In Book 7 once again the women provide the action. Now Arete , the Queen of the Phaeacians, Nausicaa’s mother, and not the king, rules the roost: “White-armed Arete had noticed his fine clothes, the cloak and shirt she wove herself, with help from her slave girls. Her words flew out to him as if on wings. ‘Stranger, let me be first to speak to you.’”
Harold Bloom argued in his Book of J that the Yawhwist, an author he identified for some of the most famous parts in the early narrative of the Old Testament called the Pentateuch, was a woman.
He noted the complex and nuanced female characters like Eve, Sarah, and Rebecca; ironic treatment of male patriarchal figures like Abraham; and the distinct literary style.
The same reasoning could support that a woman authored the Odyssey.
We've discussed this “feminist” quality of the Odyssey and its style and voice that feels so distinct from the Iliad and more sophisticated, kind of modern. Athena, Penelope, Helen, Calypso, Nausicaa, and now Arete have driven the narrative and have complete agency.
There are also domestic details woven throughout the Odyssey.
On the other hand, Odysseus himself, the male lead, is treated with much irony. Supposedly such a clever guy who has gotten all his men killed and is completely reliant on and subservient to women, at least so far.
The hapless, awkward, and insecure Telemachus is also ironically portrayed. Kind of a parody of a Bildungsroman.
Not completely disagreeing… but don’t you see Telemachus as becoming less hapless and awkward as a result of his journey? Granted, he is guided by Athena, but at key moments he acts with tact and growing maturity.
I have been really surprised at how the female characters are really coming to the fore. I thought that Penelope's essential silence in the first part was going to be typical, but it hasn't been so. Interestingly Arete doesn't speak for a long time, even though Odysseus bows down to her first. The King does all the obligatory hospitality first. Her question, being keen-eyed for his clothing, is the only one that delivers a further expansion of his journey - the purpose of the book? - whereas the King doesn't actually get any real info, other than that Odysseus is a man not a God because his sufferings have been epic.
It was a very curious (to me) twist that, after daughter Nausicaa setting up Queen Arete (whose name means excellence or virtue) as being the powerful one with agency in the castle, it turns out that King Alcinous makes the big decisions.
There’s a line in the Fitzgerald translation that is hard to match. Wilson has 152-153 as “I miss my family. I have been gone so long it hurts.” In Fitzgerald: “My home and friends lie far. My life is pain.”
I find myself kind of preferring the more plain-spoken Wilson translation. I feel as if this translation would be the best one for young readers in middle school or high school.
Ahhh, a poignantly poetic ode to pain. Oddly, lovely. I agree with Lawrence - love Wilson's translation (!) - but my heart fluttered reading Fitzgerald's words.
I like that he spoke super carefully to avoid getting Nausicaa in trouble with her father when Dad complains, "... she should have brought you here to us herself ..."!
"With careful tact Odysseus replied, 'Your daughter is quite wonderful, great king.'
Yes, and considering it was necessary for Athena to put a mist around Odysseus before he got to the hall, shows the King wasn't all that wise. I suspect Nausicaa got her abilities from her mother!
It appears from Wilson’s map that the Phaeacians are from what is now Syria. That makes sense as I believe they had a wonderful ancient civilization. I’m actually amazed at how much Homer or whoever was carrying on the oral tradition knew about other lands which are now Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Sicily, etc. I guess there was travel mostly for trade or conquest, but the poems also serve as travelogues. Homer lays out how fearful most communities were of strangers (at least until they figure the travelers are under immortal protection).
I went to India recently, and had a tour of some buddhist caves with pillars that had been paid for by merchants a couple of thousand years ago. Some of these pillars were paid for by Greeks which really surprised me. Although, this was after the time of Alex and his Mycenaean conquests, I forget how the old world was more connected than I think it is!
One of the curses of Odysseus, in addition to a world hell-bent on testing and destroying him, is his charisma. Everyone mistakes him for an immortal. Everyone, including even perhaps Athena, falls a little bit in love with him eventually. He’s not in the magical kingdom for more than a night before King Alcinous, who has sworn to help him get home, offers to have him marry his daughter.
