"ὣς ἐφάμην, ἡ δ᾽ αὐτίκ᾽ ἀμείβετο δῖα θεάων·

‘διογενὲς Λαερτιάδη, πολυμήχαν᾽ Ὀδυσσεῦ,

μή τί τοι ἡγεμόνος γε ποθὴ παρὰ νηὶ μελέσθω,505

ἱστὸν δὲ στήσας, ἀνά θ᾽ ἱστία λευκὰ πετάσσας

ἧσθαι· τὴν δέ κέ τοι πνοιὴ Βορέαο φέρῃσιν.

ἀλλ᾽ ὁπότ᾽ ἂν δὴ νηὶ δι᾽ Ὠκεανοῖο περήσῃς,

ἔνθ᾽ ἀκτή τε λάχεια καὶ ἄλσεα Περσεφονείης,

μακραί τ᾽ αἴγειροι καὶ ἰτέαι ὠλεσίκαρποι,510

νῆα μὲν αὐτοῦ κέλσαι ἐπ᾽ Ὠκεανῷ βαθυδίνῃ,

αὐτὸς δ᾽ εἰς Ἀίδεω ἰέναι δόμον εὐρώεντα.

ἔνθα μὲν εἰς Ἀχέροντα Πυριφλεγέθων τε ῥέουσιν

Κώκυτός θ᾽, ὃς δὴ Στυγὸς ὕδατός ἐστιν ἀπορρώξ,

πέτρη τε ξύνεσίς τε δύω ποταμῶν ἐριδούπων·515

ἔνθα δ᾽ ἔπειθ᾽, ἥρως, χριμφθεὶς πέλας, ὥς σε κελεύω,

βόθρον ὀρύξαι, ὅσον τε πυγούσιον ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα,

ἀμφ᾽ αὐτῷ δὲ χοὴν χεῖσθαι πᾶσιν νεκύεσσιν,

πρῶτα μελικρήτῳ, μετέπειτα δὲ ἡδέι οἴνῳ,

τὸ τρίτον αὖθ᾽ ὕδατι· ἐπὶ δ᾽ ἄλφιτα λευκὰ παλύνειν.520

πολλὰ δὲ γουνοῦσθαι νεκύων ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα,

ἐλθὼν εἰς Ἰθάκην στεῖραν βοῦν, ἥ τις ἀρίστη,

ῥέξειν ἐν μεγάροισι πυρήν τ᾽ ἐμπλησέμεν ἐσθλῶν,

Τειρεσίῃ δ᾽ ἀπάνευθεν ὄιν ἱερευσέμεν οἴῳ

παμμέλαν᾽, ὃς μήλοισι μεταπρέπει ὑμετέροισιν.525

αὐτὰρ ἐπὴν εὐχῇσι λίσῃ κλυτὰ ἔθνεα νεκρῶν,

ἔνθ᾽ ὄιν ἀρνειὸν ῥέζειν θῆλύν τε μέλαιναν

εἰς Ἔρεβος στρέψας, αὐτὸς δ᾽ ἀπονόσφι τραπέσθαι

ἱέμενος ποταμοῖο ῥοάων· ἔνθα δὲ πολλαὶ

ψυχαὶ ἐλεύσονται νεκύων κατατεθνηώτων.530

δὴ τότ᾽ ἔπειθ᾽ ἑτάροισιν ἐποτρῦναι καὶ ἀνῶξαι

μῆλα, τὰ δὴ κατάκειτ᾽ ἐσφαγμένα νηλέι χαλκῷ,

δείραντας κατακῆαι, ἐπεύξασθαι δὲ θεοῖσιν,

ἰφθίμῳ τ᾽ Ἀίδῃ καὶ ἐπαινῇ Περσεφονείῃ·

αὐτὸς δὲ ξίφος ὀξὺ ἐρυσσάμενος παρὰ μηροῦ535

ἧσθαι, μηδὲ ἐᾶν νεκύων ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα

αἵματος ἆσσον ἴμεν, πρὶν Τειρεσίαο πυθέσθαι.

