Unit 5
   English 201: 
  Masterpieces of Western Literature
.Unit 5 Reading Course Reading Entry Page
Introduction Background .Explication Questions Review

Background:
 Civic Life: The pleasures of life in the city are perfectly obvious in this section where OD visits Phaiakia.  The elements of the moral lesson are also obvious.  After 20 years of violence & piracy, OD has nothing stable enough to pass down as an inheritance.  OD burrows into the leaves, naked, like an animal.  The powers that nurture the city are feminine (motherly): Arete & Nausikaa:
7.115    so were these women
            skilled at the loom, having this lovely craft
            & artistry as talents from Athena.
Phaiakia may be overly refined, too luxurious, & even effete for Greek tastes in 700 bce.  It operates, however, as something like Disneyland or perhaps a cathedral city (cf. Mecca, Chichén Itzá, Varanasi, Salt Lake City).  It is not suppose to be an ordinary polis, but the model, the ideal. Thus:
8.141    OD, who had borne the barren sea,
            stood in the gateway & surveyed this bounty

The end of the ODY threatens to whirl out of control with violence multiplied by the aggrieved relatives of the 118 suitors executed by OD.  The idealized (almost Phaiakian) end fails.  Zeus promises that:
24.499    we, for our part, will blot out the memory
              of sons & brothers slain

Apparently this is ineffective, because the relatives mass for a military assault.  Athena seems equivocal.  She invigorates old Laertes, commanding him:
24.538    heft your spear & make your throw.
              Power flowed into him [Laertes] from Pallas Athena

When the army of relatives flees & OD's family:
24.546    would have cut the enemy down
              to the last man, leaving not one survivor
Athena stops the mayhem & commands:
24.551    end your bloodshed, Ithakans, & make peace.

At the very end of these 2 long works by Homer, the voice of Reason still requires the threat of violence to be heard:
24.556    Those from the town turned fleeing for their lives,
24.559    the lord OD reared himself to follow--
              at which the son of Kronos dropped a thunderbolt
              smoking at his daughter's feet.

Because they are manifestations of libido, power & even violence are ineradicable in our world.  The best we can hope for is their judicious use in defense of civil values (beauty).  Are we not  disturbed by OD's plan for economic recovery?
24.363     as to the flocks that pack of wolves laid waste
               they'll be replenished: scores I'll get on raids
               & other scores our island friends will give me

Give him?  How freely?  Don't you suspect extortion or intimidation?  You might as well offer the gift, before it is taken by force.  Before you condemn OD for regressing to the familiar & casual violence of The Iliad, think about the American use of violence & the threat of violence to keep the oil flowing from the mid-East or keep Khrushchev from putting missiles in Cuba or deciding not to try Emperor Hirohito for war crimes.

At the very end, the polis seems possible when:
24.567    He [OD] yielded to her, & his heart was glad.
              Both parties later swore to terms of peace
              set by their arbiter, Athena

We will see how Aeschylus explicates this easy to miss shift from an exclusive commitment to blood values (I will defend my blood relatives no matter what they do) to values that we consciously vow to defend.  The symbol for this is marriage, where the relationship is between 2 people who were once strangers to each other.  The city works (or should work) much the same way.  This is partly why Homer finds Klytemnestra's treachery so outrageous: it promises treason among civic partners.

Click on the next section: Explication above.