Homer - The Odyssey - Episode 3 - Odysseus And The Cyclops Don’t See Eye To Eye!

Homer - The Odyssey - Episode 3 - Odysseus And The Cyclops Don't See Eye To Eye!

 

I’m Christy Shriver, and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.   

 

And I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  This is our third episode covering Homer’s Odyssey, and Christy, are we finally getting to Odysseus this week?  

 

Yes- We finally meet our title character- it was an odyssey. Pun pun-  

 

Oh my- here we go…. 

 

I know, and we get to see wordplay this week as well- although word play through translation is not exactly the same but the Greeks did a lot of it, and not just in the Odyssey, so it’s nice to get just a little taste. 

 

How interesting. 

 

I know, it really is.  Homer, even though writing in verse that has meter, does not rhyme, but he does use word play- which may or may not be called a pun- but it does play around with the meaning and sounds of different words.   

 

In episode 1 we discussed a lot of the historical context both of the period in which the story is set, but also of the mysterious writer, the supposed blind bard, we have always called Homer.   I did notice we do finally get to mee the blind bard of the Odyssey, the one the ancients think might be based on our poet, but I’m not sure I would have even paid much attention to that character if we hadn’t talked about Demodocus being the model for Homer, previously.   

 

No, I agree.  I wouldn’t have either.  It’s kind of an interesting literary concept, at one point there is a bard telling a story about a bard telling a story and then there’s the story- so a story within a story within a story- talk about complicated.   

 

Yeah- let’s just move on.  In episode 2, we discussed Telemachus and his coming of age story that we call the Telemachy- or books 1-4.  In that portion of the story, we learned that swarms of suitors have overrun the family home back in Ithaca while Odysseus is away.  Telemachus’ mother, Odysseus’s wife, Penelope is being pressured to pick one of these suitors to be her husband, an act which would give the selected suitor a claim to be king or chieftain of Ithaca, perhaps even a contested heir to her fortune, leaving Telemachus’ life in extreme danger.  We saw that Penelope tricked the suitors by claiming she would marry one of them after she weaved a funeral shroud for her father-in-law, Laertes.  During the day she would weave, but at night she would unravel her work.  For three years this worked until one of her ladies’ maids gave her up.  It is at this point that we enter the story of Telemachus.  Athena visits him, first in the shape of an old friend of Odyssseus’, Mentes,  but then into another man named Mentor.  She encourages Telemachus to take charge of his own future- to go out in the world and try to find out what has happened to his father by visiting his father’s old war buddies.  Telemachus listens to Athena and visits two places: Pylos and Sparta.  Here he learns very little, honestly, about what happened to his father, but what we do see is Telemachus coming into his own.  We see his confidence and sense of self develop to the point that he seems quite a different person as he journeys back home ready to confront the very dangerous challenge of taking control over his own home or really retaking a kingdom that has been taken away from him. 

 

Yes- and today we will see where Odysseus has been this whole time.  The goal today is to get through book 9, maybe start book ten, which is kind of a chronological boomerang really.  We start book 5 twenty years after Odysseus has left home.  Calypso is forced to release him which she does.   Poseidon is outraged and reacts.  Garry let’s read Poseidon’s response. 

 

“I’ll give that man his swamping fill of trouble!” With that he rammed the clouds together- both hands clutching his trident- churned the waves into chaos, whipping all the gales from every quarter, shrouding over in thunderheads the earth and sea at once- and night swept down from the sky- East and South Winds clashed and the raging West and North, spring from the heavens, roiled heaving breakers up- and Odysseus’ knees quaked, his spirit too; numb with fear he spoke to his own great heart: “Wretched man- what becomes of me now, at last? 

 

 And of course the answer is- you’re not to die yet.  The gods will see to it.   He is shipwrecked and then found naked on the beach by Nausicaa, the daughter of King Alcinous ruler of the incredibly gracious and skilled Phaeacian’s.    And of course, it is through these people, we see an incredible example of what the Greeks call Xenia and basically how Homer defines what it means in this world to be a good person. In the Homeric world, or perhaps the ancient Greek world, if we can generalize, what makes a person good or bad is not the same as we think of today. So, Garry, just to get us started, as a concept, what is Xenia. 

