I recently re-read the Iliad and the Odyssey during a three-month seminar. I found reading both poems together extremely helpful. They are similar but different, reflecting in their styles and manner of writing their central characters: Achilles in the Iliad, the embodiment of force, bios; Odysseus in the Odyssey, the embodiment of cunning, metis.
The Iliad is straightforward, linear, told by an omniscient narrator who sees and describes directly and impartially the actions, the thoughts, the feelings of every character. It takes place over a few weeks in a compressed space, a real space in front of a real city. We can find the ruins and make maps of the likely terrain. Yes, there are plenty of gods and some strange whisking-aways, and Achilles does fight a river. But there are no monsters, no giants, no main actors who aren’t recognizable as part of our day-to-day world.
The Odyssey jumps in time and space, and much is told indirectly, by people who are remembering long-ago events and have their own agendas. Fantastic creatures, giants and monsters and goddesses, figure prominently. Large parts take place off the map, on islands unknown to Greeks of the time, or any time. Odysseus is both the main subject and one of the main narrators of his story, a story that shifts and changes as he tells it to different people.
Here is the question that prompts this essay: is the Odysseus in the Odyssey the same Odysseus we see in the Iliad? I want to argue that the answer is no, at least for most of his 10 years. Odysseus at Troy is a product of war. His combination of cunning, persuasive speech, and strategic thinking makes him indispensable to the Greek army. Odysseus wins the war and earns Achilles’ armor as the best of the Greeks. But afterwards he loses his way. The same skills that served Odysseus well at Troy are now his undoing. He loses everything and must find a new purpose before he is able to master himself and make the Odysseus who has emerged at Troy—perhaps—a fit for Ithaca.
Odysseus Before Troy
We do not have a direct picture of Odysseus before he leaves for Troy. In the later books of the Odyssey he is remembered by many as a good king, who treats subordinates like Eumaeus, his loyal swineherd, fairly and well. His wife Penelope remembers him with real affection. Only once does Homer describe directly an incident from his youth, in Book XIX, to tell us how he got his famous scar during a hunt at his grandfather’s estate; the story is a conventional hunting tale where the young prince bravely confronts and kills a cornered boar. The only nod to the Odysseus we know is when Homer says “He told his tale with style” on coming home.
Odysseus rules a small, out of the way island, often described as rocky and poor. He does not seem to have been especially ambitious. In Book XXIII when provoked by Penelope to recall his bed he describes in detail how he made it with his own hands; “I built it myself, no one else,” suggesting someone deeply committed to his house and his wife. (It is impossible to imagine Agamemnon building his own anything.) In some stories—not told in Homer—he is portrayed as not wanting to go to Troy and only agreeing under compulsion. In Book XXIV Agamemnon, in Hades, remembers “how hard it was to bring him round.”
Odysseus at Troy
When we see Odysseus in the Iliad almost ten years of war have changed him. He is an important man. He is seen as wily and cunning, a clever speaker, and therefore not entirely trustworthy, but also indispensable.
These traits make him a good negotiator. He is the one entrusted to return Chryses to her father in Book I to avert the wrath of Apollo. He persuades the Greeks not to go home when they’re wavering in Book II, is part of the delegation sent to treat with Achilles when he is sulking in Book IX, and wins King Priam’s praise for his negotiations with the Trojans.
When Thersites, a commoner and loudmouth, calls in Book II for the Greeks to go home and stop fighting for Agamemnon, it is Odysseus who steps in to humiliate and beat him. This is a strategic, not an emotional response; Thersites threatens to sway the soldiers into abandoning the war. For the sake of unity and victory he has to be silenced.
Odysseus is a strategist and counselor, along with ancient Nestor; they are the duo who make plans and advise Agamemnon. Though the story doesn’t get told in the Iliad—it emerges in the Odyssey—he is of course the inventor of the great wooden horse and the strategy that ultimately wins the war. Odysseus is also a collector of intelligence, who volunteers eagerly for the night-spying mission in Book X to see what the Trojans are planning. In Book IV of the Odyssey Helen herself relates how he once slipped into Troy in disguise to learn its weaknesses.
