← Ascend - The Great Books Podcast
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A
Today on Ascend, the Great Books Podcast, we continue our 12 week journey through the Odyssey as we discuss books 15 and 16, the reunion of father and son. This is a beautiful section. It's a wonderful section of the text. Very happy to have Dr. Frank Grabowski joining us again, our mentor throughout this entire journey through the Odyssey. And also our friend Jack Drury from Holy Family Classical School. He's a Latin teacher. He does an excellent job. He was so excited to talk to you today about the Odyssey that he jumped into whatever random supply closet he found at the university he was visiting and streamed from there. So you have that to look forward to as well. And before we jump into the conversation, I just want to say thank you. Thank you to all of you. We've had over 3,000 people start the Odyssey with us. It's been incredibly humbling. We are very happy to help you and be a small group to you as you read through the Great Books. Homer is certainly the teacher. We are all students, but thank you. Thank you so much. And thank you to all those who support us on Patreon. You have access to our written guides, to our chats, to our updates, early access to future episodes. Ascend records almost a year in advance. So sometimes when we have a really excellent episode, we'll release it early for our Patreon supporters. And this is 100% listener supported. So as we have been, to get us started, I will read the summaries of these books from our guide to just kind of set the narrative foundation. So book 15, Athena goes to Sparta, inspires the young Telemachus to return home quickly and advises him on how to avoid the ambush set by the suitors. Menelaus gives Telemachus kingly gifts and sends him and Nestor's son back to Pylos. Telemachus asks Nestor's son to leave him at his ship and not take him back to Nestor's house as to be able to return home quickly and not be hosted by the old king. As Telemachus is praying to Athena before launching his ship, a stranger approaches and asks to sail with him. Telemachus agrees and the prophet Theoclymenus joins him on his journey back to Ithaca. Meanwhile, Odysseus the beggar tells the swineherd he plans to go and beg from the suitors. The swineherd tells Odysseus the beggar his own story and we discover that the swineherd comes from a royal line. He was a toddler, kidnapped, sold into slavery, purchased by Laerces. Odysseus father and raised by Odysseus mother. The book ends with Telemachus returning to Ithaca and heading to the home of the swineherd. So what happens? In book 16, Telemachus arrives at the home of the swineherd and the swineherd greets him like a father welcoming home his darling only son. Telemachus meets Odysseus disguised as a beggar, and the three men discuss the problem of the suitors. Telemachus tells the swineherd to tell Queen Penelope he is back in Ithaca and to have one of her servants tell Iearte is the same. After the departure of the swineherd, Odysseus sees Athena outside the house under the guise of a woman, beautiful, tall, and skilled at weaving things. Odysseus goes to meet her and she says now is the time to reveal himself to his son Telemachus. She transforms him back into Odysseus the hero, and Telemachus is wonderstruck and believes some God has entered the house of the swineherd. Odysseus tells Telemachus he is his father, and after some disbelief, the father and son embrace and weep together. The two of them discuss the slaughter of the suitors and form a plan in which Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, will go into his own home with the suitors until Athena tells him the time is right. Meanwhile, the suitors are told that Telemachus escaped their ambush and is back in Ithaca. Antinous, one of the suitors, calls for the murder of Telemachus, and Penelope overhears the plot and chastises Antinous. The book ends with the swineherd returning home and feasting with Telemachus and Odysseus, who is once more disguised as a beggar. By Athen. Welcome to Ascend the Great Books Podcast. My name is Deacon Harrison Garlick. I live in rural Oklahoma with my wife and five children, serve as a deacon at Holy Family Cathedral, and as Chancellor and General Counsel of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa. In my free time, I like to help people read the Great Books. So if you're new to Ascend, that's our purpose. That's our mission. We're a weekly podcast that helps guide you through the Great Books. We can be like a small group offering a slow and attentive read to these fantastic texts. And just so you know, after the Odyssey, we'll be diving into several more dialogues of Plato in preparation for our launch into Plato's Republic later this fall. So go check us out on X, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Patreon. We appreciate all our supporters who have access to our library of written guides in kind of a question answer format. And also community chats on the great books. And visit thegreatbookspodcast.com okay, so today we are continuing our 12 week study of the Odyssey prior to the new Christopher Nolan movie. Also remember that Dr. Patrick Deneen of Notre Dame, author of why Liberalism Failed, will be joining us at the end of our study to discuss his new book, An American what An Ancient Story Reveals about Our Divided Souls, which is out July 21st. But today we are discussing books 15 and 16 of the Odyssey. We have two fantastic guests. Do you even need an intro at this point? I think everyone knows you.
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B
I always like to hear it. I always like to hear it.
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A
You would like to hear it. Okay. The accolades of Dr. Frank Grabowski, third order Franciscan diaconate candidate, dean of faculty at Holy Family Classical School. I'm sure I forgot something. Also, just our general mentor in the Homeric texts. How are you today?
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B
I'm doing well. Now we have to add thespian, too. Master thespian, owing to my rather amateur performance of Claudius yesterday. So that needs some work. I'm not gonna quit my day job anytime soon.
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A
I did appreciate watching that at the school shakefest. I thought you did a good job. Actually, the kids did a really phenomenal job. It was quite good. Also, we have Mr. Jack Drury, who serves as the Latin teacher at Holy Family Classical School. Jack, how are you today?
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C
I'm doing very good, thank you.
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A
So, Frank, tell us again, like, Holy Family Classical School. You guys have a high school? It's getting off the ground. Just tell us again why it's an excellent school?
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B
Well, it's an excellent school because we read the great books. We're getting these young men and women at where their thumoi are maturing. So they're very spirited. But no, we have excellent discussions, excellent conversations, and fortunately, we have a very, very good and competent Latin teacher in Mr. Drury. And so, no, we're small, but we're growing. And I'm excited. It was totally worth leaving 19 years and tenure behind for Holy Family.
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A
Yeah. No, very good. It's a beautiful little community. Very much appreciate it. So, Mr. Jodori, give us, like, Latin. Why does a classical school have to have Latin?
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C
Yeah, I think fundamentally, there's two reasons for Latin to study Latin, especially at the high school level. The first is Latin is a particularly ordered language that really shapes your understanding of. Of language and the way that Words operate together, which a. It makes you a better English speaker. But much more than that, you know, particularly we speak, we think in words for the most part, makes us better thinkers. And then particularly in the classical tradition, learning Latin allows us to engage with those giants that we stand on much more deeply and within their own language, rather than them coming to us, you know, translated from someone else. Which tends to be the case so often.
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A
Yeah, I think one thing that I appreciated. My daughter goes to the classical school. And so she came home and she was like, well, I have a. I have to give this presentation tomorrow. I'm like, well, what are you doing? She's like, well, I have to recite a section from the Aeneid in Latin. And I was like, really excited. Of course, like this is not the education I grew up with. So I get really excited about her having it. For her, it's very normative and just like, you know, 12 and rolls her eyes and et cetera. But then like I had her, much to her chagrin, I had her recite it in front of the whole family after family prayer. And it was beautiful to listen to. And so, yeah, I have a deep appreciation for the work that you guys are doing at the school.
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C
Yeah, thank you. That's been a. You know, all the. I'm making the sixth grade memorize that. Oh, allies for we have suffered even graver things. Passage from the Aeneid. And they're all very into it. I hear them in the hallway chanting it as they come down the hall.
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A
It is a chant. That's one thing that really caught my attention is that its meter was really. It just like captured you. Anyway, I appreciate it. I appreciate all yalls work. Let's dive into the text. Okay, so we were looking at the Odyssey. We're looking at book 15 and 16. Today we have our kind of famous reunion between Odysseus and Telemachus. But before we kind of jump into that, like book 15, Fagal's entitled says the prince and sets sail for home. We haven't talked about Telemachus in a while. Remember, he's over at Menelaus house. So Athena's gonna go and inspire him to come home. I guess like, just as a large kind of architectonic question is what is the point of Telemachus journey? The Telemachy. What is the actual point and purpose of this? It doesn't seem to have any efficacious impact on Odysseus coming home. He doesn't find anything. Like what's he. Is he trying to Find something out. Odysseus would have come home without him. What is the actual point of Telemachus journey?
