the odyssey hero essay

The Odyssey

Introduction to the odyssey.

Odyssey is one of the best ancient epics and a masterpiece, written by the blind poet, Homer. It might have been written in the 8 th or 7 th century BC. The poem has won popularity in almost every culture and civilization despite belonging to the Grecian civilization and yet has kept its freshness despite having survived the odds of time until this day. The poem presents the story of Odysseus, the Greek king, and his homeward journey after the Trojan war, including other wars and trials and tribulations that he confronts on the way home. The epic has not only achieved the status of a cannon but has also become a classic.

Summary of The Odyssey

The Odyssey is the story, the epic of Odysseus or Ulysses in some texts. His journey begins when the city of Troy falls. Odysseus, the Grecian hero , does not return to Ithaca, his kingdom, in ten days as per the journey schedule takes almost ten years. Assuming Odysseus is dead, his wife, Penelope, is hounded by unruly and rowdy suitors wanting to marry her. They spend more time around her palace, pillaging the land around it. However, despite this continuous commotion of these suitors, she carries on delaying it with the argument that she is knitting a shroud for her husband and that she will not respond to their calls until she finishes it. Although she has her son, Telemachus, with her, she does not dare to throw this mob out of the precincts of her palace. Despite the fierce opposition and Antinous’s plans to kill Telemachus, she stays dedicated.

During Penelope’s trial, Odysseus goes through a lot of trials on the land as well as the sea. He is captured with his companions and imprisoned by Calypso, a nymph on her island, Ogygia. Having no ship to return to Ithaca, he longs to be with his family. Then Mount Olympus is in deep debate as the goddesses and gods argue about what to do regarding Odysseus’ fate. While Athena has a soft spot for Odysseus and wants to assist him and his son, Telemachus, some fiercely oppose her. She visits Telemachus, disguising herself as the friend of his grandfather, and asks him to call all the suitors into an assembly and warn them of their misbehavior. She also helps him visit Nestor and Menelaus, the associates of Odysseus, who inform Telemachus about his father and his imprisonment on the island of Calypso. When he is about to return, the suitors plan to eliminate him.

Sensing delay in Odysseus’ return, Zeus himself dispatches Hermes for his release. Finally, she succeeds in convincing Calypso about the likely release of Odysseus, who sets sail toward his homeland but finds himself trapped in a storm caused by Poseidon on account of blinding Cyclops Polyphemus, his one-eyed giant son. Here again, Athena comes to his assistance and brings him to land at Scheria, where Nausicaa with her parents, welcomes him warmly. The hosts become captivated by his exploits after he discloses his real identity and tells his purpose. They promise to extend all possible help to this great hero.

However, before he departs from the island, he narrates his exploits, including his time on the island of Calypso, his trip to the Land of the Lotus Eaters, his time with Circe, and the temptation of Sirens until the final journey to the underworld where he meets the blind prophet, Tiresias, and wrestles with Scylla after consulting him Tiresias about this menace. The next day, the Phaeacians help him return to Ithaca, where he reaches the hut of Eumaeus, his faithful colleague, in the guise of a beggar.

After this, he goes to meet his son and discloses his identity, after which both plan to eliminate the unruly suitors to gain control of their city. The next day, Odysseus reaches his palace, and the same mob of the suitors attacks him with insults and rebukes, after which he meets the old lady, Eurycelia, who does not disclose his identity due to the fear that the suitors should kill him. Penelope, on the other hand, arranges an archery competition of the suitors to engage them in stringing the bow of Odysseus, at which all of them fail except Odysseus, who is in the garb of a beggar. Following this, with the assistance of his son, Telemachus, he falls upon the suitors and eliminates all of them. Following this, he discloses his identity and goes to meet Laertes, his father. They face an attack from Antinous’s father but kill him, while Zeus asks Athena to bring peace to the land after Odysseus’s ordeal ends. It is important to notice that the entire journey of Odysseus takes 20 years in which ten years he fought the Trojan war and the next ten years he fight everything else to reach home.

Major Themes in The Odyssey

• Hubris : The Odyssey shows the theme of hubris or excessive pride through Odysseus, who brags about his wins in the war until the gods turn against him and punish him for this hubris. The punishment continues until Athena favors him in bringing him home and assists him in overcoming his enemies on his way back home and also in his palace as suitors of his wife, Penelope troubles her. He faces Circe and the Cyclops and goes through the underworld. Despite his bragging, Athena supports him and saves him after he goes through this long punishment of near-fatal journeys after he has suffered enough for his pride.
• Homecoming: The theme of homecoming is apparent from the desire and longing of the hero, Odysseus, who recalls his wife, his son, and his hometown of Ithaca whenever he is in some difficult situation. It means that he always has his home in mind even when he is trapped by Circe or spends time with Calypso. Even when the Cyclops asks him the reason for staying there, he tells that he is on his homeward journey.
• Hospitality: The theme of hospitality goes side by side with other themes with its significance in the Grecian culture. That is why Odysseus enjoys the hospitality of Circe as well as the Cyclops, though he is their captive. The first one turns his people into animals , and the second starts satisfying his hunger by feeding on them. Even the Phaeacians demonstrate their trait of hospitality which is gentle rather than evil, as opposed to the first two cases.
• Temptation: Another theme of The Odyssey is a temptation that the Grecians considered a negative human trait. Although temptations are sometimes very strong and even drives Odysseus crazy such as at the Lotus-eater’s island, he always considers homecoming his major purpose in life, recalling Penelope and Telemachus. He also falls to the temptation of Circe’s beauty and sensuousness and stays for a while, but again moves forward and is able to overcome temptations.
• Heroism: Heroism is the greatest Greek virtue told in almost every epic, as reflected through the character of Odysseus is another theme. Despite having human traits, Odysseus shows exemplary character traits having courage , bravery, wit , and strength with some human aberrations of falling to the temptations as in the case of Circe and then the Lotus-eaters. However, he shows his courage when fighting against the Cyclops and even when going through his ordeal with Scylla and Charybdis.
• Deception: A minor theme, deception is shown as a human trait in The Odyssey that is necessary for survival. Odysseus comes to deception when he sees his survival is at stake. For instance, his return when he confronts Antinous. Odysseus has already done the same when confronting the Cyclops and tells him that he is a No-man, then blinding him while escaping under the sheeps’ belly. Even gods come to deceive others by adopting different guises, such as Athena does to help Odysseus.
• Free Will: Free will is another significant theme of the poem in that Odysseus is shown as a fiercely independent person having courage, bravery, and strength, yet he sometimes feels the divine act obstructing his paths, such as the magic of Circe or the deathly confrontation of the Cyclops. In such cases, it seems that the gods debate and determine his fate on Mount Olympus, and if Athena hadn’t pleaded his case with Zeus, he might not have survived at several points, such as in confronting Poseidon in a storm.
• Justice : The epic shows the theme of justice through debates between the gods and goddesses on Mount Olympus. It seems that sometimes the gods are forced to punish Odysseus, such as Poseidon does but again, a few god or goddess comes to take the punishment away from him to render justice.
• Revenge : The epic shows the theme of revenge through Odysseus’s act of blinding the Cyclops and killing the suitors, including Antinous. The gods also exact revenge, such as Poseidon does against Odysseus for killing his son, the Cyclops.

Major Characters of The Odyssey

• Odysseus: Odysseus is the main character and great heroic figure who goes through several adventures described in the entire epic, The Odyssey. He is a human with a fascinating combination of the presence of mind and strong body. He leaves to fight in Troy alongside Achilles and other kings while he is the ruler of Ithaca. He leaves Penelope, his faithful wife, and his son, Telemachus, behind. As his son is very young in his absence, his old father, Laertes, takes care of his kingdom. During his long journey toward home after the fall of Troy, he goes through various adventures, meets demons, avoids the wrath of gods, and confronts witches, nymphs, and monsters, yet he comes out of all these as victorious to lock horns with the characters like Antinous. Despite his tough and resilient frame, he sometimes has to use his mind to deal with Calypso or the Cyclops or to go through the land of Cicones. He goes on to use his wits until Athena, the goddess favoring him, asks him to stop and be at peace.
• Penelope: In The Odyssey, as well as in the Grecian literature, the status achieved by Penelope is hard to contest as a virtuous woman waiting for Odysseus. When the courtyard of her palace is full of suitors, creating a commotion for her hand, she uses patience and tricks to keep the men away. She continues knitting the shroud for her husband during the day and pulls them at night . And sending a word to the suitor that she would not respond until she finishes it, extending the time for her son, Telemachus, to be able to deal with them or for her husband to arrive. Finally, when Odysseus arrives, she informs him of the whole situation. However, this long period has tested her loyalty as well as integrity, on account of which she achieves this high status in literature and myths .
• Telemachus: As the son of Odysseus, it is natural for Telemachus to show qualities and bravery to lead Ithaca and protect his mother in Odysseus’ absence. Although he confronts the unruly suitors of his mother in the initial stages after Athena supports him, he could not resist that huge mob. His most important mistake is to allow the suitors to arm themselves to the teeth, which Odysseus has had a hard time overcoming by the end when he reaches Ithaca. Odysseus then advises him on how to protect the family’s honor and stature by the end.
• Athena: As a goddess, Athena is quite close to Zeus, but as a supporter of Odysseus, her role in The Odyssey is admirable. She saves Odysseus from several fatal accidents where it would have been hard to predict his survival. As the favorite daughter of Zeus, she holds sway on Poseidon, who is determined to take revenge on Odysseus for killing the Cyclops. She stops him from this and reaches out in different disguises to save Odysseus, who is not her son, yet becomes her favorite. In the end, she reaches out to Odysseus to help him in dealing with the wild mob of suitors.
• Poseidon: Poseidon is a divine character, but he develops animosity with the human, Odysseus, who must have been killed. He is stopped by Athena, who helps Odysseus. As a sea god, he raises storms in the way of Odysseus, lengthening his homeward journey. He, including his wife, goes against Athena, who is determined to save Odysseus from their wrath. In fact, Odysseus has blinded his son, the Cyclopes, and left him to die.
• The Cyclops : A one-eyed giant, the Cyclops, also known as Polyphemus, is the son of Poseidon, a god. He lives on a Cyclopean island in a cave where Odysseus and his men reach to take shelter during a storm. When he reaches his cave, he becomes happy to find men there and starts killing them one by one to eat them. To save the rest of his men, Odysseus deceives Cyclops. He becomes blind after Odysseus pokes a spear in his eye and leaves him on the island to die. Because of what is done to him, Poseidon is angry toward Odysseus when he blinds the Cyclops.
• Zeus: A divine figure and the chief god, Zeus is a significant character in the epic, The Odyssey. He is present during the debate between the gods and goddesses about Odysseus’ fate. When Athena supports Odysseus, he assists Athena in all of the exploits she takes upon herself to assist Odysseus in saving his life. He also allows Poseidon to cause some trouble for Odysseus but does not let him cause his death.
• Circe: Circe turns to Odysseus’s associates and turns all of them into animals after imprisoning Odysseus on her island. Odysseus falls to her magic and wins only with alertness given by Eurylochus. He finally overpowers her and wins freedom for all of his companions.
• The Suitors: The role of suitors is important to raise the status of Penelope, for they check her patience, loyalty, and integrity toward her husband. Especially, the unruliest one, Antinous, makes her stand on her toes all the time, She even has to pretend that she is weaving a shroud for her husband to keep them off. Finally, Odysseus comes and kills all of them after an archery contest.
• Tiresias: The popular Grecian prophet also appears in The Odyssey like several other myths and asks Odysseus to go to Ithaca after he lets him talk to the souls of the dead in the underworld of Hades.

Writing Style of The Odyssey

The writing style of The Odyssey is exactly like that of classical poetry, which is elevated or formal. As it is written in poetic form, it is a dactylic hexameter with repetitive use of phrases and cliches common during those times. The use of deus ex machina has made it more interesting for general readers, while the metrical pattern has added to its melody. For literary devices , Home resorts to metaphors , extended metaphors , similes, and repetitions .