Odysseus is a fine though calculating warrior, and excels at wrestling and running and other tests of skill and strength. He is an outstanding archer, as we know from the climax of the Odyssey. But his value to the Greeks does not lie on the battlefield. He is the glue that keeps the army together. He is trusted by Agamemnon, perhaps because as we read in the famous Catalogue of Ships, Odysseus comes to Troy with only 13 ships, one of the smallest of the Greek contingents. Agamemnon commands 100 ships. So Odysseus, for all his strengths, is no threat to Agamemnon’s leadership.
Odysseus’s contingent is placed in the center of the Greek armada, with Achilles and Ajax, the two greatest pure fighters, out on the wings. He sits at the center where he can advise, mediate, plan, and stay informed. While Achilles fights for himself and his glory, and will abandon the Greek cause if it conflicts with his greatness, Odysseus fights for all, for Greek victory.
Odysseus After Troy
Odysseus as he is pictured in the Odyssey has the same skills and strengths, but it is clear that the talents that in the Iliad served to keep the Greeks united and win the war have now become problematic, if not dangerous. Odysseus is no longer focused on a cause, on something that gives him purpose. He is not working for the Greeks, not serving a single king, not subordinating himself to the goal of victory in a great war. His one stated goal, to return to Ithaca along with his 600 fellow Ithacans, is frequently neglected. He puts his men in danger, over and over, ultimately losing them all. They in turn do not trust him and often disobey him.
What has happened? Why has he changed?
Odysseus had become a central player in the greatest drama of the age. And then, it’s over. Now there is peace, and the need to consider what comes next. Back to tiny Ithaca? Should the great Odysseus, known and praised throughout the Greek world, known and praised even by the gods, be confined to Ithaca? After ten years of the intensity and clarity of life at war, the world of peace may seem confusing, disorienting, pallid. The deep bonds with peers developed over years of danger and cooperation, suddenly gone. The sense of purpose, gone.
Odysseus, like others in war, has not only discovered hidden strengths and accomplished great deeds. He has seen and done terrible things. He has lost close comrades. Soldiers coming off the battlefield in any war face great difficulties in transitioning to peace, returning home to families and loved ones, coming to terms with what they’ve experienced. It’s not uncommon to be ambivalent about what awaits. Have wives been faithful? Do children remember me? Do they understand and appreciate what I’ve been through? Can I take my old place in the family, the community?
Ten years of war, twenty years away (in the Iliad, no one seems to go back home for R and R) is a particularly long time. Odysseus has risen to great heights, further away from his starting point than most soldiers.
In the opening books of the Odyssey, Odysseus’ son Telemachus hears stories from Nestor, Odysseus’ partner at Troy, and Menelaus, the husband of Helen, portrayed in the Iliad as a second-rater and weak leader. These stories, some of which Odysseus already knows from his visit to Hades many years before, reinforce these fears. The two Greek leaders in particular have not fared well. King Agamemnon, leader of the Greek host, has gone home only to be murdered by his own wife. Menelaus wanders for eight years before making it back to Sparta with the unfaithful Helen. When Odysseus eventually lands back on Ithaca he gives thanks to Athena for keeping him from Agamemnon’s fate.
When we finally get a direct picture of Odysseus, in book V, he is stranded on the goddess Calypso’s island where he has been for seven years. He weeps daily to return home. His many misfortunes have made him afraid of the gods. Poseidon is his open enemy, and Calypso has held him captive. As he will complain later, he thinks Athena, his confidante and protector at Troy, has abandoned him.
Odysseus doesn’t know it but Athena has intervened to compel Calypso to set him free (we will discuss later what this might mean). But when Calypso tells him he can go, he is immediately on his guard: “Passage home? Never. Surely you’re plotting something else, goddess.” When he sails away Poseidon sends a storm to stop him; a sea-nymph offers help, and Odysseus is again suspicious: “Oh no, I fear another immortal weaves a trap to snare me.” When he finally sees land his first response is a lengthy moan of despair: “Worse and worse! Now that Zeus has granted a glimpse of land beyond my hopes, now I’ve crossed this waste of water, the end in sight, there’s no way out of the boiling surf—I see no way.” And so on for 15 more lines.
