Book 7 Essays

This simple movement marking a crucial moment might recall another rising, of Achilles as he reenters the battlefield to avenge Patroclus:

αὐτὰρ Ἀχιλλεὺς ὦρτο Διῒ φίλος: ἀμφὶ δ᾽ Ἀθήνη
ὤμοις ἰφθίμοισι βάλ᾽ αἰγίδα θυσσανόεσσαν,
ἀμφὶ δέ οἱ κεφαλῇ νέφος ἔστεφε δῖα θεάων
χρύσεον, ἐκ δ᾽ αὐτοῦ δαῖε φλόγα παμφανόωσαν.

But Achilles, dear to Zeus, rose up; and Athena
threw the richly tasseled aegis around his broad shoulders,
and the bright goddess crowned his head with a golden
cloud, and out of it flared a brilliant flame.

Iliad 18. 203–6

Like Achilles, Odysseus has been slowly emerging from isolation, making his way toward the venue where his powers will be fully tested. Athena provides each hero with an extra blanket of protection, which reflects the parts of his essential nature that he will draw upon to finish his heroic journey. Achilles incarnates fire, the explosive power that drives him and will ultimately destroy him. Odysseus, by contrast, works from under cover, concealing his plans and his identity until circumstances favor his emerging. That work begins in earnest on the island of Scheria.

After a glance at Odysseus praying in the grove, Homer wraps up Nausicaa’s story. The strong mules carry her safely to the palace, where her brothers wait to empty the wagon and tend to the animals. By verse seven, she is tucked safely back into her cozy bedroom and her childhood nurse Eurymedousa has the fire going. With this brief scene, the poet rounds off the ring composition that begins at the doors of Nausicaa’s bedroom in Book 6 (13–24). Here, as there, familiar domesticity prompts an ornamented style, with traditional epithets falling into place. (See essay on Book 6.1–47.) Her father’s palace is “glorious” (ἀγακλυτὰ, 3), her brothers are “like the gods” (ἀθανάτοις ἐναλίγκιοι, 6), “balanced ships” (νέες … ἀμφιέλισσαι, 9) brought her nurse as a gift for Alkinous. We will not see Eurymedusa again, but the poet’s deliberate pace makes room for a fleeting glimpse of her history as she passes by, much like the defeated warriors in the Iliad whose death prompts a poignant vignette when they disappear (e.g., Il. 5.45–84). The excitement at the beach, bringing a stranger into Scheria’s remote kingdom and testing the emerging maturity of the young princess, recedes to make way for the first full iteration of the story that will cycle repeatedly through the poem from this point forward, the progress of the hero from obscurity to glorious renown.

Books 6 and 7 function as a pivot in the developing story, looking both backward and forward. When he first appears on Calypso’s island, Odysseus is one of a series of figures in the poem who are trapped in some way and struggle to move forward: Menelaus is becalmed in Egypt; Telemachus is stuck in Ithaka, unable to control the suitors; Penelope is closed away in her bedroom, mired in grief; Odysseus is Calypso’s captive lover on Ogygia. The Nausicaa episode looks back to the seven years on Ogygia, with Odysseus in a reduced state, hoping a powerful female figure will help him on his way home. Though naïve, Nausicaa might well pose a threat to Odysseus’s newfound freedom, if her dreams of marrying the stranger were to be realized. At the same time, the nameless hero’s infiltration of the royal household on Scheria alters the repeated cycle of stasis and release in an important way. So far, Odysseus has appeared as the victim of anonymity enforced by more powerful forces. From now on, however, we will see him voluntarily withholding his identity when entering a new place, as a way of establishing leverage over the people he meets. The best-known example of this gambit is the hero’s punning manipulation of Polyphemus the Cyclops (9.364–414; see also the essays 9.360–408 and 409–60), earlier in the chronology of the story but still to come in the poem’s structure. There we thrill to the triumph of mêtis (intelligence) over brute force, cheering as Odysseus taunts the wounded monster. The polarity of namelessness and heroic glory in that episode runs through the rest of the poem and is a crucial part of the poet’s reflection on the varieties of human experience.

Kleos,“glory,” is the foundation of the heroic status that Athena is intent on restoring for Odysseus in Ithaka, but along the way home, anonymity affords Odysseus a freedom of movement that is vital to his eventual triumph. When Odysseus chooses to leave Calypso, he affirms his need for the renown that his heroic identity creates. But one measure of the supreme intelligence that makes him who he is will be the ability to wield his identity as an instrument of control over those who would keep him from home.

Further Reading

Dimock, G. 1989. The Unity of the Odyssey, 83–84. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.

Heubeck, A. and A. Hoekstra. 1989. A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, vol. II, Books IX–XVI, 316–319. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Thalmann, W. 1992. The Odyssey: An Epic of Return, 56–58. New York: Twayne Publishers.

Tracy, S. 1990. The Story of the Odyssey, 44–46. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Van Nortwick, T. 2008. The Unknown Odysseus: Alternate Worlds in Homer’s Odyssey, 28–30. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

1. Nausicaa in her bedroom (6.15–40; 7.7–13).
2. Odysseus “rises” (6.255–57; 7.14).
3. History of Nausicaa’s family (6.4–14; 7.54–66).
4. Odysseus meets a young girl and asks for help in getting into town (6.149–85; 7.21–26).
5. A young girl will lead the hero (6.261; 7.30).
6. The young girl worries that the hero will encounter unsuitable locals and takes precautions (6.273–96; 7.30–31).
7. The young girl instructs hero to approach Arete first when entering the palace (6.303–15; 7.50–77).

