This is lesson 3/6 on The Odyssey.  Our theme in this section is hospitality.  In this section, books 9-12, OD tells Alkinoos & the Phaiakians the story of what happened to him from the time he left Troy until he washed up on the beach in Phaiakia to be found by Nausikaa.

OD rarely reveals his true identity.  What do you infer from the fact that OD reveals himself to Alkinoos?
9.19     I am Laertes' son Odysseus
You should infer that OD trusts Alkinoos.  Revealing your identity is a jesture of vulnerability, because it invites others to make a judgment.  This goes back to the Oedipal complex.  We don't mind so much when others make judgments about who we are when we wear masks & follow scripts.  When others criticize our performance, we often say, "I am just doing my job.  I am just following orders."  We don't feel that such judgments penetrate to our "real" identity.

OD gives a quick preview of his adventures, suggesting 2 recurrent themes that illustrate the extremes of Aristotle's ethics.  Too much power/violence causes grief.  Too little power/courage in meeting one's troubles also causes grief.  OD talks about raiding: 
9.42      the coast of the Kikones.
            I stormed that place & killed the men who fought.
            Plunder we took, & we enslaved the women

But there was a price to pay: 
9.64     Six benches were left empty in every ship . . . .
            our precious lives we had, but not our friends.

Remember Teiresias, whose name means "the weariness of rowing"?  Life is the endurance of suffering, as Teiresias reveals.  Reason should help us to reduce the suffering to what is unavoidable.  As OD's men row away from the Kikones, they are:
9.79    worn out & sick at heart, tasting our grief

If the excess of power causes grief, the deficiency is hardly better:
9.89      we came to the coastline of the Lotos Eaters
where OD's men:
9.95     fell in, soon enough, with Lotos Eaters,
            who showed no will to do us harm, only
            offering the sweet Lotos to our friends--
            but those who ate this honeyed plant, the Lotos,
            never cared to report [to muster], nor to return:
            they longed to stay forever . . .
            forgetful of their homeland.

OD "intervenes" with the drug addicts, tying them under their rowing benches

9.110    In the next land we found were Kyklopes,
            giants, louts, without a law to bless them.
             . . . they neither plow
             nor sow . . . nor till the ground.
            Kyklopes have no muster & no meeting,
            no consultation or old tribal ways 

Giant louts without culture.  They know no agri-culture.  Nor do they build ships to visit exotic ports & learn the benefits of culture -- as OD has done in visiting Phaiakia.  Remember Alkinoos teasing OD:
8.249     Come, turn you mind, now, on a thing to tell
             among your peers when you are home again

But among the rude Kyklopes:
9.132    No shipwright
            toils . . . shaping & building up
            symmetrical trim hulls to cross the sea
            & visit all the seaboard towns, as men do 
            who go & come in commerce over water.

Just as nearly everyone is familiar with Don Quixote jousting with the sails of windmills, nearly every Westerner knows at least the fragment from the ODY in which OD blinds the one-eyed Cyclops: 
9.197    A prodigious man
             . . . remote from all companions,
             knowing none but savage ways, a brute
            . . . [who] seemed no man at all

Above all, Polyphemos knows nothing of hospitality, being:
9.223     all outward power,
             a wild man, ignorant of civility.

Ironically, the brute asks an embarrassing question:
9.267     are you wandering rogues, who cast you lives
             like dice, & ravage other folk by sea?

The answer is yes:
9.276     We served under AG, son of Atreus--
              the whole world knows what city
              he laid waste, what armies he destroyed.
              It was our [bad] luck to come here; here we stand,
              beholden for your help, or any gifts
              you give--as custom is to honor strangers.

