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‘The Greatness of His Nature’: Fire and Justice in the Odyssey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Edward M. Bradley
Edward M. Bradley*
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
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Extract

In such terms Zeus instructs Athena to bind together the kingdom of Odysseus in enduring harmony and thereby brings to a happy conclusion the hero's long, painful nostos from Troy. The conditions of Odysseus' future contrast radically with the dangerous instability of his past; in the invocation to the poem (1.1-10), the accent falls somberly on wandering, destruction, suffering, helplessness, and frustration. By the end of Book 24, however, Odysseus is powerfully in control of his world, restored to his family and people, and assured of divine sanction for the enjoyment of peace and prosperity into a sleek old age and a gentle death (23.281-84).

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , 1976 , pp. 137 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1976

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References

1. Richmond Lattimore, trans., The Odyssey of Homer (New York 1968). All translations from the Odyssey in this essay are by Lattimore.

2. For a sober and lucid review of the problems presented by 23.297–24.548, see Moulton, Carroll, ‘The End of the Odyssey’ Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 15 (1974) 153–169Google Scholar. The present essay is predicated upon a text of the Odyssey which includes 23.297–24.548.

3. Whitman, Cedric, Homer and the Heroic Tradition (Cambridge, Mass. 1958) 296–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar (hereafter: Whitman); Howard Porter’s introductory essay in Palmer, George Herbert, trans., and Porter, Howard, ed., The Odyssey, Homer (New York 1962) 5Google Scholar (hereafter: Porter).

4. See below, note 9.

5. Frost, Robert, ‘Education by Poetry’, Selected Prose of Robert Frost, ed. Cox, Hyde and Lathem, Edward (New York, Chicago, and San Francisco 1966) 43Google Scholar (hereafter: Frost).

6. Frost 42. All references to the Odyssey are based upon Stanford, W. B., The Odyssey of Homer (2nd edition, London 1958–59Google Scholar).

7. Frost 42. The simile of the firebrand comes in 5.488–93. Cf. Finley, John H., Jr., Four Stages of Greek Thought (Stanford, Calif. 1966Google Scholar) 21.

8. Whitman 297.

9. Clarke, Howard W., The Art of the Odyssey (Englewood Cliffs 1967) 45Google Scholar. For a variety of critical views, see Stanford, W. B., The Ulysses Theme (Ann Arbor 1968) 23Google Scholar, 33–42; Kirk, G. S., The Songs of Homer (Cambridge 1962) 355–71Google Scholar; Dimock, George E., Jr., ‘The Name of Odysseus’, The Hudson Review 9 (1956) 52–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lord, George de F., ‘The Odyssey and the Western World’, The Sewanee Review 62 (1954) 406–27Google Scholar; Segal, Charles P., ‘The Phaeacians and the Symbolism of Odysseus’ return’, Arion 1.4 (1962) 17–64Google Scholar (hereafter: Segal); my ‘The Hybris of Odysseus’, Soundings 51.1 (1968) 33–44Google Scholar.

10. Cf. Whitman 299; Segal 22–23.

11. 5.354–59; 9.224–29, 494–500; 12.115–17, 226–27.

12. Cf. Poseidon’s farewell to his bedevilled victim (5. 376–79) and the simile of the sick father joyously restored by the gods to his despairing children (5.394–99). Kakotês occurs in both instances (379, 397) and once again (414) just before Odysseus reaches shore. The allusion to kakotês in 8.182, while prompted primarily by Odysseus‘ concern for reminding his carefree hosts of his urgent desire to return home cf. 8.153–57), is explained by his past trials (8.182–83), rather than by his present circumstances. Cf. Segal 38.

13. For the geographic symbolism of Phaeacia, see Segal 27–28. While it is true that the poet also narrates. Odysseus’ sojourn on Ogygia (5.55–268), Odysseus offers his own version of this adventure to the Phaeacians (7.240–66; 9.29–36; cf. 12.447–53).

14. On the connections between the Phaeacians and the Cyclopes, see 6.2–6; 7.204–206. Cf. Porter 9; Segal 33–35. For an expression of Odysseus’ willingness to prolong his Phaeacian sojourn, despite his intense longing for Ithaca, see 11.350–61.

