Books I-4: Telemachus Steps into Manhood

The first four books of the Odyssey, often called the Telemachy, focus on Telemachus taking his first steps as a man, at the prodding of the gods.

Telemachus asserts himself as the master of the house. Athena and his mother support him; the suitors do not.

Poem: Distaff and Spear

Telemachus asserts his rights in the assembly. The Assembly does not support him. He follows Athena’s lead and begins his journey.

Telemachus hears from Nestor how the fleet separated, when Nestor last saw Odysseus, how Aigisthos and Klytemnestra killed Agamemnon, and how Menelaus missed getting home in time to save Agamemnon or avenge him.

Poem: Aigisthos Prays

Telemachus hears about Menelaus and Helen delayed for years in Egypt. Helen tells how Odysseus used the horse to trick get into Troy. Menelaus describes fighting Proteus, a shape-shifting sea god, using the advice of a daughter of Proteus to finally get his ships home, and finds out that at that point Odysseus was on Calypso’s island, although he can’t be sure where he is now.

Books 5-8: Odysseus as Supplicant

Odysseus shows the proper behavior of a supplicant at Phaiakia, a land loved by Poseidon.

Hermes makes Calypso free Odysseus, but Odysseus still has to choose Penelope over Calypso. He ends up in the land of the Phaiakians, naked, half dead, his raft destroyed.

Odysseus becomes a supplicant to Nausikaa, who gives him food and a garment to wear. She, and then Athena in disguise, tell him how to present himself at court.

Queen Arete recognizes her own handiwork in the garment Odysseus is wearing.

The Phaiakians throw a feast. Odysseus distinguishes himself at the discus throw. The blind bard tells the story about the Trojan horse and the sack of Troy that makes Odysseus weep.

Books 9-12: Adventures of Odysseus

These books, sometimes including books 5 to 8, are often called the Apologoi, meaning stories.

Raiding the Kikones, and losing 6 men per ship when the crew disobeys Odysseus’s orders. Sparing the priest of Apollo and his family in return for strong wine and other gifts. Getting blown off course at the usual dangerous place at Malea, and ending up with the Lotus Eaters. Offering the Kikonian wine as a guest gift, and then later, using it to trick Polyphemus. Calling down the curse of Polyphemus when Odysseus identified himself.

The wind king, Aiolos, gives Odysseus a way to get home, but he doesn’t tell his crew what’s going on, and they don’t trust him after the incident with the Cyclops. The Lastrygonians, from the land of constant day, more giant cannibals, this time with two eyes, destroy eleven of their twelve ships. The one remaining ship ends up on Circe’s island, where Odysseus outwits her with advice from Hermes.

They sail to Cimmeria, the land of constant night, and Odysseus talks to Teiresias, and gets confirmation that they really have to be sure NOT to eat the kine of Helios when they get to Thrinakia, or the curse of Polyphemus will come to pass. Which still lets Odysseus get home, but with none of his men. Then he speaks to his mother, who tells him what’s going on at home with Penelope, and then sees the ghosts of many other famous women.

Odysseus breaks down and has to stop. Queen Arete convinces him to continue.

The ghost of Agamemnon tells Odysseus that Klytemnestra cooperated with Aigisthos to kill not just him, but all his men, like swine. The ghost of Achilles says that rather than “rule in the underworld” he’d rather be the hired hand of a poor farmer in the land of the living. He sees the ghosts of several other famous men.

The crew makes it through the sirens, then lose six men to Skylla horribly, make it past Charibdys and end up on Thrinakia. They know they’re not supposed to eat the kine, but the weather keeps them from sailing until they’re all out of food. Finally, they decide they’d rather drown than starve, and eat, and try to convince the gods to change their mind. It doesn’t work.

Poem: Loss of the Crew

Books 13-16: The Return

These books are often call the Nostos, homecoming or return. Sometimes they include some or all of books 17 to 20.

The Phaiakians deposit Odysseus, asleep, on the shores of Ithaka, which he doesn’t immediately recognize because Athena has covered it in mist. She presents herself as shepherd who looks like a prince; Odysseys acts as a supplicant and tells a story about needing to escape because he killed a man who tried to steal his loot from sacking Troy. Then Athena disguises Odysseus as a beggar and sends him to the swineherd, Eumaios.

Eumaios is a high status slave who is in charge of all the other swineherds, has his own place with his own house slave whom he bought himself, a spare set of clothes, and had hoped to be given a wife by the master of the house eventually. Odysseus tells a different story to the one he told Athena, this time claiming to be the son by a concubine of a rich man of Crete, who made his fortune as a raider and earned a high status wife before fighting at Troy. He ended up claiming to have just escaped from a Thesprotian ship that was supposed to take him to Doulikhion, but double-crossed him and meant to sell him as a slave. But Odysseus had been on Thesprotia before he left, meaning he had been alive, recently, very close to Ithaka.

Eumaios seems to think all of the story plausible, except for the part about the beggar having seen Odysseus. Eumaios is completely loyal to Odysseus and Penelope and hates the suitors.

Athena tells Telemachus it’s time to get back to Ithaka. He gets gifts from Menelaus and Helen, and Helen interprets a bird omen as meaning that his father will defeat the suitors. Telemachos then brings with him a supplicant seer, Theoklymenos, on the run from his kin for murder. When they land in Ithaka, he reads another omen in favor of the family of Odysseus. And we hear yet another story, this time told by Eumaios, of how he was kidnapped into slavery as a child by a Phoenician woman and sold to Odysseus’s father, who herself had been kidnapped into slavery and sold to the parents of Eumaios.

Telemachus meets first Eumaios, who has been like a father to him, and is greeted with some of the same words Penelope will use when he goes to tell his mother he’s back, and greets the beggar politely. He send Eumaios to tell his mother he’s back, and while he’s gone Athena removes the beggar disguise from Odysseus and father and son have an immensely moving reunion. Then, they beginning planning how to recover the household from the suitors.

Books 17-20: Testing

Odysseus witnesses the sacrilege of the suitors while Telemachus takes clear charge of the house. The suitors must clearly and knowingly disobey the man of the house and the law of xenia. Wily Penelope makes her contribution.

Telemachus gathers together men loyal to his father, then returns to the house and takes his place as the master of the house. He orders Antinoos to give the beggar alms. Odysseus then tests the suitors, once more giving them a chance to renounce their sacrilegious lack of xenia, and telling them exactly what will happen.

Odysseus fights Iros, another beggar, at the prodding of the suitors, who do this just for fun. They threaten the other beggar with horrible torture, that will end up happening to one of the slaves who takes the suitors’ side. The unfaithful slave women, who took the side of the suitors, laugh and mock both Penelope and the beggar. The only suitor kind to Odysseus is Amphinomos, whom he warns.

Poem: Doulikhion Mourns

By the time Penelope is able to speak to the beggar apart from the suitors, she has already been told by both her son and Theoklymenos that Odysseus is nearby, so she is primed to wonder if the beggar is Odysseus himself. The maids come out to clean up after the suitors leave, and mock the beggar, and are rebuked by Penelope. We can assume they are able to hear everything she and the beggar say. Penelope recognizes the description of Odysseus’s clothes and brooch in the story he makes up (just as Queen Arete recognized her own handiwork in the clothes Odysseus was wearing).

A woman still grinding grain through the night and into the morning because she’s too weak to keep up her share of the work caused by the suitors, calls on Zeus to strike them down. Everyone takes their places: Penelope preparing to get the bow, Telemachus, the loyal herdsmen. Theoklymenos warns the suitors one last time and leaves the room.

Books 21-24: Order Restored

Order is restored, justice is done, and the cycle of violence is broken.

Penelope suggests the test of the bow, which somehow doesn’t surprise the suitors. When they fail even to string the bow, Telemachus sends his mother and the women back to their rooms, and then insists the beggar be given a chance. He succeeds.

The suitors are trapped in the house with no range weapons; Odysseus is armed with bow and arrows, Telemachus and the herdsmen with spears and armor. Only two of the suitors even try to fight until all the arrows are gone.

Poem: Blinder than Polyphemus

Penelope slept through the battle and the executions. She suspected the beggar was Odysseus, and Eurykleia is sure of it. Now it must become real to her.

Poem / Lyrics: Is it Really Him?

Will the cycle of vengeance start all over again, with the parents of the suitors?

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Any film version of the Odyssey has to pick and choose what events to keep, which to abridge or drop altogether, and how to present difficult or alien concepts from the ancient world.

This one focuses on a warrior fighting to get back to his family, while they struggle to make it through while he’s away. Odysseus has to overcome his hubris, realizing that “I was only one man in the world, nothing more and nothing less.” Telemachus has to grow up from a boy to a man, and learn to control his temper. Penelope has to use her wits as she becomes more and more hemmed in, and endure.

The movies go in chronological order from the birth of Telemachus to the restoration of Odysseus and his family, and switch back and forth between the home front and wherever Odysseus is. It begins and ends with Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus all at home in Ithaca.

All at Home in Ithaca

Odysseus is running across Ithaca, carrying his bow, to where Penelope is in labor. “Take me home,” she says, which is not the estate but what looks like a peasant’s dwelling on the top of a hill overlooking the coast, which we will later find out is where Eumaeus, the herdsman, lives. She gives birth into the arms of her husband, who takes the infant, and introduces him to the kingdom of Ithaca, his inheritance. Agamemnon and Menelaus show up immediately and Odysseus gets a crew and ship together and leaves on the same day.

This is completely fiction, and not at all consistent with the culture of the time, but it is a good scene to quickly demonstrate the depth of their love, which is true to the Odyssey. We also meet Anticleia (mother of Odysseus), Eurycleia (wet nurse of both Odysseus and his son Telemachus), and Eumaeus (loyal herdsman).

Women’s Work in the Chieftain’s House

We see Penelope at home with Anticleia and Eurycleia and Eumaeus as Telemachus grows up. She is doing household tasks – pressing olives into oil, grinding grain – while Telemachus plays underfoot, with Eumaeus. It’s probably not the kind of work she would be doing – in the Odyssey, she weaves and directs clothing manufacture and has 50 maidservants – but it shows the kind of things women actually did. Brilliant.

This doesn’t look like a place that could host the 108 suitors that we are later told are entertained there. It looks more like a chieftain’s household. But that is consistent with the tension in the Odyssey between descriptions that look more like what Greece culture had devolved to by the time the Odyssey was written down, and the height of culture before the Bronze Age collapse, several centuries earlier.

Odysseus at Troy

Athena appears to Odysseus on the ship. Since he is fond of them, we are introduced to his men by name. The movie stresses how much Odysseus cares about his men, although the Odyssey itself doesn’t give us any of their names until after he’s lost eleven of his twelve ships. We never see him here with more than one ship.

Skip to the final year of the Trojan War. Achilles and Odysseus fight before the walls of the city, and Achilles kills Hector. Odysseus sees a toddler on the battlefield – an oblique reference to Astyanax, Hector’s son, without committing to any of the stories of who killed him (some blame Odysseus) or even whether he was killed at all.

When Achilles is slain, the Greeks want to surrender, but Odysseus comes up with the plan of the horse. After the Greeks prevail, and sack Troy, Odysseus brags to the gods, “I do not need you now. I can do anything.” Poseidon answers, “A man is nothing without the gods. You will not reach Ithaca.”

As with the scene of Odysseus with Penelope at the birth of Telemachus, this is made up. Poseidon is angry with Odysseus because he blinded his Cyclops son, Polyphemus. Odysseus never challenges the gods or blasphemes in the epic. This movie uses blasphemy against the gods as the reason for Poseidon’s enmity, and the lesson Odysseus must learn.

About Raiding and Slavery

Most, if not all, of the references to raiding are gone from this version, starting with Odysseus’s raid on the Cicones. In the epic, even when he’s hiding who he is, he doesn’t hide the fact that he himself is a raider, and has taken loot and women and children. Even Eumaeus, his faithful swineherd, is a slave who was stolen from his home and sold to Odysseus’s father. Raiding is normal and slavery is a fact of life that can happen to anyone.

Polyphemus Sins Against Xenia

We skip the Lotus Eaters and after wandering in the fog for months, end up on the land of the Cyclopes. Odysseus leaves some men with the ship, and takes the rest up to a cave dwelling, taking care to bring along very strong wine as a guest-gift. When the owner returns, they offer the guest-gift and ask for guest-friendship (xenia) in the name of Zeus. He introduces himself as Polyphemus, son of Poseidon, who does not give a fig for Zeus or xenia, showing he is uncivilized, and proves it by grabbing one of Odysseus’s men and eating him.

The rest plays out as in the Odyssey, but compresses everything from two days to one. In a touching addition, a crew member sacrifices himself for another by playing his flute to distract the blinded Polyphemus. The movie works to make us care about the crew members before they die.

They sail for more months until they get to the land of Aeolus, the god of the wind, who calls Poseidon a bully and likes Odysseus because he’s the first mortal to use his mind, which is consistent with Odysseus’s cleverness but is not in the Odyssey. He gives Odysseus a bag into which he has put all the winds that would take them the wrong way, and they head out for nine days of fair wind to Ithaca. Odysseus won’t tell his crew what’s in the bag until they get to Ithaca, and vows not to sleep until he and Penelope embrace in their bed. (In the Odyssey, he stays awake because he doesn’t trust his crew, who had disobeyed him during the raid on the Cicones.)

In Sight of Ithaca

A crushing scene. Odysseus falls asleep in sight of Ithaca and wakes when greed and curiosity drive his crew to open the bag. Penelope and Anticleia both feel the presence of Odysseus as he nears Ithaca, when suddenly a storm comes up. They look out to sea and see his ship blown from the island as he looks out on Ithaca.

Circe

We skip the Laestrygonians, where Odysseus would have lost eleven of his twelve ships. So when they are set down on the far side of the world on Circe’s island, having lost all their food and water, he is very angry with his crew instead of consoling his broken men after having lost most of their comrades, as he does in the Odyssey.

Circe is a sorceress, but instead of turning the men just into swine, they are turned into the various exotic animals that, in the epic, surround her. It seems to be played mostly for laughs, especially when Polites is turned into a wild boar. The men who remained by the ship are hungry, and he turns back into a man barely in time to avoid being butchered. Odysseus had gotten the better of Circe by following the advice Hermes gave him when he showed up.

Instead of staying for one year, the movie invents time sorcery. What seemed like five days of luxury turns out to have been five years, which Circe tells Odysseus is his own fault: he should have left as soon as he’d gotten his men back. As in the Odyssey, she tells him to go to the land of the dead.

Penelope Loses Anticleia, Telemachus Tries to String the Bow

Meanwhile, two made-up scenes illustrate realities from the Odyssey.

Telemachus, now a young teen, wants to use his father’s bow to go hunting. He can’t string it, so it stays locked away.

Anticleia can no longer hold out for her son, so she walks into the sea. In a very moving scene, Penelope tries in vain to stop her, saying, “You’re my mother, you’re my father, you’re my strength.”

The Underworld

Because most of what the trip to the underworld was about in the Odyssey is now irrelevant because of what has and will be omitted, this is almost unnecessary. But it does give Odysseus a chance to visit a very creepy underworld, get the directions to the straits of Scylla and Charybdis from Tiresias, and both be reassured of Penelope’s fidelity and be made aware of the siege on his house by the suitors.

The Suitors Show Up and the Weaving Begins

I love the way the home-front arc develops. Instead of showing Ithaca only after the suitors appear, we’ve seen Penelope raising her son and taking care of the household. After all, the weaving ruse only lasts for about four years.

Telemachus is 15 years old. Most of the other men have come back from Troy, but his father is still gone. When he sees there are visitors at home, he’s excited. Maybe Lord Antinous and Lord Eurymachus have news. But no, they’re just pests who want to marry his mother.

His excitement turns to disappointment and then anger. Brilliant.

The suitors act pretty much like everyone else portrays them. Telemachus and Eurycleia are furious. But so far this can still be read as a guest-friendship duty. Penelope tells the suitors she’ll choose one of them to marry when she’s finished her weaving, and then orders them to leave, since she has fulfilled her duties to guest-friendship by providing food and drink.

The movie is not as clear as the epic itself. The suitors claim that since she accepted their gifts, she must choose someone. That is not in the Odyssey at all. From this point on, they are violating the sacred duty of the guest to the host.

The Crew Dies and Calypso’s Island

We skip the sirens and the cattle of Helios and go right to Scylla and Charybdis. It’s a great way to kill off the rest of the crew, with awesome, horrific special effects; and they die heroically.

Odysseus ends up shipwrecked on the island of Calypso. It’s out in the middle of nowhere, which is correct, but in the Odyssey it is more like a lush Garden of Eden. This version doesn’t seem to have any plant life at all. But Calypso works on a loom herself, which is a nice way to mirror what Penelope is doing.