Part of the psychology of hospitality must be the calculation that offering a small, free gift will create goodwill & a sense of gratitude that will hopefully prevent these men from killing me, burning my house, taking everything.  Consequently, Polyphemos' response to the request for hospitality is not off the mark:
9.287     We Kyklopes
              care not a whistle for your thundering Zeus
              or all the gods in bliss; we have more force by far.
              I would not let you go [much less be hospitable] for fear of Zeus

Look up Cyclopes in your Dictionary.  You find that Zeus could prevail only with the help of their rude power.  They hammer out the thunderbolts that Zeus hurls.  They also fabricated the helmet that makes death invisible & gave Poseidon his trident.  These weapons allow the 3 greatest Olympians to tame the Titanic forces of earth.  Finally, the Kyklopes were credited with building crude menhirs & megalithic structures such as Stonehenge (2,000 bce).

Instead of extending hospitality to travelers far from home, Polyphemos:
9.300      caught 2 [men] in his hands like squirming puppies
              to beat their brains out, spattering the floor.
              Then he dismembered them & made his meal,
              gaping & crunching like a mountain lion--
              everything: innards, flesh, & marrow bones 

Homer says that Poseidon is the father of the Kyklopes:
1.89       Who bore
             that giant lout?  Thoosa, daughter of Phorkys,
             an offshore sea lord: for this nymph had lain
             with Lord Poseidon

So, how can OD tame the rude son of Poseidon?  With ship-building technology:
9.334    a club, or staff, lay there . . .
             an olive tree, felled green & left to season
             for Kyklops' hand.  & it was like a mast
             a lugger of 20 oars, board in the beam--
             a deep-sea-going craft

With Polyphemos passed out drunk asleep, OD & his crew use the sharpened mast to blind the giant.  We:
9.400    rammed it
            deep in his crater eye, & I leaned on it
            turning it as a shipwright turns a drill
            in planking

The joke about the word "nobody" reminds us that Polyphemos is totally uneducated:
9.426  Nohbdy, Nohbdy's tricked me, Nohbdy's ruined me!

The other Kyklopes who come in response to Polyphemos' howl, reason that:
9.428    if nobody has played you foul . . .
            we are no use in pain
            given by great Zeus.  Let it be your father,
            Poseidon Lord, to whom you pray.

But it is too late.  Men have not learned to evade Poseidon's power, but their ships, most often, slip by unseen by the monomania & maelstrom of whirling cyclonic power.

When OD's & his men escape the maw of Polyphemos, why does OD insist on taunting the monster?
9.517   Godsake, Captain!

The beast has lost his eye, but he has two ears & uses them to guess where the puny voice is:
9.520     Give him our bearing with your trumpeting,
             he'll get the range & lob a boulder.
             Aye
             He'll smash our timbers & our heads together!

Why is OD so concerned to make sure that Polyphemos understands exactly who blinded him?  You will find this question repeated on the Questions page as one of the topics for our next Chat session.  
9.535    Kyklops,
            if ever mortal man inquire
            how you were put to shame & blinded, tell him
            OD, raider of cities, took your eye:
            Laertes son, whose home's on Ithaka!

The ODY is very much concerned with hospitality as the first law or requirement necessary for the nurture of the polis. There are limits to hospitality.  The suitors most egregiously violate those limits, but it is interesting to see that the gods are hospitable.  Yet even they recognize limits: 
10.15    Aiolos played host to me.  He kept me
            one full month to hear the tale of Troy.
(& you thought this class was long!) 
10.19    When in return I asked his leave to sail
            & asked provisioning, he stinted nothing,
            adding a bull's hide sewn from neck to tail
            into a mighty bag, bottling storm winds

OD's crew opens the bag, suspecting that he is hoarding treasure:
10.48    we ought to crack that bag,
            there's gold & silver, plenty, in that bag!
            
When OD goes back to ask Aiolos to bottle up the winds again, the god replies:  
10.35    Take yourself out of the island, creeping thing--,
            no law, no wisdom, lays it on me now
            to help a man the blessed gods detest
Perhaps Aiolos means that in spite of his aid, fate & destiny have decreed that OD will not easily return home.  We know that Poseidon bears a grudge against OD (because us Greeks dare to put to sea where we do not belong).  In any case, Aiolos has reached the limit of hospitality.