Scale usually marks importance in Homeric poetry, and by essentially describing Odysseus’s progress to the Phaeacian royal palace twice, the poet draws our attention to the significance of the moment for the larger structure of the story. While a short walk into town might seem less than momentous, this one is part of one of the most ubiquitous story patterns in Greek literature: evil in the past, the arrival of a stranger, followed by death. Homer’s Iliad, and Odyssey, Aeschylus’s Oresteia trilogy, Sophocles’s Oedipus Tyrannus, Euripides’s Bacchae, and many other poems and plays share the pattern. Elements that would attract a Greek storyteller are inherent in the form. The stranger can bring excitement but also perhaps danger, even death, disturbing the established order of the society he enters. In a society composed primarily of small, isolated towns, where any new arrival would prompt curiosity and suspicion, stories based on this pattern would be popular.

In the Odyssey’s version of this narrative pattern, the past evil is the Trojan War, and the looming threat of death is realized on various levels, literal and figurative. Most importantly, Odysseus plays the role of mysterious stranger, making him a potential threat wherever he arrives. Note that the poet has his hero adopt this persona by choice—Odysseus might well reveal his identity as soon as he arrives in a new place, rather than withholding it—and the implications of this choice tell us much about Homer’s methods as a storyteller. By sending his hero into new places as an anonymous stranger, the poet also raises the possibility that the locals will be suspicious and even hostile. If so, then Odysseus must be on guard against threats. This dynamic ensures that each new encounter will be charged with tension: Will the locals abuse their visitor? Can the stranger win them over, or will he and/or his mission die before he reaches home? This element in the story might help explain why, for instance, both Nausicaa and Athena insist that there is a real danger of conflict with young Phaeacian men when in fact, apart from a brief, testosterone-fueled exchange between Odysseus and local youths over the athletic games (8.143–255), the reception by the Phaeacians is quite warm. Just the prospect of conflict raises the temperature of the episode and creates excitement.

Another aspect of the repeated narrative pattern reflects its role in the larger structure of the poem. The Iliad and the Odyssey share a traditional style based on oral composition, with stories based on the use of repeated forms, words, verses, and entire scenes, which the poet uses to build meaning by accretion. Each time a repeated element appears, it brings with it associations from previous examples, which a new context then enriches and extends. The anonymous stranger will penetrate a new milieu many times in the Odyssey, with each having its own peculiar features. All these episodes build toward the most important version, the arrival of Odysseus in Ithaka, disguised as an anonymous beggar, abused, and dismissed by the arrogant suitors but ultimately triumphant. The hero’s sojourn on Scheria is the first major appearance of the pattern and much of what happens in Alkinous’s palace can be understood as preparation for the beggar’s entry into the royal household at Ithaka.

The disguised Athena drops Odysseus at the door of the palace, leaving him with one last piece of advice: he should seek out the queen, Arete, whose lineage and exalted position among the Phaeacians the goddess covers in some detail. Why Odysseus is directed to the queen rather than the king has come in for considerable discussion by scholars (see essay on Od. 6.289–331). The theory that her prominence might reflect some trace of matriarchy is tantalizing, but there is little evidence of that system being in force at any time in Greek society. In any event, there is an explanation much closer to home, in the repeated narrative patterns that inform Homeric style. Arete takes her place in the Odyssey’s rich series of powerful female characters Odysseus encounters as he makes his way home. Each offers him a slightly different set of challenges, from Calypso’s smothering affection to Nausicaa’s innocent crush, from Charybdis’ voracious whirlpool to the Sirens’ alluring song. Most importantly, each represents a partial realization of Penelope’s full complexity. As he makes his way across the sea toward Ithaka, Odysseus foreshadows the ultimate trials he must undergo in his own palace before he can restore proper order there. The two most important tests will come from the suitors and from his own wife. The former he will surmount with a mix of trickery and brute force; the latter will require that he woo and win his wife—no slouch when it comes to trickery—all over again, calling on everything he has learned from her various stand-ins on the way home.

Seen through this lens, Arete’s importance is not mysterious. The episode in the Phaeacian palace foreshadows the arrival of the beggar/hero in the palace on Ithaka. Odysseus must win over the queen on Scheria just as he must win over the queen in Ithaka. Characteristically, Penelope subsumes the role not only of Arete but of her daughter. The second courtship of Odysseus and Penelope is foreshadowed in the hero’s encounters with both Nausicaa and Arete. (See essay for Book 6.211–38). Penelope’s emergence from frozen grief Book 18 draws on the portrait of the nubile young princess on the threshold of adult sexuality, as both women find themselves drawn to the mysterious stranger. In her crucial nighttime meeting with the beggar, Penelope’s role as queen in the royal household has antecedents in the portrait of Arete. Each must be won over for the plans of the anonymous stranger to be realized.

Further Reading

Beye, C. 1987. Ancient Greek Literature and Society, 2^nd ed., 156. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

Fenik, B. 1974. Studies in the Odyssey,  105–130; 153–171. Hermes Einzelschriften 30. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner.

Rose, G. 1969. “The Unfriendly Phaeacians.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 100: 387–406.

Van Nortwick, T. 2008. The Unknown Odysseus: Alternate Worlds in Homer’s Odyssey, 46–47. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

ὥς τε γὰρ ἠελίου αἴγλη πέλεν ἠὲ σελήνης
δῶμα καθ᾽ ὑψερεφὲς μεγαλήτορος Ἀλκινόοιο.