Analysis of the Literary Devices in The Odyssey

• Action: The main action of the epic comprises the homeward journey of the great Grecian hero, Odysseus. The rising action occurs when Odysseus gets freed from the clutches of Calypso and leaves her island for his home but faces a sea storm and loses his ship. The falling action occurs when he reaches home and joins his son, Telemachus, to kill the suitors.
• Anaphora : The below sentences are examples of anaphora , i. Not once have we held assembly, met in session since King Odysseus sailed away in the hollow ships. Who has summoned us now —one of the young men, one of the old-timers? (Book-II) ii. “Ah what a wicked man you are, and never at a loss. What a thing to imagine, what a thing to say! Earth be my witness now, the vaulting Sky above. (Book-V) These examples show the repetitious use of “one of the” and “what a thing” in the first part of the clauses of sentences ,or verses .
• Allusion : The best examples of allusions are given below, i. Zeus’s daughter plied, potent gifts from Polydamna the wife of Thon, a woman of Egypt, land where the teeming soil bears the richest yield of herbs in all the world. (Book-IV) ii. I’d died there too and met my fate that day the Trojans, swarms of them, hurled at me with bronze spears, fighting over the corpse of proud Achilles! A hero’s funeral then, my glory spread by comrades — now what a wretched death I’m doomed to die!” (Book-V) iii. Father Zeus, Athena and lord Apollo! if only — seeing the man you are, seeing we think as one — you could wed my daughter and be my son-in-law. (Book-VII) These examples show allusions of Zeus, Egypt, Achilles, and Apollo.
• Antagonist : Poseidon, the sea god in the house of Zeus, is the antagonist of The Odyssey even before he has blinded his son, the Cyclops. He is the main hurdle in his homeward journey.
• Conflict : The main conflict of the epic is Odysseus’s homeward journey and his struggles to overcome obstacles to achieve this end to save his wife from the suitors.
• Characters: The epic, The Odyssey, shows both static as well as dynamic characters. The young hero, Odysseus, is a dynamic character as he shows a considerable transformation in his behavior and conduct by the end of the epic when he meets his wife and son. However, all other characters are static as they do not show or witness any transformation, such as Cyclops, Poseidon, Circe, and even Zeus.
• Climax : The climax in the epic occurs when Odysseus arrives home after his long voyages and expeditions and sets upon killing the suitors for causing disrepute in his kingdom.
• Deus Ex Machina : The below sentences are the best examples of deus ex machina, i. But the other gods, at home in Olympian Zeus’s halls, met for full assembly there, and among them now the father of men and gods was first to speak. (Book-1) ii. As the sun sprang up, leaving the brilliant waters in its wake, climbing the bronze sky to shower light on immortal gods and mortal men across the plowlands ripe with grain — the ship pulled into Pylos, Neleus’ storied citadel. (Book-III) iii. Then Zeus’s daughter Helen thought of something else. Into the mixing-bowl from which they drank their wine she slipped a drug, heart’s-ease, dissolving anger, magic to make us all forget our pains. (Book-IV) The mention of gods, Olympian Zeus, sky, Helen, and magic potion shows the use of deus ex machina in the shape of supernatural beings coming down to the earth to help human beings.
• Hyperbole : The examples of hyperboles are given below, i. “Father Zeus on high — may the king fulfill his promises one and all! Then his fame would ring through the fertile earth and never die —and I should reach my native land at last! (Book-VII) ii. There colonnades and courts and rooms were overflowing with crowds, a mounting host of people young and old . The king slaughtered a dozen sheep to feed his guests. (Book-VIII) Both of these examples exaggerate things such as fame and rooms exaggerated as having capacity and capability.
• Imagery : The examples of imagery are given below, i. At last they gained the ravines of Lacedaemon ringed by hills and drove up to the halls of Menelaus in his glory. They found the king inside his palace, celebrating with throngs of kinsmen a double wedding-feast for his son and lovely daughter. (Book-IV) ii. Thick, luxuriant woods grew round the cave, alders and black poplars, pungent cypress too, and there birds roosted, folding their long wings, owls and hawks and the spread-beaked ravens of the sea, black skimmers who make their living off the waves. And round the mouth of the cavern trailed a vine laden with clusters, bursting with ripe grapes. (Book-V) iii. Here luxuriant trees are always in their prime, pomegranates and pears, and apples glowing red, succulent figs and olives swelling sleek and dark. And the yield of all these trees will never flag or die, neither in winter nor in summer, a harvest all year round for the West Wind always breathing through will bring some fruits to the bud and others warm to ripeness —(Book-VII) These examples show images of feeling, color, movement, and taste.
• Invocation: The below sentence is a good example of invocation, i. Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy. This invocation is an example in epic style writing followed by all the great poets of every nation including John Milton . Homer here invokes Muse, the Grecian goddess of poetry, to empower him to sing in the praise of that great hero.
• Metaphor : The following sentences are good examples of metaphor , i. Just as that fear went churning through his mind a tremendous roller swept him toward the rocky coast where he’d have been flayed alive, his bones crushed if the bright-eyed goddess Pallas had not inspired him now. He lunged for a reef, he seized it with both hands and clung for dear life, groaning until the giant wave surged past and so he escaped its force, but the breaker’s backwash charged into him full fury and hurled him out to sea. Like pebbles stuck in the suckers of some octopus dragged from its lair —so strips of skin torn from his clawing hands stuck to the rock face. (Book-V) ii. And out he stalked as a mountain lion exultant in his power strides through wind and rain and his eyes blaze and he charges sheep or oxen or chases wild deer but his hunger drives him on to go for flocks, even to raid the best-defended homestead. So Odysseus moved out…(Book-VI) iii. There’s nothing better than when deep joy holds sway throughout the realm and banqueters up and down the palace sit in ranks. (Book-IX) These examples show that several things have been compared directly in epic such as the first one shows the comparison between fear and a roller, the second shows the comparison of a man and a mountain, and the last one shows joys compared to men.
• Motif : Most important motifs of the epic, The Odyssey, is storytelling, disguises, and magic.
• Personification : The following sentences are good examples of personifications, i. Someone may tell you something or you may catch a rumor straight from Zeus, rumor that carries news to men like nothing else. (Book-I) ii. As Dawn rose up from bed by her lordly mate Tithonus, bringing light to immortal gods and mortal men, the gods sat down in council, circling Zeus the thunder king whose power rules the world. (Book-V) These examples show as if the rumor and dawn have life and emotions of their own.
• Protagonist : Odysseus is the protagonist of the epic. The epic, after the invocation, starts with his entry into the world and moves forward as he starts his homeward journey until he reaches home.
• Rhetorical Questions : The examples of rhetorical questions are as follows, i. Who has summoned us now —one of the young men, one of the old-timers? What crisis spurs him on? Some news he’s heard of an army on the march, word he’s caught firsthand so he can warn us now? Or some other public matter he’ll disclose and argue? (Book-II) ii. She called out to her girls with lovely braids: “Stop, my friends ! Why run when you see a man? Surely you don’t think him an enemy, do you? (Book-VI) This example shows the use of rhetorical questions posed by different characters not to elicit answers but to stress upon the underlined idea.
• Setting : The setting of the epic, The Odyssey, is spread over several places such as Mount Olympus, Ithaca, Aeaea, Ogygia, Scheria, etc.
• Simile : The examples of similes are given below, i. When young Dawn with her rose-red fingers shone once more the true son of Odysseus sprang from bed and dressed, over his shoulder he slung his well-honed sword, fastened rawhide sandals under his smooth feet and stepped from his bedroom, handsome as a god. (Book-II) ii. Here’s my prophecy, bound to come to pass. If you, you old codger, wise as the ages, talk him round, incite the boy to riot. (Book-II) iii. Strangers have just arrived, your majesty, Menelaus. Two men, but they look like kin of mighty Zeus himself. Tell me, should we unhitch their team for them or send them to someone free to host them well?” (Book-IV) iv. As Dawn rose up from bed by her lordly mate Tithonus, bringing light to immortal gods and mortal men, the gods sat down in council, circling Zeus the thunder king whose power rules the world. (Book-V) These are similes as the use of the word “like” shows the comparison between different things. For example, the first example shows the beatify of Odysseus compared to gods, the second shows the person compared to time, the third shows people compared to the relatives of the god, and the last one shows the dawn rising like a person or a living thing.

Related posts:

• Odyssey Quotes
• Odyssey Themes
• Odyssey Characters
• The Iliad Themes
• The Iliad Quotes
• The Iliad Characters

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Character Analysis Odysseus

Odysseus is a combination of the self-made, self-assured man and the embodiment of the standards and mores of his culture. He is favored by the gods and respected and admired by the mortals. Even the wrath of Poseidon does not keep him from his homecoming. He is confident that he represents virtue even when a modern audience might not be so sure. He is also a living series of contradictions, a much more complicated character than we would expect to find in the stereotypical epic hero. We can contrast Odysseus, for example, with the great warrior Achilles in The Iliad .

Achilles himself is not a two-dimensional stereotype. He has a tragic flaw, which can best be identified as hubris (an overbearing arrogance or misguided pride) as one of several distinguishing traits. But Achilles is a simpler character. According to the myth the Homeric Greeks would have known, Achilles was given a choice by the gods to live a short, glorious life full of excitement and heroism or a long, tranquil life with little recognition or fame. Achilles, of course, chose the glorious life; therefore, he achieves a kind of immortality through valor and intense, honest devotion to a cause.

Odysseus, in The Odyssey, is much more complicated. He lives by his wiles as well as his courage. He is an intellectual. Often he openly evaluates a situation, demonstrating the logic he employs in making his choices. When it proves effective, Odysseus lies (even to his own family), cheats, or steals in ways that we would not expect in an epic hero. Although he is self-disciplined (refusing to eat the lotus), his curiosity is sometimes the root of his trouble (as with the Cyclops).

He is willing to pay a price for knowledge; for example, he insists on hearing the Sirens' call, even though to do so, he must have himself excruciatingly strapped to the mast of his ship so that he cannot give in to the temptation. Odysseus can be merciful, as when he spares the bard Phemius, or brutal, as he seems when dealing with the dozen disloyal maidservants. He creates his own code of conduct through his adventures. He is deeper than Achilles, more contemplative, but still capable of explosive violence; he is almost certainly more interesting. It is easy to see why some critics like to call him the first "modern man."

Victory motivates Odysseus. He wants to return home and live well in Ithaca; as a result, every step along the way is another test, sometimes, another battle. His concern with victory is also cultural, as well as practical. In Homer's world, where there are no police or justice systems, might usually makes right. The strong prevail. Odysseus often has only two choices: death or victory. Even when Athena intervenes on his behalf, she often leaves ultimate success or failure up to Odysseus. During the battle with the suitors, for example, she could easily and quickly prevail; but she makes Odysseus earn the victory.

Appropriately, Odysseus' development as a character is complicated. He is, in every way, "the man of twists and turns" (1.1). While he does seem to grow throughout his wanderings, the reader should not look at each event as a one more learning experience for the hero. The Odyssey is not a lesson plan for growth; the episodes are not didactic examples of the importance of prudence or anything else.

When Odysseus left for Troy, he had already established his reputation as a hero. His participation in the war was crucial to the Greeks' victory. It was he who disguised himself as an old beggar and infiltrated the enemy. As Menelaus tells Telemachus in Book 4, it was Odysseus' legendary ruse of the Trojan horse that led to the defeat of Troy.

Certainly Odysseus does grow in wisdom and judgment throughout his ventures. His self-control while dealing with the suitors' insults is exemplary and contrasts, for example, with his earlier irresistible urge to announce his name to the Cyclops in Book 9. In other ways, however, he seems slow to learn. The most notable example being his difficulty in controlling his men. After the victory over the Cicones, Odysseus wisely wants to take the plunder and depart quickly (9.50). His men prefer to stay, leading to a defeat at the hands of reinforcements. When Aeolus grants the Greeks fair winds to Ithaca, Odysseus falls asleep within sight of home, enabling his suspicious, undisciplined crew to open the bag of ill winds and let loose a tempest that blows them off course. Again, on the island of the Sungod Helios, Odysseus' men disobey strict orders and feast on the sacred cattle when he goes inland to pray and falls asleep. The struggles Odysseus faces make his growth as a character more realistic and more credible because it is not simple or absolute.

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essays by Thomas Van Nortwick, notes by Rob Hardy

Book 6 Essays

By thomas van nortwick.

Athena, in disguise, comes to Nausicaa in a dream and tells her it's time to do the laundry. 

Odysseus has escaped from the powerful pull of Calypso, but his struggle with the forces of femininity is far from over.  His next encounter will be with a charming young woman, fully human unlike the nymph he has left behind, but carrying much of the same potential to stall the hero’s return home.

The Phaeacians represent a different form of living from either what we have seen in Ithaka at the beginning of the poem or more recently on Calypso’s exotic island.  Like the nymph, they live far away from others and seem to represent a liminal position on the divine/human continuum, but their benign existence moves Odysseus and us closer to a fully human community, another existential waystation on the journey to Ithaka.  After his motionless sojourn with Calypso, Odysseus now goes into action, sizing up his new surroundings and plotting his return to heroic status.  Although it’s the shortest book in the poem, Odyssey 6 is also among the richest in thematic material, introducing motifs that will recur and build in significance, laying the foundation for Odysseus’s triumphant return to power in Ithaka.

Having tucked Odysseus in under the twin olive bushes on the shore of Scheria, Athena now turns to the next part of her mission, to arrange a meeting with the Phaeacian princess, Nausicaa.  But first, a short primer on the history and culture of the Phaeacians.  They are, it seems, refugees of a sort, having escaped from the bullying of the “overbearing Cyclopes” (5). Their former home was Ὑπερείη “faraway place,” (4) and their flight from the Cyclopes did not take them any closer to other humans. Nausithoos, “Swift Boat,” brought them to Scheria and established a walled town with temples to the gods and divided up the land, a settled kingdom that Alkinoos now rules. Scheria thus joins Pylos, Sparta, and Ogygia as a foil for the troubled society in Ithaka we have glimpsed in the poem’s opening scenes.

