There is an old – perhaps dying, perhaps dead! – tradition that young would be Homerists are set an essay on whether or not the ending of the Odyssey as we have it is legitimate. This is a task that requires close reading and delving into the wonderful secondary literature produced by figures like Page, Merkelbach, Wilamowitz and others as well as a sensitive ear for metre and style.[1] Writing an essay on this is a rite of passage for young Classicists, the major inspiration for which throughout the period of Anglo-German scholastic dominance being a reference in the scholia to Odyssey 23.296 τοῦτο γαρ πέρας τῆς Ὀδυσσεἰας φησίν ὁ Ἀρίσταρχος (Aristarchus says this is the end of the Odyssey).[2]

Let’s uno reverso that bitch and consider the beginning of the poem. No, no, not from an old school analyst viewpoint, there is no reason to assume it anything but integral to the text. I want to compare and contrast it with the Iliad.

How are we going to do this? I do not want to create a pseudo-philological commentary or write mere literary impressions. I don’t have access to any of the great commentaries right now either. Instead, I will just open my text (sorry I am OCT-cel, no Teubner bucks and religion aversion to Van Thiel) and throw stuff onto the page whilst waiting for lunch. I will jump between word, line, and greater chunks. Look, these are just off the cuff comments, feel free to jump in with emendations and alternatives.

I will largely, as always, be working from the Greek. If you want a translation you can see this considerate entry by Lin or grab any book.

ἄνδρα Staid, trite, overworn truism that just as the Iliad begins with μῆνις (wrath) and thereby announces its theme, this poem does with man. The parent language had two distinct words for man *wiHrós and *h₂nḗr. The former gives us familiar reflexes such as Latin vir,[3] Old Irish fer, Old English wer, and Sanskrit vīrá. We know both words existed contemporaneously because languages like Sanskrit retain and utilise both but Greek is defective here. ἀνήρ therefore carried all the semantic range. Hunting, fighting, bravery, virtue, competition etc etc. However, is it a good first word? Yes, Odysseus is all these things, but the immediate narrative will shift to the gods (the opposite of man) then a boy (not yet a man) and much of the remaining text will display just how mean a thing man can be without fellowship, mission, and the god. Hmmm.

μοι ἔννεπε: Wonderfully archaic verb, cheekily lengthened by an additional ν to fit the metre. Eye-catching enough for Livius Andronicus to go out of his way to find a Latin verb to echo it in his Odusia. In the Iliad and in melic poesy it is overwhelmingly used with something of the air of a yarn. This is where you wriggle your arse more comfortably into its seat.

μοῦσα: Who is this Mousa and why is she invoked here? Is she synonymous with the Iliad’s θεά? Or the generic goddess in line 10 who is, nonetheless, a θύγατερ Διός? How much of the apparent Hesiodic and later tradition can we read into this word? Ascribing her as Calliope seems a touch too far.

πολύτροπον: In no way "complicated", he is not some errant will we won’t we boyfriend. I admit it is a difficult thing to convey in translation, even into colloquial Greek (even Plato, Plato!, seems to struggle Hippias Minor 364e). H is relying on this ambiguity, one who often turns and is turned about. Pulleyn’s phrase as being "of many turns" is perhaps the most apposite English translation.

ἔπερσεν: This innocuous verb is Homer staking his Odysseus’ claim to be the sacker of Troy (poor Epeius) though in direct speech later Odysseus will use the verb in the 1^st person plural. The narrator does use the verb of Odysseus’ actions elsewhere (in Thrace? I can’t recall) and therefore it is a key part of his personality. Yes, he sacked Troy, he sacked the Ciccones, and by God he’s going to sack Ithaca as well. Reader, he’s going to sack you.

ὃς πολλὰ πλάγχθη…πολλῶν δ᾽ ἀνθρώπων…ἔγνω…πολλὰ πάθεν: The polyptonic tricolon is not in anyway an accident. It tells you exactly what kind of hero this Odysseus will be.[4] Moreover, the traits here are typically heroic deep in the time of Eurasian heroic cultures: consider the first 10 or so lines of the Gilgamesh.

Incidentally, the near-eastern antecedents to the Odyssey are a very interesting topic. If only we had people who had read the texts and were interested in what the relationship(s) could tell us, rather than ressentiment driven ideologues obsessed with using the Greeks to score points against the chuds, we could have some really interesting discussions.

νόστιμον ἦμαρ: Serves to misleadingly align this poem with one of the various nostos narratives that were popular at the time. I think experienced listeners would automatically know (look how different the proem is from shorter epics…) that this is not the case, but even they would appreciate how artfully H. plays with expectations. Is the Odyssey a nostos narrative? Yes and no.