As light shines forth from the sun and the moon,
so it gleamed throughout the lofty home of greathearted Alkinous.

Odyssey 7.84–85

These two verses echo closely the description of Menelaus’s palace in Book 4:

ὥς τε γὰρ ἠελίου αἴγλη πέλεν ἠὲ σελήνης
δῶμα καθ᾽ ὑψερεφὲς Μενελάου κυδαλίμοιο.

Odyssey 4.45–46

The spectator in this latter case is Telemachus, who has arrived in Sparta, guided by a young man, to search for news of his father. The quest has taken him to Pylos, where Nestor entertains him with stories about Odysseus and then to Sparta, where both Menelaus and Helen tell him about his father’s adventures at Troy. Much of Telemachus’ journey, which ends with him finding Odysseus at Eumaeus’s outpost on Ithaka, presents a paradigm for Odysseus’s visit to the palace of Alkinous. The sequence of narrative patterns, from Sparta to Scheria to Ithaka, gives further evidence of how Homer uses repeated forms to build meaning. The magnificent façade of Menelaus’ palace, for instance, covers a troubled family life, as Telemachus will discover. Later, when Odysseus stands before the brilliant edifice on Scheria, the resonance from Sparta might prompt us to wonder whether all will be well in Alkinous’ household. All of this interplay between surface and substance will in turn color the portrait Odysseus’s royal home and family in Ithaka.

Because the circumstances surrounding each appearance of the narrative pattern change, the impact of the repeated elements on each episode is different. In Sparta, as the royal couple’s reminiscences of the war show a personal darkness beneath their own handsome exteriors, the discrepancy there between outer beauty and inner turmoil becomes part of a persistent set of themes surrounding the figure of Helen in Greek literature. When three codgers sitting on the walls of Troy exclaim in the Iliad over Helen’s dangerous beauty, they are channeling these themes:

οἳ δ᾽ ὡς οὖν εἴδονθ᾽ Ἑλένην ἐπὶ πύργον ἰοῦσαν,
ἦκα πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἔπεα πτερόεντ᾽ ἀγόρευον:
“οὐ νέμεσις Τρῶας καὶ ἐϋκνήμιδας Ἀχαιοὺς
τοιῇδ᾽ ἀμφὶ γυναικὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἄλγεα πάσχειν:
αἰνῶς ἀθανάτῃσι θεῇς εἰς ὦπα ἔοικεν:
ἀλλὰ καὶ ὧς τοίη περ ἐοῦσ᾽ ἐν νηυσὶ νεέσθω,
μηδ᾽ ἡμῖν τεκέεσσί τ᾽ ὀπίσσω πῆμα λίποιτο.”

And so, these two saw Helen, coming toward the tower,
and softly addressed each other with winged words:
“It is no disgrace that the Trojans and well-greaved Achaians
suffer pain for a long time over such a woman as this;
terrible is the likeness of her face to immortal goddesses.
But even if she be such, let her go back in the ships,
lest she leave behind pain for us and our children.”

Iliad 3.154–60

Aeschylus will tap the same vein when the chorus of Agamemnon (399–430) laments the alluring but destructive bride Paris brings to Troy from Sparta.

Odysseus’s arrival at the palace of Alkinous takes the repeated pattern in a different direction. There is, to be sure, some minor trouble when the king initially flubs his duties as host. The importance of proper hospitality is before us throughout Odysseus’s encounter with the Phaeacians (some faint resonance from the disastrous visit of Paris to Sparta here?). But the magnificent buildings and grounds, with their golden torchbearers and mysterious immortal guard dogs, are also an important part of the portrait of the Phaeacians as a rarified society, a waystation between the entirely magical island of Calypso and the harsher realities of Ithaka.

All these associations then follow the hero as he approaches his own home, disguised as a beggar. The contrast between outer appearance and inner substance, carried before by the palace architecture in Sparta and Scheria, animates the hero’s encounters with Eumaeus the swineherd and later with the suitors and his queen in the palace. When the apparently powerless beggar arrives at Eumaeus’s compound, he receives a snarling reception from the swineherd’s dogs, the poet’s shorthand for suspicious locals (14.29–39). The two men then form a warm friendship, trading stories of their past suffering and peripatetic wanderings. The swineherd, not realizing that he is entertaining his master, offers humble hospitality, while the hero pretends to be his host’s dependent inferior. The ironies become yet more pronounced when Odysseus comes to the palace. Both Melanthios the goatherd and Iros, an actual beggar, are led by his shabby appearance to underestimate the disguised hero and suffer for it. The same misperception informs the relations between Odysseus and the suitors, who pay a far heavier penalty than the two servants.

The polarities reappear in Book 18 when Penelope emerges from her self-imposed isolation to confront the future. Her first move is to come downstairs to visit the suitors, prompted by Athena and encouraged by her maid, Eurynome. Confused and upset by the impulse, she protests that her beauty has faded since Odysseus left for Troy. Athena then puts her to sleep and makes her more attractive, applying Aphrodite’s ambrosia and making her taller. When she arrives downstairs, the suitors exclaim over her beauty and affirm their desire to sleep with her. She then coyly hints that she is ready to consider remarrying and elicits bridal gifts from the suitors (18.158–303).

