Like the Cyclops or the Laestrygonians, the suitors who have taken over Odysseus’ palace in Ithaca are defined as abnormal and monstrous eaters. We are repeatedly told that they are “devouring” and “wasting” the household wealth of Odysseus, by consuming his fattest animals and drinking his wine in their constant feasts, and failing to repay the absent owner or take care of the estate. It is, of course, a violation of hospitality to enter a person’s home uninvited and remain there day after day, using up his food stores, wine, and wealth. The poem emphasizes that it is also unjust: the norms of behavior require a person to pay back what he or she owes, and a guest is supposed to give presents to a generous host, rather than simply enjoy the benefits of hospitality without giving anything in return.
Greed, ingratitude, and rudeness are annoying but, one might think, rather trivial faults. These boorish, selfish, immature young men are certainly unpleasant to be around, but not necessarily the epitome of evil, and it may be difficult to understand how anybody could think they really deserve death. The poem itself invites us to feel a degree of horror at Odysseus’ violence, and sympathy for the murdered boys. On the other hand, the language in which The Odyssey presents the suitors’ eating and drinking magnifies the enormity of their crime. The standard epithets applied to the suitors often emphasize their excessive desire to be “above” or “beyond” others (hyper: above and beyond): they are hyper-phialos or hyper-thymos (“self-indulgent,” “heedless,” “overbearing”). These words can be neutral or even positive (suggesting “noble” or “high-minded”—above the norms in a good way), but they acquire a sinister connotation here, since they are also applied to the man-eating Laestrygonians and Cyclops. We are repeatedly told that the suitors are devouring not only the literal “property” of Odysseus, but also, metonymically, his “house” and hence his “livelihood” or “life”—the words bios and biotos can mean both “way of making a living” and “life” itself. It is as if in eating Odysseus’ animals, the suitors are metaphorically eating the man himself, and his son. Telemachus complains that the suitors are “consuming my whole house, and soon they may / destroy me too.” The rage Odysseus musters against his uninvited guests seems to stem from a desperate need to preserve not only his wealth but even his identity from the mouths of those who are eating him alive.
But people who feel oppressed can become more dangerous than the people they fear. Once he reaches Ithaca, Odysseus is in the position of a guest in his own home, disguised as an old beggar. He is given a modest but warm welcome by the slave pig-keeper, Eumaeus, while the suitors act as unfriendly, hostile hosts, mocking and throwing stools at their ragged guest. However, when Odysseus is restored to his own persona, taking charge again of his household, the roles of guest and host make a sudden switch. The poor old visitor is now the householder himself. Odysseus becomes one of the most terrifying hosts of all, defending his property against unwanted visitors as thoroughly and violently as the Laestrygonians or the Sun God himself.
Gods
Xenia is particularly important to the gods in general, and especially to Zeus, the father and king of all the gods. One of the standard titles of Zeus was Xenios (“God of Strangers”). He is the god who presides over visitors, foreigners, and beggars, and who is invoked to defend the rights of guests or of hosts, when people fail to adhere to the norms of xenia. Zeus is also the god associated most closely with justice—dike in Greek, a notion linked to the idea of balance, and hence to the idea of retribution. Some readers have assumed that the gods in this poem—or at least Zeus—are defenders not only of xenia (which is, as we have seen, only partly an ethical concept), but also of morality in general. Some leap to the further notion that the triumph of Odysseus over the suitors represents an ethical victory, sanctioned by the gods. This certainly goes too far. Odysseus is presented as a morally complex character, as ancient readers recognized. The gods in The Odyssey, like those of The Iliad, are self-interested beings, whose interventions in human lives are motivated primarily by their own desires, whims, and preferences rather than by a consistent commitment to uphold moral law.
The main difference between gods and humans is that gods are far more powerful and, unlike mortals, immune from old age and death. Humans in the poem, especially Telemachus and Odysseus himself, invoke the gods as guardians of what is “right,” but it is less clear that the gods see themselves in quite this way.
At the start of The Odyssey, Zeus is contemplating a problem in the human world. Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, had raised troops to help his brother Menelaus reclaim his wife, Helen, who had been taken to Troy by Paris, son of Priam, king of Troy. But in Agamemnon’s absence, Aegisthus, who had an alternative claim to the throne of Mycenae, seduced Agamemnon’s wife, Clytemnestra, seized control of his kingdom, and murdered Agamemnon when he came back home from Troy. Later, Agamemnon’s young son Orestes—who had been sent away for his own protection—returned to Mycenae and killed both Aegisthus and his own mother, Clytemnestra, in revenge for the killing of his father.
Zeus presents the story of Aegisthus as an object lesson in human folly. People are already destined to suffer a certain amount, and yet sometimes they increase their quota of suffering by making bad choices—as Aegisthus did in killing Agamemnon and partnering with Clytemnestra, despite the warnings of the gods. Athena replies by reminding her father that Odysseus is stuck on Calypso’s island, thanks to “bad luck,” the hostility of Poseidon, and the negligence of Zeus himself—although perhaps also, we may speculate, thanks to his own decisions.
This first exchange between divine father and divine daughter has sometimes been read to imply that the gods of The Odyssey ensure that good people, like Odysseus, are rewarded for their virtue, while bad people, like the suitors, are punished. Aristotle, the philosopher of the fourth century BCE, may hint at this interpretation in a very brief allusion to the poem: he says that The Odyssey has a double structure, and ends in opposite ways for the “better” and “worse” characters (Poetics 1453a). But “better” is not the same as “good,” and the word Aristotle uses can mean simply “more noble” or “higher class.” In fact, neither Zeus’ words nor the narrative of the poem suggests that morally good behavior guarantees a happy life. Zeus says nothing about virtue as such in this speech. Although one may speculate that the gods warned Aegisthus because they are on the side of ethical behavior (against adultery, murder, and usurpation), this is not what Zeus himself says. Rather, he insists that Aegisthus was imprudent and foolish in pursuing a course of action that he should have known would result in his doom. When Athena urges Zeus to help Odysseus, she does not claim that her favorite human is morally superior to all others—a case that would be hard to make about this lying, self-interested sacker of cities. Instead Athena reminds Zeus that Odysseus “is more sensible than other humans.” His intelligence sets him apart from other adulterers and murderers. Gods usually favor people who are exceptionally talented in some way, and the poem makes it clear that it is Odysseus’ special form of cleverness that has earned him the attention of Athena.