Odysseus has two more years (instead of the seven from the epic) with Calypso before Hermes comes to tell her Zeus is making her let Odysseus go. The movie does a good job of balancing sympathy for Calypso, who seems to really be fond of Odysseus, with his pining for Penelope.

Telemachus Stands up to the Suitors; Penelope’s Ruse Revealed

Melantho is attracted to one of the suitors, Eurymachus, and notices that Penelope is unraveling her weaving to make it take longer.

Telemachus tries to string his father’s bow again. Furious, he asks his mother, “What can I do?” Here, Penelope is the one who recommends that he call the Assembly, instead of Athena.

He calls the Assembly. Mentor, the keeper of the staff, gives it to Telemachus, who accuses the suitors of being shameless thieves. They claim that Penelope must choose a suitor, because she accepted their gifts. The elders agree.

In the Odyssey, it’s even worse. No elders agree with the suitors. The suitors simply say it’s not worth fighting about, and nobody will stand up to them. First Penelope, and now Telemachus, take every avenue to peacefully insist the law be followed, but without people who will spill blood for it, it will not happen.

Telemachus asks for a ship, and Eurymachus agrees, hoping he’ll never come back. Athena encourages Telemachus while he waits for his ship to be ready, and he heads for Sparta.

Eurymachus romances Melantho and she tells him Penelope’s secret for making the weaving take so long. Although Melantho welcomes the attention, Eurymachus is also untrustworthy and menacing.

In a very ominous scene, Eurymachus threatens Penelope. I was relieved when he “only” took her loom with the weaving, and broke and burned it in the central fire of the main room. It was even creepier than the Odyssey, where they just make her finish it.

Telemachus in Sparta

We skip Telemachus’s visit to Nestor, and head directly to Menelaus in Sparta, which we could have skipped as well. They probably just wanted to show Telemachus doing things away from Ithaca for a while. We don’t go inside the palace or talk to Helen. Menelaus just talks up his father, then tells him to go home and fight for what is his and his father’s.

Everyone Back on Ithaca

On his way from Calypso’s island, Odysseus is being tossed on the sea. Poseidon tells him he must understand that “without gods, man is nothing.” Then he washes up on the shores of the Phaeacians. The king recognizes who he is and puts him on a ship home. On the trip back, he realizes that “I was only one man in world, nothing more and nothing less.”

Most of this is made up. It’s just the usual lesson against hubris.

The Phaeacians put Odysseus on his way back to Ithaca, so he can reunite with his family and restore his house. We don’t need anything else from them, since their main purpose was to give us a master class on xenia while Odysseus told of his travels.

Odysseus wakes up on the shore of Ithaca and comes to the house of Eumaeus, who recognizes him at once. This is so wonderful! Eumaeus gets to play most of his role from the Odyssey, instead of being just “some servant.”

Telemachus returns to Ithaca, now with a beard, and also goes to Eumaeus. He hears Odysseus, and first disbelieves and then believes it is his father. Odysseus tells him, “Tell no one I have come, especially your mother.”

Athena wants to know why. “I need to know if her heart is still with me.” So Athena disguises him as a beggar, saying only Telemachus will see through the disguise, so he can find out.

Eurymachus sets up a fight between Telemachus and Antinous, now that he’s man, since he has a beard. They’re planning to goad Telemachus into attacking Antinous, who will then easily kill him. It almost works, but the beggar reminds him: “To be angry is easy!” and Telemachus drops his dagger. “Tell your mother you have conquered your anger.”

The fight is made up, but it’s not a bad way to dramatize Telemachus growing into manhood. In the Odyssey, it is more about accepting responsibility and finding his courage. But channeling his anger is part of it.

Penelope wants to see the beggar who saved her son. She thanks him, and says she will hold a contest the next day among the suitors with the bow of Odysseus to decide which one she will marry. The beggar understands her moving on, with her husband gone. But she doesn’t want to. She has to, because she promised Odysseus, before he left, that she would remarry when Telemachus had a beard. “This is the last sacrifice I can make for him.” That’s what Odysseus needed to hear. The beggar says that “he’ll come to defend you.”

What a brilliant way to condense the entire “testing Penelope” scene, even though the particular line about “the last sacrifice” is not in the Odyssey.

“Tomorrow I will take my world back.”

Eurycleia, Philoetius, and Eumaeus shut the doors. Odysseus wins the bow contest, then Athena makes him look like Odysseus again, instead of a beggar. Telemachus spears Antinous, while Odysseus kills suitors with his bow and arrows. Eurymachus offers to restore what they’ve taken – after all, they didn’t kill anyone. The proposal is laughable. There must be blood.

There are great scenes fighting what look like twenty or thirty suitors, and Telemachus is a badass, as he should be. Having learned to control his anger, he can unleash it on the right men at the right time for the right reason. Eumaeus and Philoetius also throw spears in the Odyssey, but in this film, they hold off the suitors’ servants by saying, “Your masters are not worth dying for.”

Melantho forces open the door to the women’s quarters just as Eurymachus is headed there, and Odysseus gets them both with one arrow. That was a great way to show the death of Melantho for modern audiences. When the slaughter is done and the room is cleansed, they send for Penelope.

Penelope and Odysseus meet by the living bed.

“You’re still the same,” he tells her.

“You’re still a liar,” she answers.

“You are my world,” he tells her.

A fictional, but fitting ending on one of the Odyssey’s themes: their love.

Buy Me a Coffee with a Book

If substack had a method for accepting one-time payments, I would use it. But I didn’t want to set up yet another payment method, as other folks have done with “Buy Me a Coffee.” Think of this book as a way to “Buy Me a Coffee” while getting something from me to hold in your hand. I think the paperback book is the main thing I’m offering, so I don’t really care about Amazon’s rules for the ebook.

You can actually get everything in the book, now including this review of the 1997 Odyssey mini-series with Armand Assante, here in my substack if you look for it.

You can get the ebook for free at Smashwords during their promotion in July 2026. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/2047205

You can get links to the paperbook (including Amazon) and other sources for the ebook here:

https://books2read.com/hearthhelm/

It’s an 88-page collection of the creative work I’ve embedded in over two years of essays inspired by my read-through of the Aeneid, the Iliad, and the Odyssey. Poetry, short fiction, my paraphrases of key sections from each epic.

Or if you’d rather not go through 24 posts on the Aeneid, 21 posts on the Iliad, and 24 posts on the Odyssey to find the 8 creative works from each included in “Hearth and Helm: Voices from the Epics”, you can still support me, and save money by getting the ebook version.

https://books2read.com/hearthhelm/

(So far, since I’m not putting all those posts behind a paywall, Amazon doesn’t allow me to sell this collection in digital form. The Amazon Kindle link only lets you order the print version.)

This is what I was originally talking about calling “In the Shadow of Troy.”

From the Aeneid section

Aeneas turns back to the flames of burning Troy, searching desperately for Creusa after losing her on the way to the rendezvous. Dido succumbs to cursed love and bitter abandonment, missing Aeneas’s unspoken answer. A skilled slave mother struggles to stay with her nursing twins after frightened women burn some of their ships. And a father shares hard-won wisdom with his son, before leaving him to return to the field: “Learn virtue and true toil from me-fortune from others.”

From the Iliad section

When Agamemnon appropriates Briseis, the wrath of Achilles spreads devastation through ordinary lives. A soldier and his once-captive wife confront their own painful echoes of the spoils of war. Hector removes his helmet to bid farewell to Andromache and their infant son as a father, then dons it again for battle. Ordinary sons of herdsmen and shepherds fall in the brutal grind of combat. In the end, Achilles reminds us: Die Must We All.

From the Odyssey section

Odysseus’s crew perishes on the wine-dark sea, caught between starvation and divine wrath. The suitors discover too late the cost of arrogance, while the land mourns one of them who tried to do right. Telemachus arms beside his father with sword and spear as they reclaim their house. Penelope tests the beggar’s identity with wary hope: Is It Really Him? A man is nothing without the gods-or the family waiting at the end of the long road.

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Information about Cloak and Stola

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One such pottery shard, dated to sometime between AD 1 and AD 199, was from a man named Rustius Barbarus, a baker, to a man named Pompeius.

Myos Hormos was the northern most major port on western shore of the Red sea during when Rustius Barbarus wrote. It supported a brisk trade between Egypt, India and East Africa. Not surprisingly, there was a Roman garrison at Myos Hormos. This garrison provided for 50-100 Roman soldiers [not necessarily citizens; possibly auxillia] and in the civilian community, there were warehouses, shops, and … a bakery.

According to https://papyri.info/ddbdp/c.ep.lat;;73 the subjects of the pottery shard are:

“private letter; from Rustius Barbarus to Pompeius; exchange of letters and merchandise; upcoming marriage” [my translation from the German2]

To my brother, Pompey.

This shard is being kept with the recipient, in the settlement in that desert area of Egypt. It’s something like a bill of lading. Pompey isn’t actually his brother. We know this because another bill of lading refers to him as being as close as a twin brother born from the same womb. A friend, not a brother, but as close as a brother. Someone he addresses as a brother.

Did you get the bread? Why haven’t you written back to let me know?

Then follows a list of recipients and quantities.

The names are in Latinized, but only Popilius has a Roman gens, and he, just like Rustius, could be a freedman, or a freeborn man descended from a freedman. The name Dutupori looks Celtic (Gaulish or British), and both Draco and Thiadices are Greek. Since Thiadices is specifically named as a cavalryman, he might be from the Greek East, Thrace, or Syria.

Rustius Barbaras is certainly foreign. What native Roman would call himself “Barbarian”? It’s not a Roman name or clan or family — it’s the Latin word for someone who is not Roman. And if Rustius is spelling the Latin the way it sounds to him, he clearly speaks with an accent. He can’t help pronouncing tam as tan and habemas as habimas.

So after the list of bread deliveries, he asks Pompey to get something for him: beautiful weights. He proposes payment in kind — baking bread — or in coin [copper]. The payment is not necessarily cheap, but also not overly expensive.

And then, at the end, two lines about getting married, of all things. And he uses the term for marriage, “Uxorem ducere,” connected with conubium.

Why bring it up? Because he won’t be coming down, presumably to pick up the weights, or maybe to get payment for the bread, until after he’s married.

In Pompeii, Italy, there was once a baker.3 I don’t assume there is any relevance to the man addressed, whose name is Pompeius, but I could use it in writing fiction.

We don’t know this baker’s name, but we know he supported Aulus Rustius Verus for the office of aedile, the Roman magistrate in charge of public works, games, buildings, and roads. And we know that in AD 79, in Pompeii, two women and a 3-4 year old child died sheltering in his bakery when the volcano erupted.

The article mentions that the baker could have been a freedman of that Aulus Rustius Verus. If so, the freedman Aulus Rustius Verus would be called Aulus Rustius, with his third name being what he was called when he was a slave.

If I made Rustius a freed slave of the Aulus Rustius Verus of Pompey, his full name would be Aulus Rustius Barbarus. And the name “Barbarus” would have been the kind of name a slave might have been given, since it is a Latin word meaning “barbarian” or “foreigner,” from the Greek.

There are consistent misspellings of some words, which seem to imply a non-standard pronunciation of the Latin — another clue that Rustius is indeed of non-Roman birth or upbringing.

And was he supplying the garrison at Myos Hormos? Or one of the twelve way stations, manned by Roman soldiers?

Here is the translation I found in the book “The Roman Army, 31 BC — AD 337” by Brian Campbell, which I own:

Rustius Barbarus to his brother Pompeius, greetings. Why it that you have not written back to me if you received the loaves of bread? I sent you 15 loaves with Popilius and Dutuporis, then fifteen more and a vase (?) with the carter Draco; you have used up four matia (on third of an artabe) of wheat. I sent you six loaves with the cavalryman Thiadices, who said he could take them. I request, brother, that you have some scales (?) made for my personal use, as beautiful as possible, and write to me so that in payment for them I can make you bread or send you money, whichever you wish. Now, I want you to know that I am going to get married. As soon as I have married, I shall write to you at once to come. Farewell. Regards to [___].

Transcription of the Latin from the shard, of the letter he wrote4.

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Rustius Barbarus Pompeio fratri salutem ·
quid est quod mi non rescripsisti si panes percepisti misi tibi · 
per Popilium et Dutuporim · panes · XV ·
item per Draconem · hamaxitem · panes · XV ·
et vasum explesti  · IIII ·matia 
misi tibi per Theadicem equitem panes · VI 
quod dixit se posse tollere
rogo te frater ut facias mi in ṃeos usus pondera quam formosa et scribe mihi ut pretium 
eorum quid vis · panem tibi faciam aut aes tibi mittam · 
scito enim me uxorem ducere ·
quam mox duxero continuo tibi scribam ut venias · vale
saluta Sertoṛium

Note: my pen name is Mary Hare, so I’m going to start using that on my substack. The substack url will not change; it will continue to use maryh10000.

The AENEAD: Aeneas and Ascanius

In the Aeneid, Aeneas has just finished putting on his armor to go fight Turnus. His son, Ascanius, also known as Iulus, is a young man old enough to hunt, but not old enough to go into battle himself.

Aeneid Book XII lines 435-436
Disce, puer, virtutem ex me verumque laborem,
fortunam ex aliis. 

The Latin word can mean “manliness, manhood.” Or the masculine virtues that could apply in general “strength, vigor, bravery, courage” or “martial virtues.” [1] The other translators I’ve looked at, ranging from Dryden in the 1600’s to Fitzgerald in his 1983 translation copyright [2], all use one or more of the more general terms.

But in my paraphrase, I retain both meanings with “what it means to be a man” and “going on bravely.”

I want to make clear that Aeneas is specifically talking to his son about what his duties will be when he reaches full manhood. Ascanius is not going into battle right now with his father specifically because he has not yet reached full manhood. So I chose to include both aspects of “virtus”: manhood, and bravery.

The ILIAD: Hector and Astyanax

In the Iliad, Hector is already geared up to fight again. His son, Astyanax is still in the care of a nurse, so is probably not weaned yet. He is not likely any older than three years old. The plume of his father’s helmet scares him, so Hector takes it off.

He has no advice for his little boy. Instead, he prays – a prayer that will not be granted:

Iliad Book VI lines 476-481
Ζεῦ ἄλλοι τε θεοὶ δότε δὴ καὶ τόνδε γενέσθαι
παῖδ᾽ ἐμὸν ὡς καὶ ἐγώ περ ἀριπρεπέα Τρώεσσιν,
ὧδε βίην τ᾽ ἀγαθόν, καὶ Ἰλίου ἶφι ἀνάσσειν:
καί ποτέ τις εἴποι πατρός γ᾽ ὅδε πολλὸν ἀμείνων
ἐκ πολέμου ἀνιόντα: φέροι δ᾽ ἔναρα βροτόεντα
κτείνας δήϊον ἄνδρα, χαρείη δὲ φρένα μήτηρ.

This time, my paraphrase differs from translations, not just in word choice, but in what I left out, to stress the pathos:

“Zeus and ye other gods, grant that this my child may likewise prove, even as I, pre-eminent amid the Trojans, and as valiant in might, and that he rule mightily over Ilios. And some day may some man say of him as he cometh back from war, ‘He is better far than his father’; and may he bear the blood-stained spoils of the foeman he hath slain, and may his mother’s heart wax glad.” – Translated by A. T. Murray

The ODYSSEY: Odysseus and Telemachus

In the Odyssey, Telemachus has become a man already. Now, he will be initiated into battle by his father. Father and son have made the battle plan together, gathered their allies, and prepared the battle ground. Odysseus has just won the contest and is equipped with both bow and quiver full of dozens of arrows. Telemachus is just waiting for his father’s signal. Now he’s the one getting armed. He belts on his sword, grabs his spear, and takes his place by his father’s side.

Odyssey Book XXI lines 431-434
ἦ καὶ ἐπ᾽ ὀφρύσι νεῦσεν: ὁ δ᾽ ἀμφέθετο ξίφος ὀξὺ
Τηλέμαχος, φίλος υἱὸς Ὀδυσσῆος θείοιο,
ἀμφὶ δὲ χεῖρα φίλην βάλεν ἔγχεϊ, ἄγχι δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ αὐτοῦ
πὰρ θρόνον ἑστήκει κεκορυθμένος αἴθοπι χαλκῷ.

He spoke, and made a sign with his brows, and Telemachus, the dear son of divine Odysseus, girt about him his sharp sword, and took his spear in his grasp, and stood by the chair at his father’s side, armed with gleaming bronze. – Translated by A. T. Murray

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Robert Fitzgerald (copyright 1983): 
Learn fortitude and toil from me, my son,
Ache of true toil. Good fortune learn from others.

John Dryden (1631-1700):
My son, from my example learn the war,
In camps to suffer, and in fields to dare;
But happier chance than mine attend thy care!

John Conington (verse translation 1866):
“Learn of your father to be great,
Of others to be fortunate.”

