His conversations with dead heroes reflect the same anxiety. These women represent the theme of womanhood-some are faithful, some treacherous (unfaithfulness to the marriage bed receives much attention). In the underworld, Odysseus is first confronted with a great crowd of wives and daughters of princes, whom he interviews one by one, reflecting his anxiety for the purity and success of the household. These concerns can be characterized as follows: The other concerns, also very natural, are reflected not only in these questions, but also in his conversations with the other shades. Odysseus attempting to embrace the ghost of his mother in the Underworld, by Jan Styka, 1901Īnyone in Odysseus’ shoes would wonder if their aged parents were still living. What form of death overcame you, what laid you low, some long slow illness? Or did Artemis showering arrows come with her painless shafts and bring you down? Tell me of father, tell of the son I left behind: do my royal rights still lie in their safekeeping? Or does some stranger hold the throne by now because men think that I ’ll come home no more? Please, tell me about my wife, her turn of mind, her thoughts…still standing fast beside our son, still guarding our great estates, secure as ever now? Or has she wed some other countryman at last, the finest prince among them? ’ ( Odyssey XI.193-205) ‘But tell me about yourself and spare me nothing. The driving themes are laid out when he questions his mother in the underworld: These feelings are the material around which Odysseus builds his story. The story of the underworld can be seen as an expression of the hopes, fears, and doubts of a man who has been away from home for a very long time. Keep telling us your adventures-they are wonderful.” Odysseus is spinning a yarn to please a king from whom he has much to gain, and the King wants more.Īlcinous prompts Odysseus by asking if he saw any heroes in Hades: “But come now, tell me truly: your godlike comrades-did you see any heroes down in the House of Death, any who sailed with you and met their doom at Troy?” His host and benefactor has indicated a subject he would like to hear about, and Odysseus obliges in style, dropping a great many well-known names to help set the stage.īut if this is theater-if Odysseus is not relating something that “really” happened-what are we to make of this tale? For us in the palace now, it ’s hardly time for sleep. But King Alcinous urges him to continue: “The night ’s still young, I ’d say the night is endless. Odysseus pauses to suggest that it may be time to break off story-telling and go to sleep. Of all the stories Odysseus tells the Phaeacians, his account of the underworld is the only one to contain an interruption, emphasizing that this is a story being told to an audience. But did it “really” happen? Are we meant to believe that, within the horizon of the poem, Odysseus actually traveled to the underworld-or is he telling another tall tale? Just as the adventures described in Books 9-12 of the Odyssey are often the most-remembered episodes due to their fantastic character, so Odysseus ’ account of the underworld is one of his most striking. Lyons, Contributing Writer, Classical Wisdom
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