Reading Troy — chapter 51 of 74 · Odyssey, Book 1

Odyssey, Book 1 — Council of the Gods; Athena Visits Telemachus (Year 10 after Troy's fall; the twentieth year of Odysseus's absence from Ithaca; Olympus and the palace of Odysseus on Ithaca)

Olympus convenes without Neptune, who is feasting among the Ethiopians at the world's edge. Jove muses bitterly on Aegisthus — warned by Mercury, he seduced Clytemnestra and slew Agamemnon, and Orestes has now paid him back in full. Minerva turns the talk to Ulysses, who languishes on Calypso's island while the goddess "tries by every kind of blandishment to make him forget his home." Jove confirms Neptune's grudge — Ulysses blinded his son Polyphemus — but agrees the gods can outvote him. Minerva proposes the double plan that will structure the first twelve books: Mercury to Calypso with the order of release, herself to Ithaca to rouse Ulysses's son.

She binds on her golden sandals, takes the great bronze spear "wherewith she subdues the ranks of heroes who have displeased her," and descends to the gate of the courtyard disguised as Mentes, chief of the Taphians. The suitors are inside, throwing dice on ox-hides and shouting for wine. Telemachus, brooding apart, sees the stranger first — Butler notes the courtesy: it shamed him that a guest should stand at the door. He takes the bronze spear, settles Mentes on a separate seat away from the noise, and gives her food and water before any question, the formula of right hospitality the suitors are nightly profaning.

Phemius the bard begins to play. Under the cover of his song, Telemachus tells Mentes that his father's bones "lie rotting in some wilderness"; that the suitors of Dulichium, Same, Zacynthus and Ithaca itself are eating up the house; that Penelope will neither refuse them nor consent. Minerva-Mentes counsels the prince through the program of the whole Telemachy: call a public assembly tomorrow and order the suitors out; then take twenty rowers and sail — first to Nestor at Pylos, then to Menelaus at Sparta — for news. And remember Orestes, who killed his father's killer and won glory among men.

She vanishes like a sea-eagle through the smoke-hole, and Telemachus knows his guest was a god. Penelope comes down from her upper chamber, veiled and attended by two maids, weeping at Phemius's song of "the sad return of the Achaeans"; Telemachus, newly emboldened, sends her back to her loom — speech is man's matter, and mine above all others, for it is I who am master here. To the suitors at table he announces the assembly. Antinous mocks his "lessons in bluster and tall talking"; Eurymachus, smoother, asks who the stranger was; Telemachus lies — Mentes the Taphian, a friend of my father's — but "in his heart he knew that it had been the goddess."

The hall empties. The old nurse Euryclea, bought long ago by Laertes for the worth of twenty oxen, lights Telemachus to the tower room with a torch in each hand, folds his shirt, draws the silver bolt. He lies awake under the fleece, turning over the voyage Athena has set him. The residue of the book is a boy who has heard his own voice for the first time, and a divine machinery already in motion.

Analysis

Chapter 0051 — Analysis

A proem that names the hero last

The Odyssey opens Andra moi ennepe, Mousa — "Tell me, O Muse, of the man" — and withholds Odysseus's name for sixteen verses. Butler smooths this into prose ("Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide") and loses the held breath, but the structural point survives: the poem starts by defining its subject by quality (cunning, much-suffering, far-travelled) before granting him a name. The Iliad began with a noun — menis, wrath — and a name, Achilles. The Odyssey begins with an adjective cluster and a question. We are dealing with a different kind of hero.

The Telemachy as prelude

Books 1–4 are universally called the Telemachy: Odysseus does not appear in person until book 5. This is structurally unique among ancient epics — imagine the Iliad's first four books following Patroclus or Briseis. Two consequences. First, the audience meets Odysseus through absence and rumour, building expectation; by book 5 we have heard him eulogised on Olympus, mourned by Penelope, invoked by Telemachus, narrated about by Nestor and Menelaus. Second, the Telemachy is a coming-of-age story grafted onto a nostos, and many scholars (Analyst school, nineteenth-century) thought it a separate poem stitched in. Unitarians point out it is impossible to imagine the Odyssey without it: Telemachus's voyage doubles his father's, and the recognition sequence in book 16 depends on it.

Aegisthus as paradigm

Jove's opening complaint about Aegisthus is not idle. The Oresteia plot — adultery, murder of returning king, vengeance by son — is the dark mirror the Odyssey holds up to itself in every book. Penelope is the un-Clytemnestra; Telemachus the proto-Orestes (Minerva names him explicitly as model); Odysseus the king who, unlike Agamemnon, does survive the homecoming. Agamemnon's murder is off-stage in the cycle's narrative present — it happened in the year of the Greek nostoi, between Posthomerica 14 and Odyssey 1 — but it haunts the entire poem. We will hear Agamemnon's ghost narrate it in books 11 and 24.

Butler's prose and the Roman names

Butler in 1900 translated Homer the way he translated the Iliad in 1898 — into plain modern prose, with Roman names throughout: Jove for Zeus, Minerva for Athena, Neptune for Poseidon, Mercury for Hermes, Ulysses for Odysseus. This was already old-fashioned when he did it (Lang-Leaf-Myers's prose Iliad of 1883 used Greek names), and is now a quirk to acclimate to. The advantage: action moves unobstructed; the dialogue sounds like dialogue, not chant. The cost: the formulaic register dissolves. Polymetis Odysseus becomes "Ulysses, that man of many counsels"; glaukopis Athene becomes "Minerva," flat. Compare Lattimore's hexameter ("Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways") or Fagles, Wilson, Lombardo. Butler is reading-fast; the others are reading-slow.