John Conington (prose translation 1917):
“Learn valour from me, my son,
And genuine hardihood, success from others.”

SPOILERS

Even more interesting was the love story they added to raid. Although she was not directly involved in the Great Raid itself, Margaret Utinsky was important in keeping the POWs alive. And the reason was love, not for an Army major rescued in the Raid, but for her husband, a former Army captain whom she met in the Philippines as a widow with a young son in the late 1920’s and married in 1934. She was working as a nurse for the Red Cross when the Japanese invaded the Philippines.

Jack Utinsky had gone to the Philippines as a Lieutenant, then served in Siberia in WWI (the Game Club has been going through Decision Forcing Cases related to the American Expeditionary Forces in Siberia), then left the Army to be a civil engineer in the Philippines at the island of Corregidor. He was captured by the Japanese when Corregidor fell on May 6, 1942.

Margaret, who had refused to evacuate with the other wives when Jack had gone back to work on Corregidor, went now to search for her husband. He was on the Bataan Death March, and did, in fact, end up in the Cabanatuan POW camp, where he died of starvation on Aug 6, 1942, although she didn’t get news of that when it happened.

Real life is more amazing than fiction.

The Setup

The movie starts with historical black and white film and photographs. Captain Robert “Bob” Prince narrates. American planes bomb enemy targets as he reminds us that the Japanese bombed the Philippines within hours of Pearl Harbor. On March 11, 1942 General MacArthur leaves, ordered by President Roosevelt, vowing to return with reinforcements, but the United States has decided to deal with Europe first. The Philippines are left hanging.

The Bataan peninsula falls when Major General Edward P. King Jr. surrenders on April 9, 1942 at Bataan, Philippines. 60,000 Filipinos and 10,000 Americans are taken prisoner and are forced to walk 55 miles from the southern end of the peninsula to POW camps. Because of the death rate from starvation, disease, and execution, it will become know as the “Bataan Death March.”

Finally, on May 6, 1942, U.S. Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright surrenders the rest of the U.S. troops in the Philippines to the Japanese from the island of Corregidor at the entrance to Manila Bay.

When the tide of the war turns against the Japanese, they double down. The Tokyo War Ministry issues what will be called the “kill all” order on August 1, 1944:. POW’s will be killed when the Japanese retreat. General MacArthur returns to the Philippines landing on Leyte on October 20, 1944.

Then the movie changes from archival black and white, to the actors. I’ll intersperse what happens in the movie with historical information that confirms it, adds more context, or identifies what is completely fictional, in bracketed italics.

It is Dec 14, 1944, and Kempei Tai (Japanese military police) officer, Major Nagai, supervises as POWs dig two air raid shelters at Palawan camp. They’re trapped in the shelters they just dug, and then barrels of fuel are thrown in with them and ignited. As the POWs are burned to death, some manage to escape the shelters and are shot.

[Major Nagai is a fictional character, but what it shows is not. They did dig their own air raid shelters and 109 of 120 POWs were burned alive. 11 managed to escape, which was a factor in triggering the raid to free the POWs of Cabanatuan.]

Context set, we move to the planning and implementation of the Great Raid itself. The narrator has been Captain Robert Prince, commander of Company C of the 6th Ranger batallion of the Sixth Army. General Krueger, commander of the Sixth Army, has landed on Luzon island. His HQ is in Calasiao on the Lingayen Gulf.

Day 1, January 27

The count-down starts on the day General Krueger, commander of the Sixth Army, activated for service in the SW Pacific on January 22, 1943, brought Lt Col Mucci in on the raid. Mucci has transformed a battalion originally dealing with livestock, with mostly farmhands and rural soldiers, into a Ranger battalion. Most of them have not seen combat.

[The 6th Ranger battalion was formed out of the 98th Field Artillery Battalion, which was a mule pack artillery, with twelve .75 mm howitzers. On July 1, 1944, Ranger training for 6th battalion completed and they were sent to Finschhaven, New Guinea. Before they were sent to Lingayen Gulf, the 6th Rangers were sent to secure three islands before the initial landing of the Allies in the Philippines on the island of Leyte on October 20th. Only Company D has faced combat and suffered their first KIA.]

A man rides up on a horse in the background, and Mucci asks who the “cowboy” is. It is Major Lapham, who stayed behind after the Bataan campaign and runs guerrilla units.

[Major Lapham was in the United States Armed Forces Far East (USAFFE) when the Japanese invaded, escaped capture, and leads the Luzon Guerrilla Army Force (LGAF).]

General Krueger, his intel chief (G-2) Colonel White, LtCol Mucci, and Major Lapham discuss the POW’s burnt alive at Palawan and the danger of the POW’s at Cabanatuan. The POW camp is 30 miles behind enemy lines. There are over 30,000 Japanese troops in the area, and they can’t tell exactly where they are. LtCol Mucci is told to get a plan for the rescue to G-3 (HQ operations) by the next morning and he assigns this task to Prince.

[Major Lapham first spoke to Colonel White the day before, on January 26th, which is when the decision was made to save the POW’s at Cabanatuan.]

Mucci and Prince then meet with three Alamo Scouts, who brief them on their recon. There are as many as 200 Japanese prison guards. They don’t know about tanks, but they show an aerial photo and point out where they could be. The last 800 yards of the approach to the POW camp have no cover and are as flat as a pancake. Prince says he needs better info. Two of the three Alamo Scouts head out to get more info, promising to have better info by next morning at 0800.

[The Alamo Scouts were part of the Sixth US Army’s Special Reconnaissance Unit. The description of the situation is accurate, and the Alamo Scouts did do recon on this day. In the movie, for some reason they did not use the names of the actual Alamo Scout team leaders. Lt Nellist is called Lt Able, and Alamo scout Lt Rounsaville is called Lt LeClaire. They were each the leader of a six to seven man scout team, which participated in the raid. A third team leader, Lt Dove, was embedded with the Rangers, without a team. It was not clear to me that we were ever specifically shown the two teams in the movie – just their team leaders.]

The scene switches to show exactly what that last 800 yards look like. POW’s dig a grave in a field full of graves as far as the camera show. Other POW’s working in the field, guarded by Japanese soldiers. One of the POW’s, called “Red”, hides one of the vegetables he’s digging up under his straw hat to smuggle back to their CO, Major Daniel Gibson, who is sickly. Cohen, who works in the office of the Japanese camp commander Colonel Mori reports that Mori has got news that MacArthur has landed.

[All of the camp inhabitants, POW and Japanese, are fictional. The descriptions of how the camp was run and the state of the prisoners matches historical accounts very closely. The POW’s did farm. News that MacArthur has landed is either very late (he landed in Leyte on October 20th), or refers to his landing in Lingayen on January 9.]

Four miles west of the POW camp is Cabanatuan, the town the camp is named for. Filipino vendors slip Maj Gibson, Red, and Cohen money to bribe their Japanese guards, and meds. We are introduced to Mina, who slips them medicine. She works with someone called Margaret in the underground, to provide the POW’s with food and medicine.

[Mina is probably a composite of Filipina workers in the underground. The POW’s at Cabanatuan did do some farming and did bribe their Japanese guards with help from the underground to get food and medicine. Margaret Utinsky was real, worked in the underground, and coordinated exactly this kind of interaction to get food and drugs to Cabanatuan. She also specifically did this for the Cabanatuan POW camp.]

Margaret is an American nurse who was married to Gibson’s commanding officer, who died about a year ago of malaria in another camp. He is in love with Margaret, whose husband didn’t care about his wife, but did not act on it while her husband was alive, because Gibson is a gentlemen. And of course, now he’s a POW and can’t do much about it.

[This is the fictional love story, but the real love story was between Margaret and her husband, not the fictional Major Gibbons. And she actually was relevant in keeping the POWs alive, although she didn’t participate directly in the raid.]

Mucci announces the mission to his Rangers. It will require speed, surprise, and overwhelming firepower. We find out Prince suffers from jungle rot, and that Prince tried to get only unmarried men on the mission, which would leave out his first sergeant, who has actual battle experience. His sergeant convinces him to keep him on the team.

[I didn’t find evidence for or against the discussion about married men. Prince did suffer from jungle rot, a very painful chronic ulcerative skin lesion that probably looked worse than they showed in the movie.]

Day 2, January 28

Rangers head out. They must travel two days on foot over open terrain. If they get spotted by the Japanese, they will lose surprise and the mission will fail.

The Japanese soldiers at the POW are leaving, including the officers. Major Gibson suspects a trap and won’t let the POW’s leave the camp. But in the meantime, they break into the stores on the Japanese side of the camp, and eat well for a while.

[This did happen, but several weeks earlier. By this time, their original Japanese guards had been replaced by retreating Japanese units who ignored the prisoners.]

Rangers are delayed from crossing a road by Major Nagai and his men, who seem to be on his way to the POW Camp at Cabanatuan.

[Major Nagai is fictional, but there was a delay caused by Japanese movements on the road.]

Margaret, Mina, and other underground members are meeting in Manilla. They suspect an informer. Major Gibson is getting worse – he has malignant malaria and will die if he doesn’t get quinine.

[Major Gibson is fictional. The rest of it is plausible. Margaret’s husband died of starvation in this camp in August of 1942.]

The POW’s see Major Nagai and his men enter the camp. Nagai speaks with Gibson, who now can barely stand. He demonstrates that he’s had contact with the underground. He threatens to kill ten additional men for any one man who tries to escape.

[Fictional. But the Japanese did divide POWs into groups of ten, and all men in the group of ten were killed if anyone escaped.]

Day 3, January 29

Gibson has malignant maleria and has only 3-4 days to live without quinine.

Margaret tries to steal quinine at the Manila Hospital. She is successful, but the hospital is raided by the Japanese, and an informer picks out several hospital workers, who are then shot. She then meets up with Mina outside the hospital and hands her the quinine, but Mina is picked up by someone working for the Japanese. The quinine is lost and does not get to the prisoners.

[Fictional, but plausible.]

Rangers arrive at the rendezvous with the Alamo Scouts, and the Filipino guerrillas under the command of Captain Juan Pajota, at the village of Balincarin, which was burned down by the Japanese yesterday and over 100 inhabitants killed.

[One source mentions Balincarin, and says that it was indeed burned down and over 100 inhabitants slaughtered, but that it had happened a few weeks earlier. The Japanese regularly did this to Philippine villages, especially if they were suspected of helping the guerrillas. The depiction in the movie is realistic, if possibly understated.]

Captain Prince wants to put off the raid to get more information from the Alamo Scouts. Captain Pajota wants to put off the raid one day because a Japanese division is going to be passing by the POW Camp tonight. Mucci doesn’t want to wait. Some drama where Prince listens to Pajota when Mucci won’t, but wins him over, and they delay 24 hours.

[There really was a Japanese division passing by the POW Camp that night, causing them to delay the raid one day. At least one source thinks the arguments between Mucci and Pajota are overdone, but they did disagree.]

Margaret is arrested and interrogated by the Japanese Military Police. She is shown an image of Gibson from her Bible.

[Margaret was arrested by the Japanese more than once. Gibson is fictional.]

Prisoners at the Cabanatuan POW camp are digging air raid shelters. A messenger gives Nagai a message. Gibson is brought in front of Nagai again, who shows him a picture of Margaret.

[All fictional. The Japanese that are guarding the POW camp at this time are ignoring the prisoners.]

Margaret is in a cell hanging from a cross bar. She is freed, and walks past underground workers killed by the Japanese.

[This did happen, although she was arrested on September 28, 1943, and it was much worse and lasted for much longer than a day or two. Her jaw was broken, and she was imprisoned for 32 days. She was tortured, including being hung with her arms behind her back from a ceiling.]

She is picked up and taken care of by a priest, who reassures her that she didn’t reveal anything. Mina and her father were picked up and killed by the Japanese on their way to Cabanatuan yesterday. She says, “I did it for him. I stayed for him.” The priests smuggle her out, just as the Japanese show up.

[A Filipino boy got her to the hospital in this particular case, although she was regularly helped by priests. She spent six weeks there recovering. She obviously didn’t do it for the fictional Gibson: she stayed for her husband, Jack. After she found out she was too late for him, she stayed to help the other POWs who could still be saved.]

The Rangers, Alamo Scouts, and Guerrillas are gathered in Platero, which is where the POWs will be evacuated to. Mucci argues with Pajota, who wants to do more than just screen the flanks of the rescuers during the Raid. More foot care, this time by Doctor Fisher. Mucci is feeling “on top of the world.”

[Not sure what’s wrong with “screening the flanks.” Isn’t that the effect of keeping the Japanese from crossing the bridge at Cabu, or from coming in from the town ofCabanatuan? One source says Mucci could act like a glory hound. Is that what this is supposed to show?]

Alamo Scouts see the Japanese division go by in front of the camp.

[Correct.]

In the camp, people are watching Red to make sure he doesn’t attempt to escape and get people killed. Barrells of fuel are delivered, like what we saw used at Palawan. Nagai sends message to Tokyo: he’s ready to liquidate the prisoners, waiting for the go-ahead.

[All fictional. Don’t think the Japanese needed to wait for a go-ahead to kill the POWs.]

Margaret gets transport to the hills.

[She did get away.]

Day 4, January 30

Red escaped in the night. The Japanese bring him back in the morning, and execute him plus ten others that they pick out.

[Fiction, but the Japanese did do this. They were more likely to behead them than shoot them, though.]

Captain Prince gets the photo that the Alamo Scouts got.

[Nellist and Rounsaville teams moved to 700 yards from camp. Nellist and Rufo Vaquilar were disguised as local farmers. They walked, then crawled, up to an empty, elevated hut, 200 yards directly north of the prison gate. They could see right into the prison and marked complete info of the Japanese positions and baracks on an aerial photo, which they sent to the rest of their scout teams. Lt Dove, who was with the scout teams 700 yards from camp, carried the marked photo to Platero via native pony.]

The Japanese have resupplied the camp with an addition 150-200 troops. Now that they have an 300 Japanese to defeat, they will not be able to spare any Rangers for the Cabu bridge, ½ mile to the east. Also, the Japanese reinforced the bridge at Cabu with 1,000 men.

[Not sure if this is historical. Could be.]

Captain Prince is forced to update the plan.

Captain Pajota and his 200 men will hold off the Japanese at the Cabu bridge. They will rig the bridge with explosives. It won’t blow up the bridge, but it will prevent the Japanese from getting over it. Pajota also suggests getting a plane to provide a diversion for the final 200 yards before the ditch where there is no cover. Prince and Mucci agree.

Captain Joson and his 200 men will block the Japanese on the road from Cabanatuan City, ½ mile to the west of the camp.

Lt Riley will go around to the back gate and take the first shot at the Japanese guard to start the raid at 19:30 time?

[Yes, this is the plan. I don’t know why they changed the name of Lt Murphy from F Company to Lt Riley.]

Cohen helps Major Gibson write a final letter to Margaret.

[Fiction]

They break camp at 1700. The rangers start crawling across the field while it is still daylight.

[Alamo Scouts Nellist and Rounsaville and their teams crawled with the Rangers to the gate. I think the movie only shows the Nellist and Rounsaville under their fictional names. The lack of cover was actually WORSE than the movie showed when the soldiers were crawling up to the POW camp.]

The Black Widow flies over the camp, causing a distraction, that allows them to get to the ditch just in front of the POW camp.

[The Black Widow didn’t just fly over; it faked engine trouble. Sounds like the pilot put on quite a show. The Black Widow was a P-61A-10 N0, Serial number 42-39390, from the 547th Night Fighter Squadron, 5th Air Force based in Lingayen Airfield, Philippines. It was crewed by pilot Lt Ken Schreiber and Radar Operator Lt Bonnie Rucks. It was called “Hard to Get” and was painted in a Vargas styled nude artwork.]

Lt Riley and his men take their positions. He is ten minutes late taking the beginning shot.

[It’s Lt Murphy, and he either was late or ten minutes early because the Japanese guard said “Halt.”]

There is a duel between Nagai and a couple of Rangers because they are shooting mortars. Doctor Fisher is fatally wounded. Another Ranger is killed.

[Most of the raid was correct.

There was no duel, and not much fight from the Japanese. Most were killed in their barracks.

A Japanese private managed to fire three rounds from a knee mortar, one of which mortally wounded Dr Fisher. The other ranger who died during the raid was killed by friendly fire.

Lt Nellist directed fire for the Rangers to silence a mortar that had dropped three rounds at the gate, wounding Rounsaville and Tsgt Alfonso.]

Whichever Alamo scouts were not needed as guides formed a rear guard at the front gate. Then they formed a firing line to cover removal of seriously wounded and stragglers on the north bank of the Pampanga River.

Pajota and guerrillas very accurate at bridge.

Mucci did not help with any flanking operation.

One prisoner was not discovered. British Edwin Rose walked out the next day.]

Day 5, January 31

We see Talevera, the American Front Line, where the POW’s are being cared for. Dr. Fisher has died of his wounds.

