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Odyssey Books 10-12
Book 10: Odysseus continues to relate his adventures, this time with the wind god Aeolus and the sorceress Circe.
I found the whole plot of the Aeolus bit hilarious. Odysseus visits Aeolus, the wind god, who is super generous to him and happily sends him back to Ithaca with a bag of winds as a present. Apparently Odysseus stays awake almost the whole time, but sleeps when they're almost at Ithaca, at which point his crew decides to open the bag, thinking there's treasure inside. Instead, they release the winds, which blow Odysseus all the way back to Aeolus. Aeolus is not amused and reasons that Odysseus is cursed, and makes him go away.
Question: why is Odysseus in a situation where he (correctly) feels like he can't sleep or else his crew is going to try to steal his treasure from him? Like, really? I feel like this says something about his leadership qualities.
Next, they find themselves at Circe's island. She turns a bunch of the sailors into pigs, except one guy, Eurylochus, who is fortunately cautious enough not to go in her house and returns to tell the tale. Fortunately for Odysseus, a) he was not in that group of sailors, and b) on his way to try to avenge the sailors (have I mentioned that he is kind of quick to anger and prideful? He just sets off randomly without as far as I can tell any sort of actual plan, and against Eurylochus' advice) he finds Hermes, who gives him an antidote to Circe's drugs. (Things I did not know: the epic Greeks had a ton of great drugs, apparently!) He convinces Circe to turn his sailors back into men.
So then he goes back to his men:
I reassured them, saying... [...]
'all of you, come with me, and see your friends
inside the goddess Circe's holy house,
eating and drinking: they have food enough
to last forever.'
They believed my story,
with the the exception of Eurylochus,
who warned them,
'Fools! Why would you go up there?
Why would you choose to take on so much danger,
to enter Circe's house, will she will turn us
to pigs or wolves or lions, all of us,
forced to protect her mighty house for her?
Remember what the Cyclops did? Our friends
went to his home with this rash lord of ours.
Because of his bad choices, they all died.'
At that, I [Odysseus] thought of drawing my long sword
from by my sturdy thigh, to cut his head off
and let it fall down to the ground -- although
he was close family. My men restrained me,
saying to me, 'No king, please let him go!
Let him stay here and guard the ship, and we
will follow you to Circe's holy house.'
I mean! I feel Eurylochus has several Very Good Points here!
Then they stay with Circe for a year, after which she tells them they need to sail "to the house of Hades and the dreadful / Persephone" (wow, isn't that cool! Looking forward to that) to ask the prophet Tiresias for his advice. (The Pyriphlegethon and Cocytus, / a tributary of the Styx, both run / into the Acheron. ) Also of note later on:
But even then
I could not lead my men away unharmed.
The youngest one -- Elpenor was his name --
not very brave in war, nor very smart,
was lying high up in the home of Circe...
Basically, dude was in a loft, forgot to climb down the ladder, crashed down and died. Poor Elpenor, couldn't even survive a year of plenty and also is immortalized as not very brave nor very smart!
I guess (having peeked into Book 11) poor Eurylochus was stuck guarding the ship for that year...
Book 11: Odysseus tells about visiting the Underworld.
This is a long chapter and a fascinating one. I suppose I tend to be interested in heroes visiting the underworld...
First Odysseus sees Elpenor, who's like, dude, you didn't even bury me!
Tiresias to Odysseus:
King under Zeus, Odysseus,
adept survivor, why did you abandon
the sun, poor man, to see the dead, and this
place without joy?
Agh, I can see how that morphed into the underworld chapter of the Aeneid and, much later and in a whole different theology, transformed to How were you able to ascend the mountain? Did you not know that man is happy here? Also, I love the name "adept survivor" for Odysseus, it really fits.
Tiresias: Don't hurt the cows of the Sun God. Otherwise a lot of bad things will happen.
Me: Okay, yeah, I've read this before.
Then Odysseus talks to his mom (this section is rather heartbreaking) and then he sees a bunch of random women from Greek mythology, which is interesting -- he doesn't see the male heroes of Greek mythology first, he sees their mothers. (He does later see a bunch of heroes/greatest hits, both from the Trojan War and other older heroes.) And he also sees -- guess who? -- Agamemnon, who (of course) has something to say about being murdered by Aegisthus!
Chapter 12: Odysseus meets the terrors of the sea: the Sirens and Scylla/Charybdis.