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C
Yeah, you know, it seems to me that Telemachus mission as he goes off is to grow up and to become a man. You know, his father is gone. He hasn't had a father figure to grow up as someone to emulate. And you see him way back, I forget which book it is where he has to talk in front of the suitors and he just breaks down crying and you just know that he is not a man yet. And he goes off on this journey and at some point he has to come home and show that he has become the man that he was not before.
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B
And yeah, and just to add to what Jack just said, by encountering, by meeting Odysseus's old mates, Nestor, Menelaus, he's rec, in a way he's reconstructing for himself or maybe constructing for himself the first time the life of his father. And so you know, he did not know his father. Odysseus left at a very, you know, he left Telemachus at a very young age, an infant. And so you know, as Jack said, first and foremost this, this, you know, this, this journey by Telemachus is, is a, a coming of age story of sorts. But also, you know, he's collecting important information about his father, father that he never knew. And so I think it, I think this, this journey serves that twofold purposes.
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A
Yeah, no, very good. I think, yeah. One way to say it is I think that Telemachus has to learn how to become a threat. So like to Jack's point, like he's not a threat when he's in his father's home with the suitors, like he's not a threat. And so I think in certain ways, like he has to grow in his own Thumas. Like he has to find that thematic. I like to mention about talking to his father's friends to a certain degree. I think then they're a stead of his father. Right. That he can go and talk to them. He learns about his father kind of vicariously through them. And I think that yeah, he has to learn how to become a threat. And we see him do that, we'll see him then enter into that. I think when his father starts to kind of conspire with him, how we're going to take back the house. So it's something to watch. I think that too not to grind too much against people's kind of presuppositions about the Odyssey. But I also think that, or at least I'm entertaining the idea that that also includes Penelope. Will Penelope actually align herself with to the will of the gods? Or will she align herself to something more akin to Clytemnestra? Because we've already seen Telemachus compared to Orestes and what he was called to do out of justice by the gods. And so I think that's a big question too then of where is Penelope going to land and her kind of role as the gods unfurl this. And I think that's something that I've been paying attention to this time, is to what degree does Athena and even Zeus care about Penelope's role and reuniting Odysseus and Penelope? I think that's a question that I've had throughout this read through. So, yeah, no, good, good questions, good comments overall. Let's look at the actual text. So Athena comes, she's telling Telemachus that he needs to leave Menelaus's house. She kind of tells him three things, kind of just, you know, a crude sketch. She tells him first, this story, this kind of yarn, if you will, that, hey, you know how women work. Like, you leave Penelope, she's gonna. She's gonna find. She's gonna forget about Odysseus, she's gonna forget about you. You're the son of her dead husband and she'll get a new husband and all the riches that come with that. You better go home. You better hurry up. So we get this kind of story against Penelope. Then two, she tells him about the ambush that the suitors have set for him. So that's something we haven't talked about in several books. But there's an ambush, it's a naval one. So he's gonna sail home, they're gonna attack him. So she basically says, you know, you sail a wide berth. It's very interesting in the narrative that we don't really get a whole lot of details about that. Telemachus just shows up safely back in Ithaca, and then three, he's told to go to the swineherd first. When he arrives back, he has to go to the swineherd. I kind of want to jump to Menelaus and his reaction and guest friendship and things like that, but. Any other comments on what Athena tells Telemachus?
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B
Yeah, I have something to mention. And. And it's just, well, the rhetorical move that she makes when she says that, it's wrong again, quoting from the fagals. It's wrong to rove so far leaving Your holdings, unprotected crowds in your palace, carving up your wealth. Right? So here she's appealing directly to his Thumas, his sense of honor. All right, And I think that this, to go back to Jack's point, I mean, this. This is showing Telemachus now a man, or a young man who. Who values the things that men value, right? Not just possessions, but rather the things that give a man honor. They give him a reputation.
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C
Yeah, I. I think that I'm depending on that. You know, the claim that these are your lands is. Is quite interesting because Odysseus is very obviously alive, especially to Athena. And this is something I think we'll get into, especially in book 16. But there's this weird game that begins to be played of like, who is the head of the household? Athena treats Telemachus as if he's the head of the household. And she's also going to treat Odysseus as if he's the head of the household. And who's going to assume the responsibilities for what as things go on.
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A
Yeah, really well said. No, I appreciate that. I appreciate that dynamic too. That's something I probably need to pay more attention to. Let's jump into Menelaus, because I find his character here really fascinating. So Telemachus knows he needs to go home. He tells Nestor's son, who's with him, that we need to leave. And we can't leave in the middle of the night. We gotta wait. Menelaus, though, this is what I find interesting about him. So he just seems to be like the consummate host. He understands that they want to leave. He understands that they need to go down a line. Oh, before 80 or so he says, balance is best in all things. It's bad either way. Spurring the stranger home who wants to linger, holding the one who longs to leave. You know, welcome the coming and speed the parting guest. And what I thought was really interesting about, one, his intuition of how to treat the guest and treat it well. And two, just how well he takes care of Telemachus so we can get into the gifts he receives and what Helen gives and things of this nature. But it really made me stop and think about large in the Homeric story that Menelaus is such a good host and he's presented as being so sensitive to zinnia, to guest friendship, when it's really a violation of guest friendship. In his own home of Paris, absconding with Helen, that actually started this entire ordeal. And even Helen herself. Right. So just to kind of get into that a little bit. Telemachus, I think shows a lot of his maturation and how he responds. So Jack talked about like an earlier part where he, you know, he tries to talk to the suitors and he cries. If you remember when he tried to talk to Nestor the first time, he tells Athena that he doesn't even know what to say. He doesn't know how to talk to a king. Here already in very quick order, we see Telemachus is maturing. This is line a little bit 400. And how he responds to Menelaus. He's understanding the politics, the sensitivities of zinnia much better. And then he gives many gifts. He gets a two handed cup, he gets a mixing bowl. And then I love this. Helen of all people gives him a largest, loveliest robe which she says he can have for his own bride to wear. I love that Helen is the one that gives a gift for his bride, given her own history. But any thoughts here on Menelaus as the host and the gifts that he gives?
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B
Yeah, just a brief comment. I sometimes wonder how much of his brother's fate, Agamemnon's fate, has a bearing on the temperament of Menelaus. You know, not that Menelaus was never a gracious host, but prior to the war, but coming back or at least along the way hearing about what happened with Agamemnon, I wonder if that had any sort of influence on Menelaus and just his outlook on life and death and all of those other important things. I mean, war tends to change someone. War tends to change people in a pretty radical way.
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A
And I would add to that too. We saw when Telemachus first appeared in the house of Menelaus how much he lamented the war because of the death of his brother. So no, I think that has impacted him greatly. You know, one thing too, and this is kind of just a, I don't know, kind of a first time reader comment that really struck me is I find it really interesting with both Menelaus and Nestor that they understand the plight of Telemachus, but Telemachus has to do it on his own. Like you kind of think, like, well, okay, Menelaus, you see what's going on. Why don't you send 50 men from your house to help Telemachus retake the house of Odysseus, like Nestor, why don't you give, you know, your men to go help? It's really interesting to me and it's really kind of subtle. They don't ever, to my memory, they don't ever take it up explicitly, but this has to be something that Telemachus has to do. He has to go home and capture the house of his father. It can't be something that they do for him. And that was something that I thought was really interesting the first time I read it. Okay, let's look at the meal. So they eat a meal together. And then I think Menelaus kind of shows his piety a lot around, like, 160 or so. And then we get the bird omen. So you see, again, around 170, Telemachus, I think, matures and his courtesies. He understands how to talk. The bird omen kicks in around 180. This is an eagle clutching a huge white goose in its talons. I mean, any thoughts on the fact that it's Helen, Helen the prophet who is able to interpret the bird sign for us? So, of course, this is, you know, Odysseus is the eagle. The fatted goose are the suitors that he's going to come and swoop in and tear apart. But I find it really fascinating that it's Helen that is the one that interprets the bird signs. And I could be wrong, but the only other time I see Helen playing this type of role is if you remember, we found out earlier that kind of haunting story that Menelaus told of Helen walking around the Trojan horse and a daemon came upon her, and she's calling out to the men inside the horse by name. And if you read it a certain way, they hear her in the voice of the respective wives as well. So that's a moment. I mean, she's also a demigod, right? She's a daughter of Zeus. So I don't know. I mean, any thoughts here on the bird omen or Helen the prophet?
