4.100–146

ἧος ὁ ταῦθ᾽ ὥρμαινε κατὰ φρένα καὶ κατὰ θυμόν,
ἐκ δ᾽ Ἑλένη θαλάμοιο θυώδεος ὑψορόφοιο
ἤλυθεν Ἀρτέμιδι χρυσηλακάτῳ ἐικυῖα.
τῇ δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἅμ᾽ Ἀδρήστη κλισίην εὔτυκτον ἔθηκεν,
Ἀλκίππη δὲ τάπητα φέρεν μαλακοῦ ἐρίοιο,
Φυλὼ δ᾽ ἀργύρεον τάλαρον φέρε, τόν οἱ ἔθηκεν
Ἀλκάνδρη, Πολύβοιο δάμαρ, ὃς ἔναι᾽ ἐνὶ Θήβῃς
Αἰγυπτίῃς, ὅθι πλεῖστα δόμοις ἐν κτήματα κεῖται:
ὃς Μενελάῳ δῶκε δύ᾽ ἀργυρέας ἀσαμίνθους,
δοιοὺς δὲ τρίποδας, δέκα δὲ χρυσοῖο τάλαντα.
χωρὶς δ᾽ αὖθ᾽ Ἑλένῃ ἄλοχος πόρε κάλλιμα δῶρα:
χρυσέην τ᾽ ἠλακάτην τάλαρόν θ᾽ ὑπόκυκλον ὄπασσεν
ἀργύρεον, χρυσῷ δ᾽ ἐπὶ χείλεα κεκράαντο.
τόν ῥά οἱ ἀμφίπολος Φυλὼ παρέθηκε φέρουσα
νήματος ἀσκητοῖο βεβυσμένον: αὐτὰρ ἐπ᾽ αὐτῷ
ἠλακάτη τετάνυστο ἰοδνεφὲς εἶρος ἔχουσα.
ἕζετο δ᾽ ἐν κλισμῷ, ὑπὸ δὲ θρῆνυς ποσὶν ἦεν.

While he pondered these things in his heart and his mind,
out of her fragrant, lofty bedchamber came
Helen, like Artemis with her golden distaff.
Adreste followed and set out for her a well-wrought chair,
while Alkippe carried a coverlet of soft lamb’s wool
and Phylo brought a silver table, given to her
by Alkandre, wife of Polybus, who lived in Egyptian
Thebes, where most of the goods are stored in houses.
And Polybus himself gave two bathtubs to Menelaus,
and two tripods and ten talents of gold. And apart from
these his wife brought for Helen beautiful gifts of her own:
a golden distaff and a basket with wheels underneath,
silver, with the top edge worked in gold.
Phylo, her handmaiden, set it beside the queen,
full of finely spun yarn. And upon it
was spread the distaff with dark-colored wool.
The queen sat in the chair, a footstool under her feet.

Odyssey 4.120–35

This is the closest thing to a divine epiphany that Homer ever gives to a mortal woman. As Menelaus is about to ask Telemachus the familiar, requisite questions about his origins and identity, the queen sweeps in and sucks all the air out of the room. The style ascends as multisyllabic epithets fill up the verses: θαλάμοιο θυώδεος ὑψορόφοιο; Ἀρτέμιδι χρυσηλακάτῳ; κλισίην εὔτυκτον; τάπητα … μαλακοῦ ἐρίοιο. Helen’s attendants are named, as if the audience would be expected to recognize them—no anonymous ἀμφίπολοι for her. She seems to embody the gleaming splendor of the gold and silver her servants bring in. Her impact here parallels the moment in the Iliad when the old geezers on the wall of Troy watch her walking toward the city gates, her beauty so powerful that it transcends the earthbound resentments other women might inspire (see above, pp. 3–4). This is the way Homer always attests to Helen’s beauty, not with any direct description, only its impact on others. There is something about her presence, he seems to imply, that lies outside ordinary human experience, a force strong enough to make men risk their lives for ten years in a faraway place. She was once Aphrodite’s gift to Paris and though she reminds the poet at this moment of Artemis, she still carries some of the love goddess’s power.

Having taken over the room from her husband, Helen continues to upstage him by turning immediately to the question of their guests’ identity. As Athena did in Ithaka (1.207–9), she sees Odysseus in Telemachus and says so to the king, who will concur. We first witnessed Telemachus’s gradual assumption of his father’s habit of self-concealment, understandable within the story as a genetic trait, in Pylos. We also suggested that his reluctance to identify himself to his hosts there might be as an example of Homer’s creation of character through accretion, Telemachus being one in a series of surrogates for Odysseus, which the poet uses to build his hero’s complex persona (see essays on Book 3, pp. 5–9). The process continues here as Peisistratus, not Telemachus, names the young prince. We can explore this topic further by noting another set of parallels.

