The Odyssey: Ithaca

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Foreign.

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Welcome to the Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast. I'm Jeremiah Regan.

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And I'm Juan Davalos. We are on to a new course today, the Odyssey. We're going to be covering Lecture one today, Ithaca. And I'm going to start by making a confession here, which is that unlike Jeremiah, I know very little about Homer's Odyssey for now. That's right. So I am going to be actually just a student of this course. And I'm really excited about it because it's one of those things that I've always wanted to dive into. And I started obviously watching with lecture one, and I'm really excited because it's a beautiful course and Jeremiah, you can tell us a little bit more about it.

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The Odyssey is an epic poem that was, we would say authored, but really, because it was transmitted verbally, was created by the poet Homer, who is also the author of the Iliad. The Odyssey takes place after the Iliad. The Iliad is mostly about the last few days of the Trojan War. It's about the rage of Achilles and the will of Zeus. The Odyssey is named after its protagonist, Odysseus. And Odyssey, in our modern parlance, has come to mean, like a long journey. And that's because that's what Odysseus undertakes in the Odyssey. He's been in Troy fighting the trojan war for 10 years. It takes him 10 more years to journey home, through many twists and turns, through many travails and temptations. But he makes his way back to his home where he is a king and will have to re establish his kingdom.

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So I know that Dr. Whalen is going to go into more detail on this, but why should we? Obviously, this is a great story. It has survived the test of time, but why should we care about a story like this one?

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It's for several reasons. One is that it's beautiful. Homer is an outstanding poet. He writes memorable nuggets. But also, this is a very long, extended poem. So he's the master of the short and the long. It's about ancient Greeks and Greek mythology, but Homer taps into the universal human condition and he tells us something about all men at all times, the types of virtues and vices that men have, the temptations they face. So Odysseus, for example, does not have necessarily, though he is an accomplished warrior, the same martial skill as Achilles, the greatest warrior. Odysseus has other traits, though. He's very cunning, prudent. That means he's able to look at circumstances and determine what actions will lead to the most good. But he's also a character who undergoes development and improvement. Throughout the course of the poem. We watch as he learns lessons about hubris or arrogance that he later applies to great success. The hubris early in the poem causes many problems for him and his men. Later in the poem, he is more humble and he's wiser, and he's able to avoid the types of disasters that could befall him had he not learned his lesson. So it's a great historical work and it's a great human work. It's as relevant today for human beings who are examining themselves as it was for the Greek listeners 2500 years or more ago. But on top of that, it's filled with colorful characters, adventures, all kinds of things that make a story great.

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If this is your first time jumping into this amazing story, I encourage you to go to hillsdale.edu course and pick up a copy of the book. That's Hillsdale Edu Course. At the top you'll see the tab that says books and you can buy a copy of the Odyssey. The translation is by Robert Fagels. That's Hillsdale Edu Course.

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Now let's turn to Professor Whalen with Lecture one of the Odyssey. Ithaca.

