The Odyssey Page 0,166
leave her own home for her new husband’s.
7 (p. 9) slave-maids followed her: Slave labor was fundamental to the Greco-Roman economy. Slaves were generally foreign-born, and most were captured in raids or warfare. Men were relegated to field work and women to the home. Women slaves were often the sexual chattel of the house’s patriarch, as Homer’s praise for Laeärtes’ gallant behavior toward Eurycleia indirectly indicates on page 11. Slaves could own property; Eumaeus even buys his own slave; see page 179.
8 (p. 9) the distaff: A distaff is a stick used for spinning thread. Historically, women in the Mediterranean and throughout Europe were so identified with the production of cloth—a domestic task, performed inside the household—that the word “distaff” came to stand for the feminine realm or perspective in general. In the Odyssey, even the nymph Calypso tends the loom. Women had very little scope for a life outside the domestic sphere.
Book II
9 (p. 12) early, rosy-fingered dawn: Epithets such as this one, repeated frequently throughout the text, reflect the original oral composition of Greek epic poetry. Rather than memorize a long text word-for-word, a poet intimately familiar with a particular epic story would employ many such formulaic phrases to improvise a fresh version of the tale on each new occasion, so that the telling would never be exactly the same twice.
10 (p. 12) summon to an assembly: Homer includes only a sketchy picture of the form of government practiced in what to him was the long-past world of epic heroes. While Odysseus serves as Ithaca’s king, the council Telemachus attends—which apparently includes only older citizens—seems to exercise some leadership function. At any rate, no new king has been anointed despite the hero’s twenty-year absence.
11 (p. 15) Tyro, Alcmene, and crowned Mycene: All three of these women evidently bore human or partly human children to gods. Tyro founded the line that leads to Nestor with Poseidon, and Alcmene bore Heracles after union with Zeus. Mycene’s story has not survived, but since her name is the root of Mycenae, Agamemnon’s city, one may assume that she, too, favored some divinity with offspring.
Book III
12 (p. 24) Peisistratus: The disproportionate attention paid to Peisistratus, son of Nestor, may reflect a reported attempt by the Athenian ruler Peisistratus (sixth century B.C.) to collect and regularize all the manuscripts of Homer then in existence. The Athenian Peisistratus claimed ancestry from Nestor (called the Neleid line, after Neleus, son of Tyro and father of Nestor).
13 (p. 25) as the pirates roam the seas: Like the Vikings, the early Greeks considered sea raiding a legitimate, if dangerous, means of acquiring wealth. Odysseus earns his epithet “spoiler of cities” by many more depredations than the sack of Troy, as the plundering raids on the Ciconians and Laestrygonians, described in books IX and X, demonstrate.
14 (p. 27) safely, too, Philoctetes: Greek warriors maroon the archer Philoctetes on the island of Lemnos after he suffers a snakebite that festers to an unbearable pungency. But Odysseus and his comrades eventually retrieve the archer because a prophecy connected with his bow prevents Troy from falling in his absence.
15 (p. 30) his gentle arrows: The Greek world often pictured the arrows of Apollo or Artemis as inflicting death by what the modern world understands as disease. In the Odyssey, Apollo strikes suddenly, in the fashion of a heart attack or stroke, while Artemis effects more gradual and gentler ends.
16 (p. 30) to Egypt: The association of Egypt with the accumulation of wealth also figures in the tale Odysseus concocts to hide his identity after he returns to Ithaca (book XIV) and in the biblical story of Joseph; the element of bondage unites the latter two stories as well. The stability and prosperity of Egyptian civilization was long unique in the ancient Mediterranean.
Book IV
17 (p. 36) Hermione: According to some ancient sources, Hermione eventually marries Orestes, the avenging son of Agamemnon. The Odyssey, however, does not specifically allude to such an outcome.
18 (p. 40) child of Zeus: Homer does not specify the manner of Helen’s descent from Zeus. Other sources explain that Zeus took the form of a swan to rape Helen’s mother, Leda, resulting in the birth of four children from eggs: Helen, Clytaemnestra, Castor, and Polydeuces. The two males became symbols of loyalty (see p. 138) and the two females of betrayal, illustrating the fundamental male bias of ancient Greek culture.
19 (p. 49) son-in-law of Zeus: That Menelaus merits immortality as the spouse of semidivine Helen suggests that fragments of earlier,