When he does get on shore, more of the same: “Man of misery, what next? Is this the end? If I wait out a long tense night by the banks, I fear the sharp frost and the soaking dew together will do me in…What if I’m spared the chill, fatigue and sweet sleep comes my way? I fear wild beasts will drag me off as quarry.”
This is not the bold, confident Odysseus of the Iliad. This is a man close to breaking, at the end of his tether. What has happened? Shortly Odysseus will tell us the story of his misadventures. This will be at a banquet held by his hosts, King Alcinous and Queen Arete of the fantasy island of Phaeacia, a land not on any map or known to any Greek, where gods walk among men. There Odysseus will spin his own fantasies of Cyclops and Circe and Hades.
Telling His Story: The Prelude
Before he speaks at the banquet, however, Odysseus is brought back to Troy. There is a bard, Demodocus, who sings of a famous quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles about the best way to take Troy. Achilles favors force, Odysseus guile. Hearing this Odysseus—whose identity is not yet known to his hosts—breaks down and weeps. For seven years he has been out of touch with the great war and his comrades from that time. Now he sees they have become known to all, a subject for song. Now he realizes that he too is well-known. When he tells his story, he must place it in the context of this version of himself, the version known to bards and poets.
Before starting Odysseus sets the stage. Still anonymous, he asks Demodocus to sing about his great triumph, the wooden horse. The bard tells how at Troy Odysseus “fought the grimmest fight he had ever braved but won through at last, thanks to Athena’s superhuman power.” Again Odysseus breaks down in tears “as a woman weeps, her arms flung around her darling husband, a man who fell in battle.” Hearing about his past glory makes the bitter aftermath, and Athena’s absence, more painful.
Odysseus now reveals himself and launches into the iconic stories of the Odyssey. He does not start with the war, however, and we wonder why. Odysseus at Troy would impress his hosts and establish his greatness. Since they know something about Troy already it would prove that he is who he says he is. King Alcinous in fact invites Odysseus to tell that story: “Why do you weep and grieve so sorely when you hear the fate of the Argives, hear the fall of Troy?…Did one your kinsmen die before the walls of Troy…Or a friend perhaps, someone close to your heart staunch and loyal? No less dear than a brother, the brother-in-arms who shares our inmost thoughts.”
Instead, Odysseus begins when he leaves Troy. Is the subject too painful? Or does it tell us something fundamental about Odysseus; that he is alone, and a loner. No one lost at Troy touches him the way Patroclus did Achilles. On his voyage home none of the Ithacans emerges as a close friend, an equal or confidante. His capacity for manipulation and trickery implies a certain cool distance from others, even those from his home country and his war companions.
And they reciprocate. Achilles tells Odysseus, in Book IX of the Iliad, “I hate like Hades’ gates the man who hides one thought inside his heart and says another.” Agamemnon, though he needs Odysseus, rails at him in Book IV, “You are a genius at manufacturing your wicked schemes and plotting to advance your own self-interest.”
Something that Odysseus probably appreciates in telling about his post-war adventures is that he can say whatever he wants. He is the only witness—all his companions are gone. The Trojan war is a story he shares with the world. His post-war story is his alone. He can start over and show a different and possibly truer Odysseus. And he is the unchallenged hero. Achilles looms over the Trojan War and threatens to put even Odysseus in the shade. Now Odysseus can take center stage.
Story-telling is very important to him. As he tells his hosts at the start of Book IX: “The crown of life, I’d say. There’s nothing better than when deep joy holds sway throughout the realm and banqueters up and down the palace sit in ranks, enthralled to hear the bard….This, to my mind, is the best that life can offer.” Achilles’ idea of bliss is eviscerating his enemies; Odysseus’ is listening to someone tell the story of Achilles. Or telling it himself.
The Tall Tales
He starts by stressing that all he wants is to get home: “So nothing is as sweet as a man’s own country…” But many of his tales show a man who has other goals, and is prone to disastrous errors in judgment. His first adventure, for instance, and the only one that takes place in a real place with real people, is when he chooses to attack the Cicones, a Trojan ally. The Ithacans sack their city and kill the men, apparently just for plunder. But Odysseus says he cannot convince his men to leave with their loot; they are out of control, drinking and feasting. The Cicones counter-attack and the Ithacans barely get away, with many men lost.