And the unfolding of Book 7 is masterful. We are given so much time to linger over the splendor of this world, to fall in love with it. When readers are finally surprised at the end when the king offers for Odysseus to remain there, the temptation of it becomes yet another obstacle to test him, and we get that viscerally, because maybe we’d like to stay there too. It’s not all raging seas and angry gods getting in his way.
I guess you can say that Calypso's island where he spent seven years out of his ten wilderness years, was also like an Eden. Yes, getting to the Phaeacians' island was somewhat traumatic and a bit touch and go there, but overall, his time 'returning' home hasn't been all bad.
Hello fellow readers: I studied Ancient Greek in college but remember very little vocabulary. However, I still have the text and a very good Homeric dictionary. If anyone is struggling to reconcile a few translations or wants to know how something appears in the original, I may be able to shed some light on it. I’d be glad to try.
Will happily defer if anyone is more knowledgeable!
Is there perhaps, a bit of irony "hidden" within women's actions throughout the story (thus far)? I was struck by the implicit elision between "slaves" and "women" generally: "fifty slave girls ... wove cloth and sat there spinning yarn with fingers quick as rustling popular leaves," juxtaposed with "the women there" (no distinction between slaves and Phaeacian women generally) [who] are "expert weavers, since Athena gave them fine minds and skills to make most lovely things; while "[w]hite-armed Arete ... noticed [Odysseus's] cloak and shirt she wove herself, with help from her slave girls."
On the one hand, "the old slave" Eurymedusa's caregiving is depicted as "oh-so-matter-of-fact"/something taken for granted: "She used to babysit young Nausiicaa, and now she lit her fire and cooked her meal." On the other hand, Arete, with all her "goddess-adjacent" honor, respect, and power, remains the "essential" caregiver for Alcinous: "Alcinous was sleeping in his room, beside his wife, who made their bed and shared it." The simplicity of this sentence and its absence of detail, juxtaposed with the detailed directive Arete "called" to "her attendants" to "put a bed out" for Odysseus: "lay fine purple blankets on it and spread covers and wooly quilts across the top," reflects (for me) a continuing elision between "servant/slave" and women broadly. Even, the "white-armed Arete" who is honored like a goddess, remains responsible for making her husband's bed, and sharing it. Not that there is anything wrong with this; I just felt a bit of ironic play with the realities of power, care, and love hidden within the narration of seemingly "ordinary" acts.
This is a really good observation and train of thought. Recently I've been reading some substacks about the fact that women still do most of the caregiving in families. Somebody remarked that men must be reminded that women are not "a born servant class." But the reason men see women that way now is that in ancient times, slavery and patriarchy were so deeply entertwined: in some sense, slaves were women and women were slaves. Women are easier to enslave than men, because once they have children (maybe fathered by their enslaver) it's harder for them to run away, and they start to have a kind of bond, however traumatic, with their enslaver.
As discussed elsewhere in this thread, the ancient world relied on female slaves for the very time-consuming work of making textiles by hand. The Greeks used a hand spindle, much slower than the treadle wheel or so called "Great Wheel" that handspinners can use now. They used a wide warp-weighted loom with no treadles, very time consuming to weave on, although capable of very wide widths.
Female slaves also ground grain by hand. I'm guessing they did a lot of the hard work of caring for babies and toddlers, in addition to hauling water for the household and heating it for baths. And, they could produce more slaves. Slaves did all the boring stuff that took a great deal of time out of your day. Sound familiar?
Orlando Patterson's book Freedom is a good book about, in part, the ancient world and slavery. Also see Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy, about the historical co-evolution of slavery and patriarchy.
Also, Graeber and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything. Here is a quote that relates to violence and caregiving, comparing Native Americans (the Wendat) to Europeans:
"Public torture, in seventeenth-century Europe, created searing, unforgettable spectacles of pain and suffering in order to convey the message that a system in which husbands could brutalize wives, and parents beat children, was ultimately a form of love. Wendat torture, in the same period of history, created searing, unforgettable spectacles of pain and suffering in order to make clear that no form of physical chastisement should ever be countenanced inside a community or household. Violence and care, in the Wendat case, were to be entirely separated. Seen in this light, the distinctive features of Wendat prisoner torture come into focus."