As Odysseus makes his way home, he encounters many different modes of living, each with its own particular customs, ranging along a continuum from the atomistic enclaves of the Cyclopes to the sophisticated royal culture of the Spartans; from the divine solitudes of Circe and Calypso, enlivened only by the other forms of life these powerful beings control, to the incestuous realm of Aeolus with its high walls and mated siblings; from the xenophobic Laestrygonians to the alluring Sirens.  And, of course, from the world of the living to the world of the dead.  The poet of the Odyssey seems to have an almost anthropological interest in the varieties of human and non-human organization.  This focus, articulated through the poet’s analogical use of repeated forms, ensures that by the time we return with the hero to Ithaka, the society there appears against a rich backdrop of possibilities.  But more than that, since the places Odysseus visits often reflect the character of their inhabitants—lush Sparta as the home of the somewhat jaded king and queen, the rigidly controlled environs of Aeolus’s kingdom mirroring the king’s function as keeper of the winds, the magical landscape of Calypso reflecting her uncanny powers—the array of different cultures also supplies a context for Odysseus’s complex and sometimes contradictory character.

Athena’s encounter with Nausicaa is brimming with powerful symbols. The young princess has only a cameo role in the drama on Scheria, but who she is and what she says and does are crucial for our understanding not only of her but also, as we will see, of Penelope.  Our first glimpse of her, snugly tucked away in her bedroom, speaks volumes if we know the poet’s traditional style. Her boudoir is richly ornamented, closed off by “shining doors.” She is herself “like the gods” in her beauty and stature. Outside the doorway are two handmaidens, their own beauty a gift from the Graces (15-19). The phrase θύραι … φαειναί (19) is associated in Homer and elsewhere in early Greek hexameter poetry with female sexuality (cf. Il. 14.169 ; Od. 10.230 , 256 , 312 ; Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 60 , 236 ). When Circe opens the θύρας … φαεινὰς of her house to Odysseus’s hapless crewmen, it is a sexual invitation; when Eos closes the θύρας…φαεινὰς to her boudoir with Tithonus inside, that signals the end of their sex life. (See also Od. 192-227 essay .)

The hint of sexuality we might get from Nausicaa’s doorway is quickly dispelled by the presence of the two maidens flanking it.  In Homeric epic, a series of recurring motifs is centered around the theme of “accompaniment.”  For a Homeric male, to be flanked by retainers is a sign of his being in his proper status with the right authority.  In Book 24 of the Iliad , when Achilles leaps to his feet to attend to Hector’s corpse at the behest of Priam, he is accompanied by two θεράποντες ( 24.572 ), one sign that he is taking up again the leadership role that he relinquished when he stormed out of the Greek camp after quarreling with Agamemnon ( Il. 1.245–303 ). Homeric women, when they go out in public, must be accompanied by maidservants, a sign of their modesty and, for virgins, their chastity. When Penelope descends to talk to the suitors in Book 18, she has her two ἀμφίπολοι right beside her ( 18.307 ). We will see this motif at work later when Nausicaa first meets Odysseus on the beach. For now, the presence of the two ἀμφίπολοι (18) guarding her “shining doors” suggests that any latent sexuality is firmly under control.

A locked door is no challenge for Athena, who wafts into Nausicaa’s bedroom like a puff of wind. The psychic visitation that follows is a familiar event in Homeric poetry. The goddess assumes a nonthreatening disguise and nudges the sleeping princess toward acting on impulses that are usually understood in the world of the Homeric poems to be already present, however submerged, in Nausicaa’s mind. The scene type is flexible enough to cover various situations, with the divine visitor appearing as an eidolon , a kind of ghost ( Il. 23.65–106 ), as an evil dream ( Il. 2.5–34 ), as an anonymous woman in an easily penetrable disguise ( Od. 20.30–53 ) or, as here, a trusted friend ( Od. 4.796–807 ). The most important parallel, as we will see, is Athena’s elaborate visitation in Book 18 ( 158–205 ) where the goddess impels Penelope toward a fateful meeting with the suitors.

Interventions like Athena’s here are consistent with the Homeric practice of having the gods initiate significant human action. The meeting that the goddess is arranging will propel Odysseus toward the royal palace and eventually Ithaka. Nausicaa’s character and situation will resonate in various ways throughout the rest of the poem, forming a paradigm for the second courtship of Odysseus and Penelope, which must happen before the hero can finally retake possession of his kingdom. (See Introduction: Odysseus as Trickster and The Trickster Vanishes .) Finally, Nausicaa’s awakening sexuality is the foundation, as we will see, for the more complex reemergence of Penelope from her quiescent seclusion, unleashing the emotional energy that drives her decisions about the mysterious beggar. Tracing the afterlife of Nausicaa in the poem is a good way to observe Homer employing the full potential in his traditional style, seeding the ground with thematic material that will sprout and grow throughout the story.

Athena’s message is the same one that all such visitations are meant to deliver in one form or another: “Still sleeping? You have work to do!” In this case, the work will be in the service of Nausicaa’s coming of age as a young woman. Her marriage is not far off!  She must look her best and cultivate a good reputation.  The imperatives that her “friend” invokes here are social, attached to the proper role for a young woman in Greek society, sanctioned, as Athena assures her, by her mother (25). The other kinds of feelings that might be bubbling up in a young princess are left unsaid here, though they are clear enough to us: she is beginning to be curious about her emerging sexuality.  Both the goddess and later Odysseus play on these latter impulses for their own purposes, as we will see. In the next scene, between Nausicaa and the brine-encrusted stranger, the poet will offer a brilliantly subtle portrait of a girl on the cusp of sexual awareness.

Her message delivered, the goddess wafts away:

ἡ μὲν ἄρ᾽ ὣς εἰποῦσ᾽ ἀπέβη γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη Οὔλυμπόνδ᾽, ὅθι φασὶ θεῶν ἕδος ἀσφαλὲς αἰεὶ ἔμμεναι. οὔτ᾽ ἀνέμοισι τινάσσεται οὔτε ποτ᾽ ὄμβρῳ δεύεται οὔτε χιὼν ἐπιπίλναται, ἀλλὰ μάλ᾽ αἴθρη πέπταται ἀνέφελος, λευκὴ δ᾽ ἐπιδέδρομεν αἴγλη· τῷ ἔνι τέρπονται μάκαρες θεοὶ ἤματα πάντα.

Speaking thus, gray-eyed Athena went away to Olympus, where the gods’ home stands unchanging, forever. It is neither shaken by winds nor dampened by rain, nor does snow ever pile up, but the bright air spreads cloudless away, and the white light runs over it. There the blessed gods take their pleasure every day.

Odyssey 6.41–46

Some Classical scholars have been suspicious of this passage, citing its scale and unusual vocabulary for describing the gods’ home. But this modulation of our perspective is normal for Homer, who likes to pull in close and then zoom away, speed up and slow down, to mark a shift between two modes of existence. When Zeus sends Hermes to liberate Odysseus from Calypso, the shift from the timeless world of Olympus to the nymph’s remote island is marked by the messenger god’s laborious donning of his sandals and long journey across the pathless deep. Here, the poet pulls our attention abruptly from the busy life of the young princess, pressed by the urgencies of time and circumstance, toward the magical static beauty of Olympus where the gods live at their unending ease.  The sudden shift leaves us suspended in time and space, suddenly looking down at the polite rituals of Phaeacian society as if from a long distance, both physically and existentially. What conclusions we are to draw about the differences between these two venues is not obvious, only that each offers the chance to think about the other with some detachment.

Further Reading

Heubeck, A. Hainsworth, J. and S. West (ed.) 1989. A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, vol. I, Books I-VIII , 289–292. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nagler. M. 1974. Spontaneity and Tradition: The Oral Art of Homer , 64–76.Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Segal, C. 1962. “The Phaeacians and the Symbolism of Odysseus’ Return.” Arion 1: 17–64.

Tracy, S. 1990. The Story of the Odyssey , 38–39. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Van Nortwick, T. 1979. “Penelope and Nausicaa.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 109: 269–276.

Nausicaa asks her father for a cart and mules so she can take her laundry to the shore, where she and her attendants will wash it.

As befits a princess, Nausicaa is “awakened” by the dawn, as if the goddess were another of her handmaidens. The portrait of the royal family that follows presents an ideal household. Nausicaa finds the queen spinning wool by the hearth, surrounded by servants, and meets her father as he is on his way out the door, leading the local lords to assembly.

The charming exchange that follows continues the theme of happy domesticity. The young princess stands up close to her father—we imagine her gazing up and perhaps batting her eyelashes—and asks to use the special wagon with the high seat so she can go to the springs with the laundry make sure that he and her four brothers can all have clean clothes for official meetings and social occasions. She is, we are told, embarrassed to admit that, presumably acting on the impulses that Athena has stirred, she is also thinking of the clothes she might need for her own marriage. Alkinous, not always the model of tact during Odysseus’s visit, is so here, pretending not to know what is on Nausicaa’s mind.  Of course, she can have the wagon or whatever else she wants.  He will deny her nothing.

Preparations ensue, as servants yoke the mules to the “well-polished” wagon, Nausicaa fetches the clothing, “shining” though in need of washing, and her mother brings supplies for a splendid picnic, food, wine, and olive oil in a golden flask for the girls to anoint themselves with after bathing.  When Nausicaa climbs up and flicks the whip, the mules take off eagerly.  The poet adds one more verse:

οὐκ οἴην, ἅμα τῇ γε καὶ ἀμφίπολοι κίον ἄλλαι.

(She traveled) not alone, but some handmaidens went with her.

Odyssey 6.84

We might think that this detail is unnecessary, since we would hardly suppose that a royal princess would handle laundry duty by herself. But here again Homer summons his traditional style to economical effect. This verse reinvokes the “accompaniment” motif we have seen in the first scene outside Nausicaa’s bedroom. The young princess is not heading into the countryside without the proper emblems of her virginity.  Even the wagon she rides in plays a role in the motif.  The notion of “high up,” which both Nausicaa and her father associate with this particular vehicle ( 58, 70 ), has a special meaning here.  The women’s quarters in a Greek household would usually be upstairs, a private refuge away from the prying eyes of strangers. Penelope’s first appearance in the poem marshals these symbols:

τοῦ δ᾽ ὑπερωιόθεν φρεσὶ σύνθετο θέσπιν ἀοιδὴν κούρη Ἰκαρίοιο, περίφρων Πηνελόπεια: κλίμακα δ᾽ ὑψηλὴν κατεβήσετο οἷο δόμοιο, οὐκ οἴη, ἅμα τῇ γε καὶ ἀμφίπολοι δύ᾽ ἕποντο.

The daughter of Ikarios, discreet Penelope, heard the wonderous song from upstairs. She came down the high staircase of the house, not alone, but two handmaidens followed her.

Odyssey 1.328–31

The queen will descend again from her chambers for a crucial encounter with the suitors, during which her marital status is very much at issue, after Odysseus arrives home disguised as a beggar:

ὣς φαμένη κατέβαιν᾽ ὑπερώϊα σιγαλόεντα, οὐκ οἴη: ἅμα τῇ γε καὶ ἀμφίπολοι δύ᾽ ἕποντο.

So she spoke, and came down from her shining bedroom upstairs, not alone, but two handmaidens followed her.

Odyssey 18.206–7

Nausicaa’s virginity is guarded not only in her bedroom but even in the family wagon, which keeps her “high up,” intact and away from any threats along the way.

Odysseus is about to meet this young princess, and Homer has been busy making sure we understand who she is and what role she might play in the hero’s future.  She has beauty and stature like the immortals and is guarded by women who themselves have beauty “from the Graces” (18). Gold and shiny things surround her, in her clothes, the doors to her bedroom, the flask that carries her olive oil, even the reins of the mules. She is precious, a lovely ornament to her family, guarded at all times. Such a pampered existence might make a person haughty, but not in this case. Ready to share in the picnic preparations and laundry duties, she mingles happily with her ἀμφίπολοι. “Daddy’s girl,” to be sure, but not completely spoiled.

And for Odysseus, extremely dangerous. In the wider perspective of the poem’s narrative form, Calypso and Nausicaa, so seemingly different, are interchangeable, detaining women who would keep the hero from reaching Ithaka and so bringing the story to its appropriate conclusion.  The restoration of Odysseus to his proper role as king, husband, father, and son is the goal towards which the Odyssey propels us. Certain imperatives accompany this kind of story, and we must accept them if the form is going to make sense. Any collateral damage that Odysseus causes on his way home must be considered less important than his getting there. The suitors might well seem to be relatively normal and healthy young men.  The maids, who the suitors sexually exploited, also engender sympathy, given their powerless situation. But no, they all must die. So too, no qualms should accompany the manipulation of a delightful young princess who wants the hero for a husband.

These outcomes are part of the poem’s ruthless logic, however uncomfortable they may make us feel.  For this reason, it is even more remarkable how sympathetic Homer makes both Calypso and Nausicaa, how delicately he depicts the hero’s relationship with each.  Only a great storyteller could take such a risk and pull it off. As the encounter between Odysseus and Nausicaa unfolds, we will see that the poet continues to use his traditional style to keep us fully engaged in the hero’s present struggles while at the same time preparing the way for the final scenes between the royal couple in Ithaka.

Dimock, G. 1989. The Unity of the Odyssey , 78–80. Amherst. The University of Massachusetts Press.

Van Nortwick, T. 2008. The Unknown Odysseus: Alternate Worlds in Homer’s Odyssey , 26–27. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Nausicaa and the other Phaeacian girls arrive at the shore to wash their laundry. The girls play ball together. Odysseus wakes and wonders where he is. 