ἔνθα τοι αὐτίκα μάντις ἐλεύσεται, ὄρχαμε λαῶν,

ὅς κέν τοι εἴπῃσιν ὁδὸν καὶ μέτρα κελεύθου

νόστον θ᾽, ὡς ἐπὶ πόντον ἐλεύσεαι ἰχθυόεντα.’540

ὣς ἔφατ᾽, αὐτίκα δὲ χρυσόθρονος ἤλυθεν Ἠώς.

ἀμφὶ δέ με χλαῖνάν τε χιτῶνά τε εἵματα ἕσσεν·

αὐτὴ δ᾽ ἀργύφεον φᾶρος μέγα ἕννυτο νύμφη,

λεπτὸν καὶ χαρίεν, περὶ δὲ ζώνην βάλετ᾽ ἰξυῖ

καλὴν χρυσείην, κεφαλῇ δ᾽ ἐπέθηκε καλύπτρην.545

Circe informs Odysseus that he must speak to the seer Tiresias, who will explain how to reach Ithaca.

Circe reassures Odysseus that he will not need anyone to guide the ship to the edge of Hades. The voyage will proceed on autopilot—presumably with supernatural aid—while he and his men sit in the ship. Once they have arrived, they will need to carry out various specific tasks to appease the gods and summon the prophet Teiresias, who will show them the way to get home. Detailed instructions follow, a three-part a mix of ritualized actions from various sources, which seems to reflect festivals of the dead when spirits are summoned from the underworld to mingle with the living.

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But Homer’s version differs in one important respect from those occasions: the Greeks will first go to Hades and then call up the dead. Thus, the entire episode also draws on perhaps the most common and most important heroic adventure, the katabasis, or journey downward to the land of the dead, where the hero typically confronts deep knowledge about the future and about himself only available there and returns to the world of the living. The function of this momentous episode in the Odyssey will differ in some ways from that in many other stories, as we will see.

The principal aim of the mission for Odysseus will be to consult Teiresias about how to get back to Ithaka. This straightforward goal seems decidedly less mysterious and profound than what Gilgamesh learns by confronting the inescapable fact of his own mortality or what Achilles, after being trapped in his own self-created hell, comes to realize in his encounter with Priam. (Or, much later in the epic tradition but equally relevant, what Aeneas’s father reveals to him: his role in the eventual founding of Rome and a preview of the next thousand years of Roman history.) But if the knowledge that Teiresias will offer to Odysseus seems more prosaic than the prize offered to other heroes, it is in fact what he needs to know to reach his fullest potential as a man, as the Odyssey presents it. As the heroes of tragic stories, Gilgamesh and Achilles can only evolve into the men they must be by accepting that they must die. The Odyssey’s comic form requires not acceptance from its hero, but survival. He must win back his rightful status, no matter what the cost to others along the way. The knowledge of how to do this is what Odysseus must gain when he encounters the land of the dead.

We can explore this way of understanding Odysseus’s katabasis further by looking at the encounter with the nymph Eidothea and her father Proteus that Menelaus describes in Book 4. There and here, a female figure with special powers tells a stranded hero how to approach a wise adviser, who will rise from some deep, dark place and tell him the way to sail home across the sea (4.389–90 = 10.539–40). In both cases, the hero is crushed to hear what he must do before he can achieve his homecoming (4.538–41 = 10.496–99). Menelaus must ambush Proteus and control the creature’s shape-shifting to get secret knowledge, while Odysseus will draw the prophet to him with special rituals. Each hero will receive some general information about how to get home and learn the fate of his comrades who have died at Troy or on the homeward journey; each will also hear how he will die.

Tracing these parallels show us Homer characteristically building Odysseus’ katabasis on earlier narrative patterns. Menelaus ambushes Proteus and learns that he must return to Egypt and sacrifice to the gods in order to reach home safely. He then hears about the deaths of Ajax and Agamemnon, the former punished for angering Athena, the latter killed treacherously by his cousin Aegisthus. Pressing Proteus further, he learns of Odysseus’ captivity on Calypso’s island. Finally comes the most important information, his own fate after he dies. Because he is Helen’s husband, he will live on after death in the Elysian Fields, where there is no snow, no rain, only soft breezes (Od. 4.465–570).

