polymechanos,the man of much contrivance and many devices, and of course polytlas,
much suffering and much enduring. He is a man of great versatility and great
virtuosity who has seen cities and known the minds of men; he survives by reliance
upon his wits and by virtue of his intelligence. Though Odysseus is famous for his
‘Odyssey’, his long journey to strange lands and distant places, Homer starts his
Odysseyat a point when his hero is near the end of his journey, after he has been a
prisoner of the nymph Calypso on the island of Ogygia for seven years. The main part
of his ‘Odyssey’ is narrated in the form of an after-dinner speech to the Phaeacians,
on whose island he is shipwrecked after he has left Calypso. The remainder of the
poem, its second half, is entirely concerned with the situation in Ithaca and with
Odysseus’s successful efforts to regain mastery of his own household.
The poem starts with a dramatic representation of the disorder in Ithaca in
Odysseus’ absence. Nine years after the Trojan War, the sons of the neighbouring
aristocracy are competing for the hand of his wife Penelope in marriage, and riotously
consuming his substance in feasting and nightly entertainment. The choice lies with
Penelope, and the wooers are pressing their suit till she chooses one of their number.
In an Ithacan assembly, Odysseus’ only son Telemachus, who has just recently come
of age, attempts to eject the suitors, who are in no mood to go. The people in Ithaca
are entirely passive, there being no external authority to which appeal can be made
in Homeric society. Telemachus determines to journey to Pylos, the home of Nestor,
and to Sparta, the home of Menelaus, in order to seek news of his father to end the
uncertainty. The position of Penelope is delicate. She wishes to remain loyal to
Odysseus and does not want to choose a successor, but the assertion of Telemachus,
which exposes him to danger (the suitors have a plot to ambush him on his return
which he is only able to evade by use of his wits), puts new pressure upon her. The
situation in Ithaca is most unstable; events are taking an ugly turn and entering a
dangerous and critical stage. The judgement on the suitors at the beginning of the
poem and throughout is clear: their riotous actions and insulting speeches are a gross
breach of Homeric manners. The line between unseemly behaviour and downright
wickedness is clearly crossed in the plot to ambush and kill Telemachus. The moral
outline of the poem is simple and clear; the stage is set at the opening for the ultimate
triumph of right over wrong in the poetic justice that is to be meted out in the reversal
of fortune at the poem’s climax.
The scene now shifts to Calypso’s isle, where Odysseus is to be found in a
nostalgic mood, away from the goddess, yearning for his return home. The gods send
their messenger Hermes to instruct Calypso to release the hero. Odysseus builds a
raft, sets sail but is almost drowned when Poseidon, god of the seas, whose anger he
incurred when he blinded his son Polyphemus the Cyclops, raises a storm which
blows him off course and shipwrecks him on Scherie, the island home of the
Phaeacians.
22 THE GREEKS