Patterson's and Lerner's scholarship complicated much of my thinking during my graduate studies. Opened my eyes to a whole new way of considering the world. Thanks for "The Dawn of Everything" reference!
The naming of two of the many slaves in Ch. 7 stood out to me. We get some back story for Eurymedusa, but for Pontonous, the wine boy, we are only given his orders delivered by the king. Still I thought it interesting that they were given individual names at all, when mostly we just get a quantity and gender. I wonder if it is a literary device to give the story an air of verisimilitude.
My memory of the poem is imperfect, so I don’t know what will come … but I’m feeling the shadow of hubris looming over this people who live in splendor and declare themselves beloved by the gods.
I’m also curious about these people who were introduced to in Book 6 as having been exiled from Hyperia, “the land of dancing,” because the Cyclopes “kept looting them” until they “could not hold out.”
The excellence ("arete"), peace, lack of suspicion, etc., of this island kingdom symbolize for me a kind of stasis that is antithetical to the engaged "complexity" of the human life and world of Odysseus. It's almost jarring when Alcinous declares he wishes Odysseus would stay and marry his daughter (and it echoes Calypso's attempts to lure him into a static deathless state)
I really like what SH mentioned about Odysseus now “taking control” of his own narrative, especially around lines 260-280 in this book. I keep remembering that this is from the oral tradition. As someone who stands in front of classrooms, the art of the dynamic “recap” is a necessary one!
But Odysseus’ summary also says something about his character and the aim of his speech. He speaks here of a night of sleep beneath the bushes with “heavy heart,” whereas at the end of Book 5, the narrator describes that same sleep beneath the olive and thorns as “happy.”
There’s a kind of Mr. Bojangles aspect to Odysseus’s repetitive performances about his sufferings and sorrow: a little song, a little dance, a little seltzer in my pants. Here in Book 7, I wonder if Athena's behavior (winking, skipping, teasing "Mr. Foreigner") might be aimed in part at bringing Odysseus to an awareness of this performative aspect of his behavior
It would seem only the commoners of Phaeacia have a tendency toward xenophobia, given that the first words out of Echeneus's mouth are to remind his king "you know it is not right to leave a stranger / sitting there on the floor beside the hearth /", followed by an embarrassment of generosity toward Odysseus. But, due to Nausicaa's warnings and Athena's magical mist, I suppose we'll never know.
I was confused about a minor detail: why is the cloth the slave girls are weaving in the palace dripping with oil? (others wove cloth and sat there spinning yarn, / with fingers quick as rustling poplar leaves, / and oil was dripping from the woven fabric (106-8) -- was this something to do with how they wove? Were they making some kind of ancient oil cloth?
According to a note in The Classical Review from 1937,
“In ancient Greece the yarn would probably be woven in the grey, or raw unboiled state, and so would be hard or harsh and difficult to work. Treating the weft yarn with oil would soften and lubricate the yarn, enabling a greater number of shots of weft to be inserted in an inch of cloth, and this would result in a closely woven linen. The pressure used in forcing the shot of weft home would tend to squeeze out the oil.”
I use oil to lubricate fibers for spinning, but I wash it out when the final weaving is done!
I doubt that the Greeks, especially queens, would spin raw wool. For one thing, this is not sanitary: wool has a lot of bacteria in it that can make you sick if you accidentally put your hand in your mouth after spinning raw wool. It's not that hard to wash fleece before spinning. I am guessing that they first washed the fleece, then oiled it for spinning, and then wove cloth with the threads while they were still oily. But after that, before wearing it, I would think they would wash the oil out, unless it was being used for sails. The Vikings had wool sails, but I don't know if the Greeks did.
Great article about the warp-weighted loom!
The Cambridge article seems to assume that the fibers were linen, but the text seems to imply that the fibers were wool. I can't think of a reason that you would oil linen for spinning or weaving. Spinners moisten linen fibers with water or spit while spinning. The warp and weft are kept damp while weaving, because there is less breakage that way.
EW’s note says “The oil may be from the fabric itself if it is wool, or perhaps the women are applying olive oil to the material to make the weaving easier.”
