Marketing the Classics to Today's Students

Originally published in the Sacred Heart University Review, Vol. IX, No.2, Spring 1989

http://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/shureview/vol9/iss2/5/

Slave, Servant, Surrogate: Eurykleia's Roles in Homer''s Odyssey

Slave, Servant, Surrogate: Eurykleia’s Roles in Homer’s Odyssey

          For some decades now – certainly since the publication of M.I. Finley’s The World of Odysseus in the early 1950s – the Homeric epics have been examined not only for the power of their myths but also for what they might reveal about real life in the ancient Greek cultures.  While it is difficult, perhaps, for most of us to acdcept the events detailed in the Iliad and Odyssey as “historical” documents, it is considerably easier to view the cultural attitudes reflected in these works as reflections of what could be termed the “memory” of the culture in pre-literate Greece before the eighth century B.C.E.  Furthermore, it can be persuasively argued, in the case of the Odyssey at least, that it survived over the pre-Homeric ages in part to simply remind listeners of what was and was not acceptable behavior.

            The society described in the Homeric epics can, therefore, be taken as the best mirror we have reflecting the society of the world that existed between the end of the Mycenaean civilization and the time of Homer – whoever he or she was or might have been.  One need not, incidentally, totally subscribe to Samuel Butler’s argument for a female author of the Odyssey to look to the poem for reflections of those virtues and qualities and rules of behavior required of and honored in the women of the Homeric family.  Apart from such “ambiguous” Odyssean women as Circe or Calypso, or certainly the Sirens, there are in the poem a number of carefully portrayed female characters.

            In addition to the faithful Penelope, the lovely Nausicaa and her powerful and fair-minded mother Arete and there is, of course, Helen as we find her in her post-Trojan War role as gracious hostess to

Telemachus and Pesistratos during their visit to Sparta.  Certainly, much could be said of each of these personalities as reflections, to some degree, of a woman’s role in the Homeric society.  It is, however, another woman in the poem, the old nurse Eurykleia, that I wish to consider for what her character might reveal about the roles of a woman – in this case a slave woman – in this Ithakan household.

            The great recognition scene in Odyssey 19 in which the old nurse Eurykleia uncovers the identifying scar on the leg of Odysseus is without doubt one of the most memorable in Western literature.  In its dramatic power alone the scene has few rivals in the poem.  Only those scenes, perhaps, detailing the blinding of Polyphemos (Od. 9) and Odysseus’ stringing of the bow (Od. 21) come close in comparison.

            Apart from the dramatic tension that the discovery of the scar generates, the action of the poem is driven along in several critical respects by the scene: notably the inevitable reuniting of Odysseus and Penelope, the eventual acts of revenge and retribution to be carried out against all guilty suitors and servants in the household, and the particular staging of the stringing of the bow are outlined.  Furthermore, this recognition scene is interesting for the role played by Athena in effectively diverting the attention of Penelope from an amazing scene: a scene that includes, in addition to what must have been an astonished gasp from the old nurse, the splashing of Odysseus’ leg into a basin which spills its contents over on to the floor, accompanied by a lengthy exchange of threatening whispers.  The scene is interesting in at least one other respect – the one on which I focus this paper: what it reveals about old Eurykleia herself and, by extension, what it reveals about individuals in her position of servitude in the poem and in the ancient world generally.  Such revelations are of particular interest because they tend to be inconsistent with traditional patterns of behavior depicted in Homer. 

            Like the inconsistent characterization of Telemachus in Odyssey 1-5 which focuses on developing social and political skills rather than testing his courage in battle as a basis for acquiring kleos, the characterization of Eurykleia is inconsistent with those of other slaves named in the poem.

            Having been purchased in her youth by Odysseus’ father Laertes and designated as a nurse, Eurykleia has obviously served the household of Odysseus for most of her life.  She is generally depicted in the poem as a servant, as in Book 1 when she puts Telemachos to bed, or when she is directed to run errands for Penelope or Telemachus or Odysseus.  At other times she acts as a trusted confidant for both Telemachus when he is leaving for Pylos and Sparta and for Odysseus himself when she discovers the scar.  Furthermore, since she has apparently nursed both Odysseus and Telemachus, and since Odysseus’ mother Antikleia appears in the poem only briefly as a shadow in the Underworld in Book 11, it has been suggested that Eurykleia also serves as a surrogate mother of sorts for both Odysseus and Telmachus.  That Eurykleia’s role as nurse is naturally very close to that of mother and their names – Antikleia and Eurykleia – are so similar further reinforces this point.

            We have, therefore, in Eurykleia, as my title suggests, a slave acting out multiple roles in the poem which, when examined carefully, might well provide a glimpse at least of a culture in transition, a world where a slave is still a slave but something more as well.

            M.I. Finley has observed that “the troubles of non-aristocratic herders, servants and peasants” were not fit subjects for “heroic poetry”; consequently, little is known of their day-to-day thoughts and feelings.  While no doubt this is generally true, both Eurykleia and Eumaeus, in this light, are clear exceptions to those in his observations. These exceptions could, of course, be attributed to the fact that, though they had, for apparently different reasons, fallen into slavery, they were both of noble birth.  They can, then, perhaps, be viewed as aristocrats who are simply victims of misfortune.

            In her marvelous work on women in classical antiquity titled Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves, Sara Pomoroy emphasizes the strong system of patriarchal values depicted in Homer, one in which “women were viewed symbolically and literally as properties – the prizes of contests and the spoils of conquest – and domination over them increased the male’s prestige.”[25]

            However, Pomoroy goes on to point out “women, free or slave, were valued (in the Homeric world) for their beauty and accomplishment.”  While male prisoners were either ransomed or put to death in the Homeric world, women and children were enslaved.  The picture given by Homer has apparently been confirmed by Mycenaean tablets listing large numbers of women and children, sometimes with their places of origin.

            We are informed of Eurykleia’s noble birth, as well as the level of respect awarded her at the end of Book 1 when she is introduced to accompany Telemachus to his sleeping quarters.  Curiously, we are informed that Odysseus’ father Laertes had purchased her “long ago when she was still in her first youth . . . and he favored her in his house as much as his own devoted wife, but never slept with her, for fear of his wife’s anger.”   Even here at her introduction into the poem, one finds, another instance of inconsistency.  When one learns that Eurykleia has been favored and respected in the household to the point that she has never been used by her owner for sexual satisfaction (a not uncommon outcome of the purchase of a young female slave) one somehow would like to learn that it was for reasons of genuine respect, rather than simple fear of Antikleia’s anger!

            Clearly, in the Homeric world a slave of either sex was actually the property of the master and was not permitted sexual relationships without the master’s consent.  In view of this fact, Pomoroy concluded “Eurykleia would have had to have given birth to a baby somehow, without incurring her master’s displeasure, for she became wetnurse to Laertes’ young son Odysseus, as well as, apparently, to his son Telemachus, and in her old age remained on affectionate terms with Odysseus’ family.” [26-27] The details of that life and those children of Eurykleia are not, however, as Finley has suggested, of particular concern in this heroic poem.  Slaves are seen as having no gods, no family lives, and no personal lives.  Those who do exercise personal whims, such as those servant women who cavort with the suitors, are put to death for their behavior, an act, ironically, which Eurykleia fully supports.

            Yet, after Odysseus’ return to Ithaka, the successful action of this poem – particularly his taking revenge on the suitors and reestablishing himself in his household – depends primarily on the roles played by the two most faithful slaves Eumaios and Eurykleia.  Sheila Murnaghan in her work Disguise and Recognition in the Odyssey suggests that while the recognitions involving Eumaeus and Eurykleia have often been read as devices for treating more important characters in the poems such as Telemachos and Penelope, it is possible to read the distribution of Odysseus’ recognitions “as a means of highlighting his dependence on the loyalty of his social subordinates.” [39] The tense moment of recognition by Eurykleia of the scar, she suggests, “dramatizes how much he needs to be able to rely on her and on others like her.”

            In reality, according to Murnaghan, the relationship between Odysseus and these two servants amounts to “a metaphorical kingship.”  Though neither is actually related to him by blood, she suggests, they both in the course of the action “lose their social inferiority as if it were a disguise like the one assumed by Odysseus.