τῶν ἁμόθεν γε…εἰπὲ καὶ ἡμῖν: The line is misleadingly difficult and translators smooth over this. I wish I could find my copy of Pulleyn to check how he renders it. *ἁμός is not elsewhere used and Chantraine’s assumption that it is either an archaism or an Atticism seems bland and unconvincing.[5] Maybe the use of the elative suffix points more to an archaic origin.

How are we taking καί here? Overall, the sense of the line seems to be that Homer has asked the goddess to give him the tale Odysseus from anywhere she chooses and is simultaneously positioning himself both as passive recipient (hence the καὶ ἡμῖν, along with the audience) and performer at once. This is a key part of H’s rhetorical strategy.

What is H. on about? Well, there are endless variations and competing narratives but the goddess is going to give him, and therefore you, reader, the true one.

INCIDENTALLY, How do we, as grammatically aware Anglophones, feel about all the imperative verbs, addressed to the gods? In many languages such as Greek and Sanskrit this is simply the done thing, but the early Romans seemed a little phased by it: there is a big jump from Livius’s hedging to Virgil’s Musa mihi causas memora…Hmm that’s the second time Livius has come up. Maybe you read fragments?

I am getting bored with word/line commentary. How well does this set up the rest of the book? Despite starting with "man", the proper scene we have is…of the gods? This is a much cosier style of assembly scene than seen in the Iliad. Zeus is (avoiding the whole issue of ἀμύμων Αἴγισθος) concerned with theodicy:

ὢ πόποι, οἷον δή νυ θεοὺς βροτοὶ αἰτιόωνται:

ἐξ ἡμέων γάρ φασι κάκ᾽ ἔμμεναι, οἱ δὲ καὶ αὐτοὶ

σφῇσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὑπὲρ μόρον ἄλγε᾽ ἔχουσιν,

O popoi![6] How the mortals now blame the gods

and say that their troubles come from us! Yet they themselves

have pains beyond their allotted fate due to their own recklessness!

Those hoping to hear about the man may be disappointed since we have gone from him to the gods, to a man but the mytheme of Aegisthus is very important. It offers a paradigm to Telemachus, at least to an extent, as we do not (yet) want him to kill his mother and he is faced not with a single adulterous suitor but several.[7] It also offers a warning to Odysseus. Unlike the other survivors, his nostos is still incomplete (11-13) and can easily end the same way as Agamemnon’s. It is not until books III and IV that we see what a safe and sound homecoming (Nestor) and an amicable, axe-free, spousal reconciliation (Menelaus and Helene) can look like.[8] Even that type of reconciliation is smashed between the threat of Calypso (1.13-19; 5) in the poem’s broader narrative structure.

Ok do let’s wrap up because περιπλομένων ἐνιαυτῶν and my lunch is almost done.[9] How does is the opening of the Odyssey? Well obviously, it is very very good. The proem and the following lines set up the narrative beautifully, even if at times they play with expectations. There is very little of the whole text that you can’t find an excuse to talk about.[10] Does it compare to the Iliad? I don’t know, it certainly doesn’t make me want to take my shirt off and punch things. Gregory Nagy, an American scholar finer than his tone-deaf sycophantic epigones, claims that people are variably Iliad or Odyssey people. Maybe I’m just fixed in Iliad mode. I think this might be the first appearance of the Odyssey on the blog since I pipped the BBC and several others to the post explaining what that fragment was several years back.

This is a fun exercise, that takes mere minutes. Give it a quick try now and then.

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[1] The trick is to find out what your tutor believes and write the exact opposite.

[2] Actually no lol he doesn’t. I wrote that. I have no access to the scholia or anything cool right now. I have no access to a proper library: Be cool, ok? We’ll find the actual Greek later. I’ll slip it in before more than 5-10 people notice.

[3] Potentially quite complicated because the vowel in Latin is short, not the expected outcome of a vowel plus a laryngeal. Note, however, the irregular noun vis where in most cases the I must be long. All is well in Latinland!

[4] οὐ μὲν γάρ τοι ἔτ’ ἄλλος ἐλεύσεται ἐνθάδ’ ᾿Οδυσσεύς (16.204) – remember, H is constantly up against and part of a multiform tradition.

[5] If former, why no other testimony (even across cognate langs), if the latter, surely there would be much richer semantic parallels within the Attic and neo-Attic corpora.

[6] It’s just an exclamation guys like πω πω or ώπα or something.

[7] I believe multiformity allows as to whether or not Penelope is/has/can betray Od or not. Nonnus definitely retains some recondite epichoric variation (Dionysica 14.92) and Pausanias’ scandalous version (8.12) is common knowledge.

[8] I am not diving into the ambiguity around Helen here. Maybe some other time.

[9] Pls remind me and I will teach you make proper souvlaki (τυλιχτό and everything) in domestic oven.

[10] Yes, text. Americans, cry.

Ancient Greek

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