I really liked the image of Arete spinning her luxury purple fiber in front of a fire, with her back against a pillar. Kinda wish King Alcinous would do something too besides sit on his throne. He could be knitting socks, for example.
I thought it was kind of weird that King Alcinous immediately tried to get Odysseus to marry Nausicaa, before he even knows Odysseus' name! Ok, Odysseus looks like a god, but Odysseus points out that he is of "normal height." (Unlike the gods on the Parthenon frieze for example.)
Why is oil dripping from woven fabric? The only reason I can think of is that wool is sometimes lubricated with oil for spinning. In this case, there could be some oil dripping from the threads as they are spun. But from fabric? That seems kind of gross. Surely the Greeks washed the spinning oil out either before or after weaving.
I liked the image of Athena going "home" to Athens and the palace of Erechtheus. I read a book about the theory that the Parthenon friezes may be about King Erechtheus' sacrifice of his daughter to the gods; the book is called The Parthenon Enigma, by Joan Breton Connelly. (She is my classmate from college and she did a presentation for us on a Zoom meeting once about her work.) The theory makes a lot of sense to me, and it dovetails with what we know of human sacrifice (particularly of girls for some reason) from Homer.
PS: Old women still do all the hard work. RIP, Cecile Richards.
I was struck by Homer's description of Odysseus in line 169 as the "many-minded hero" when Alcinous raises him from the ashes. Can have a variety of meanings -- both positive and not so positive. Those who are comparing this translation to others: if you have a minute, I'd be curious as to how our hero is described by other translators.
This isn't about other translations, but: I keep wondering, how do the Greeks know when it's a god speaking to them in their head, or their own thoughts? Is this part of being "many-minded"? We all have a lot of conflicting "voices" in our heads, but nowadays we don't attribute any of them to gods, unless you're a schizophrenic. But how did Homer's people think about this?
I have heard Christians in my area say things like, "Oh, that thought you had was actually the Devil speaking." So I guess the idea of gods speaking into your head is not entirely dead.
In fact, I always say to these people, "How can you tell if it's an original idea of your own, or one that the Devil said?"
In fact the theory now seems to be that nobody's thoughts are ever really their own, and that we don't "invent" or "create" our thoughts, but they just sort of happen. This is part of the argument against free will sometimes. Maybe the Greeks were onto something. But sometimes they DO seem to think that they have thoughts that are their own, and some that are inspired by the gods.
Yes, I underlined that one, too, since it rhymes so well with Wilson's choice of "complicated man" in Book 1 line 1. I checked Fitzgerald and Fagles, and they respectively translate this line in Book 7 as "the great adventurer" and "seasoned, worldly-wise Odysseus". Clearly, Wilson's choice is far more provocative than these two and, having not read her introduction yet, gives another clue to how she views him, I think.
In Book 7 once again the women provide the action. Now Arete , the Queen of the Phaeacians, Nausicaa’s mother, and not the king, rules the roost: “White-armed Arete had noticed his fine clothes, the cloak and shirt she wove herself, with help from her slave girls. Her words flew out to him as if on wings. ‘Stranger, let me be first to speak to you.’”
Harold Bloom argued in his Book of J that the Yawhwist, an author he identified for some of the most famous parts in the early narrative of the Old Testament called the Pentateuch, was a woman.
He noted the complex and nuanced female characters like Eve, Sarah, and Rebecca; ironic treatment of male patriarchal figures like Abraham; and the distinct literary style.
The same reasoning could support that a woman authored the Odyssey.
We've discussed this “feminist” quality of the Odyssey and its style and voice that feels so distinct from the Iliad and more sophisticated, kind of modern. Athena, Penelope, Helen, Calypso, Nausicaa, and now Arete have driven the narrative and have complete agency.
There are also domestic details woven throughout the Odyssey.
On the other hand, Odysseus himself, the male lead, is treated with much irony. Supposedly such a clever guy who has gotten all his men killed and is completely reliant on and subservient to women, at least so far.
The hapless, awkward, and insecure Telemachus is also ironically portrayed. Kind of a parody of a Bildungsroman.
Not completely disagreeing… but don’t you see Telemachus as becoming less hapless and awkward as a result of his journey? Granted, he is guided by Athena, but at key moments he acts with tact and growing maturity.