 

Well, it’s a concept of hospitality that is an extremely complex and developed social  institution in the ancient Greek world.  If we break the word down- the word xenos- that word means both guest-friend or guest-stranger.  If you think of the word xenophobia- it means you have fear or hatred of strangers.  So xenia is how you receive or treat strangers in your community, your oikos, your household.   Well executed xenia solidified relationships between peoples; it created alliances, and could often be the difference between life and death.  It was also religious- one of Zeus’ names is Zeus Xenios because he was the god that embodied a moral obligation to be hospitable to foreigners or strangers.   

 

 And it’s that moral element that is so central to so much of what we should understand about why things happen the way they do in the Homeric world.  In Homer’s world, hospitality drives morality.  It is in the hosting, receiving, gift-giving and relationship building that is pushing forward the movement in the world.  It’s what gets you in favor or in trouble with the gods.  If you are a good host and/or good guest, you are a good person.  If you are a bad host/ bad guest, you are a bad person.  To me it really seems to be that simple.  The moral code that determines your place is life is not based on the ten commandments or something like that- it is not based on lying, or stealing or even murdering- things that we use to define morality. If you think about it, all three of those things Odysseus does all the time and is even admired for how well he does them.  The gods are proud that he is cunning.  He brags about sacking villages.  The climax of the book involves broadscale murder (there’s a slight spoiler, if you are 3000 years behind the times and don’t know the ending).  There is definitely no morality around sex at all.  The definition of who you are as a person is very dependent on something else and that something else is what the ancient’s called xenia- this concept of being a good host and being a good guest.  Garry, from our standpoint today, that seems weird.  We don’t value hospitality in this way at all, and on the other side, we look poorly on people who are pirates, liars, thieves, or adulterers.  

 

True- and it is a very interesting way of thinking about things- and something we should think about.  Of course, obviously and I know you weren’t being exclusionary, but there are other values emphasized in Homer’s epics- respect for the gods, being a wise and moderate person, not to mention, you are supposed to avenge the death of family members, that is also part of the moral code, but your point cannot be overstated more- the importance of hospitality is essential to success in life, and there are very good and obviously practical reasons for this.   

 

Just to clarify what we’re talking about- even before we get to book five, we’ve seen examples of this in every chapter of the epic already.  Telemachus was a good host to Mentes. Nestor and Menelaus were amazing hosts to Telemachus ,and now Alcinious is even more gracious then the other two and in fact brings Odysseus home, even though it will cost him dearly, as we’ll see at the end.   

 

True, but the concept of Xenia is not just inherent in Greek culture.  It was important in other cultures in other parts of the ancient world as well.  If you want an example that you might be familiar with from this time period and if you familiar with Biblical text we see similar things in the book of Genesis in the Bible. Abraham is very concerned about being a good host as well as a good guest and we see various interactions of him being a guest when he wanders around Canaan.  And just as the gods in the Odyssey punish and murder those who do not respect the rules of hospitality, there is a perspective to suggest that the Hebrew God of the Bible also punishes those who do not respect the rules of hospitality- just look at Sodom and Gomorrah and how the destruction of that town is set up by the abuse of guests in the community.  How you receive strangers very much defines your humanity in many cultures and has for a long time.  This idea of morality being connected to hospitality is very ancient and deeply embedded in various ancient cultures.   

 

Well, in the Odyssey there are at least 12 hospitality scenes of all kinds. We see examples of bad hospitality as well as examples of good hospitality- In book five, we see both juxtaposed against each other almost back to back.  In Polyphemus the Cyclopes- we see almost a perfect example of a bad host.   But he isn’t the first character in the book to violate the rules of Xenia- for that we don’t need to look further than book one and the suitors.  Those guys are clearly terrible guests, terrible humans and we don’t feel a bit sorry for them when they get what’s coming in the end.  But before we get t here, let’s start with the concept of xenia itself.  What is this idea of being a host which is so central to the story?  How should we understand it in terms of culture so we can then extrapolate cross-culturally?  Why is hospitality important to the degree that it is a motif in almost every book of this epic.  In fact, it’s a type scene.  