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This is an epic poem from Archaic Greece, composed perhaps around the year 750 BC but set in a heroic age even more distant than that, around maybe 1100 or 1200 BC at the end of the late Bronze Age. We know nothing about the author of this poem. We call him Homer. Other than the tradition that he was blind, he was, though undoubtedly, a master storyteller and poet. I want to dive into the poem, but first, a word of encouragement. Nothing I say can replace or stand as a substitute for the reading of Homer's Odyssey. Here at Hillsdale, we like our students to encounter the primary works to read the great books. We don't want our students just to read about them or to just know about the story, but to actually hear Homer's voice. And in case you are intimidated by the thought of reading a nearly 3,000 year old poem, I want to encourage you. You'll be surprised at how readable, accessible and even downright delightful Homer's story is. We are working with Robert Fagel's translation of the Odyssey, which is quite easy to understand and quite readable. It's gripping and striking in many ways. So don't be intimidated. Grab a copy, crack it open. You'll find it as readable as any contemporary novel, and it's one of the greatest works of Western literature. Hello I'm Benedict Whalen, professor of English at Hillsdale College, and I'm delighted to have you join me as we read through Homer's the Odyssey. Book one of the Odyssey starts with these words. Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns, driven time and again off course. Once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy. Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds. Many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea, fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home. But he could not save them from disaster. Hard as he strove, the recklessness of their own ways destroyed them all, the blind fools they devoured, the cattle of the sun and the sun God wiped from sight the day of their return. Launch out on his story, Muse, daughter of Zeus. Start from where you will sing for our time, too. By now, all the survivors, all who avoided headlong death were safe at home, escaped the wars and waves. But one man alone, his heart set on his wife and his return. Calypso, the bewitching nymph, the lustrous goddess, held him back deep in her arching caverns, craving him for a husband. But then, when the wheeling seasons brought the year around, that year spun out by the gods when he should reach his home, Ithaca, though not even there would he be free of trials, even among his loved ones. Then every God took pity. All except Poseidon. He raged on, seething against the great Odysseus till he reached his native land. Now, the first 12 lines here are what we now call or describe as the epic invocation. It's the part at the beginning of a great epic poem where the poet raises a prayer to the goddess, the muse, for inspiration. This becomes a convention in epic literature. Following Homer, for Virgil, Dante, and following epic poets, all offer invocations in a similar style. The epic invocation also establishes the subject of the poem here, the man of twists and turns. Now, to know more about this man, we need to establish a little bit of our background. What was this Troy that Odysseus plundered? To learn more about Troy, we would need to turn to Homer's earlier epic poem, the Iliad. That epic poem is about a great war fought over a woman named Helen. Helen, the daughter of Zeus, the chief of the gods, was the most beautiful woman in the world. And when she was young, all of the greatest men, princes and kings of Greece came courting her. As they were trying to win her hand, they made an agreement. They swore an oath that they would all band together and support and defend and protect the marriage of whomever Helen ended up with. Helen ended up marrying the king of Sparta, Menelaus. Several years after their marriage, however, a young prince from the city of Troy, his name was Paris, he came and according to different traditions, he either seduced or abducted Helen and carried her off to the city of Troy. In keeping with the oath that they had all sworn, all of the great princes and men of Greece gathered their subjects together and joined Menelaus and his brother Agamemnon as they sailed to Troy to to win back Helen. While there, the great hero of the Greeks, Achilles fought and after the close of the epic, finally died. He is the primary character of the Iliad. While at Troy, Achilles and the other great princes of the Achaeans fought to regain Helen, but they also fought to gain glory, or to use the Greek phrase cleos. Cleos means glory or fame, or that which is heard about a person. It is the thing that heroes strove for as well as victory. Now different things can denote the armor of an enemy whom one has defeated, the prizes one wins in a contest with one's peers, or even the songs that bards sing about one that carry one's renown and fame, or kleos abroad to the larger Greek population. Now in the Iliad, Achilles is given a unique choice. He hears a prophecy regarding his death. He can either fight and die at Troy while gaining undying cleos, undying glory, or he can live through the war and return home. But he returns home in obscurity and won't have the kleos that he fights for. Now in the Iliad, Achilles is uncertain as to what he'll really do until his friend Patroclus joins the combat and his friend dies at Hector's hands. And Achilles desire to avenge his friend's death leads him into the battle and and finally to his own death. Now in the larger mythology, after the close of Homer's Iliad, the Greeks, the Achaeans do finally sack Troy. They do this through the plot of the Trojan horse Odysseus idea. Odysseus counsels his fellows to build a giant hollow wooden horse that they leave behind as a trophy for the Trojans. The fleet should sail away, then the horse should be left there on the shore. They follow this plot, but they fill the horse with all the greatest warriors of the Achaeans. The Trojans, thinking they've won the war, bring the horse into their walls and at night the Greek warriors burst out of the horse. They open the gates to the army that has returned in the night and they sack the citadel. Now this story is a famous instance of Odysseus cunning, or to use the Greek word, his metis. Odysseus was famous, renowned throughout the Achaean forces for his cunning, for his wisdom, for his practical intelligence. But in the sacking of Troy, many atrocities are done, different rapes and pillagings happen and certain temples of the gods are desecrated. This offends various of the gods on Olympus. And so the gods then punish the triumphant Greek warriors as they attempt to return home. Now a triumphant homecoming or a return home was known among the Greeks as a nostos and and this was also very valued, very sought after by the Greeks. If on the one hand the Achaean warriors wanted kleos, they also wanted to accomplish a nostos, a triumphant return home. On the new episode of the Larry

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Arn Show, Hillsdale College President Larry Arn

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sits down with former US Navy SEAL

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officer Leif Babin for a one on one conversation.