The mystery of Penelope’s intentions colors the story in Books 18–22. Will she give up hope of Odysseus returning and remarry? Does she recognize her husband beneath the beggar’s rags? If so, can we assume she is secretly working in tandem with his (and Athena’s) own plans to defeat the suitors? If not, will Odysseus be able to act against the suitors before she carries through with her plan to remarry? Homer gives no definitive answers to these questions, and disagreements over them have flourished in classical scholarship for centuries. Our response to the poem draws much of its energy from confronting these questions, and how we answer them for ourselves will determine our understanding of how the Odyssey presents the uncertainties behind the most famous marriage in Greek literature.

By the time we hear of the joyous reunion of Odysseus and Penelope in Book 23, we may not be aware of any connections between that scene and Odysseus’s encounter with the Phaeacians. But somewhere in our minds the repeated words, phrases, and scenes from Scheria, themselves enriched by Telemachus’s visit to Sparta, will be echoing, carried by the stranger as he approaches each new place. The recurring focus on appearance and reality is embedded in each successive repetition of the basic story pattern, blending with new elements to produce an ever-richer narrative texture, reaching its crescendo in the embrace of the king and queen.

Further Reading

Clarke, H. 1963. “Telemachus and the Telemachia. American Journal of Philology 84: 129–145.

Thalmann, W. 1992. The Odyssey: An Epic of Return, 107–108. New York: Twayne Publishers.

Tracy, S. 1990. The Story of the Odyssey, 46–47. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Van Nortwick, T. 2008. The Unknown Odysseus: Alternate Worlds in Homer’s Odyssey, 105–110. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

We then pass outside the palace to the king’s flourishing, fertile gardens, blooming all year round, pear upon pear, grape upon grape, fig upon fig. The natural setting of a society in the Odyssey often reflects the character of its people. Calypso’s magical landscape reflects her powers, lush with vegetation and filled with fertile energy, seemingly responding to her beguiling voice, ordered but not by human intelligence (see essay on Book 5.43–91). Later, we will hear about the cave of Polyphemus, closed off from the other inhabitants of an asocial, atomized society (See essay on Book 9.161–192) and the home of Aeolus, who controls the winds for the gods, a floating island surrounded by sheer cliffs and bronze ramparts (see essay on Book 10.1–45), a suitable venue for rigid control. Eumaeus’s outpost is a microcosmic version of what Odysseus’s palace must have been before the suitors arrived, carefully ordered, productive but not flashy (14.5–28). The last gardens we will see are those kept by Laertes in the Ithakan countryside, a hardscrabble plot reflecting the deprivation created by Odysseus’s absence (24.226–31).

The orchards of Alkinous tell us much about the king and his society. Flourishing in a gentle climate, they offer sustenance without apparently requiring hard labor. This abundance, Homer tells us, is a gift from the gods. The poet’s description recalls a common paradigm in the myths of the ancient Mediterranean, of a Golden Age when humans lived a carefree existence alongside the gods, in a landscape where food grew spontaneously without the need for human husbandry or the skills that inform it. This kind of effortless fecundity fits with the general tenor of Phaeacian civilization, which seems highly sophisticated but lacking in the kind of heroic striving that would usually produce such an existence. The Phaeacians, we will learn, do not like violent conflicts such as boxing or wrestling (let alone war), but prefer singing and dancing and warm baths. Theirs is the kind of society that the Greeks of the 8^th century might see as insufficiently tough. Another parallel from Telemachus’ visit to Sparta suggests a more focused version of this critique (see essay on Book 6.239–88.)

After dinner in the royal palace, Menelaus tells his guest the story of how he was becalmed in Egypt after leaving Troy. Eidothea, a friendly sea nymph, befriended the Greek commander and advised him to consult her father Proteus about how to escape. Proteus, a prophetic shapeshifter, could change form at will and would only yield up his prophecies if confined and unable to transform himself. With the nymph’s help, the Greeks captured her father and extracted information about how they might get home. They also learned about the fates of his comrades who fought at Troy, including Odysseus, still held captive by Calypso. Finally, the old man revealed how Menelaus’s own life would end:

σοι δ᾽ οὐ θέσφατόν ἐστι, διοτρεφὲς ὦ Μενέλαε,
Ἄργει ἐν ἱπποβότῳ θανέειν καὶ πότμον ἐπισπεῖν,
ἀλλά σ᾽ ἐς Ἠλύσιον πεδίον καὶ πείρατα γαίης
ἀθάνατοι πέμψουσιν, ὅθι ξανθὸς Ῥαδάμανθυς,
τῇ περ ῥηίστη βιοτὴ πέλει ἀνθρώποισιν:
οὐ νιφετός, οὔτ᾽ ἂρ χειμὼν πολὺς οὔτε ποτ᾽ ὄμβρος,
ἀλλ᾽ αἰεὶ Ζεφύροιο λιγὺ πνείοντος ἀήτας
Ὠκεανὸς ἀνίησιν ἀναψύχειν ἀνθρώπους:
οὕνεκ᾽ ἔχεις Ἑλένην καί σφιν γαμβρὸς Διός ἐσσι.

But for you it is not fated, Zeus-nourished Menelaus,
to die and meet your fate in horse-pasturing Argos,
but to the Elysian fields at the ends of the earth
will the immortal gods send you, where sandy-haired Rhadymanthus
is, and where life is made easiest for mortals.
No snowstorms there, nor harsh winter, nor even much rain,
but always the streams of the Ocean send forth fresh
breezes from the west wind to refresh the lives of mortals.
This will be yours because you have Helen and are son-in-law to Zeus.

