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Homer sets the scene at the edge of the underworld, with the hero and his crew “smothered,” κεκαλυμμένοι (15) in darkness, already a sign that the episode will feature feminine forces threatening to Odysseus and his crew. The requisite rituals performed, the poet brings forth the ghost of Elpenor, who begs his captain to give his corpse a proper burial back on Circe’s island. With this opening, Homer creates the narrative ring that will mark the boundaries of his episode, with Circe at the beginning and end. Putting off Antikleia until he can interview Teiresias, Odysseus reaffirms that he has already made the break with his mother’s nurture that marks a mature male in Greek hero stories. He is not in the midst of an evolving journey of self-discovery, as are many tragic heroes. His mission aims at restoration, not the acceptance of limits.

Next comes Teiresias, whom Circe has named as the keeper of information crucial to a successful homecoming. The prophet does deliver one piece of advice about the return trip—stay away from the cattle belonging to Helios—but the most important news is about how Odysseus can die a peaceful death. This kind of discovery is entirely in keeping with the goals of a traditional katabasis: knowledge, and often self-knowledge, that the hero could only gain in the underworld. By settling up with the sea, the medium for his wanderings, Odysseus can quiet the restless curiosity that has driven him. This window—for the hero and for us—into Odysseus’ fundamental nature is important part of his exchange with Teiresias. The rest of the strategizing about his return voyage can wait until he meets Circe again.

The catalogue of heroines sounds celebratory at first, but on closer inspection is more cautionary. After the first group of “fortunate” women who have been abducted by the gods, many of the other heroines portend danger for Odysseus, appearing elsewhere in stories that highlight the kind of threat that feminine forces have posed to the hero all along the way. Their potentially dangerous power in turn makes a natural segue to the interlude in Scheria, where Arete takes the lead in speaking to Odysseus, upstaging Alkinous once again, as she did when Odysseus first arrived on the island of the Phaeacians.

The end of the interlude takes us to the heart of the katabasis, where Homer’s innovative use of the traditional episode becomes clear. In the encounters with Agamemnon, Achilles, and Ajax, with their focus on the powerlessness of the once mighty heroes of the Iliad, the poet drives home his point: To save the royal family and kingdom in Ithaka, Odysseus must forsake the tragic obsession with kleos at any cost. He must instead survive, no matter what it costs him and those around him (in the latter case, their lives). Both Agamemnon and Achilles put it succinctly: Do not be like me. Control, of oneself and others, especially women, must be the primary goal. Ajax and the famously excessive Herakles show the dire consequences of failing to control one’s appetites, for revenge, for glory. The underworld is always a useful laboratory for a storyteller, where the true consequences of a hero’s acts in the world of the living, however that world is portrayed in the story, are tested against the ultimate reality that awaits all mortals. In the world of the Odyssey, only heroes like Odysseus can ultimately triumph. It is fitting that Odysseus can reanimate the twittering ghosts in Hades, so they can talk to him. He is all about living on, however that can happen.

The smothering darkness, Antikleia’s prominent appearance, the catalogue of women, the enfeebled heroes from the Iliad (and perhaps the sexual ambiguity of Teiresias), all signal that the underworld, as the Greeks would have seen it, is a feminized milieu, a land of women. This is not a place where heroes can win kleos, claiming a place in the stories that live on after death. Like the island of Calypso, Hades exists in a kind of stasis, out of time. For Odysseus in particular, Hades is his mother’s home, whereas his mission is to restore his father’s home in Ithaka, something Achilles cannot do for Peleus. In this sense, the underworld episode repeats a dominant theme in the return story of Odysseus, as a masculine hero penetrates a feminized milieu and effects the release of Odysseus: Hermes invades Calypso’s island and gets Odysseus released; Odysseus then arrives on Scheria as an anonymous stranger, works his way into the good graces of the effete—and in the view of the Greeks, femininized—Phaeacians with his athletic prowess and beguiling storytelling, and wins a ride home to Ithaka; he visits the island of Polyphemus, enters the womblike cave as “Nobody,” wields the phallic stake and emerges as Odysseus; with the help of Hermes, he avoids becoming another of Circe’s pet animals, then enters Hades, a feminized realm, and emerges unscathed; finally, Odysseus, in disguise, will penetrate the royal palace in Ithaka, a chaotic place lacking in masculine authority, and release the true version of himself by killing the suitors.

Further Reading

Bassi, K. 1999. “Nostos, Domos, and the Architecture of the Ancient Stage.” South Atlantic Quarterly 98, 415–449.