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I would say in Iraq, from my experience there, I think we won the war and we lost the peace. I think that's the best way to describe that. And I think that comes from mission creep, because I think you have to define very clearly what are you actually trying to do. And we learned a lot of very tough and humbling leadership lessons on the battlefield in Ramadi. Humility, ownership, teamwork. We learned that leadership is the most important, important thing on the battlefield. And by leadership, I'm not just talking about the senior person in charge, but by everyone in the organization, right down to the frontline trooper. Listen to this exclusive interview with Leif

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right to your device. That's Podcast Hillsdale. Edu.

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Hey there, it's Scott Bertram, host of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. This week on the program we talk with Professor Evolutionary behavioral scientist and best selling author God Saad in his new book, Suicidal Dying to be Kind. What about the potential dangers of altruism? Can something good be bad if there's simply too much of it? And Dr. Stephen Smith from Hillsdale College discusses the life and teachings of St. Thomas More. His new book, the Last Advice on Living and Dying well from the imprisoned St. Thomas More. All that this week on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Find it at podcast hillsdale. Edu or wherever you get your audio. The gods angered by the Behavior of many of the Achaeans during the sack of Troy decide to punish the Greeks and interfere with their triumphant homecomings, their Nostos. Some are struck down by the gods, some are blown all over the Mediterranean. And Menelaus brother Agamemnon, the leader of all the Achaean forces as he returns home, is murdered by his wife Clytemnestra, who had taken up a lover Aegisthus, while he was gone in the 10 years at Troy. Eventually, their son Orestes comes and avenges his father's death by murdering his mother Clytemnestra. Orestes will prove an important role model that characters in the Odyssey will think about. Now, all of that is important background information for us. But if we look at this Proem Homer's epic invocation for the Odyssey, we learn several other interesting things. For instance, we learn that much time has passed since the sack of Troy, since the fall of that great city before this poem opens. In fact, so much time has passed that all of Odysseus men have died. The passage of this time leads us to the convention that epic poets follow after Homer, which is they start their poems in the middle of things, or to use the Latin phrase in media res, the Iliad for Homer started nine years into the war against Troy. The Odyssey starts nine years into Odysseus attempt to get home. Now, the very first word in the Greek of the Odyssey is the word andra, which means man. And in the first line of the Odyssey in Greek we have one important adjective that describes the man named there, and that is polytropon, a form of polytropos. That adjective is rendered here in Fagel's translation as the man of twists and turns. Other translators render polytropos as crafty or of roundabout ways, or of resourceful or of many ways. This is one of the most important attributes of the man that that our poem is going to be about. Now, on one level, he is of many twists and turns, of many ways, because he has been driven time and again off course, that is, physically in his journey he has had twists and turns. But on a deeper level, metaphorically and about Odysseus character, he's a man of twists and turns in that he doesn't quite follow a straight line. He's a deep man. He's a man who's hard to grasp, a man who's hard to pin down. He will be a challenge for us to understand. This characteristic of Odysseus as a polytropon, as a man of twists and turns is Related to that earlier term, I already mentioned that Odysseus has metis. He has cunning. If he is a man of twists and turns of polytropon, he is also a man of cunning and intelligence, in many ways a man of PolyMetis. That is, he has many different forms of understanding and thought. Polymates is one of Odysseus primary epithets. An epithet in ancient Greek literature is a repeatedly used descriptive phrase. Homer attaches many different epithets to his different characters. As you're reading this epic, you'll notice that Athena might be described as the sparkling eyed goddess or grey eyed Athena. We we hear of wary Penelope or cautious Penelope. We even get epithets describing inanimate things like rosy fingered dawn. While for Odysseus, his most important and most commonly used epithet is polymetes, it's related to his being of twists and turns. He's a man of many different forms of thought. Now, one of the ways in which Odysseus is a man of twists and turns and is hard to pin down is reflected in the very poetry of this beginning. That is, we actually don't get Odysseus name until 24 lines in. In Fagel's translation. In the original Greek we don't get the name of Odysseus until 21 lines in. So we hear, sing to me of the man, muse, the man of twists and turns. But even his name escapes us for nearly 25 lines. This delay increases the dramatic nature of the quote quality. It emphasizes the man. He is slow to reveal himself to us. He is slow to come into vision for us. This is in contrast to Achilles, the main character of the Iliad. Achilles and his wrath is named in the very first line of that poem. Here, Odysseus with his very name waits and lingers in the background. And when he does come before us, he will be a challenge for us to understand. Now, Odysseus name itself is also an interesting one. There's some scholarly debate about the exact roots, the linguistic origins of Odysseus name. We certainly think that it is perhaps related to words meaning to be angry at. But it also seems to be associated with a verb that can mean who suffers pain or also conversely inflicts pain. And I actually like this duality in Odysseus name. That is, he is one who suffers pain and one who inflicts pain. Now, a few other important details that we get here in these opening lines is that we hear Odysseus many cities of men, he saw and learned their minds. It's Sort of a curious phrase here we have emphasis here again on Odysseus's intellectual qualities. That is, he sees cities and he doesn't just know their architecture or their religion or their cuisine, but he understands their intellectual makeup. He learns their minds. Odysseus is a penetrating and deep thinker. We also learn that Odysseus has survived something that destroyed all of the rest of his men. There is something grizzled, something hardened, something of the survivor in Odysseus. He survives where others die. Then also interestingly we learn that Odysseus is beloved by goddesses. There's this nymph, Calypso, who loves him, who wants him as a husband. But then