There are many difficult to pronounce names in Homer (e.g., Nausikaa).  Kirke's isle must be high on the list:
10.143    Our next landfall was on Aiaia, island
              of Kirke, dire beauty & divine

Kirke is convinced that all men are pigs.  Her magic simply makes them appear as the beasts they really are:
10.249    she prepared a meal of cheese & barely
              & amber honey mixed with Pramnian wine,
              adding her own vile pinch, to make them lose
              desire or thought of our dear father land.
              Scarce had they drunk when she flew after them
              with her long stick & shut them in a pigsty--
              bodies, voices, heads, & bristles, all
              swinish now, though minds were still unchanged.

When OD has Kirke turn the pigs back into the shape of men, are the men grateful?  
10.427    they were men again,
              younger, more handsome, taller than before.
              Their eyes upon me, each one took my hands,
              & wild regret & longing pierced them through,
              so the room rang with sobs

Evidently, the men would have been content to remain:
 10.259   hogs who rut & slumber on the earth.

Who saves OD from falling prey to Kirke's magic?
10.295    Hermes met me, with his golden wand
              barring the way--a boy whose lip was downy
              in the first bloom of manhood, so he seemed.

 If the divine appears in thunderous power, everyone listens.  How likely is it that General Schwarzkopf would take advice from a 15 year old boy?  We cannot imagine AG or AK listening to a callow boy advise them about how to act with "a dire beauty."  What would a kid know?  OD is humble enough to take the boy's advice.  When Kirke commands:
10.350    Down in the sty & snore among the rest!
She discover that OD is not like other men:
10.355    What champion, of what country, can you be?

Although he retains his human form, OD does seem to fall under Kirke's spell.  After a year on Aiaia, OD shows no inclination to leave.  His men have to prompt him:
10.508    shake off this trance, & think of home

Kirke gives the men the bad news:
10.529   home you may not go
             unless you take a strange way round & come
             to the cold homes of Death & pale Persephone.
             You shall hear prophecy from the rapt shade
             of blind Teiresias of Thebes, forever
             charged with reason even among the dead;
             to him alone, of all the flitting ghosts,
             Persephone has given a mind undarkened.

The second shade that OD sees in Hades is that of his mother:
10.89     Now came the soul of Antikleia, dead,
             my mother, daughter of Autolykos
             dead now, though living still when I took ship
             for holy Troy.  Seeing this ghost I grieved,
             but held her off, through pang on pang of tears.

OD discovers that his mother died of a broken heart, longing for her lost son:
10.213    no true illness
              wasting the body to undo the spirit;
              only my loneliness for you, OD . . .
              took my own life away.

How is this for guilt that OD must endure?  Teiresias tells OD that he & his men must not touch Helios' cattle, no matter how hungry they are for barbeque.  When he finally reaches Ithaka, OD must:
10.129    go overland on foot [into Macedonia], & take an oar,
              until one day you come where men have lived
              with meat unsalted, never known the sea . . .
              [& consequently ask] What winnowing fan is that upon your shoulder?

What is this all about?  There is a somewhat comparable story about the Buddha who was asked by a grieving mother to bring her dead child back to life.  Gautama said he would do so but that he needed a tiny mustard see from a house that had not experienced the grief of losing a loved one to death.  The woman runs off to find such a seed before thinking about it.  Of course she never finds anyone untouched by grief & begins to understand one of the fundamental truths of Buddhism, that life is inherently & inescapably disappointing (dukkha).  Teiresias' prophecy is somewhat comparable.  Asked to illustrate exactly what life is, a Greek might well suggest the image of painfully pulling an oar.  A Greek might ask, is there anyone who hasn't felt the pain of pulling an oar?  It is hard to image that OD will ever find the person untouched by pain who asks why he shoulders such a strange winnowing fan (with its suggestions about bountiful harvests).