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B
Well, I'd like to hear Jack's thought on this. I wonder whether it was a pause or a delay in Menelaus thinking whether that was deliberate or whether Helen beat him to the punch. I see. I wonder whether this was. Whether this is a case of Menelaus graciously allowing Helen to take the lead on this. I mean, it is a very. The relationship that Helen has with Menelaus is actually quite charming and lovely, considering all that they've been through. So obviously there's been a reconciliation between the two. But, yeah, for the female in this case, to interpret the birdsign, I think is certainly, Homer has an important point to make, although I'm not exactly sure what that might be.
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C
In my first thoughts, I want to Think of, I mean, the Odyssey is a book of the return. And it seems to me that Helen is much more the image of the return of a homecoming after the Iliad than Menelaus is. So it may be appropriate that in some way for that reason that Helen is the one to prophesy of Odysseus's homecoming. But if I recall, like Nestor also says that Odysseus will come home, correct? This isn't the first time he's heard this. This isn't new to Telemachus, right?
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A
No, I don't think so. And he, and he continues to bear a certain spirit of disbelief as well. We'll see that even when he meets Odysseus, his own father, he still seems to absorbed a lot of that disbelief and skepticism, which is probably not too shocking of the son of Odysseus would have that disposition. But let's look at. Okay, so kind of pushing it forward. So there's this interesting thing where say they're leaving. They leave Menelaus and then they need to skip Nestor's house. And so he tells him, like, you know, I can't be a guest in Nestor's house. First off, I'm still shocked that Nestor's still alive. That was one of my big shocks when I read the Odyssey the first time, that Nestor's still kicking it, but he's there. What's interesting to me though, just like in a shallow read, is they actually worry about Nestor flying into a rage that's a little bit forward. Line 240, which I thought was really interesting because I don't ever remember Nestor ever flying into a rage about anything. He seems to be the even keel storyteller old man. He remembers the, the golden age when men were men, things of this nature. So that was only one thing that caught my attention, that they skipped Nestor's house. And then they go and so they're going to sail straight from, what is that, Pylos back to Ithaca. And we get then the introduction of probably one of the most interesting slash odd characters I think, in the entire Odyssey, one of the most mysterious characters by far. So this is around line 250. So Telemachus is preparing to launch the ship. I think this is important that he's in the middle of the ritual to Athena. So he's going to, he's praying to Athena. He's in the middle of this ritual at the front of the ship. And as he does this, this man appears. It says a man from a far off country came toward him. Now a Fugitive out of Argos. He had killed a man. He was a prophet. And this is. So I'll give my Oklahoma pronunciation. You guys correct me because you guys both read Greek. I don't know. How do you pronounce it? Theo Clementis. How do you pronounce his name?
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B
Yeah, that's right. Theo Clementis.
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A
So Theo Clementis comes in, and he's a prophet. He's killed a man. And he says, hey, can I. He actually swears on the rites that he sees Telemachus doing. This is around 290. He says, I beg you by these rites and the gods you pray to, then by your own life and the lives of all the men who travel with you, tell me truly, don't hold me back. Who are you? Where are you from? Your city and your parents? And so what's really interesting here is we seem to have a form of guest friendship about the ship itself, where Telemachus then has to welcome the stranger, a stranger who has apparently murdered someone who's, by the way, details and facts we don't even receive. And then he welcomes this prophet onto the ship to sail back to Ithaca. This is a very odd narrative. What are your thoughts here?
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B
Well, Homer's, at least in the Odyssey, has this habit of introducing some rather strange heroes or protagonists. I mean, we've seen Eumaeus, for instance, the swineherd. We'll see him again. Not your typical hero, not your typical main character. But Cleomenes is another example here of a person who is going to be allied with Odysseus and son. So Homer, I think, is breaking a lot of the rules and the common tropes that we expect to encounter in these epics. We wouldn't think that a murderer would be somebody that would accompany Telemachus back home. But as we'll see, he will play a very important role later in the prophecies that he makes. So, yeah, it is very. It's odd. But again, there's so much. There are so many oddities in the Odyssey that stray from the common fare that we've come to expect in the Iliad.
- [26:34]
C
It's also going to kind of prefigure the story that Odysseus is going to give to Telemachus in 16 of his past. Right. As someone who's. Who's killed someone, who's from a rich family and run away. So I. I mean, I think this, in some ways, is part of the training that Telemachus gets, even to meet his father in the future as well. And you mentioned Nestor flying into a rage. Have you ever heard of a, of a man named Darius Phrygius? He's, he claims to be an eyewitness of the Trojan War and he writes his own account. It's very pro Trojan. And in this account, Nestor is the most wrathful Greek of all by far. And this is the, the, the Trojan War story that, that gets picked up in the Middle Ages far more than Homer. They actually, they think that Homer's a liar. In the Middle Ages texts like Roman de Troy, Nestor is, is. He's, he flies into a rage like every minute. It's funny you mentioned that.
- [27:37]
A
That is fascinating. No, I love, I need to have a better understanding of the different accounts of the Trojan War. One of my favorite ones is the Egyptian one that Herodotus has recourse to, in which Helen never even made it to Troy, that she stayed in Egypt. And then all the Achaeans show up in Troy and they don't believe that she's not there. And so then it's even this like worse kind of event in which basically Troy burns to the ground even though the repentant, they would have given her up, but they just simply don't have her. Yeah. Comparing the Homeric tale to other tales is certainly a study worth undertaking and one I'm very nascent in. A few other thoughts here on this. Like, you know, Theo Clementis, this interesting prophet. We have one. His name means he who hears or hearkens to the gods. Other things is he's referred to as a stranger, but he's also referred to as a stranger even after we receive his name. Which is interesting for Homer to do. And what I mentioned earlier too, I think even as a first time reader, one of the things that caught my attention the most is that neither Homer nor the prophet ever tell us whether or not the murder is just or not. We get no facts about the murder. And I thought that was so interesting that Telemachus is like, oh yeah, you murdered a guy, that's fine. Yeah, come on my ship, that's perfectly fine. We have nothing and no commentary about the theme of justice in the murder itself.
- [28:57]
B
Well, murders are usually by definition unjust. I don't know what word is being translated. So it's not that he just killed a man, but he murdered a man. So I think the implication is that the death was brought about in a morally questionable way. But I mean, your point still stands, Deacon. It's a good one.
- [29:15]
A
But that would even be, I mean that would even be more right that then it is. It is a murder. And then Telemachus seems to simply welcome him because he appeals to the rights of Athena in a kind of an interesting form of guest friendship in which the house or the ship is the house itself. Benedetti makes a comment that he tends to play the role of the divine in replacing Mentor. So on Telemachus's way out, he had Mentor to guide him. And on his way back into Ithaca, now he has this kind of mysterious prophet. So it's an interesting character. It's also a character. It's one of those characters that too. It's like if you removed him from the Odyssey, what actually gets removed with him?
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B
And just to add one more point, Deacon, I think it's important. I think it's significant that Theoclymenus actually confesses to this. I mean, he didn't have to tell Telemachus this. So something to maybe track in the later books is the. Is the theme of repentance. And we have to ask ourselves, does Odysseus undergo, you know, kind of moral transformation where he looks back upon things that he's done and is repentant or that, you know, if he feels sorry for having done those things.
