A Guide to the Odyssey: A Commentary on the English Translation of Robert Fitzgerald (18 page)

293
one in a thousand
is Fitzgerald’s invention. Homer is more optimistic, repeating the word (“rare” or “few”) he had used in the preceding line [276, 277].

306
barley meal:
These provisions, with grain as the main staple, are more like the regular diet of Homer’s contemporaries than the vast quantities of meat he describes as being consumed at banquets. Contrast the sobriety of these provisions with line II.317.

322
the way you used to:
Antínoös and the other suitors are taking note of the fact that the son of their absent and unwilling host is not the easily manipulated boy he once was (see II.329–30).

333
This is not the cleverest of things for Telémakhos to say. Although he has already shown a capacity to prevaricate, Telémakhos
is not yet up to his father’s ability to dissemble consistently, nor will he ever equal his father in cunning.
341,349
Note that the next two speakers are nameless. Both suitors are sarcastic, the first more biting in his mockery, the second almost blasé.

357
Telémakhos:
Homer says merely, “He, however …” [337], leaving the listener to understand who is meant.

359ff
. Despite the years of consumption by the suitors, Odysseus’ wealth is still great, guarded as it is by Eurýkleia, the one true servant of the household.

360
oil:
Olive oil, in the ancient as in the modern Mediterranean world richly prized. Indeed, after Homer’s time Athens attributed its name to Athena’s gift of the olive to the then unnamed settlement.

361–65, 372–75
Even the wine can provide an occasion for a thought of the absent Odysseus.

388–89
Lord Odysseus
…: Eurýkleia, too, speaks, when it suits her argument, as if she believes Odysseus is surely dead, although we have just learned that she keeps a special urn reserved against his homecoming.

405ff
. That Athena so rapidly dons another disguise, of Telémakhos no less, and the way she so swiftly musters a crew and begs a ship of Noêrnon make for a particularly charming and witty passage. Her assistance every step of the way permits a magical ending to
Book II
.

405
Meanwhile
is a modern device to permit the author and reader to jump backwards in time and to view a second action as simultaneous with one already narrated. Homer usually presents simultaneous events serially. It does seem likely that Athena went about her business while Telémakhos went about his, but it is an important facet of Homeric narrative that this simultaneity is not insisted upon. We simply are presented with another action, and neither poet nor audience seems overconcerned with accounting for units of time on the narrative microlevel.

In the Greek, both logical and temporal connections are conveyed by means of a rich system of grammatical particles, used by Homer singly and in multiple combinations. They are often impossible to translate “literally,” but without them, Homer’s narrative web would unravel.

413
That Athena drags the beached ship to the shore herself is of course unusual. It would otherwise have required a number of crew members, whose arrival on board is postponed until after Athena has procured the ship and done much of the outfitting on her own. This postponement constitutes the only deviation that this instance of ship launching exhibits when compared with the “typical scene” of Homeric ship launching.

The fullest standard pattern, constructed by collating and combining all comparable moments in the text, comprises nine stages. Here in
Book II
we have the first such scene in
The Odyssey
, and, likely for that reason, Homer, who in a number of the later instances abbreviates the scene (IV.831ff.; VIII.52ff.; -XI.1ff.; XIII.22ff.; XV.254ff.; 351ff.; also
Iliad
I.478ff.) produces a particularly expansive treatment here. The nine stages of launching are (1) crew selection (here II.407–9); (2) the crew makes its way to the ship (416, postponed as noted above); (3) the beached ship is drawn down to the sea (413); (4) the ship is readied for the voyage (414); (5) the ship is “moored in the harbor” (415); (6) the ship is provisioned (435–40); (7) passengers and crew board the ship (441–42); (8) “the mooring ropes are loosed” (443–44); (9) a favorable wind blows and the voyage begins (445–55). (The above closely follows the summary provided by West in HWH 1.153 [on II.382ff].)

417–23
Homer has Athena make the suitors drunk and drowsy. We might ask: why not have her kill them and restore Odysseus and order to Ithaka? The Homeric gods do not work that way. They hinder or assist, often at crucial moments, but (as the saying has it) they help those most who help themselves, augmenting each individual’s own talents and tendencies. Here we might note
that the suitors apparently did a pretty good job of getting soused on their own, and Athena’s assistance must have been incremental at best.

426
A particularly “lofty” line in Greek, including one sesquipedalian (i.e., seven-syllabled) word as well as one of five and another of four syllables [300].

434
now strong in the magic:
The Greek speaks of “the divine force of Telémakhos” [409], although the contexts in which it and comparable formulae appear do not seem as a rule to emphasize either divinity or strength. Presumably the idea is that the hero so described is either now or generally charismatic.

444
benches
seems to make sense, and the term [
klêisi
, 419] was long so understood, but we also have here the same “tholepins” that Homer and Fitzgerald give us at VIII.41. Tholepins are “hook-shaped fittings to which the oars were attached for rowing by leather loops” (West, HWH I.156).

449–55
Homer (and Fitzgerald) knew and loved the workings of sailing ships and sailors, as this vivid, detailed, and technically accurate account indicates. The exacting precision of Homer’s imagination and diction, precision without pedantry, is a hallmark of his style and one of the touchstones of his excellence.

1–2
The sun rose:
As in the jump from
Book I
to
Book II
, here we have a contrast between “through the night” (II.461) and the rising sun.

