In the final book of the poem, Telemachus has one more chance to prove himself a man, by fighting, yet again, beside his father. With their little band of supporters, Odysseus, Laertes, and Telemachus prepare together to fight against the family members of those whom they have killed. Odysseus calls on Telemachus not to “shame your father’s family,” which is “known across the world for courage / and manliness.” Telemachus responds eagerly, “Just watch me, Father,” and Laertes beams with pride: “A happy day for me! My son and grandson / are arguing about how tough they are!” The fight is curtailed by Athena’s intervention, so Telemachus never gets to prove his full worth as a fighter, although he has demonstrated his eagerness to participate in the military aggression of his male family members. Readers may disagree about the extent to which Telemachus ever fully grows up in The Odyssey—as well as about whether growing up to manhood, as this boy imagines it, would really be a good thing.
Slaves
Many of the most prominent characters in The Odyssey—such as the father, mother, son, and the suitors—are elite people who live in what is figured as a large, palatial house (although it is clearly modest from the perspective of later forms of kingship). Odysseus is a leader in war, not a mere foot soldier, and in Ithaca, the house of Odysseus is the richest and most powerful of the neighborhood. But the poem also includes a number of characters who are not rich or powerful. In The Iliad, the only named non-elite character, Thersites, is presented as ugly and annoying; when he speaks out of turn, Odysseus beats him up. The Odyssey includes a far richer array of characters who are not lords or ladies, kings or princesses. Slaves and homeless beggars are presented in this text as human beings who deserve respect and even empathy—at least as long as they remain in their limited social place.
The possibility that people of any rank might be enslaved—through trafficking or war—is assumed as a fact about the world; The Odyssey is not an abolitionist text. But we are given glimpses of the hard lives of those who serve and feed the privileged people who are the main focus of the narrative. In Book 20, the prayer of an unnamed, frail slave, grinding the grain, reminds us that the labor of food production is exhausting: it hurts her knees. Odysseus, who has his own agenda, treats the prayer simply as a good omen for his own plans. But the reader or listener can momentarily see the cost of running the elite household in terms of human labor and human suffering—a cost that may be reduced but will not end, even when the banquets of the suitors cease.
Slave owners favor slaves who ally themselves most closely with their master’s interests, rather than taking the risky step of switching to a new set of masters. Only one of the slaves who slept with the suitors is named: Melantho, who is characterized as having a mind of her own and a will to talk back to her mistress. The orifices of female slaves, including their mouths, are a source of particular concern; the rope deprives Melantho of her attempt to have an autonomous voice. Male slaves are imagined not as mouths but limbs of their masters; a “bad” male slave uses his capacity to work or fight or procreate to serve an alternative master. Melantho’s brother, Melanthius, who serves as a herdsman for the suitors, is trussed up like an animal, and then, in a particularly brutal scene, his nose, ears, genitals, hands, and feet are slashed off. This “limb” of the wrong masters is robbed of his own bodily appendages. Melantho and Melanthius—whose names both suggest “black flower”—are the children of Dolius, the herdsman who is treated as a trusted favorite, loyal to Odysseus. We are not told how he feels about the slaughter of his children, but it is clear that, in Odysseus’ remade household, there will be no possibility of expressing such grief. The name Dolius suggests “crafty” or “deceitful”; the poem shows us why dishonesty is the most essential survival tool for the “good” slave.
The pair of young “bad” slaves are mirrored by a pair of old “good” slaves, who are loyal to Odysseus and his family. Eurycleia, the old slave woman who took care of Telemachus as a baby and now protects the master’s domestic stores, provides a counterpart to the threats posed by Melantho. She is old enough to pose no sexual threat, and she controls her voice for the sake of her masters—by keeping the secrets of Telemachus’ journey and Odysseus’ identity, and by restraining her impulse to shout in triumph over the slaughter of the suitors. Melantho’s physical intimacy with the wrong set of owners is presented as a threat to the household. Eurycleia, by contrast, maintains the household by taking care of the bodies of Odysseus and his family—by helping Telemachus get dressed, and by washing Odysseus’ feet.
The most prominent slave character in the poem is the swineherd Eumaeus, the “good” counterpart to the “bad” goatherd, Melanthius. Eumaeus welcomes Odysseus, in his guise as beggar, into his simple cottage. Eumaeus’ humble but affectionate offering of xenia contrasts with the rudeness of the suitors, and we are clearly supposed to admire this “noble slave” for identifying his own interests with those of his owner; he is the one who “cared most about preserving / the master’s property.” No other character is addressed directly by the narrator, but Eumaeus is often addressed in the second person (“You, swineherd”), a stylistic detail that creates a particular intimacy between the reader or listener and this odd character. Eumaeus is also described repeatedly in the terms of military heroism, as the “commander” of his pigs—a trope that serves both to elevate this quasi-heroic character and to mock him. Eumaeus is a “noble slave” for two incompatible reasons. On the one hand, paradoxically, he is noble because he is so slavish: he refuses to disentangle his own interests and perspective from that of his master. But he is also genuinely noble, both in birth and in behavior: he performs the aristocratic customs of xenia even in his poor, dung-piled shack, and he tells the memorable, grim story of how he was born into an elite foreign household, before he was trafficked and sold as a slave. The “good” slave is one who responds to the trauma of enslavement by identifying with his or her owners, and imagining those in power as loving parents rather than overlords. The Odyssey seems to have it both ways in the depiction of slave characters. We are reminded that a good slave can be more loyal and more hospitable than a rude, overprivileged young man, but we are also invited to imagine that slaves are good only insofar as they subdue their own identities to those of their owners.
The poem suggests a similar contrast between the “good” and the “bad” way to occupy another lowly social position: that of the penniless, homeless migrant. When Odysseus is in disguise as a poor beggar, the ways that people respond to him are presented as the test of their moral worth. It is a black mark against the suitors that they fail to behave politely or warmly to the wrinkled, ragged, hungry old stranger who shows up in the palace where they are living it up on somebody else’s meat and wine. But the “real” beggar, Irus—who is not an elite warrior in disguise, but a genuinely poor, dirty homeless person—is depicted in entirely negative terms. Odysseus wrestles with him, wins, and humiliates him, and the text seems to invite us to celebrate his victory. There is thus a certain uneasiness about the proper way to respond to social and economic hierarchies. Elite people are supposed to treat slaves and homeless beggars well; but slaves and homeless beggars are themselves to be despised, unless they are royalty in disguise. Odysseus can become old, poor, weak and homeless; but his “real” identity is (apparently, but perhaps debatably) as the king and warrior who fights to gain massive wealth and assert his own masculine prowess, using deceit and violence to slaughter his enemies—both on the battlefield of Troy and even in his own lovely home.