            We learn that Eumaeus, who as a youth has been kidnapped and sold into slavery, had lived in Laertes’ house like a brother to Odysseus in their youth.  In Odyssey 15 in a response to the disguised Odysseus’ queries – a somewhat tender scene during which the old disguised beggar Odysseus pretends not to know the dear friend from his child, Eumaious recalls his relationship with Odysseus’ sister Ctimene to whom he was “only a little less favored.” However, when, says Eumaeus, “we had both arrived at our lovely prime, they gave her away for marriage . . . and for her were given numberless gifts; but the lady gave me a mantle and tunic . . . and sent me to the estate.  From the heart she loved me dearly.”

            The tone of these remarks, while clearly reflecting his acceptance of his lot as a slave, is also tinged with regret over the loss of simple social interactions which he valued in his youth.  “There is no sweet occasion now,” says Eumaeus, “to hear from my mistress in word or fact . . . and greatly the serving people miss the talk in their mistress’ presence, the asking of questions and eating and drinking there, then something to take home with them to the country – which always warms the hearts of the serving people.” [15.366 ff]  Clearly, here is a slave sharing his inner most feelings about his day to day existence.

            Yet, despite his early residence in the house of Laertes and Antikleia, Eumaeus has been relegated to the pig farm on the edge of the estate where he has served faithfully until Odysseus reappears at Odyssey 14.  Eumaeus has been deemed by Laertes and Antikleia a fit companion for their son Odysseus, but hardly a fit husband for their daughter.

            Likewise, it has been suggested that the account of Eurykleia’s history in Odyssey 1 which includes the naming of both her father and grandfather “makes it clear that she is Anticleia’s equal in social status and nearly her equal in position in the household of Laertes.” [Murnaghan 40] Such a view is reinforced in Odyssey 19 in the marvelous flashback which follows the recognition of the scar (reminiscent of a frozen frame in a film ) in which Eurykleia recalls the story of how the brave young Odysseus had acquired the wound while hunting a wild boar.  More important, for our purposes, is the preceeding recollection contained in the flashback detailing the actual naming of the infant Odysseus.  It is Eurykleia, not the child’s mother, who presents him to his grandfather Autolycus to be name.  It has been observed that “any reader of these lines who did not know otherwise would assume that Eurykleia was Odysseus’ mother.” [41]?

            That Eurykleai wields authority and influence in the household of Odysseus is made clear repeatedly.  A very interesting discussion of this aspect of authority was a subject of a paper by Helen Pournara-Karydas at out last gathering at St. Paul’s in which she argued that “Eurykleia has the authority to advise, praise and blame not only Telemachus and Penelope, but also Odysseus who, despite his harshness and seemingly unchallenged authority, in the end, always follows her suggestions.”  She also observed that while Odysseus chooses precisely when to reveal himself to everyone in the poem but Eurykleia who, of course, discovers him, an act which gives to her an element of power over him.

            From the moment she is introduced in the Odyssey Eurykleia is described as old and faithful, a loyal servant and nurse in the household of Odysseus, even a surrogate mother to two generations of males in that household.  Because of her loyalty and no doubt heroic efforts, the household has been held together for more than twenty years.  However, she remains a slave, and after she more or less presides over the reunion of Odysseus and Penelope in Odyssey 23 she vanishes from the poem.

            Near the end of Odyssey 23, set in the bedroom of Odysseus and Penelope, when Odysseus is reiterating to Penelope his instructions from Teiresias, Eurykleia and another servant are preparing with soft coverings the famous bed of Odysseus and Penelope. “Then,” we are told, “when they had worked and presently had a firm bed made, the old woman went away back to bed in her own place” [23.292] while the other servant Eurynome (who although named about whom we know little except she is faithful) actually carries the torch to guide the reunited lovers to their bed and to “their old ritual.”  This is the last we hear of the old nurse Eurykleia.

            When Odysseus has finished relating his instructions from Teiresias, Penelope replies: “If the gods are accomplishing a more prosperous old age, then there is hope that you shall have an escape from your troubles.” [23.286 ff]  The details of the troubles of Eurykleia, however, an individual of an even older age, have no place in the poem.  In contrast, we are given in the final scene a positive portrayal of old Laertes who has purchased Eurylkeia so long ago in “her first youth.”  Laertes has apparently abdicated his responsibilities to the household long ago and fled the estate for a distant farm to avoid the bother of the disruption to the household.  Eurykleia has, on the other hand, managed to muster the strength and fortitude over the years to hold the household together.

            Along with Eumaeus, she has for some reason remained loyal and faithful when she had more than occasion not to be.  Clearly, an unsettled household with an absent master is the perfect place for servants to grow more than a little shiftless and irresponsible unless there is a Eurykleia or a Eumaeus ( or, one recalls in the unforgettable Masterpiece Theater series “Upstairs, Downstairs”: A Mr. Hudson or a Mrs. Bridges) to sustain some semblance of order.  It is Eumaeus who hints at this condition when he, along with the disguised beggar Odysseus, encounters the old dog Argos in Odyssey 17. Argos is lying on a manure pile in a terrible mangy and tick-infested state, explains Eumaeus, in large part because the servants have neglected his care.  These conditions are natural and to be expected, says the swineherd, for “serving men, when their masters are no longer about, to make them work, are no longer willing to do their rightful duties.  For Zeus takes away one half of the virtue from a man, once the day of slavery closes upon him.”[17.320ff]  Yet, obviously he and Eurykleia are exceptions, having apparently maintained their complete virtue – in their twenty-year exercise of loyal servitude.

            These are unique characterizations in Homer, characterizations inconsistent with what has been portrayed as the traditional patterns of Homeric behavior.

            Such apparent inconsistencies and ironies in situation and characterization – variances from what might have long been assumed traditional patterns of behavior in that ancient world – have led the critic Charles Segal to suggest the Odyssey might well have been written in a time “when the heroic ideal [was] undergoing change and redefinition.”  A character such as Eurykleia – highly respected and valued, though still a slave – might be considered a further reflection of a redefinition of values, of an ancient elite culture bent on preserving a world founded on a caste system where subservient folks were meant to be used in all sorts of ways but also were expected still to know their proper place.

[This essay was originally presented to the 89^th Annual Meeting of the Classical Association of New England at Boston University, March 10-11 1995 whose central theme was “Women in the Ancient World: Life and Literature, History and Art.”]

End Notes

Finley, M.I. The World of Odysseus. Penguin Books, 1979.

Lattimore, Richmond, trans. The Odyssey of Homer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.

Murnaghan, Sheila. Disguise and Recognition in the Odyssey. 1987.

Pomeroy, Sarah B. Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity. Schocken Books: New York, 1975.

Segal, C. Homer’s The Odyssey, ed. H. Bloom (New Haven, 1988).

Odysseus in the Underworld: A Classic Mid-Life Crisis

Envisioning the Future and Valuing the Past

            Jacques Barzun, noted Columbia University historian and author of the still popular Teacher in America, commented in a recent address on the use of classics today.  “Obviously,” said Barzun, “the first service that a classic does is to connect the past with the present by stirring up feelings akin to those that once moved human beings – people who were in part very much like ourselves and in part very unlike.” (Barzun, p.1)  He goes on to suggest that studying the classics often loses its relevance, ending up “mere bookishness,” lacking in “imagination” which he defines as “making a successful effort to reconstruct from words on a page what past lives, circumstances, and feelings were like.” (Barzun, p. 11)

            There are, however, exceptions.  The epics of Homer, I would argue, provide myriad opportunities for glimpses into the thoughts and feelings of the ancients which, when imaginatively reconstructed and applied to our own lives, appear surprisingly familiar.  It is in this light that I propose to examine Odysseus’ venture into the Underworld in Book XI of the Odyssey as a classic mid-life crisis.  The depictions of Odysseus and the characters with whom he interacts in this venture present us an extraordinary array of feelings commonly associated today with those of adults at mid life.