There’s an interchange between Prince and Mucci. Don’t know whether it actually happened that way or not, but I liked it:

Mucci: How do you feel?
Prince: All right.
Mucci: I’m proud of you.
Prince: Thank you, sir.
Salutes.

Cohen takes Margaret to Gibson’s body.

[1 POW did actually die after being freed.]

Cohen gives Gibson’s letter to Margaret, where Gibson says he loved her and how much she meant to all the POWs at the camp as well.

[Fiction, except the part about the POWs. They did know about her, and she did make a big difference to them.]

511 POWs were rescued.

2 Rangers died.

21 Filipino guerrillas died

[Not sure if I wrote down the numbers correctly from the movie. The sources seem to say that there were 522 rescued (489 soldiers, 33 civilians). They also list Filipino guerrillas injured, but don’t show any deaths. Everyone agrees two Rangers died.]

And the movie ends with archival file and photos of the rescued POWs and their rescuers.

Sources:

• warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/great-raid-on-cabanatuan/

• arsof-history.org/articles/v4n3_alamo_scouts_page_1.html

• wwiirangers.org/our-history/ranger-history/6th-btn/

• www.rowandrake.net/2025/08/07/the-great-raid-how-the-6th-rangers-alamo-scouts-and-filipino-guerrillas-pulled-off-wwiis-boldest-pow-rescue/

• alamoscouts.com/the-great-raid/american-thinker/article1.php, Article by John B. Dwyer, military historian

• philippinedefenders.pastperfectonline.com, Utinsky record: From “Miss U” by Margaret Utinsky, and “Adoptee’s Grandmother was an American spy: Wendy Johnson’s Quest for Family Led her to Claire “High Pockets” by Cathy Ingalls, Albany Democrat Herald, Sept.2 ,2009

• www.findagrave.com/memorial/56771803/john_paul-utinsky

• archive.org/details/MissU1948/page/n7/mode/2up

• ww2aircraft.net/forum/threads/p-61-black-widow-of-the-great-raid-query.41069/

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I’m going through and putting together a booklet for sale, tentatively titled “Under the Shadow of Troy,” not of the essays themselves, but of the poems and fiction I wrote for many of them. This could be an inexpensive way for people who don’t want to become paid subscribers to support my work here with a one-time contribution.

I started reading the Aeneid in the first place as research for my current WIP, which continues in the first century AD world of my novella, “Cloak and Stola.” I’d learned that in my time period, Roman soldiers looking to advance had been advised to read the Aeneid, which Augustus was promoting. So I thought I should, too.

If you’ve been reading my essays, you’ll recognize the stories and poetry I’m putting in the booklet.

Procerus and Sophie compare the relationship between Achilles and Briseis to how their own master / slave relationship started as contubernales. Dido laments that Aeneas abandoned what looked like the promise of conubium marriage through usus; Aeneas makes his own answer, based on the same supposition. Pholoe begs not to be separated from her babies. And more from my Aeneid essays.

From the Iliad, I wrote a fictional reconstruction of the courtship and marriage of Anthemion, and then death of his son Simoeisios, based on the description of how Simoeisios, son of Anthemion, died fighting for Troy in the Iliad. I have other poems from the points of view of other minor characters, as well as from Hektor’s and Achilles’s points of view.

From the Odyssey, there are poems, fictional snippets, and even an interchange between Penelope and Odysseus that I imagine as sung.

Do you have any suggestions or ideas?

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As early as four centuries later according to Douglas Frame, about 250 miles to the south, the Ionian League held a festival to Poseidon Helikonios, called the Panionia2, at which the two epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey were performed. Douglas Frame3 proposes not that they were composed there initially, but that they were expanded to their current form in this place and during this time, that “the Iliad and Odyssey were first expanded to the monumental proportions in which we know them at a specific time and in a specific place. The time and place that I have in mind are the late eighth and early seventh centuries BC at the celebration of the Panionia in Asia Minor.”4

And to get an idea of what the Panionia may have looked like, he invites us to look at the books involving the Phaiakians: feasting, athletic contests, dancers, and poets. In Books IX through XII, Odysseus plays the part of the poet himself, using four books, IX through XII to relate the main adventures we connect with his voyage home. But Frame invites us to see each book as performed by one poet, and each presentation as a unit of four books, performed by four different poets, over a period of six to twelve days (that’s including both the Iliad and the Odyssey).

I suddenly realize that the Odyssey (and the Iliad) was written, not as a book to be read, but as episodes to be performed. They are more like plays than books. And they are meant to all be performed over a contracted period time, as episodes of an overarching storytelling arc. The most natural method of adapting the Odyssey would be as a mini-series of about 6 long movies, or as a series of 24 shorter episodes, similar to an anime based on a manga series. And in fact I watched a 1968 Italian version of the Odyssey, called Odissea, which was eight episodes of about an hour long each, and while it contained much more of the content than I’ve seen anyone else use (of the ones I’ve seen), it’s still disjointed if you don’t already know the whole story — not just the parts from the sea travels of Odysseus, and the battle at the end, with a nod to Penelope’s weaving ruse.

Honestly, I also think you could do an amazing version of the Iliad, as a real, 24 episode, military series. Character arcs, battle scenes, spying, action interspersed with slower sections that still contribute to the story.

Unfortunately, my essays on each book of the Odyssey aren’t anything like screen-plays. They’re just the things I was interested in or noticed as I was reading. If you want to read them, here are the links in order. Or you can go to my substack menu item Odyssey.

Unit 1: Telemakhos starts his “coming of age” character arc.

Book 1:

Book 2:

Book 3:

Book 4:

Unit Two: Odysseus Interacts with Civilized Men

Book 5:

Book 6:

Book 7:

Book 8:

Unit Three: Odysseus Relates His Voyage from Troy

Book 9:

Book 10:

Book 11:

Book 12:

Unit Four: Odysseus and Telemakhos Reunite with the Loyal Swineherd

Book 13:

Book 14:

Book 15:

Book 16:

Unit Five: Penelope and her Women

Book 17:

Book 18:

Books 19 and 20:

Unit Six: Justice is Done

Book 21:

Book 22:

Book 23:

Book 24:

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Hermes leads the shades of the dead suitors to the Underworld. As the suitors get to the Fields of Asphodel in the underworld, they see Achilles talking to Agamemnon. Achilles sympathizes with his former antagonist, saying he should have died at Troy, rather than the piteous death he had when he got home.1 Just as the Iliad ended with the funeral of Hektor, in this last book of the Odyssey, Agamemnon describes the glorious funeral of Achilles.

Agamemnon sees the group of suitors approaching, recognizes Amphimedon, son of a friend from Ithaka, and asks how they all got killed. He imagines Poseidon raging at sea, killing everyone on the ship, or a raid on a fortress, for treasure and women.

It’s almost comedic. Amphimedon doesn’t even try to hide what they were doing, or their mistreatment of the beggar. They were tricked! By Penelope – her weaving! By Telemakhos – he gave the beggar the bow! By Odysseus – he had some god helping him! And they were all three working together! (He couldn’t know that the bow was Penelope’s idea, not Odysseus’s idea, but he did realize they were working together.) He seems to be expecting sympathy.

You can imagine how this all sounds to Agamemnon. I hear him bellowing out his effusive praise of Penelope. How blessed Odysseus was to have a faithful wife of such excellence [aretê] and glory [kleos].

“		                    a valiant wife!
True to her husband’s honor and her own.”
-- Translated by Robert Fitzgerald

Laertes Homestead

Odysseus, Telemakhos, Eumaios and Philiotios, have made it to the homestead where Laertes lives with his servants and farmhands. Odysseus sends the others ahead to the main house, and looks for his father in the orchards. When he sees him, he weeps to see him so sad and bent over.

As Penelope did with him, he decides to test his father first, instead of running to embrace and kiss him. This time his father is the pathetic one in dirty, patched clothes. Odysseus pretends to be a stranger, asks this “fieldhand” why his master doesn’t keep him better dressed, and wants to know if this is the land where Odysseus lives. His father is so overwhelmed with grief and hope for his son that Odysseus can’t keep it up.

“Oh, Father, I am he!
Twenty years gone, and here I’ve come again
to my own land!
	            Hold back your tears! No grieving!
I bring good news – though still we cannot rest.
I killed the suitors to the last man!
Outrage and injury have been avenged!”
-- Translated by Robert Fitzgerald

Just as Penelope had asked him for proof, so too did Laertes. Odysseus showed him his scar. But he went further, and once more the sign was a tree. Or rather trees. And vines. He described how Laertes had given him pear trees and apple trees and fig trees and vines, when he’d been a boy helping him in this very orchard.

Now, Laertes is both glad and worried about an attack. As Odysseus had told Penelope in Book XXIII, killing even one citizen can force you to flee into exile, and they killed a lot of citizens. Being in the right won’t save them, if they don’t have armed men to back them up. But Odysseus assures him he’s got a plan.

The next part reminds me of the transformation of Theoden after Wormtongue was killed. His old housekeeper bathes him, and he puts on fresh, unpatched clothes, but in addition, Athena revives his strength and appearance. Now he wishes he’d been with Odysseus when he’d killed the suitors!

Meanwhile, the townspeople have found out what happened, and buried the dead, or sent them to be ferried off the island to their own homelands for burial. Eupeithes, the father of the Antinoos, calls an Assembly, just as Telemakhos did back in Book II. He wants revenge. Odysseus has come back without any of the men or ships they sent with him to Troy – true – and now he’s killed all the suitors. They need to chase after him before he gets away!

Medon, the herald that Odysseus spared, gets up and speaks. They don’t want to do that! A god was fighting with Odysseus!

The seer Halitherses, who had warned the suitors at that earlier Assembly called by Telemakhos, warned them again. This is justice. “[you] would not put down the riot of your sons.”2

As before, the majority don’t want to fight. But this time, almost half of them still do, and they follow Eupeithes. We don’t know how many are in the group that arms up and heads out to Laertes’ homestead, but we know there are twelve opposing them: Odysseus and Telemakhos, Eumaios and Philiotios, Laertes and his old servant Dolios, and the six sons of Dolios.

Odysseus, his father, and his son all head toward the townsmen. At the command of Athena, Laertes kills Eupeithes. Then Odysseus and Telemakhos go on the attack, killing with sword and spear, until Athena, taking the form of Mentor, calls a halt before they can kill all of the group of townsmen.

			“Now hold!”
she cried, “Break off this bitter skirmish;
end your bloodshed, Ithakans, and make peace.”
-- Translated by Robert Fitzgerald

That terrifies the townsmen so much they drop their swords on the ground, and run away. Odysseus, though, still has his blood up. He prepares to follow.

A thunderbolt strikes at Athena’s feet. She says “Command yourself. Call off this battle now”3 and Odysseus does.

Later, both sides will swear to terms of peace.

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Odysseus is a warrior home from the wars, after years away, whose family and friends hardly know him anymore. In fact, the only creature that recognized him without being told was his dog, Argos.

Even soldiers who are only deployed away from home for months, not years, can feel like strangers to family, wife and children. And he has been away an almost unimaginable twenty years, the last ten without any word whatsoever. I think of the poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson, Enoch Arden. Although not a soldier, Enoch Arden was shipwrecked and didn’t make it home for eleven and a half years.

When Eurykleia wakes up Penelope to tell her the good news, her first reaction is disbelief. But when she explains that it was the stranger Penelope had talked to who was Odysseus, Penelope’s first reaction is to believe her and she hugs her with tears of joy. Then she remembers how one-sided the odds were when she had gone upstairs and starts to doubt. How could the stranger, Odysseus or not, possibly have succeeded? Penelope had slept through everything. She hadn’t heard the battle at all.

Eurykleia had, and describes what she and the other women heard. Then, she describes what she saw when she went downstairs: the suitors dead and Odysseus victorious:

                                        If you had only seen him!
It would have made your heart glow hot! – a lion
splashed with mire and blood.
-- Translated by Robert Fitzgerald

Doubt returns. Maybe the suitors are slain, but it must be the work of the gods – that would be justice. She had already suspected the stranger could be Odysseus, but is he really? Eurykleia answers:

Your own lord lives, he is at home,
he found you safe, he found his son. The suitors 
abused his house, but he has brought them down.
-- Translated by Robert Fitzgerald

Penelope still doubts. Eurykleia is beyond frustrated. She sighs. “Kill me yourself if you don’t believe me, I stake my life on it. Just come down!” [my paraphrase]

Penelope finally agrees to come down and at least see this man.

Following is my paraphrase / reworking of what happened, based mainly on the Fitzgerald translation. I use dividers and mark direct quotes as translations, as usual. In my head, this poetry is sung, but I have no actual tune in mind.

[Penelope descends the stairs.]

Is it him? Is it really him?
My heart beats fast within my breast.
Do I run to him, take his hands,
Or keep my distance, make my test?

[At the bottom, she sits against the nearest wall across the room from him.]

[Odysseus has not yet bathed or changed clothes: he is wearing rags, filthy and bloody]

Don’t look, don’t stare, 
Quiet sit and wait.
Does she know me?
What will say she?
Quiet sit and wait.

[Penelope thinks]

Still as death I sit.
Clearly him, knew it!
No, not him, beggar.
Yes, my lord.
No, a wretch!
Still as death I sit.

[Telemakhos says]

Mother, is your heart of stone?

[Penelope answers]

Son, my heart is stunned.
I cannot speak,
Cannot question,
Cannot keep 
My eyes upon his face.
If it is he,
We will know it,
Secret signs,
Secrets you don’t know.

[Odysseus smiles]

Patience, son,
She will know me.
Quiet sit and wait.

But now, Odysseus reminds them all that they have just killed many citizens. That means they’ll either have to flee in the night (as we saw Theokymenos, the seer, have to do when he killed a kinsmen) or plan to fight.

His immediate strategy is to buy time by not letting it get out right away what has happened. Everyone should clean up, dress up, bring the harper back into the hall now that it’s all just been cleaned up, continue the feasting, make it sound to anyone passing by like the queen has chosen a suitor and this is the wedding feast. Then, later, the four fighters will sneak off to Laertes in the countryside, regroup, and make plans.

[Penelope and Odysseus sit across from each other exactly as before. But now, he is clean, royally clothed, and Athena has “lavished beauty over his head and shoulders” —translated by Robert Fitzgerald]

[Odysseus says]

Strange woman, dear lady,
Don’t you know me yet?
Must I sleep alone tonight?
Nurse, make up a bed.

[Penelope says]

Strange man, dear sir,
You look like him and yet,
Set his bed outside the room,
The one he made himself.

[Odysseus says]

Who could move my bed?
That’s our secret sign.

One bedpost formed from living tree,
Three others match it perfectly,
Inlaid with godlike mastery,
With silver, gold, and ivory:

I made and carved myself.

With eyes brimming tears she ran to him,
throwing her arms around his neck, and kissed him,
Translated by Robert Fitzgerald

[Penelope says]

That’s our secret sign;
No man else has seen.
Now my stiff heart knows
I am yours, your queen.

And I can’t end this any better than with Robert Fitzgerald:

                                                  he wept at last,
his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms
longed for
        as the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmer
spent in rough water where his ship went down
under Poseidon’s blows, gale winds and tons of sea.
Few men can keep alive through a big surf
to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches
in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind:
and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband,
her white arms round him pressed as though forever.
Translated by Robert Fitzgerald

And Athena slows the night down, to give them time together, before he and the other three leave armed, at dawn, for the countryside.

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Odysseus jumps from his son’s side to the door sill. Rags off! Is he literally fighting naked, as if an athlete at the games?

He pours the arrows on the ground. How many? When he runs out of arrows, they’ll still have two score suitors to deal with, which means before then they’ll have to have killed over 60. And it turns out, according to my sources, that he could have dumped out 60 arrows out of that quiver.

The Book and Sword blog, quotes page 68 of Ellis H. Minns, Scythians and Greeks: A Survey of Ancient History and Archaeology on the North Coast of the Euxine from the Danube to the Caucasus (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1913) which claims to have found 200 to 300 arrows in quivers from Scythian graves .

The Book and Sword blog article goes on to state:

“Soldiers in Babylonia in the same period usually carried 30 to 60 arrows, the Strategikon recommends that Roman soldiers carry 30 or 40 in a quiver, and English archers in the 14th, 15th, and 16th century usually carried a sheaf of two dozen arrows.”

There were 108 suitors, so I tried to imagine the size of the main hall, the megaron, where all the feasting and fighting takes place. I found an archaeology article about the throne room, which would have been in the megaron, of Nestor’s Throne Room, dated to 1300-1200 BC, located in Pylos, Greece. Assuming Odysseus’ palace in Ithaka was similar, it might have looked something like this:

Now Odysseus says he’ll try to hit a target that no man’s hit before. And the suitors still haven’t got a clue. Antinoos sure doesn’t. He’s lifting his fancy gold wine cup – described by Homer in loving detail – to his lips just as the arrow goes all the way through his throat.