From her first appearance in the poem, Nausicaa straddles the boundary between naïve innocence and awakening sexuality, a liminal position that Homer represents by various stylistic gestures that point in opposite directions.

Her bedroom has the golden doors that often signal sexual potential, but the two maidens sleeping outside offer protection for her innocence. That shield fails to keep Athena out, however, and the goddess stirs the young princess’s curiosity about marriage, both as a social institution and, in a more submerged way, as the entrance into sexual maturity. She aims to be a “good girl,” who wants to help her father and brothers look presentable. But at Athena’s urging, she also hopes to make herself ready for marriage, a motive that her father immediately recognizes. She drives happily off for a washing party and picnic with her ἀμφίπολοι, her virginity protected on the way by her “lofty” wagon.

At the river, all is innocence and purity: sparkling clear water, clothes and girls washed clean and dried in the sun. After lunch, the fun continues as the girls play a game of catch and Nausicaa leads them in a song, which reminds the poet of Artemis and her handmaidens:

οἵη δ᾽ Ἄρτεμις εἶσι κατ᾽ οὔρεα ἰοχέαιρα, ἢ κατὰ Τηΰγετον περιμήκετον ἢ Ἐρύμανθον, τερπομένη κάπροισι καὶ ὠκείῃς ἐλάφοισι· τῇ δέ θ᾽ ἅμα νύμφαι, κοῦραι Διὸς αἰγιόχοιο, ἀγρονόμοι παίζουσι, γέγηθε δέ τε φρένα Λητώ· πασάων δ᾽ ὑπὲρ ἥ γε κάρη ἔχει ἠδὲ μέτωπα, ῥεῖά τ᾽ ἀριγνώτη πέλεται, καλαὶ δέ τε πᾶσαι· ὣς ἥ γ᾽ ἀμφιπόλοισι μετέπρεπε παρθένος ἀδμής.

As Artemis the arrow-shooter goes through the mountains over lofty Taygetos or majestic Erymanthos delighting in the wild boars and swift deer, and with her, nymphs, daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus, range over the wilds, playing, and Leto is delighted, for the head and brows of Artemis rise above all the others, and she is easily distinguished, though all are beautiful. So the unwed virgin shown forth among the maidens.

Odyssey 6.102–9

The simile underscores Nausicaa’s virginal purity and also her godlike beauty.  Beyond that, the regal bearing we associate with a goddess imbues the young princess with enhanced dignity. She is a young girl who likes to play catch, but she is also a member of Phaeacian royalty. The gravitas carried in the latter role will slowly emerge as she takes charge of the needy stranger.

Virgil channels this latter quality in his reworking of Homer’s simile, describing Aeneas’ first glimpse of the Carthaginian queen Dido as she inspects new building projects:

Quālis in Eurōtae rīpīs aut per iuga Cynthī exercet Dīāna chorōs, quam mīlle secūtae hinc atque hinc glomerantur Orēades; illa pharetram fert umerō gradiēnsque deās superēminet omnēs (Lātōnae tacitum pertemptant gaudia pectus): tālis erat Dīdō, tālem sē laeta ferēbat per mediōs īnstāns operī rēgnīsque futūrīs.

As Diana, on the banks of Eurotas and the peaks of Cynthus, leads the chorus, and a thousand mountain nymphs follow her, joined together here and there; she carries a quiver on her shoulder and strides towering over all; and joy courses through the quiet heart of Leto. So Dido strode happily through the crowd, intent upon the work and her future realm.

Aeneid 1.498–504

Dido seems an unlikely match for a young girl in the grip of new emotions, but Virgil will show her eventually undone by love, used cynically by Juno and Venus, wandering distracted through Carthage. Dido is perhaps the Roman poet’s most striking creation. A tragic casualty of Roman destiny, she is regal and dignified but finally destroyed by the madness of her love for Aeneas. As he so often does, Virgil has pushed beyond the surface of Homer’s portrait, attuned to a part of Nausicaa that is muted at first but resonates later in Penelope’s struggle to resolve the competing forces within herself: the awakening desire to move out of her numbed withdrawal in response to the chaos in Ithaka and the flickering hope that Odysseus might still return. The Odyssey cannot accommodate Roman gravitas , but Penelope’s resourcefulness and determination show an inner strength that Virgil drew on in creating his heroine.

The game of catch winds down and Nausicaa begins to think about heading home, but Athena has other plans. This whole expedition, we are now reminded, was her initiative, and she now moves toward her ultimate goal: Nausicaa must meet Odysseus and lead him to the palace.  The princess’s last toss goes astray, the maids shout, the hero wakes up and ponders:

ἦ ῥ᾽ οἵ γ᾽ ὑβρισταί τε καὶ ἄγριοι οὐδὲ δίκαιοι, ἦε φιλόξεινοι καί σφιν νόος ἐστὶ θεουδής; ὥς τέ με κουράων ἀμφήλυθε θῆλυς ἀϋτή: νυμφάων, αἳ ἔχουσ᾽ ὀρέων αἰπεινὰ κάρηνα καὶ πηγὰς ποταμῶν καὶ πίσεα ποιήεντα. ἦ νύ που ἀνθρώπων εἰμὶ σχεδὸν αὐδηέντων; ἀλλ᾽ ἄγ᾽ ἐγὼν αὐτὸς πειρήσομαι ἠδὲ ἴδωμαι."

Oh no! What sort of people are these, whose land I’ve reached? Are they arrogant, fierce, and lacking in justice? Or kind to strangers, with intelligence like the gods’? That’s the voice of girls wafting around me, or nymphs, who haunt the steep summits of the mountains and springs of rivers and grassy meadows. Am I near people who speak my language? Come now, I’ll try to see for myself.

Odyssey 6.119–26

We know the voices come from girls, but the poet’s simile has added a mythical penumbra, as Nausicaa and her playmates cavort against a numinous backdrop. In his quandary, Odysseus ranges around the boundaries of human and divine, always a source of energy in the poem. The phrase ἀμφήλυθε θῆλυς ἀυτή (122) recalls the alluring music of Calypso, mysterious sounds that surround the hero and blur the clean edges of consciousness, having the power to distract him from his mission. (See  essay  on Book 5.43–91) Male bards like Phemius and Demodokus offer stories of the Trojan War, full of paradigms for masculine heroism.  This other kind of singing, which Odysseus has heard coming from Circe’s house and the island of the Sirens, is always dangerous. Nausicaa will indeed be a threat to Odysseus. But as we are about to learn, he could also be dangerous to her.

Austin, N. 1975. Archery at the Dark of the Moon , 193–194; 202–203. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Gross, N. 1976. “Nausicaa: A Feminine Threat.” Classical World 69: 311–317.

Mackie, H. 1997. “Song and Storytelling: An Odyssean Perspective.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 127: 77–95.

Nagler, M. 1977. “Dread Goddess Endowed With Speech.” Archaeological News 6: 77–85.

Van Nortwick, T. 1992. Somewhere I Have Never Travelled: The Second Self and the Hero’s Journey in Ancient Epic , 100–19. New York: Oxford University Press1.

———. 2008. The Unknown Odysseus: Alternate Worlds in Homer’s Odyssey , 27–28. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Wohl, V. 1993. “Standing by the Stathmos: The Creation of Sexual Ideology in the Odyssey . Arethusa 26: 19–46.

Odysseus, naked and caked with salt, appears from behind a bush. The other girls flee, but Nausicaa remains. Odysseus addresses her with a flattering speech. 

The atmosphere is charged as Odysseus emerges from the thicket, his appearance prompting more conflicting signals from the poet. Naked and vulnerable, the hero holds an olive branch in front of his genitals. Yet he reminds Homer of a hungry lion, wind-blown, drenched from rain, prowling in search of food, eyes burning with intensity as he hunts for food among flocks of cattle or sheep.

Odysseus is about to “mingle” with the girls, even though he is naked. The word μίξεσθαι ( 136 ) can mean simply “to go amongst,” but it is also the usual word for sexual intercourse in Greek poetry, and young maidens at play are often a target for abduction and rape in early Greek hexameter (cf. Homeric Hymn to Demeter 4-20 ; Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 117-25 ). As he does with Nausicaa, so here the poet portrays Odysseus with symbols that suggest he is both vulnerable and potentially threatening.

Filthy and caked with brine, the stranger looks σμερδαλέος, “fearsome” to the maidens, and they scatter in fear. Not Nausicaa, however:

οἴη δ᾽ Ἀλκινόου θυγάτηρ μένε· τῇ γὰρ Ἀθήνη θάρσος ἐνὶ φρεσὶ θῆκε καὶ ἐκ δέος εἵλετο γυίων. στῆ δ᾽ ἄντα σχομένη·

Only the daughter of Alkinous remained, for Athena put courage in her heart and took the fear away from her body. She stood firm, facing him.

Odyssey 6.139–41

The phrase οἴη δ᾽ Ἀλκινόου θυγάτηρ μένε (139)—a rare variant of the “accompaniment motif”—sums up neatly the ambiguity in the confrontation. Nausicaa faces the scary looking stranger alone , without the usual company of attendants, a potentially dangerous position for a young girl. She and the others have thrown off their veils, another risky gesture, especially out in the countryside where satyrs may lurk. On another level, both actions might be seen as forward, especially for Nausicaa, given the feelings that her dream seems to have stirred. All the conflicting impulses in the young princess surface in this moment.

Odysseus, meanwhile, must proceed carefully. In his present state of disarray, he might well frighten the young princess and ruin his chances for getting into the good graces of the island’s rulers. Kneeling and grabbing her knees, the usual posture for a suppliant, seems too forward: better to approach her more gently. The speech that follows ranks with his most impressive. He sizes up the young maiden and aims for just the right amount of flattery without coming on too strong. Invoking Artemis—almost as if he had heard the poet’s simile—he signals that his thoughts about the princess are both reverent and chaste. And yet, as he passes on to the possibility that such a vision might actually be mortal, he ever so gently hints that his thoughts have strayed into a different territory. Her family would be thrilled to see her heading to a dance, such a flourishing young shoot.  The word θάλος (157) carries the sense of young, vigorous growth, the kind of virgin that might well be compared to Artemis, but also with fertility in reserve. In short, an excellent future wife. Sure enough, Odysseus next ponders the fate of the lucky man who would lead her into marriage.

The tone is complex here.  We receive the signals sent by Odysseus’s words differently than does Nausicaa. From our perspective, Odysseus is laying it on pretty thick. We know he is speaking to a vulnerable girl, in whom conflicting emotions are swirling. Curiosity about men and sex has recently surfaced inside her, nudged by Athena; at the same time, she is still relatively naïve, happy to play catch at the springs. Since we are not to believe, I think, that Odysseus really contemplates the possibility that Nausicaa is a goddess, Homer runs the risk of having his hero come across to us as a cynical cad, not a heroic survivor. And yet, we also know that Odysseus himself is in a delicate situation, needing Nausicaa on his side but at risk of an entanglement with her that might derail his homecoming.

Homer is probably drawing on traditional material here. A mortal man suddenly confronted with a woman who might be a goddess is a situation ripe with possibilities for the storyteller. The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite , a poem composed around the same period as the Odyssey , tells the story of how Aphrodite is forced by Zeus to fall in love (or at least in lust) with Anchises, a prince of the royal family in Troy and father of Aeneas. (See   essay  on Book 5.1–42.) The goddess finds her intended paramour herding sheep on Mount Ida and approaches him disguised as a naïve young virgin, telling him that she has been snatched from the chorus of Artemis by Hermes to be his wife and bear him children.  The roles here are the reverse of what we see in the Odyssey , and this poet exploits the irony in the situation to full comic effect. The young prince thinks he will manipulate the apparently innocent maiden and have his way with her. He, like Odysseus, begins with hyperbolic flattery:

χαῖρε, ἄνασσ᾽, ἥ τις μακάρων τάδε δώμαθ᾽ ἱκάνεις, Ἄρτεμις ἢ Λητὼ ἠὲ χρυσέη Ἀφροδίτη ἢ Θέμις ἠυγενὴς ἠὲ γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη, ἤ πού τις Χαρίτων δεῦρ᾽ ἤλυθες, αἵτε θεοῖσι πᾶσιν ἑταιρίζουσι καὶ ἀθάνατοι καλέονται, ἤ τις Νυμφάων, αἵτ᾽ ἄλσεα καλὰ νέμονται ἢ Νυμφῶν, αἳ καλὸν ὄρος τόδε ναιετάουσι καὶ πηγὰς ποταμῶν, καὶ πίσεα ποιήεντα.

Hail, my lady! Are you some goddess who has come to my home, Artemis or Leto or golden Aphrodite, or noble Themis or Athena with glancing eyes? Or perhaps you are one of the Graces, who accompany all the gods and are called immortal, maybe one of the nymphs who haunt the lovely groves or live here on this beautiful mountain, around the springs of the rivers and the grassy meadows.

Hymn to Aphrodite 92–99

The assignation proceeds, but afterward the tables are turned when the goddess assumes her divine stature and awakens the young prince. He is terrified and begs her not to punish him:

αὐτίκα σ᾽ ὡς τὰ πρῶτα, θεά, ἴδον ὀφθαλμοῖσιν, ἔγνων ὡς θεὸς ἦσθα: σὺ δ᾽ οὐ νημερτὲς ἔειπες. ἀλλά σε πρὸς Ζηνὸς γουνάζομαι αἰγιόχοιο, μή με ζῶντ᾽ ἀμενηνὸν ἐν ἀνθρώποισιν ἐάσῃς ναίειν, ἀλλ᾽ ἐλέαιρ᾽: ἐπεὶ οὐ βιοθάλμιος ἀνὴρ γίγνεται, ὅς τε θεαῖς εὐνάζεται ἀθανάτῃσι.

