1. Homer, Odyssey and Homecoming An introduction

2. Odysseus’ Home: Ithaca

7. The Apotheosis of Homer

8. The earliest notable portrayal of the scene is a 3rd century BC marble relief by Archelaus of Priene, now in the British Museum

9. The Homecomings: The Odyssey An overview

11. Odysseus blinding Polyphemus (Book 9)

12. Odysseus blinds the Cyclops

13. The Cyclops Polyphemus key episode: Note the description of the island and the nature of Cyclopean society. Pay attention to Odysseus' behavior. Is it commendable? Is he a good guest? Is Polyphemus a good host? Look for mentions of Zeus and the guest-host relationship. What vice gets Odysseus into trouble? What virtue gets him out of it? What types of behavior are approved and condemned by this story? Does Odysseus' victory over the Cyclops, and the means he uses to achieve it, suggest any other myths? What is the significance of calling himself Nobody?

14. Odysseus escaping the Cyclops' cave (Book 9)

15. Odysseus and the Cyclops (another view)

16. Odysseus and Circe

17. Elpenor addressing Odysseus, who stands next to Hermes

18. The Odyssey Books 11 Odysseus in Hades

19. Odysseus and the Sirens

20. Penelope at her loom, with Telemachos in attendance

21. The Nurse washing Odysseus' feet

22. Terracotta plaque, Plaque with the return of Odysseus, ca. 460?450 B.C.; Classical Greek, Melian

23. Odysseus slaying the suitors; below, an overview of the vase

24. Odyssey, Books 5-8 (Year 10 of the wanderings) Hermes visits Calypso, who is with Odysseus Calypso will grant him immortality; Odysseus wants to go home. Poseidon gets back and brings up a storm Washed up on the island of the Phaeacians Nausicaä, daughter of Alcinous, king of the Phaeacians The Athletic Games and Feast The bard Demodocus sings of Troy, reveals Odysseus

25. Odysseus helps his men escape from Polyphemus' cave by hiding them under sheep. Pushkin Museum, Moscow.

26. Books 9-11: The Adventures, Part I (3 years) The Cicones The Lotus Eaters Drug of Forgetfulness Polyphemus, the Cyclops Aeolus, Lord of the Winds Gives Bag of Winds; men open it; blown back Laestrygonians (Man-eating giants) Every ship destroyed except Odysseus'

27. Circe, the Sorceress a. Men turned to pigs b. Odysseus and Moly, the magic herb c. Odysseus and Circe get together d. They all stay for a year The Trip to the Underworld a. The ghost of Elpenor b. Tiresias' prophecy c. The Parade of Women d. Agamemnon: Don't trust women e. Achilles: Asks about Neoptolemus f. Ajax: still bitter, walks away g. The sufferers: Tityus, Tantalus, Sisyphus,

29. ORIENTALIZING STYLE: The story portrays Polyphemus as a giant, one- eyed cyclops who is blinded by a spear by Odysseus and his friends. The Cyclops is shown in a sitting position, and his monstrous size is noticeable in comparison to Odysseus and the others who are standing.

30. Works Cited Kim, Lawrence. Odyssey: Phaeacian Tales. 15 Nov 2004. 4 May 2005. Pottery Styles. 5 May 2005.

31. Odysseus and Nausicaa: Athena visits Nausicaa, princess of Scheria, in a dream and tells her to go wash clothes at the river. She meets Odysseus. Try to visualize Odysseus' meeting with this young woman. What do we learn about Odysseus' character in this encounter? What information does he withhold?

32. with the return of the heroes with the return of the heroes who survived The other Homeric epic, the Odyssey, is concerned with the peace that followed the war and in particular with the return of the heroes who survived.

33. wandering in unknown seas wandering in unknown seas Its subject is the long, drawn-out return of one of the heroes, Odysseus of Ithaca, who was destined to spend then years wandering in unknown seas before he returned to his rocky kingdom.

35. twenty years of war and seafaring When Odysseus’s wanderings began, Achilles had already received, at the hands of Apollo, the death that he had chosen. versatile intelligencecombined with long experience the trials and dangers of twenty years of war and seafaring Odysseus struggles for life, and his outstanding quality is a probing and versatile intelligence that, combined with long experience, keeps him safe and alive through. the trials and dangers of twenty years of war and seafaring

36. archetypal adventurer archetypal adventurer, whose one goal is to get home Although Odysseus has become for us the archetypal adventurer, the Odyssey gives us a hero whose one goal is to get home. preserve and complete the heroic reputation He struggles not simply for his own and his shipmates’ personal survival but also to preserve and complete the heroic reputation that he won in war at Troy.

37. Odysseus’ Tricks tricks the Cyclops by presenting himself as “Nobody It may seem ironic that Odysseus succeeds by concealing his name, as when he tricks the Cyclops by presenting himself as “Nobody,” or when, at home on Ithaca, he tricks his wife’s suitors by disguising himself as a beggar. shiftinesshis talent for disguise, deception, and But Odysseus’s shiftiness, his talent for disguise, deception, and plain lying, is part of his versatility.

