"ὣς ἐφάμην, οἱ δ᾽ ὦκα ἐμοῖς ἐπέεσσι πίθοντο.

Εὐρύλοχος δέ μοι οἶος ἐρύκανε πάντας ἑταίρους·

καί σφεας φωνήσας ἔπεα πτερόεντα προσηύδα·430

·ἆ δειλοί, πόσ᾽ ἴμεν; τί κακῶν ἱμείρετε τούτων;

Κίρκης ἐς μέγαρον καταβήμεναι, ἥ κεν ἅπαντας

ἢ σῦς ἠὲ λύκους ποιήσεται ἠὲ λέοντας,

οἵ κέν οἱ μέγα δῶμα φυλάσσοιμεν καὶ ἀνάγκῃ,

ὥς περ Κύκλωψ ἔρξ᾽, ὅτε οἱ μέσσαυλον ἵκοντο435

ἡμέτεροι ἕταροι, σὺν δ᾽ ὁ θρασὺς εἵπετ᾽ Ὀδυσσεύς·

τούτου γὰρ καὶ κεῖνοι ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὄλοντο.’

ὣς ἔφατ᾽, αὐτὰρ ἐγώ γε μετὰ φρεσὶ μερμήριξα,

σπασσάμενος τανύηκες ἄορ παχέος παρὰ μηροῦ,

τῷ οἱ ἀποτμήξας κεφαλὴν οὖδάσδε πελάσσαι,440

καὶ πηῷ περ ἐόντι μάλα σχεδόν· ἀλλά μ᾽ ἑταῖροι

μειλιχίοις ἐπέεσσιν ἐρήτυον ἄλλοθεν ἄλλος:

‘διογενές, τοῦτον μὲν ἐάσομεν, εἰ σὺ κελεύεις,

αὐτοῦ πὰρ νηί τε μένειν καὶ νῆα ἔρυσθαι·

ἡμῖν δ᾽ ἡγεμόνευ᾽ ἱερὰ πρὸς δώματα Κίρκης.’445

ὣς φάμενοι παρὰ νηὸς ἀνήιον ἠδὲ θαλάσσης.

οὐδὲ μὲν Εὐρύλοχος κοίλῃ παρὰ νηὶ λέλειπτο,

ἀλλ᾽ ἕπετ᾽· ἔδεισεν γὰρ ἐμὴν ἔκπαγλον ἐνιπήν.

τόφρα δὲ τοὺς ἄλλους ἑτάρους ἐν δώμασι Κίρκη

ἐνδυκέως λοῦσέν τε καὶ ἔχρισεν λίπ᾽ ἐλαίῳ,450

ἀμφὶ δ᾽ ἄρα χλαίνας οὔλας βάλεν ἠδὲ χιτῶνας·

δαινυμένους δ᾽ ἐὺ πάντας ἐφεύρομεν ἐν μεγάροισιν.

οἱ δ᾽ ἐπεὶ ἀλλήλους εἶδον φράσσαντό τ᾽ ἐσάντα,

κλαῖον ὀδυρόμενοι, περὶ δὲ στεναχίζετο δῶμα.

ἡ δέ μευ ἄγχι στᾶσα προσηύδα δῖα θεάων·455

‘μηκέτι νῦν θαλερὸν γόον ὄρνυτε· οἶδα καὶ αὐτὴ

ἠμὲν ὅσ᾽ ἐν πόντῳ πάθετ᾽ ἄλγεα ἰχθυόεντι,

ἠδ᾽ ὅσ᾽ ἀνάρσιοι ἄνδρες ἐδηλήσαντ᾽ ἐπὶ χέρσου.

ἀλλ᾽ ἄγετ᾽ ἐσθίετε βρώμην καὶ πίνετε οἶνον,460

εἰς ὅ κεν αὖτις θυμὸν ἐνὶ στήθεσσι λάβητε,

οἷον ὅτε πρώτιστον ἐλείπετε πατρίδα γαῖαν

τρηχείης Ἰθάκης. νῦν δ᾽ ἀσκελέες καὶ ἄθυμοι,

αἰὲν ἄλης χαλεπῆς μεμνημένοι, οὐδέ ποθ᾽ ὕμιν

θυμὸς ἐν εὐφροσύνῃ, ἐπεὶ ἦ μάλα πολλὰ πέποσθε.’465

ὣς ἔφαθ᾽, ἡμῖν δ᾽ αὖτ᾽ ἐπεπείθετο θυμὸς ἀγήνωρ.

