Odysseus, who has spent much of the past nine years in the arms of one goddess or another, still has to make his peace with his wife. Athene is fond of him, chastely of course; he is her favorite mortal. Fortunately, the love of this goddess is without jealousy, the proof of which is made clear by the gift Athene gives Odysseus after he has slain all the suitors and taken his wife into his arms.
What do you do when you have been away from home for twenty years (ten in the siege of Troy, ten in the subsequent wanderings)? Do you spend the first night making love? Or sharing the stories of your troubles? Odysseus of course wants both, as he always does. He asks Athene for help and she, smiling at him as she always does, extends the night so there is time for both. Such a night there never was before, and perhaps never after.
The Odyssey is an adventure story of almost unbearable excitement, but it is also—as countless other poets, as well as ordinary readers, recognize—a profoundly true portrayal of human beings and the relations among them. A mother and a son just growing into manhood, a father learning how much he needs the help of his son; that father and his old father, whom he also needs; a man and wife—these human ties are probed with an intensity seldom equaled in the two and a half millennia since the poem was composed. In the end, a wonderful family—father, mother, and their beloved son—emerges from the apparent wreckage of their lives. Homer also understands that in the most difficult human enterprises a mortal has to pass through Hell, and Odysseus does that, too, seeking among the dead for the secrets of life among the living. Meanwhile, on Mount Olympus, the immortal gods recline on golden benches, drink from golden cups, and smile and sometimes weep at the vanity and ambition of those creatures down below, with their loves and hates and desires and fears. And their mortality.
Before leaving The Iliad and The Odyssey, I want to say a word about translations. There are many, and some are better than others.
I have read at least four different translations and skipped through a fifth—Pope’s Iliad, as it was called as though he had written it himself. Despite the praise that famous version received when it was published in the eighteenth century I believe it is unreadable today. The versions of the two poems published in the Loeb Classical Library, by A.T. Murray, seem to me even worse, although these were The Iliad and The Odyssey my father knew and loved and on the basis of which he wrote his superb commentaries in The Noble Voice. Translations of both epics by Richmond Lattimore are said to be closer to the Greek than most others but perhaps as a result they are not easy to read. A more passionate version of The Iliad by Robert Fitzgerald seemed preferable when it appeared thirty years ago. But none of those, in my opinion, can be compared with the translations of both poems by Robert Fagles that were published at the end of the last century. His Iliad is powerful, almost overwhelming, his Odyssey utterly charming, and I recommend them to anyone who wishes to read—or reread—Homer’s two great epics. I can’t imagine any reader not being transported by Fagles into Homer’s magical world.
HESIOD
fl. 700–650 BCE ?
The Homeric Hymns
Very little is known about Hesiod. He probably lived from about 700 BCE to about 650, which would make him perhaps half a century younger than Homer. He wrote a “Theogony”—that is, an account of the history of the gods, starting with Chaos and Night and coming down to the present day (his, not ours). Not all of it survives and what does is rather confusing. The better-known “Works and Days” also survives in lengthier fragments. It contains some good advice about both farming and living, but perhaps not enough to warrant finding and reading it.
“The Homeric Hymns,” which may or may not have been written by Hesiod, are well worth the trouble—at least the four that survive more or less intact. One is the famous story of Demeter (or Ceres), the goddess of agriculture, whose daughter Persephone is abducted by Hades (Pluto), God of the underworld. Her mother, in despair, travels the world in search of her, and when she discovers her whereabouts she asks Pluto to let her daughter come back to the light. Pluto, the third brother of Zeus (Poseidon is the second), is a great god and doesn’t have to release her, but he relents on condition that Persephone spend one half of the year with him beneath the surface of the Earth, the other half with her mother above it. Demeter must accept this, which explains the origin of the seasons.
Other “Hymns,” more or less intact, are addressed to Apollo and Hermes. They tell delicious tales of these gods that were retold by Greek and Roman poets many times in subsequent centuries.
The “Hymn to Aphrodite” is a fine story and is sexy in a way Homer never was. Aphrodite, the goddess of love, has tricked many male gods into falling for mortal women, and Zeus, to punish her, causes her to fall in love with a mortal man. His name is Anchises and he is very handsome; he is also a son of Dardanus, the founder of Troy. At the time Aphrodite falls in love with him, Anchises is herding his father’s cattle high on Mt. Ida.
When Aphrodite feels the pangs of love that Zeus has instilled in her heart she flies to Cyprus, to Paphos, where her sweet-smelling temple is located. She enters, closing the glittering doors, and the Graces bathe her with the heavenly oil that blooms upon the bodies of the eternal gods. Then Aphrodite dresses in all her rich clothes, decks herself with gold, and flies to Mt. Ida, accompanied by wild creatures, wolves and lions and bears and leopards, male and female, that she enchants with desire so that they mate, two and two, around the house where Anchises lives and where he is strolling, playing his lyre.
The goddess approaches and stands before him, looking for all the world like a pure maiden, averting her eyes as a mortal girl would do. Anchises, seeing her rich garments that shimmer like the moon over her tender breasts and the rich jewels that sparkle on her wrists and around her lovely neck, is seized with desire. He thinks she must be a blessed goddess, and so kneels and addresses her with respect and awe. But Aphrodite answers that she is no goddess. “I am just a mortal girl,” she declares, “and I was playing with the other maidens around the temple of Artemis when the Slayer of Argus took me up and carried me here, saying I should become the wife of Anchises and that I would bear him goodly children. I beseech you by Zeus and by your noble parents,” she continues, “take me now, stainless and unproved in love as I am, and show me to your father and mother and to your brothers. And send a message to my parents and they will send you gold and other splendid gifts, which shall be my marriage portion.”
Hearing this declaration, Anchises is even more overcome by love and he swears: “If Hermes has brought you here to me to be my wedded wife then neither god nor mortal man shall restrain me until I have lain with you in love right now. Willingly will I go down into Hades, O lady, beautiful as the goddesses, once I have gone up to your bed!”