- [30:36]
A
Yeah, that's good. Okay, let's shift then, into the second half of this book. We have a scene change, right? We go back to Ithaca, and we're back into the hut of the swineherd. And once again, we're told that Odysseus needs to test Eumaeus. He needs to test the swineherd. So Odysseus tells him the story of like, hey, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go beg up for the suitors. And the swineherd is like, this is a terrible idea, right? So, you know, a few things here that I think is. Is interesting maybe at the beginning. I mean, what I want to jump to is, is the swineherd story, because I think that's like the. The crux of the second half. But I think it's interesting that again, Odysseus is still testing the swineherd, even though I think we've seen his loyalty has been proven time and time again. We also get Laertes. So Odysseus asked for an update on his parents, even though obviously the swineherd doesn't know that it's him. That's a little bit before 390. And so we see Laertes is actually still alive. Obviously, his mother died of grief. We were told that when he visited the underworld. You know, one thing, I actually think Laertes is an incredibly mysterious character and a confusing character for me. And if you have any light to shed on that, I'm happy to welcome it. Where it was actually really surprising to me the first time I read the Odyssey that he was alive, one that why is he not king and Odysseus is? And then if the king leaves, why Laertes doesn't actually take back up that mantle and take ownership of his home, but rather he leaves and then plays this like, grieving parental role out in the country. You know, he's taking his meals with the servants since Telemachus ate or since Telemachus left, he hasn't even eaten. I mean, anyone want to shed some light kind of on the role of Laertes in the story itself? Or maybe he remains a mystery, I don't know. I think he's an incredibly mysterious character. I mean, at the end, I think we get towards book 24. I think he plays like a certain pedagogical role, but his overall arc in the Odyssey overall is a role that I'm still not terribly settled with.
- [32:41]
B
Before pressing into Eumaeus story, I was wondering if, if you found at all interesting the questions that precede the questions that Odysseus asks, because I was trying to remember, and even in the previous paragraph. So Odysseus invites Eumaeus to tell his story. These are very strange questions, right? Was your city sacked? Were you all alone herding your sheep and cattle when pirates kidnapped? I mean, of course, Deacon, you recall in some of our previous conversations how Odysseus often lets things slip, right? For instance, in Phoeicia, when he was engaging in the athletic contests, you know, he mentions that he competed in Troy in some sort of archery contest. And so that was a moment where if, if, if the Phaeacians were actually paying attention, they would have, they would have asked, well, what do you mean you were in Troy? Because that wasn't at all part of the story of, of, of, of his life that, that he, that he revealed. And so here again, I wonder, in asking these questions, not knowing anything about Eumaeus life, is this a slip or is this an invitation to Eumaeus or some sort of clue for Eumaeus as to Odysseus true identity?
- [34:20]
A
The thesis being there is that his questions are too tailored to Eumaeus's life for him. Not. Yeah, I see that. Oh, that's a good catch. I still think I'm still struggling with the Fact of the fact that Odysseus calls Eumaeus before Eumaeus ever tells him his name, and whether that's supposed to be that one too.
- [34:39]
B
Exactly.
- [34:41]
A
Well, let's look at the story then. So this is line 430. A little bit after that, 4:30 in Fagles the Swineherd starts, my friend, the swineherd answered the foreman of men. You really want my story? So a few things there. One we're still tracking. How much does the swineherd actually know and what. Also what is his inclination? So even if he has these kind of imprints, these kind of things where he thinks it might be Odysseus, how much does his own disbelief and also just like how many stories he's heard previously, have these made him numb to actually believing what he is probably getting a little bit of an inclination on to the foreman of men. That epithet that he has. I mean, obviously he does oversee men, the other servants and things like that. But I think it's a play on words where he also is a leader amongst men. And I actually learned today that Plato's statesman makes a play off this as well, that the epithet of foreman of men means a royalty. Right. It's been foreshadowing that there's something noble about this humble swineherd. So maybe just to sketch out his story real fast. So it's really, I mean, particularly as a father, it's a tragic story, right. When I read it, I think it's probably one of the most tragic, sad stories that we have in the Homeric. So anyway, what's the basic story here? He's actually royalty. The swineherd is actually royalty. And what was it? This is a crude sketch and then we can get into details. But he's in the house, his caretaker, right, his nurse is a servant in the house. And she basically absconds with him. She has actually become in a relationship with one of these kind of merchants, these pirates. And so she absconds with him so she can have a ride home. And so she takes gold, she takes goblet, she takes these things, but she takes him too. And he trusts her because that's his nurse, that's his caretaker. And so she takes him on the ship. This is how he was stolen from the royal household. And then we see that then in the midst of them going away, Artemis actually comes and showers arrows down upon and kills the woman on the ship. This is a little bit after 5:30. It says Artemis, showering arrows, came and shot the woman Headfirst into the bilge. And she splashed like a diving turn and the crewman heaved her body over, a nice treat for the seals and fish, but left me all alone, cowering, sick at heart. So just as a side note, she's denied any type of burial rights. And then Laertes ends up buying him as a slave. So it's a very tragic story, but a few things that just stick out to me, just in general. One, there's all kinds of parallels to what's going on right now. So we have a servant who turns and betrays her master, the king, and betrays his son. And you compare that to. Then the swineherd is the loyal servant who's pining after the return of the king and is, you know, wanting to take good care of the queen. And also, as we'll see, has apparently been taking good care of Telemachus and has a relationship there. I think there's also a parallel between this story and the serving women of Odysseus home. And so we see then, right, this was one of the parallels down at 470 that the woman is seduced by one of these traitors, one of these merchants, and she starts that relationship with him, and then that's the foothold that starts the betrayal of the house. They're actually there a year. It's a long betrayal, it's a long treachery, it's a long game, as they're kind of filling up the storehouse of the ship before they leave. And so I think that's analogous, too, to the women of Odysseus's house who have started relationships with the suitors and are betraying their king. I think there's a lot here. But what kind of comments and thoughts do you have on this passage?
- [38:36]
B
Well, I like what seems to be Homer's message that there is really this disconnect between one's social status and one's moral character. And so, okay, is Eumaeus royalty? Well, yes, but he's lost that. But yet that hasn't affected who he is. That hasn't affected his nobility. And so whereas nobility, perhaps in the Iliad, is typically most closely associated with one's social status, with, again, with the honor that one has accumulated through war prizes. Here we see Eumaeus as a good man, but his goodness isn't defined by what station he holds or what he owns.
- [39:33]
C
But we still do find greatness as something that is kind of patrilineal or coming from a high station. With Emmaus, he is the Loyal servant. And he has a real dignitas to him. But in some ways that comes. It kind of. It's implied to come from the nature of who he is when he was born.
- [39:57]
A
Yeah. On both of your comments, it's interesting that the, the best servant is from the royal household. The best servant is actually from the aristocracy. It's from the royal house. I think that's a. That's an interesting idea. And I like Dr. Grabowski's juxtaposition and Jack's comment of, you know, so here's a man who has arete, but does not seem to have the station in life that would mirror his noble soul, because we actually. He's actually called noble on several occasions. And so I wonder here, I mean, that was one of the notes that I wrote down, is like, is there such thing as an arete of a simple life? He cares for the pigs, and he cares for them very well. And even as he watches them, he is a good foreman of the men. He's a good leader of his station. And if you remember, he even has this wonderful, incredible, impressive memory of actually not just the swine, but of all of his master's holdings. He can list everything that's going on in his master's home. So, yeah, there's a very interesting juxtaposition here of having such a noble soul play such a lowly role, but then be so instrumental in the retaking of the house. One thing, too, that stood out to me, I don't have a comment on this, is the uniqueness of the island in which he comes from. And what is Homer? Is, Is there a pedagogical purpose for this? And so this is. There's an island. Siree, siree.
- [41:22]
B
I'm.
- [41:23]
A
I'm happy to be corrected here. S Y R I E. But it has something unique about. Says not so packed with people. Still a good place, though. Fine for sheep and cattle, rich in wine and wheat. Hunger never attacks the land. No sickness either, that always stalks the lives of us poor men. So in certain ways, okay, so that seems to be a utopia. But why aren't there a lot of people here if there's all this food and no one dies of old age? Well, no. As each generation grows old on the island down. Apollo comes with his silver bow with Artemis, and they shoot them all to death with gentle arrows. Two cities there are that split the land in half and over them both my father ruled in force. And then. Okay, so that's, that's all fascinating on the front end, but it's bookended by then Artemis coming down and shooting the disloyal servant. This kind of act of divine justice. I mean, any thoughts on the uniqueness of the island or the fact that the disloyal servant is killed by divine justice? Which, again, seems to be a foreshadowing of Odysseus's home, just broadly speaking.