ἔνθα μὲν ἤματα πάντα τελεσφόρον εἰς ἐνιαυτὸν

ἥμεθα δαινύμενοι κρέα τ᾽ ἄσπετα καὶ μέθυ ἡδύ·

ἀλλ᾽ ὅτε δή ῥ᾽ ἐνιαυτὸς ἔην, περὶ δ᾽ ἔτραπον ὧραι

μηνῶν φθινόντων, περὶ δ᾽ ἤματα μακρὰ τελέσθη,470

καὶ τότε μ᾽ ἐκκαλέσαντες ἔφαν ἐρίηρες ἑταῖροι·

‘δαιμόνι᾽, ἤδη νῦν μιμνήσκεο πατρίδος αἴης,

εἴ τοι θέσφατόν ἐστι σαωθῆναι καὶ ἱκέσθαι

οἶκον ἐς ὑψόροφον καὶ σὴν ἐς πατρίδα γαῖαν.’

Eurylochus fails to persuade them to leave. Circe welcomes them all, and Odysseus and his men remain with Circe for a whole year.

Odysseus persuades the crew left behind at the ships to head to Circe’s house—all except Eurylochus, who asks what seem like reasonable questions: Why would they want to go to Circe’s house, where she will turn them all into pigs, wolves, and lions, prisoners like their friends? Do they want to suffer what happened to the men who died in the Cyclops’s cave, destroyed by Odysseus’s recklessness? This insubordination is too much for Odysseus, who contemplates decapitating Eurylochus:

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ὣς ἔφατ᾽, αὐτὰρ ἐγώ γε μετὰ φρεσὶ μερμήριξα,
σπασσάμενος τανύηκες ἄορ παχέος παρὰ μηροῦ,
τῷ οἱ ἀποπλήξας κεφαλὴν οὖδάσδε πελάσσαι,
καὶ πηῷ περ ἐόντι μάλα σχεδόν: ἀλλά μ᾽ ἑταῖροι
μειλιχίοις ἐπέεσσιν ἐρήτυον ἄλλοθεν ἄλλος:

So he spoke, but I pondered in my mind
as I drew my sharp sword from beside my thigh,
whether to chop off his head and throw it on the ground,
even though he was a close relative; but my companions
restrained me, one after the other, with soft words.

Odyssey 10.438–42

The hero’s violent impulse is somewhat startling amid the rejoicing, and we wonder what Homer is up to. We recall a similar moment of decision in Book 9, when Odysseus contemplates killing the sleeping Polyphemus (Od. 9.299–306). There, the hero decides to hold back without prompting from his companions, a decision that shows him in his role as master strategist, foregoing the immediate pleasure of punishing the monster to serve his larger purposes as a leader of the crew. Here, the emotion he must overcome is apparently more personal, rage at Eurylochus for daring to oppose him. The difference is slight, but instructive. The Cyclops episode aims us toward the triumph of μῆτις, put in the service of both the captain and his men; the encounter with Circe gives a glimpse of the potential conflict between what Odysseus demands and the welfare of the group, something that last appeared appear in the final scene of the Greeks’ escape from Polyphemus.

The emergence of Eurylochus as the representative of the crew’s anxieties focuses our attention on a fundamental problem inherent in the Greeks’ ideas about masculinity, the potential danger for the community in the hero’s power: if trained on the community’s enemies, no force is more welcome; but if the hero’s desire for glory and the good of the group are in conflict, nothing could be more threatening. We might suppose that Achilles in the Iliad is the most extreme example of the destructive (and self-destructive) force of Greek masculine heroism. But that poem is persistently focused on the trade-offs between individual glory and the good of the community and ends with a glimpse at what might have been if the latter had prevailed. No such softening occurs in the Odyssey or its hero. Odysseus remains, as we have said, the hardest, most unrelenting example of heroic masculinity of Greek literature.