 

A type-scene.  That’s a new term.  Christy, what’s a type scene? 

 

A type scene is a scene that you see over and over again.  It’s kind of like a pattern.  But you become familiar with it to the point that you can recognize differences in how different people practice the same pattern or the same type, so to speak. For example, in the Iliad, how a person puts on his armour is a type scene- it happens over and over and you can see the pattern with the differences.  Holding sacrifices is another type-scene- it happens all the time.  There are many kinds of type-scenes at the disposal of the bard, he uses them to set up the story. We don’t have time to feature all of them, obviously, but I want to talk about hospitality because it’s so relevant to what the Odyssey is all about, in my view.   Like I said before, in the Odyssey there are at least 12 hospitality scenes.  So, that’s a lot of emphasis- it sets off the plot in chapter 1, it creates complications throughout, and in some ways how we can watch Odysseus evolve as a character.  We watch him develop as we watch him reveal who his is in these various interactions with his different hosts.  So back to this idea of gift-giving and hospitality.  What are your thoughts- just in general? 

 

Well, first of all, let’s recognize that we are in an ancient world consisting of mostly isolated islands.  There are no hotels, no restaurants, and not even any money.  The Chinese are given credit in being the first to come up with money, but that wasn’t until around 770 BCE.  So, just in that regard, you can see how important relationships would be just on a survival level.  Bartering, obviously did exist. But, in general, if a person is going to travel, he will have to rely on mercy from other people to survive, and of course that’s how ancient societies worked.  Again, a parallel example of ancient text would be the stories of the Old Testament in the Bible, if you recall.  People went into the lands of others and threw themselves at the mercies of those rulers.  So in some sense, the idea of emphasizing hospitality on a macro-scale makes sense- I’ll host you if you’ll host me.  But that doesn’t answer the second question, why all these gifts?  You would think that the one giving the gift would be the one being hosted.  He/or she after all is the one being fed, being clothed.  You would also think that if you were a rat of a human, and so many of us are rats, you could just go around and exploit person after person.  And notice, and you can see this through the many scenes of hospitality, you are supposed to feed and bathe a guest BEFORE you even ask their name or their business.  THAT was the ethics of the tradition.  So, the question, is why give gifts?   

 

Well, of course, I don’t know, but the obvious first pass guess, again, maybe is the idea of reciprocity.  I am going to host you today knowing that one day that balance of power may shift and I may need your hospitality.  I’ll give you a good gift, so that one day you will give me a good gift- that sort of thing.  Except, as I say that out loud, it does fail the say out loud test.  After going through the Christmas season, if you are a person who practices gift-giving, you know there are always those people that shaft you.  How many of us have been in situations where we drew names, and you’re supposed to buy a gift for the person that you get their name and spend a certain dollar amount.  Well, we all know that person or persons who will shaft whoever they draw.  They will justify it by saying to themselves, “Well, the original price was the money limit, I just got it on sale and they’ll never know.”- which of course is bogus because we always know.   But sometimes people don’t bother even doing that.  They may just shaft you because there is nothing anyone is going to do about it at a holiday party.  That sort of thing.  I can’t imagine the Greeks not having those schumcks- well, we know they have those schmucks- they’ve moved into Penelope’s house in book one.  So, I guess I’ll ask you- why give gifts?  I can see how it would make a society a better and kinder place, but I can’t see how and why it works.  It seems to go against human nature. 

 

True- Of course the first reason is it makes you a good person and it pleases the gods- and we want to be good people and we all want to please the gods.  We just do.  Even those of us who unfortunately find ourselves incarcerated for terrible things we’ve done to other people, will likely NOT EVER want to give up the idea that we are good people.  We want others to see that in us, and we want the gods to see that in us.  And of course, we see that idea here- the gods will reward generosity and hospitality.   