Odyssey 4.561–69

This blissful existence foreshadows the unending life of pleasure that Calypso will offer Odysseus if he will only stay with her (5.135–36). The hero’s preference for a perilous and uncertain future with Penelope is definitive for our understanding of his character: an anonymous immortality, no matter how attractive, would keep him from the heroic striving—and thus, heroic glory—that defines who he is in an existential sense. The implied contrast between Menelaus’s afterlife, a divine gift he has not earned, and the heroic glory that Odysseus must win through constant exertion, could not be stronger.

The gardens of Alkinous, bathed in the breezes of the Zephyr, sending forth crops unceasingly (118–19), are the Phaeacian king’s version of Elysium. Like the opulent milieu of the royal palace, with its golden torchbearers and mysterious robot guard dogs, this landscape seems to rest closer to the carefree existence of the gods than the grittier, conflict-ridden reality Odysseus will return to in Ithaka. And like the mysterious, fecund world of Calypso, the entire benign realm of Alkinous is a gift from the gods not won through striving, not an appropriate place for Odysseus to spend the rest of his life.

Homer has prepared the scene carefully, setting the Phaeacian royal family and their home in evocative surroundings. Now it’s time for the hero to get moving again. He steps briskly into the palace to find a scene that both Nausicaa and Athena have already described to him (6.303–9; 7.75–76). Athena’s mist keeps him invisible right up to the moment he kneels before Arete, making for a dramatic epiphany. His short speech follows a familiar pattern for suppliants, offering hope for the queen’s prosperity and continued honor for the assembled local citizens in return for help getting home. His plea brings, however, no response from Arete for almost eighty verses. Instead, the poet’s attention turns to Alkinous and his clumsy debut as a host. This curious delay has generated much interest among classical scholars, but as we will see, the poet has his reasons.

Meanwhile, we note that Odysseus’s speech, like much of what happens in Book 7, points both backward and forward. His kneeling before Arete echoes his more elaborate supplication of Nausicaa (6.149–85; see essay for Book 6.127–61) and contributes to the impression that the hero’s approach to the Phaeacians comes in waves, beginning on the beach, eddying for a time, then surging forward again. This section of the poem is, as we have said, marked as especially significant by its scale, with the hero making his way inexorably toward the palace with repeated movements. The tide will continue to roll in right up through the hero’s arrival in Ithaka when he must again win over the queen to arrive safely home.

Further Reading

Dimock, G. 1989. The Unity of the Odyssey, 86-89. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.

Segal, C. 1962. “The Phaeacians and the Symbolism of Odysseus’ Return.” Arion 1: 17–64.

It is not seemly, he says, for a guest to sit alone in the ashes. The men assembled in his halls wait for him to take the lead. The stranger must be given food, drink, and a proper chair.

This is a telling diversion. By drawing our attention to Akinous’s apparent faux pas, the poet signals that something is amiss in the Phaeacian royal palace. The customs governing hospitality in the Odyssey are clear: a guest who arrives from outside the household must be invited in and given food and drink before being asked his business or even who he is. This is partly a practical matter. In the 9^th and 8^th centuries BCE, a traveler could not check into a motel at the end of the day. Finding a friendly welcome on the road could mean survival in that uncertain time. And since Zeus honors guests, a rude welcome is also likely to jeopardize a community’s relations with him, thus how a guest is treated is not just a matter of etiquette but a measure of the health of a community. When Athena appears disguised in Ithaka at the beginning of the poem, the dismal state of Odysseus’s household is clear, with suitors lurching around the palace, eating and drinking up king’s provisions, Telemachus unable to exert control, Penelope upstairs in her bedroom. The goddess’s arrival prompts the first sign of recovery in the ailing community. Telemachus, though still too unsure of himself to take command of the household, at least knows how to treat a guest:

βῆ δ᾽ ἰθὺς προθύροιο, νεμεσσήθη δ᾽ ἐνὶ θυμῷ
ξεῖνον δηθὰ θύρῃσιν ἐφεστάμεν: ἐγγύθι δὲ στὰς
χεῖρ᾽ ἕλε δεξιτερὴν καὶ ἐδέξατο χάλκεον ἔγχος,
καί μιν φωνήσας ἔπεα πτερόεντα προσηύδα:
χαῖρε, ξεῖνε, παρ᾽ ἄμμι φιλήσεαι: αὐτὰρ ἔπειτα
δείπνου πασσάμενος μυθήσεαι ὅττεό σε χρή.

He [Telemachus] went straight to the forecourt, troubled in his heart
that a guest was left standing in the doorway. He stood
next to her, took her right hand, and relieved her of the bronze spear.
And addressing her he forth spoke winged words:
“Hail, stranger, you will be entertained as a guest among us.
Then, having tasted food, you can tell us what you need.”

Odyssey 1.119–24

This seemingly small gesture signals to us that things are beginning to turn around in Ithaka.

Alkinous recovers quickly, raising the stranger from the ashes and providing food and drink. He then delivers a handsome speech, stepping into his expected role as male head of the household, promising to arrange for safe transport home for their guest the next day. Right order seems to be restored at this point, with the king firmly in charge, and his social gaff seems slight enough. So why did the poet create this detour from the trajectory that had aimed Odysseus straight at Arete? (See essay on Book 6.289–331) Once again, the answer is only obvious if we view the passage as part of a series of narrative patterns foreshadowing the disguised hero’s encounters at the royal palace in Ithaka. As early as the poem’s first scene, a lack of male authority causes a lapse in hospitality, as the louche suitors ignore Athena at the palace door. Telemachus eventually steps into the breech, but his lack of control over the rude interlopers is evident. His own subsequent adventures in Pylos and Sparta offer further examples of how a stranger’s arrival can reveal aspects of a community that might not be obvious at first, like the hearty but somewhat overbearing hospitality of Nestor or the fraught relationship between Menelaus and Helen. The latter couple’s troubles also appear as part of the poem’s evolving meditation on the relationship between outer appearance and inner substance, symbolized by the contrast of their palace’s dazzling exterior with an uncertain inner life.

