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of heroism is evident in Achilles’ envy of the living. Even the greatest hero on earth, in the world of the Odyssey, becomes nothing more than an ephemeral shade after death. And so now we know the enormous price of Odysseus’ decision to return to Ithaca and understand fully for the first time in the epic the enormous value of an Homeric hero’s honor. Returning home means giving up any chance of immortality and subjects the hero to the challenges of homecoming (nostos). The dangers of homecoming are symbolized by the fate of Agamemnon, who was murdered by his wife and her lover (see 11.385; 24.15-204 and elsewhere). However homecoming means that he will have the fame of having successfully defeated the Trojans and then return his kingdom to health, after rescuing his wife and assuring his son’s succession.

Unlike The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Odyssey is not really about immortality, or even about not having it. Immortality is only used as a way to underline the real subjects: heroism and fame. The Odyssey begins with immortality refused rather than immortality sought (as in The Gilgamesh Epic) so it is the binary opposite of The Gilgamesh Epic. But binary oppositions eventually tell the same story. The Odyssey is about heroically battling against political and domestic disorder, which in some wider sense is the point of The Gilgamesh Epic as well, because Gilgamesh was not a good king until he had been made human by the knowledge of his own inevitable death. Both dramas are played out on a stage in which the hero’s various possibilities for mortality and immortality are set against fame and explored.

There were other stories that valorized immortality in Greek culture. From one perspective, the Odyssey may be viewed as the lay of Telemachus’ maturation or even the epic of Penelope’s trial of patient waiting. But, for the Greeks, the title role goes to Odysseus, the fighting man. Both the stories of Gilgamesh and Odysseus center on male behavior, involving the idealization of male heroic, warlike values.

Demeter and Persephone, the Eleusinian Mysteries

JUST AS IN Mesopotamia, there was another mythic pattern in the Homeric world, which we can see in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. This hymn is written in the same heroic verse as the Iliad and the Odyssey but it tells another story: the familiar story of the rape of Persephone by the god of the underworld, Pluto. It serves the same purpose in Greek literature that the myth of “the Descent of Inanna” serves in ancient Sumerian literature. In some way, we keep coming upon the same naked narrative structures, each time newly dressed in the interests of a new culture.

Persephone is abducted by Pluto, the Lord of the underworld, while she is gathering spring flowers, which come with the rains. Persephone’s mother Demeter wanders the world looking for her daughter; while she looks she neglects her duties and the natural world languishes throughout the summer, growing no grains or wheat, of which Demeter is the patron goddess. After she locates Persephone, she appeals to her Olympian siblings to release her, for none can actually enter the kingdom of death except Hermes, the messenger. The gods prevail on Pluto to allow her to leave. However, they discover that Persephone has eaten six pomegranate seeds. Because of this lapse, Persephone is forced to return to Pluto every year for six months. Again and again, we find that what keeps humanity from immortality is lack of circumspection while eating in front of the gods. Alimentation is definitely part of our mortal natures. The gods eat too (they like to eat sacrifices and embrosia), although they do not need to eat. Conversely, divinity can be achieved in the ascetic refusal of the pleasures of eating and generation, or at least, this will be the response of Christian monastics (see ch. 14).

During Persephone’s forced annual sojourn underground, Demeter mourns again for her daughter, and the earth is not fertile. When Persephone is back above ground, Demeter is happy to be reunited with her daughter so she causes the grain to grow,