Right away when I saw you, goddess, I knew you were immortal; you did not tell me the truth. But I beg by Zeus who wears the aegis, do not let me live enfeebled among mortals, but take pity on me, since a man is no longer potent, when he goes to bed with an immortal goddess.

Hymn to Aphrodite 185–90

Virgil may have been thinking of both sources when he has Aeneas encounter Venus, disguised as a young huntress looking for her sisters in the forest outside Carthage:

'ō quam tē memorem, virgō? namque haud tibi vultus mortālis, nec vōx hominem sonat; ō, dea certē (An Phoebī soror? an nymphārum sanguinis ūna?), Sīs fēlīx nostrumque levēs, quaecumque, labōrem et quō sub caelō tandem, quibus orbis in ōrīs iactēmur doceās: ignārī hominumque locōrumque errāmus ventō hūc vāstīs et flūctibus āctī. multa tibi ante ārās nostrā cadet hostia dextrā.'

“Oh how shall I address you, young maiden? For your face hardly seems mortal, nor does your voice sound human. A goddess, surely— the sister of Apollo? Or one of the family of nymphs?— may you be prosperous and whoever you are, may you ease our labors, and, under what sky finally, on what shores of this earth we are landed, please reveal to us. We wander here not knowing the lands or the people, driven by the wind and vast waves. Many animals will fall dead, sacrificed before your altars.”

Aeneid 1.327–34

Virgil clearly has the Odyssey passage in mind, given his use of the Diana/Artemis simile soon after. The irony in the Homeric scene, part of the charming, light tone of the entire exchange, here becomes part of Virgil’s persistent questioning of his hero’s fitness for the mission of founding Rome. Allusions to Odysseus in the portrait of Aeneas always portray the Roman leader as inadequate, lacking in the supreme self-confidence of Homer’s hero. Whereas Odysseus uses flattery to manipulate a naive virgin, Aeneas seems quite sincere in his quandary about who this young woman might be. He does not, in fact, recognize his own mother, who is herself manipulating him.

Whether Virgil knew the Homeric hymn, or at least the myth behind it, we might be less sure, but the parallels are tantalizing. If we hear the story of Aphrodite and Anchises in the background of Aeneas’s encounter with Venus (the Roman Aphrodite), then we look on as the Roman hero replays the prelude to his own engendering. Compare Telemachus’ response to the disguised Athena in Book 1, when she asks if he is indeed the son of Odysseus:

μήτηρ μέν τέ μέ φησι τοῦ ἔμμεναι, αὐτὰρ ἐγώ γε οὐκ οἶδ᾽: οὐ γάρ πώ τις ἑὸν γόνον αὐτὸς ἀνέγνω.

My mother says I am his son, but I myself do not know; for who has known his own birth?

Odyssey 1.215–16

We underestimate Virgil’s mastery of Homeric epic at our peril.

Tracy, S. 1990. The Story of the Odyssey , 39–42. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Van Nortwick, T. 1992. Somewhere I Have Never Travelled: The Second Self and the Hero’s Journey in Ancient Epic , 100–191. New York: Oxford University Press.

Odysseus continues his flattering speech and concludes by asking Nausicaa for clothing and food. Nausicaa responds by introducing herself and offering to help him. She calls her attendants to bathe him and give him food and drink.

Rolling now, Odysseus kicks it up a notch, citing the quasi-religious awe σέβας (161) that has overtaken him as he gazes at Nausicaa, thus providing a smooth segue into his report of a visit to Delos—Artemis again—where he saw a “slender palm tree” (163) that the young princess resembles.

So far, he has offered flattery without any underlying sexual suggestiveness, but now he inches closer: he would like to grasp her by the knees…but her radiance forbids it! His worshipful tone then points him toward the position he has been aiming at from the beginning, as a pitiful suppliant in need of help, at the feet of a gracious queen (ἄνασσ᾽, 175). After a brief recap of his travails since leaving Calypso’s island, he finally gets down to business: Could she spare some old rags and show him the way to town? In return, he offers his good wishes:

“σοὶ δὲ θεοὶ τόσα δοῖεν ὅσα φρεσὶ σῇσι μενοινᾷς, ἄνδρα τε καὶ οἶκον, καὶ ὁμοφροσύνην ὀπάσειαν ἐσθλήν· οὐ μὲν γὰρ τοῦ γε κρεῖσσον καὶ ἄρειον, ἢ ὅθ᾽ ὁμοφρονέοντε νοήμασιν οἶκον ἔχητον ἀνὴρ ἠδὲ γυνή· πόλλ᾽ ἄλγεα δυσμενέεσσι, χάρματα δ᾽ εὐμενέτῃσι, μάλιστα δέ τ᾽ ἔκλυον αὐτοί.”

“May the gods grant whatever you wish for in your heart, a husband and a home and sweet agreement in all things; for nothing is stronger and better, than when a man and woman keep a home together, united in their thoughts, bringing much pain to their enemies and joy to well-wishers; and they are in excellent repute.”

Odyssey 6.180–85

These verses resonate on more than one level. In the immediate context, they mark a return by Odysseus to one of his (and Athena’s) principal messages to the young princess: Time for you to find a husband; the stirrings you are feeling are quite appropriate as a prelude to assuming your proper place in society. Meanwhile, of course, the rugged—and scantily clad—stranger is sending other messages, to which the princess will soon show herself to be receptive. But beyond the present situation, this homily speaks to a larger theme in the poem, the yearning for home that drives the hero. Because we have witnessed the existential choice that Odysseus makes to leave the blissful, timeless life that Calypso offers and keep struggling to reach Penelope—who he admits is only mortal and inferior in beauty to the goddess—his words here take on an outsized importance. The bond he envisions for Nausicaa will turn out to be precisely what he finally wins back in Ithaka, and the key to its strength will be the quality of “thinking alike” that he and Penelope show us there. The entire Nausicaa episode provides a paradigm for the submerged courtship we will see in Books 18–23 as husband and wife, each working in his or her own way, find their way back to the bliss that Odysseus foretells here.

Nausicaa responds with some proverbial wisdom of her own, the gist of which is, “Stranger, you seem smart enough, so you know that Zeus gives out prosperity as he wishes, and mortals must do what they can with what they get.  That goes for you.” The tone here fits a royal princess, not the giddy teenager who has just now been playing with her maids. She continues in this grown-up persona, noting that as a suppliant who has come to her town, Odysseus is entitled to her help. She tells him where he is and then introduces herself:

“εἰμὶ δ᾽ ἐγὼ θυγάτηρ μεγαλήτορος Ἀλκινόοιο, τοῦ δ᾽ ἐκ Φαιήκων ἔχεται κάρτος τε βίη τε.”

“I am the daughter of greathearted Alkinous, whose power and strength come from the Phaeacians.”

Odyssey 6.196–97

The form of her announcement is striking and unusual.  The verb εἰμὶ appears in the first person singular only in two other places in the poem, when Athena in her disguise as Mentes reassures Telemachus that she will be a worthy helpmeet for him as he heads out on his journey to find out about Odysseus ( 2.286 ), and when Odysseus reveals his identity to the Phaiacians ( 9.19 ). In neither of these cases does ἐγὼ appear. These are not the words of a timid girl but the proud assertion of a princess, who identifies herself not by her proper name but by her place the royal family.

The air of command continues as she chides her handmaidens:

“στῆτέ μοι, ἀμφίπολοι· πόσε φεύγετε φῶτα ἰδοῦσαι; ἦ μή πού τινα δυσμενέων φάσθ᾽ ἔμμεναι ἀνδρῶν; οὐκ ἔσθ᾽ οὗτος ἀνὴρ διερὸς βροτὸς οὐδὲ γένηται, ὅς κεν Φαιήκων ἀνδρῶν ἐς γαῖαν ἵκηται δηιοτῆτα φέρων· μάλα γὰρ φίλοι ἀθανάτοισιν. οἰκέομεν δ᾽ ἀπάνευθε πολυκλύστῳ ἐνὶ πόντῳ, ἔσχατοι, οὐδέ τις ἄμμι βροτῶν ἐπιμίσγεται ἄλλος. ἀλλ᾽ ὅδε τις δύστηνος ἀλώμενος ἐνθάδ᾽ ἱκάνει, τὸν νῦν χρὴ κομέειν· πρὸς γὰρ Διός εἰσιν ἅπαντες ξεῖνοί τε πτωχοί τε, δόσις δ᾽ ὀλίγη τε φίλη τε. ἀλλὰ δότ᾽, ἀμφίπολοι, ξείνῳ βρῶσίν τε πόσιν τε, λούσατέ τ᾽ ἐν ποταμῷ, ὅθ᾽ ἐπὶ σκέπας ἔστ᾽ ἀνέμοιο. ”

“Stand still, girls. Where are you going, just because you’ve seen a man? Surely you don’t think this is some enemy coming at us? There is no man alive nor could there ever be, who would come to the land of the Phaeacians bringing an attack. For we are very dear to the immortals. We live far from others on the much-eddying sea, at the very edge, and no other mortal mixes with us. But this wretched wanderer has arrived here, and we ought to care for him, for Zeus protects all strangers and wanderers, and the gift is small but precious. So give food and drink to the stranger, girls, And bathe him in the river, where there is shelter from the wind.”

Odyssey 6.199–210

Homer’s masterful characterization of Nausicaa continues. Her words, though addressed to the maidens, are full of signals for her guest. Unlike her flighty companions, she is not afraid of him. Rather, she assumes the role he has suggested for her, of the beneficent host. The charming but naive girl who was ashamed to admit to her father that she might be thinking about marriage is gone, replaced by someone more commanding. Whether this version poses a greater threat to Odysseus’s homecoming remains to be seen.

So arresting is the portrait of Nausicaa that we may miss the poet’s sleight of hand in modulating her passage from pre- to post-adolescence in such a brief stretch of narrative. His economical use of traditional materials in the first scene, the shining doors, the divine visitation, establishes the young princess’s position on the boundary between childhood and maturity as the Greeks understood these stages in a girl’s life. The dream and her reaction to it reveal submerged feelings that Athena stirs and Odysseus plays on. Nausicaa’s shyness with her father about her interest in marriage shows us the young, inexperienced part of her still dominant, but then her response to the stranger propels her into quite a different persona, of the regal princess, fully in possession of her feelings and ready to take charge of a potentially frightening situation.

The poet draws on the symbolic power of traditional material in his description of the washing party. The similes, of Artemis at the dance and Odysseus as hungry lion, the ambivalence of casting off the veils and Nausicaa’s solitary approach to the stranger, all send conflicting signals about the intentions on both sides of the encounter. The question of who is a threat to whom hangs in the air. The poet of Odyssey is a master of this kind of multilayered characterization, driven by a deft modulation between the surface of the story and the pull of underlying traditional symbols. We have seen it already in the figure of Calypso and it will surface again in Circe, coming to a crescendo in Penelope.

Thalmann, W. 1992. The Odyssey: An Epic of Return . New York: Twayne Publishers, 54–56.

Van Nortwick, T. 2008. The Unknown Odysseus: Alternate Worlds in Homer’s Odyssey . Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 112–114.

———. 2008. Imagining Men: Ideals of Masculinity in Ancient Greek Culture . Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 68–72.

Nausicaa's attendants give Odysseus clothing, and he goes off to bathe. Athena makes him look dazzlingly attractive. The attendants give him food and he wolfs it down.

The maids prepare to clean up the salty stranger, laying out clean clothes and supplying olive oil for moisturizing.  Displaying a seemly modesty, Odysseus asks the girls to stand further off and leave the washing to him, as he would be embarrassed to appear naked before them.  Next comes a striking simile:

τὸν μὲν Ἀθηναίη θῆκεν Διὸς ἐκγεγαυῖα μείζονά τ᾽ εἰσιδέειν καὶ πάσσονα, κὰδ δὲ κάρητος οὔλας ἧκε κόμας, ὑακινθίνῳ ἄνθει ὁμοίας. ὡς δ᾽ ὅτε τις χρυσὸν περιχεύεται ἀργύρῳ ἀνὴρ ἴδρις, ὃν Ἥφαιστος δέδαεν καὶ Παλλὰς Ἀθήνη τέχνην παντοίην, χαρίεντα δὲ ἔργα τελείει, ὣς ἄρα τῷ κατέχευε χάριν κεφαλῇ τε καὶ ὤμοις. ἕζετ᾽ ἔπειτ᾽ ἀπάνευθε κιὼν ἐπὶ θῖνα θαλάσσης, κάλλεϊ καὶ χάρισι στίλβων· θηεῖτο δὲ κούρη.

Athena, born of Zeus, made him taller and broader to look at, and on his head she put thick hair, curling like hyacinth blossoms. As when some learned craftsman pours gold over silver, one whom Hephaistos and Pallas Athena have taught every kind of art, and he creates graceful works, so the goddess poured grace over his head and shoulders. Then going apart he sat on the shore of the sea, glistening with beauty and grace. And the maiden admired him.