 

Which brings us to Alcinous’ daughter- she truly is depicted at being a wonderful human being.  She’s brave and she’s generous.  Let’s read where Odysseus approaches her and begs for mercy. 

 

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But of course, as we can clearly see here.  Naussicaa, the princess, is an exceptional person.  Not very many of us are as wonderful as this girl, so I don’t think reciprocity fully explains the concept of gift giving.  Of course, I don’t know for sure, but one perspective  to consider here is in watching the balance of power.  Remember, primitive societies didn’t have InterPol, or the United Nations, or anything like that, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t still have complex systems of interacting. When you show up on someone’s shore, the smart thing for the person on the shore to do is to kill you at the get go- and in fact, that’s what happened a lot.   Man, after all is a warring being, and societies historically war. And that is where I see the value of gifts.  The currency of today and the currency of the ancient world in one sense is the same- fame, reputation, power, glory, status- isn’t that what people buy with their money- a higher place on the hierarchy?   Today, we literally BUY it with money.  We can and do buy VIP seating, VIP lounges, private planes, exclusive clubs, name brands and for what?  These things showcase that we are more important than other people- our social rank- no matter how egalitarian we claim to be.  In the ancient world just as today, greatness is defined by reputation, fame, glory- and how that happens is by giving and getting.  It’s builds reputation.  If we look at what actually happens in this particular story what I notice is that for one- These tokens matter economically.  And this particular family, which is described as being a cunning family, are good at amassing wealthy by being recipients of great gifts.  We certainly see it in Odysseus.  But we also see it in Telemachus who actually negotiates his gifts, but and even Penelope is very smart in collecting gifts and building her own wealth.   But let’s look at it from the other side of things.  What the giver gets in exchange is also of great value.  The giver of each gift is sending with the recipient a signal to everyone who sees the gift a message of his great reputation.  Everyone is reminded that King Menelaus is great every time he sees an artifact that came from his kingdom.  Everyone is reminded not to mess with a man as grand as can afford to give away something as great as this gifr or that gift.  But the giver is also building personal indebtedness that can extend multi-generationally.  We saw that when Telemachus visited his fathers’ friends.  This networking extends reputation and gift exchange is also a tool with  which hierarchy is established.   

 

Well, in the case of King Alcinous, he had a tremendous reputation for greatness and was, and I quote, “obeyed like a god”.   We could talk quite a bit about this banquet  King Alcinous and Queen Arete threw in honor of their guest:  the recognition scene, the games, etc.  but I want to jump ahead to the cyclopes- which is just fun to read.  And of course, it brings up one of the reasons why this book is so popular.  It’s readable at every level.  We can read it for some psychological or anthropological understanding of humanity, but it’s also just as fun and worthy to read the gory description of a dude poking out another dude’s only eye.  So, jumping straight to book 9, the bard, in book eight, has been telling Odysseus’ story but now Alcinous is making Odysseus tell his own story and finally Odysseus confesses his identity.   

 

I am Odysseus, son of Laertes, known to the world for every kind of craft- my fame has reached the skies.  Sunny Ithaca is my home.  Atop her stands our seamark, Mount Neriton’s leafy ridges shimmering in the wind.  

 

 And on he goes describing his homeland.  The first story he tells is about him sacking and plundering Cicones- sacking the city, killing the men.  By our standards, its sheer pirating, but it’s not a shameful story in this context.  The shame came at the end when his stupid men got drunk and allowed the Cicones to get them back.  He says “out of each ship, six men-at-arms were killed.”  So, there’s the example of how a lot of these interactions between peoples go- people warring against invaders.  But after the Cicones, he gets to the Lotus eaters. 

 

The Lotus eaters’ story is famous too, and I love how the Percy Jackson movie portrayed the Lotus eaters as being a casino in Las Vegas, and the men just kind of losing track of time as so many have in those corridors that connect the Pallazzo to the Venetian or Bally’s to Paris.   

