After the Odyssey Zeus’ settlement at the end of the Odyssey is meant to be permanent: Odysseus will “be ruler forever” (βασιλευέτω αἰεί, 24.483). Of course, this cannot come to pass literally; even the divinely favored Menelaos must cede Sparta and retire to Elysion (Odyssey 4.561-564). The… Read more
Nestor’s Nostoi Like Odysseus, the mortal character Nestor focalizes a significant portion of the Odyssey. His narrative helps to establish further the poem’s relationship to the Nostos-tradition, which, as discussed in previous chapters, forms the part of the Odyssey’s backstory that extends from the fall of Troy… Read more
Divine plan and narrative plan Thus far I have argued that the Dios boulē theme serves two interconnected functions in the Odyssey: it lends shape and coherence to the narrative, and it mediates the Odyssey’s relationship to other Odysseus-traditions. The attraction of Zeus to the interface between… Read more
Appendix 1: Homeric scenes in which Zeus appears and references to his actions Citations include scenes in the main narrative, as well as scenes that, while outside the main narrative, impinge on it (such as the encounter between Helios and Zeus in Odyssey 12) or proceed directly… Read more
Appendix 2: Typology of Divine Councils in the Odyssey I have throughout this study referred to the five scenes in which Zeus has a speaking role in the Odyssey, in Books 1, 5, 12, 13 and 24, as “divine councils.” From the standpoint of the oral tradition… Read more
Bibliography Texts West, M., ed. 1998. Homerus Ilias Volumen Prius Rhapsodias I-XII Continens. Stuttgart and Leipzig. West, M., ed. 2000. Homerus Ilias Volumen Alterum Rhapsodias XIII-XXIV Continens. Munich and Leipzig. van Thiel, H., ed. 1991. Homeri Odyssea. Read more
2. Helen’s Web: Time and Tableau in the Iliad [1] This paper was originally prepared for a panel on “Some Contemporary Approaches to the Homeric Poems.” [2] It describes a case in which contemporary critical theory,… Read more
3. Similes and Symbol in Odyssey v [1] Since antiquity, the Odyssey has invited symbolic interpretation. When Eustathius pronounces the poem an ethical allegory, and in that, more indicative than the Iliad of “Homeric power,” he echoes a tradition extending back through… Read more
4. Odyssean Temporality: Many (Re)Turns [1] The wisdom of the text is self-destructive (art is true but truth kills itself), but this self-destruction is infinitely displaced in a series of successive rhetorical reversals which, by the endless repetition of the same… Read more
5. Helen’s “Good Drug” [1] I δύο τὰ πολλὰ τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων. [2] Alcmaeon Were someone to formulate a Foucaultian epistêmê for archaic Greek thought, it might be some… Read more