Odyssey 6.229–37

The goddess is busy again, working in the hero’s interests. Just being clean again might not be enough to attract the princess, it seems. As we will see, this gambit succeeds, as Nausicaa will soon send out some signals of her own. As it happens, the same simile appears again, verbatim, in Book 23 when Odysseus is bathed after slaughtering the suitors.  In this case the enhancement does not immediately work on Penelope, as it does on Nausicaa. The queen is not a naïve young virgin and has some tricks of her own. The hero will need to work harder to win over his prudent wife ( 23.152–204 ). (See essay on Book 5.1–42)

This parallel is yet another sign that Homer had the Nausicaa episode in mind when composing his portrait of Penelope in Books 18–23. In each case, we see a potential mate for Odysseus, whom he must win over to regain his status in Ithaka. Athena orchestrates the meetings between the two, buffing up the hero so he will be at his most attractive. Submerged feelings surface in both Nausicaa and Penelope, initially stirred by Athena, which make them more receptive to the man before them ( 6.20–47 ; 18.158–205 ). Both are uncertain about how to respond to the stranger, drawn to him but constrained by societal notions of propriety. Nausicaa is moving toward marriage, Penelope perhaps toward remarriage. The question is, will Odysseus arrive in time to be the queen’s groom or will one of the suitors take over in Ithaka? The Nausicaa paradigm imbues the later episodes with a rich layering of meaning: Through the rags and dirt, we see Odysseus engaged in a second courtship of his wife, who will prove to be harder to catch than he might expect.

The image of Athena as artist is also suggestive. One of the fundamental sources of energy in the poem comes from the interplay of two different perspectives on human experience and the kind of world imagined by each. On the one hand, there is the story of Odysseus’s heroic struggle to make it back to Ithaka, an example of a popular subject in the Greek literature about the Trojan War and its aftermath. Other versions include the grim story of Agamemnon’s murder by Clytemnestra upon returning to Argos, Ajax’s suicide in the wake of his unsuccessful bid to inherit the arms of Achilles, or Menelaus’ detour into Egypt before reuniting with Helen. Virgil’s reimagining of Homeric epic rests on another postwar struggle, of Aeneas and the other Trojan refugees.

Athena is the divine force behind Odysseus’s journey, as we have seen. In Book 5 and again in Book 24, Zeus notes that she has already arranged for the hero’s successful return and triumph over the suitors ( 5.21–27 ; 24.477–81 ). With the repeated simile, Homer seems to be pointing to the goddess as the artistic director of Odysseus’s heroic return, a kind of story-within-a-story. His triumph over the suitors, to which the poem’s dominant rhetoric gives primacy over all other considerations, will reaffirm his roles as king, husband, father, and son, all of which have been vacant in Ithaka for twenty years. Behind the imperatives in this perspective lie other assumptions, that Odysseus, gone for twenty years, can simply take up where he left off, that the lives of others will reshape themselves around the imperatives of the returning hero. Into Athena’s heroic world the poet has allowed two inconvenient facts, that Telemachus has reached manhood and must find his way on his own and that Penelope may not be content to remain celibate—forever, if necessary—rather than find a new husband. In pursuing their own goals, each character provokes a crisis after Odysseus returns to Ithaka, Telemachus by posing a potential threat to Odysseus’s kingship, Penelope by endangering his status as her husband.

The fairytale qualities of Athena’s return story play out against the backdrop of a different world, the one inhabited by Odysseus in his persona as the anonymous stranger who arrives in each new place on his way home from Troy and waits to reveal his identity until he feels safe. (See Introduction: Two Worlds .) This dynamic informs several episodes in Books 6–22, his stay with the Phaeacians, with Polyphemus the Cyclops, with Circe, with Eumaeus in the Ithakan countryside, all building to a glorious crescendo in his triumph over the suitors and fraught reunion with Penelope and then Laertes. In each case, Odysseus arrives unknown and relatively powerless and then, having negotiated the challenges of the local scene, returns to his heroic persona in a triumphant recognition scene ( 9.1–38 , 500–5 ; 10.325–35 ; 16.186–91 ; 23.205–30 ; 24.321–44 ). In these situations, when Odysseus’s heroic identity does not at first afford him leverage over others, he experiences the world from the perspective of the ordinary non-heroic person and must make his way by his wits. We, meanwhile, observe how the relationships he forms assume a different scale of values, in which his status does not separate him from others, but rather offers the chance to bond with them.

The clash of these two modes of experience appears most clearly in Books 14 and 15, when Odysseus, disguised as an old beggar, encounters his faithful swineherd Eumaeus. The two men form a warm connection, based on the life stories they exchange, Eumaeus’s tough childhood and rescue by the noble Laertes, the beggar’s adventures at sea. At this point, the alternate worlds of the poem suggest two radically different views of the relationship. From the perspective of Athena’s heroic return story, the beggar is never authentic, only a disguise covering the hero’s true identity. The stories he tells are purely fiction and the friendship between two men down on their luck is not genuine. If the swineherd knew he was sitting across from his master, he would never presume to be his friend. The world of the heroic return is strictly hierarchical, based on the relative status of each member, which is based on kleos , the measure of heroic greatness.  The anonymous stranger, on the other hand, can form a friendship with the swineherd based on shared suffering and kindness offered to someone in need.

The Odyssey , like most enduring works of the imagination, reveals a more complex view of human experience than its dominant narrative represents.  Odysseus’s fame, the basis of his status as hero, depends on being known and admired by others, and on the separation this status enforces between him and lesser mortals.  In the episodes where he is initially without this leverage, especially in the Eumaeus episode, Homer explores the advantages and disadvantages of anonymity and, by implication, of heroic glory. By witnessing the growing bond between the beggar and swineherd, something not possible in Athena’s world, we begin to see the heroic exploits of Odysseus in a larger context: Kleos brings one before the admiring gaze of many but allows intimate contact with few. Heroic status and the power it brings must be guarded from the predations of others and can thus bring isolation. The exchanges in the Ithakan countryside are hampered by none of these considerations of power and status. Strangers with apparently little leverage in the world can form friendships without worrying whether their property will be safe. A rough cloak can be shared without ceremony, meals without calculation of profit and loss.  The principal medium of exchange between the two men is the very experience of pain and trouble; a good story repays the host who feeds the storyteller. This implicit critique of heroic values adds depth and richness to the return narrative, and it begins with the Phaeacians.

Van Nortwick, T. 2008. The Unknown Odysseus: Alternate Worlds in Homer’s Odyssey , 45–82. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Nausicaa gives Odysseus instructions on how to enter the town and find the palace of her father, King Alcinous. 

The subtle characterization of Nausicaa continues. Athena’s intervention has worked, apparently tapping into the feelings that the goddess stirred in the dream.

"κλῦτέ μευ, ἀμφίπολοι λευκώλενοι, ὄφρα τι εἴπω. οὐ πάντων ἀέκητι θεῶν, οἳ Ὄλυμπον ἔχουσιν, Φαιήκεσσ᾽ ὅδ᾽ ἀνὴρ ἐπιμίσγεται ἀντιθέοισι· πρόσθεν μὲν γὰρ δή μοι ἀεικέλιος δέατ᾽ εἶναι, νῦν δὲ θεοῖσιν ἔοικε, τοὶ οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἔχουσιν. αἲ γὰρ ἐμοὶ τοιόσδε πόσις κεκλημένος εἴη ἐνθάδε ναιετάων, καὶ οἱ ἅδοι αὐτόθι μίμνειν. ἀλλὰ δότ᾽, ἀμφίπολοι, ξείνῳ βρῶσίν τε πόσιν τε."

Listen, my white-armed servants, that I might say something. The gods who hold Olympus are not unwilling for this man to mingle with the godlike Phaeacians. Before now, he looked to me to be an unsuitable sort, but now he seems like one of the gods who rule the heavens. If only the man to be called my husband were like this one, one living here, if only he would be pleased to remain here. But come, my servants, give the stranger some food and drink.

Odyssey 6.239–46

The princess signals that she has begun to fantasize about marrying the handsome stranger—note the verb ἐπιμίσγεται (241) with its sexual undercurrent—but is at pains to maintain her dignity before him and her servants, following her wistful projection with some brisk orders for the maids and detailed instructions for the stranger. The picnic is over, and she efficiently packs up the laundry and yokes the horses. This bustling is important to the portrait, as Nausicaa busies herself with chores she might well have assigned to the servants, to divert attention from her growing interest in the stranger. 

Along with more flirting comes further information about the Phaeacians. Though they have had little contact with other mortals since Nausithoos settled them far from the Cyclopes (2–8), their town has features that would be familiar to an 8 th -century audience: surrounded by walls, set on a peninsula with harbors on both sides, a temple to Poseidon, and an agora. As we might expect, their citizens are expert sailors and shipbuilders. They are not, the princess tells us, interested in bows and quiver—which is to say, war.  Alkinous will return to these latter qualities later, when he says that his people are not as good at boxing and wrestling as they are at dancing, warm baths, and elegant clothes ( 7.246–49 ). They are a refined civilization, perhaps even a little soft by the standards of heroic culture. Odysseus has entered a society that exists in a fantastic middle zone between Calypso’s timeless cosmos and the ordinary human world of Ithaka, scarred by war and soon to be visited by violence. The poet’s anthropological interest in the varieties of human experience will continue in Books 9–12, as Odysseus tells the story of his adventures with monsters, witches, ghosts, and seductive singers.

Nausicaa returns to matters at hand, as coy hints and firm instructions follow. First a reassertion of her authority: ἐγὼ δ᾽ ὁδὸν ἡγεμονεύσω, “ I will lead the way” (261). The stranger seems “not to be thoughtless,” (258), so perhaps he can follow instructions.  She will make sure he meets with the best men of the town, but the danger is that certain uncouth types (ὑπερφίαλοι, 274) might spread malicious gossip:

καί νύ τις ὧδ᾽ εἴπῃσι κακώτερος ἀντιβολήσας· "τίς δ᾽ ὅδε Ναυσικάᾳ ἕπεται καλός τε μέγας τε ξεῖνος; ποῦ δέ μιν εὗρε; πόσις νύ οἱ ἔσσεται αὐτῇ. ἦ τινά που πλαγχθέντα κομίσσατο ἧς ἀπὸ νηὸς ἀνδρῶν τηλεδαπῶν, ἐπεὶ οὔ τινες ἐγγύθεν εἰσίν· ἤ τίς οἱ εὐξαμένῃ πολυάρητος θεὸς ἦλθεν280 οὐρανόθεν καταβάς, ἕξει δέ μιν ἤματα πάντα. βέλτερον, εἰ καὐτή περ ἐποιχομένη πόσιν εὗρεν ἄλλοθεν· ἦ γὰρ τούσδε γ᾽ ἀτιμάζει κατὰ δῆμον Φαίηκας, τοί μιν μνῶνται πολέες τε καὶ ἐσθλοί." ὣς ἐρέουσιν, ἐμοὶ δέ κ᾽ ὀνείδεα ταῦτα γένοιτο. καὶ δ᾽ ἄλλῃ νεμεσῶ, ἥ τις τοιαῦτά γε ῥέζοι, ἥ τ᾽ ἀέκητι φίλων πατρὸς καὶ μητρὸς ἐόντων, ἀνδράσι μίσγηται, πρίν γ᾽ ἀμφάδιον γάμον ἐλθεῖν.

And now one of these inferior types would meet us and say, “Who is this big handsome stranger following Nausicaa, and where did she find him? Now he’ll be a husband for her. She might have saved him when he was thrown off the ship of some alien men, since there are none other close by. Or maybe a god, much prayed for, came down to her, from the heavens and will keep her for all her days.” So they will say, and this would be a scandal against me. And I would disapprove of any girl who would act that way, that is, against the will of her of her father and mother, mingling with men before she is properly married.

Odyssey 6.275–88

Having veered close to her secret desires—μίσγηται again (288)—Nausicaa preserves her dignity with her prim disapproval of wanton bad girls who would act on the impulses she herself is feeling.

Rose, G. “The Unfriendly Phaeacians. Transactions of the American Philological Association 100: 387–406.

Tracy, S. 1990. The Story of the Odyssey . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 42–44.

Nausicaa finishes giving her instructions to Odysseus, telling him where to find the palace and instructing him to approach her mother the queen first when he enters. Odysseus prays to Athena. 

Before driving off in her wagon, Nausicaa gives the stranger one more set of instructions: to avoid the wagging tongues of locals, he should walk with the servants behind the wagon until they come within shouting distance of the city, then wait in a grove sacred to Athena until the entourage has reached the city and approach the city alone.

The poet conjures an amusing tableau for us here, of the brawny warrior trudging along behind the wagon while the princess leads the way, flicking her whip over the mules.  This will be the last time we will see Nausicaa exerting her regal authority, putting herself firmly in the driver’s seat to counter the vulnerability brought on by her feelings for the stranger.

