6.211-238

τὸν μὲν Ἀθηναίη θῆκεν Διὸς ἐκγεγαυῖα
μείζονά τ᾽ εἰσιδέειν καὶ πάσσονα, κὰδ δὲ κάρητος
οὔλας ἧκε κόμας, ὑακινθίνῳ ἄνθει ὁμοίας.
ὡς δ᾽ ὅτε τις χρυσὸν περιχεύεται ἀργύρῳ ἀνὴρ
ἴδρις, ὃν Ἥφαιστος δέδαεν καὶ Παλλὰς Ἀθήνη
τέχνην παντοίην, χαρίεντα δὲ ἔργα τελείει,
ὣς ἄρα τῷ κατέχευε χάριν κεφαλῇ τε καὶ ὤμοις.
ἕζετ᾽ ἔπειτ᾽ ἀπάνευθε κιὼν ἐπὶ θῖνα θαλάσσης,
κάλλεϊ καὶ χάρισι στίλβων· θηεῖτο δὲ κούρη.

Athena, born of Zeus, made him taller
and broader to look at, and on his head
she put thick hair, curling like hyacinth blossoms.
As when some learned craftsman pours gold over
silver, one whom Hephaistos and Pallas Athena
have taught every kind of art, and he creates graceful works,
so the goddess poured grace over his head and shoulders.
Then going apart he sat on the shore of the sea,
glistening with beauty and grace. And the maiden admired him.

Odyssey 6.229–37

The goddess is busy again, working in the hero’s interests. Just being clean again might not be enough to attract the princess, it seems. As we will see, this gambit succeeds, as Nausicaa will soon send out some signals of her own. As it happens, the same simile appears again, verbatim, in Book 23 when Odysseus is bathed after slaughtering the suitors. In this case the enhancement does not immediately work on Penelope, as it does on Nausicaa. The queen is not a naïve young virgin and has some tricks of her own. The hero will need to work harder to win over his prudent wife (23.152–204). (See essay on Book 5.1–42)

This parallel is yet another sign that Homer had the Nausicaa episode in mind when composing his portrait of Penelope in Books 18–23. In each case, we see a potential mate for Odysseus, whom he must win over to regain his status in Ithaka. Athena orchestrates the meetings between the two, buffing up the hero so he will be at his most attractive. Submerged feelings surface in both Nausicaa and Penelope, initially stirred by Athena, which make them more receptive to the man before them (6.20–47; 18.158–205). Both are uncertain about how to respond to the stranger, drawn to him but constrained by societal notions of propriety. Nausicaa is moving toward marriage, Penelope perhaps toward remarriage. The question is, will Odysseus arrive in time to be the queen’s groom or will one of the suitors take over in Ithaka? The Nausicaa paradigm imbues the later episodes with a rich layering of meaning: Through the rags and dirt, we see Odysseus engaged in a second courtship of his wife, who will prove to be harder to catch than he might expect.

The image of Athena as artist is also suggestive. One of the fundamental sources of energy in the poem comes from the interplay of two different perspectives on human experience and the kind of world imagined by each. On the one hand, there is the story of Odysseus’s heroic struggle to make it back to Ithaka, an example of a popular subject in the Greek literature about the Trojan War and its aftermath. Other versions include the grim story of Agamemnon’s murder by Clytemnestra upon returning to Argos, Ajax’s suicide in the wake of his unsuccessful bid to inherit the arms of Achilles, or Menelaus’ detour into Egypt before reuniting with Helen. Virgil’s reimagining of Homeric epic rests on another postwar struggle, of Aeneas and the other Trojan refugees.