Now the suitors look at the walls and finally notice that all the weapons, shields, and armor are gone. They have only their swords, close quarter weapons, against arrows, distance weapons. No spears, no arrows of their own.

But they still don’t take the warning. Even with Odysseus himself standing in front of them with dozens of arrows spilled out on the floor and a powerful bow in his hands, they still think it’s a fluke, a lucky shot. They still don’t see their danger.

Blinder than Polyphemus

by maryh10000

So long have they been indulged.
So long had no man or law stayed their hands.
Warned of their crimes, time and again, 

by the beggar, 
by the seer, 
by the herdsmen, 
by the Queen, 
by prince Telemakhos.

They didn’t see.

Even when the beggar stood motionless, hit by the footstool.
Even when the beggar defeated Irus, with just one blow.
Even when the beggar strung the bow easily, that they could not.
Even when he made the shot, only Odysseus could make.

Odysseus answers them with (two translations of the same part):

Your last hour has come. You die in blood.
-- Translated by Robert Fitzgerald

The hour of vengeance, wretches, now is come,
Impending fate is yours, and instant doom.
-- Translated by Alexander Pope

Then, finally, finally someone takes him seriously. Eurymakhos tries smooth words, trying to blame it all on Antinoos, and promising restoration. It might even have been convincing once – but Odysseus has heard and seen for himself what Eurymakhos is, from his own mouth, and so have Telemakhos, Eumaios, and Philiotios.

Again he answers (two translations of the same part):

There will be killing till the score is paid.
-- Translated by Robert Fitzgerald

Your blood is my demand, your lives the prize,
Till pale as yonder wretch each suitor lies.
-- Translated by Alexander Pope

The Battle

In the seconds before his death, Eurymakhos finally proves his leadership and his bravery. He rallies the rest, makes a plan on the spot, and rushes to the front. What if he had supported the law instead of preying on the weak? Too late now, he is down.

And the third suitor brave enough to fight dies next – Amphinomos. He had been warned, and had believed, the beggar’s warning, but he was bound by Athena because he was a suitor. But even before Athena had bound him, he had not walked away. Too late now. His advice forestalled attacks on Telemakhos not once, but twice, but he dies by the prince’s hand. Telemakhos spears him from behind, his first kill, on the way to join his father at the entrance.

Telemakhos wants to get weapons, shields and helmets for the four of them. Odysseus agrees. He’ll hold off the suitors in the meantime. And he probably has enough arrows to do so.

There are no more rushes by the suitors. They cower, but still, every arrow hits its mark and brings down a man. Telemakhos gets back with the two herdsmen, all three of them now outfitted with two spears each, shield and helmet, about the time his father has spent his arrows. Odysseus equips himself and sends Eumaios over to guard the door near the storeroom Telemakhos just got back from.

Now that they’re not under fire, Agelaos takes charge of the suitors. He sees a window, and calls for someone to climb up there, get out, and go for help. Melanthios knows that the window is on the way to the storeroom, where Eumaios is now on guard. They can’t get out that way, but he can climb up the wall to there and bring arms back from the same storeroom Telemakhos came from. And so he does.

When Odysseus sees twelve of the suitors suddenly equipped with a spear, a shield and a helmet, he suspects one of the women or Melanthios. Telemakhos admits he left the door to the storeroom unlocked and then Eumaios spots Melanthios heading back there. Odysseus sends the two herdsmen to tie Melanthios’ hands and feet together behind his back and hang him from the storeroom ceiling while he and Telemakhos keep the suitors at bay until they get back.

When they return, there are only two score men left to fight, so it looks like Odysseus had already taken down around 60 of them with his arrows. Considering what cowards they were after the first three suitors were killed, that actually seems possible.

Only now do the remaining suitors even attempt to fight the four armed men. The odds have gone down to five to one. Each of the four has two spears, and twelve of the 40 have one spear each, so it’s 8 spears to 12.

Agelaus decides against trying to rush them. They’ll all target only Odysseus, six throwing at a time. The first time they throw, Athena makes sure none of them hit. Then, the four throw their spears, each one killing a man. The suitors take spears from the dead, and throw again. Once again, Athena keeps any of her people from dying, although they did score superficial wounds on Telemakhos and Eumaios.

Once again, the four throw and every spear kills a man. Then Odysseus gets in close and drops Agelaos with his spear. This still leaves around 30 men for them to kill. But now, Athena drives their enemies mad with fear, by appearing with her terrifying shield, the aegis.

The four then easily kill the remaining suitors like falcons picking off songbirds birds of prey.

When the fighting is over, it turns out that there are three men still alive. The first survivor grabs Odysseus legs and begs for mercy, Leodes, who was the diviner for the suitors. Unfortunately for him, he was also, himself, a suitor. Odysseus beheads him.

Two more beg for mercy. Phemios, the minstrel, sang for the suitors. Not a suitor, he claimed his divinely protected role as a minstrel, and also that he was compelled. He has also never been shown mocking or taking advantage of anyone. Telemakhos agrees he should be spared, then actually suggests they look for Medon, the herald. He has been keeping Penelope informed, and has looked out for Telemakhos since he was a boy. Medon sticks his head up and is also spared. Both are sent out of the hall to the courtyard.

The Executions

There is one more category of traitor to deal with – the women who betrayed Penelope and conspired with the suitors. Eurykleia tells Odysseus there are twelve such women.

Were there women other than the twelve, who had sex with the suitors, but didn’t make the list? Or were they all considered guilty, even if they did not consent? After all, the suitors would be guilty of rape, that is theft, whether the women consented or not. We don’t know. But we do know that every one of the twelve is presented, at the end, as having willingly conspired and had sex with the suitors, making more work for the other women, verbally disrespecting the family, and betraying Penelope. Not every woman who conspires with the enemy is a victim. Then or today.

Odysseus condemns the women to death. But first, they will clean the blood and gore from the hall. All the suitors are dead, their bodies piled up in the hall. They will touch the corpses of the men they conspired with, laid with. They will see what came of their collusion.

Then, they are to be executed by the sword. Once again, Pope and Fitzgerald are best:

and hack them with your swordblades till you cut the life out of them, and every thought of sweet Aphrodite under the rutting suitors, when they lay down in secret.
-- Translated by Robert Fitzgerald

There the revenging sword shall smite them all;
So with the suitors let them mix in dust,
Stretch’d in a long oblivion of their lust.
-- Translated by Alexander Pope

But now, Telemakhos reconsiders. Death it will be, but not by the sword. That would be an honorable kind of death, reserved for those who die in battle, or for sacrificial offerings. Hang them, like birds, trapped by snares in a thicket.

To me, death by hanging does not seem crueler than death by the sword. A death by sword, if it only took one clean stroke, might be faster, but it might not be one clean stroke either. We have had the deaths of the suitors described in gruesome detail, and this does not seem worse. The issue appears to be that death by hanging is more shameful, not more painful.

But the worst is reserved for the slave goatherd, Melanthios. During the entire fight, he was hung, weighted with a plank, from the ceiling, by his hands and feet tied together behind his back. It is unlikely he could walk by then, and his shoulders must have been dislocated. They cut off his nose and ears, tore out his genitals to feed to the dogs, and then cut off his hands and feet. It does not say whether they killed him directly. It implies that they left him there like that to die, without any single immediately fatal wound, to bleed out.

Then, after fumigating the place with fire and sulphur, the loyal servant women are called to meet their master, returned home. And they rejoice to see him.

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In Book II, Eurykleia got the supplies from the great vault that stored the treasures of the family for Telemakhos’ trip to Pylos and Sparta. Now, Penelope goes to get her husband’s military treasures from a [different?] storeroom that contains his great bow and arrows and other gleaming armor and weaponry of gold and bronze and iron.

She comes down to the hall with the bow in her hand and a quiver packed with arrows over her shoulders. Her maids carry a chest with the iron axe heads. She castigates the suitors for their behavior, and announces a contest for which she herself will be the prize. Eumaios, Philoitios and Telemakhos seem surprised. Antinoos and Eurymakhos, though, don’t. To me, at least, it looks like the traitorous maids let them know what was coming.

Antinoos mocks the two herdsmen for being upset and they leave the hall. Telemakhos makes a joke of it.

“What do you know?” he says. “Mother gave in after all. Step right up and earn your prize. No prize like her, whether in Achaia, Argos, Pylos, or Mykene; on the island of Ithaca or on the mainland.” [my paraphrase] He sounds like a carnival barker to me.

But Telemakhos is a trickster like his father. He sets up the axe heads easily, astonishing everyone since he’s never seen this trick done before. And then asks for the chance to make a try himself. On his fourth try, he almost succeeds in stringing the bow, but his father gives him a look he stops. This makes me think that Telemakhos didn’t know ahead of time about the bow, but that he is now picking up that his father knows what’s going on.

While the suitors make fools of themselves, not even able to string the bow, let alone use it, Odysseus follows the two herdsmen outside. He proves to them he’s Odysseus by showing them his scar, and gives them tasks. Eumaios will give Odysseus his bow when the suitors refuse to let him try and Philoitios will lock the gate so the suitors can’t escape. The three men return to the hall separately, leaving some time between them.

The suitors have, of course, failed, and the beggar suggests they give him a try. For the first time, the suitors seem to consider that he might be a real problem. As Odysseus suspected, they don’t want to give him the bow.

Antinoos threatens him.

Penelope warns him not to threaten a guest.

Eurymakhos worries about their reputation if the beggar shows them up.

Penelope gets in a real zinger: “Eurymakhos, you have no good repute in this realm, nor the faintest hope of it —” [translated by Robert Fitzgerald].

And now, we have a recap of the exact same words Telemakhos used when he told his mother to go back to her room and her women and her weaving in the very first book, where “the bow” takes the place of “speech.”1

go to thy chamber, and busy thyself with thine own tasks, the loom and the distaff, and bid thy handmaids ply their tasks. The bow shall be for men, for all, but most of all for me; since mine is the authority in the house.”

— translated by A. T. Murray

He’s absolutely got to get her out of there. She will be in danger if she remains down in the hall when the bloodshed starts. And the four against the suitors will be in danger if they cannot take action exactly when the moment is right, before they lose the element of surprise.

Robert Fitzgerald goes with scholarship that considers the paragraph from Book I to be an unintentional duplicate, so he leaves it out, and considering that they differ by only one word in the Greek, I get it now. I thought he considered it too rude for modern audiences, since the other three older translations I use (Butler, Murray, Pope) and the Greek from the Perseus Catalog all keep it. Now, seeing how close the duplication is, perhaps other scholarship supports thinking that it was too soon for Telemakhos to be speaking that strongly in the first book.

I like keeping it, though. I think it makes a good bookend, to have it both places, especially since it is also followed by the exact same following paragraph in both books, with not even a single word of difference in the Greek at all.

She then, seized with wonder, went back to her chamber, for she laid to heart the wise saying of her son. Up to her upper chamber she went with her handmaids, and then bewailed Odysseus, her dear husband until flashing-eyed Athena cast sweet sleep upon her eyelids.

— translated by A. T. Murray

Penelope gets safely back to her rooms, and now the suitors threaten Eumaios, who is bringing the bow to the beggar. Frightened, he puts it down. Telemakhos again asserts his authority, this time over Eumaios, whom he calls “ἄττα.” The suitors laugh at them — maybe because Telemakhos used the term ἄττα?2 But Eumaios picks up the bow and gets it and the quiver of arrows to Odysseus.

At first, the suitors continue mocking the beggar with the bow. Odysseus totally ignores them. He handles the bow like a harper handling a precious instrument, strings the bow with ease, and then plucks the string to make it sing.

The suitors fall silent, stunned.

There’s a crack of thunder. Odysseus laughs at the sign from Zeus. He makes the shot easily, then signals to Telemakhos.

Telemakhos, true son of King Odysseus,
belted his sword on, clapped hand to his spear,
and with a clink and glitter of keen bronze
stood by his chair, in the forefront by his father.
-- Translated by Robert Fitzgerald

Let the battle begin.

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Odysseus, with Athena by his side, stands in the quiet hall with Telemakhos, “studying the ground for slaughter.”1Telema khos, who is with him, cannot see her. As planned, they are going to move all the family arms from the hall and lock them away in an inner room.

Telemakhos directs Eurykleia to lock the maids in the women’s hall while he and the stranger move the arms to shield them from getting more dirty and discolored. But with the women shut away, who will provide the light? Athena herself, still unseen by Telemakhos! Odysseus tells him the light is from the gods and to remember this, but to keep quiet. And once all the arms are moved, he sends his son off to bed, across the courtyard in his chamber in the tower, while he deals with Penelope and her maids.

He waits with Athena, whom only he can see, in the hall. Not long after, Penelope comes downstairs to the hall with her maids, while other maids come out to clean up the hall, now that the suitors are gone. Melantho, once again, takes to insulting the stranger – she accuses him of being there to ogle the women – and tries to kick him out of the hall.

The stranger answers her with a warning that Odysseus will return, and even if not, his son is a man now and will punish her himself.

Penelope backs him up. Homer already told us Melantho is sleeping with Eurymakhos. Now Penelope confirms that she knows about it. And reminds her that the stranger has lingered here specifically at her request.

Secrets in Front of Traitors

Then follows one of the most remarkable sections of the Odyssey. I’m influenced here by Robert Fitzgerald’s postscript to his translation of the Odyssey, although my interpretation of their “code” is mine.

We know that there are traitors among the maids, and that anything the stranger and Penelope say may be told to the suitors. Odysseus must reveal who he is to her, in their presence. In addition, Penelope will introduce the idea of the test of the bow, which will enable Odysseus to both prove his identity, and to be armed and attack before the suitors realize what is happening, without the maids understanding, so that the suitors aren’t forewarned about what its actual purpose is.

Penelope asks the stranger who he is, his parentage, and his homeland. He avoids a direct answer by saying it causes him too much grief to talk about. “One of the maids might say – or you might think – I had got maudlin over sups of wine.”2

— I can’t trust the maids. Can I trust you?

Penelope grieves because suitors from Doulikhion, Same, Zakynthos, and Ithakans, [the same list Telemakhos gave Odysseus earlier] are courting her against her wish. “Can I give proper heed to guest or suppliant or herald on the realm’s affairs?”3

— I don’t want to remarry, but I can’t control the suitors.

She describes her weaving strategem, and how she was betrayed by her maids. The suitors did not do this alone. “So these men urge on my marriage, and I wind a skein of wiles.”4

— I’ve been holding them off, but I was betrayed.

“my son will not stand by while they eat up his property. He comprehends it, being a man full grown, able to oversee the kind of house Zeus would endow with honor.”5

— Telemakhos is old enough to run the house, if he can get rid of the suitors, who outnumber him greatly.

Now Odysseus makes up a story about where he is from, that is significantly different from what he told Eumaios. He still claims to be from Krete, but instead of being the son of a rich man called Kastor by a concubine, in this story he is Aithon, the son of Deukalion, who is the son of King Minos himself. Aithon is the younger brother of Idomeneus, who went to fight at Troy, while Aithon didn’t. He claims to have seen Odysseus at Knossos in Krete, ten or eleven days after Idomeneus had left for Troy. Odysseus was also on his way to Troy, but had been blown off-course at Cape Malea and landed in Krete. Odysseus was grounded at Krete for twelve days until the wind changed and they put to sea.

It’s so convincing, Penelope is moved to tears. Odysseus is also moved. I like the way Fitzgerald translates “ δόλῳ” in this context: “He had this trick” and then describes what he’s doing, although that is not literally in the text. The Greek does say that he held back his tears6. I also like the Pope translation very much here.

Imagine how his heart ached for his lady, 
his wife in tears; and yet he never blinked; 
his eyes might have been made of horn or iron 
for all that she could see. He had this trick – 
wept he willed to, inwardly
-- Translated by Robert Fitzgerald

Withering at heart to see the weeping fair,
His eyes look stern, and cast a gloomy stare;
Of horn the stiff relentless balls appear,
Or globes of iron fix’d in either sphere;
Firm wisdom interdicts the softening tear.
-- translated by Alexander Pope

When she’s finished weeping, though, Penelope still asks for proof that he’s seen Odysseus. Remember that she’s been prepped already to expect that Odysseus could come back, and she knows that the stranger is watching what he’s saying in front of her maids. She has to consider that the stranger is Odysseus himself.

The stranger proves it. Just like Arete recognized her own handiwork in the clothes Odysseus had been given by Nausikaa, Penelope recognizes the clothes and brooch Odysseus describes. She had put them on him herself — was any of it her handiwork? — when she sent him off to Troy. And he mentions his herald, an older man named Eurybates, that he preferred over his other men.

Now she knows he actually saw Odysseus. Could he be Odysseus himself? And she needs to distract again. She thanks the stranger for his news, and weeps, but once more insists that Odysseus will never return.

