7.78-107

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.