15. For references to Odysseus’ extraordinary treatment by the Phaeacians, see 13.302; 16.227–31; 19.278–82; 23.338–41.

16. Cf. Porter 5–6; Clarke (above, note 9) 78–9; Segal 23, 38; Whitman 299.

17. Cf. Dodds, E. R., The Greeks and the Irrational (Boston 1957) 32–33Google Scholar; Lloyd-Jones, H., The Justice of Zeus (Berkeley 1971) 28–29Google Scholar; Thorton, Agathe, People and Themes in Homer’s Odyssey (London 1970) 2–3Google Scholar, 121.

18. Cf. Jones, F. W., ‘The Formulation of the Revenge Motif in the Odyssey’, TAPA 72 (1941) 195–202Google Scholar; D’Arms, Edward F. and Hulley, Karl K., ‘The Oresteia-Story in the Odyssey’, TAPA 77 (1946) 207–213Google Scholar; Whitman 305.

19. 9.214–15.

20. Cf. Lloyd-Jones (above, note 17) 29.

21. In 1.7 it is explicitly stated that Odysseus’ men perished because of atasthalia.

22. Cf. Lord (above, note 9) 413.

23. 4.627. Cf. 16.410, 418; cf. Thornton (above, note 17) 2–3.

24. Cf. Porter 15–16.

25. Stanford (above, note 6) 2.278 ad 16.423.

26. Odysseus: 13.213–4, 14.259–70, 17.424–39, 20.169–71, 22.411–16; Eumaeus: 14.81–88; Penelope: 16.421–23, 23.62–67; suitors: 17.483–87. Cf. Laertes’ remarks in 24.351–52 and Medon’s warning to the relatives of the suitors in 24.443–49.

27. 14.262; 15.329; 16.86, 410, 418; 17.169, 431, 487, 565, 581; 23.64; 24.352.

28. 1.368; 4.321, 627. Hubris is found only twice in the Iliad (1.203, 214) and refers exclusively to Agamemnon’s highhanded treatment of Achilles.

29. 1.227; 3.207; 17.245 (Melanthius), 588; 18.381; 20.170, 370.

30. Cf. Vivante, Paolo, The Homeric Imagination (Bloomington 1970) 47Google Scholar: ‘What the genius of Odysseus really is may best be learnt, of course, from his own account to the Phaeacians. Each passage of his narrative is interspersed with introspection and with a self-conscious feeling of personal resourcefulness, as though the mental faculties were fathomed for the first time as constituent elements of a man’s prowess. They emerge with the fresh energy of a newly discovered power. ’Cf. also 24–25; Segal 22–24.

31. Cf. Lord (above, note 9) 417–18.

32. Porter 16.

33. Frost 42.

34. E.g. 3.341, 446 (Nestor’s sacrificial fire); 4.418 (one of Proteus’ metamorphoses); 4.662 (Antinous’ angry eyes).

35. 8.576; 9.176; 13.202. Cf. Finley (above, note 7) 21.

36. Iliad 6.6; 18.102. Cf. Clarke (above, note 9) 73; Whitman 121–22; Amory, Anne, ‘The Reunion of Odysseus and Penelope’, Essays on the Odyssey, ed. Taylor, Charles H., Jr. (Bloomington 1965) 109Google Scholar.

37. Dikê has, of course, multifarious meanings in the Odyssey. In some instances it clearly means little more than ‘way, practice, custom’ (4.690–91; 11.218; 14.59; 19.168; 24.225). In others, it just as obviously signifies ‘the ways of justice, just conduct’, or ‘justice’ (3.244; 9.215; 14.84). I suggest that the sense of dikê in 19.43 is best understood in terms of the entire complex of ethical practices first adumbrated by Zeus in Book 1, subsequently elaborated by the career of Telemachus and by Odysseus’ critical narrative of his adventures to the Phaeacians, and vigorously executed by Odysseus and his allies in the final books of the poem. Cf. Lloyd-Jones (above, note 17) 28–30; Guthrie, W. K. C., ‘Gods and Men in Homer’, Essays on the Odyssey, ed. Taylor, Charles H., Jr. (Bloomington 1965) 7–10Google Scholar. For a somewhat more reserved definition of dikê (‘legal decisions which give everyone his due’, etc.) cf. G. M. Grube, A., ‘The Gods of Homer’, Phoenix 5 (1951) 69–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar, note 27.

38. Cf. Amory (above, note 36) passim; Harsh, Philip W., ‘Penelope and Odysseus in Odyssey XIX’, AJP 71 (1950) 1–21Google Scholar.

39. Cf. Porter 13; Moulton (above, note 2); Stanford, W. B., ‘The Ending of the Odyssey: an ethical approach’, Hermathena 100 (1965) 5–20Google Scholar.