            The psychologist Erik Erikson has suggested in the development of his theory of identity outlined in his Identity: Youth and Crisis that we truly know ourselves when we are able at a given point in our lives to value our pasts while realistically envisioning our futures.  When we are able to satisfy these demands forward and backward we are said to have identity, to use Erikson’s term.  Unlike Robert Frost’s hired man in his poem “Death of the Hired Man” we have “identity” when we are able “to look backward with pride” and “forward with hope.”  Conversely, say the psychologists, when we are, for whatever reasons, unable to comfortably envision our lives in both directions – as having a future as well as a past – we are said to be in a state of crisis.  In the modern consciousness, after adolescence it is at so-called “middle age” when individuals appear to be the most vulnerable to such crises.

            Of course, the epics of Homer contain memorable portraits of age extremes.  The contrast between the passion of youth and the wisdom of age is clearly distinguished in both epics.  Both the Iliad and the Odyssey abound in youthful portraits: Achilles and Patroklos, the Phaiacian athletes, Telemachos, Nausicaa, etc.  Likewise, there are in the epics unforgettable portraits of elders: Nestor’s attempt to end the friction between Achilles and Agamemnon; the touching outpouring to Achilles by his old tutor Phoinix; the appeal by old Priam for the body of his son Hektor; or Odysseus’ return to his old father Leartes.

            However, there is more to life than youth and old age.  One does not just leap from childhood to death’s door.  There is, in reality, considerable life in between – life devoted to marriage, family, children, aging parents, the protection of property, and reputation – life that is constantly assessed by the quality of past decisions and enriched by future possibilities – life whose conflicts are understood by competent therapists to contribute considerably to mid-life crises.  Because modern readers accept the notion of mid-life as a stage of our existence, those episodes of the Iliad and the Odyssey that portray the agony and doubt and tragedy associated with this state are particularly appealing.

            Odysseus could, of course, be viewed as an individual in a constant state of crisis throughout the Odyssey.  Throughout much of the epic his future is in doubt.  However, about midway in the poem in Book XI the cloud of uncertainty regarding his future is lifted.

            A brief examination of this venture reveals a conscious effort by the poet to address the universal need of his adult listeners to envision their futures by evaluating their pasts.

            Before proceeding, it might be apt to point out that by my perhaps fanciful calculations, Odysseus should be viewed as “middle-aged” upon his return to Ithaca.  Since when he embarks for Troy he has

already a wife and a child, he can be assumed to be at least twenty or so.  Therefore, after another twenty years of fighting and wandering, he can be envisioned as in his forties at least upon his return.

            Supposedly, Odysseus is directed by Circe to the Underworld in order to obtain directions home.  Critics, however, have long noted that this adventure serves not its alleged purpose – to receive directions home – but the storyteller’s intended purpose [Clarke. P. 58] – to provide Odysseus and his underworld contacts with news of what has happened, is happening, and will happen in the world of the living.

            During this visit, Odysseus both gives and receives information regarding the upper world.  Further, [and this is the major point] this adventure allows Odysseus the opportunity to review his past and, more importantly at this point in his life, to establish his future, thereby providing him with what all mortals seek but never obtain: knowledge of his future – his destiny.

            As directed by Circe, Odysseus meets with the blind prophet Teiresias and receives both assurance and advice – assurance that he will eventually arrive safely back in Ithaca and advice as to how to proceed when he arrives.  After he kills the suitors, he is to take an oar and walk inland until he meets someone who has never known the sea and mistakes his oar for a winnow-fan; then he must drive the oar into the ground and make sacrifices to his old nemesis Poseidon.  If this is done: “Death will come to you from the sea. In some altogether unwarlike way, and it will end you in the ebbing time of a sleek old age.  Your people about you will be prosperous.” [Lattimore: 134-37]

            It is through these extraordinary conversations and interactions between Odysseus and the members of the Underworld – conversations in which the shades of Hades hear and think and speak – that Homer provides us with some of his most powerfully human characterizations.

            Though Odysseus encounters many shades in the Underworld, some are singled out for specific revealing encounters that provoke Odysseus.  It is on these few encounters I wish to focus, because it is the sentiments voiced in these encounters – those with Antikleia, Agamemnon, Achilles, and Aias – that, in Erikson’s terms, assist Odysseus in reestablishing his identity.

            It has been suggested that Odysseus, by his very presence as a living being in the Land of the Dead, brings pain to all who see him and talk with him. [Griffin, p. 101] Unlike the souls with whom he interacts who have only their pasts to consider, Odysseus is also looking to the future.  Without exception, all of the shades with whom he comes into contact look at their pasts with regret and self-pity rather than with pride.

            Not one of the great warriors depicted in these encounters in the Underworld – including Odysseus – is able to take pride in his participation in the Trojan War.  The lovely Helen who [though manipulated by the gods] was the cause of it all, has become for Odysseus just another “vile woman,” and he bemoans the suffering and deaths of his companions who perished there.  After Odysseus has related to the gathering in the hall of Alkinoos his encounters with Teiresias, Elpenor, and Antikleia, there is a brief break in the storytelling after which Alkinoos inquires whether he has seen any of “his godlike companions, who once with you went to Ilion and there met their destiny.” [371-72]

“I would not begrudge you the tale of these happenings,” replies Odysseus, “and others yet more pitiful to hear, the sorrows of my companions, who perished later, who escaped onslaught and cry of battle, but perished all for the sake of a vile woman, on the homeward journey.” [380-84]

We learn here that there are no rewards in the afterlife for a hero.  There remains only the memory held by those alive in the upper world.  During his encounter with the shade of Achilles Odysseus tries to sooth the regret expressed by the “Son of Peleus” by calling attention to the honor bestowed upon him when he was alive and the “great authority” he now holds over the dead. [484-86] “Do not grieve, even in death, Achilleus.” [486] Achilles’ reply is that of a man who, now that it’s too late to matter, has his priorities in order:

“O shining Odysseus, never try to console me for dying.  I would rather follow the plow as thrall to another man, one with no land allotted him and not much to live on, than be a king over all the perished dead.” [489-91]

Every one of his fellow Achaians regrets his past and generally accepts responsibility for it.  They are reluctant to blame the gods.  Rather, they blame themselves, save Agamemnon, who characteristically blames his “sluttish wife” for his fate. [411]  And, since they are destined to remain shades in the Underworld forever, they have no future.  Or, do they?

In one respect many of the shades do have a future, the future that all mortals have, the future of their progeny.  The concern expressed here repeatedly by Odysseus and his former comrades is for the welfare of their families, particularly their children – in this case, of course, sons.  When Odysseus meets with his mother he has in mind the future welfare of his family:

“And tell me of my father and son whom I left behind.  Is my inheritance still with them, or does some other man hold them now, and thinks I will come no more?  Tell me about the wife I married, what she wants, what she is thinking, and whether she stays fast by my son, and guards everything, or if she has married the best man among the Achaians.” [174-79]

Wife, family, fortunes are Odysseus’ concerns, because he is looking to the future.

Agamemnon and Achilles, however, are left only to think of their sons – the only future they can envision.  “Tell me,” says Agamemnon, “if you happened to hear that my son was still living.” [458] Odysseus has no knowledge of Orestes, and the two are left “exchanging their sad words.”  Achilles requests information regarding his son Neoptolemos and his father “the stately Peleus.”  Although Odysseus has no knowledge of Peleus, he is able to relate an elaborate account of Neoptolemos’ brave actions both inside and outside the “Trojan horse.  Apparently, this sooths if not satisfies Achilles.  “So I spoke,” says Odysseus, “and the soul of the swift-footed scion of Aikos stalked away in long strides across the meadow of asphodel, happy for what I had said of his son, and how he was famous.” [538-40]

Among his former comrades encountered in the Underworld only Aias is unwilling to communicate although he apparently recognizes Odysseus.  He rejects Odysseus’ attempts at reconciliation and walks away angry still over his loss to Odysseus of the armor of Achilles.  In Odysseus’ mind, however, the armor has not been worth its cost, and he is filled with regret by Aias’ scornful reaction.  “I wish,” he says, “that I had never won a contest like this.” [548]

Nowhere in Homer, perhaps, are we given so vivid a depiction of a hero’s willingness to resolve an old quarrel and the everlasting bitterness which is the fate of an individual who stubbornly refuses to let go of the old baggage of his past.

The emotions expressed in these encounters have little to do with the gods and their will and power as they do in the Iliad and Odyssey generally.  Rather, they reflect the emotions and concerns common to all mortals.