What we learn of Menelaus and his ultimate fate will in fact resonate twice in the portrait of Odysseus. When the nymph Ino saves him from being pulled under the waves by Calypso’s cloak in Book 5 (333–53), we hear a clear echo of Menelaus and Eidothea. The implied parallels between the two heroes are instructive for our understanding of Odysseus’s character. By declining to stay with Calypso, he refuses the easy existence that awaits Menelaus, choosing to fight on toward Ithaka. He reclaims his identity by refusing the fatal allure of the nymph’s timeless oblivion and returning to the world of death and change. This choice is fundamental to Homer’s portrait of his hero and will be echoed in each of Odysseus’s triumphant returns from anonymous stranger to famous hero along the way to Ithaka.

The Menelaus paradigm surfaces again in Books 10 and 11, with Eidothea’s role as rescuer and the prophecies of Proteus divided between Circe and Teiresias. Like Menelaus, Odysseus will hear about the deaths of his former comrades and receive detailed instructions about how to proceed on his journey home. He, like Menelaus, will eventually learn about the end of his life: one last trek inland, where a “gentle death” that will come from the sea in “comfortable old age.” Unlike Menelaus, who is given eternal bliss because he married the right woman, Odysseus will struggle to earn his gentle ending. And finally, the parallels imply the question that will come to dominate the last third of the poem: Will Penelope turn out to be another Helen?

 

Further Reading

Anderson, W.S. 1958. “Calypso and Elysium.” Classical Journal 54, 2–11. 

Heubeck, A. and  A. Hoekstra, eds. 1989. A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, vol. II, Books IX–XVI, 71–72. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Van Nortwick, T. 1992. Somewhere I Have Never Travelled: The Second Self and the Hero’s Journey in Ancient Epic, 28–29; 134–138. New York: Oxford University Press.

 

505  τί: “at all,” adverbial accusative.

505  ἡγεμόνος: objective genitive with ποθή.

505  μελέσθω: “let (nom.) be a concern for …,” with dative (τοι); 3rd sing. mid. imperat.

506  ἀνά … πετάσσας: tmesis, nom. sing. aor. ptc. > ἀναπετάννυμι, “to spread open, unfurl.”

507  ἧσθαι: infin. > ἧμαι. Used as imperatative.

507  τὴν: the ship.

507  κέ … φέρῃσιν: subjunctive with κε (ἄν) in an independent sentence, in place of a future (Monro 275b; Smyth 1813). 

507  φερῃσιν: 3rd sing. pres. subj..

508  ὁπότ᾽ ἂν … περήσῃς: general temporal clause (ἄν + subj.).

509  ἔνθ(α): “to where (there are).”

510  ὠλεσίκαρποι: according to Theophrastus (Enquiry into Plants 3.1.3), "the willow is said to shed its fruit early, before it is fully matured and ripened; and so the poet not unfittingly calls it 'the willow which loses its fruit' (trans. Arthur F. Hort). A fitting tree for the Underworld.

511  αὐτοῦ: “there.”

511  κέλσαι: “beach,” “put … to shore,” infin. as imperat. > κέλλω.

512  αὐτὸς: “yourself,” intensive.

512  ἰέναι: infin. as imperat. > εἶμι.

514  ἀπορρώξ: “a branch,” lit., "a piece broken off," see LSJ ἀπορρώξ II.

515 πέτρη τε ξύνεσίς τε: hendiadys (Smyth 3025) for "a rocky confluence," either rapids or a waterfall.

516  ἥρως: vocative

516  χριμφθεὶς πέλας: “having been brought near,” “having approached.” πέλας is strictly speaking redundant.

516  χριμφθεὶς: nom. sing. aor. pass. ptc. > χρίμπτω. 

517  ὀρύξαι: aor. infin. as imperat. > ὀρύσσω.

517  ὅσσον τε πυγούσιον ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα: “a cubit square" (lit., “as much as a cubit in this direction and that”). The relative clause is attracted to the accusative case of the antecedent, βόθρον (Monro 271.1; Smyth 2532). The τε is untranslatable (Monro 332; Smyth 2970). The instructions given in 10.517–25 are carried out in 11.25–33.

518  χεῖσθαι: infin. as imperat. > χέω; the middle has the same meaning as the active..

