Odyssey Notes
- May 16
- 8 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
[In Progress]
The tomb of Odysseus has been discovered on Ithaka, identified by the broach which Odysseus himself describes, as described by Homer (XIX, 227-230. This was discovered much as Schliemann discovered Troy- by simply taking seriously the account we had dismissed as myth and legend.
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Odysseus Returns. Now Streaming. An amateur historian, Makis Metaxas, claims he found the bones of Odysseus, the hero of Homer's epic poem, the Odyssey ...Read more
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An amateur historian, Makis Metaxas, claims he found the bones of Odysseus, the hero of Homer's epic poem, the Odyssey
Book I
Polytropos, Lattimore has the man of "many ways," and this coheres with the third line, "Many were they whose cities he saw." The Ascend podcast is doing a different translation, which has "twists and turns."
Zeus in council says that the mortals accuse the gods and so the Odyssey too will be a defense of the ways of god before men.
Poseidon is said to be angry at Odysseus for killing the Cyclopse, but we thought this had not happened yet! I asked AI if the opposition of the gods in their homecoming was not rather due to "Palamedes," meaning Philocleites, who was left on the island. But in taking Troy, the Greeks were excessive, and committed many impieties including the rape of Cassandra at the altar of Athena by Ajax..
Athena represents wisdom, and a faculty that transcends the particular humans- So when she restrains Achilles at the opening of the Iliad, it is wisdom herself that restrains him from an unwise action, while he himself would here attack the king or general. She is close to the ingenious Odysseus, and helps Telemachus.
I am appreciating much more the background homecoming story of the Orestia, due to Grabowski and the Ascend podcast- one can see why, if Greek tragedy begins there. The homecoming after war story is also the background of two of the great rock operas, The Wall by Pink Floyd and Tommy.
II .155-176 ff Halitherses the soothsayer is a friend of Athena and together they side with the family of Odysseus against the suitors, and their prophecy is correct.
That Athena takes on the likeness of Mentor means the same as that Mentor participates in wisdom in this circumstance. The podcast reports that his name is indeed the source of our word for a guide or model teacher.
III .1 Book III is day 3. We have to do a survey of the twenty times as a commentator has discerned, that Rosey fingered Dawn is mentioned.
IV . 72-75 Lacedaemon is pre-Lycugus Sparta.72-75 Menelaos is very rich at this time- now there is barely a monument to mark the location of Sparta. The love of the beautiful, evident in the Eponymous Hellen (Herself named after an ancient king of Pthia, Hellen the son of Deucalion and grandson of Promethius.
That Menelaos was stuck on the shore of Egypt untill he accomplished perfect hecatoms recalls the decision of Agamemnon, following Calchis, to sacrifice his daughter at the outset of the Trojan War expedition. Homer does not include this, but does seem to allude to it.
A hecatomb is a sacrifice of 100 victims, as Solomon sacrificed "Dr. Taylor Marshall writes" "King Solomon the Wise offered 220 “hecatombs” of oxen (i.e. 22,000 oxen; 2 Chr 7:5) at one time. King Hezekiah also did something similar (cf. 2 Chr 29:32-33)."
In Homer the blatant commerce of Greek piety is present in an innocent and assumed way, that humans can petition the gods with offerings, and this ensures or can effect good fortune. That there is an art to reading birds and intestines is also assumed. The Greeks may in some ways have been so superstitious we would not have been able to deal with of communicate with them in certain ways- we would be aliens. The Spartans would not arrive at Marathon because of a certain sacrifice.
IV How many days have passed throughout the Telemachy? How many rosey fingers count the number? II.1; the dawn III.1
Charisma is "Athena drifted a mantle of grace upon him." II.12
V Hermes says That on the way home, the crew of Odysseus "offended Athene,who let loose an evil tempest and tall waves against them" V.108-9) and this seems to refer to their eating the cattle of Helios. But Odysseus was already blown off course and before offending Poseidon by killing the Cyclops.
The Iliad and Odyssey are related as tragedy to comedy in the developed sense, similar to the Shakespearean sense of an action that works well and avoids tragedy due to wisdom.
As the Iliad abstracts from the history to show an action- the wrath or rage of Achilles Aristotle, Poetics, )- from what does the Odyssey abstract, and in order to show what?
The Podcast is excellent on Arete and helpful on MANY points: Two olive trees, domestic and wild: V. 476-485, the source of the leaves in which Odysseus buries himself. Nausikaa's rhetoric and intelligence. How to spell and say Nausik- eyyah!
That does not come through in the Lattimore translation, which has, "one of shrub, and one of wild olive." At VII, 181, Lattimore has "rights," a word that is extremely rare in this sense before Hobbes- believe it or not. Examples are errors. This is:...
The Olive trees wild and domestic are symbols too in scripture, but not with the same meaning as in Homer. What does it mean that the leaves in which Odysseus is buried to preserve the seed of flame are the leaves of this entwined twin tree? Nature and cultivation together...
VIII 64-82 Demodokos the singer is of course like Homer himself and blinded, singing of the events of the Trojan war and Achilles and Odysseus.
.180 Perseus has: “Pontonous, mix the bowl, and serve wine [180] to all in the hall, that we may pour libations also to Zeus, who hurls the thunderbolt; for he ever attends upon reverend suppliants.” Once again, the word "rights" enters in a paraphrase. As in Ireneus. When I see the word rights in a translation prior to Hobbes, I look it up, and it is a paraphrase of something indeed like rights- but there is not the word...would it be a passive form of dike?
.435 The tripod, often a gift as to Apollo at Delphi- is this metal instrument for heating water and food over fire. 3 legs is a more stable design for uneven ground, less likely to wobble, though more likely to topple. The most famous was the tripod on which the Priestess at Delphi was seated when prophesying.