38. The adventures on the voyage home test these mental qualities, as well as Odysseus’s physical endurance, but tempting him to lapse from the struggle homeward. forgetfulness of home and family The Lotos flower offers forgetfulness of home and family. Circe Circe gives him a life of ease and self- indulgence on an enchanted island. In Phaeacia, Odysseus is offered the love of a young princess and her hand in marriage.

39. The Lotus-Eaters 17th century etching/ Theodor van Thulden (1606 - 1669) Fine Art Museum of San Francisco

40. The Sirens tempt him to live in the memory of the glorious past. Calypso chooses the human condition, with all its struggle, its disappointments, and its inevitable end Calypso, the goddess with whom he spends seven years, offers him the greatest temptation of all: immortality. In refusing, Odysseus chooses the human condition, with all its struggle, its disappointments, and its inevitable end.

41. Odysseus and Calypso, by Jan Brueghel

42. Return to ordinary life celebrates return to ordinary seem a worthy prize The Odyssey celebrates return to ordinary life and makes it seem a worthy prize after excitement, toil, and danger. only four of twenty- four books The adventures occupy only four of twenty- four books (or eight if we include Calypso and the Phaeacians).

43. Ithaca Ithaca For the entire second half of the poem, Odysseus is back on Ithaca, winning his way, by deceit that only paves the way for force, from the swineherd Eumaios’s hut to the center of his own house.

44. Odysseus and Eumaios/ 17th century etching Theodor van Thulden (1606 - 1669)

45. Telemachus There, and in books 1-4, we see the social disorder on Ithaca that Odysseus’s return is to set right. Telemachus, We also see Telemachus, his son, emerging from adolescence and impatient with all that keeps him from assuming a man’s role (his mother as well as her suitors).

46. Telemachus

48. Penelope And we see Penelope’s dealings with her son, with her suitors, and with the beggar who is really her husband in disguise.

50. Penelope’s cunning Penelope is a challenging figure, because the narrative does not give us full access to her thoughts and motives. with a cunning that matches Odysseus’s But she seems, with a cunning that matches Odysseus’s, to keep in balance two contradictory requirements of her situation.

51. Penelope’s weaving Painting By J.W. Waterhouse

52. If she remarries... If she remarries and Odysseus then returns, she will seem to have betrayed him and, in his and society’s eyes, she will be classed with those other adulterers Helen and Clytemnestra.

53. Penelope’s trick of the web In its ambivalence, Penelope’s trick of the web (she promised the suitors to choose one of them when she had finished a shroud for Odysseus’s father, Laertes, and for three years she unwove each night what she had woven by day) perfectly encapsulates the way she is forced to play loyal wife and available bride at the same time; it is both a delaying tactic and a way of stringing the suitors along

54. Penelope’s faithfulness Odysseus evidently interprets the trick simply as an expression of Penelope’s faithfulness to him, and so have readers over the ages.

55. Geopolitical remapping polis, or “city- state The period in which the Iliad and the Odyssey probably took shape, 750-700 B.C. or a little after, saw enormous cultural, political, and social developments in Greece, especially the formation, in many areas, of the polis, or “city- state.”

56. civilization civilization The Odyssey offers a more positive meditation on the nature of civilization and of the structures of daily political life as the Greeks experienced it. In addition, Odysseus’s adventures explore alternatives to “ordinary” (that is, Greek) civilization.

57. Nature and culture antithesis Odysseus experiences nature itself as the threatening antithesis to human culture, and he encounters other cultural forms that seem defective or excessive when measured against Ithaca.

58. hospitality hospitality. The richest contrast is provided by the Cyclopes, who lack many of the features of the evolving Greek civilization: houses (they live in caves), agriculture (they are herders), ships for trade and colonization, political integration (their highest political unit is the family), and the key institution of hospitality.

59. The foreign When Odysseus finally is restored to Ithaca, he, and his Greek audience, can appreciate the familiar for having explored alternatives to it in these and many other ways. the foreign, This self-fashioning by reference to the foreign, which was to have a long history among the Greeks, must have been especially important during this formative period of their culture.

60. Prolong internal warfare prolong internal warfare One enormous contradiction underlies the final books: Odysseus restores order by killing men from his own community, within his house, and he is prepared to prolong internal warfare by killing the suitors’ relatives in the final book.

61. Odysseus kills the suitors In fact, this struggle recapitulates the Trojan War and resembles the dispute between Achilles and Agamemnon in book 1 of the Iliad. In all three cases, men compete for honor over a woman. What is more, Odysseus kills the suitors within his own house, which should be exempt from competition and conflict, as the Odyssey’s many scenes of feasting in this same hall show. Both poems leave us with questions.

62. Human aggression How can human aggression be controlled, if not eliminated? Can violence within the community be channeled into safe, perhaps even socially creative, forms? Can it be successfully controlled by being turned outward, against other communities? If so, does that justify the human suffering and waste that external wars cause? And what about the more refined forms of violence at the heart of social hierarchies that create asymmetries of gender and class?