he's also hated by other gods. Poseidon, the brother of Zeus, a very powerful God, is bent on Odysseus destruction. So Odysseus has this funny quality where he's beloved of some gods and hated by others. And despite it all he manages to survive. The final really important thing we see here in these opening lines is that Odysseus is striving to get home. He wants to get home to his wife. His heart set on his wife and his return. But this nymph, this goddess Calypso wants him as her husband. That is, we see right at the beginning of this epic that there is a threat to Odysseus marriage. Now if we recall in the Iliad we can think of a whole political order, a whole city of men brought to its destruction because it committed itself to the violation of the marriage of Helen and Menelaus. Here in the Odyssey we are immediately informed of a threat to Odysseus marriage. And, and we should, after reading the Iliad, also wonder about the political order that that marriage supports. We will discuss this more as our narrative unfolds. But marriage and its relation to the political order is of primary importance for Homer. Now after this opening invocation, Homer takes us to Mount Olympus, the home of the gods, where we hear an interesting conversation between several of them. The very first spoken words of this epic are spoken by Zeus, the king of all the gods. And he has this complaint to but the other gods at home in Olympian Zeus halls met for full assembly there and among them now the father of men and gods was first to speak. Sorely troubled, remembering handsome Aegisthus, the man Agamemnon's son, renowned Orestes killed. Recalling Aegisthus, Zeus harangued the immortal powers. Ah, how shameless the way these mortals blame the gods. From us alone they say, come all Their miseries, yes. But they themselves, with their own reckless ways, compound their pains beyond their proper share. Look at Aegisthus now, above and beyond his share. He stole Atreides wife. He murdered the warlord coming home from Troy, though he knew it meant his own total ruin far in advance. We told him so ourselves, dispatching the guide, the giant killer, Hermes. Don't murder the man, he said. Don't court his wife. Beware, revenge will come from Orestes, Agamemnon's son. That day he comes of age and longs for his native land. So Hermes warned, with all the good will in the world. But would Aegisthus hardened heart give way? Now he pays the price, all at a single stroke. And sparkling eyed Athena drove the matter home. Father, son of Cronus, our high and mighty king, surely he goes down to a death he earned in full. Let them all die so, all who do such things. But my heart breaks for Odysseus, that seasoned veteran, cursed by fate so long far from his loved ones. Still he suffers torments. Now this opening conversation is very interesting. On the one hand we return to the theme of a threat to marriage. And here we see the threat to marriage from the other side. That is, Aegisthus courted the hero's wife while the hero was away at Troy. This in fact represents something that we will see with Odysseus wife Penelope on Ithaca. Not only is Calypso a threat to the marriage in her pursuit of Odysseus, but but there are suitors who are courting Odysseus wife Penelope. So we see possible threats to marriage, both with the man and with the wife. But more largely, Zeus's complaint here is that men blame the gods for the suffering that they bring on themselves. This raises another important theme for the Odyssey as a whole. What are the sources, the causes of the suffering that mankind endures? Are the gods the source of our suffering? Is it chance? Or is it the actions of men themselves? Homer will look closely at this in the following narrative. Now, as the story continues, Athena convinces Zeus to let them dispatch Hermes, the messenger God to Calypso, telling her she has to let Odysseus off her island. And she herself decides to go down to Ithaca, Odysseus home island, to inspire his son Telemachus. Telemachus was an infant when Odysseus left for Troy. But the war took 10 years and Odysseus has been traveling for nine years. So Telemachus is about 19 years old, about 20 years old at the opening of this work. And Athena decides to go down to inspire Telemachus to start to move him, to prepare for his father's return. And so Homer tells us, and down she swept from Olympus's craggy peaks and lit on Ithaca. Standing tall at Odysseus Gates the threshold of his court, gripping her bronze spear, she looked for all the world like a stranger now, like Mentes, lord of the Tafians. There she found the swaggering suitors just then, amusing themselves with rolling dice before the doors, lounging on hides of oxen they had killed themselves, while heralds and brisk attendants bustled round them, some at the mixing bowls, mulling wine and water, others wiping the tables down with sopping sponges, setting them out in place. Still other servants jointed and carved the great sides of meat. First by far to see her was Prince Telemachus, sitting among the suitors, heart obsessed with grief. He could almost see his magnificent father here in the mind's eye. If only he might drop from the clouds and drive the suitors all in a rout throughout the halls and regain his pride of place and rule his own domains. Daydreaming so as he sat among the suitors, he glimpsed Athena now, and straight to the porch he went, mortified that a guest might still be standing at the doors. Pausing beside her there, he clasped her right hand and, relieving her at once of her long bronze spear, met her with winged words. Greetings, stranger. Here in our house you'll find a royal welcome. Have supper first, then tell us what you need. He led the way, and Pallas Athena followed. Once in a high roofed hall, he took her lance and fixed it firm in a burnished rack against a sturdy pillar. There, where a row on row of spears embattled Odysseus spears stood stacked and waiting. Then he escorted her to a high elaborate chair of honor. Over it draped a cloth, and here he placed his guest with a stool to rest her feet. But for himself, he drew up a low reclining chair beside her, richly painted, clear of the press of suitors concerned his guest, offended by their uproar, might shrink from food in the midst of such a mob, he hoped, what's more, to ask her about his long lost father. A maid brought water soon in a graceful golden pitcher and over a silver basin, tipped it out so they might rinse their hands, then pulled the gleaming table to their side. A staid housekeeper brought on bread to serve them appetizers aplenty, too lavish with her bounty, a carver lifted platters of meat toward them, meats of Every sort. And set beside them golden cups. And time and again a page came round and poured them wine. Now we see here several important things. Of course, Telemachus is here as a young man yearning for his father's return. We see his great desire for his father. We also see the presumptive and offensive behavior of the suitors.

