9.82-115

Forgetting who you are risks losing the ability to win glory, the foundation of heroic status. Choosing to be nameless, as Odysseus often does, is by contrast somewhat less threatening, since anonymity can be used to manipulate others and avoid enemies and then discarded when the right moment for self-revelation arrives.

The encounter begins with Odysseus sending some of his men to scout out the local settlement and assess the people, “eaters of bread” (89), who live there. The epithet might seem out of place, since the Lotus Eaters are distinguished by the fact that they do not eat bread, but only the flower of the lotus. As is often the case with Homeric poetry, this small anomaly repays attention. Bread, made by modifying grain, a ubiquitous food source, is a common symbol for human culture in the Mediterranean, appearing with this meaning as early as 1600 BCE in the Epic of Gilgamesh. As that story begins, Enkidu, a wild man who runs with the gazelles and drinks from their watering hole, encounters a harlot sent by a hunter whose traps he has been disturbing. Enkidu enjoys seven days of lovemaking with the harlot, then eats bread and drinks beer—another human product made from grain—for the first time. The animals shun him now, as he has crossed the threshold from nature to human culture. He travels to the city of Uruk to confront Gilgamesh and later accompanies the king on an adventure to defeat the monster of the Cedar Forest, a typical exploit for the “culture hero,” who establishes or preserves civilization by defeating a creature that represents chaos (GiI.1–V.344). Like Enkidu, the Greeks have crossed the boundary of the human world, but the Greeks are leaving rather than entering.

Odysseus drags his unwilling shipmates, who have eaten the lotus plant and forgotten home (97), back to the ships and they sail on to meet the Cyclopes. There follows the first of three major episodes around which Books 9–12 are structured. Odysseus’s description of the one-eyed creatures establishes their peculiar mode of living immediately. They are ὑπερφίαλοι, which can mean physically enormous, but usually with the connotation of “overbearing,” “arrogant,” or “savage,” and ἀθέμιστοι, “lawless.” The former epithet is the most common one used of Penelope’s suitors. Like those oafish men, Polyphemus will prove to be a conspicuous failure when it comes to the civilizing norms of hospitality, θέμιστες, that articulate the poem’s moral and ethical standards.

Our view of these curious creatures is immediately complicated by the lines that follow (9.107–115). Here is a version of what the Greeks called the Golden Age, when humans lived alongside the gods and had no need of practical skills to secure food and lodging. The basic form of the myth appears widely across the Mediterranean in the 1^st millennium BCE, perhaps best known through the biblical story of Adam and Eve (Genesis 2.4–3.24). Each version features some form of paradise, when crops grow without cultivation and trees bear fruit continuously. This ideal world comes to end when a breach occurs between gods and humans, causing the latter to be cut off from the abundance once provided without any labor. In the Greek version, first appearing in Hesiod, Works and Days (109–201), the Silver Age follows, when humans had to compensate for losing their access to nature’s bounty by developing civilizing skills, growing and harvesting crops, banding together for mutual protection and benefit.

From the outset, the poet sends mixed signals about the Cyclopes. They are boorish like the suitors, asocial creatures living at a lower level of civilization than humans, isolated in their atomistic families, trusting in the gods rather than each other. They are primitive, but like the first inhabitants of paradise they are so because they have no need of community or civilizing skills to extract their livelihood through agriculture. At the same time, Polyphemus will prove to be a fastidious shepherd, caring for his flocks, tidily arranging his cave and pens, and making cheese from the milk of goats. Homer seems to have an almost anthropological interest in the Cyclopes, whose way of living offers insights into the trade-offs implied by the Golden Age myth. As this rich and entertaining episode unfolds, ironies will multiply. Polyphemus will prove to be a grotesque parody of the good host, and Odysseus, the obvious candidate for the role of culture hero, a treacherous guest. The interplay between anonymity and kleos continues, as the trickster uses his namelessness as part of his plan to conquer the powerful monster with intelligence, rather than force. And once again, the crew will suffer to satisfy Odysseus’s thirst for knowledge.

Further Reading

Austin, N. 1975. Archery at the Dark of the Moon, 143–149. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Clay, J. 1983. The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey, 125–132. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Dimock, G. 1989. The Unity of the Odyssey, 110–111. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.

Murnaghan, S. 1987. Disguise and Recognition in the Odyssey, 91–103. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Segal, C. 1983. “Kleos and Its Ironies in the Odyssey.” In Schein, S. 1996. Reading the Odyssey. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 201–222.

Tracy, S. 1990. The Story of the Odyssey, 60–61. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Van Nortwick, T. 1992. Somewhere I Have Never Travelled: The Second Self and the Hero’s Journey in Ancient Epic, 8–38. New York: Oxford University Press.