He tells her that doesn’t need to grieve, because Odysseus is not dead and is coming home. He ends his story in the same place as the story he told Eumaios: Odysseus is in Thesprotia. And he explains how he got to Thesprotia with the story of being shipwrecked on the island of the Phaiakians, after Zeus shipwrecked him and killed his crew for eating the cattle of Helios on Thrinakia.

He ends by swearing by Zeus and by the hearth of Odysseus that Odysseus is alive and coming home. He will be home “before this present dark and one day’s ebb, after the wane, before the crescent moon.”7 According to Fitzgerald in the postscript to his translation, since the next day turns out to be the new moon, as we know because of the holiday in honor of Apollo, this could indicate the very next day.

Once again Penelope says his news would be good if it could happen that way, but that Odysseus will never return. But she calls for her maids to make him up a real bed and wash his feet. In the morning, they are to bathe him and clothe him so he can sit next to Telemakhos at the feasting.

— I believe you that Odysseus will be there soon. Are you he? You are my honored guest.

Odysseus turns her down, making excuses. He also says he doesn’t want any of the maids to bathe his feet, but then reconsiders. Maybe an old maidservant? And describes someone exactly like Eurykleia.

— Don’t make me up a nice bed. I need to stay here in the hall unencumbered. And don’t forget that the maids will tell the suitors everything we say here.

Now Penelope uses a dream that looks a lot like the omen of the eagle killing a goose that Helen interpreted for Telemakhos to ask the stranger straight out if he is Odysseus. In the dream, an eagle comes down and kills twenty fat geese, and I weep, with all the other women. Then the eagle comes down and tells me not to weep. All those geese were suitors and the eagle was I, your lord, come back to kill them all.

— Are you Odysseus? Can you win against so many?

The stranger answers:

My dear, how can you choose to read the dream
differently? Has not Odysseus himself
shown you what is to come? Death to the suitors,
sure death, too. Not one escapes his doom.
-- Translated by Robert Fitzgerald

— I am. And I can.

Handing Him the Weapon

Once again, she tells him he’s wrong, so that when the maids tell the suitors, they’ll interpret it the same as they always have: someone is giving Penelope hope, and she’s not falling for it.

Now, she suggests a contest for the suitors, with herself as the prize. They are to string and use the bow of Odysseus for one of his favorite trick shots. Penelope doesn’t wield a weapon herself, she (metaphorically) puts it in his hands. And comes close to literally putting it in his hands in Book XXI.

If the stranger really is Odysseus, he will know that none of the suitors could possibly win such a contest. If he wins it, he will have proven who he is, and will be armed with bow and arrow against the unsuspecting suitors.

The stranger answers that the contest and the timing is perfect.

Then Odysseus of many wiles answered her, and said: “Honored wife of Odysseus, son of Laertes, no longer now do thou put off this contest in thy halls; for, I tell thee, Odysseus of many wiles will be here, ere these men, handling this polished bow, shall have strung it, and shot an arrow through the iron.” 
Translated by A. T. Murray

Then she leaves him to go to her own bed, and Athena gives her sleep.

Book XX Setting the Stage

Odysseus sleeps outside in the entryway instead of accepting a bed inside, and observes the traitorous women going to the suitors. As expected, the suitors will indeed be told what the stranger and Penelope said. Will they recognize who the stranger is, or what the purpose of the contest is? When Eurymakhos hears about the contest in Book XXI, he doesn’t sound very surprised. Or worried.

As it gets close to dawn, Odysseus wakes up when he hears Penelope cry out in her restless sleep. He asks Zeus for a sign, and gets one. An old maidservant, out early to grind grain because of the relentless feasting of the suitors, prays aloud that this will be the last day of their feasting. Zeus sends a thunderclap in a cloudless sky. Message received.

The house stirs. Today is the new moon, the feast of Apollo, so the suitors will be early to their feasting. All the servants are busy.

The herdsmen arrive with the animals for the feasting: Eumaios with his pigs, the cowherd, Philoitos, and of course, the traitor goatherd, Melanthios with his goats and his usual insults. Eumaios introduces the stranger to Philoitos, who pledges his devotion to their absent master, Odysseus. The complement of those who will directly fight with Odysseus against the suitors is complete: Telemakhos, Eumaios and Philoitos. Odysseus and those three, with some help from Athena, will prevail against over a hundred suitors.

The suitors once more plot to kill Telemakhos, and for the second time, Amphinomos tells them not to. They get rowdy at the feast, and one of the suitors, Ktesippos, throws a cows foot at the stranger. Telemakhos tells him he’s lucky he missed, because he’d have a lance in his belly otherwise. And they listen to him and are quiet for a bit. Then Athena riles up the suitors one more time, with wild laughter. Theoklymenos gives them their last warning and leaves.

Telemakhos awaits his father’s sign to start. Penelope looks down on the hall.

The stage is set. Everyone is in place.

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                                      αὐτὰρ Ὀδυσσεὺς
θυμῷ μὲν γοόωσαν ἑὴν ἐλέαιρε γυναῖκα,
ὀφθαλμοὶ δ᾽ ὡς εἰ κέρα ἕστασαν ἠὲ σίδηρος
ἀτρέμας ἐν βλεφάροισι: δόλῳ δ᾽ ὅ γε δάκρυα κεῦθεν.

The suitors are enjoying dance and song as the day heads towards sundown, with no sign of stopping.

Beggars Fight

A well-known local beggar, who is a regular at the house of Odysseus, shows up, surprised to see another beggar already there. His nickname is “Iros” because he takes messages for the suitors, like Iris, the rainbow goddess, does for the gods on Olympos. When the suitors see Iros trying to make Odysseus leave “his” place for begging, Antinoos thinks it would be great fun to push the two beggars to fight each other.

The winner will get a nice supper of blood pudding. Odysseus “reluctantly” agrees, despite being so old, as long as the suitors promise not to take sides against him. They agree. Telemakhos adds the requirement that the two ringleaders, Antinoos and Eurymakhos, will enforce those promises. Both of them happily agree. They’re looking forward to great fun mocking the two beggars.

Then, Odysseus “belts up” for the fight, removing most of his rags. Uh oh. Odysseus looks like a fighter, not a decrepit old man now. Iros tries to back out, but the suitors force him to “belt up” himself. They threaten to send him to King Epeiros, who is known for cruelty: he’ll cut off his nose and ears and feed his private parts to the dogs. It sounds like comical exaggeration, as does the beggar’s terror. But exactly that will actually happen to someone in a later book. The threats and jokes of the suitors always seem to come back on their own.

The fight is very, very short. It takes Odysseus only one blow to break Iros’ jaw. Odysseus then drags him over to the wall, gives him his staff, and says he’s perfectly welcome to keep begging here. Meanwhile the suitors continue to terrify him with threats of King Epeiros. The suitors think it was all capital fun, and congratulate the winner. Antinoos gives him the blood pudding.

Amphinomos is Warned

Then Amphinomos brings him two brown loaves and wine in a gold cup. “Here’s luck, grandfather; a new day; may the worst be over now.1”

Odysseus is touched, and remembers that Amphinomos’ father, Nisos, was a decent sort. He recounts the dangers that the suitors are bringing on themselves.

I see you young blades living dangerously,
a household eaten up, a wife dishonored – 
and yet, the master will return, I tell you,
to his own place, and soon; for he is near.
-- Translated by Robert Fitzgerald

Amphinomos needs to get out of there! Amphinomos, the kindest of the suitors, who has already spoken against the suitor’s plots to kill Telemakhos once, doesn’t mock or disbelieve Odysseus. In fact, he takes him seriously. But although “his heart foreknew the wrath to come,2” Athena kept him from missing the next day. He’ll leave for his own place tonight, but he’ll be back the next day. And it will be Telemakhos who kills him.

Penelope makes an appearance, causing the suitors to bring her more gifts while at the same time convincing Odysseus that she’s still avoiding marriage.

Odysseus’ heart laughed when he heard all this – 
her sweet tones charming gifts out of the suitors
with talk of marriage, though she intended none.
-- Translated by Robert Fitzgerald

They bring gifts, then she goes back upstairs.

Melantho Mocks

The servants have set out braziers, since it’s getting dark. Odysseus offers to tend the fires so the maidservants can go keep Penelope company, and spin, and card wool. They laugh at him. Melantho, in particular, mocks and insults him. She’s the daughter of Dolios [is the goatherd, Melanthios, whose father is also called Dolios, her brother?], and was raised by Penelope like a daughter of her own. But she has no respect for Penelope, and she’s sleeping with Eurymakhos.

When Odysseus threatens to tell Telemakhos, the women get scared, and go back to their rooms.

But the suitors have heard the mocking of the maidservants, and Eurymakhos takes it up again. As before, Odysseus is more than capable of defending himself. Once more, he warns that the master is on his way back. Eurymakhos, like Antinoos, ends up throwing a footstool, but this time Odysseus ducks and it doesn’t hit him.

Telemakhos says everyone’s had more than enough wine, and they should go home. Amphinomos agrees. He has his herald, Moulios, pour everyone wine for the last libation of the evening to the gods. And all the suitors go home.

Doulikhion Mourns

by maryh10000

Amphinomos is down.
He counselled, twice, “Don’t kill
The prince, Telemakhos.

Telemakhos cut down
The Lord of fifty-two
Doulikhion suitors.

He raised sword to the King,
That counselled him to flee.
Athena held him down.

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Now in Book 17, they start to implement their plans. They must head to town and start to sift out friend from foe. Unfortunately, Eumaios, although a completely trustworthy friend and like a father to Telemakhos, cannot yet be read into their plans. He would give away the beggar’s secret identity, inadvertently, before they are ready to act.

Telemakhos will head into town right away to reassure his mother he’s still alive. He directs Eumaios to take the beggar into town later to beg, since Telemakhos himself has too much to deal with and can’t be expected to take care of everyone. The beggar himself agrees: “I am not yet so old I must lay up indoors and mumble, ‘Aye, Aye’ to a master.”1 Eumaios would rather keep him at his hut, but his master, beloved or not, must be obeyed.

Telemakhos in Town

When Penelope sees Telemakhos in the hall, she responds with exactly the same words in Greek that Eumaios used on seeing Telemakhos back safely at his hut:2

Thou art come, Telemachus, sweet light of my eyes; I though I should never see thee more after thou hadst gone in they ship to Pylos

– translated by A. T. Murray

Penelope wants him to tell her about his trip and news. But Telemakhos, having let her see him, face to face, says “Mother, not now.”3 He tells her to prepare for a noble friend he’s bringing to court, and to sacrifice and ask Zeus for revenge. And so, she does.

In town, he meets up with and debriefs trusted family friends Mentor, Antiphos, and Halitherses, and finds Theoklymenos, the noble friend he wants to bring to court, in the company of his crewman Peiraios.

Telemakhos is much different here, than he was in Book I. Then, when Athena showed up as a guest in the form of Mentes, he was sullen and embarrassed. When he brings Theoklymenos to court, we see him as a head of household, acting the way Nestor treated him, and the way the Phaiakians treated Odysseus. Penelope, herself acting like a queen, directs her son and his guest to the maids to be bathed, given fresh clothes, and then fed. Meanwhile she sits and spins fine wool yarn.

Once the guest has been appropriately washed, clothed and fed, Telemakhos tells his mother what he learned from Nestor and Menelaus. According to Menelaus, Odysseus is alive and trapped on Kalypso’s island. And here, Theoklymenos repeats his own oracle, declaring that Odysseus is already on the island of Ithaka and will bring a “black hour”4 on the suitors.

Beggars and Slaves and Arete

Meanwhile, Odysseus and Eumaios are almost reached town. They’re at the spring house, where people get their water. Now we see how beggars are treated these days in Ithaka.

Melanthios, son of Dolios, a goatherd who is probably a slave (the word for slave is used interchangeably with herdsman in the Odyssey) like Eumaios, mocks Eumaios and the beggar, ending by kicking the beggar’s hip. He doesn’t notice the utter lack of effect his kick has on the ragged old man – the beggar doesn’t even falter on the path. Odysseus, while contemplating how he’d kill the man, nevertheless keeps calm and doesn’t respond.

Eumaios, on the other hand, calls on the gods to send their true lord back and punish the “fine courtly ways”5 or “proud airs”6 of such as Melanthios.

“Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.” – Robert E. Howard, from The Tower of the Elephant.

Then, Melanthios actually threatens to force the beggar on a ship and sell him. Having just heard that this actually happened to Eumaios, this is not an idle threat. And then Melanthios actually hopes Telemakhos himself will be struck down, either by Apollo or by one of the suitors. Speaking of which, the suitors have started their daily routine of congregating at the house of Odysseus to slaughter his livestock and feast. Melanthios brings his two goats into the hall, and sits at the side of his favorite suitor, Eurymakhos, and lets the other household servants / slaves wait on him.

Then we have the sad scene where Odysseus is recognized by his dog Argos, whom he left as a puppy 20 years ago. Eumaios tells him what a good dog he was, how good at hunting. But these days, in his old age, the women don’t take care of him. [Again, it is impossible to tell which, if any, servants in the house, male or female, are not slaves. In general, all the workers in the house of Odysseus are referred to generally as slaves δμώς]

And then we have a plaintive statement by Eumaios:7

Servants never do their work when their master’s hand is no longer over them, for Zeus takes half the goodness [aretê] out of a man when he makes a slave of him.

– Samuel Butler

You know how servants are: without a master
they have no will to labor, or excel.
For Zeus who views the wide world takes away
half the manhood of a man, that day
he goes into captivity and slavery.
-- Translated by Robert Fitzgerald

The Fitzgerald translation is interesting. Only he translates “arete” specifically as manhood, rather than “goodness” or “worth.” On the one hand, his specific example was about the women who no longer bothered to take care of Argos, now that he was old and of no use to the hunters. On the other hand, in his own example, he refers specifically to “men,” and does not use a generic term for people. Does “arete,” when applied specifically to men, mean “manhood?” That would be similar to Latin, where the word “virtue” is derived specifically from the word for “vir,” the word for man.

Eumaios warns the beggar not to linger too long, then enters the hall and sits down with Telemakhos. Odysseus waits for a bit, then comes in through the servant entrance.

The Beggar and Antinoos

Telemakhos again immediately sets an example, as the head of the household, of the proper treatment of a beggar. He sends Eumaios with a full loaf of bread and two handfuls of meat to the beggar and invites him to beg from everyone here. The beggar thanks him loudly.

In a breathtaking example of hypocrisy, Antinoos berates Eumaios for bringing in a beggar to waste his master’s property.”

Eumaios talks back to Antinoos, just as he did to Melanthios, but Telemakhos stops him. And then does it himself!

We’ve seen Telemakhos with his own father, with Eumaios who is almost a father, and referring to Nestor as being like a father. Now, with sarcasm so thick you cut it with a knife, he answers Antinoos with: “What fatherly concern you show me.”8

And then, he orders him to give the beggar something. Twice.9

Give him a loaf. Am I a niggard? No,
I call on you to give. 
– Translated by Robert Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald translates it as a clear command. The other translators use “bid,” which in English can also be a clear command. Antinoos answers as if Telemakhos were still a boy to be over-ruled, but no one else does. Everyone else gives to the beggar.

Later, to make it clear, Odysseus actually flatters Antinoos. Surely, he is truly noble and will give him more than anyone else. And then he tells the story he told Eumaios about how he was reduced to begging, including how important it is to please the gods by giving alms to the beggar.

Antinoos just hears a beggar’s pitch, and throws his footstool, as he threatened before, and hits his right shoulder. Ominously, as before with Melanthios’ kick, Odysseus stands completely unmoved, and just shakes his head.

It reads to me as if Antinoos has been in a court of law. It’s one thing to hit a man who is trying to take your property. It’s quite another to hit a man who is begging for food. And now Odysseus, as the beggar, pronounces judgment:

If beggars interest the gods, if there are Furies
pent in the dark to avenge a poor man’s wrong, then may
Antinoos meet his death before his wedding day!
– Translated by Robert Fitzgerald

Antinoos threatens the beggar again, but everyone else is cowed, and no-one is listening. In fact, one of the suitors, who is not named, warns that the gods check up on men by taking such forms as this beggar.

Meanwhile, Penelope has heard the footstool hit the beggar, and sends for Eumaios to tell her about him. Hearing that the beggar says Odysseus is nearby, in Threspotia, she asks him to bring him to her so she can hear his story. The beggar sends back a request that she wait until the suitors leave first, since the suitors are clearly dangerous to him. She agrees.

Eumaios leaves for his hut, leaving Telemakhos and the beggar behind.

