Post-Odyssey Odysseus: a Housebound Hero?

The Trojan War lasted 10 years, as told in Homer's Iliad. Odysseus then took a further 10 years to get home, buffeted by wind, waves, and the wills of the gods, as told in Homer's Odyssey.

After the Lotus Eaters; the Cyclops; the stolen winds of Aeolus; the Laestrygonians; the beautiful dread witch Circe turning them into pigs and then hosting them graciously thereafter; the trip to the Underworld; the Sirens; Scylla and Charybdis; eating Helios' sacred cattle; the sexual imprisonment with Calypso; and, finally, killing the suitors upon his return to Ithaca ... Odysseus could relax - he was finally home.

As Edith Hamilton puts it (in her frankly excellent text Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Mortals that blows Robert Graves' The Greek Myths out of the water): 'For Odysseus at last after long wandering had come home and every heart was glad.'

But, as we're all becoming increasingly aware, home cannot be restful forever.

Writing Beyond the Ending

So, what happened to Odysseus after he returned to Ithaca?

Did he just kick back, relax, and tell stories of the glory days (or, rather, gory days - heh)? That's what ruddy-faced Menelaus and wrinkly Nestor were doing, and if it's good enough for those Achaean kings, then surely it would be good enough for Odysseus, king of rocky, goat-y Ithaca?

I would like to take this moment to remind you of Odysseus' primary character trait: cleverness a monstrously large ego.

Take, for instance, when he escaped the cyclops Polyphemus, blinded him, and cleverly told him that his name was Nobody. Therefore, when Polyphemus' fellow cyclops asked him who had hurt him, he said 'Nobody blinded me!' and they were all: alright cool.

But then, Odysseus' stupid male ego got the better of him and, as he sailed away, he told Polyphemus the name of the man who had blinded him, and that he hailed from Ithaca. Clever Stupid Odysseus incurred the wrath of the Cyclops' father: just a powerless loser... Poseidon. Hence the ten years it took him to get home.

Idiot.

So then, once he got home, do we think that poor, weary Odysseus would rest at his hearth for the rest of his days?

I certainly don't think so, and nor did Lord Alfred Tennyson. In his poem Ulysses (1842), Tennyson imagines a bitter and restless Ulysses, unhappy with his old wife and prudent son, often leaving the rocky shores of Ithaca, sailing to 'savage' (eesh) lands to explore and conquer. Tennyson's Odysseus is intent on reliving the greatest moments of his odyssey, such as travelling to the Underworld: 'It may be we should touch the Happy Isles, / And see the great Achilles, whom we knew'. Or maybe there are new adventures to be had, to increase one's reputation: 'Some work of noble note may yet be done'. I really enjoy Tennyson's poem because you can really see the ageing Odysseus' preoccupation with his own reputation and legend, his sheer egotism, and his utter restlessness.

Tennyson's embittered Odysseus, drinking and skirmishing and constantly sailing away from Ithaca, is really identifiable with Madeline Miller's Odysseus in Circe.

Source: Madeline Miller's Instagram

Miller's Odysseus, after he has left Aiaia and eventually returned to Ithaca, was also bitter and bored, malcontent with his 'greying wife who was no goddess and a son he could not understand' (Miller 2018: 184). He was paranoid, always on the lookout for plots to unravel, and restless, constantly wanting to venture out to see again. He grows jealous of the tales of distant glory, of 'Menelaus [who] had built a brand new golden palace, Diomedes [who] had conquered a kingdom in Italy. Even Aeneas, that Trojan refugee, had founded a city' (Ibid.).

To a modern audience, this paints Odysseus - one of the best remembered figures of the Trojan War - as petty and jealous, sitting there comparing his feats to his old comrades and enemies.

This isn't a figure I would usually identify with, but being stuck at home, watching opportunity after opportunity get cancelled, wondering when I can get back to my regular academia routine... it's starting to resonate.  I'm probably slightly less concerned than Odysseus with how my legend will be preserved and my standing with the gods, though.

Much like Odysseus hearing tales from bards, we look on social media and wonder if our lockdown lives are living up to our peers', who seem to be learning languages and yoga and botany. But we're probably going to be remembered for our greatest feats and our galavants, like speaking to heroes in the Underworld and outsmarting gods, nymphs, and witches, rather than the time we spent miserably at home. Probably.

These violent delights have violent ends

Odysseus' life comes to a very weird end. I'm just going to say it: his death is straight-up odd. When Tiresias meets Odysseus in the Underworld, he tells him that 'Gentle death will come to you, / far from the sea' (Odyssey, trans. Wilson, 11:135-6). Some translations, however, have this as Odysseus' death will come 'out of' the sea, which is also pretty accurate.

When Odysseus left Ithaca, he left his wife Penelope with his infant son, Telemachus; when Odysseus left Aiaia, he left his lover Circe pregnant with his son, whom she names Telegonus. When Telegonus grows up, he leaves the magical confines of Aiaia in search of his father, but his witch mother does not let him go unprotected: she equips him with a spear that is tipped with the chthonic sea god Trygon's tail, which is fatally poisoned.

Side note: This part in Miller's Circe is spooky and harrowing and excellent - it may well be my favourite part of the novel.

When Telegonus lands on Ithaca's shores, a grizzled old man shouts at him and threatens him, completely throwing xenia (hospitality towards strangers, from which we get the term xenophobia) out the window. The stranger grazes himself on Trygon's tail and dies, and Telegonus soon realises that he has accidentally brought about his father's death and is heartbroken.

Odysseus Meets Nausicäa, Michele Desubleo (1654)
 The Phaeacian's xenia was instrumental in Odysseus'
story being told and his return to Ithaca. 

As much as Odysseus was trying to recreate his former adventures, he forgot that the main thing that saw him through was not his own cunning or the patronage of Athena, but the hospitality of strangers.

Thus, Odysseus dies both not at the hands of the sea, but also at the hands of the Sea.

In another peculiar twist to an already weird story, in some versions of the myth, Telegonus and Telemachus marry each other's mothers. That is to say, Telegonus marries the ageing Penelope and Telemachus marries the dread witch Circe of Aiaia. Bizarre.

Perhaps the parallel I am inelegantly trying to draw here is that, once all of this is over, I hope that we don't "return to normal". Institutional xenophobia and racism, defunding and privatising the NHS, cuts to the welfare state... these are the normals we will be returning to. Maybe the government could actually learn something from this nightmare hellscape plague situation and-- never mind. Or, perhaps, I was just telling you all about Odysseus' weird end.

Ultimately, when Odysseus returns to Ithaca, he is neither housebound nor heroic... maybe I should have picked a better example for this post, or at least changed the title of it.




Cover art: 'Ulysses Fleeing the Cave of Polyphemus', Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, 1812