My father’s Odyssey

The capital letter is intentional. My father would have turned 103 today. He had more than enough of an odyssey with a lowercase “o”: walking home from the front after deserting the war, and later, out of necessity, travelling all over the country as a construction site manager, so that almost all ten of us were born in different towns.

But now I want to write about the Odyssey with a capital “O”, to which he had a deeply personal connection, perhaps not entirely unrelated to those earlier odysseys. For him, it meant the Greek language and philosophy, which he loved so dearly, but for which, after secondary school and university, the many little Telemachuses and the many kinds of Cyclopes left him so little time.

Yet he passed on to me his love of the Odyssey and of the Greek language. It was the first book I ever read, at the age of five, and afterwards my siblings would regularly quiz me on the names of the characters and their relationships. He would often recite the prologue and analyse the Ancient Greek words, delighting in watching me continue reading the epic and learning the language.

Since I have already quoted the prologue of the Iliad in connection with Achilles' sarcophagus at Nicaea, let me also recall here the prologue of the Odyssey, just as my father would have analysed it.

1 Ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ
2 πλάγχθη, ἐπεὶ Τροίης ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἔπερσεν·
3 πολλῶν δ’ ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νόον ἔγνω,
4 πολλὰ δ’ ὅ γ’ ἐν πόντῳ πάθεν ἄλγεα ὃν κατὰ θυμόν,
5 ἀρνύμενος ἥν τε ψυχὴν καὶ νόστον ἑταίρων.
6 ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ὣς ἑτάρους ἐρρύσατο, ἱέμενός περ·
7 αὐτῶν γὰρ σφετέρῃσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὄλοντο,
8 νήπιοι, οἳ κατὰ βοῦς Ὑπερίονος Ἠελίοιο ἤσθιον·

1. Ἄνδρα – man μοι – to me, for me ἔννεπε – tell, recount Μοῦσα – O Muse πολύτροπον – of many turns, resourceful in many ways, much-wandering (see below) ὃς – who μάλα – very πολλά – much, many things Tell me, Muse, of the man of many turns, who wandered greatly...		2. πλάγχθη – wandered, was driven about ἐπεί – after, when Τροίης – of Troy ἱερόν – sacred πτολίεθρον – citadel, city ἔπερσεν – sacked, destroyed ...who wandered after he had sacked the sacred city of Troy.
3. πολλῶν – of many ἀνθρώπων – men, people ἴδεν – saw ἄστεα – cities καί – and νόον – mind, understanding, way of thinking ἔγνω – came to know He saw the cities of many people and came to know their minds.		4. πολλά – many δ’ – and, moreover ὅ γ’ – he indeed ἐν πόντῳ – on the sea πάθεν – suffered ἄλγεα – pains, sorrows ὃν κατά θυμόν – in his own heart And upon the sea he suffered many sorrows in his own heart,
5. ἀρνύμενος – striving to win, to save ἥν τε ψυχήν – his own life καί – and νόστον – the homecoming ἑταίρων – of his companions striving to save his own life and secure the homecoming of his companions.		6. ἀλλ’ – but οὐδ’ ὣς – not even so ἑτάρους – his companions ἐρρύσατο – he saved ἱέμενός περ – although he longed to do so But even so he could not save his companions, though he longed to.
7. αὐτῶν γάρ – for they themselves σφετέρῃσιν – by their own ἀτασθαλίῃσιν – reckless folly, sinful recklessness ὄλοντο – perished For they perished through their own sinful recklessness,		8. νήπιοι – foolish ones, fools οἳ – who κατά … ἤσθιον – devoured, ate up βοῦς – the cattle Ὑπερίονος – of Hyperion’s son Ἠελίοιο – Helios the fools who devoured the cattle of Helios, the son of Hyperion.

• Ἄνδρα – The first word of the Iliad is Μῆνιν, “wrath”. The first word of the Odyssey is Ἄνδρα, “man”. At the centre of the Iliad stands the wrath of Achilles and its consequences. The Odyssey, by contrast, tells the story of a human life, experience, and the journey home.

• πολύτροπον – perhaps Homer’s most celebrated epithet. Literally: “of many turns, adaptable in many ways, much-wandering, resourceful, cunning”, since τρόπος can mean “direction, manner, behaviour, character”. It means much more than simply “much-wandering”, as in many translations: Odysseus is not only a traveller through many lands but also a man whose own mind follows many paths, and who presents many different faces to others. One might even translate it as “a man who knows every trick in the book”. This single epithet is the key word of the entire epic.

It is striking that Homer defines Odysseus not by epithets such as “strong”, “brave”, or “swift-footed”, but by this one. πολύτροπος distinguishes him from Achilles from the very first line. Achilles triumphs through strength; Odysseus through intelligence.