Nausicaa predicts that Odysseus, once inside the palace, will find the same kind of tranquil domestic scene she left when heading out for the picnic: the queen by the hearth, surrounded by her servants, the king sitting on his throne, drinking like a god. Her next piece of advice has prompted much discussion from scholars: Odysseus should bypass Alkinous and go directly to Arete to plead for help. If the world of the Odyssey is basically patriarchal, why would a suppliant approach the queen? Addressing all the issues, anthropological, literary, and textual, raised by this question is beyond the scope of our essay; we can at least consider, though, whether Nausicaa’s advice makes any sense in the context of our understanding of the poem. From the storyteller’s point of view, arranging an encounter with a prominent woman for the stranger fits with the ongoing focus on power and gender in the poem. Arete is yet another in the series of female figures with whom the hero must negotiate his return to Ithaka. Her meeting with the stranger prefigures that of Penelope with the beggar. Here the role of potential marriage partner is absent, having been displaced onto Nausicaa, but in both cases the hero’s first challenge is to win over the queen.

But if Arete presents a dignified figure, Alkinous at first might seem a slender reed for Odysseus to lean on. Though we get no hint of disrespect for her father from Nausicaa, from our perspective he gets off to a shaky start as a host. Once Odysseus has approached Arete, the king must be prompted by one of his subjects ( 7.153–66 ) to acknowledge the suppliant as a good host should do. Then after Odysseus gives a brief account of what brought him to Scheria, Alkinous seems to overcompensate by enthusiastically offering the stranger Nausicaa in marriage on the spot ( 7.311–16 ). As the episode progresses, Alkinous settles into his regal position and discharges his duties appropriately. Perhaps his unsteady beginning is meant to present a negative paradigm for Odysseus, demonstrating the necessity for exerting masculine authority, another way in which the scenes in the Phaeacian palace prefigure Odysseus’s return to his own home.

Nausicaa drives off and effectively disappears from the story, apart from an uneventful description of her arrival at the place ( 7.1–13 ) and a later cameo appearance, just before Odysseus begins the narrative of his adventures ( 8.461–62 ). Her character is one of Homer’s small masterpieces, a young princess unwavering in her command of a potentially dangerous encounter while struggling with new and bewildering emotions.  To get Odysseus from the seashore to the city did not require the poet to create the kind of subtle and insightful portrait we find in the young princess.  As she herself says, “a mere child” (πάϊς … νήπιος, 300) could lead him to the palace. Her importance, as we have seen, is twofold: 1) A naïve and innocent contrast to the powerful Calypso, she nonetheless represents a genuine threat to the hero’s homecoming who, like the nymph, must be handled with supreme tact; 2) Her situation and response to it prefigure in various ways that of Penelope at the end of the poem.

In Book 6, we see, for the first time in the poem, Odysseus entering a new and unfamiliar society as an anonymous stranger.  His enforced exile on Calypso’s island only ends because Athena convinces Zeus to send Hermes to effect the hero’s release. The nymph’s powers establish the nature of the threat the hero faces from controlling female forces and the paradigm will reappear in various forms throughout the story, right up through the final reunion with Penelope in Book 23. Once on Scheria, Odysseus must use all his skills to win over the locals so that they will help him to reach home again. He will delay revealing his heroic identity until he feels sufficiently confident that his campaign has succeeded. In the interim, Homer begins to explore the interplay of celebrity and namelessness that will grow in richness as the poem proceeds, providing us with a view detached from the imperatives of Athena’s heroic return story. Odysseus finally reveals his identity to the Phaeacians at the beginning of Book 9, and then launches a rendition of his adventures before reaching Calypso’s island, in the course of which the journey from unknown stranger to glorious hero will play out twice more before he reaches Ithaka, in the cave of the Cyclops and on the island of Circe. Once he is home, the pattern will recur twice more, on the farm with Eumaeus and finally in the royal palace. Each repetition adds layers of meaning to the original paradigm, enriching the poet’s meditation on the riddles of human identity and its role in the creation of meaning in human life.

Thomas Van Nortwick and Rob Hardy, Homer: Odyssey 5–12 . Carlisle, Pennsylvania: Dickinson College Commentaries, 2024. ISBN: 978-1-947822-17-7.

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The Odyssey

A hero's tears: how and why odysseus cries fiona lu college.

In Homer’s The Odyssey, tears are a reencountered motif that lends insight to the characters’ motives, true emotions, and defining qualities. The Odyssey splits tears into two categories-- restrained and unrestrained. The criteria for making the distinction between when tears are forbidden versus allowed serves to characterize the ideal Greek hero, namely Odysseus. This paper will specifically compare Odysseus’ tears for himself and his tears for others to examine how these varying modes of crying distinguish him as a hero and guide his noble intents.

Although Odysseus cries often, he does so in different ways. Throughout the first half of his journey, we see that Odysseus keeps his grief private; he only openly weeps for his misfortunes when he is trapped alone on Calypso’s island, but he hides his tears behind a hard exterior when he is surrounded by the public eye. For example, when he visits the Phaecians and listens to Demodocus’ song of “The Strife Between Odysseus and Achilles,” he “clutch[es] his flaring sea-blue cape in both powerful hands” and “[draws] it over his head…, ashamed his hosts might see him shedding tears” (VIII. 100-103). In the figurative sense, Odysseus hides his tears behind a disguised identity for...

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85 Odyssey Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

Looking for the Odyssey essay examples and writing tips? This article contains the Odyssey literary analysis how-to guide, prompts, title ideas, outlining tips, and examples.

💡 The Odyssey Essay: Themes & Ideas

❗ the odyssey thesis statements, 🎣 hooks for the odyssey essay, 📜 odyssey essay: how to write, 🏆 the odyssey essay examples, 👍 the odyssey essay topics, ❓ odyssey essay questions.

Homer’s Odyssey remains one of the most impressive masterpieces of the Greek literature. It’s not surprising that students often are assigned to write an essay on this poem.

Brainstorm the ideas you’re willing to discuss in the paper and make a list of all the key points. Look through the essay samples represented below for inspiration or check the list of the Odyssey themes and ideas below.

• Symbolism in the Odyssey. What do Odysseus struggles symbolize? How can you compare the Odysseus trials and adventures to our lives? Can we say that our lives are similar to the hero’s journey when we’re on the way to achieve something we desire.
• Hospitality theme in the Odyssey. How do people welcome strangers? Explore the ways Odysseus was welcomed when he returned home and when he was welcomed by the king and queen.
• Theme of loyalty in the Odyssey. Think, why loyalty is important. Explain why Penelope and Telemachus stayed loyal to Odysseus even when they received the message about his death.
• Theme of revenge in the Odyssey. Why does the theme of vengeance is important in the poem? Analyze it from the point of view of Odysseus and Poseidon. You can also compare and contrast vengeance in “Odysseus” and Christian teachings. Think if it is acceptable to kill in the name of vengeance.
• The role of women in the Odyssey. Discuss how does the female characters influence the plot of the story. What roles do they play in Telemachus and Odysseus journeys?

A thesis statement is the main point of your paper summarized in one sentence. It usually appears in the introductory paragraph of the text.

Below you’ll find a list of the Odyssey thesis statements that you might want to use for inspiration.

• There are parallels between the Odyssey and Near Eastern mythology, especially the Epic of Gilgamesh .
• The central themes of the Odyssey are wandering and homecoming.
• Women in the Odyssey are presented as inferior to men; even goddesses are described as angry and short-sighted.
• The key symbols in the Odyssey are the bow, the sea, and the shroud.

When writing your paper introduction, keep in mind that you have to engage your reader and make them want to read the entire text. Avoid phrases like “In this essay I’m going to discuss…” at the beginning of the paper.

A good idea is to start your Odyssey essay with an interesting fact about the epic poem or a quote. For instance, if you’re planning to focus on Odysseus as an epic hero, you can use a quote about heroic qualities of a person.

Below you’ll find a list of the Odyssey hook ideas.

• “A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.” (Joseph Campbell)
• “Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.” (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
• “Nobody – that’s my name. Nobody — so my mother and father call me, all my friends.” (the Odyssey)

Regardless of what Odyssey essay topic you will choose, you should tell your readers about the background and event developments of the poem.

Analyze the content and provide connections between the events or/and characters and your essay key idea. Make sure that all the paragraphs are logically connected.

When writing the Odyssey essay conclusion, make it bright and clear. Restate the thesis statement and add your personal impressions on the poem.

After you finish your paper read it again carefully and add some touches you might miss during the writing. Proofread the essay and get rid of all grammar, style and spelling mistakes. Did you know that some professors can cut out up to 20% of grade because of errors?

Still not sure how to complete your essay on Homer’s Odyssey and get the best grade? Check IvyPanda’s essay examples below, written by professionals for your convenience!