The chaos in Ithaka as the Odyssey opens is the dark specter that drives the rhetoric of the poem. Nothing good can happen until the vacuum in male leadership is filled by a worthy king, preferably Odysseus or if he is dead, a mature version of Telemachus. Right order must be restored, and no sacrifice is too great to achieve that goal, including the death of every single crewman, very single suitor and the maids who slept with them. Until the slaughter of the suitors, the dynamic between the hero and his community in the Odyssey is on display almost entirely in the relationship between Odysseus and his men, where we often see the captain’s will overriding the good of the crew, always to their detriment. By the time Odysseus reaches the island of Scheria, he is alone.

Viewed from this perspective, the figure of Eurylochus offers a fleeting glance at what is honored at the end of the Iliad. He becomes a kind of double for Odysseus, the version of the hero that would have hung back in fear for the lives of the crew and avoided exploring the Cyclops’s island and the lair of Circe. Perhaps that captain would have lacked the requisite cunning and boldness to get even himself back home alive, but we might also imagine more than one Greek sailor returning safely to Ithaka. But the Odyssey is not the kind of story, and the weight of the poem’s rhetoric pushes us to scorn caution in the service of the hero’s survival. That his first impulse is to kill Eurylochus for urging second thoughts seems to us somewhat extreme but not out of the question shows how thoroughly we have accepted the poem’s assumptions about means and ends.

The Greeks head back to Circe’s house and a joyous reunion with their comrades, now back in human form. The witch, having washed, clothed, and fed them, speaks in the voice of Siduri, the woman who keeps a tavern on the edge of the Waters of Death in Epic of Gilgamesh: no more grieving; they have suffered much on their journey, time now to take care of themselves; eat, drink, and pursue pleasure while they can. At this point, Homer signals that any threat that Circe might have posed for Odysseus and his crew is gone. The men allow themselves to be bathed by women, always potentially perilous for a man in the Odyssey, and then feast happily with a witch, which leads to eternal captivity in many folktales. It is a measure of how far Odysseus has strayed from his characteristic heroic vigilance that after a year of partying the crew must urge him to push on: Has he forgotten his homeland? That the hero has been willing to delay his quest for Ithaka this long underscores the persistent duality in his character, one part centripetal, always pushing toward home, and one part centrifugal, reaching for new knowledge and experience as a bulwark against the numbing effects of oblivion.

The remainder of the Circe episode shows the witch as a benign ally of the Greeks, helping them prepare for his frightening trip to the land of the dead. During this idyllic interlude, the island of the witch has offered the hero and his crew respite from the unrelenting danger that has surrounded them since they left Troy. The rigid self-control modeled by Odysseus is not for the moment necessary. They may weep, eat and drink, sleep in their beds. For the captain, this luxurious emotional expressiveness also takes the form of sex with the witch, we suppose. Curiously, the place that Aiaia most resembles in this moment is, as we have said, the idealized Ithaka Odysseus has been struggling toward all along, safe, and comfortable, with a supportive, loving woman at its center. There will be much more suffering and loss before he arrives.

 

Further Reading

Van Nortwick, T. 2008. Imagining Men: Ideals of Masculinity in Ancient Greek Culture, 1–15. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.

 

429  μοι: dative of possession (with ἑταίρους).

431  δειλοί: “wretches”

431  ἴμεν: 1st pl. > εἶμι.

431  ἱμείρετε: the verb takes a genitive.

432  καταβήμεναι: "namely, to go down into...," aor. infin. > καταβαίνω, acting as an object of ἱμείρετε, in apposition to τούτων.

432  ἥ κεν … ποιήσεται: “who will make,” with object and predicate accusatives. ποιήσεται could be a future indicative (Monro 326; Smyth 1793) or a short-vowel subjunctive (Monro 80) in a relative clause of purpose (Monro 304; Smyth 2554c).

432  ἅπαντας: “us all.”

434  οἵ κεν … φυλάσσοιμεν: “who could guard,” “to guard,” relative clause of purpose (Monro 304; Smyth 2554c).

434  οἱ: “for her,” dative of interest.

434  καὶ ἀνάγκῃ: “even by force.”

435  οἱ: “his,” dative of possession.

436  σὺν δ᾽: “along with them.”

436  εἵπετ(ο): impf. > ἕπομαι.