Circe gives Odysseus some advice for all those. I like this exchange between Odysseus and Circe:
I answered, 'Goddess, please,
tell me the truth: is there no other way?
Or can I somehow circumvent Charybdis
and stop that Scylla when she tries to kill
my men?'
The goddess answered, 'No, you fool!
Your mind is still obsessed with deeds of war,
But now you must surrender to the gods.
She is not mortal. She is deathless evil,
terrible, wild and cruel. You cannot fight her.'
Odysseus then, so he says, tells his crew everything that Circe told him. Except when he doesn't. He says, "And [Circe] says / that I alone should hear the [Sirens'] singing," which is not quite what she said -- she said, "if you wish to hear them..." which is very different, in my opinion! Also he does not mention the part where Circe told him Scylla would mean "inevitable death" for six of his crew. Uh-huh.
Anyway, those six inevitable deaths past, they get to the Sun God's island. Odysseus says not to go there, but Eurylochus (aw Eurylochus, he's my fave) is like, "you never seem to tire / you must be made of iron. But we men / have had no rest or sleep." Okay, Odysseus says, "I am one and you are many." (Also, no one says this, or at least it doesn't fit in Odysseus' retelling (recall that he's still telling all this story to the Phaecians) but I bet they're all kind of angry at Odysseus regarding the Scylla deaths which he never did tell them was going to happen!) But he makes them swear not to kill any animals.
Well, this lasts until their provisions run out, at which point Odysseus falls asleep (is this a theme?) and Eurylochus is like, "I'd rather get blasted by lightning than starve" (which, again, I feel is fair!) so they kill some cows, yum. Zeus blasts the ship and all the sailors die except for Odysseus himself, so I guess Eurylochus got what he said he wanted.
In a rather cool bit (which I think I remember from before, once I read it), Charybdis swallows his ship while he jumps to hang from a convenient fig tree, hoping Charybdis will vomit back up the ship, which indeed happens, so he is able to climb back on to them and eventually end up with Calypso, which is the end of his story to the Phaecians.
...Conveniently, there is no one left alive who can confirm or deny this entire story. And he was called "Lord of lies" at the beginning of it. I'm just throwing that out there. :)
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But he can't be that bad a leader, or else his servants, tenant farmers and so forth wouldn't be so glad to see him back. It's honestly a testament to him as king that his swineherd who he hasn't seen for ten years and who knows he's going to be very violent is immediately so glad to see him. You could argue that it's just that the suitors are so terrible. But perhaps Odysseus is genuinely a better judge and administrator than he is a general?
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(which, honestly, continues as a battle tactic for a very long time. One of the things that caught me about reading about the Battle of Hastings, which I was doing about the same point I was reading the battle sequences in the Iliad last November/December was how similar some of the 'what was going on here' descriptions sound.)
But there's also some dynamics stuff about how some of the men with Odysseus are relatives (by marriage in various ways) and sort of grudgingly there, and as it takes longer and longer to get home, and as the things that happen are less and less sensible, they're more and more inclined to try and do things their own way. And, in some cases, to undermine Odysseus's authority in various ways.
Like, Odysseus says, "Don't go do X, here's why" (about opening the bag of winds, about the Sun God's cattle) and then he goes to sleep after being awake for days and they do it anyway.
I think the answer here is he may have needed a different second in command.
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As I recall, Harald at Hastings is supposed to have set up a shield wall on the top of a hill, and he lost when so many of the housecarls were killed that the formation fell apart. I don't think the Iliad envisions this kind of formation fighting. I guess what I don't understand is whether that's because the poet wasn't familiar with it, or because he didn't think it was very heroic and is describing a warrior culture that's archaic even for him. Perhaps someone else on here will know?
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But there's also some dynamics stuff about how some of the men with Odysseus are relatives (by marriage in various ways) and sort of grudgingly there, and as it takes longer and longer to get home, and as the things that happen are less and less sensible, they're more and more inclined to try and do things their own way. And, in some cases, to undermine Odysseus's authority in various ways.
Oh yeah, that's true, it even says in-text that Eurylochus is close family.
I don't think Odysseus ever told them not to open the bag of winds OR why, though! This is one case where I think him telling them more information could have helped (although you might argue then that they might have thought he was lying... but in that case whose fault is that, Odysseus??)
I think the answer here is he may have needed a different second in command.
Yeah, that seems like it would have helped!
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