Yes. He's kind of a parody of a Bildungsroman.
I have been really surprised at how the female characters are really coming to the fore. I thought that Penelope's essential silence in the first part was going to be typical, but it hasn't been so. Interestingly Arete doesn't speak for a long time, even though Odysseus bows down to her first. The King does all the obligatory hospitality first. Her question, being keen-eyed for his clothing, is the only one that delivers a further expansion of his journey - the purpose of the book? - whereas the King doesn't actually get any real info, other than that Odysseus is a man not a God because his sufferings have been epic.
It was a very curious (to me) twist that, after daughter Nausicaa setting up Queen Arete (whose name means excellence or virtue) as being the powerful one with agency in the castle, it turns out that King Alcinous makes the big decisions.
I agree. Also Athena, in disguise told him to greet the queen first and hug her knees etc but then…the action/power falls on the king.
“May I live out my final days in sight
of my own property and slaves and home.”
Oh dear, Penelope and Telemachus don’t seem to be much of a priority in Odysseus’s longing, lumped in with all-purpose ‘home’ at best.
Oh dear, indeed. I too, was struck by the "ordering" of Odysseus's "priorities."
I can kind of relate to that. It's a farmer's perspective.
I agree. That jumped out at me too.
There’s a line in the Fitzgerald translation that is hard to match. Wilson has 152-153 as “I miss my family. I have been gone so long it hurts.” In Fitzgerald: “My home and friends lie far. My life is pain.”
I love Wilson’s translation, but I sometimes remember the high poetic expression of Fitzgerald and miss it.
I find myself kind of preferring the more plain-spoken Wilson translation. I feel as if this translation would be the best one for young readers in middle school or high school.
Ahhh, a poignantly poetic ode to pain. Oddly, lovely. I agree with Lawrence - love Wilson's translation (!) - but my heart fluttered reading Fitzgerald's words.
It’s in perfect iambic meter.
Are you reading along with both translations?
No … just comparing from time to time.
Following on from my question yesterday, it feels like Odysseus's manner of speaking acts as an epithet for him -
Odysseus with careful calculation, said ...
Planning his words with careful skill, he answered...
With careful tact Odysseus replied ...
Evidently a wily fellow.
I like that he spoke super carefully to avoid getting Nausicaa in trouble with her father when Dad complains, "... she should have brought you here to us herself ..."!
"With careful tact Odysseus replied, 'Your daughter is quite wonderful, great king.'
I agree.
Yes, and considering it was necessary for Athena to put a mist around Odysseus before he got to the hall, shows the King wasn't all that wise. I suspect Nausicaa got her abilities from her mother!
It appears from Wilson’s map that the Phaeacians are from what is now Syria. That makes sense as I believe they had a wonderful ancient civilization. I’m actually amazed at how much Homer or whoever was carrying on the oral tradition knew about other lands which are now Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Sicily, etc. I guess there was travel mostly for trade or conquest, but the poems also serve as travelogues. Homer lays out how fearful most communities were of strangers (at least until they figure the travelers are under immortal protection).
I went to India recently, and had a tour of some buddhist caves with pillars that had been paid for by merchants a couple of thousand years ago. Some of these pillars were paid for by Greeks which really surprised me. Although, this was after the time of Alex and his Mycenaean conquests, I forget how the old world was more connected than I think it is!
Which caves were these, Rita?
Hill Fort Caves, a little drive out of Mumbai. Worth a peek if you're ever in the neighbourhood.
Sadly, the "fear of strangers" continues; it remains all too "normative" in today's world. Where is "immortal protection" when needed?
Are the Ethiopians mentioned, from today's Ethiopia?
One of the curses of Odysseus, in addition to a world hell-bent on testing and destroying him, is his charisma. Everyone mistakes him for an immortal. Everyone, including even perhaps Athena, falls a little bit in love with him eventually. He’s not in the magical kingdom for more than a night before King Alcinous, who has sworn to help him get home, offers to have him marry his daughter.
And the unfolding of Book 7 is masterful. We are given so much time to linger over the splendor of this world, to fall in love with it. When readers are finally surprised at the end when the king offers for Odysseus to remain there, the temptation of it becomes yet another obstacle to test him, and we get that viscerally, because maybe we’d like to stay there too. It’s not all raging seas and angry gods getting in his way.