The primary players in this drama are all looking toward both the past and the future.  However, it is Odysseus’ view that most concerns us, since he is the only player still functioning in the land of the living, the only character with a future.

Homer emphasizes in the opening words of the Odyssey that this is the story of a man.  “Tell me, Muse, about the man.”  It has been suggested that this focus “implies study of personality, of human relations, of the subtle psychology of man – a man in relation to other men and women, to his heritage, to his present environment, and to his destiny.” [Belmont, p. 49]

In Book XVIII Odysseus, awaiting his revenge in his own household disguised as a wretched beggar, humiliates a rival resident beggar named Iros and wins for himself a free meal.  Afterwards, he offers some advice to one of the least offensive of the suitors, a man name Amphinomous whose father and whose family Odysseus has respected in the past.  In a subtle attempt to persuade the young man to dissociate himself from the suitors, he urges Amphinomos to “listen and understand.”

“Of all creatures that breathe and walk on the earth, “says Odysseus, “there is nothing more helpless than a man is, of all that the earth fosters; for he thinks that he will never suffer misfortune in future days, while the gods grant him courage, and his knees have spring in them.  But when the blessed gods bring sad days upon him, against his will he must suffer it with enduring spirit.  For the mind in men upon earth goes according to the fortunes the Father of Gods and Men, day by day, bestows upon them.” [XVIII. 130-37]

Ironically, Amphinomos fails to heed this advice.  Perhaps he is too young to understand and, unlike Odysseus at this time in the tale, with ample spring still in his knees.  At any rate, he does not separate himself from the other suitors as Odysseus has urged, and is later killed by Telemachos in the slaughter.

We recognize the voice of experience in Odysseus’ observations.  These are the words of a man who has known suffering, a man who has literally “been th hell and back.”  Furthermore, we know these words reflect the confidence of a hero, made wise by his trials, who has returned to his home to fulfill his destiny.  The reader knows his adventures are nearing their end.

Jacques Barzun concludes his comments on the uses of classics today by reasserting that while scholarship can be brought in occasionally to shed light on a work, “a classic sheds its own light . . . And everything in it may be usefully related to the world and to the Self; it’s the role of the imagination to forge the links.”  Then, warning mildly of the dangers of proceeding in this imaginative realm, he concludes: “It is easy to talk nonsense and make false connections.  But the reward of reading with a humanistic eye is not in doubt: it is pleasure, renewable at will.  That pleasure is the ultimate use of the classics.” [p.12]

To consider the experiences of Odysseus in the Underworld as a successful passage through a crisis at mid-life may be a bit too imaginative, perhaps – playing fast and loose with the classics, so to speak.  Maybe.  Yet, for all but the most unthinking adult, mid-life provokes nothing if not a taking stock of the past in an attempt to ensure a future.  It seems clear to this reader that Homer’s depiction of Odysseus in the Underworld provides contemporary readers with brilliant models, even case studies, of familiar “feelings akin to those that once moved human beings” in the ancient world.

 [This essay was first presented at the 83^rd annual meeting of the Classical Association of New England at Miss Porter’s School, Farmington, CT, April 7, 1989]

Bibliography

Barzun, Jacques. “Of What Use the Classics Today? Perspective Vol. 1, No. 2. Council for        Basic Education.

Belmont, David E. “Twentieth-Century Odysseus.” Classical Journal 62 (1966): 49-56

Clarke, Howard W. The Art of the Odyssey. Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Prentice Hall, 1967

Dietrich, B.C. “The Spinning of Fate in Homer.” Phoenix 16 (1962): 86-101

_________ Death, Fate and the Gods. London: Athlone, 1965.

Erikson, Erik, Identity: Youth and Crisis. New York: Norton, 1968

Finley, John H., Jr. Homer’s Odyssey. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978

Frame, Douglas. The Myth of Return in Early Greek Epic. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978.

Griffin, Jasper. Homer on Life and Death. Oxford: Clarendon, 1980.

Lattimore, Richmond, trans. The Odyssey of Homer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.

Lord, A.B. The Singer of Tales. Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, Vol 24. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960.

Nelson, Conny, ed. Homer’s Odyssey: A Critical Handbook, Belmont, California: Wadsworth, 1969.

Niles. John D. “Patterning in the Wanderings of the Odyssey.” Ramus 6 (1978): 46-60.

Russo, Joseph. “Interview and Aftermath: Dream, Fantasy, and Intuition in Odyssey 19 and 20.” American Journal of Philology 103 (1982): 4-18.

Telemakhos as Adolescent: Growing Up in the Homeric World

A glimpse of what might be termed "Homeric adolescence."

 Dale P. Woodiel

Conard High School

West Hartford, CT

In the final scene of Book 1 of Homer's Odyssey we find Odysseus' son Telemakhos being "put to bed" by his old nurse Eurykleia who has watched over him, like his father before him, since his infancy. She ac­companies him to his sleeping quarters, essentially to "tuck him in": she folds his tunic, turns out the torch, so to speak, and secures the door (1.425 ff.).

Recently, a curious but literal-minded fourteen-­year-old in one of my classes inquired whether Telema­khos was not a bit old for that sort of treatment. He pointed out that if, in fact, Odysseus had been gone for almost twenty years, his son would have to be at least approaching twenty, even if he had been born after Odysseus had rushed off to Troy! The question evoked a lively discussion.

From the appeal to the Muse in the opening lines of the poem we know that Odysseus will return, and we expect the action of the poem to lead up to that climac­tic moment. However, Zeus has hardly agreed to Athe­ne's appeal to bring Odysseus home and Hermes has been dispatched to Calypso's island with orders for Odysseus' release when Athene makes clear her plans to venture to Ithaka to attend to Odysseus' no-longer­-young son Telemakhos. Although the spirit of Odys­seus pervades the opening books of the Odyssey, the poem focuses for the moment on the growth and de­velopment of his abandoned son Telemakhos, no longer a child, but still unprepared to assume the role held by his famous father.

Athene's mission in Ithaka, she says, will be "to stir up (Telemakhos) a little, and put some confidence in him" (1.189) to oppose the suitors. Afterward she will accompany him to Pylos and Sparta in search of news of his father's homecoming. Why? "So that among people he may win a good reputation" (1. 95), in a word: kleos. 2

Charles Segal, in a discussion of kleos in the Odys­sey,  has observed that in the "shame-culture" of Homer­ic society, "esteem depends almost solely on how one is viewed and talked of by one's peers. Kleos is fun­damental as a measure of one's value to others and to oneself,3 a value that is repeatedly reenforced in the interactions between Telemakhos and every major figure he encounters on his journey.

Clearly, the Telemakhos of Book I who is accom­panied to his sleeping quarters by Eurykleia is not meant to be perceived as the Telemakhos who will appear to his father at the hut of the swineherd Eumaios in Book 26. His journey to Pylos and Sparta, accompa­nied by Athene/Mentor, constitutes his rite of passage to the adult world, his education, so to speak. An analysis of the Telemachy provides a glimpse - vague and confused as it might be - of what might be termed "Homeric adolescence."

Although at this point Telemakhos is nearing the age of twenty, his reputation is that of an insecure child essentially bullied by the adult suitors. His journey to maturity is, therefore, abnormal, at least in its timing. Although Athene clearly desires to assist Telemakhos in literally gaining "a good report  among men," his kleos will not be won in battle (even if one includes the assist he provides in the slaughter of the suitors), nor will it be won (as in the case of his father Odysseus) in an encounter as a youth with a wild beast, the result of which allowed the shedding of blood and the bestowal of a marvelous tale-telling scar (19.427 tt). His education will, however, be largely carried out in the company of Nestor's son Peisistratos, a considerably more mature youth of approximately Telemakhos' age.

John Finley, in his book on the Odyssey, com­ments on what he sees as Homer's tendency to cast a "sparkling gaze toward the young."4 Certainly, this is born out in the way the poem repeatedly focuses on the maturation of youth, not only Telemakhos and Peisistra­tos, who befriends Telemakhos during his visit to Py­los, but also Nausikaa, the daughter of Queen Arete and King Alkinoos, who befriends Odysseus when he reach­es the land of the Phaiakians.