- [42:30]
B
Well, I guess what I find interesting, Phaeacia is also described as a utopia of sorts. And of course, things don't turn out well for them in their assisting Odysseus to return. And so I wonder if Homer here is commenting on the need for struggle, the need for labor in defining a people and in sustaining a nation. So when things are easy, that typically leads to a kind of stasis or even death. But through struggle, through labor, through hard work, a people can survive and indeed thrive.
- [43:17]
A
Yeah, I think it's a fascinating kind of book ending to that. I think there's lots of parallels to Odysseus home as well. Kind of taking in this theory that, you know, all these things are pedagogical, according to Homer. Homer's always trying to teach us something. Okay, let's push on. So we have Telemachus arrives back in Ithaca. There's this very. It ends with a very interesting commentary on guest friendship. So when the ship left for Ithaca, we had this. This kind of interesting situation of zinnia, of guest friendship, of welcoming the prophet Theocominus onto the ship. So look at 580. So when he first has to figure out where to send the prophet, you know, clearly he can't send it back to his house. So I found it fascinating. The first person he actually recommends, he says, but I'll mention someone else. You might just visit Eurymachis. Okay, that's one of the suitors. And so I was really curious here. And, I mean, he speaks very highly of him. His upstanding son. He's the man of the hour. Our island people look on him like a God. The prince of suitors, hottest to wed my mother and sees my father's powers like it's. I'm not entirely sure what's happening in this passage, nor do I. Like, Eurymachis is clearly, I think, the more dangerous of the suitors. So Antinous. O Antinous, he. He's just an open book, like, you understand where he is, but we'll see even in the next book, like Urimachus is, you know, Eurymachus is actually, I think, a much more dangerous suitor because he's clever, because he's a rhetorician. Right. And so what's interesting to me is that then in the middle, you get Eurymachus, then you get the omen around 590 or so. So we get another. This is what, a bird sign? Yeah, we get another bird sign and the feathers come down and things like this. And so the prophet then tells him why, the moment I saw it here before my eyes, I knew it was a sign. No line more kingly than yours. In all of Ithaca, yours will reign forever. And so Telemachus is like, oh, yeah, all this should come true. And so then he shifts and turns to his trusted friend Piraeus. You know, will you take this prophet in and, you know, give him guest friendship? It's a very fascinating way for this text to end. Any thoughts on this kind of commentary on Zinnia? The shift from Eurymachus to Piraeus? I mean, is Telemachus seeing that, oh, this prophet is legitimate. This prophet speaks on behalf. So I'm not going to send him to the suitors. I'm going to send him to my friend. I wasn't quite sure how to take this.
- [45:47]
B
No, I'm not sure either, Deacon. Isn't Eurymachus the one suitor that we're told Penelope favors the most?
- [45:58]
A
I don't recall. I mean, I certainly see him as the most dangerous. And he'll speak on behalf of the suitors to Penelope in the next book.
- [46:04]
B
Yeah, he's certainly not as obviously threatening as Antinous. Antinous is openly plotting to kill Telemachus. So, yeah, Eurymachus's place here is a bit puzzling to me, too.
- [46:21]
A
All right, very good. Well, that's good. We'll end on that puzzle. We'll end book 15. Okay, so let's look at book 16. So Fagol's entitles this father and son. We finally get our grand reunion between Telemachus and Odysseus. Okay, so just starting off, I'm really interested if there's a sub motif in Homer about dogs and what dogs can actually perceive. I find this to be fascinating. So notice at the very beginning here, when Telemachus comes up to the swineherd's, you know, hut is that the dogs that were going to kill Odysseus are actually very familiar with Telemchus. They come up, they nuzzle him, et cetera. And even Odysseus notices this. And so I thought, you know, what do we make of this? And so what I thought and what it's coupled with is the meeting, the warm Meeting between Telemachus and the swineherd, that Telemachus must have been here often. Telemachus must have come to the swineherd often as a father figure because Homer lays this on really thick. If you look around line 20, when Telemachus walks into the house and the swineherd sees him, Homer tells us as a father brimming with love welcomes home his darling only son in a warm embrace. What pain he's born for him, him alone home now in the 10th year, from far abroad. So the loyal swineherd hugged the beaming prince. He clung for dear life, covering him with kisses. Yes, like one escaped from death. So it's interesting that Homer presents their relationship as father and son and in a lot of ways actually gives us the reunion that we're expecting between Odysseus and Telemachus. But it's between Telemachus and the swineherd. Any thoughts on, like, the familiarity here or the intimacy in Telemachus and the swineherd?
- [48:15]
B
Well, I can't help but comment on your remark about the dogs. As a Franciscan, of course, I love the way that Homer depicts these human animal relationships. Of course, later we'll meet Odysseus's rather aged dog, Argos. And so, you know, you mentioned how way that these domesticated animals respond to familiar and to unfamiliar people. I just think that Homer is painting for us just a very realistic picture. It shows us that Homer pays attention, that he is an educator, that again, the reality, the three dimensionality of this story is coming across in these small little details. So it's not just like the big up and coming engagement between Odysseus and the suitors. Of course, we're all looking forward to that. But there are these moments here where I think Homer really does tap into life in just a very robust way that I find quite touching and real.
- [49:31]
C
Yeah, and actually I find that this scene makes Odysseus homecoming just far more bittersweet than Telemachus's because, you know, these dogs are going to stay in Telemachus's life, the dogs that, that Telemachus knows. And we're going to get the scene with the dog in a bit, you know, later on. That is just, I mean, tragic in many ways. It seems like Homer puts it in there just to like rip our hearts out. But Telenicus is, I mean, Telemachus has a homecoming, a proper homecoming and the homecoming that we wish for Odysseus. But in many ways, because Odysseus is a Stranger, it can't be the same. And it's going to be far more bittersweet. I mean, how do you come home when people don't know you anymore? When it's maybe it's questionable? Whether or not it is home is kind of the large question of the Odyssey.
- [50:29]
A
Yeah. No, very good. Okay, let's look at. Then they start to have this meeting between Telemachus and Odysseus, but Odysseus is still in the guise of the beggar. Their first interaction I find fascinating. So a little bit after line 40, he says, as he approached his father, Odysseus rose to yield his seat. So this is the beggar giving up his seat to the prince of the island. But the son on his part waved him back. Stay where you are, stranger. I know we can find another seat somewhere here on our farm. And here's the man to fetch it. How do we read this? So is this. I mean, first off, I just want to say something about Telemachus. Telemachus is suffering from fatherlessness, but somehow has a phenomenal amount of arete in virtue. So even though we talk about him needing to find his thumas and, like, it has to be nurtured and he needs to become a threat and these kind of things, and he's certainly better than all the young men who are the suitors, even without that, who also, by the way, have been suffering from fatherlessness for the most part. Right. This missing generation in Ithaca. Telemachus seems to embody just a certain natural nobility that I think is really fascinating. And he also has an element to him that I typically don't associate with the ancient Greeks. If you remember, at certain times he's shown a certain modesty, a certain humility that I find to be fascinating that I'm not entirely sure you can just kind of chalk up to, like, Odyssean rhetoric or where he's using certain advantages and perceptions against the person. So here, like, I don't know, like, he. He lets the beggar stay and he talks about our farm. I didn't know if this was, like, do we take this as, like, he's so familiar with the swineherd's hut that he treats it as his own home in his own guest friendship. And so he won't make the stranger, the guest, give up. He'll offer him to stay and he'll get another seat. Like, does this comment both on Telemachus understanding of guest friendship, but also, again, it's another type of familiarity with the swineherd's home, that he treats it as his own.
- [52:37]
B
I like that read a lot. The text also, I think, operates symbolically here where Odysseus is not ready yet. Or at least we're being told that it is not yet time for Odysseus to abandon the throne to Telemachus. And so I wonder if, and maybe this is something Jack can comment on. I'll invite him to share his thoughts. But you know, there's this question that even my students have about whether Penelope and Telemachus believe that Odysseus is still alive. I mean, is, is, does. Is some. Is there some sense in which Telemachus detects Odysseus in the beggar? I don't know. I mean, I don't. I don't think we have any. Any reason to. To think he does. But that's always, that's always played in the back of my mind.