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ἦλθες, Τηλέμαχε, γλυκερὸν φάος. οὔ σ᾽ ἔτ᾽ ἐγώ γε
ὄψεσθαι ἐφάμην, ἐπεὶ ᾤχεο νηῒ Πύλονδε

δμῶες δ᾽, εὖτ᾽ ἂν μηκέτ᾽ ἐπικρατέωσιν ἄνακτες,
οὐκέτ᾽ ἔπειτ᾽ ἐθέλουσιν ἐναίσιμα ἐργάζεσθαι:
ἥμισυ γάρ τ᾽ ἀρετῆς ἀποαίνυται εὐρύοπα Ζεὺς
ἀνέρος, εὖτ᾽ ἄν μιν κατὰ δούλιον ἦμαρ ἕλῃσιν.

δός οἱ ἑλών: οὔ τοι φθονέω: κέλομαι γὰρ ἐγώ γε:

Odysseus is in the hut with Eumaios, and they are fixing breakfast, having sent the other swineherds out with the pigs, when he hears footsteps and the dogs. It must be one of the lads coming back for something, or maybe some other friend, since the dogs are friendly, not attacking.

And then Telemakhos appears at the doorway.

Eumaios drops the vessels he’s using to mix the wine for their breakfast and rushes to hug and kiss him, weeping.1 He greets Telemakhos like a father greeting an only son, come back after ten years, and thought dead, even though Telemakhos has only been gone about a week.

But Eumaios is atta, not pater.

Alexander Pope2 translates atta as “friend,” and Samuel Butler3 as “old friend.” That avoids “father”, which might be seen as confusing. But it doesn’t keep a similar level of intimacy.

I think Robert Fitzgerald’s translation for atta is best: uncle. Although atta seems to literally mean “father”, it is a word of respect used by children to elders that are close family. And the closest we have to that in English is probably “Uncle.”

Think of a man whose dear and only son,
born to him in exile, reared with labor,
has lived ten years abroad and now returns: 
how would that man embrace his son! Just so
the herdsman clapped his arms around Telemakhos
and covered him with kisses – for he knew
the lad had got away from death. He said:

“Light of my days, Telemakhos,
you made it back! When you took ship for Pylos
I never thought to see you here again.
Come in, dear child, and let me feast my eyes;
here you are, home from the distant places!
How rarely anyway, you visit us,
your own men, and your own woods and pastures!
Always in the town, a man would think
you loved the suitors’ company, those dogs!”

Telemakhos with his clear candor said:

“I am with you, Uncle. See now, I have come
because I wanted to see you first, to hear from you
if Mother stayed at home – or is she married
off to someone and Odysseus’ bed
left empty for some gloomy spider’s weaving?”

-- translated by Robert Fitzgerald

A. T. Murray uses father both for pater and atta. Although this doesn’t preserve the distinction — Eumaios reacts exactly like a father but he is not literally one — it preserves another truth. In a very real way, Eumaios may have been more like a father to him growing up than anyone else. At least we know he must be younger than Odysseus, since he is close in age to Odysseus’ youngest sister. Might he have still been in the house with the rest of the family for part of the time Telemakhos was growing up?

And as a loving father greets his own dear son, who comes in the tenth year from a distant land—his only son and well-beloved, for whose sake he has borne much sorrow—even so did the goodly swineherd then clasp in his arms godlike Telemachus, and kiss him all over as one escaped from death; and with wailing he addressed him with winged words: “Thou art come, Telemachus, sweet light of my eyes. I thought I should never see thee more after thou hadst gone in thy ship to Pylos. But come, enter in, dear child, that I may delight my heart with looking at thee here in my house, who art newly come from other lands. For thou dost not often visit the farm and the herdsmen, but abidest in the town; so, I ween, has it seemed good to thy heart, to look upon the destructive throng of the wooers.”

Then wise Telemachus answered him: “So shall it be, father. It is for thy sake that I am come hither, to see thee with my eyes, and to hear thee tell whether my mother still abides in the halls, or whether by now some other man has wedded her, and the couch of Odysseus lies haply in want of bedding, covered with foul spider-webs.”

translated by A. T. Murray

Transformation

Telemakhos sends Eumaios to his mother to let her know he’s back safe and sound. But he doesn’t want to risk sending him with the news to Laertes as well, because he’s worried that if he doesn’t come straight back, Eumaios will be a target to people trying to get to Telemakhos himself. It will be safer to have Penelope send her old housekeeper to Laertes for that.

Once Eumaios is sent on his errand, Athena appears to Odysseus alone, from the courtyard, and signals for him to come outside. He goes out to the other side of the wall around the courtyard, and she tells him it’s time for him to reveal himself to his son, and plan how they will conquer the suitors. She’s eager for battle.

She touches him with a golden wand and he recovers his youth.

The descriptions here all make it sound like more than simply removing the disguise of poverty and old age – it sounds to me, from all the translations, that she doesn’t return Odysseus to the state he was in when he was dropped off by the Phaiakians, well dressed and in good health. He appears to have actually gotten younger.

Fitzgerald’s translation goes the furthest (and too far, I think?) when he has Odysseus lose his beard altogether. The other translations just remove the gray. I don’t think there was any custom of men shaving their beards off, so I think a man without a beard would come across, not so much as a viral young warrior, but more like an immature youth. And that is absolutely not the impact Odysseus has.

Hmm. Since Telemakhos is not described with a beard, would it make Odysseus look similar to his son? Is that the comparison Fitzgerald sees? Hmm. On the other hand, does Homer ever describe whether Telemakhos has a beard or not, either way?

Odysseus: Pater (πατὴρ)

When Odysseus walks back into the hut, Telemakhos is convinced he’s being visited by a god. His first thought is to beg for mercy, and offer gifts and sacrifices.

Then Odysseus insists he’s mortal, and really his father, and embraces his son, starting to weep.

Telemakhos doesn’t believe him. This must be the work of some god who just wants to cause him more pain. After all, a poor old man wearing rags doesn’t suddenly turn into a strong young man wearing a nobleman’s clothes.

Odysseus finally convinces him by saying, truthfully, that it’s the work of Athena who can make him look however she wants: an old man in rags or a young man in fine clothes.

The power of Athena over appearances is something that Telemakhos has experienced many, many times. So now, finally, both father and son cling to each other and cry, long and hard.4

     		                        Then, throwing
his arms around this marvel of a father
Telemakhos began to weep. Salt tears
rose from the wells of longing in both men,
and cries burst from both as keen and fluttering
as those of the great taloned hawk,
whose nestlings farmer take before they fly.
So helplessly they cried, pouring out tears,
and might have gone on weeping so till sundown,

– translated by Robert Fitzgerald

and Telemachus, flinging his arms about his noble father, wept and shed tears, and in the hearts of both arose a longing for lamentation. And they wailed aloud more vehemently than birds, sea-eagles, or vultures with crooked talons, whose young the country-folk have taken from their nest before they were fledged; even so piteously did they let tears fall from beneath their brows. And now would the light of the sun have gone down upon their weeping

– translated by A. T. Murray

Plotting

What finally ends the tears is the need to get back to the problem at hand.

Telemakhos gives a status report of their enemies: a list that reminds me of the much greater assembly of the fleet in Book 2 of the Iliad. They will be facing 102 fighting men.

Meanwhile, in town, both Eumaios and someone from Telemakhos’ ship arrive at the house of Odysseus at the same time. Eumaios whispers to Penelope his news about her son, but the crewman from the ship declares it out loud in front of everyone, so now the suitors know that Telemakhos got around them. Soon afterwards, their own ship that was laying in wait for him, comes into the harbor.

They meet the boat on the beach, and then all gather together on the assembly ground, keeping anyone not with the suitors away. Antinoos, son of Eupeithes, appears to have been on the ship, and immediately absolves himself of any blame. They were doing a good job! The gods were with Telemakhos.

It’s almost comical how they continually call their own guilt down on themselves. Why yes, Antinoos, the gods were with him. But of course, that doesn’t change him in any way. As usual, he’s the most bloodthirsty. They’ve got to kill Telemakhos. Otherwise, the Assembly will vote against them. And if that happens, they’ll have to stop eating his food, and start courting his mother properly, from their own halls, with proper dower gifts.

Amazing! He expects that the worst that could happen would be to go back to the way they should have been acting in the first place. It still doesn’t even occur to him that he, or any of them, might be in mortal danger themselves.

Amphinomos, son of Nisos Aretiades, leader of the suitors from Doulikhion, isn’t that bloodthirsty. It doesn’t feel right to him to kill a prince. They should consult the gods, and then he’ll follow that either way, whether they call for killing Telemakhos or not. So that’s what the suitors all decide to do, and they go back to Odysseus’ house. Presumably to consult the gods?

Meanwhile, Medon tells Penelope what the suitors are planning, as usual, and when they arrive, she confronts them, addressing Antinoos directly.

And now Eurymakhos responds, reassuring her that no one here is planning to kill her son. He is certainly safe from death at the hand of any of the suitors, although the gods would be another matter. Just as Antinoos correctly noted that the gods were with Telemakhos, without imagining that meant he should leave him alone, Eurymakhos correctly states that men cannot avoid death willed by the gods, while not imagining that he, rather than Telemakhos, might be their target.

Back at the swineherd’s hut, Athena transforms Odysseus back into an old beggar. They must not let Eumaios know that Odysseus is back, since he would be incapable of keeping the news from Penelope. They need to test the loyalty of those at the palace.

Eumaios returns and tells Telemakhos and the beggar that the suitors know Telemakhos is back, and that the suitors’ ship has returned.

Odysseus and Telemakhos have made their plans.

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ὡς δὲ πατὴρ ὃν παῖδα φίλα φρονέων ἀγαπάζῃ
ἐλθόντ᾽ ἐξ ἀπίης γαίης δεκάτῳ ἐνιαυτῷ,
μοῦνον τηλύγετον, τῷ ἔπ᾽ ἄλγεα πολλὰ μογήσῃ,
20ὣς τότε Τηλέμαχον θεοειδέα δῖος ὑφορβὸς
πάντα κύσεν περιφύς, ὡς ἐκ θανάτοιο φυγόντα:
καί ῥ᾽ ὀλοφυρόμενος ἔπεα πτερόεντα προσηύδα:
‘
ἦλθες, Τηλέμαχε, γλυκερὸν φάος. οὔ σ᾽ ἔτ᾽ ἐγώ γε
ὄψεσθαι ἐφάμην, ἐπεὶ ᾤχεο νηῒ Πύλονδε.
ἀλλ᾽ ἄγε νῦν εἴσελθε, φίλον τέκος, ὄφρα σε θυμῷ
τέρψομαι εἰσορόων νέον ἄλλοθεν ἔνδον ἐόντα.
οὐ μὲν γάρ τι θάμ᾽ ἀγρὸν ἐπέρχεαι οὐδὲ νομῆας,
ἀλλ᾽ ἐπιδημεύεις: ὣς γάρ νύ τοι εὔαδε θυμῷ,
ἀνδρῶν μνηστήρων ἐσορᾶν ἀΐδηλον ὅμιλον.
’
τὸν δ᾽ αὖ Τηλέμαχος πεπνυμένος ἀντίον ηὔδα:
‘
ἔσσεται οὕτως, ἄττα: σέθεν δ᾽ ἕνεκ᾽ ἐνθάδ᾽ ἱκάνω,
ὄφρα σέ τ᾽ ὀφθαλμοῖσιν ἴδω καὶ μῦθον ἀκούσω,
ἤ μοι ἔτ᾽ ἐν μεγάροις μήτηρ μένει, ἦέ τις ἤδη
ἀνδρῶν ἄλλος ἔγημεν, Ὀδυσσῆος δέ που εὐνὴ
χήτει ἐνευναίων κάκ᾽ ἀράχνια κεῖται ἔχουσα.

As some fond sire who ten long winters grieves,
From foreign climes an only son receives
(Child of his age), with strong paternal joy,
Forward he springs, and clasps the favourite boy:
So round the youth his arms Eumaeus spread,
As if the grave had given him from the dead.
“And is it thou? my ever-dear delight!
Oh, art thou come to bless my longing sight?
Never, I never hoped to view this day,
When o’er the waves you plough’d the desperate way.
Enter, my child! Beyond my hopes restored,
Oh give these eyes to feast upon their lord.
Enter, oh seldom seen! for lawless powers
Too much detain thee from these sylvan bowers,”
The prince replied: “Eumaeus, I obey;
To seek thee, friend, I hither took my way.
But say, if in the court the queen reside
Severely chaste, or if commenced a bride?”

A father could not be more delighted at the return of an only son, the child of his old age, after ten years’ absence in a foreign country and after having gone through much hardship. He embraced him, kissed him all over as though he had come back from the dead, and spoke fondly to him saying:

“So you are come, Telemakhos, light of my eyes that you are. When I heard you had gone to Pylos I made sure I was never going to see you any more. Come in, my dear child, and sit down, that I may have a good look at you now you are home again; it is not very often you come into the country to see us herdsmen; you stick pretty close to the town generally. I suppose you think it better to keep an eye on what the suitors are doing.”

“So be it, old friend,” answered Telemakhos, “but I am come now because I want to see you, and to learn whether my mother is still at her old home or whether some one else has married her, so that the bed of Odysseus is without bedding and covered with cobwebs.”

                                                 Τηλέμαχος δὲ
ἀμφιχυθεὶς πατέρ᾽ ἐσθλὸν ὀδύρετο, δάκρυα λείβων,
ἀμφοτέροισι δὲ τοῖσιν ὑφ᾽ ἵμερος ὦρτο γόοιο:
κλαῖον δὲ λιγέως, ἀδινώτερον ἤ τ᾽ οἰωνοί,
φῆναι ἢ αἰγυπιοὶ γαμψώνυχες, οἷσί τε τέκνα
ἀγρόται ἐξείλοντο πάρος πετεηνὰ γενέσθαι:
ὣς ἄρα τοί γ᾽ ἐλεεινὸν ὑπ᾽ ὀφρύσι δάκρυον εἶβον.
καί νύ κ᾽ ὀδυρομένοισιν ἔδυ φάος ἠελίοιο,

Widowhood and Love

Penelope may be weakening in her resolve to stand up to the suitors. Eurymakhos is offering the richest bride gifts, and her father and kinsmen are pressuring her to accept him. Athena seems to say, “Hurry up, or she’ll forget you and your father for a new husband.”

Odyssey, Homer, Book XV, lines 21 to 23

You know a woman’s pride
at bringing riches to the man she marries.
As to her girlhood husband, her first children,
he is forgotten, being dead – and they 
no longer worry her.
– translated by Robert Fitzgerald

That doesn’t seem to match what we’ve been told of Penelope. Is Athena making stuff up to get Telemakhos going? But a more literal translator, who doesn’t try to retain the poetic aspects of the Greek, does something similar:

Odyssey, Homer, Book XV, lines 21 to 23

For thou knowest what sort of a spirit there is in a woman’s breast; she is fain to increase the house of the man who weds her, but of her former children and of the lord of her youth, she takes no thought, when once he is dead, and asks no longer concerning them

– translated by A. T. Murray

And yet, the term translated as “husband” by Fitzgerald and as “lord” by Murray, to describe the widow’s first husband, is κουριδίοιο φίλοιο, which means “wedded loved one”. Why didn’t they translate it as something like: “dear girlhood husband” or “dear lord of her youth.”

The Greek made me think about a woman moving on from first love after widowhood. And this is one of the few cases where I prefer Pope’s translation, because he keeps “love.”

Odyssey, Homer, Book XV, lines 21 to 23

Thou know’st the practice of the female train,
Lost in the children of the present spouse,
They slight the pledges of their former vows;
Their love is always with the lover past;
Still the succeeding flame expels the last.

– translated by Alexander Pope

Others have reminded me of the consequence of the much higher death rate for women in pregnancy and childbirth in the past, as well as the higher death rate for men by violence. All this is overlaid by the higher death rate of both sexes in general, compared to today. The longer a man or woman lived, the more likely they were to lose a spouse, and re-marriage was a matter of survival, of self or children.

While Athena’s warning is harsh, it emphasizes the pressure Penelope is under, without minimizing the feelings she has for Odysseus. It is natural for a woman both to love her first husband, but then also, as needed, to move on to another one once he is dead.

And then Athena reminds him that he needs to keep the family treasure safe because he will need it to get a wife of his own!

Gifts, Invoking Goddesses, and a Seer

Menelaus feasts and gifts Telemakhos. He gives him a two-handled golden wine cup. Megapenthos, his son by a slave woman, gives him a precious silver wine bowl, thus taking on what looks like the role of a royal son. Will Megapenthos end up inheriting his father’s palace and lands?

And Helen, whom so far we’ve not seen spinning or weaving, gifts him with a stunning embroidered robe for Penelope to save for Telemakhos’ bride, when he gets married. Helen did the embroidery herself. Is Telemakhos going to find, or leave on a quest to find, his own bride by the end of the Odyssey?

Last of all, there’s another bird omen: a mountain eagle carries off a goose.