The portrait of Alkinous and his family draws on all this previous material. Odysseus’s wonderment at the king’s opulent and magical palace recalls, as we have said, Telemachus before the Spartan royal buildings, perhaps raising doubts about the apparent harmony of the Phaeacian royal family. The king’s gardens, with their Golden Age qualities, look back to the description of Menelaus’s predicted fate in Elysium, an unearned divine gift that he owes to his wife, not to the kind of prowess that Odysseus will need to reach home again. The accumulated weight of this thematic material suggests a lack of rigor in Phaeacian society, further confirmed by its preference for dancing and warm baths over warfare or even strenuous athletics (8.246–55). Viewed as part of this evolving cluster of themes, Alkinous’ seemingly minor lapse assumes a greater weight. His failure as host calls into question both his own masculine authority and the health of his society, which also seems to lack the requisite assertiveness. And his shortcomings surface precisely at the time when the primacy of his wife is on display.

Now look ahead to what happens when Odysseus, disguised as an anonymous stranger, finally penetrates his own royal palace. He finds there a community undermined by the lack of masculine authority, a once proud household crippled by an inner moral rot. To restore right order and allow the kingdom to flourish once again, he must drive out the sources of disharmony and—back to Arete—he must win over the queen. Homer’s interweaving of narrative patterns, each carrying the accumulated meanings that attach to them through repetition, can be dizzying. But only by tracing the implications of Homer’s mastery of his traditional style can we reach the full richness of the Odyssey’s story.

Further Reading

Edwards, M. 1975. “Type Scenes and Homeric Hospitality.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 105: 51–72.

Fenik, B. 1974. Studies in the Odyssey, 61–64. Hermes Einzelschriften 30. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner.

Reese, S. 1993. The Stranger’s Welcome: Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality Scene, 101­–121. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

The king’s remark accords with what his everblooming gardens suggest, that the Phaeacians occupy a place in the cosmic order in between the gods and ordinary mortals. Such a position accords with their rarified civilization and makes Scheria both the geographical and the existential midpoint of Odysseus’s journey from Calypso’s timeless island to the fully human existence that awaits him in Ithaka.

The king’s remarks also touch on a common folktale, of the disguised god who visits the humble dwelling of an unsuspecting mortal couple, whose kindness to the stranger wins them special favor. In one sense, the template seems to fit uneasily over the present situation, in that Alkinous’ palace is an unlikely candidate for a humble dwelling. But the basic dynamic of the folktale, drawing our attention to the boundary between mortals and immortals, keeps surfacing in the poem. Nausicaa tells her servant girls that Odysseus seems like a god to her. Later, she imagines that her rude local suitors might think that the big handsome stranger might be a god in disguise (6.242–43; 280–81). After Athena changes the beggar back into Odysseus, Telemachus thinks he must be a god (16.181–84). Meanwhile, both Athena and Hermes do appear disguised as mortals (1.105; 7.19–21; 10.277–79; 13.221–24).

The folktale’s power to affect the poem’s surface meaning appears strongest in the encounter between Odysseus and Eumaeus in Books 14 and 15. There the actual power imbalance between host and guest creates an undercurrent of irony, as the king, disguised as a seemingly humble traveler tests the generosity of his swineherd. And there is yet another layer of irony in the exchanges, as we learn that the swineherd has been himself displaced by misfortune and treachery from his rightful place in an aristocratic family (15.403–84). The constant oscillation in the social status and identities of the two men taps in turn into the poem’s ongoing meditation on the intricacies of human identity, figured through the polarity between outer appearance and inner reality.

In response to the king’s speculation, Odysseus assures Alkinous that he is in no way like the gods, offering as proof the terrible suffering he has undergone at their hands, which he would describe in more detail, but first he needs to eat. His stomach, he says, is a tyrant that drives him to forget all his sorrows and concentrate on filling her up. The hero’s homely tone here fits with his persona as, “only human,” a downtrodden wanderer. At the same time, his embrace of ordinary, earthy humanity recalls the momentous choice he made in response to Calypso’s offer of immortality (5.214–24). His identity, as the poem defines it, depends on the fact of his mortality, on his constant striving against the forces of oblivion—however appealing in the moment—that threaten him all the way home (see essay on Book 5.192–227).

The guests voice general approval of the stranger’s request for food and drink, and a feast follows. When the festivities conclude, all the locals head home to bed, leaving Odysseus alone in the hall with the royal couple. Once the servants have left, the queen finally speaks:

τοῖσιν δ᾽ Ἀρήτη λευκώλενος ἤρχετο μύθων·
ἔγνω γὰρ φᾶρός τε χιτῶνά τε εἵματ᾽ ἰδοῦσα
καλά, τά ῥ᾽ αὐτὴ τεῦξε σὺν ἀμφιπόλοισι γυναιξί·
καί μιν φωνήσασ᾽ ἔπεα πτερόεντα προσηύδα·
"ξεῖνε, τὸ μέν σε πρῶτον ἐγὼν εἰρήσομαι αὐτή·
τίς πόθεν εἰς ἀνδρῶν; τίς τοι τάδε εἵματ᾽ ἔδωκεν;
οὐ δὴ φῆς ἐπὶ πόντον ἀλώμενος ἐνθάδ᾽ ἱκέσθαι;"

White-armed Arete began to speak among them,
for she recognized the mantle and tunic, beautiful
clothing she herself made with her handmaidens.
And addressing him she spoke winged words:
“Stranger, I have some questions for you first:
Who are you and where from? Who gave you these clothes?
Did you not say that you came here by wandering over the sea?”