Something is terribly amiss here. Why does Odysseus, the hero of the Trojan war, the right-hand of Agamemnon, need more spoils? Hasn’t he been given his fair share from the fall of the rich city of Troy? His ships should be fully laden. But his first act is to plunder an innocent city, like a pirate, not a victorious king. And why are his men out of control? How has he lost their trust?
Nestor has given us a hint, when he tells Telemachus in Book III about the leave-taking after Troy has fallen. According to him, at the end the two brothers, Menelaus and Agamemnon, had a bitter falling out, with Agamemnon wanting to stay longer to offer sacrifices to Athena (what sacrifices we are not told; we should remember that Agamemnon sacrificed his own daughter, Iphigenia, when leaving for Troy). Menelaus and many others sail off, but then Odysseus changes his mind and turns back, “veering over to Agamemnon to shore his fortunes up,” according to Nestor.
Agamemnon has always been a controversial and difficult commander. Now the Greek coalition has fallen apart in the face of his divisive leadership. In the past Odysseus has helped keep the Greeks united behind Agamemnon to defeat a common enemy, but with the war over Agamemnon no longer deserves his support. Odysseus, wanting to keep his central place, fails to see this. He leaves angry and ashamed. How can he and his 600 men go back to Ithaca empty-handed?
After the Cicones Odysseus is swept away by a great storm, escapes the Lotus Eaters, and then comes to the land of the Cyclops. Here it is Odysseus, still eager for gain—to know “what gifts he’d give”— who ignores the pleas of his men to leave the giant alone. More of his men die at the hands of Polyphemus, and when Odysseus boasts and reveals his true name this allows Polyphemus to call on Poseidon to punish him, the cause of his subsequent woes.
From here on Odysseus regularly recalls his clever escape from Polyphemus’s cave to rally his men and show his ability to get out of every tight spot. He seems oblivious to how this must sound to them, boasting about a narrow escape made necessary only by his own poor judgment, where his men pay the price.
Things now go from bad to worse. On the island of Aeolus he is given the gift of winds, but within sight of Ithaca he falls asleep and his men, distrusting Odysseus and believing the bag of winds holds treasure he won’t share—he has not told them what it really is—open the bag and are again blown far away. Most of his men are then quickly killed and eaten by the Lastrygonians, a second race of giants. The one remaining ship limps to the goddess Circe’s island. Odysseus masters and beds her and stays an entire year, only leaving when his crew tell him “Captain, this is madness! High time you thought of your own home at last.”
All in all not the actions of a man focused on returning to his wife and son.
On leaving Circe Odysseus is told he must die; that is, he must go to Hades and get advice from the dead. What this seems to mean is that Odysseus has lost his way and needs to be re-oriented. In Hades the blind seer Tiresias offers guidance, and then Odysseus catches up on the news and speaks with some of his dead comrades from Troy. All of them have been grievously damaged by the war: Agamemnon killed by his angry wife; Ajax unwilling to forgive Odysseus for winning Achilles’ armor; Achilles preferring to be a slave on earth than ‘reign in Hades.’ Odysseus must think, what did all my efforts and sacrifices gain? Have I too been doomed by this terrible war?
But he also learns, partly from his own dead mother, that he still has a home. Penelope and his son Telemachus are alive and loyal to him. He has been damaged by war, but not destroyed. He still has some men to bring back. He can return to the land of the living with the possibility of healing.
With more advice from Circe, Odysseus passes by the Sirens and between Scylla and Charybdis—more Ithacans devoured—and to the Island of the Sun. When Odysseus tries to get his exhausted crew to sail past they mutiny, led by his second-in-command, Eurylochus. Marooned for a month his starving men disobey his orders not to kill Apollo’s cattle, while Odysseus again falls into inconvenient slumber, a sign that he has failed to exercise effective leadership. They pay the price: a lightning bolt from Zeus. Only Odysseus survives. He lands on Calypso’s island where he is kept by the goddess for seven years, a long dark night of the soul.