I guess you can say that Calypso's island where he spent seven years out of his ten wilderness years, was also like an Eden. Yes, getting to the Phaeacians' island was somewhat traumatic and a bit touch and go there, but overall, his time 'returning' home hasn't been all bad.
You articulate so beautifully what drew me to this Book (and its masterful unfolding). Indeed, I was tempted to stay in this "magical kingdom."
Hello fellow readers: I studied Ancient Greek in college but remember very little vocabulary. However, I still have the text and a very good Homeric dictionary. If anyone is struggling to reconcile a few translations or wants to know how something appears in the original, I may be able to shed some light on it. I’d be glad to try.
Will happily defer if anyone is more knowledgeable!
On Perseus every word is clickable and leads to a dictionary and you can even view stats and what other works the term has appeared in! You can also load notes and translations. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0135%3Abook%3D8%3Acard%3D1
Wow! I’ll check it out! Thanks
Is there perhaps, a bit of irony "hidden" within women's actions throughout the story (thus far)? I was struck by the implicit elision between "slaves" and "women" generally: "fifty slave girls ... wove cloth and sat there spinning yarn with fingers quick as rustling popular leaves," juxtaposed with "the women there" (no distinction between slaves and Phaeacian women generally) [who] are "expert weavers, since Athena gave them fine minds and skills to make most lovely things; while "[w]hite-armed Arete ... noticed [Odysseus's] cloak and shirt she wove herself, with help from her slave girls."
On the one hand, "the old slave" Eurymedusa's caregiving is depicted as "oh-so-matter-of-fact"/something taken for granted: "She used to babysit young Nausiicaa, and now she lit her fire and cooked her meal." On the other hand, Arete, with all her "goddess-adjacent" honor, respect, and power, remains the "essential" caregiver for Alcinous: "Alcinous was sleeping in his room, beside his wife, who made their bed and shared it." The simplicity of this sentence and its absence of detail, juxtaposed with the detailed directive Arete "called" to "her attendants" to "put a bed out" for Odysseus: "lay fine purple blankets on it and spread covers and wooly quilts across the top," reflects (for me) a continuing elision between "servant/slave" and women broadly. Even, the "white-armed Arete" who is honored like a goddess, remains responsible for making her husband's bed, and sharing it. Not that there is anything wrong with this; I just felt a bit of ironic play with the realities of power, care, and love hidden within the narration of seemingly "ordinary" acts.
This is a really good observation and train of thought. Recently I've been reading some substacks about the fact that women still do most of the caregiving in families. Somebody remarked that men must be reminded that women are not "a born servant class." But the reason men see women that way now is that in ancient times, slavery and patriarchy were so deeply entertwined: in some sense, slaves were women and women were slaves. Women are easier to enslave than men, because once they have children (maybe fathered by their enslaver) it's harder for them to run away, and they start to have a kind of bond, however traumatic, with their enslaver.
As discussed elsewhere in this thread, the ancient world relied on female slaves for the very time-consuming work of making textiles by hand. The Greeks used a hand spindle, much slower than the treadle wheel or so called "Great Wheel" that handspinners can use now. They used a wide warp-weighted loom with no treadles, very time consuming to weave on, although capable of very wide widths.
Female slaves also ground grain by hand. I'm guessing they did a lot of the hard work of caring for babies and toddlers, in addition to hauling water for the household and heating it for baths. And, they could produce more slaves. Slaves did all the boring stuff that took a great deal of time out of your day. Sound familiar?
Orlando Patterson's book Freedom is a good book about, in part, the ancient world and slavery. Also see Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy, about the historical co-evolution of slavery and patriarchy.
Also, Graeber and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything. Here is a quote that relates to violence and caregiving, comparing Native Americans (the Wendat) to Europeans:
"Public torture, in seventeenth-century Europe, created searing, unforgettable spectacles of pain and suffering in order to convey the message that a system in which husbands could brutalize wives, and parents beat children, was ultimately a form of love. Wendat torture, in the same period of history, created searing, unforgettable spectacles of pain and suffering in order to make clear that no form of physical chastisement should ever be countenanced inside a community or household. Violence and care, in the Wendat case, were to be entirely separated. Seen in this light, the distinctive features of Wendat prisoner torture come into focus."