The action of the Telemachy begins with the ap­pearance of Athene, disguised as Mentes, to Telema­khos in Book 1. Athene will initiate Telemakhos' first confrontation of the suitors, subsequently direct his journey to Pylos and Spana, and support his safe return where he is reunited with his long-absent and, to him. unknown father.

Crash course though it is, under the tutelage of Athene Telemakhos' journey constitutes a mini-version of the journey of Odysseus. Like his father, Telema­-

khos will see, if not great cities, at least two great households, and he will learn much from the minds of those he meets. More significantly, he is exposed to a civilized world of sophistication and culture that differs markedly from the world he has known, char­acterized by the barbaric antics of the suitors.

When Athene appears to Telemakbos in Book I she finds him in the midst of what can only be called a dysfunctional household, absent of a father for decades, long abandoned by the elder grandfather Laertes, and filled daily (and one assumes nightly as well) with over one hundred boisterous males bent on partying and con­suming the household's resources. Although Telema­khos is moping in their midst, his thoughts on the re­turn of his father, when he recognizes the stranger at the door, his "right instincts" kick in. He has not forgotten his manners. Although embarrassed by the atmosphere in the hall, he welcomes the stranger, finds him a chair aside from the major activity, and offers him food (113 ff).

Claiming guest-friendship with Odysseus for years, Athene/Mentes immediately reminds Telemakhos of the renowned reputation of his father and comments on their physical resemblance: "Big as you are," she ob­serves, "you are strangely like about the head, the fine eyes, as I remember. . ." (205-7).  Assuming his fa­ther Odysseus now dead or disappeared, Telemakhos regrets the loss of kleos which would have come to him had Odysseus "gone down among his companions in the land of the Trojans" (236), for had he done so, "he would have won great fame for himself and his son hereafter" (239-40).

Athene assures Telemakhos that he will not "go nameless hereafter" (223-24) and urges him instead to accept her advice and assistance in devising a plan to rid the household of the suitors. "Come now," she says to him, "pay close attention to me and do as I tell you . . . I will counsel you shrewdly, and hope you will listen" (271 ff).

She then outlines the plans for their journey, speci­fies that he will be expected to assist at least in the killing of the suitors, and concludes with the blunt pronouncement that it is time to grow up! "You should not." she admonishes, "go on clinging to your child­hood. You are no longer of an age to do that." (296­-97).

Clearly there is glory in such violent, revengeful action for Homeric youth if it is designed to restore a kind of order in the household. Once again the heroic paradigm is the action of Orestes in revenging the murder of his father Agamemnon. Telemakhos' final response at Athene's departure is noteworthy: "My guest," he says, "your words to me are very kind and considerate, what any father would say to his son. I shall not forget them" (307-8). When Athene vanishes and Telemakhos returns, as he does, to the suitors, he is now described as "a god-like man" (324).

NECN&J Feb. 1995

Having been touched by divine intervention, Tele­makbos begins suddenly to mature; he starts to take charge, confronting the suitors, even ordering his moth­er about. Even his view of the songs being sung by the minstrel Phemios reflects a less provincial, more mature point of view. He urges his mother not to begrudge the singer for the song (in this case the return of the Greeks, which she finds upsetting); his father has not been, after all, the only Greek lost returning from Troy (354-55). He then suggests that she return to her housework (357), leaving him to make the big deci­sions. It is "the men [who) must see to discussion, all men, but I most of all. For mine is the power in this household" (358-9).

However, Telemakbos' confidence is short-lived. Although his initial confrontations of the suitors cause them to bite their lips in amazement at his daring new manner (381), they are not completely cowered.  Anti­noos, the most vocal of the group, senses that the gods have prompted Telemakhos "to speak so daringly" to them (385); he recognizes that Telemakhos bas the right to inherit the kingship of Ithaka, but he hopes Zeus will not see fit to make him so. Telemakhos' reply makes clear his newly-acquired feeling that he should be the absolute lord over his own household and servants "whom the great Odysseus won by force" (397-98).

Then, in response to Eurymakhos' inquiry about the stranger who has just visited, Telemakhos lies re­garding the identity of Athene and, accompanied by Eurykleia, turns in for what John Finley has termed his final night of rest in "the beautiful security of boy­hood." His rite of passage from childhood to man­hood -his education- has been set in motion, as he falls to sleep "ponder[ing] in his heart the journey that Pallas Athene had counseled" (443-4).

The change in Telemakhos will not be miraculous, however; there will be relapses to the behavior of ado­lescence, losses of courage which will require repeated assistance from Athene. At the assembly on the follow­ing morning, he bursts into tears and dashes the scepter to the ground, aware of his weakness in the face of the suitors. He vows he will call upon Zeus "to grant a reversal of [the suitors'] fortunes" (2.144) if they did not leave voluntarily, and he is given some encourage­ment when the vow is dramatically punctuated by the appearance of two eagles who swoop over the heads of the assembly and tear at each other throats before speeding away, an action that is interpreted as an ominous warning that, in fact, Odysseus is alive and close by (163-64).

The major contrasts that exist between the world in Ithaka and the worlds Telemakhos encounters in Pylos and Sparta can perhaps be best illustrated in the attention given in these scenes to two pillars of appro­priate behavior in civilized Homeric society: the proper treatment of guests and the attention given to religious sacrifice. As we saw in the scene of Athene's initial appearance (and we shall certainly see after Odysseus' return), the proper treatment of guests has almost, but not entirely, vanished from the Ithakan household. Likewise, along with civil behavior, the religious ritual of the sacrifice has disappeared. In fact, Athene com­ments on the "disgraceful behavior" within the house­hold (1.229). In contrast, upon his arrival in Pylos Telemakhos finds Nestor, his sons and their compan­ions, engaged in an elaborate sacrifice to Poseidon, in which he and Athene/Mentor are invited to participate. Nestor's son Peisistratos carefully explains the purpose of the sacrifice to the visitors, after which he offers the wine cup first to the elder Mentor, requesting that he then pass it to the younger Telemakhos. "I think," says Peisistratos, "he [Telemakhos) also will make his prayer to the immortals .  All men need the gods" (3.47-48). Athene is described as "happy at the thoughtfulness” (3. 52) - and one assumes the maturity as well-reflected in this gesture. Where could Telema­khos find a better role model? When Athene/Mentor leaves the scene, Nestor realizes her identity and, more importantly, the significance of the fact that she is guiding Telemakhos. He vows then to make to Athene a special sacrifice of a yearling cow and to open the special wine to accompany it. There follows perhaps in all of Homer the most detailed description of such a sacrifice, one that might be called a textbook illustration.

When Telemakhos and the young Peisistratos arrive together at the home of Menelaos and Helen in Sparta, they find a double wedding celebration in progress. 6 Both Menelaos' son and daughter are being married. Upon their arrival, Telemakhos and Peisistratos are ac­knowledged by Menelaos' henchman Eteoneus who goes to his master and quietly informs him of the arrival of two men, and requests whether he should unharness their horses or [one assumes, in view of the festivities] "send them on to somebody else, who can entertain them" (4.28-29). Menelaos, "deeply vexed" by his servant's question, accuses him of babbling nonsense like a fool, and orders him to unharness the strangers' horses immediately and to bring the men to the feast.

Apart from the proper treatment of guests and gods, however, there are also certain social amenities which must be acquired on this journey, what might be considered simply good manners or courtesies: knowing how to behave, knowing what to say and knowing how and when to say it. Words and their proper use solicit respect and equal power in the Homeric society.

From his first encounter with Nestor it is obvious Telemakhos lacks the verbal and social sophistication of Peisistratos. Yet, we sense already that he is a fast learner. To the suitor Antinoos he has made clear that he has put his childhood behind him. Now, he says, he has "grown big" and more powerful and will eventually "learn the truth" by "listening to others" (2.314-15).

When he steps ashore on Pylos, however, he ap­peals to Athene for help because he is afraid to speak "up close" to the elder Nestor. Athene, like the good coach, urges him simply to do his best, and assures him one way or another that he will have the words required to say what he needs to say. "Some of it," she says, "you yourself will see in your own heart, and some the divinity will put in your mind" (3.26-28). And, of course, with help from Athene he is able to impress the elder Nestor with his words, as he later impresses Menelaos with his refusal of his gift of horses and a chariot (4.600 ff).

