11.138-179

Ninsun, Gilgamesh’s mother, clears the way for him to pursue Humbaba, monster of the Cedar Forest, an adventure that will eventually bring the hero much pain (The Epic of Gilgamesh III.i–v). Achilles’s mother Thetis supports him in his thirst for vengeance against Hector, though it is clear to us at least that this rampage will be self-destructive. Only after Zeus commands her does she go to Achilles and urge him to release Hector’s corpse to Priam, thus signaling his (and her) acceptance of his mortal nature (Il. 24.77–119). The rare counter examples draw power from this established pattern. Orestes, son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, must be spirited out of Argos as an infant, for fear that his frightening mother and her lover Aegisthus might kill him to protect themselves. Medea murders her children to spite her faithless husband Jason.

Though the hero’s mother usually offers comfort, her son, in order to reach maturity as a man, must eventually separate from her nurture and come to terms with his father’s world, process that often requires the acceptance of some hard truths about himself and his place in that world. Both Gilgamesh and Achilles struggle to accept the fact that they, like all mortals, must eventually die. Utnapishtim, a surrogate father, delivers this hard news to Gilgamesh (Epic of Gilgamesh X.vi). To win release of his son’s body, Priam convinces Achilles to see in him a reflection of Peleus, the hero’s father, pining for his son back in Thessaly (Il. 24.486–506). The disastrous life of Oedipus plays out in the wake of his conspicuous failure to launch, as he kills his father and marries his mother (Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannus 771–833). Virgil plays against the expectations generated by previous hero stories to create a brilliantly perverse portrait of Aeneas’ relationship to his mother Venus. The goddess appears in the woods outside Carthage disguised as a sexy virgin huntress—thus firing up the Oedipal potential in the encounter—and then arranges for Aeneas to become entangled with Dido, with horrific consequences for both (Aen. 1.305–417).

Odysseus’s mother is less prominent in her son’s story, appearing only here in the Odyssey. She is certainly devoted to him, having died from the pain of missing him (11.202–3). In response to his questioning, she reassures him that his father, son, and wife are all alive and protecting his estates, though Laertes is living a debased, hardscrabble existence (11.180–96). The hero’s mother, in her desire to protect him, often works against his need to assert himself in the world and win renown (kleos). Antikleia’s transparently allegorical name (“against kleos”) seems to put her in that role. Her interest is in getting him back home to his wife and family, not encouraging more adventuring. On the other hand, doing so will eventually require him to kill the suitors, a spectacularly heroic feat.

The crosscurrents here reflect the influence of Odyssey’s comic narrative form (see Introduction, para. 5). In tragic stories like The Epic of Gilgamesh or the Iliad, there is a tension between a mother’s desire to protect and nurture her son and his journey toward becoming the man he is supposed to be. The Odyssey, by contrast, requires not that Odysseus evolve into full manhood, but rather that he survive, at whatever cost, to restore order in Ithaka. He has finished whatever growing up he must do and so Antikleia has a different function in the story than she would in a tragic narrative. There is in fact a story in the poem about a male protagonist evolving toward maturity, the adventures of Telemachus, who is sent on a journey orchestrated by Athena to find out about his father and become a worthy helper for Odysseus if he comes home. He does not tell his mother his plans, for fear she will try to keep him from fulfilling his mission, which will bring into contact with his father’s world. The movement of Telemachus toward maturity could in fact create a problem for Odysseus’s mission. If Telemachus reaches maturity at the end of his journey, there would be two contenders for the role of king in Ithaka. That conflict is resolved when Odysseus successfully warns off his son as the latter is about to string the bow and win both the kingship and the queen (Od. 21.101–35).

Odysseus’s encounter with his mother ends with a striking vignette, as he tries unsuccessfully three times to embrace Antikleia’s ghost, which flies off each time “like a shadow or a dream” (207–8). The scene recalls a famous encounter between Achilles and the ghost of Patroclus:

"ἀλλά μοι ἆσσον στῆθι: μίνυνθά περ ἀμφιβαλόντε
ἀλλήλους ὀλοοῖο τεταρπώμεσθα γόοιο."
ὣς ἄρα φωνήσας ὠρέξατο χερσὶ φίλῃσιν
οὐδ᾽ ἔλαβε: ψυχὴ δὲ κατὰ χθονὸς ἠΰτε καπνὸς
ᾤχετο τετριγυῖα: ταφὼν δ᾽ ἀνόρουσεν Ἀχιλλεὺς
χερσί τε συμπλατάγησεν, ἔπος δ᾽ ὀλοφυδνὸν ἔειπεν:
"ὢ πόποι ἦ ῥά τίς ἐστι καὶ εἰν Ἀΐδαο δόμοισι
ψυχὴ καὶ εἴδωλον, ἀτὰρ φρένες οὐκ ἔνι πάμπαν:
παννυχίη γάρ μοι Πατροκλῆος δειλοῖο
ψυχὴ ἐφεστήκει γοόωσά τε μυρομένη τε,
καί μοι ἕκαστ᾽ ἐπέτελλεν, ἔϊκτο δὲ θέσκελον αὐτῷ."

“But come closer; embracing, if only for a moment,
let us take pleasure in baneful grieving.”
Having spoken thus he reached out with his arms
but could not grasp the image; like a puff of smoke the spirit
went under the earth with a shrill cry. Achilles rose up astonished,
drove his hands together and spoke a sorrowful word:
“Ah wonder! Even in the house of Hades there is left something,
a soul and an image, but no wits are in it.
For all night long the spirit of wretched Patroclus
stood over me wailing and grieving,
and told me each thing to do, and the likeness to him was wonderful.”

Iliad 23.97–107

The absence of any verbal parallels between the two passages suggests that these are probably not two versions of a traditional type scene. The “three times” motif here does appear elsewhere in Homeric epic, but not in the same kind of context (cf. Il 5.436–37; 16.703–4, 784–85). Both encounters are intensely intimate and personal, full of frustrated affection. In both cases, we learn something about the nature of the psyche after death, both consistent with Homeric beliefs about the afterlife and the soul. Achilles’s outburst fits with the ongoing exploration in Iliad Books 22–24 of the boundaries of human experience, while Antikleia’s explanation, because it occurs during the katabasis, corresponds to the kind of deep wisdom that the hero characteristically encounters in the underworld. That the hero’s mother delivers it puts her in a role usually reserved for male authority figures in heroic epic, another sign of that this katabasis will not fit comfortably in the paradigm as we see it elsewhere in tragic stories. Women are central to the meaning of Odysseus’s adventure in Hades, but their function in the episode is particular to the Odyssey.

Further Reading

Dimock, G. 1989. The Unity of the Odyssey, 149–151. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.

Heubeck, A. and Hoekstra, A. ed. 1989. A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, vol. II, Books IX–XVI, 86–88, 90. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Reinhardt, K. 1942. “The Adventures in the Odyssey.” In Schein, S. 1996. Reading the Odyssey. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 116.

Van Nortwick, T. 1992. Somewhere I Have Never Travelled: The Second Self and the Hero’s Journey in Ancient Epic, 46–47, 67–68, 95–100. New York: Oxford University Press.