Odyssey 7.233–39

The queen’s self-confident authority comes through strongly here. Alkinous has played his part in the social arrangements, and now Arete gets down to business with pointed questions. She already knows the answer to one of them, and we sense that things may get tricky for Odysseus. His hosts have given him food and shelter, so their curiosity about his identity is not out of order. Any answer he gives to the queen could put him in a risky position. He seems polite enough, but maybe he stole the clothing from Nausicaa’s laundry basket? Even if Nausicaa gave him the clothes, he must have put the princess in a compromising position, meeting a strange man out in the countryside, the usual venue for rape. Odysseus will navigate the delicate moment with aplomb.

The curious bifurcated structure of this scene has two significant effects: 1) throwing the spotlight on Alkinous’ fumbling of his role as host undermines his masculine authority in the household; 2) making us wait for Arete’s response to the supplicant’s plea gives it greater dramatic weight. In both cases, Homer creates antecedents for important events later when Odysseus arrives at the palace in Ithaka. On the threshold of the Ithakan royal residence, Eumaeus and the beggar discuss strategy. Who should enter first? Odysseus prefers to wait outside despite the threats he’s received from local bullies:

γιγνώσκω, φρονέω: τά γε δὴ νοέοντι κελεύεις.
ἀλλ᾽ ἔρχευ προπάροιθεν, ἐγὼ δ᾽ ὑπολείψομαι αὐτοῦ.
οὐ γάρ τι πληγέων ἀδαήμων οὐδὲ βολάων:
τολμήεις μοι θυμός, ἐπεὶ κακὰ πολλὰ πέπονθα
κύμασι καὶ πολέμῳ: μετὰ καὶ τόδε τοῖσι γενέσθω:
γαστέρα δ᾽ οὔ πως ἔστιν ἀποκρύψαι μεμαυῖαν,
οὐλομένην, ἣ πολλὰ κάκ᾽ ἀνθρώποισι δίδωσι,
τῆς ἕνεκεν καὶ νῆες ἐΰζυγοι ὁπλίζονται
πόντον ἐπ᾽ ἀτρύγετον, κακὰ δυσμενέεσσι φέρουσαι.

I see, I understand. You’re talking to someone who gets the point.
But you go ahead, and I’ll stay behind here.
I’m familiar with blows and things thrown at me;
I have an enduring heart, since I have endured many evils
on the waves and in war; so let whatever comes, come.
But even so, there’s no way to suppress the ravenous belly,
a ruinous thing, which gives many evils to mortals,
because of which well-built ships are guided
over the barren sea, bringing misfortunes to enemies.

Odyssey 17.281–89

Later, when Penelope is finally alone with the beggar, her questions touch on familiar territory:

νῦν μὲν δή σευ, ξεῖνέ γ᾽, ὀΐω πειρήσεσθαι,
εἰ ἐτεὸν δὴ κεῖθι σὺν ἀντιθέοις ἑτάροισι
ξείνισας ἐν μεγάροισιν ἐμὸν πόσιν, ὡς ἀγορεύεις.
εἰπέ μοι ὁπποῖ᾽ ἄσσα περὶ χροῒ εἵματα ἕστο,
αὐτός θ᾽ οἷος ἔην, καὶ ἑταίρους, οἵ οἱ ἕποντο.

Now I think I will test you, stranger, to see
if it is true that there, with his godlike companions,
you entertained my husband in your palace, as you say.
Tell me what kind of clothing he wore on his body, and what
sort of man he was, and his companions who followed him.

Odyssey 19.215-219

Each of these speeches in Ithaka has a clear function in its immediate context. The beggar can wait for a little while, but his hunger will soon drive him to ask the suitors for food. Penelope’s question about Odysseus’s clothing makes sense as a way of testing the stranger’s story about knowing her husband. At the same time, we can see now that Odysseus’s slightly comic preoccupation with his stomach in Scheria foreshadows more serious imperatives in Ithaka, while Arete’s unusually prominent role in welcoming the stranger to her home lays the foundation for Penelope’s crucial role in the return of her husband to power.

Further Reading

Murnaghan, S. 1987. Disguise and Recognition in the Odyssey, 91–117. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Thalmann, W. 1992. The Odyssey: An Epic of Return, 58–61. New York: Twayne Publishers.

Tracy, S. 1990. The Story of the Odyssey, 49–50. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

He makes sure to lay on fulsome praise for the princess, how poised and well-mannered she was when meeting him, especially for one so young! This last detail is important. When dealing with Nausicaa on the beach, Odysseus walked a careful line, complimenting her on her beauty and so stirring her interest to win her over but avoiding any overtly sexual signals that would frighten her. The strategy worked and she has enthusiastically delivered him to the palace. Now she is safely tucked away, and Odysseus has a different challenge, to ingratiate himself with her parents without giving away any information about himself until he is ready to do so. Thus, he adopts an almost parental attitude toward Nausicaa that works in his favor in two ways, reassuring her parents that he is no predator and indirectly praising them for raising their daughter so well. Finally, he throws in, almost casually, as an afterthought, that Nausicaa gave him the clothes that Arete has recognized. Nothing untoward has happened, they may rest assured.

