men are like, Wild savages with no sense of right or wrong Or hospitable folk who fear the gods.

A culture hero is a mythological hero (sometimes fictional, sometimes not) specific to some group – national, ethnic, religious, etc. – who serves as a representative and exemplar of that group.

Stories about heroes teach us what it is to be heroic – they stage the values of the culture that has produced them. Yet stories about culture heroes also test and redefine the very heroic virtues they advocate.

… And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. - from Tennyson’s “Ulysses” (1842) Under the shape of his sail, Ulysses, Symbol of the seeker, crossing by night The giant sea … - from Wallace Stevens, “The Sail of Ulysses” (1957)