The first hospitality scene

Hospitality (xenia) is the moral architecture of the Odyssey: every encounter tests it. The very first scene at Ithaca — Telemachus rising to welcome an unrecognised stranger before the suitors notice her, taking her spear, seating her apart, feeding her before asking her business — is a model of the rite. The suitors are the inverse: they consume hospitality without being guests. By book's end Minerva-Mentes has eaten Telemachus's food, given counsel, and refused a parting gift "until my return" — perfect xenia. The Cyclops in book 9 will be the perfect inversion.

What to watch for

• The double plot (Olympus / Ithaca) that will run for four books before the strands converge.
• Phemius the bard as the poem's self-portrait — the bard who survives the slaughter in book 22 because he sings under compulsion.
• Telemachus's first decisive speech to Penelope ("speech is man's matter") — the first move out of boyhood. Watch how often he repeats it.
• Euryclea, named here with a full genealogy (daughter of Ops son of Pisenor, twenty oxen). This care will pay off in book 19, when she recognises the scar.
• The Aegisthus paradigm. It will recur in books 3, 4, 11, 24.

Echoes across the cycle

Chapter 0051 — Echoes Across the Cycle

Backward echoes

The Odyssey is chronologically last of the four cycle epics, and book 1 is dense with reach-back. Jove's exemplum of Aegisthus, Clytemnestra and Orestes presupposes events that happened in the year between Posthomerica 14 (the Greeks scatter from Troy in storm) and Odyssey 1 — Agamemnon reaches Mycenae, is murdered at his welcome-bath, and Orestes returns to kill the killer. The Odyssey assumes we know the Oresteia. So does the cycle: Agamemnon's homecoming was treated in the lost Nostoi. Minerva's mention of Odysseus's sacrifices "before the ships of the Achaeans, in the broad land of Troy" reaches back into the Iliad and Posthomerica — she watched him on the walls in Iliad 4 and at the Wooden Horse in Posthomerica 12. Phemius's song of "the sad return of the Achaeans" is the cycle's own Nostoi miniaturised, sung in Odysseus's own hall. Neptune's grudge over Polyphemus reaches forward in the poem to book 9, but in the cycle's chronology it reaches back to the year after Troy fell. And the absent-husband / besieged-wife structure is itself a quiet inversion of the Iliad: there a war was fought to recover Helen because Menelaus would not endure her loss; here Penelope endures, and the war comes to her hearth in the form of suitors.

Forward echoes

The book is a forward-pointing engine. Every element pays off:

• Athena's plan (Mercury to Calypso, herself to Ithaca) executes in books 2–4 (Telemachus's voyage) and book 5 (Hermes to Ogygia). The double action is the poem's structural skeleton.
• Telemachus's growth — first speech to Penelope, first speech to the suitors — sets up his coming-of-age across books 2, 3, 4, 15, 16 (the reunion), 22 (he kills suitors), 24 (he stands beside his father).
• Antinous's mockery marks him as the first to die in book 22 — Odysseus's arrow through the throat at the moment he lifts his wine-cup.
• Eurycleia's introduction with full genealogy is the seed of the book 19 recognition scene: the nurse who washed Odysseus as a child will be the first mortal to know him by the scar.
• The Aegisthus paradigm recurs at every structural hinge: Nestor invokes it in book 3, Menelaus in book 4, the ghost of Agamemnon himself warns Odysseus about wives in book 11, and Agamemnon and Achilles speak of it again in the second Nekyia at book 24's close.
• Phemius the bard survives the slaughter in book 22, sparing the figure who has been within Homer's own poem.
• Beyond the Odyssey: the Aegisthus / Orestes plot is the matter of Aeschylus's Oresteia, Sophocles's Electra, Euripides's Electra and Orestes. Virgil cites Orestes in Aeneid 3 and 4. The bow that no suitor can string (book 21) becomes the type-scene of any concealed-king-returns story from medieval romance to the western.

Cast in this chapter

Chapter 0051 — Cast In This Chapter

On stage

• Zeus — "Jove" in Butler; opens the council with the Aegisthus parable, authorises Odysseus's release
• Athena — "Minerva"; argues for Odysseus, descends as Mentes the Taphian, sets the Telemachy in motion
• Telemachus — Odysseus's son, ~20 years old; receives his first call to action, makes his first public speech
• Penelope — descends weeping at Phemius's song of the Achaeans' return, is sent back upstairs by Telemachus
• Antinous — chief suitor; first words in the poem are mockery of Telemachus
• Eurycleia — old nurse; lights Telemachus to bed, named with full genealogy (bought by Laertes for twenty oxen)

Mentioned / off-stage

• Odysseus — "Ulysses"; on Calypso's island, the absent centre of every conversation
• Poseidon — "Neptune"; absent among the Ethiopians, his grudge over Polyphemus the cause of delay
• Hermes — "Mercury"; will be dispatched to Calypso (executed in book 5)
• Calypso — holding Odysseus on Ogygia; the council's first agenda item
• Polyphemus — Neptune's blinded Cyclops son; named here, story told in book 9
• Agamemnon — Jove's exemplum; the king murdered on his homecoming
• Clytemnestra — the un-Penelope; named via Aegisthus's seduction of her
• Nestor — to be visited at Pylos (book 3)
• Menelaus — to be visited at Sparta (book 4)

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This post is part of Reading Troy, a slow daily readalong through the four canonical Trojan-cycle epics — Homer's Iliad, Quintus Smyrnaeus's Posthomerica, Virgil's Aeneid, and Homer's Odyssey — read in chronological narrative order.