• πλάγχθη – from the verb πλάζω, “to go astray, to wander, to be driven about”, carrying the idea of losing the straight path. It is not merely a journey, but both a physical and a spiritual wandering. The entire epic is about this. Not simply how Odysseus finds his way home, but how he finds his way back to himself.

• νόον ἔγνω – This means far more than “he came to know their thoughts”. Rather, he came to understand their mentality, their culture, their entire worldview. Odysseus is not a tourist. He is an anthropologist. A diplomat. A linguist. A psychologist. A ruler.

• ἄλγεα – “sorrows”, “sufferings”. Not merely physical pain, but every kind of loss: homesickness, grief, fear, loneliness, despair. These are Odysseus’ greatest teachers.

• νόστος – means “homecoming”. From this word derives “nostalgia”, literally “the pain of longing for home”.

• ἀτασθαλία – One of the great moral key words of the Odyssey. It does not simply mean “folly”, “sin”, or “recklessness”, but wilful, arrogant folly: knowingly doing wrong despite understanding the consequences. It is moral irresponsibility. This concept later became one of the fundamental ideas of Greek tragedy. The gods punish, but first human beings commit the offence: they transgress the boundary established by the gods. In the moral universe of the epic, this is the kind of transgression that inevitably brings about destruction.

These eight lines are virtually a complete summary—a concise manifesto—of the Odyssey:

• the hero: Odysseus;
• the theme: νόστος (homecoming);
• the defining characteristic of the hero: πολύτροπος;
• the setting: the sea and the world of foreign peoples;
• the central motif: suffering as the price of gaining experience;
• the moral lesson: human destruction is caused above all by one’s own ἀτασθαλία (“reckless folly”, “wilful moral blindness”).

Since I recently wrote about Greek lyric poetry, let me conclude with this video, in which Doug Metzger performs the opening of the Odyssey to the accompaniment of a Greek lyre, using the Homeric—that is, Erasmian—pronunciation of Ancient Greek. The melody is a modern reconstruction, and there is no guarantee that it resembles the tunes once sung by the Greek bards. And the performer is admittedly rather theatrical. But at least we can hear the text while following it alongside its translation.

Since I have mentioned the two prologues in the same post, it is worth recalling that Odysseus and Achilles encounter one another at a crucial moment in both epics. We have already seen their first meeting in the Iliad on Achilles’ sarcophagus, and it is also depicted on this Attic vase from the workshop of the so-called Caylus Painter, dating from 520–510 BC, now in the museum of Lecce. In the Odyssey, they meet again in the Underworld.

These encounters are explored in a book that I happened to find here in Lecce: the classicist and novelist Matteo Nucci’s Achille e Odisseo. La ferocia e l’inganno (Achilles and Odysseus: Ferocity and Deception, 2020). Nucci argues that the true opposition in the Homeric epics is not between the Greek Achilles and the Trojan Hector, but between Achilles and Odysseus themselves. Fighting on the same side, they nevertheless embody two radically different ways of experiencing existence, truth, and time:

• Achilles lives each present moment with absolute intensity. He embodies instinct, pure passion, the unquenchable inner fire. His actions are grounded in plain, openly spoken truth; he rejects calculation and strategy, caring little for the consequences.

• Odysseus is the very model of flexible intelligence (μῆτις), prudence, and strategy. He knows how to wait, to endure, and to yield to circumstances in pursuit of the ultimate goal. While Achilles lives in the present, Odysseus is always focused on the future.

Achilles despises such an attitude. As he declares in Iliad 9.312–313:

“For I hate, like the very gates of Hades, the man who says one thing with his lips while hiding another in his heart.”

One of the book’s most important climaxes is its analysis of their meeting in the Underworld. Here, more starkly than anywhere else, the two heroes’ philosophies of life collide, revealing the tragic contrast in their attitudes towards time.

Odysseus tries to comfort Achilles with the logic of the living. He reminds him that while alive he was honoured by the Greeks almost as a god, and that now he reigns with power among the dead. Odysseus looks to fame and to glory that endures into the future. Achilles, however, angrily and bitterly rejects this consolation with one of the most famous lines in world literature:

“I would rather be a hired labourer serving a poor man on earth than rule over all the dead in the Underworld.”

Even here Achilles does not soften his words: he hurls his own harsh truth in Odysseus’ face. For the man who always chooses the present over the future, glory—the future—can never compensate for flesh-and-blood existence in the present. And in doing so, he paradoxically confirms the position of Odysseus, the great survivor, who is determined to return alive to Ithaca at any cost, even if it means humiliation or disguising himself as a beggar.

Neither Homer nor Nucci condemns or privileges either of these positions. They simply present them as two fundamentally different attitudes towards life, two opposing archetypes within our shared cultural imagination.

My father, I think, was a man of the Achilles type. And perhaps the Odyssey helped him nevertheless to live through, in the manner of Odysseus, that long life full of hopeless journeys and difficult tasks which the Moirai had allotted to him.