OD meets many of his comrades who perished at Troy or in its aftermath (viz., AG).  To each shade, OD brings trouble.  AG:
11.433    tried to stretch his hands toward me, but could not,
              being bereft of all the reach & power
              he once felt in the great torque of his arms.

Ignominiously, AG has to admit to OD that he & his new girlfriend (Kassandra) were butchered by Klytemnestra:
11.459    murders you would catch your breath at:
              think of us fallen, all our throats cut, winebowl
              brimming, tables laden on every side

Once again part of what makes these murders so outrageous (dike), is the treachery in regard to hospitality.  The guest is invited to life (food) & treacherous butchered.  The winebowls are brim full.  No libation has been poured in prayer to the gods.  Instead AG's blood is spilt.

AK asks how OD found his:
11.526    way down to the dark
              where these dimwitted dead are camped forever,
              the after images of used-up men?

Like all of the champions who devoted themselves to the culture of the body, AK poignantly regrets having only the memory of what life in the body felt like:
11.542    Better, I say to break sod as a farm hand
              for some poor country man, on iron rations,
              than lord it over all the exhausted dead.

Aias (Ajax) refuses to speak to OD.  Why?  Look Ajax up in your Dictionary.  You find that "legends later than the Iliad put Ajax nearly on a par with Achilles."  When AK is slain by Paris (with help from his sister Polyxena, with whom AK was in love; & help from Apollo), who will inherit the divine armor that Hephaistos fashioned?  Aias thinks the choice is obvious.  There is, however, a kind of election with the question being: who would follow into battle?  The men choose OD as the best living warrior, the man that would most likely get them out of the battle alive.  Aias is so outraged at this that he goes looking for OD to settle the matter by a contest of arms.  Athena adds to Aias rage so that Aias mistakes a flock of sheep for OD.  Aias slaughters many & carries a big ram off to his tent, thinking that he has OD.  He tortures the ram all night & the next morning when sanity returns, Ajax cannot face the troops whom he had hoped to convince about his leadership.  Aias commits suicide, throwing away the magnificent body that was his pride.  Aias continues to be sullen when OD bids him:
11.632    Conquer your indignation & your pride [Aias].
              But he gave no reply, & turned away.

Book 12 offers more strange sights:
12.46    the Seirenes will sing his [anyone who hears them] mind away

There are also Skylla & Kharybdis who grab six of OD's crew.  OD says:
12.307.    deathly pity ran me through
               at that sight--far the worst I ever suffered,
               questing the passes of the strange sea.

Even if we acknowledge the qualification about "the worst sight I suffered at sea," doesn't this seem implausible?  What is so horrific about Skylla & Kharybdis?  Read these passages closely & see if you have a good answer to bring to the Chat session :)

Apparently, the worst outrage committed by OD's men -- that caused their deaths -- was eating Helios' cattle.  Why was this so outrageous?  Perhaps these Greeks have become Hindus!  The joke actually reminds us that the Aryan ancestors of the Greeks migrated into northern India as well as into the Greek peninsula. But there are no sacred cows in Homer.  I think the idea here goes back to our theme: hospitality.  The sun comes each morning to enliven our world.  All he asks is to enjoy the sight of his grazing cattle:
12.447    So overweening,
              now they have killed my peaceful kine, my joy
              at morning when I climbed the sky of stars

Humans are rapacious & ungrateful.  Not content to accept the hospitality of the sun, they barbeque his cattle.  Finally, this incident should reminded us of what is transpiring in Ithaka.  The suitors are similarly imposing on Penelope & literally eating up OD's cattle, sheep, & hogs.  Their behavior is equally outrageous.  If justice is be done, those men will go down into the dark forever or justice will not light our world.  Thus Helios, similarly vows:
12.451    Restitution or penalty they shall pay--
              & pay in full -- or I go down forever
              to light the dead men in the underworld. 

Go to the top & click on the next section: Questions.