Patterson's and Lerner's scholarship complicated much of my thinking during my graduate studies. Opened my eyes to a whole new way of considering the world. Thanks for "The Dawn of Everything" reference!
The naming of two of the many slaves in Ch. 7 stood out to me. We get some back story for Eurymedusa, but for Pontonous, the wine boy, we are only given his orders delivered by the king. Still I thought it interesting that they were given individual names at all, when mostly we just get a quantity and gender. I wonder if it is a literary device to give the story an air of verisimilitude.
My memory of the poem is imperfect, so I don’t know what will come … but I’m feeling the shadow of hubris looming over this people who live in splendor and declare themselves beloved by the gods.
I’m also curious about these people who were introduced to in Book 6 as having been exiled from Hyperia, “the land of dancing,” because the Cyclopes “kept looting them” until they “could not hold out.”
Yes, there are so many contradictions in this book - will need to start gathering them.
I'm sad that the land of dancing had to be vacated and apparently no longer exists.
I agree. I’d like to live in the land of dancing.
The excellence ("arete"), peace, lack of suspicion, etc., of this island kingdom symbolize for me a kind of stasis that is antithetical to the engaged "complexity" of the human life and world of Odysseus. It's almost jarring when Alcinous declares he wishes Odysseus would stay and marry his daughter (and it echoes Calypso's attempts to lure him into a static deathless state)
That’s a great observation!
I really like what SH mentioned about Odysseus now “taking control” of his own narrative, especially around lines 260-280 in this book. I keep remembering that this is from the oral tradition. As someone who stands in front of classrooms, the art of the dynamic “recap” is a necessary one!
But Odysseus’ summary also says something about his character and the aim of his speech. He speaks here of a night of sleep beneath the bushes with “heavy heart,” whereas at the end of Book 5, the narrator describes that same sleep beneath the olive and thorns as “happy.”
There’s a kind of Mr. Bojangles aspect to Odysseus’s repetitive performances about his sufferings and sorrow: a little song, a little dance, a little seltzer in my pants. Here in Book 7, I wonder if Athena's behavior (winking, skipping, teasing "Mr. Foreigner") might be aimed in part at bringing Odysseus to an awareness of this performative aspect of his behavior
Nice to see poor old imperfect god, Hephaestus, toiling away in his flaming volcanic forge, get a mention.
It would seem only the commoners of Phaeacia have a tendency toward xenophobia, given that the first words out of Echeneus's mouth are to remind his king "you know it is not right to leave a stranger / sitting there on the floor beside the hearth /", followed by an embarrassment of generosity toward Odysseus. But, due to Nausicaa's warnings and Athena's magical mist, I suppose we'll never know.
I was confused about a minor detail: why is the cloth the slave girls are weaving in the palace dripping with oil? (others wove cloth and sat there spinning yarn, / with fingers quick as rustling poplar leaves, / and oil was dripping from the woven fabric (106-8) -- was this something to do with how they wove? Were they making some kind of ancient oil cloth?
According to a note in The Classical Review from 1937,
“In ancient Greece the yarn would probably be woven in the grey, or raw unboiled state, and so would be hard or harsh and difficult to work. Treating the weft yarn with oil would soften and lubricate the yarn, enabling a greater number of shots of weft to be inserted in an inch of cloth, and this would result in a closely woven linen. The pressure used in forcing the shot of weft home would tend to squeeze out the oil.”
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/classical-review/article/abs/use-of-oil-in-weaving/71D3F11F2A23041A79604332A47C0CCC
I lost the morning to a rabbit hole about weaving, but if anyone else is interested, here’s a great article:
Picturing Homeric Weaving, by Susan T Edmunds
https://chs.harvard.edu/susan-t-edmunds-picturing-homeric-weaving/
I wondered about the oil too. Thank you for doing the research so that I got to find out!
Agree!
I use oil to lubricate fibers for spinning, but I wash it out when the final weaving is done!