 

I agree- Las Vegas is perfect.  The passage about the lotus eaters is a short passage especially for how well known it is, let’s remember those famous Lotus Eaters. 

 

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You know, I’ve heard this passage described as people high on drugs, but we may be too quick to go the route of mental incapacity.  When the men go back to their boat, they are aware that they are being forced to leave, and they even cry about it.  It’s not their perceptions that are impaired; it’s their will that’s impaired.  The bedazzling experience of the present has totally obliterated any sense of time as well as any concern about other experiences in the future.  It’s a metaphor for a lot of things beyond drugs that have this effect- although drugs definitely unfortunately do this in the extreme.   

 

Ha!  I would say so- can we say tik tok!!  You know, our good friend, Cristiana, the other day got on tiktok, and let me say she’s my age, so we’re not talking about a child.  Anyway, her complaint about it was that she spent an hour drifting through video after video.  She was entertained for sure, but after an hour she looked up and realized could not tell you one thing that she had seen.  The videos were too short to even stick in her short term memory.  She was annoyed because she couldn’t account for the time- she remarked that she literally had nothing to show for it- it went the way of the lotus eaters. 

 

Ha!  So true- I guess Instagram and Facebook aren’t much better,  but let me ask you this- is that an example of good xenia or bad xenia?  

 

HA!  Well, I think of it as just a little sidebar until we get to the big xenia story-  the story of the Cyclopes-  

 

A couple of things to notice as we compare the story of Polyphemus as host to the story about King Alcinous and Queen Arete and their reception of Odysseus.  With the Phaeacians, we see a positive example of what it means to be a good person.  We see a great and confident leader who has built a good community.  Homer is going to juxtapose that with this community that does not work well.  We are going to see what it means to be bad- a bad person, a bad leader and live in a bad society.  Remember when I said that a type-scene is a scene where you recognize a pattern.  Well, the pattern to receive a guest has been established a bunch of times already starting in book one now through book 8.  And Polyphemus does everything absolutely wrong.  He’s the very opposite of a good person, and the Cyclopes society is the opposite of a good society.  Besides the hospitality type-scene- we also have an assembly which is another type-scene.  We’ve had a bunch of assemblies already as well- remember when Telemachus called an assembly, they met and passed around the scepter and all that, well Polyphemus is going to try to call an assembly, but it doesn’t go well either because nothing these barbaric people do is worth anything.  They are awful in all ways. 

 

So, in a traditional hospitality scene- you’re supposed approach the visitor, welcome the visitor, seat and feed the visitor, offer the visitor a drink, then ask the visitor’s name, exchange information, entertain the visitor, allow the visitor to bath, then sleep, try to detain the visitor give the visitor a gift, make a sacrifice  to the gods and finally escort him to the next destination.  That’s exactly what we’ve already seen over and over again up to this point.  With that in mind, let’s look at how Polyphemus treats civilized life.  First of all, Polyphemus isn’t there at first, but when he gets there, before anything else, he asks them who they are.   

 

Let’s read it.  

 

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Stop after other men then read his response 

 

And of course they answer him, not by stating who they are but by saying who’ve they’ve been with and asking for a guest-guest.   

 

Which  didn’t go well. 

 

No- let’s read how it goes.  

 

P 220 

 

 

Instead of feeding the guests, he eats them.  It can’t get worse than that, but there are more oppositions, instead of the host offering the guests wine, Odysseus offers Polyphemus wine.  And instead of Odysseus revealing his identity, he conceals it- He tells Polyphemus his name is Nobody or No man depending how your book translate it- And of course Polyphemus  likes the wine so much he decides to give Odysseus or Nobody a guest gift, but the gift is terrible. 

 

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The scholars tell us that this scene actually has four examples of word play in the Greek, but the translation only comes across as one.  It’s kind of fun that it works.  But it is this word play that has interested so many and sets the primary complication for the ten years of Odysseus’ life. 