It is important to remember that, apart from the attention to civilized behavior and attention to niceties, the Homeric adult, unlike the child, must be able and willing to kill, and it should be noted that when Tele­makhos returns to Ithaka from his journey abroad, he is prepared to join his father in doing the work re­quired, viz. engaging in a massive slaughter of 108 suitors who have not been behaving properly. At the poem's end, one senses that Telemakhos is capable of assuming the responsibilities of his famous father. The climactic slaughter, in this respect, reflects his "proper" education.

However, there are elements of Telemakhos' edu­cation that are, atypical, even ambiguous. They clearly have as their goal the acquisition of a good

reputation in the eyes of others; and they clearly include the development of the characteristic willingness to kill; but they also involve the acquisition of behaviors that reflect sensitivity and good manners - style and conduct - which are to be gained through social encounters with the "right" people. In this respect, they bear striking resemblance to the clearly didactic works of ancient wisdom literature in which, typically, an eldest son is instructed in the skills and responsibilities necessary to assume his father's estate.

Segal has suggested that in the Odyssey even the treatment of Odysseus' kleos in the poem is "ambigu­ous" and might well reflect a time when the heroic ideal was being redefined. Perhaps, Segal suggests, the poet is using "traditional elements" in "new ways" reflecting a style in which "non-heroic values and fresh social, ethical, and aesthetic currents make themselves felt."7

This sense of ambiguity is, in fact, echoed in Odys­seus' final lines in Book 24 where, in that great scene of three-generational male bonding, Telemakhos fights side by side with Odysseus and old Laertes. In this scene - where Athene and Zeus stop the fighting before it really begins - Odysseus charges Telemakhos to "be certain not to shame the blood of [his) futhers" who have "all across the world surpassed in manhood and valor" (24.508-9).  Telemakhos can only reply: "You will see, dear father, if you wish, that as for as my will goes, I will not shame my blood that comes from you, which you speak of" (511-12).

The final spear-cast of old Laertes is symbolic. Guided effectively by Athene, it will bring about the final death before peace settles over the land. No more fighting. If kleos is to be gained in the future, other standards will have to be recognized. Perhaps in the character of Telemakhos we have a model in progress.

[This essay was previously published in Volume XXII February 1995 Number 3 of the New England Classical Newsletter & Journal.]

Additional note: When preparing this paper for the 1994 annual meeting of the Classical Association of New England I could not have predicted my later association with the late Charles Segal (whose work I quote here) who was known to me as one of the most admirable among living classicists.  Later in the year this essay was published I had the great pleasure of auditing Professor’s Segal’s “Odyssey” seminar at Harvard where I spent the academic year as an NEH Visiting Scholar.  In fact, I was pleased to preside over his final exam in his absence away at a conference in Pisa.

End Notes

1 All references are to Richmond Lattimore's translation. The Odyssey of Homer (New York 1967).

2 The unique nature of Telemakhos' search for kleos. intro­duced by Athene in Book I, has long been a subject of inter­est to scholars. An excellent summary of the major critical positions on the subject can be found in P. V. Jones' "The kleos of Telemachus: Odyssey 1.95," AJP 109 (1988) 496­506.

3 C. Segal. "Kleos and Its Ironies in the Odyssey" in Homer's The Odyssey. ed. H. Bloom (New Haven 1988).

4 J. Finley, Homer's Odyssey (Cambridge. MA 1978) 144. SPinley (above, note 4) 156.

6 The subject of marriage as a natural continuation of a young

man's growth dominates Telemakhos' visit to the home of Menelaos and Helen. Note particularly Helen's gift to Tele­makhos of a robe for his wife to wear "on the occasion of his marriage" (15.126-7).

7 Segal (above, note 3) 148.

The Pandora Puzzle: The Dynamics of Myth

 "There is no such thing as an authoritative, final version of a myth."

Dale Woodiel

Harvard University

Almost a century ago, in volume 20 of The Journal of Hellenic Studies, published in London in 1900, a Cambridge University classicist, a Miss Jane E. Har­rison, introduced an article entitled "Pandora's Box" with the following statement:

No myth is more familiar than that of Pandora, [and] none perhaps has been so completely misun­derstood. Pandora is the first woman, the beautiful mischief: she opens the forbidden box, out comes every evil that flesh is heir to;  hope only remains . . . The box of Pandora is proverbial, and that is the more remarkable as she never had a box at all. [1]

    This comment addresses not only what Harrison sees as an example of mistaken iconography in the Pandora myth, but also, in its substance, it addresses directly the dynamics [2] of the myth's evolution: its origins, its variations of content and format, and its significance at any point along its evolutionary journey.

Harrison's point, of course, is that the container mentioned in the earliest written account of the Pandora story, that in Hesiod's Works and Days, is a pithos (W&D 94) - a very large storage jar, not a small box (pyxis) as it would later become. Such pithoi, generally more than

four feet high and two feet wide, were placed partially buried in cellars and used by the ancient Greeks for storing oil or wine or grain. [i]  Every other classical and medieval writer who told the story of Pandora mentions a pithos, with a mega poma, a large lid, just as Hesiod had (W&D 94). The earliest refer­ence to Pandora's Box yet identified is in Erasmus' Adagiorum Chiliades Tres published in 1508.[ii]

Today, the icon of the box of Pandora has become so fixed that to anyone other than a group of classicists a reference to Pandora's "jar" sounds strange. Even the magnificent exhibit that opened last fall at the Walters Gallery in Baltimore devoted to women in classical Greece was billed as "Pandora's Box. [iii] Har­rison, however, was unable in 1900 to accept such mislabeling as inevitable. Such a mistake was for her a vital error of the sort that would "breed the corruption of a total mythological misconception."[iv] Convinced by depictions on a variety of fifth-century vases [v] that the Pandora story was an etiological myth originally associ­ated with the Athenian festival of the Pithoigia, Harrison understandably saw such a critical alteration of icono­graphy as severing forever Pandora's distinction as an Earth Goddess.[vi]

If one sets aside the specifics of Harrison's argu­ment, her charge related to "the corruption of a total mythological misconception" introduces an important question regarding the dynamics of myths. Is it pos­sible to have a "misconception" of a myth? Does not such a phrase have almost oxymoronic overtones? Is not the assumption of versions a part of the definition of a myth? Assuming Erasmus altered Hesiod's version of this old story, as he obvious did, so what? To be bound to the generally-perceived "original" version found in Hesiod is to ignore the dynamics at work in the evolution of such a myth - the cultural, social, and even political forces that have influenced its transforma­tions over the centuries.

In fact, the alterations in a very old Pandora story (or stories) which Hesiod himself made in his Works and Days go far beyond a single substitution of icono­graphy such as a large jar for a small chest. Not only does he drastically revise one or more older stories, including perhaps the one to which Harrison holds allegiance, but he delivers it (or them) to us in frag­ments.[vii]  Such variations and revisions are inevitable in the life of a myth with the inherent richness of the Pandora story.

It is important to remember that the story of Pro­metheus or Persephone or Oedipus that one finds in the anthologies of Joseph Campbell or Michael Grant or Robert Graves did not originate with Homer and Hesi­od. In fact, it could be said that Hesiod and Euripides and Robert Graves engaged in similar activities, only at different moments in history. The work of Albert Lord and other scholars of the oral tradition has shown that what might be called "creative embellishment" has always been an essential characteristic of the art of the "singers of tales."[viii] Richmond Hathorn, in the preface to his Greek Mythology, warns his readers they will be disappointed with his volume if they expect to find in it the original or the authoritative ancient form of a myth. "There is," says Hathorn, "no such thing as an authoritative, final version of a myth. And in the case of the original form, we either do not have it or do not know it if we do. "[ix]

We have traditionally looked to Hesiod for the Pandora story because it is in his poems that it first appears in Greek, fragmented and confused as it is therein. In the Theogony, generally believed to be the earlier of the two poems, an account is given of the creation of the first woman, a "beautiful evil" (585), but the name Pandora is not mentioned and there is no mention of a jar.