I doubt that the Greeks, especially queens, would spin raw wool. For one thing, this is not sanitary: wool has a lot of bacteria in it that can make you sick if you accidentally put your hand in your mouth after spinning raw wool. It's not that hard to wash fleece before spinning. I am guessing that they first washed the fleece, then oiled it for spinning, and then wove cloth with the threads while they were still oily. But after that, before wearing it, I would think they would wash the oil out, unless it was being used for sails. The Vikings had wool sails, but I don't know if the Greeks did.
Great article about the warp-weighted loom!
The Cambridge article seems to assume that the fibers were linen, but the text seems to imply that the fibers were wool. I can't think of a reason that you would oil linen for spinning or weaving. Spinners moisten linen fibers with water or spit while spinning. The warp and weft are kept damp while weaving, because there is less breakage that way.
EW’s note says “The oil may be from the fabric itself if it is wool, or perhaps the women are applying olive oil to the material to make the weaving easier.”
love losing the morning to a rabbit hole, and this one is super interesting!
I really liked the image of Arete spinning her luxury purple fiber in front of a fire, with her back against a pillar. Kinda wish King Alcinous would do something too besides sit on his throne. He could be knitting socks, for example.
I thought it was kind of weird that King Alcinous immediately tried to get Odysseus to marry Nausicaa, before he even knows Odysseus' name! Ok, Odysseus looks like a god, but Odysseus points out that he is of "normal height." (Unlike the gods on the Parthenon frieze for example.)
Why is oil dripping from woven fabric? The only reason I can think of is that wool is sometimes lubricated with oil for spinning. In this case, there could be some oil dripping from the threads as they are spun. But from fabric? That seems kind of gross. Surely the Greeks washed the spinning oil out either before or after weaving.
I liked the image of Athena going "home" to Athens and the palace of Erechtheus. I read a book about the theory that the Parthenon friezes may be about King Erechtheus' sacrifice of his daughter to the gods; the book is called The Parthenon Enigma, by Joan Breton Connelly. (She is my classmate from college and she did a presentation for us on a Zoom meeting once about her work.) The theory makes a lot of sense to me, and it dovetails with what we know of human sacrifice (particularly of girls for some reason) from Homer.
PS: Old women still do all the hard work. RIP, Cecile Richards.
Yes, King Alcinous knitting socks - a satisfying image!
Purple of course.
And was the King assuming Odysseus wasn't already married or he just didn't care?
I was struck by Homer's description of Odysseus in line 169 as the "many-minded hero" when Alcinous raises him from the ashes. Can have a variety of meanings -- both positive and not so positive. Those who are comparing this translation to others: if you have a minute, I'd be curious as to how our hero is described by other translators.
This isn't about other translations, but: I keep wondering, how do the Greeks know when it's a god speaking to them in their head, or their own thoughts? Is this part of being "many-minded"? We all have a lot of conflicting "voices" in our heads, but nowadays we don't attribute any of them to gods, unless you're a schizophrenic. But how did Homer's people think about this?
I have heard Christians in my area say things like, "Oh, that thought you had was actually the Devil speaking." So I guess the idea of gods speaking into your head is not entirely dead.
In fact, I always say to these people, "How can you tell if it's an original idea of your own, or one that the Devil said?"
In fact the theory now seems to be that nobody's thoughts are ever really their own, and that we don't "invent" or "create" our thoughts, but they just sort of happen. This is part of the argument against free will sometimes. Maybe the Greeks were onto something. But sometimes they DO seem to think that they have thoughts that are their own, and some that are inspired by the gods.
Yes, I underlined that one, too, since it rhymes so well with Wilson's choice of "complicated man" in Book 1 line 1. I checked Fitzgerald and Fagles, and they respectively translate this line in Book 7 as "the great adventurer" and "seasoned, worldly-wise Odysseus". Clearly, Wilson's choice is far more provocative than these two and, having not read her introduction yet, gives another clue to how she views him, I think.
Thanks for checking. Such different translations -- three completely different meanings.
The description in Greek uses the word daiphrona which seems to mean prudent, wise. Phrone is related to thinking, considering.
Fagle's translation is closest to this. But Wilson's is much more interesting!