 

Odysseus manages to get Polyphemus drunk and he and his crew stab him in the eye, very infeasibly with a piece of wood they made out of embers (don’t try to explain that scientifically).  Let’s read it. 

 

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And of course, Odysseus gets away by being smart, patient, more cunning- the things that the gods reward.  Polyphemus is left to cry out to his father Poseidon- which of course in some ways is the correct idea, you are supposed to pray to the gods before your guests leave, but not like this.  And of course, finally Odyssey leaves not being escorted but by fleeing with his life as Polyphemus throws boulders at him.  Ironically, however,  Odysseus would have gotten away, and we wouldn’t have had a story except for the lines that Odysseus blurts out once he’s safely far enough away where he thinks he’s escaped. 

 

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He just can’t be a nobody.  He had to tell him who he was.  He wanted him to know.  And isn’t that what takes all of us on so many personal Odysseys.  We just can’t be a nobody.  We would lose something in our humanity like that.  It’s about identity.  That’s what we’re looking for in some sense.  It’s what the whole of life experience is about in many ways.  Who are we?  We are NOT a nobody- at least we hope we’re not- we hope to be a somebody to somebody.  How well Homer knows us.  

 

Indeed.  It’s an idea that we see Homer taking with us for the rest of the books.  Odysseus will reclaim his name.  He will define it. It’s what defines your home- the place where you are somebody.  But another point to make, and I don’t want to leave this discussion of uncivilized people without making mention of one other thing.  There is something very interesting to notice in Poseidon’s prayer.  You know, if I had been blinded, and I had a magical father with powers, I might pray for my eyesight back.  That would be the most helpful thing moving forward, at least you’d think.  But that’s not what Polyphemus does.  Let’s read it. 

 

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He’d rather have revenge than his own eyesight.   

 

Indeed- it’s fascinating to me- that when Homer wants to finish his description of what a pitiful example of a living breathing low-life is, what a totally uncivilized society looks like- he starts by saying it’s a group of people who do no work, produce nothing, have no assemblies, do not live well in community, but he ends it with a prayer to seek vengeance in a final breath.   

 

Ha!  I guess so. The worst of in us all played out- a bad person would rather hurt another person that move forward.   Well, off Odysseus goes.  He thinks he’s caught a break at the beginning of book 10.  He reaches the home of the god Aeolus- a giant floating island.  And this god receives him well- another hospitality scene.  They go through all the things, and he gets a great parting gift.  He gives him a sack of wind.  Aeolus binds the winds from all the corners of the earth except the West Wind that blows Odysseus all the way to Ithaca.  For Nine days he sails non stop.  He can see men tending fires on the beaches of his hometown.  He’s made it.  He can rest, but his men are greedy.  Right before they get there, while Odysseus is asleep, the shipmates open the bag wanting to sneak out treasure while Odysseus isn’t watching.  When they open the bag all the winds come out at once, and they get blown all the way back to King Aeolus.  Oops.  Odysseus asks him to put the winds back in the bag.  This time, Aeolus says, sorry but no.  Instead this is what he said- let’s read King Aeolus lines. 

 

, “Away from my island- fast- most cursed man alive! It’s a crime to host a man or speed him on his when the blessed deathless gods despise him so.  Crawling back like this-it proves the immortals hate you! Out- get out!’ 

 

And so off he goes- and I guess it’s time for us to head out as well.  Next episode we’ll pick up with Circe, and go through the rest of Odysseus’ wanderings.  I also want to talk a little bit about the role of women in the books, as we’ll meet a couple more.   

 

Sounds good.  So, we’ll call it a wrap for today.  Thanks for listening.  WE hope you’re enjoying our discussions as we work our way through this influential classic.  As always, we hope you will honor us by sharing an episode with a friend either by text email or word of mouth.  Please leave us a five star rating on your podcast app and of course visit us at howtolovelitpodcast.com, where we have plenty of instructional materials if you are a teacher or student.  Also, follow us on any or all of our social media: Instagram, facebook, linked in, and if you’d like to receive our monthly newsletter, please email Christy at [email protected]. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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