Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [122]
MYTHICVOICES
Look now how mortals are blaming the gods, for they say that evils come from us, but in fact they themselves have woes beyond their share because of their own follies….
All men have need of the gods….
Olympus, where they say there is an abode of the gods, ever unchanging; it is neither shaken by winds nor ever wet with rain, nor does snow come near it, but clear weather spreads cloudless about it, and a white radiance stretches above it….
The gods, likening themselves to all kinds of strangers, go in various disguises from city to city, observing the wrongdoing and righteousness of men….
So it is that the gods do not give all men gifts of grace—neither good looks nor intelligence nor eloquence….
—From the Odyssey
Which crafty Greek hero can’t wait to get home?
Home is a powerful idea—as anyone who has seen E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial knows. But the little alien had it easy compared to the most famous homebound traveler in literature, Odysseus, the cunning king of Ithaca. He is the star of the Odyssey, one of the most influential works in Western history and among the greatest adventure stories ever told. Scholars still fight over its origins, but, traditionally, the Odyssey is thought to have been composed by Homer, probably in the 700s BCE. The poem describes Odysseus’s long journey home to Ithaca, an island off the northwest coast of Greece, after he fights against Troy. One of the heroes of the Iliad, Odysseus (changed in Latin to “Ulixes” and translated into English as “Ulysses”), is credited with the idea of the Trojan horse, and just as he used trickery to end the ten years of fighting, he relies on his wits to defy even greater odds in the Odyssey.
Like the Iliad, the Odyssey consists of twenty-four books, but it is considerably shorter, running some 12,000 lines long, and takes place over a period of about ten years. Unlike the Iliad, which is more of a tragedy, the Odyssey is an adventure tale, and in many ways more “fun.” It has been called a “comedy,” in the original sense of the word, which meant order was restored with the reuniting of a family. The good guys and bad guys are easily identifiable. Very different from Achilles or Hector, Odysseus is the crafty hero—resolute, curious, but mostly devoted, like E.T. or Dorothy Gale of Kansas, to getting back home after nearly twenty years away—ten of them fighting at Troy, three lost at sea, and seven more on the island of Calypso, where his tale begins.
Odysseus has been the prisoner of the sea nymph Calypso (whose name means “concealer”), when the gods of Mount Olympus decide that the time has come for him to return to Ithaca and his loyal wife, Penelope. During his long absence, she has been under pressure to accept that her husband is dead, and marry again so that Ithaca has a new king. Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, resents his mother’s noblemen suitors, and the goddess Athena suggests that he go to seek news of his father. Telemachus sets off in search of him.
Meanwhile, the tale returns to Odysseus’s adventures. When Calypso releases Odysseus, he sails away on a raft, but Poseidon—angry at Odysseus for reasons that will emerge—sends a storm that shipwrecks him. Washed ashore on a beach, he is discovered by Nausicaa, the beautiful daughter of the Phaeacian king. Sheltered by the Phaeacians, he recounts for them his years of wandering since the Trojan War when he set out for home with twelve ships carrying fifty men each.
First, he tells of his escape from the lotus-eaters, who consume a drug that makes men forget home and purpose. Next, he recounts his blinding of the Cyclops Polyphemus with a hot wooden stake. Odysseus had cleverly told Polyphemus that his name was “Nobody,” so that the other Cyclopes would be befuddled when the wounded Cyclops roars that “Nobody” is trying to kill him. Concealing his crewmen