• Examples of Hospitality in The Odyssey by Homer: Review While the tale has various mythical and magical motifs in the form of Gods, Goddesses, nymphs, witches, and magic; one of the most interesting and a rather unusual aspect of the story was the astounding […]
• Deception Role in “The Odyssey” by Homer He also pretended to be a beggar to test the loyalty of others and to devise his plan of overthrowing the other suitors.
• Father-Son Relationship in The Odyssey by Homer In Odyssey therefore, it is expected that the relationship of Odysseus and Telemachus is as admiring as it is; the father is proud of his son, who is courageous and the son is proud of […]
• The Ghosts in Homer’s The Odyssey I find the ghost one of my favorite because of the hope and information he gives Odysseus.”The ghost reveals to Odysseus that Poseidon was busy punishing and killing the Achaeans “. From the encounter with […]
• Roles of Women in “The Odyssey” by Homer Of course, she is not a mortal woman as she is a nymph and is beyond the laws of human society. Of course, the woman is meant to be devoted to her husband and her […]
• “The Odyssey” by Homer Throughout the story, there is a constant struggle of the growing Telemachus to imitate the actions of his father and then eventually become like him that he comes to an end of his journey.
• Disguise in “The Odyssey”: Character Development & Athena’s Impact Athena also had to pour a sea fog around Odysseus to protect him, and then she assumed the shape of a little girl and showed him the way to the palace.
• Role of Fate and Divine Intervention in Oedipus and The Odyssey This is because while the gods are obviously responsible for choosing the path that one’s life is to take, it still takes the free will of the involved person to follow that path.
• Odysseus as Husband Being a good father and an excellent husband, Odysseus did everything he could to return home, however, there were a number of barriers, however, having returned home Odysseus killed all people who wanted evil to […]
• Homer’s “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey”: Main Themes The Iliad and the Odyssey are anti-war poems, even though the actions in the stories are mainly conflict-oriented. They are anti-conflict because the aftermath of the fights is tragic, and every individual always engaged in […]
• An Exemplary Hero: Homer’s “The Odyssey” The masterpiece describes the life of Odysseus and his journey especially after the infamous fall of Troy. One outstanding fact about Odysseus is that he is the main hero of the epic.
• The Symbol of Weaving in the Poem “The Odyssey” The Penelope image is associated with the goddess of the house, the keeper of the hearth, and all households. During his wanderings, the goddess is the patroness of Odysseus.
• Divine Comedy and The Odyssey as Epics It is a poem about the supernatural more than about a hero, which is the first difference between the current poem and ‘The Odyssey’.’Divine Comedy’ has 14, 233 lines, the number that is almost equal […]
• Comparative Literature: “The Odyssey” and “The Aeneid” The Odyssey and The Aeneid are some of the major epics created by the western civilizations. On balance, it is possible to state that the two epics share a lot of features as Virgil’s work […]
• Importance of the Book “The Odyssey” by Homer It is a book with a story that has lasted for ages due to its major themes such as the relation between father and son, the role of women, the significance of hospitality and the […]
• “Bhagavad-Gita”, “The Odyssey” and “The Epic of Gilgamesh”: Contrast and Comparison The sole aim of all the religions is to make the people realize the value of life and to make the most of the same but doing holy acts and by not indulging in undesirable […]
• Women in Literature: Oedipus the King and The Odyssey Two major works of literature, ‘Oedipus the king’ and ‘The Odyssey’, provide some of the best examples of how the role of female characters is portrayed in different ways and how these women influence the […]
• Telemachus Journey From Boyhood to Hero: Homer’s The Odyssey As described by Arnold van Gennep in “The rites of Passage,” the concept of the rites of passage is a ritual event used to signify the process of transition of a person from one social […]
• The Expression of Sarcasm in The Odyssey The suitors laughed and teased Telemachos of his struggles to defend the beggar. Odysseus simply examines the bow and one of the suitors mocks him saying he is a connoisseur.
• The Plays “The Iliad,” “The Odyssey,” and “Agamemnon”: Understanding of Leadership Finally, the story of Agamemnon told in The Iliad and Agamemnon taught us that a capable leader must remain humble and self-aware.
• Sophocles II and The Odyssey: Book Analysis Penelope’s hand is one of the allusions in The Odyssey that offers the reader a comprehensive picture of who Odysseus was and how powerful he was.
• Women in The Odyssey and The Epic of Gilgamesh In particular, the women’s power in the story was shown in their ability to influence significantly men, who were depicted as the wisest and most powerful beings.
• Culture of Ancient Greece in The Odyssey by Homer The Odyssey is one of the oldest and most well-known epics in the world. This can be attributed to Homer’s ability to describe the culture and life of the people of the ancient era with […]
• The Poems “The Song of Roland,” “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” and “The Odyssey” The emphasis on bravery and dignity in Roland represents a stark contrast to the characters of Odysseus and Gilgamesh. Therefore, Roland as a character is vital in the evolution of heroic characters in epic narratives.
• “The Odyssey” by Homer as a Vehicle for Creative Works One of the characters that can be interesting to examine in a more broad way is Telemachus. It works well to tie in a sense of loss and longing for a father with Telemachus, allowing […]
• Community Conflict in The Odyssey The Iliad heroes, Diomedes and Glaucus, provide a glimpse into the constructs of community and conflict. Such a story is that of Glaucus and Diomedes who recognized their ancestors as heroes, resulting in mutual respect […]
• Characters in The Odyssey: Athena, Poseidon, and Polyphemus In the epic poem The Odyssey by Homer, Odysseus encounters Athena, Poseidon and Polyphemus are surrounded by unique myths and occupy a distinct place in Odysseus’ journey.
• Deception in King Lear, The Odyssey and Gilgamesh The forms of deception in the book seem to come effortlessly to Odysseus, and the stories he tells throughout the book serve to protect him and his family.
• The Oldest Epics of Ramayana and The Odyssey Thus, the main similarity is the narrative about the difficulties of the protagonists, and the difference is the presence of magical characteristics.
• Heroism and the Spirit of Adventure: The Odyssey and Gilgamesh Interpretation In fact, the ancient epic is famous nowadays mainly due to the fact that some of the works are considered as the first official mentioning of a hero.
• The Role of Women in Great Epic Works: “The Odyssey” and “Gilgamesh” To summarize the influence of both women on Gilgamesh, it is possible to cite Kelley to describe Gilgamesh’s advice to him during one of the toughest period of the epic: When the gods created man, […]
• The Power of “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” Nowadays The significance of Iliad and Odyssey in the modern world can be explained by the fact that they are the first ancient epics, which have survived to this day.
• Plot Analysis of Homer’s The Odyssey Through the meeting of Telemachus with Menelaus, the author emphasizes the significance of hospitality as a primary value and develops such features and discretion, leadership, and heroism of the son of Odysseus.
• The Relevance of the Book “The Odyssey” The book’s central motif is the adventurous journey, the complete transformation of the king of Ithaca from the Trojan battle.
• Manhood in Homer’s Poem The Odyssey From the point of view of the author of the poem, the heroism of Odysseus lies in the fact that he remains faithful to his homeland, the island of Ithaca, nothing scares him in achieving […]
• “The Odyssey” by Homer and Its Legacy: A Romantic Vision of the State Odysseus is known all over the world as one of the most outstanding models of leadership anthemed in the literature of the ancient world.
• The Odyssey by Homer: Comprehensive Analysis of the Character of Penelope Penelope is believed to be the faithful wife of Ulysses and she stood really strong in his absence. She had a lot of persistence and composure, her image had been overshadowed because of Ulysses, and […]
• Gender Role Expectations in “The Odyssey” by Homer The reason is that many behaviors of these female characters are masculine in their nature, and they need to be further discussed with reference to examples.
• Themes in Books VIII-XI of Homer’s “The Odyssey” For instance, Retief and Cilliers argue that Book XI of The Odyssey largely shaped the perception of Hades, or the Greek land of the dead, as well as of the Ancient views on death and […]
• The 11 Book of Homer’s “The Odyssey” The 11th book of the Odyssey tells about the trip of Odysseus to the Underworld. He expresses pity that Odysseus is also in the land of the dead and tells about his journey in Hades […]
• Varying Moral Worlds in The Odyssey and Aeneid Some of the issues that differ between the two societies, as highlighted in the two poems, include marital love, representation of the underworld, the idea of fate, and pride/hubris. It is believed that the intention […]
• “The Odyssey” by Homer Discussion With this knowledge, it is necessary to examine the role played by the other characters in the poem. On the other hand, Penelope knows that she is expected to remain faithful to her husband.
• ‘Homer’s The Odyssey’ by Bernhard Frank Literature Analysis Bernhard makes use of clear words and concrete examples as well as numerous quotes to articulate his belief that the cause and sequence of the events in this book were created on purpose by Homer […]
• Monstrous and Human Relationship in “The Odyssey” In each stage of the adventure readers are introduced to an ever increasing similarity between what is monstrous and what is man to the point that the line between the two blurs resulting in actions […]
• “The Odyssey”: The Relationship Between the Monstrous and the Human When looking at the relationship between the monstrous and the human in Odyssey, it can be seen that monsters represent, in many instances, the darker side of humanity.
• The Comparison of Gilgamesh and Odysseus This paper is aimed at discussing the journeys undertaken by the main characters; in particular one should focus on their motives of the protagonists and the way in which both Gilgamesh and Odysseus were transformed […]
• Greek Culture in Homer’s “The Odyssey” Therefore, a critical analysis of the story enlightens the contemporary society on the aspect of hospitality in relation to the people of Greece.
• The Role of Hospitality in the Homeric World-Odyssey None the less the Homeric world gives a glimpse of the noble men and women who live within that society, they appreciate and acknowledge the little favors and hospitality extended to them and in some […]
• The Meaning and Impact of the Closing Book of The Odyssey Critics such as William Merritt Sale argue that Homer’s purpose in creating the mythic poem of The Odyssey was to represent the inherent struggle of the human condition when faced with the choice between the […]
• Human Potential in Rig Veda, Genesis and Homer’s The Odyssey Human beings need to meditate from time to time to find out specific modes of behaviour they need to observe. The value of hard work is used to explain how human beings need to be […]
• Greek/Roman Humanities: Epic of Gilgamesh and The Odyssey The earliest works of fiction included the work of fiction the Epic of Gilgamesh that dates from the beginnings of civilization in Mesopotamia and Homer’s Odyssey, greatest ancient works of literature attributed to Homer.
• Analysis of Job’s and Odysseus The strong character traits of the main characters Odyssey and Job in the epic The Odyssey and The Story of Job help develop their plots from the beginning to the rise of conflict and their […]
• Gods and Humans in “The Odyssey” by Homer For instance, the journey of Odysseus back to Ithaca feature him as an important figure to Calypso therefore helping in building up the story as his return remains the center of all agony that begets […]
• The Concept of Moral Principles in Literature Works He formulated the trick of the great wooden horse to give victory to the Greeks. The prince was also supposed to strike a balance of generosity to the citizens.
• The Journey to the Land of the Dead: Homer’s “The Odyssey” Homer is regarded as a legendary Greek due to his great works of literature such as “The journey to the Land of the Dead”.
• What Is an Example of Alliteration From “The Odyssey”?
• What Does “Odyssey” Mean in Greek Mythology?
• What Occupation Did Eumaeus Have in “The Odyssey”?
• Where Did the Cyclops Live in “The Odyssey”?
• How Is “The Odyssey” Book Written Based on the Flaws and Imperfections of the Main Characters?
• What Is the Land of Death in “The Odyssey”?
• Did Atreides Make It Home in “The Odyssey”?
• How Does Odysseus Feel About Telemachus in “The Odyssey”?
• How the Greeks Portrayed God in “The Odyssey”?
• Are Women the Source of Many Difficulties for Odysseus in “The Odyssey”?
• What Is the Main Message in “The Odyssey”?
• How Does Hubris Affect Odysseus in “The Odyssey” Epic Poem?
• How Does “The Odyssey” Relate to Life Today?
• How Did Odysseus Display the Characteristics of a Hero in “The Odyssey”?
• How Does “The Odyssey” Represent the Importance of Family?
• What Did Homer Want to Say in “The Odyssey”?
• Whether the Olympians Prefer War or Peace in “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey”?
• Did Odysseus Bring the Trouble on Himself in “The Odyssey”?
• Which Epic Has Most Relevance to a Twenty-First Century Reader, Virgil’s “Aeneid” or Homer’s “The Odyssey”?
• What Does “The Odyssey” Teach Us About Greek Culture?
• Did Odysseus Prove to Be a Good Leader or No in “The Odyssey”?
• What Can We Learn From “The Odyssey” Journey?
• How Telemachus Evolved From a Boy to a Man in “The Odyssey”?
• How Fate and Free Will Play a Part in “The Odyssey”?
• How Does Homer Use Suspense to Make the Story of “The Odyssey” More Interesting?
• How Women Are Portrayed in Homer’s “The Odyssey”?
• How Was the Divine Represented in Homer’s “The Odyssey”?
• How the Star Crossed Lover Theme Appears in the “Aeneid” and “The Odyssey”?
• What Is a Good Thesis Statement for “The Odyssey”?
• Why Does Odysseus Fit the Epic Hero’s Mold in Homer’s “The Odyssey”?
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Epic Odyssey: Achilles Hero on Screen

This essay about the portrayal of Achilles in cinema explores the enduring fascination with the legendary hero from Homer’s “The Iliad” to modern interpretations. It into Achilles’ complex character, torn between glory and love, and his iconic conflicts, particularly with Agamemnon. Through examining Achilles’ relationships, such as with Patroclus, and the thematic exploration of pride, honor, and mortality, filmmakers aim to balance epic spectacle with intimate drama. The essay also discusses the resurgence of interest in classical mythology in recent years and the timeless themes that continue to resonate with audiences. Ultimately, it highlights how Achilles movies offer a profound exploration of humanity’s eternal quest for meaning and the enduring power of myth in cinema.

How it works

In the vast realm of cinema, where tales of heroism and tragedy intertwine, few narratives hold the power and resonance of the legendary figure Achilles. From the pages of Homer’s epic poem “The Iliad” to modern interpretations on the silver screen, the mythic hero has captivated audiences for centuries with his unparalleled prowess in battle and his complex inner struggles. While numerous adaptations have graced the screen, each offering its own interpretation of the myth, the essence of Achilles remains a timeless exploration of human nature, mortality, and the pursuit of glory.

At the heart of any Achilles movie lies the enigmatic character himself, a warrior of unmatched skill whose legend extends far beyond the battlefield. Born to the mortal Peleus and the sea nymph Thetis, Achilles was destined for greatness from the moment of his birth. Yet, his destiny was not one of unbridled triumph but rather a path fraught with conflict, inner turmoil, and ultimately, tragic demise.

In crafting a cinematic portrayal of Achilles, filmmakers are tasked with capturing the essence of this complex character – a man torn between his insatiable thirst for glory and his longing for a life of peace and love. From his fateful encounter with the seer Calchas, who prophesies both his glorious deeds and his untimely death, to his tumultuous relationship with King Agamemnon during the Trojan War, Achilles’ journey is one of both triumph and despair.

Central to any Achilles movie is the character’s iconic conflict with Agamemnon, the ambitious leader of the Greek forces. Their clash over the spoils of war, particularly the maiden Briseis, serves as a catalyst for Achilles’ withdrawal from the battlefield – a decision that not only alters the course of the war but also sets in motion a series of events that culminate in his tragic downfall. Through this conflict, filmmakers have the opportunity to delve into themes of pride, honor, and the cost of hubris, as Achilles grapples with his own mortality and the fleeting nature of glory.

Yet, amidst the chaos of war and the weight of destiny, there exists a tender side to Achilles – a man capable of profound love and compassion. His relationship with Patroclus, his closest companion and confidant, serves as a poignant reminder of the hero’s humanity amid the brutality of battle. It is through his bond with Patroclus that Achilles finds solace and purpose beyond the pursuit of glory, paving the way for moments of vulnerability and introspection rarely seen in the portrayal of mythic heroes.

In bringing the story of Achilles to life on screen, filmmakers are faced with the daunting task of balancing epic spectacle with intimate character drama. From sweeping battle sequences that showcase Achilles’ martial prowess to quiet moments of reflection that delve into the depths of his soul, each scene must resonate with emotional truth and narrative resonance. Through the use of innovative visual effects, stunning cinematography, and evocative storytelling, filmmakers have the opportunity to transport audiences to the heart of ancient Greece and immerse them in the timeless tale of one man’s quest for immortality.

In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in classical mythology and epic storytelling, with filmmakers exploring new avenues for reimagining age-old tales for contemporary audiences. Whether through bold reinterpretations of familiar myths or faithful adaptations of ancient texts, the story of Achilles continues to captivate and inspire, reminding us of the enduring power of myth and the eternal quest for meaning in the face of mortality.

In conclusion, an Achilles movie is not merely a retelling of a familiar myth but a journey into the heart of what it means to be human – to strive, to love, to triumph, and ultimately, to confront the inevitability of our own mortality. Through the lens of cinema, the legend of Achilles lives on, inviting audiences to ponder the timeless questions that have echoed through the ages and to find meaning in the enduring power of myth.

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PapersOwl.com. (2024). Epic Odyssey: Achilles Hero on Screen . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/epic-odyssey-achilles-hero-on-screen/ [Accessed: 11 Apr. 2024]

"Epic Odyssey: Achilles Hero on Screen." PapersOwl.com, Mar 25, 2024. Accessed April 11, 2024. https://papersowl.com/examples/epic-odyssey-achilles-hero-on-screen/

"Epic Odyssey: Achilles Hero on Screen," PapersOwl.com , 25-Mar-2024. [Online]. Available: https://papersowl.com/examples/epic-odyssey-achilles-hero-on-screen/. [Accessed: 11-Apr-2024]

PapersOwl.com. (2024). Epic Odyssey: Achilles Hero on Screen . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/epic-odyssey-achilles-hero-on-screen/ [Accessed: 11-Apr-2024]

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