Athena is the divine force behind Odysseus’s journey, as we have seen. In Book 5 and again in Book 24, Zeus notes that she has already arranged for the hero’s successful return and triumph over the suitors (5.21–27; 24.477–81). With the repeated simile, Homer seems to be pointing to the goddess as the artistic director of Odysseus’s heroic return, a kind of story-within-a-story. His triumph over the suitors, to which the poem’s dominant rhetoric gives primacy over all other considerations, will reaffirm his roles as king, husband, father, and son, all of which have been vacant in Ithaka for twenty years. Behind the imperatives in this perspective lie other assumptions, that Odysseus, gone for twenty years, can simply take up where he left off, that the lives of others will reshape themselves around the imperatives of the returning hero. Into Athena’s heroic world the poet has allowed two inconvenient facts, that Telemachus has reached manhood and must find his way on his own and that Penelope may not be content to remain celibate—forever, if necessary—rather than find a new husband. In pursuing their own goals, each character provokes a crisis after Odysseus returns to Ithaka, Telemachus by posing a potential threat to Odysseus’s kingship, Penelope by endangering his status as her husband.

The fairytale qualities of Athena’s return story play out against the backdrop of a different world, the one inhabited by Odysseus in his persona as the anonymous stranger who arrives in each new place on his way home from Troy and waits to reveal his identity until he feels safe. (See Introduction: Two Worlds.) This dynamic informs several episodes in Books 6–22, his stay with the Phaeacians, with Polyphemus the Cyclops, with Circe, with Eumaeus in the Ithakan countryside, all building to a glorious crescendo in his triumph over the suitors and fraught reunion with Penelope and then Laertes. In each case, Odysseus arrives unknown and relatively powerless and then, having negotiated the challenges of the local scene, returns to his heroic persona in a triumphant recognition scene (9.1–38, 500–5; 10.325–35; 16.186–91; 23.205–30; 24.321–44). In these situations, when Odysseus’s heroic identity does not at first afford him leverage over others, he experiences the world from the perspective of the ordinary non-heroic person and must make his way by his wits. We, meanwhile, observe how the relationships he forms assume a different scale of values, in which his status does not separate him from others, but rather offers the chance to bond with them.

The clash of these two modes of experience appears most clearly in Books 14 and 15, when Odysseus, disguised as an old beggar, encounters his faithful swineherd Eumaeus. The two men form a warm connection, based on the life stories they exchange, Eumaeus’s tough childhood and rescue by the noble Laertes, the beggar’s adventures at sea. At this point, the alternate worlds of the poem suggest two radically different views of the relationship. From the perspective of Athena’s heroic return story, the beggar is never authentic, only a disguise covering the hero’s true identity. The stories he tells are purely fiction and the friendship between two men down on their luck is not genuine. If the swineherd knew he was sitting across from his master, he would never presume to be his friend. The world of the heroic return is strictly hierarchical, based on the relative status of each member, which is based on kleos, the measure of heroic greatness. The anonymous stranger, on the other hand, can form a friendship with the swineherd based on shared suffering and kindness offered to someone in need.

The Odyssey, like most enduring works of the imagination, reveals a more complex view of human experience than its dominant narrative represents. Odysseus’s fame, the basis of his status as hero, depends on being known and admired by others, and on the separation this status enforces between him and lesser mortals. In the episodes where he is initially without this leverage, especially in the Eumaeus episode, Homer explores the advantages and disadvantages of anonymity and, by implication, of heroic glory. By witnessing the growing bond between the beggar and swineherd, something not possible in Athena’s world, we begin to see the heroic exploits of Odysseus in a larger context: Kleos brings one before the admiring gaze of many but allows intimate contact with few. Heroic status and the power it brings must be guarded from the predations of others and can thus bring isolation. The exchanges in the Ithakan countryside are hampered by none of these considerations of power and status. Strangers with apparently little leverage in the world can form friendships without worrying whether their property will be safe. A rough cloak can be shared without ceremony, meals without calculation of profit and loss. The principal medium of exchange between the two men is the very experience of pain and trouble; a good story repays the host who feeds the storyteller. This implicit critique of heroic values adds depth and richness to the return narrative, and it begins with the Phaeacians.

Further Reading

Van Nortwick, T. 2008. The Unknown Odysseus: Alternate Worlds in Homer’s Odyssey, 45–82. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.