519  ἡδέι: "sweet," > ἡδύς.

520  ἐπὶ: “on top,” "over it," adverbial.

520  παλύνειν: infin. as imperat.

521  πολλὰ: “many times,” or “much,” adverbial.

521  γουνοῦσθαι: “entreat …, vowing to ….” The infinitive is used as an imperative. The verb seems to imply both an entreaty and a vow (Cunliffe).

521  νεκύων ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα: a periphrasis (Smyth 3041) for ψυχαί.

522  ἥ τις: “whichever is …”

523  ῥέξειν: “to sacrifice,” fut. infin. > ῥέζω, complementing the implied verb of vowing (line 521).

523  πυρήν: “pyre” or “altar."

523  ἐμπλησέμεν: fut. infin. > ἐμπίμπλημι, “to fill with,” + gen.

524  ἀπάνευθεν: “separately.”

524  οἴῳ: "alone," modifying Τειρεσίῃ.

525  παμμέλαν(α): "all black," modifying ὄϊν.

525  μεταπρέπει: “stands out among,” with dative.

526  ἐπὴν … λίσῃ: general temporal clause. 

526  λίσῃ: 2nd sing. aor. subj. > λίσσομαι.

536  εὐχῇσι: fem. dat. sing. > εὐχή.

527  ῥέζειν: infin. as imperat.

527  θῆλύν: "female," i.e., a ewe.

528  στρέψας: “turning them” (i.e, making them bow their heads).

528  αὐτὸς: “you yourself,” intensive.

528  τραπέσθαι: “turn,” infin. as imperat. > τρέπω.

529  ἱέμενος: “moving toward” (i.e., facing), with genitive, see LSJ ἵημι II.2.

531  ἑτάροισιν: dative with compound verb.

531  ἀνῶξαι: “command them to,” infin. as imperat, with the complementary infinitives (κατακῆαι, ἐπεύξασθαι) in 533.

532  τὰ δὴ: “the very ones which…,” relative.

532  κατέκειτ᾽: κατέκειτο, > κατάκειμαι, singular verb with the neuter plural subject τά.

532  ἐσφαγμένα: perf. ptc. > σφάζω.

534  Ἀΐδῃ…Περσεφονειῃ: in apposition to θεοῖσιν.

535  αὐτὸς: “you yourself,” intensive.

536  ἧσθαι: infin. as imperat. > ἧμαι

536  ἐᾶν: “allow,” infin. as imperat. > ἐάω

536  κάρηνα: “heads,” metonymy for ψυχαί, “souls” (or ghosts).

537  ἆσσον: “near to,” with genitive.

537  ἴμεν: complementary infin. > εἶμι governed by ἐᾶν.

537  πρὶν: “before you …,” followed by an infinitive.

537  πύθεσθαι: “inquire of …,” aor. infin. used as imperat. > πυνθάνομαι, followed by the genitive.

539  κέν … εἴπῃσιν: subjunctive with κε (ἄν) in an independent sentence, in place of a future (Monro 275b; Smyth 1813).

539  εἴπῃσιν: 3rd sing. aor. subj.

540  ὡς: “how…,” in apposition to νόστον.

540  ἐλεύσεαι: 2nd sing. fut. > ἔρχομαι.

542  ἀμφὶ: either with με (“around me”) or tmesis with ἔσσεν; > ἀμφιέννυμι, “to put (acc. of thing) on (acc. of person).”

542  ἕσσεν: “she put on,” > ἕννυμι, or tmesis with ἀμφί (see note above).

543  αὐτὴ: with νύμφη.

543  φᾶρος: "cloak."

543  ἕννυτο: “put on (herself),” mid. > ἕννυμι. The middle is reflex.

544  περὶ … βάλετ(ο): “put (acc.) around (dat.),” tmesis, 3rd sing. aor. mid. > περιβάλλω.

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Suggested Citation

Thomas Van Nortwick and Rob Hardy, Homer: Odyssey 5–12. Carlisle, Pennsylvania: Dickinson College Commentaries, 2024. ISBN: 978-1-947822-17-7 https://dcc.dickinson.edu/homer-odyssey/x-503-545