The Odysseus now telling his story, on Phaeacia, has washed up on shore with literally nothing, not even clothes. He has lost all his men. He has lost all his treasure. He has lost the chance to bring up his son, and have other children. His mother has died of a broken heart. He is fearful and unsure of himself. He has nothing to show for his twenty years away.
The Recovery
Can he pull himself together? In Phaeacia we see him, bit by bit, come back to life. The delightful Princess Nausicaa’s immediate and natural attraction to the castaway begins to restore his confidence; Athena makes him handsome and strong once again. The bard’s tales of Troy allow him to weep for himself and his former comrades. He shows some of his old prowess in games held in his honor.
Since he does this not as the great Odysseus but as someone anonymous, it proves to himself that he retains innate strengths, that when he finally reveals who he is he has already earned their respect. He will repeat the exercise at greater length when he returns to Ithaca.
But it is his lengthy tale-telling that perhaps does the most to bring about healing. It is here that he can exercise what is most true in his character, his ability to speak well, to tell a story, to invent and manipulate. It is in his story-telling that we see most clearly the many-twistedness, polytropos, the hard to translate quality he is assigned in the Odyssey’s opening lines. The story shows a man of many turns, alternately far-sighted and blind, cunning and bold, favored and punished by the gods. Seeking his wife and home, and running away. Nothing is straight, starting with his track through the sea and its many islands. And the ever-turning, multi-faceted hero is also the narrator. Or inventer. We cannot tell.
The tales show truths about their author, and also have another, immediate task. Odysseus must make sure the Phaeacians will follow through on their promise to quickly send him on his way, back to Ithaca, with a great load of treasure. Just before his story-telling, King Alcinous remembers a prophecy, an old tale from his father: “That Lord Poseidon was vexed with us…One day, as a well-built ship of ours sailed home on the misty sea after such a convoy, the god would crush it, yes, and pile a huge mountain round about our port.” Odysseus seems to see this as a challenge. Can he admit to them that he is a special target of Poseidon, and despite the prophecy have them follow through? Can he navigate this verbal Scylla and Charybdis? Does he still have the old magic?
Yes! The stories mesmerize his audience. After he has finished, King Alcinous heaps more gifts on Odysseus, beyond what the lords of Phaeacia can afford—“a sumptuous tripod, add a cauldron!”—saying he will tax the people to pay for them. They ignore the prophecy and use their magic ship to sail Odysseus home to Ithaca. Sure enough, Poseidon imprisons them forever behind a great mountain. But by then Odysseus is long gone.
We too, the off-stage listeners and readers, are mesmerized. It takes an effort to see past the glorious and diverting adventures to the man who is telling the tale. Even if we do we admire the bard, maybe even overlook his failings out of gratitude for his imagination and the sheer pleasure of, as Odysseus has claimed, “the best that life can offer.” For Odysseus it is a win-win.
Athena’s Return
After this lengthy prologue—we are now half-way through the Odyssey—Odysseus finally lands in Ithaca. Here something notable happens: Athena shows herself again. She and Odysseus had once been the closest of allies; Nestor tells Telemachus “I’ve never seen the immortals show such affection as Pallas [Athena] openly showed him, standing by your father.” But Odysseus has not knowingly seen her since leaving Troy. He is not happy: “You were kind to me in the war years, so long as we men of Achaea soldiered on at Troy. But once we’d sacked King Priam’s craggy city, boarded ship, and a god dispersed the fleet, from then on, daughter of Zeus, I never saw you.” He accuses her of mocking him and telling him tales.
Athena’s excuse is that she didn’t want to oppose the powerful Poseidon. Hardly credible; the Athena of the Iliad never shrank from butting heads with other gods. But this abandonment and return seems to reflect how Odysseus at Troy used his talents usefully and beneficially, but away from the war these same talents have been his undoing. Athena stresses that she and Odysseus are much the same: “We’re both old hands at the arts of intrigue. Here among mortal men you’re far the best at tactics, spinning yarns, and I am famous among the gods for wisdom, cunning wiles too.” Her absence coincides with Odysseus’s wanderings and losses; her return signals that he now again has a purpose that will bring out his best.