- [53:33]
C
I think that Telemachus is far less likely to know it before him than Penelope personally, just in the. In the difference. I think that Odysseus kind of wants to comment later on about the knowledge between a husband and wife and how they know each other. And I do think that Penelope knows beforehand, but I don't think that Telemachus does until the very moment.
- [54:05]
A
Yeah, I will say Telemachus doesn't seem to be the best at perceiving things. The swineherd. I have a lot of thoughts on Penelope. I have a lot of thoughts on Telemachus. Doesn't seem to notice a lot of things, even though I think I would give him a great nobility. And we'll see some examples of that in this text. Even though I am. I think it's a great question for all the characters is how much they suspect Odysseus. And Telemachus, though, is at a huge disadvantage because he's never seen him. Right. His father is this mythical concept that he's always heard about. I mean, even he's had prior statements like Odysseus, my father. If Penelope tells me what is true. Right. I mean, the fatherliness of Odysseus is a complete theoretical for him. He has no image by which to actually recognize. Whereas those who seem to have an image of Odysseus do seem to be very suspicious of him in this guise, which is really interesting because it's a divine disguise. It's not like he went and rolled in the dirt and like put on a beard and stuff like that. And people could see through it. There's something about. Even with a divine Disguise that familiarity and dare I say, even love can actually perceive that to a certain degree. Okay, so let's push through. So Telemachus, they're going to have a meal, they're all eating together. Telemachus is asking questions about, you know, who is the stranger, etc. Just a few things I noted. One, I thought it was interesting that Telemachus presents the two options before his mother. And again, I'm trying to actually have a deep and critical read of Penelope, this read through as opposed to, I think maybe the surface read of just like the woman who's pining for her husband to come home, etc. Sometimes we get this kind of romantic rose colored glasses version of the Odyssey. So he has this. He presents it down around line 80. Then my mother's wavering, always torn two ways, whether to stay with me and care for the household true to her husband's bed, the people's voice as well, which I thought was interesting, or leave at long last with the best man in Achaea, who courts her in the halls, who offers her the most. So two things. One, I thought was interesting that the people's voice is behind staying with Telemachus. Two, notice that Telemachus doesn't actually predicate this upon Odysseus coming home, just that Penelope is true to the bed, which means that she has to hold off long enough for Telemachus to take the reins of the house and become the king. I thought that was a fascinating way that he presents, that his presentation, in other words, his presentation of Penelope isn't predicated upon Odysseus coming home.
- [56:36]
B
Right. And I think this shows yet again Telemachus maturation. I mean, would he have been able to say this in the way he does prior to his departure for Pylos? So, I mean, I. So I think that we're beginning to see emerge from Telemachus a political shrewdness that we hadn't yet seen up to this point.
- [57:02]
C
Within the Homeric world, to be the head of the household kind of constitutes you having the power to do three things. The one is to organize your female relationships. The second is to organize travel. And the second is to care for strangers. We see this care for strangers, like here in this moment, and the organization of travel elsewhere. But this is him demonstrating that he, as the man of the household is the one capable of. Of organizing his mother's marital relationships. Even if it's not something he wants to do, it's something that he's going to take charge of. And so it It. It is like a necessary part of his maturation into the. The head of the household that he could be.
- [57:53]
A
I'm interested in what you guys thought about Odysseus seemingly testing Telemachus and even telling him what he would do if he was in his shoes. This is after line 100. He says, Tell me though, do you let yourself be so abused or do people around you about stirred up by the prompting of some God, despise you, or are your brothers at fault? Skip down a bit. He says, were I were young as you to match my spirit. Now it seems it's interesting here. Like, in one way he could be testing Telemachus. Thumas, like, do you have what it takes to go in and retake this home? In a certain way too, he could be testing his prudence because that's exactly what Odysseus is not supposed to do is go marching right into the hall and try and kill them all. Because then he might end up like Agamemnon. He doesn't know friend from foe. So I don't know. It's an interesting test of Telemachus, I think, is how to read this passage. Any thoughts?
- [58:49]
B
Could it also be understood as Odysseus testing himself in a way, you know, bouncing ideas off of Telemachus? I certainly think that, you know, the obvious read is that right? He wants to make sure. He wants to. I mean, he wants to ensure himself that Telemachus is prepared to undertake this monumental, monumental task. But. But Odysseus in a way, still has to work out a solution to this problem. And so in a way, you know, one might read this passage as Odysseus using Telemachus as a soundboard of sorts.
- [59:30]
A
I like that. I like that a lot. Okay, let's push forward a little bit. So Telemachus then wants Eumaeus to leave and to go tell Penelope that he is home. There's an interesting back and forth where they ask about whether or not to tell King Laertes as well. And Telemachus has this kind of like, I think, political prudence to say, no, not yet. Like, go tell my mom. And then my mom, Penelope can have her servant. Then go tell Laertes, which effectively, I think, delays the telling. And then we get this. Well, no, not to skip too far ahead. So that gets Eumaeus out of the house. And then we kind of finally get what we want, which is which, again, this goes. I found this funny because this goes back to Telemachus inability to actually understand what's going on. So Athena appears. This is after a little bit before line 180. It says that she stands in the exit, in the doorway, approaching closer now, she appeared as a woman, beautiful, tall, and skilled at weaving lovely things. Just at the shelter's door, she stopped, visible to Odysseus, but Telemachus could not see her since her there. The gods don't show themselves to every man alive. Odysseus saw her, so did the dogs. No barking now. They whimpered, cringing away in terror through the yard. So just on a surface level, it's funny, that's our third meeting of the dogs. So with Odysseus, they attack him. Telemachus, they're familiar with him and they nuzzle him. With Athena, they understand something's there and they run in fear. But what do you make of this appearance of Athena and Telemachus inability to see Athena?
- [61:11]
B
Is the point that Athena doesn't make herself visible to Telemachus, or that she does, but Telemachus can't see her?
- [61:21]
A
Well, what's interesting to me in this passage is that. So there's different ways this happens in Homer, right? So one could be that the goddess herself is standing in front and he can't see her in her glory, if you will. That doesn't seem to be happening. What's interesting here is that Athena is in disguise and he can't see her at all. It's not that he can't see her through the disguise, which is typically what we see. Typically what we see is that people can't ascertain that they're talking to a goddess or a God here. That's not true. He just can't see her at all, which I find to be fascinating. And I wonder too, how much to lean into this, of what she appears to be. In certain ways, she seems to be a certain ideal. She's tall, she's beautiful, she's skilled at weaving lovely things. She is, in a certain way, that feminine ideal, but also very much Athena insofar as she's the goddess of war and strategy, but also of crafts. And those two go together, right? So she can weave the material, but she can also weave the strategy and the wills of men and things like this in wartime. And so I just. I don't know. It's a. It's a really fascinating passage. Of course, then she tells him it's time to reveal yourself. There's a transformation. And then the inability of Telemachus continues, because then Odysseus walks back in and he thinks that he's A God. So he can't see the goddess then he thinks his father is a God. You know, surely you are some God who rules the vaulting skies. Probably about 205 or so. Odysseus, very quickly, no, I'm not a God. The long enduring great Odysseus returned. Why confuse me with one who never dies? No, I am your father, the Odysseus you wept for all your days, which I thought was a funny line. You bore a world of pain, the cruel abuse of men. And then notice what's really fascinating is Telemachus actually pushes back, which I think does show more of his maturation, his skepticism of no, you're not my father, you're not Odysseus. Just some spirit spellbinding me now to make me ache with sorrow all the more. He's actually very sensitive to the fact that. That a God could take the form of his father and lead him and deceive him in some manner which is fun. Which is very fascinating because we'll actually see later that that is Penelope's exact concern. And it's. I really wonder whether Penelope ever shared that concern with him as her longing for Odysseus. One of the things that could really happen is a God could come in his disguise, in his guise and trick us all. Any thoughts on this passage? On this finally having this reunion between the two?
