Odyssey Study Guide Contents
The opening book of the Homer's Odyssey foreshadows what will happen in the next 23 books. Starting in the middle (after the invocation of the Muse), Book I quickly summarizes events leading to Athena's appearance before the council of the gods to ask for help bringing Odysseus safely back to his kingdom of Ithaca:After the fall of Troy, the Greeks tried to sail home, but most of them, cursed by the gods, failed or met death upon their return. Not so Odysseus. Between the ten years of the Trojan War and the years Poseidon has spent blocking Odysseus' homecoming, Telemachus, the infant son Odysseus left behind, has become a man, faced with the difficult task of staving off his mother's suitors.
Now that Poseidon is on vacation, so to speak:
But now that god
had gone off among the sunburnt races,
most remote of men, at earth's two verges,
in sunset lands and lands of the rising sun,
to be regaled by smoke of thighbones burning,
haunches of rams and bulls, a hundred fold.
(From Fitzgerald's translation.)
all the other gods support Athena. Jupiter dispatches the gods' messenger, Hermes, to instruct the nymph Calypso to give up the man she has detained seven years.
Meanwhile, Athena contrives to persuade Telemachus to take action. Disguising herself as a trusted family frend, Mentes, she descends to Ithaca to persuade Telemachus to hold an assembly, rebuke the suitors, and commission a boat with crew to travel throughout Hellas seeking news of his father.
Besides establishing the direction of the story and briefing the listener on recent events, the first book of the Odyssey presents a series of contrasts between the divine and mortal worlds and a parallel between Odysseus' family and that of the leader of the Achaean forces at Troy, Agamemnon.
The gods had warned Aegisthus against taking what was not his, but Aegisthus wouldn't listen. While the Achaeans fought the Trojans, Aegisthus took Agamemnon's wife and kingdom of Mycenae for his own. He got his desserts when Agamemnon's son Orestes killed him for murdering his father. [Note: Homer does not blame Clytemnestra.] Orestes' revenge marks his transition to manhood and wins him his patrimony. It is important that Telemachus be willing to do the same: keep his mother safe for his father and kill the men who would steal his patrimony, should it become necessary.
Just as Athena had to convene a meeting of the gods before putting her plan to work, so it is important for Telemachus to gain the backing of the Ithacan elders. Proper procedure must be followed.
When Telemachus greets his visitor, the pretend Mentes, it is essential that he offer him the proper courtesy and hospitality, xenia. Food and drink must come first. Only after the creature comforts are attended can questions begin. Telemachus behaves perfectly, but his guests do not. Like Odysseus' men who abused the sun god Helios' hospitality, the suitors wantonly slay the cattle of their hosts. The sun god killed Odysseus' men for their transgression. Clearly, the suitors will soon be made to suffer.
We shall see, in the next twenty-three books, how well Homer's Muse has inspired him to recount the
... story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end,
after he plundered the stronghold
on the proud height of Troy.
(From Fitzgerald's translation.)
Odyssey Study Guide
Odyssey Book I English Translation
Odyssey XI: Nekuia
Notes
Parallels
Names and Places in Odyssey Book I
Ancient / Classical History Glossary
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