According to this account, Zeus had ordered Pro­metheus chained to a rock at the mercy of a liver-de­vouring eagle for no reason other than he found Prome­theus clever and unruly and "full of various wiles" (Th. 511). After Prometheus had been released by Heracles and Zeus' wrath somewhat abated, Prometheus de­ceived Zeus in the division of the sacrifice. In retalia­tion for this elaborate deception Zeus then withheld fire from mortals, only to have it cleverly stolen by Pro­metheus and carried away in a hollow fennel stalk. "Forthwith," says Hesiod, "he [Zeus] made an evil thing for men as the price of fire" (570).

Zeus' creation, in the form a beautiful, shy maiden, elaborately adorned by Athena and lovely in every outward respect, would inwardly be a "beautiful evil" (kalon kakon) filled with "sheer guile, not to be with-stood by men" (Th. 589). From this creation would spring "the race of women and female kind" (590), whose nature would be to do mischief and who would tend to live like drones off the toil of others. Further­more, if the dreadful burdens brought by the creation of woman was the first evil, the second was that the man who "avoids marriage and the sorrows that women cause, and will not wed, reaches deadly old age without anyone to tend his years" (603-6).

The version of Pandora's story in the Works and Days, although much more elaborate, is similarly intro­duced, but in this case not only are Athena's gifts of skills in needlework and weaving bestowed on the creature, but also Hermes' gifts of a shameless mind and deceitful nature, and Aphrodite's gifts of "cruel longing and cares that weary the limbs" (W&D 60-69). The creation is named Pandora, meaning the ''all-en­dowed," or perhaps "she to whom all gifts are given," and at Zeus' direction she is presented as a gift to Epimetheus, the slow-witted "after-thinking" brother of the clever Prometheus. Unlike the version in the Theogony, however, this is not the end of the story; this is not to be just a tale of a bad joke played by an all­ powerful god on a mentally-challenged Titan. Instead, at this point in his story Hesiod abruptly introduces a dramatic action which leaves us with a number of puz­zling questions.

After a description of a prior Eden-like existence in which hard work was not required of men to survive and in which the general evils of this world did not exist (W&D 90 ff.), we are told that this newly created woman removed the lid from a large jar, releasing countless plagues and diseases and other evils into the world. Furthermore, by the will of Zeus, we are told, only Hope (Elpis) remained within "in an unbreakable home under the rim of the great jar, and did not fly out at the door [because) the lid of the jar stopped her" (94-99). The tale ends, as it does in the Theogony, with the reminder, lest we forget, that "there is no way to escape the will of Zeus" (105).

This account is most intriguing for what it fails to reveal: What is this large jar? Was it a part of the gift? Why and by whose direction were the evils placed in­side, and why were they released? Is this action intend­ed as yet another illustration of the dangers of human curiosity, like that of the biblical Eve to which it has been inevitably compared?[x] Was Pandora told specifi­cally not to open the jar? And in exactly what respect is hope (Elpis) to be viewed as an evil? A common­sense reading of the text suggests the answers to such questions were in other stories which would have been instinctively familiar to Hesiod's audience. We, whose knowledge is confined to Hesiod's version and its derivatives, can only speculate.

Some scholars believe that a second-century CE ac­count of the myth by the fabulist Babrius more clearly reflects the older Pandora story than "the one forced upon posterity by Hesiod.[xi] In his fifty-eighth fable, Babrius offers a drastic contrast to Hesiod's version by placing man (anthropos) in the role of Pandora and in­cluding in the vessel only Goods rather than Evils:

Zeus assembled all the goods in the vessel and gave it sealed to man; but man, unable to restrain his eagerness to know, said, 'What in the world can be inside?' And, lifting the lid, he set them free to return to the houses of the gods and to fly thither, thus fleeing heavenwards from the earth. Hope alone remained. [xii]

      This version of the story is obviously clearer and more logical than Hesiod's version. Furthermore, its implications about the dangers of impatience and reck­less curiosity are appropriate to Hesiod's stated pur­pose, the instruction of his wayward brother, and, most significant, it places Elpis in an understandable context. Although, due to a human action, the Goods have been forfeited, Hope remains. It is interesting to note that slightly earlier mythologists such as Apollodorus and Hyginus [xiii] confine their accounts of the story to the cre­ation of the first woman, eliminating completely the jar and Pandora's evil aspect. [xiv]

It has been acknowledged from the beginnings of modern scholarship, certainly from the era of Jane Harrison and Sir James Frazer onward, that fifth-cen­tury pottery and other archeological evidence depict Pandora as an Earth-goddess, indeed the Mother of Life, whose reputation might logically have flourished with the beginnings of agriculture - an age, as Michael Grant puts it, when "woman, with her unaccountable phenomena personifying life, was mysterious and awe-­inspiring [and] fertility was the community's most highly prized value.” [xv]Pandora should, therefore, be perceived as "the all-giver," rather than "the one to whom all is given."

The validity of this way of conceiving Pandora's role has been greatly enhanced in this century by re­search which displays convincing parallels between the Pandora story and Babylonian creation stories. Myths such as the Enuma Elish and Enki and the Pickaxe depict, among other creations, the fashioning of man­kind from water and dirt, and a tradition in which man is said to have shot up like a plant from the ground through a hole made by the god Enlil.[xvi]Such works substantiate the long held assumption that the Pandora story had been associated with the myth of creation in the ancient Near East long before the time of Hesiod.

As fascinating as such studies might be, however, attempting to solve the Pandora puzzle, or to fix any myth absolutely, is inevitably disappointing and frustrat­ing until one faces the fact that it cannot be done, though it must be acknowledged that some mythologists such as the late Jean-Pierre Vernant have been impres­sive in their attempts. But while Vernant sees the com­bined versions of the myth in Hesiod as defining the new and permanent quality of human life, even he is compelled to conclude that the combination of elements "embedded at the core of the myth" comprise "a web of interrelations so dense as to be inextricable.”[xvii] Indeed, it is this denseness, this amazing web of parallels and opposites and counterbalances that has obviously sustained the myth over the millennia.

It is instructive in any attempt to analyze the Pan­dora story to recognize that the format of the Works and Days, apart from its specific treatment of the Pan­dora myth, is closely modeled on the "wisdom" or in­structional texts of the ancient Near East which tradi­tionally included a long list of admonishments and "shall nots" compiled by a father or a king in hopes that his son or his heir would grow up to be a hard-working responsible adult.[xviii] The recipient of the admonitions in this case is Hesiod's lazy and deceitful brother Perses. Hesiod obviously used the Pandora myth in the Works and Days to support the over-riding theme of the poem: Life is hard; evils in many forms pervade our lives; and hard work is required to survive-truths not unlike those parents attempt to impress upon their children even today as they emerge from their age of innocence.

In his Theogony Hesiod had used the myth of Pan­dora to explain the creation of women and the reason for their duplicitous nature. In the Works and Days it serves to explain why man must struggle unrelentingly to survive in a world plagued by labor and disease. But, why, one is compelled to ask, the ambiguous and absurd portrayal of woman as the cause? "A person who ascribes all evil to one segment of the human spe­cies is not a rational thinker," charges one critic, "but [rather] a person possessed by an emotion so violent that it exceeds an objective correlative.[xix]

Because logical analysis of such a story is out of the question, an answer, if there is to be one, must be found in the symbolic sense to be gleaned from the story: from the pithos itself, from which the evils now in the world originally emerged, and from Elpis which remains inside. Over-riding both the pithos and Elpis­ - or one might better say embodied in both - is the sym­bol of woman herself.

A number of interesting hypotheses have been set forth providing possible reasons for Hesiod's radical redefinition of woman. It has been suggested that Hesiod's transformation of Pandora the Earth goddess to that of the beautiful curious woman bent on mischief is an act of "theological animus," an almost necessary gesture amidst a transition from matriarchal to patriar­chal theology in the ancient world.[xx] A number of socio-economic reasons have also been suggested relat­ed to changes in agricultural methods and shifts in population growth in the centuries before Hesiod.[xxi] Yet, regardless of the cause, the ultimate result (in league, of course, with the Garden of Eden myth of the ancient Hebrews) was the encoding of misogyny as a characteristic of western culture, the effects of which remain relevant even to the present day.