IX Cyclops
The root moly is an antidote to what? The spells of Circe- which has turned his companions into pigs. So, what is it that the study of nature is an antidote? One wonders about the wild and domestic olive intertwined.
XI Eva Brann compares the deed of Socrates to that of Herakles, in bringing up the triple headed monster Cerberus- the three part soul (Music of the Republic)
XIII: The sacrifice of the Phaiakians averts a prophecy from being fulfilled, as Zeus negotiated with Poseidon. A marvelous comment in the highest relations among the gods, prophecy, human placation of the anger of the gods by sacrifices,
Shakespeare has many echoes of the Odyssey
"You nymphs called Niads," who have a cave at Ithaka XIII.104-5
XIV: Could the story Odysseus tells to Eumaios be the true story? That Odysseus was in Egypt? There is a wonderful complexity to the lies and disguises in these sections. Is the story Odysseus tells Eumaios about Egypt somehow the truth behind the cattle of Helios?
XV: We notice that Menelaus does not come from Sparta to help Telemachus. After all the Greeks went to help him get his wife back!
There is a justice them in XV, regarding the murderer who is received as a prophet, and then the story of Eumaios. As with the cattle of Helios, or the women and children of the Egyptians, the companions of Odysseus are guilty and so deserve their fate. The suitors are similarly made guilty, and it is seen as self defense when they are killed, especially since they tried to kill Telemachus. Justice is interesting in Homer, and here it is a recurrent theme of this section.
XVI And what a nice kid that Telemachos is, calling the Swineherd "father," and doing hospitality for the beggar who is his real father.
Ascend points out that Eumaios is then royalty disguised in a different way
There are connections between Shakespeare's Tempest and the Odyssey, beginning with Ferdinand on the yellow sands of the magic island, similar to the arrival of Odysseus on Phaicia.
The deed of Clytemnestra taints all women, according to Agamemnon in Hades. Hamlet too says the deed of his mother ...what has she done that taints all women...
Apology XIII. 80: and upon Odysseus there fell a sleep, gentle,/ the sweetest kind of sleep with no awakening, most like death." This always seemed strange in the Apology: IS that the sweetest sleep? Or are there many dreams more pleasant than unconsciousness? But this is Odysseus as he arrives home at Ihtaka. Is that not related to Socrates dream and the return of Achilles to fertile Pthia?
Appendix: The ten best comments on Homer
Jacob Klein, On Virgil, Essays, Iliad is shaped as an oval, from the nod of Zeus to the scream of Achilles.
Socrates in Phaedrus, (Steisichorus). Helen was not in Troy. This saying is presented as a cure for the blindness that resulted for the poet due to saying or believing that Helen was at Troy. Regardless of the historical truth- the Greeks did return home with her, having found her there- the meaning of the saying is that the beautiful is not in the city, nor even in the object of the beloved, and this indeed is the cure of the blindness of the lover.
Socrates in the lesser Hippias. The question regarding the Iliad and Odysseus is which of the two- Achilles and Odysseus- does Homer present as the better man. Beneath these lies the question of whether the active or contemplative life is better.
Herodotus. On Proteus. Helen and Alexandros visited Egypt, where she acquired the drugs or knowledge of them that she uses in the Odyssey (IV)
Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida is a comic presentation of the Trojan war.and a critique of comedy for the un-tuning of respect for authority and degree.
Aristotle Poetics. That Homer selects a part of the story of the Trojan war to show the wrath of Achilles. That tragedy is due to flaw in a noble character.
Socrates in Republic III and X: That the poets make bad images of the gods adulterated by their cause in the human soul. The poets should not show heroes wailing or in madness or in love. Barbara Tovey shows that Shakespeare as if intentionally violates these prohibitions of the Republic, and the non-tragic characters are notariously difficult to show in action.Gods would not lie, change shape, nor cause harm or evil. The poets as Euripides flatter and feed the worse elements of the soul, and make "hymns to tyrants."
Socrates in Plato's Ion. The inspiration of the rhapsodes comes from the poet as magnetism comes to magnetic rings, from the lodestone. That the soul of the poet is as a bee.
Aristotle's Politics Book I, where he comments on the Cyclopse as without law, each giving law to his own family (I,ii, 152b).
The comment on Cyclopse in Aristotle's Politics crystallized my evolutionary thought on the emergence of the village from the family, into the polis, with corresponding changes in endogamy and exogamy and in the human soul. Barker translation:
This primitive kingship is what Homer describes
Each of them ruleth over his own children and wives, a passage which shows they lived jn scattered groups, as indeed men generally did in ancient times.
This then allows me to address the Freud, as I tried to do writing on Hamlet. The image emerges as one approaches the limit of law, as when Caesar was about to cross the Rubicon in Plutarch. There is a regression through images toward the origin, as described by Augustine. Cave.
Plato in Protagoras...(As the writer of Plato's Trojan Horse, Spencer T. Milton, indicates. indicates).
Plato, Republic X, where Odysseus chooses the life of an ordinary man, similar to the comment of Achilles that he would rather be a serf on the surface of the earth.
+, My poem "Seeing Nausika" Nausikaa. On the two appearances of the beautiful in the beloved.
Bibliograhy:
Benardete, Seth. The Bow and the Lyre.
Ahrendsdorf, Peter. Homer and the Gods
Brann, Eva. Homeric Moments: Clues to Delight in Reading the Odyssey (and the Iliad), and Clay, Jenny Strauss.The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey.
Klein Essay on Virgil, in Collected Essays.
Milton, Spencer R. Plato's Trojan Horse. 2026
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