- [63:54]
C
Yeah, I think this trepidation from Telemachus is pretty, pretty necessary. We were talking before how it doesn't seem that Telemachus is very cunning in the way that Odysseus is, but he is at this moment cautious in the way that it seems that a large part of Odysseus virtue is cautious, not what. What's kept Odysseus alive actually to this point is his unwillingness to kind of commit until he knows for certain.
- [64:29]
A
I think what's interesting too about this meeting is the hermeneutics. So like, what is the standard of belief? So this is something we're going to start to see, right? So Odysseus is going to start revealing himself to people on the island after he's sufficiently tested them, which Telemachus says is very quick. He's tested the swineherd several times. The swineherd will not be able to know that it's Odysseus yet. But what is the standard of belief? Because what I thought was interesting is, and I agree with you Jack, that in certain ways Telemachus suspicion makes him very much cut from the same cloth as Odysseus. It shows him very much to be Odysseus son. But then I thought that Telemachus kind of folded pretty quick. And with almost no evidence to the contrary, I mean, Odysseus basically says, well, I'm not a God, I'm actually your dad. And then Telemachus is weeping and saying, oh, you're home, et cetera. Like this is around 2:30, right? He says, no other Odysseus will ever return to you. That man and I are one. The man you see here, after many hardships, endless wanderings, after 20 years, I have come home to my native ground at last. So. And he just says, it's Athena that changed me. I didn't really find him to actually give anything terribly dispositive or prove anything about that. Only Odysseus would know. He just says, no, that's not true. Athena's helping me. And then a little after 2:40 at that, Odysseus sat down again and Telemachus threw his arms around his great father, sobbing uncontrollably as the deep desire for tears welled up in both. So Telemachus folds pretty quick, I think. And so I think one thing for us just to track as we read through the text is the rest of the book is what is the standard of belief that people need to understand or discern that this is Odysseus. And Telemachus, who has probably the least amount of familiarity with the king, seems to believe him pretty quickly.
- [66:17]
C
But he does fulfill this image of Odysseus that he's been taught. And the first thing he says is, yes, I'm your father. The Phaeacians brought me here. Now count me the suitors so that we can. So that we can make a plan of what to do. And I think that that's the proof that Telemachus needed that fulfills this kind of image of his father that he's had his whole life, that he will come and fix everything. And that's all he has for the image of his father, I guess.
- [66:54]
A
Well, it's funny that you mentioned that, because I think that might be one of the tensions of this text is Odysseus is bumping up against what Telemachus understands to be his father. But Telemachus might not even understand what that even means. So to your point, he's like, okay, let's talk about slaughtering the suitors. That's around a little after 260, he says, so we could plan the slaughter of our foes. And so he asks him, right, I'll deploy the old tactician's wits, decide if the two of us can take them on alone without allies, or we should hunt for reserves to back us up. And Telemachus then pushes back on him. But what you say dumbfounds me. It staggers the imagination. I thought you were a man deep of counsel. I thought you were a man of strategy. The two of us are going to march in there and take on all the suitors. And so then Odysseus responds, let me tell you, the old soldier said, bear in mind, now listen to me closely. Think will Athena flanked by father Zeus do for the two of us, or shall I rack my brains for another champion? I am really sorry. It is hard not to read this as sarcasm. Like, it's like, oh, will Athena and Zeus do for allies, or should we go find more people? Because I think Telemachus, who is again suspicious, even responds with, I think this is all banter in the wit between, you know, the master rhetorician and his son, whose rhetoric is, I think, starting to mature. Because even Telemachus says, and Homer says, he answered shrewdly full of poise, two great champions, those you name. It's true. Off in the clouds they sit, and they lord it over gods and mortal men. It's like, okay, we have these allies, but they sit in the clouds, which is part of the problem. So Telemachus can't see that Athena was just there. He can't see these things. So I know. I found it a really interesting back and forth as Odysseus even tries to bring his son into the plains to kill the suitors.
- [68:49]
C
And I. I apologize. I got my order mixed up.
- [68:51]
B
I actually.
- [68:51]
C
Mixed. Missed the line. He throws his arms around his father, and I think, yes, there he does give in to kind of incautiousness. But I think he catches himself. And that's when he asks, in what manner of ship, dear Father, have sailors now brought thee hither to Ithaca? Who did they declare themselves to be now wise? Methinks I'll come hither on foot. Then he's like, but how did you get here? Tell me everything. And that's him catching himself for his incautiousness. And then he gets this story. Um, so I think he corrects himself. He gives in, he folds. And then he corrects himself and asks
- [69:29]
A
for some more details, which kind of makes him a. To your point, Makes him kind of a more immature version of Odysseus, who, when he realized he was on Ithaca, remember, his heart, like, swelled. But he was able to Hide it and to test it further. And so Tilmachist doesn't quite have that level of maturity yet and being able to kind of keep his heart hidden in his words, probably what they need to be. So, no, I think that's a good read. So then we're introduced to the plan. That's around 300. So it's like, okay, I'm going to go, I'm going to be a beggar in the house, I'm going to test them, etc. By the way, we're not going to strike until Athena tells us to, right? This thing is very saturated in the divine. So even though Odysseus is a tactician, even though there's lots of strategy here, we are relying heavily upon Athena and Zeus to tell us when this divine justice has to strike. And so what are they going to do? Just broadly speaking, right. Telemachus is going to kind of, in a subtle way, remove all the weapons from the hall. And so the original idea is then when it's time to strike, only Telemachus and Odysseus and whatever allies they have will have weapons. The rest of the suitors will be bereft of weapons and this thing will be a slaughter. That's my short take of the plan that they've concocted. And I think too, to show Telemachus maturity, he not only pushes back about the gods, but then he actually pushes back about his father's notion of needing to find more allies. So he says, you. So this is around line 340 or so. He's going to go test different people, right? And then Telemachus pushes back and says, but I think your last plan will gain us nothing, you know, reconsider, I urge you. And he says, that's work for later. If you have really seen a sign from Zeus who shield a storm and thunder. So I thought that's really fascinating that Telemachus switches pretty quickly. He's like, well, by the way, if you have Athena and Zeus and they've told you to do this, there's not a whole lot of reason to keep going around Ithaca trying to build up a little army of allies. Like, if that's true, like, let's, let's just go, let's figure out. And then when they give the sign, do it and whatever, and then it'll just be done because it's backed by the divine. So I really think this whole back and forth is between like an Odysseus and a more immature Odysseus. But I don't Mean to discount everything Telemachus says, because I think Telemachus critiques are valid as he tries to understand what's going on in the plan. So then we jump to the queen, is told. I don't know what to make of it. There's this interesting passage in which Eumaeus is sent to the queen by Penelope. Or, excuse me, is sent to the queen by Telemachus. But then also there was the herald who was also watching for Telemachus to return. So both of them return, and they get there pretty much simultaneously. This is a little after line 370. And Homer creates a contrast where the herald bursts out, your beloved son, my queen, is home at last. Eumaeus, though bending closer to Penelope, whispered every word that her dear son entrusted to him to say. Message told in full. He left the halls in the precincts, heading for his pigs. Eumaeus seems to demonstrate far greater political prudence and whispers just what Penelope. What he was told to Penelope. The suitors then can't hear it, et cetera. So there's a juxtaposition there. I'm not sure I fully appreciate what Homer's trying to teach us. But then we get this kind of long back and forth about the suitors realizing that their ambush has failed. Any thoughts about this? Or even on Penelope coming in to chastise them? Because we get Antinous, he jumps in around 400, and he's just like, we're just going to kill him again. He's an open book, right? Four, ten. So here at home, we'll plot his certain death. He must never slip through our hands again. That boy, while he still lives, I swear, will never bring our venture off. Okay, so Telemachus has 100 become a threat. Antinous is like, we just need to kill him. Antinous also gives this interesting thing of just like he says, hey, strike him down, kill him, clear the town and fields or on the road. Then we'll seize his estate, worldly goods, and carve them up between us and share and share alike. But as for his palace, let his mother keep it. She and the man she weds. So now the game has changed. Or he's arguing. The game should change, right? Why don't we just kill him and we'll split all this up and one of you guys can stay here and take the palace and marry the queen. That's fine, but we're done. And one of the suitors, I need help with his name, though. Anfeminus. Anfeminis. Yes. So he. Then he pushes back and Says, friends, I have no desire to kill Telemachus. Not I. It's a terrible thing to shed the blood of kings. Wait. Sound out the will of the gods. The first. If it decrees of mighty Zeus, commend the work. I'll kill the prince myself and spur on the rest. If the gods are against it, then I say hold back. This is like complete divine command theory. Like, what is good here? Should we kill the prince or not? We'll just wait and see what the gods tell us. And whatever the gods tell us is what is good. I mean, there's an imprint of the Euthyphro dilemma on this as well, right? How do we discern what's good here? It's 100%. What are the gods will?