Just before Helen arrives, Telemachus hides his tears in response to Menelaus’s lament over the apparent loss of Odysseus by covering his face with a cloak. Odysseus himself will later be moved to weep twice in the palace of the Phaeacians when he hears Demodokos, the palace bard, sing about the Trojan War (8.83–95; 521–34). The first passage is the closest verbally to Telemachus’s reaction, as Odysseus also covers his face with a cloak to hide his emotions from the others in the hall. In all three passages, the poet notes that only one other person notices the gesture, Menelaus in Book 4 and Alkinous, the Phaeacian king, both times in Book 8. Likewise, neither of the guests has yet revealed his identity to his hosts.

Telemachus’s appearance before the royal family in Sparta may serve, then, as a template in other ways for Odysseus’s later encounter with Alkinous and Arete, the king and queen of the Phaeacians. We have noted above (1–2) that as Telemachus stares in awe at the splendid palace of Menelaus, so Odysseus admires the handsome architecture of the Phaeacian royal residence. Likewise, Menelaus’s annoyance at Eteoneus’s uncertainty about how to receive the two young strangers at the palace gates (20–36) is echoed when Odysseus, disguised as a wandering sailor, appears at the Phaeacian royal palace and Alkinous is criticized by one of his henchmen for not immediately offering refreshment to the stranger (8.159–66). Finally, Arete, like Helen, takes over questioning the stranger about his identity from her husband (8.233–39).

These parallels show the poet not only using repeated elements to build the character of Odysseus through the portrait of his son, but also to develop and enrich the recurrent narrative pattern of the anonymous stranger’s arrival in a new place (see essay on Book 1.17 and Book 3.6–8). The process will continue throughout the poem, culminating in Odysseus penetrating his own palace in disguise as an anonymous beggar. He will need to keep his identity from the formidable queen there, too, while he wins her over to his side. The conjunction of weeping and recognition in Sparta and again in the Phaeacian palace might seem coincidental, but the two elements keep surfacing together when the recognition of the hero seems imminent. When Penelope questions Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, about his identity, he deflects her curiosity by inventing a story about meeting “Odysseus” in Crete, describing him in a way that may be too close to the truth and so eliciting a powerful response from the queen (see essay on Book 2.8):

ἴσκε ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγων ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα:
τῆς δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἀκουούσης ῥέε δάκρυα, τήκετο δὲ χρώς:
ὡς δὲ χιὼν κατατήκετ᾽ ἐν ἀκροπόλοισιν ὄρεσσιν,
ἥν τ᾽ Εὖρος κατέτηξεν, ἐπὴν Ζέφυρος καταχεύῃ:
τηκομένης δ᾽ ἄρα τῆς ποταμοὶ πλήθουσι ῥέοντες:
ὣς τῆς τήκετο καλὰ παρήϊα δάκρυ χεούσης,
κλαιούσης ἑὸν ἄνδρα παρήμενον.

He spoke, telling many lies that were like truth.
And as she listened, tears began to flow, softening her complexion.
As when the snow melts on peaks of the mountains,
snow that the West wind piles up and the East wind thaws,
and the rivers overflow with its melting,
so her lovely cheeks were softened with the running tears,
as she wept for her husband, who was sitting beside her.

Odyssey 19.203–9

His audience’s familiarity with the connection of weeping with recognition lets Homer tease here, as Penelope seems perilously close to recognizing her husband, when his anonymity is his only protection from the suitors. Danger threatens again when Eurykleia, Odysseus’s faithful nurse, recognizes an old scar and knows who the beggar really is, bursting into tears. Athena must intervene to distract Penelope while Odysseus bullies the old woman into silence.

Weeping accompanies recognition once more, but this time the hero is finally safe. Odysseus and Telemachus have slaughtered the suitors and cleaned up the gore. Penelope gives the hero his last test and he passes, telling the origin of their marital bed:

ὣς φάτο, τῆς δ᾽ αὐτοῦ λύτο γούνατα καὶ φίλον ἦτορ,
σήματ᾽ ἀναγνούσῃ τά οἱ ἔμπεδα πέφραδ᾽ Ὀδυσσεύς:
δακρύσασα δ᾽ ἔπειτ᾽ ἰθὺς δράμεν, ἀμφὶ δὲ χεῖρας
δειρῇ βάλλ᾽ Ὀδυσῆϊ, κάρη δ᾽ ἔκυσ᾽ ἠδὲ προσηύδα

He spoke, and her knees and heart went slack,
as she recognized the clear signs that Odysseus had revealed;
but then she burst into tears and ran to him, and throwing
her arms around the neck of Odysseus she kissed him and said:

  Odyssey 23.205–8

The poet begins the process of creating this final reunion in the palace at Sparta.

Further Reading

Edwards, M.W. 1987. Homer: Poet of the Iliad, 42–54. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Fenik, B. 1974. Studies in the Odyssey. Hermes Einzelschriften 5–60. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner.

Murnaghan, S. 1987. Disguise and Recognition in the Odyssey, 33–38. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Van Nortwick, T. 2008. The Unknown Odysseus: Alternate Worlds in Homer’s Odyssey, 45–47. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.