Although obviously fascinated by the Pandora story, Hesiod's view of woman is ambiguous at every turn, and his complex and apprehensive view of femi­nine nature is difficult to explain. One critic sees it serving "as a focus for his anxiety about life in gener­al.[xxii] Another more Freudian critic has equated Hesi­od's attitude with that of a troubled young idealist who, discovering that reality perverts his every ideal, dream an explanation-not unrelated, of course, to the woman who has abandoned him after bringing him into the world.[xxiii]

Although Hesiod makes much in the Theogony of woman's liability as a drone on man's economy, he also grudgingly admits that a woman is a necessity for a man to have around in his old age, a statement which seems to acknowledge the convention that a wife would inevitably be much younger than her husband, as well as the fact that she would also be required to produce a child or children who would assist in their father's care as well. Therefore, one must again ask, how can the vital source of children be connected with evil?

Perhaps a partial answer can be found in the un­known potential which a child symbolizes and the hope with which each child is associated by its parents from the moment of its birth. Here the way one defines Elpis is critical. Elpis is generally defined as a neutral "expectation," neither necessarily good or bad, perhaps a combination of "hope" in a conventional sense com­bined with fear. Froma Zeitlin, however, suggests that Elpis functions as yet another ambiguous human un­certainty about the future that  is "good if it inspires men to work and assure their livelihood, to fill their [pithoi] with grain, bad if it lulls an idle man into illu­sory expectations for the future. But," she continues, "taken as an image that embodies an idea, the Elpis that is left in the jar most closely corresponds to the child (or the hope of the child) residing in its mother's womb."[xxiv]

Zeitlin goes on to review the historical correlation of the womb with a container or jar in both ancient medical and philosophical texts, citing Hippocrates and later anatomists as likening a woman's uterus to an upside-down jar. Continuing the analogy by equating Pandora's removal of the jar's seal or lid as the breach­ing of her virginity, Zeitlin sees the closing of the jar upon Elpis, which remains inside, as the beginning of pregnancy. [xxv] Hope remains within "in the form of the expectations for the child to be.[xxvi] As interesting as Zeitlin's analysis is, however, it appears, even to her, incomplete and unsatisfying. The ambiguous quality of Elpis leaves us in a muddle.

If Elpis has been placed in the jar, is it to be con­sidered an evil? If so, why does it not come out with the other evils? Better: why does Zeus leave it inside? Is it, asks one critic, "the one good that Zeus allows humans to mitigate the curse of Pandora? If it is the mitigating factor, why is hope confined to the urn? Is this to say that not even hope is allowed us, that the human condition is hopeless? Or is Pandora offering us hope as the last and greatest of all evils? Is Pandora holding out hope, or withholding hope?"[xxvii] For every critical point of view on a given aspect of the story - ­every icon, every symbolic action, every lesson to be derived-one can easily find an opposite point of view.

In the context of Norman Austin's assertion that Hesiod's interpretations of the Pandora story "have the mysteriously logical quality of the completely irratio­nal,[xxviii] I am persuaded by the arguments that suggest the two versions are simply variants of the same arche­typal myth, both etiological, which combine into an explanation for the cause of evil - i.e. the necessity for human labor - in the world. As in the myth of Eve in the Garden of Eden, Hesiod's male mind finds in the duplicity of women both evil's symptom and its cause. [xxix] And the pessimism which Jane Harrison identified a hundred years ago is for unexplainable reasons the dominating tone in his narrative.[xxx]

The Pandora puzzle, unlike the jig-saw types famil­iar to us, does not really contain all the pieces required for satisfactory completion, a fact which in the opinion of the critic M. L. West should come as no surprise to us. We are, he says, after all, "in a myth, not a gro­cer's shop." This myth, he continues, is "about the origins of hardship and of hope-amid-hardship.

Such questions do not have easy answers.

So, while one might not come away from the Pan­dora myth, every piece having fallen into its proper place, many of the major pieces of its puzzle can be identified, and some of the key sections of the total pic­ture are revealed. Ultimately, aided by West's friendly admonition, one retains a dream-like mosaic of percep­tions and insights about the human condition from which can be derived myriad interpretations - precisely what one expects from the best of the ancient myths.

[The research for this essay was completed during the 1995-96 academic year in residence as a Visiting NEH Teacher Scholar at Harvard University.  It was presented at the 1996 spring conference of the Classical Association of New England and later published in the New England Classical Journal.]

END NOTES:

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[i] E. Harrison, JHS 20 (1900) 99. 

[ii] I use the word dynamics here to describe the forces at work in any complex matter, not to suggest the evolution of myths is governed by the fixed or natural laws of physics, although there clearly are interesting similarities.

[iii]  It was in a large pithos (dolium in Latin) that the Cynic Oiogenes was said to have been residing when he had his famous encounter with Alexander. Pithoi were also used as coffins and by the Romans as public urinals.

[iv]D and E. Panofsky, Pandora's Box: The Changing Aspects of a Mythical Symbol (New York 1956) 15-16. Harrison ([above, note 1) 100) had attributed the error in translation to Giraldus Lillius' Historiarum Deorum Syntagma published in 1580.
  

[v]E.D. Reeder, Pandora: Women in Classical Greece (Baltimore 1995) contains aan introduction to the exhibit and a  selection of relevant essays in addition to a carefully documented catalogue of the exhibition.

[vi] Harrison (above, note 1) 100.

[vii] See Reeder (above, note 5) 277-286.

[viii] Harrison (above, note 1) 101;  J. E. Harrison, Prolegomenal 10 the Study of Greek Religion (Princeton 1991) 276 ff.

[ix] See Th. 570-590, W&D 57-101.

[x]  A. B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge 1960) 13-29.

[xi] R.Y. Hathorn, Greek Mythology (Beirut 1977) ix.

[xii] For early references see Panofsky (above, note 4) 11 ff. For a more contemporary assessment of the Eve-Pandora parallels see Norman Austin's Meaning and Being in Myth (University Park and London 1990).

[xiii] Panofsky (above, note 4) 6.

[xiv] Quoted in Panofsky (above, note 4) 8, from Babrii Fabulae

Aesopeae, ed. O. Crusius (Leipzig 1897) no. 58.

[xv] Apoliodorus, Bibliotheca 1.7.1-2; Hyginus, Fabulae 144

[xvi] In his account Apollodorus allows that Pandora and Epime­theus' daughter Pyrrha married Prometheus' son Deucalion. After surviving the flood (which Zeus sends to end the Bronze Age) by floating in a chest, the couple re-populate the earth by tossing stones over their heads. Hers become women; his become men (1.7.2).

[xvii]M. Grant, Myths of the Greeks and the Romans [4](Cleveland 1962) 145.

[xviii]  For detailed analyses of such parallels and Hesiod's origins

in the Near East see P. Walcot's Hesiod and the Near East (Cardilf 1966) 55-79 and C. Penglase's Greek Myths and Mesopotamia (London 1994) 197-229.

[xix] J.P. Vernant, Myth and Society in Ancient Greece, tr. 1. Lloyd (New York 1980) 197.

[xx] For thorough treatment of "wisdom" elements in Works and Days see the "Prolegomena" and the "Commentary" in M. L. West's Hesiod: Works and Days (Oxford 1978).

[xxi] Austin (above, note 12) 75.

[xxii] Harrison, Prolegomena (above, note 8) 285.

[xxiii] See L. S. Sussman's "Workers and Drones: Labor, Idleness and Gender Definition in Hesiod's Beehive" in Women in the Ancient World: The Arethusa Papers ed. by 1. Peradotto and J.P. Sullivan (Albany 1984) 79-93.

[xxiv] P. A. Marquardt, "Hesiod's Ambiguous View of Woman," CP 77 (1982) 283-291.

[xxv]  Austin (above, note 12) 68 If.

[xxvi]In Reeder (above, note 5) 49-56.

[xxvii]Zeitlin (above, note 26) 53.

[xxviii] It is interesting to note that even today pregnant women are said, in the vernacular, to be "expecting."

[xxix] Austin (above, note 12) 66.

[xxx] Austin (above, note 12) 75.

[xxxi] Austin (above, note 8) 284

[xxxii] Harrison, Prolegomena (above, note 8.

[xxxiii] West (above, note 28) 169.