437  τούτου … ἀτασθαλίῃσιν: “because of the recklessness of this man,” dative of cause.

438  μερμήριξα: “I had half a mind to,” with the complementary infinitive πελάσσαι.

439–40  σπασσάμενος ... / ... ἀποτμήξας: notice the lack of connective (“and”) between the two participles; this is called “asyndeton,” and is common in “rapid and lively descriptions” (Smyth 2166).

440  τῷ: “with it” (i.e., the sword), dative of means.

440  οἱ: “his,” dative of possession with κεφαλήν.

440  ἀποτμήξας: aor. ptc. > ἀποτμήγω, “to cut off.”

440  οὖδάσδε: “to the ground.” -δε is an enclitic that attaches to a noun (hence the two accents on the word).

440  πελάσσαι: “to bring it” (i.e., Eurylochus’s head), aor. infin., complementing μερμήριξα.

441  καὶ πηῷ περ ἐόντι μάλα σχεδόν: “even though he was a very close kinsman.”

441  πηῷ … ἐόντι: dat; agrees with the dative of possession οἱ in line 440. Eurylochus was married to Odysseus’s sister.

442: ἄλλοθεν ἄλλος: “on all sides.”

443  τοῦτον: Eurylochus.

443  ἐάσομεν: 1st pl. fut. > ἐάω, “to allow.”

444  αὐτοῦ: “here.”

444  μένειν … ἔρυσθαι: complementary infinitives with ἐάσομεν.

444  ἔρυσθαι: “to guard” > ἐρύομαι, mid. > ἐρύω.

445  ἡγεμόνευ(ε): “lead,” imperat., followed by the dative.

446  ἀνήϊον: 3rd pl. impf. > ἄνειμι, see εἶμι.

447  λέλειπτο: “was left,” 3rd sing. plupf. pass. > λείπω, translated as simple past (Smyth 1946, 1952).

449  τόφρα: “meanwhile.”

450  λοῦσέν: unaugmented aor. > λούω.

450  λίπ(α) ἐλαίῳ: "generously with oil," "with a generous amount of oil," a frequent formula in Homer (see 10.364).

451  a repetition of line 365.

451  ἀμφὶ: “around the men,” “around them.”

453  φράσσαντό: “perceived (each other),” 3rd pl. aor. mid. > φράζω; see LSJ φράζω II.4.

453  ἐσάντα: “face to face.”

454  κλαῖον: unaugmented impf. >κλαίω.

458  ὅσ(α): “how many,” neut. acc. pl.

458  πάθετ(ο): unaugmented aor. > πάσχω.

459  ὅσ(α) … ἐδηλήσαντ(ο): “how much harm … have done.” ὅσα is an internal (cognate) accusative (Monro 132; Smyth 1573).

461  εἰς ὅ: “until.”

461  κεν … λάβητε: general temporal clause (κεν / ἄν + subj.).

462  οἷον ὅτε: “such as when,” “of the sort (you had) when….” The antecedent of οἷον is θυμόν.

464  αἰὲν: “always.”

464  μεμνημένοι: ptc. > μιμνήσκω; takes a genitive.

464  οὐδέ ποθ᾽: “(there is) never.”

465  πέποσθε: 2nd pl. pf. mid. > πάσχω. For the "2nd pf." form, see Smyth 705.

466  ἡμῖν: dative of possession with θυμός.

467  τελεσφόρον εἰς ἐνιαυτὸν: “for a full year.”

469  ἔην: ἦν.

469  περὶ … ἔτραπον: “came around again,” “turned,” 3rd pl. aor., tmesis > περιτρέπω.

470  μηνῶν φθινόντων: genitive absolute.

470  περὶ … τελέσθη: “were brought to an end,” 3rd sing. aor. pass., tmesis > περιτελέω;  singular verb with neuter plural subject. This line (with πόλλ᾽ ἐτελέσθη for μακρὰ τελέσθη) appears in Hesiod’s Theogony, line 69. It is omitted in some MS(S). of the Odyssey, and may be an interpolation from Hesiod.

472  μιμνήσκεο: imperat., with genitive.

473  σαωθῆναι: aor. pass. infin. ( > σώζω, “to save”)

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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/ro/homer-odyssey/x-428-474