This does not mean all will be smooth sailing. In Ithaca Odysseus will struggle to keep his suspiciousness, his talent for deception and intrigue, and his violent urges under control. He will probe remorselessly to see who is faithful, especially Penelope, but even, cruelly and purposelessly, his aged father. Telemachus has to confront him at one point to prevent an endless interrogation of everyone on the island: “Reconsider, I urge you. You’ll waste time roaming around our holdings, probing the fieldhands man by man.”
He carries on a lengthy deception as a beggar in his own house, an act that he seems to enjoy for its own sake: Odysseus can not only tell a fiction, he can be one. In one of the most wrenching scenes in the book he will turn away from his beloved dog, who dies on a dunghill. He will savagely kill all the suitors, even when they offer to repent, and even when he knows it will bring about a civil war. (Most of the killing is done from a distance, with his great bow, a way of fighting disparaged in the Iliad; Odysseus however is less worried about his reputation than about getting the job done). But in the end he finds his way back to Penelope, Telemachus, and his people.
Odysseus and Penelope
When Odysseus and Penelope first speak in Book XIX he is disguised as a beggar and tells one of his many alternate histories, about being Diomedes’ brother from Crete. But when the two of them are reconciled and spend their first night together in Book XXIII he tells her the same stories he had told on Phaeacia. This it seems is the version that he wants those closest to him to hear.
Why is he comfortable telling his wife these tales of shifting commitment, not to mention many years bedding down with other women (goddesses, he claims)? Perhaps because Penelope and he are alike; she too is a deceiver, as we are told, weaving by day and undoing by night to buy time. She too is eager for gain and will dupe the suitors to get it: “Staunch Odysseus glowed with joy to hear all this—his wife’s trickery luring gifts from her suitors now”. She too is suspicious and with the test of the bed wants proof that this version of Odysseus still remembers, and can be passionate about, their intimate secrets.
Penelope, like Odysseus, has grown and changed. While not unfaithful in the way Odysseus admits, she has accepted the need to re-marry and give up the dream of her husband’s return. She can be trusted to understand him, and to admire his fictions.
In this we can perhaps see that Penelope and Athena are mingled. They share character traits, share the need to stand firm in a man’s world, and share a clear-eyed love for this flawed but intensely interesting man. The Athena who is by Odysseus’s side at Troy is also Penelope, who wants nothing more than Greek victory so that her husband can come back. The Athena who then leaves Odysseus in the lurch is also Penelope, who has to give up pining for her husband and focus on bringing up Telemachus, until he becomes a man and can take over the household. The Athena who returns is also the Penelope who wants her husband back, but has to uncover who he now is.
For his part, Odysseus the ‘many-turning’ must navigate perhaps the steepest turn of all. This loner, this most self-contained of men, has to come to terms with the realization that this campaign is not like taking Troy; it’s not all up to him, and he can’t win through sheer cleverness. Others have a say. Telemachus has to accept him. The people of Ithaca have to accept him. Above all Penelope has to accept him. His temptation is always to succeed by tricking or sweet-talking, but in his own home this will be self-defeating.
Are these new relationships wholehearted, or provisional? Odysseus is quick to warn Penelope that there is a further test, Tiresias’ obscure prophecy involving a seemingly impossible journey to find men who have never heard of the sea; only then will they have lasting peace. At the end Odysseus disobeys a direct command from Athena (Penelope?) to stop killing his enemies, although they have thrown down their weapons. It takes the ultimate intervention, a thunderbolt from Zeus, to make him stop and, perhaps, end the cycle of retribution.
Later poets will find it hard to believe Odysseus is ready for a peaceful life. Dante places him in the 8th circle of Hell for his many deceptions and lies, and because at the end he sailed into the far West seeking what mortals should not. Tennyson famously describes an Odysseus unable to stay at home:
Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
Somehow “and they lived happily ever after” doesn’t quite seem believable. Odysseus has labored mightily to come to terms with the man he became at Troy, and now he has Penelope’s help. But the changes are deep. Homer is silent on the future.
Quotes from the Iliad are from the translation by Emily Wilson. Quotes from the Odyssey are from the translation by Robert Fagles.