Helen reads the omen. The wild mountain eagle represents Odysseus and the tame goose represents the suitors. Odysseus will bring a black hour on the suitors. Telemakhos promises to invoke Helen as a goddess when he gets back to Ithaka, if this comes to pass. In doing so, he mirrors his father with the Phaiakian queen Arete and princess Nausikaa. Odysseus used similar words about invoking Nausikaa as a goddess, and actually gave his ceremonial cup of wine to Arete, as if she were a goddess, instead of pouring out a libation from it.

They make it to the ship near Pylos.

While they’re getting things ready to sail, Theoklymenos comes running up, and begs to go with them. He’s killed a relative, and his other kinsmen are on his trail to kill him. Interestingly, he doesn’t seem to need to explain himself. Both he and Telemakhos explain their parentage: Theoklymenos identifies himself as being an ancestor of Melampus, who was driven out of Pylos by Nestor’s father. That doesn’t seem to bother anyone either.

Working Like a Slave

Speaking of Eumaios, Odysseus wonders if he’s overstaying his welcome, and asks for guidance on going into town to beg, maybe at the house of Odysseus. He mentions being willing and able to do menial tasks for the nobles: fire building, chopping wood, carving and serving meat, mixing and pouring wine. He lists the things the slaves / house servants do at his own house for the suitors.

Eumaios won’t have that. They have plenty to spare for him, and he doesn’t want his beggar guest to mess with the cruel suitors. So Odysseus changes the subject and asks for news of the parents of his master. The swineherd tells him his mother has died, and his father longs for death, missing both her and his son.

Eumaios recalls how Laertes and his wife raised him along with their youngest child, a daughter, Ktimene, who was close to his age when they bought him. It says he was brought up with her, treated nearly the same. When they both came of age, Ktimene was married off to a Samian prince and Eumaios was given brand new clothes and sandals and sent into the countryside to work. He considered himself well-loved by them. And the gods have prospered his work: he has all he needs plus enough left over to share.

It sounds like Odysseus would have grown up with Eumaios. He next surmises that Eumaios must have come there as a child, due to some misfortune and asks about that. Does Odysseus already know this story? Or was he much older than Eumaios and not around much anymore by then?

Kidnapped and Sold

In the Iliad, we are introduced to many women, born free, who become slaves as prizes of war. Here in the Odyssey, we get stories of free people, male and female, kidnapped and then sold to others far away from home.

That was the story of Eumaios. His father, Ktesios, son of Ormenos, was the king of a small island with only two cities, good for grazing, grain and wine, where there was no sickness, no war, and everyone dies an easy death by the arrows of Artemis or Apollo when they get old.

In his father’s house was a Phoenician woman, good looking and highly skilled in beautiful work. She also looked after Eumaios, but isn’t called his nurse. She had been taken by Taphian pirates (remember Athena’s first disguise in the Odyssey was as friend-of-the-family Mente, the ruler of Taphos) and sold to Eumaios’ father, so she was a slave. She was the daughter of rich man, Arubas, in Sidon.

And then the cycle repeats. A Phoenician merchant ship stops on their island, and one of the sailors seduces the Phoenician slave woman when she’s out doing laundry. Reminds me of Nausikaa running into Odysseus while doing laundry with her handmaids.

She answers the sailor when he asks where she’s from, and he suggests she come with them to Sidon when they’re finished trading and refilling their cargo. She agrees, and then plots with them so that Ktesios doesn’t find out and keep her from getting away. It takes a year for the Phoenicians to sell and buy a cargo. When it’s time to go, she steals three golden goblets and Eumaios to “pay her passage.”

On the way, she drops dead by an arrow from Artemis, so the Phoenicians decide to sell Eumaios at the next easiest stop, as determined by the winds and currents, which happens to be Ithaka. So just as the Phoenician woman had been sold to Eumaios’ father, Eumaios was sold to Laertes.

Another Omen Involving Eurymakhos

Meanwhile, Telemakhos and his ship land in Ithaka, following Athena’s advice to get around the ambush with no trouble. He tells the crew to take the ship to berth in town, while he goes into the countryside. Theoklymenos asks Telemakhos where he should go.

Telemakhos tells him he can’t go to his father’s house, and explains the situation. Then he recommends going to the house of the richest and most likely of the suitors, Eurymakhos. Another bird omen: A hawk, Apollo’s courier, plucks the feathers of a dove. Theoklymenos interprets it to mean the family of Telemakhos will remain in power forever.

Now we come full circle with one set of prophecies. In Book II, Eurymakhos mocked the seer Halitherses for interpreting the two fighting eagles as a warning to the suitors. Now, another seer is guided away from staying with Eurymakhos by another, also correct, interpretation of the bird omens.

In Book II, Eurymakhos said to Halitherses:

Before the whole assembly I advise Telemakhos
to send his mother to her father’s house;
let them arrange her wedding there, and fix
a portion suitable for a valued daughter.
Until he does this, courtship is our business,
vexing though it may be; we fear no one,
certainly not Telemakhos, with his talk;
and we care nothing for your divining, uncle,
useless talk; you win more hatred by it.
We’ll share his meat, no thanks or fee to him,
as long as she delays and maddens us.
– translated by Robert Fitzgerald

So instead, Telemakhos sends the seer to stay at the house of one of his most trusted crewmen on this ship, Peiraios, son of Klytos, instead of to Eurymakhos.

And he himself heads cross country to the swineherd’s hut.

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O my Swineherd

Fitzgerald does something interesting in his translation here. Looking at the Greek, Eumaios is almost always referred to as “Eumaios, the swineherd.” It is quite common in Homer to refer to important characters with set formulas, which seem to be chosen as needed to make a line of the poem scan. Athena is “the grey-eyed goddess”, Poseidon is “the god of earthquake”, Zeus is “the storm king” (among several other set formulas for all of them). Odysseus himself seems to have as many, if not more, set formulas as the gods. He is a “man of ranging mind,” “raider of cities,” “son of Laertes and the gods of old.” Here, Fitzgerald turns “Eumaios, the swineherd” into a similar set formula, referring to him as “O my swineherd!” Eumaios. Has this been used for anyone else of such low status?

Although Eumaios is a slave, he appears to have a pretty decent house, which he built himself, without informing Penelope or Laertes. Later, we will also be told he used his own property to buy a slave of his own, Mesaulios, to help with the house and yard, again without the help of Penelope and Laertes. The terms used seem to imply, not that he is doing anything improper for a slave with his responsibilities, but that he stays away from the palace as much as he can because he detests the suitors so much.

This would be something that would make sense to my first century Romans. Even though a Roman slave could not legally own anything, slaves were often authorized to purchase for their masters, and even sometimes given charge over some amount of property, including other slaves. However, the Roman slave never legally owned anything, no matter what his master might allow. I wonder whether Greek slaves were thought to legally own some things? Or whether it was an undefined gray area. The Romans certainly seemed to define more things in law than the Greeks.

Wife, Concubine and Contubernales

Another interesting point is that Eumaios claims that the master, whom he loves, would have given him a place of his own, and acreage, and a wife [γυναῖκα] who had many suitors [πολυμνήστην: πολυ (much) + μνήστην (form of “to woo”, from which the noun “suitor” [μνηστήρ] is derived) of her own. The term γυναῖκα seems to be used interchangeably as “woman” and “wife”, just as “femme” is used in modern French or “Frau” is used in modern German. My first century Romans, though, would see such a relationship as clearly one of contubernales: socially treated as a marriage by the forbearance of the master, but with no legal rights whatsoever.

Then Odysseus makes up a story about being the son of a rich Cretan named Kastor Hylax by a concubine he had bought. It’s the first time I remember seeing the Greek word for concubine [παλλακίς] in the Iliad or the Odyssey. He is treated as well as a true son, but he is still illegitimate. His other sons are the children of ἀλόχου: translated as “a lawful wife” by Murray and as “his true lady” by Fitzgerald.

Later, when Kastor dies, his legitimate sons don’t leave his concubine’s son much, but through his own abilities / valor he still manages to get a wife [γυναῖκα] from a rich father. It makes sense that he refers to her as γυναῖκα, since as a concubine’s son he is of lower status than a legitimate son, although not as low status as the slave, Eumaios.

Later, after getting rich from raiding, and then making a name for himself at Troy, he takes a month off to enjoy his wife and children and possessions. Homer no longer uses γυναῖκα here but κουριδίῃ τ᾽ ἀλόχῳ. Κουριδίῃ means “wedded” and we also have what looks like an upgrade to ἀλόχῳ. Both translators use “wife”, but Murray specifically uses “wedded wife.” Fitzgerald makes no distinction.

Homesickness

When Eumaios describes wishing he could see his mother and father again, and the land of his birth, but that even so, he would rather see the return of his master, Odysseus even more, it reminds me of “Til We Have Faces” by C. S. Lewis. Queen Orual has had a Greek slave as her tutor since girlhood, and at one point he has the ability to choose to go back to Greece, which he has never stopped being homesick for, or to stay and continue to be her counsellor. I wonder if Eumaios will have a similar option, and if so, what he will choose.

Clothing

Once again, we get a clear idea of how expensive clothing is. Eumaios, despite being a “well-to-do” slave, in charge of four other swineherds, with a decent place to live, and a slave of his own to help around the property, still has only one spare change of clothes, and he notes that this is usual with slaves. He’s explaining why, although he can lend his beggar guest a cloak to sleep under for the night, he can’t let him keep it the next morning.

From the Bible: Exodus 22:26-27 English Standard Version 2025 (ESV)

If ever you take your neighbor’s cloak in pledge, you shall return it to him before the sun goes down, for that is his only covering, and it is his cloak for his body; in what else shall he sleep? And if he cries to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.

There’s a reason noblewomen are always spinning, weaving, and giving clothes as part of expensive gifts. Note that the clothes aren’t usually even called “new.” In every case I remember in the Odyssey, they are called “clean” or “laundered.” I seem to remember one place in the Iliad where someone refers to a garment that has never been worn before.

That’s part of why spinning and weaving is an important part of Cloak and Stola. As here with Eumaios, both of them have only one spare change of clothing.

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“Where to, Captain?” asked the sergeant when Mike Kolibri stepped into the staging area of the Alexandria spaceport. One side was lined with about a dozen company size troop carriers. Portals were used on-planet; spaceships between them.

“Foloy 2” he said, naming the Force base at the system closest to where he was currently stationed with his family. “Close” was reckoned in energy expenditure, not distance. “Then the Segest moon, then Birdland Research Center, then back here. One overnight at each stop.” Birdland was named for the way the native word for their planet sounded, not for anything to do with winged creatures.

He got to his assigned carrier and entered. There were jump pods above the seats all along the length of the carrier on both sides, but of course, this wasn’t being used as a combat transport at the moment. Kolibri clicked into a seat beneath a nearby pod.

A Lieutenant entered with a platoon of 40 marines in fatigues, and they also clicked in without using the pods. He greeted Kolibri with a polite palm slash through the air. A full salute was not required.

“Training?” asked Kolibri, conversationally, after they introduced each other. Most of Lieutenant Rustin’s people looked not long out of boot camp, but no one was spec’ed out for combat.

“Joint war game at Somerset,” Rustin answered, naming a training base several jumps away. “We’re transferring at Foloy 2.”

Once they were underway, Mike took Magda’s Gold out of his pocket, and accessed the direct interface to the family data-well. He pulled up an old pulp novel from the twentieth century.

“A solid?” asked Rustin. It wasn’t just a hologram. It had tactile feedback, like an at-home interface. “Nice.”

“Gold solid,” answered Mike, showing off. He handed him the book, and Rustin admired the feel of the paper style pages. It was called Gold, not just for its color, but because it had the highest level of tactile feedback.

“Can you kick it?” he asked. His travel data-well interface, just a bronze, had only mid-level tactile feedback, and had a tendency to fade out.

“Yup. Full tactile, until dropped back into the well.”

The Lieutenant dropped the book, but when he kicked it with his foot, it just slid across the floor towards Mike. “I though you said –.”

“DNA keyed,” answered Mike. “Just me and the wife.” They had keyed the disc by kissing it.

When they landed, the Lieutenant and his marines headed for the barracks, and Kolibri checked in at the Admin data-well building of the garrison at Foloy 2. He got his room assignment in the VOQ, and passed through the portal door to his quarters. The next morning, the garrison commander, Captain Serapis, greeted Kolibri when he stepped through the portal to his office. “Welcome, Captain, I’m glad you’re here. We have a situation.”

Mike nodded. There was usually something.

“We need to buy a slave.”

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Odysseus has finished his tale. Yesterday (in Book VIII)1, King Alkinoos had called for the 12 princes of the realm to each bring a clean cloak and tunic and a bar of gold for Odysseus. Queen Arete arranged the gifts in a chest, and added a clean royal cloak and tunic, and the king’s own libation cup with gold intaglio, and added a lock for the chest. Now, Alkinoos calls for even more riches to be brought for Odysseus. The princes are each to bring a tripod and a cauldron as well; and this time Alkinoos will make a levy on the common people so that the princes don’t bear the cost of these additional gifts as well.

I can’t avoid a certain feeling that part of their motivation is paying him to make sure he leaves.

The king himself helps direct the stowage of the additional gifts, then they have another full day of feasting and songs. This wears on Odysseus, who is just itching to get going. In fact, when the sun finally reaches the horizon, Homer compares the relief that Odysseus feels to a farmer who has been working hard all day plowing behind a yoke of oxen, and with weary legs, when it’s time to turn for home and a nice supper!

Finally, he can ask for the formal farewells to be made – he blesses Alkinoos and all the Phaiakians, and asks for libations to the gods.

Alkinoos calls for the wine to be poured, and each man pours out a libation. When it comes to Odysseus, though, instead of pouring his cup out as a libation, he gives the cup full of wine to Queen Arete, and blesses her specifically. It looks to me like he is treating her like a goddess, since the wine was due to the gods. And no one worries about it, nor do we hear anything negative from the gods.

Now Arete directs three of her handmaids to bring the chest of gifts from yesterday, another cloak and tunic, and bread and wine, on the ship. Crewmen take the provisions aboard, and they (or the handmaids?) also make up a rug and cover where Odysseus can sleep. And then he falls asleep as they row him out to sea. It appears to take only one night for the ship to take him all the way back to Ithaca, and they put him ashore, still sleeping, with all the gifts.

A Prophecy Somewhat Lightened?

Meanwhile, Poseidon complains to Zeus that Odysseus didn’t suffer for this last leg of his trip, and has even ended up with more riches than what he left Troy with.

Earlier, Alkinoos had told us about his father’s warning about helping others. Now, it looks like Poseidon is going to make it happen because they helped Odysseus. Zeus recommends his little brother be content with just turning the returned ship to stone in the harbor, and to relent on surrounding the city with a mountain, which I’m assuming would have destroyed their ability to use the harbor. Poseidon turns the ship to stone before it can make a landing, and Alkinoos leads everyone in prayers, and the sacrifice of 12 bulls, asking Poseidon not to surround their city with a mountain, and promising never take castaways in their ships again.

It looks like it’s going to work, but Homer doesn’t tell us directly. Interestingly, trying to avoid other prophecies hasn’t prevented them before. The Phaiakians didn’t try to stop this one, and may have gotten off lightly.

Still, I feel sorry for the crew of the ship turned to stone in the harbor. We’re not told whether they made it off the ship first.

Avoiding a Trap

When Odysseus wakes up, he doesn’t recognize where he is because Athena has sent a thick mist that keeps him from seeing much. He immediately expects the worse and starts cursing the Phaiakians. Where is he? They must have betrayed him! He checks that he still has all his gifts, and he does.

Athena, this time taking the form of a young shepherd man, who looks like a prince, approaches him. Odysseus throws himself on his mercy, grabbing his knees, and asks where he is.

Athena describes all the good things about Ithaca, finally revealing that he is, indeed, on Ithaca, and asks who he is.

Odysseus suspects this could be Athena, but still being wary, makes up a story. He claims that on his way back from Troy, he stopped at Crete, and Orsilokhos, son of Idomeneus tried to steal his spoils from Troy, so he killed him. Then he escaped by paying passage on a Phoenician ship in the harbor to take him to Pylos. They got blown off course, and he landed here.

I find it interesting that he thought a story about killing someone who might be well-known (he gave the man’s name and father’s name) would make a stranger sympathetic to him.

Athena reveals herself and gets rid of the mist, and they admire each other’s deceptions. Then they start making plans on how to deal with the suitors. She’ll go bring Telemachus over from the palace of Menelaus. Meanwhile, she makes Odysseus look like an old beggar, and sends him off to his family’s swineherd, who is loyal to Penelope.

Just as the Phaiakians seem to mirror the correct way to handle a prophecy — don’t try to avoid it — Odysseus is set to mirror the correct way to avoid Agamemnon’s mistake with Aigisthos. He’s not going to walk into a trap.

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