From a naturalistic point of view, Odysseus’ success at evading any mention of his identity seems plausible—the description of his adventures goes on long enough that they might not notice right away, especially if they are won over by his flattery. The real test, of course, is whether the poem’s audience, as listeners hearing the story roll by in the moment, would have found the omission glaring and that we cannot judge definitively from this distance. In any event, from our perspective as students of Homer’s storytelling after the fact, there is much here to think about. The fact that Odysseus withholds his identity for now is crucial to the poem’s larger thematic structure. While the story can be seen as a linear progression, following Odysseus’s journey from Troy to Ithaka, the dominant narrative rhythm of the poem is a series of circular, recursive movements, tracing the hero’s arrival in a new place as an anonymous stranger, his attempts to learn as much as he can about the locals as he can without revealing who he is until he feels safe, and finally the climactic moment when he or someone else reveals his name. Each time the pattern repeats, from the time the stranger is reborn in a new place until the hero Odysseus is revealed, the poet builds an ever more subtle meditation on the riddles of human identity, centered on the polarity of glory and namelessness. With the triumphant homecoming of Odysseus, which affirms that he has fully reassumed the roles that symbolize his true identity, king in Ithaka, husband of Penelope, father of Telemachus, and son of Laertes, the poet brings the story circling around for the last time (see essay on Book 6.211–38). Arete’s question could not be more important, but it comes too early, before the hero can learn what he must to risk revealing himself.

Alkinous is so taken with the stranger’s self-portrait that he is unable to contain himself:

αἲ γάρ, Ζεῦ τε πάτερ καὶ Ἀθηναίη καὶ Ἄπολλον,
τοῖος ἐὼν οἷός ἐσσι, τά τε φρονέων ἅ τ᾽ ἐγώ περ,
παῖδά τ᾽ ἐμὴν ἐχέμεν καὶ ἐμὸς γαμβρὸς καλέεσθαι
αὖθι μένων· οἶκον δέ κ᾽ ἐγὼ καὶ κτήματα δοίην,
εἴ κ᾽ ἐθέλων γε μένοις·

Oh Father Zeus and Athena and Apollo, how I wish
that you, being as you are and thinking the same as I do,
could have my daughter as a wife and be called my son-in-law,
and remain here. I would give you a home and possessions,
if you should wish to stay.

Odyssey 7.311–15

The king is willing to give his daughter away to someone whose name he does yet know, an enthusiastic gesture of hospitality if ever there was one, perhaps sending a chill down Odysseus’s spine. Alkinous goes on to guarantee safe passage home for Odysseus, a promise that will prove costly to the Phaeacians. Poseidon bears a grudge against Odysseus for harming his son Polyphemus, and the Phaeacians will pay the penalty:

βῆ ῥ᾽ ἴμεν ἐς Σχερίην, ὅθι Φαίηκες γεγάασιν.
ἔνθ᾽ ἔμεν᾽· ἡ δὲ μάλα σχεδὸν ἤλυθε ποντοπόρος νηῦς
ῥίμφα διωκομένη· τῆς δὲ σχεδὸν ἦλθ᾽ ἐνοσίχθων,
ὅς μιν λᾶαν ἔθηκε καὶ ἐρρίζωσεν ἔνερθε
χειρὶ καταπρηνεῖ ἐλάσας·

[Poseidon] went off to Scheria, where the Phaeacians live
and waited there. The seagoing ship came near,
skimming along, and the Earthshaker came near to her
and turned her into stone, rooting her to the bottom
with a stroke from the flat of his hand.

Odyssey 13.160–64

The stone ship will sit blocking the harbor of the Phaeacians, presumably cutting them off from contact with others, hardening their isolation yet further.

The Phaeacians are only one of many societies that suffer from their acquaintance with Odysseus. Love for Odysseus makes Calypso, immortal nymph, long for something she cannot have. The spark of amorous excitement that Nausicaa feels when she meets the stranger on the beach is snuffed out abruptly when the hero moves on. Polyphemus, whose circumscribed but orderly existence allows him to live alone, is left helpless when Odysseus blinds him. Aeolus loses control of the winds, the task allotted to him by the gods, when he agrees to help the Greeks. The Sun God loses his cattle. By the time he reaches home, Odysseus has lost his entire crew. Not for nothing does Autolycus give his grandson the name, “man of trouble.” Though the poem’s dominant rhetoric urges us to accept everything that the hero does to reach home as necessary to the restoration of right order, he leaves a trail of collateral damage along the way.

Homer’s deft portrait of Alkinous, created with a few telling speeches, carries more weight than its often-comic tone would suggest. Impulsive, generous to a fault, and easily swayed by events of the moment, the king seems to lack the requisite regal solemnity. To his flightiness the poet contrasts the quiet self-possession of Arete, who asks the right questions and maintains a queenly reserve. As we have seen, she will be the character on which Homer will build his impressive portrait of Penelope at the end of the poem, while Antinous seems to prefigure the deficit in masculine authority that the beggar will find in Ithaka. The evening comes to a close and Arete sends the stranger to bed with a telling command: ὄρσο … ὦ ξεῖνε (342).

Further Reading

Austin, N. 1972. “Name Magic in the Odyssey.” California Studies in Classical Philology 5: 1–9.

Dimock, G. 1965. “The Name of Odysseus.” Hudson Review 9: 52–70.

Van Nortwick, T. 2008. The Unknown Odysseus: Alternate Worlds in Homer’s Odyssey, 47–50. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.