6
Pylos town:
There has been much debate about the exact location of Nestor’s Pylos. While there were several sites of that name, archeological finds have established that there was a major Mycenaean palace at Epano Englianos, just over ten miles north of the site in Messenia (in the southwest corner of the Peloponnèse), known in Classical times as Pylos. This seems most likely to have been the palace that at some point in the tradition before Homer had caused the name “Pylos” (“Pu-ro” in the Linear B tablets found there) to enter poetry (see illustration 2). Homer’s geographical notions are not to be judged by modern standards of accuracy, so it matters neither that it would probably have taken longer to sail to the beach nearest Pylos from Ithaka (if we can be certain where that was) than the single night that divides Books II and III in
The Odyssey
nor that it would have taken
considerably longer to walk from the shore to the Mycenaean palace of Pylos than III.457ff. suggests. Homer would not have visited the site, and, even if he had, it is doubtful he could have seen much, since the great palace had been destroyed by a fire about 1200
B.C.E
., long before his day. In short, at least for
The Odyssey
itself, any resemblances between the Homeric Pylos and the Mycenaean Pylos are purely accidental.
7
Neleus: See 36, below.

9
the blue-maned god who makes the islands tremble:
This is Poseidon, god of the sea, and of course the prime thwarter among the gods of Odysseus’ return. The link between Pylos and Poseidon is likely of old standing in the epic tradition: “In the Linear B tablets from Epano Englianos Poseidon is the most important divinity” (West, HWH I.160 [on III.6]).

13
The smoke from the burning fat rises for the gods. It seems likely, although it remains a point of debate among scholars, that some or all of the worshipers ate the meat after sufficient smoke had “sated” the divinity. The sacrifice of eighty-one bulls is impressive even by Homeric standards, indicating primarily the piety but also the relative affluence of Pylos.

22
so we may broach the storehouse of his mind:
Instead of “mind,” Homer has Athena use the same word for “wily cunning” [
mêtis
, 18] that is so frequently used to characterize Odysseus.

26–29
Telémakhos is acutely aware of his youth and inexperience; the absence of his father forces him to approach Nestor betimes.

32–33
I should say
…: Neither Homer nor Athena tires of their little joke, and, presumably, Homer’s audience didn’t either.

36
The first picture of Nestor, seated among his sons, emblematizes the ideal. Here and frequently after Nestor is described with the patronymic “son of Neleus.” The sixth-century Athenian tyrant Peisístratos, under whom some sort of Athenian edition of the Homeric poems seems to have been made (though the importance of the so-called Peisístratean recension is debated by scholars),
claimed descent from the Neleids. Clearly a devotee of Homer, he would have taken particular pleasure in seeing a forebear of the same name presented here as a noble youth.

45–55
Observing proprieties, Peisístratos not only addresses Mentor, the older of the two guests (as he himself explains), first, but also asks the two to participate in the ceremony before seeking to learn their identities.

53
on whom all men depend:
Literally, “all humans have need of the gods.” This sentiment defines the Greek conception of all those who can be regarded as human.

59
at some length:
Or “earnestly.”

60–68
There is an obvious charm to Athena praying to Poseidon (60–66), particularly since he is the major obstacle to her achieving her aim (see the council of the gods at the opening of
Book I
, at 42ff.); the narrator underlines the irony in lines 67–68.

65–66
third
Athena cleverly lets her hosts know with whom they are dealing and with great cunning virtually binds them in advance to agree to what they will be asked by including this hope in her public prayer.

75–76
To have waited until after the guests had eaten to ask these questions is yet another sign of Nestor’s excellent manners and observation of protocol.

79–81
corsairs
is an inspired choice, for “pirate” has too negative a connotation. The career of “privateer” or professional raider has been regarded in many cultures and over many centuries as a viable if not entirely respectable option; indeed, “corsairs” have been lionized from the ancient Greek novels to Byron, from Sir Francis Drake to John Paul Jones. Nestor himself refers to sailing for pillage below (114). To the argument that this was a time of war we might respond that the intense competition for goods around the Mediterranean amounted to a virtually constant state of war through much of the second and first millennia
B.C.E
. and, indeed, for many centuries after. We may well ask if it has ceased yet.

89–90
Though very subtle, this distinction between public and private business is a reminder of what is rotten in the state of Ithaka: were all things as they should be, the affairs of Odysseus’ household would be of public concern.

94–99
Telémakhos and his family are suffering the uncertainty that all the loved ones of people missing in action undergo.

111–217
Nestor was noted for the loquacity to which this speech gives ample testimony.

117–20
Note the increasing weight as Nestor goes through this minicatalog: two heroes each receive one half line, one hero receives one line, and finally one hero—Nestor’s son—receives tribute of two whole lines, exactly as in the Greek [109–12]. This structure is called
crescendo;
when there are three elements, it is called
tricolon crescendo
(see XI.294–95, below). It is a frequent building block of units ranging from single lines to full episodes.

122–25
Gould any mortal man
…: On the one hand, it is a commonplace to convey the immensity of something by claiming it can’t be related in speech (the
inexpressibility topos
) and is thus utterly traditional; on the other hand, if we posit one organizing talent as creator of
The Odyssey
, it is hard not to see this as a witty and ironic self-reference. The irony would increase if the poet of
The Odyssey
were also the singer of
The Iliad
. (On the likelihood of both hypotheses, see Introduction, pp. xxxiii—xlii.) If we put the emphasis on “the whole story,” this might be a jab at those poets who attempted to do just that. The creator or creators of both
The Iliad
and
The Odyssey
understood the value of selectivity and structure, and later classicizing critics (e.g., Aristotle, Horace) praised Homer and castigated the cyclic poets for just this; the most severe judgment on the latter is of course the fact that their creations survive only in the most meager of fragments and précis.