- [74:33]
B
Well, it's been a while since we've seen the suitors, so from a narrative point of view, it's important that Homer reintroduces them to us. And I know that when I'm teaching the odyssey with my 9th graders, the question keeps coming up, are the suitors, in fact, are they deserving of death? Are all of them? Are some of them. Is the punishment too severe? And so I think certainly in the case of Antinous, Antinous is. Is making the best possible case for his execution.
- [75:13]
C
Right.
- [75:14]
B
He is unjust in every way. I mean, he's plotting to kill Telemachus. He's trying to get the other suitors on his side. And so something that I. I mentioned in one of our previous conversations is the increasing bestiality of the suitors. The suitors become more and more like animals, less and less human, and hence, one might argue, more and more deserving of death. And so the question as to whether they in fact, deserve what Odysseus is planning to give them, that question kind of answers itself.
- [75:53]
C
But at the same time, then, you know, with. With amphinomis, the. The suitors don't become one unit. And it's unclear. I mean, amphinomis seems far less deserving of death than Antinous. And. Well, are we allowed to say spoilers on this?
- [76:14]
A
We try. We're honoring the first Time reader, so try not to get too much.
- [76:17]
C
Okay? Yeah. And so. But it just ceases planning. Like, for all you're considering that they've all committed the same sin. Essentially, they're all trying to lose.
- [76:29]
B
Woo.
- [76:30]
C
Penelope. None of them have committed a greater sin. Some of them are maybe planning it. But do they. Are some more deserving than others? And should Odysseus differentiate? Yeah. I don't know.
- [76:44]
B
Well, I don't think it's a spoiler, Jack, to say that Odysseus still disguised as the beggar, gives Amphinomis an opportunity to leave and he doesn't.
- [76:56]
A
Right.
- [76:57]
B
So, yeah, I think that, yeah, there's this open question. There's. Well, at least there, there seem to be degrees of badness among the suitors. There are some that are quite awful and there are some that to us seem a bit more sympathetic. But your comment that they've all committed the same sin and they're not checking each other, they all, I mean, each and every one of them has the choice of either remaining or leaving and they've all chosen to remain. And so there, there are those who are perhaps more direct in their badness and the harm that they brought to Odysseus estate, but then there are those who've sort of committed the other sin, which is. How do you put that? You know, the sin of actually not preventing others from committing these evil acts. Omission. Right. A sin of omission.
- [78:00]
A
I think to your point, then, what you're, you know, you said your freshman ask. I think it's a fantastic question of are they all deserving of this fate? And the other question I would ask is it seems very clearly as we get into the Odyssey later on, at some point there is a point of no return. There is a point in which the suitors simply have been locked in by Athena and they are, they're spiraling into this kind of just bestial ideal and we'll see that, that the slaughter in a certain way takes on a form of sacrifice to the gods. So at what point, though, was the point of no return? Here we have a suitor saying, listen, I just want to do whatever the gods tell me. That's it. I'm not sure that's going to work. I don't think that's going to save him. And so I think that's a fantastic question and one that we can actually ask ourselves as we move through the text. I do want to point out here as we come to the end, this is one of the reasons I was pointing out earlier that Eurymachus is actually a much more dangerous person inside the house of Odysseus. Because unlike, you know, Antinous, Eurymachus actually has rhetoric and he's almost like a, you know, he's a budget version of Odysseus in certain ways. And so Penelope comes out, she chastises them and how's he respond? This is after 480, he's like, no, we would never do this. We would never lift a hand against Telemachus. Like, this is okay, everything's fine. And then Homer tells us, encouraging all the way, but all the while plotting the prince's murder in his mind. And so again, this is one of the things that I was. I was curious earlier about why he was mentioned as the one that the prophet might go to. Just why was Telemachus doing that? Just, surely he can tell that Eurymachus is evil. Or has he been swayed by the rhetoric there? It's still something I need to think about. And then the only thing I want to say to end this text is I love this dynamic that pops up. So, you know, I don't think, I don't read the Odyssey as this, like, overly warm, fuzzy, charming, like, father and son narrative, but I do think there are some elements of that that come out that are incredibly endearing. And one of the ones is here is that Eumaeus comes back to the hut, Odysseus is now back in the guise of the beggar, and Eumaeus is then telling him, right, that the suitors are returned, etc. And at that, the young prince, Telemachus smiled, glancing toward his father, avoiding Eumaeus's eyes. I think this is the first opportunity or the first example we get of this, but it's going to be really endearing that a lot of times after this moment, Telemachus is going to look to his father's eyes multiple times in the text to understand what to do. And a lot of times Odysseus is looking to Athena, but Telemachus is going to look to his father. And I think there's a good moral read there of the son looking to the father to understand who he is and what we need to do. And so there's something beautiful that's going to start there between them.
- [80:50]
B
Well, it brings to mind Alcibiades, doesn't it, Dika? Right. That one comes to know oneself by looking into the eyes of the beloved. Or in this case, into the eyes of one's father.
- [81:02]
A
Yeah. The eyes of the ones who love you are a mirror to the soul. They help you understand yourself. No, That's a beautiful connection. Any other thoughts on that? Or just book 16 or 15 overall? Any kind of final comments? All right. Hearing none. We have exhausted the wisdom of homer in book 1516. We have dug through it all. So I deeply appreciate. Dr. Goralski, thank you for coming back again, being a mentor to us and guiding us through the text. Remind us about your substack.
- [81:31]
B
Absolutely, yes. So the substack is the porch and the altar. So in it I'm exploring the various connections and disconnections between Athens and Jerusalem. And so recently I uploaded a post on Beowulf. I plan to do another one on Beowulf. So kind of going back and forth between Beowulf and the Greeks. So, yeah, anybody who care to check it out? It's free and I think it's some pretty good content. At least it's worth reading.
- [82:08]
A
And Jack, where can people find out more about you and your work? You have a secret substack somewhere or YouTube channel? Anything?
- [82:14]
C
No, I do not. I've got a paper coming up at the International Conference of Medieval Studies, so if anyone's there, I'll be there.
- [82:27]
B
But you have to plug. You have to plug the philosopher that you're writing about. Your favorite.
- [82:31]
C
Oh, yes. Everyone go read Alan of Lille. He is my favorite philosopher poet.
- [82:36]
A
Can you remind us who that is?
- [82:38]
C
He is a 12th century poet and theologian out of the school of Chartres. Wrote the Complaint of Nature and Anti Claudianus and the first ever systematic theology.
- [82:54]
B
And a Platonist, which I know, and
- [82:56]
C
a hardcore Platonist, which is very.
- [82:58]
A
There you go now. Now you've piqued my interest. I'm. I'm. I'm plugging in. Okay, good. Well, I. Again, I'm in debt to both of you guys. I deeply appreciate it. Thank you for joining us in this text. Everyone will continue our read through the Odyssey. So next time we are reading books 17 through 19. So a little bit of a bigger haul as we continue this wonderful journey of the Odyssey. 12 weeks leading up to the new Christopher Nolan movie. So you can read the Odyssey and then be disappointed in the movie with all of us. So that's our goal. We'll have a wonderful episode, a post movie discussion. Again, we've got our. Also at the end, our conversation on the American Odyssey with Dr. Patrick Deneen. And so go check us out on X, YouTube, Facebook and Patreon. And Instagram. We have Instagram now and we'll see you guys next week. Thank you.