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And in fact, Telemachus is worried that this guest, this stranger to his house, might be offended by the bad behavior of the suitors. We also see Telemachus attention to this guest. And this introduces another motif or theme that is quite important for Homer's work as a whole. And that is the theme of hospitality or xenia in Greek. Hospitality was very important in this culture for many reasons. First of all, of course, travel was very difficult at that time. And so strangers, travelers from distant lands had already encountered great difficulties before arriving at your palace, at your house. But travelers were quite important because travelers could bring news of distant events. And news at that time would travel quite slowly. Travelers also could establish bonds between different cities, palaces, peoples and communities. That is, if you accept with hospitality a traveler from distant Sparta, say, then when you are traveling to Sparta, you might expect reasonably similar hospitality. So hospitality formed a sort of glue, a social bond that knit these different cities and peoples together. Travelers, in fact, were said to be sacred to Zeus. This principle of hospitality, this principle of xenia, was a virtue that Zeus himself enforced. He said that we must be hospitable to strangers. Now, in this culture, the guest also has certain obligations. If he can expect to be fed, washed and housed. He should share news. He should entertain his hosts, tell stories, sing songs, perhaps compete with them in games, perhaps exchange gifts with the host. And he must be careful not to tread upon or violate this principle of hospitality. That is, while he can expect to be treated well, he should not over extend his welcome. He shouldn't overstay his welcome. This is part of what we see the suitors doing. They are violating the principle of hospitality by using their hosts. Now, while the suitors are carousing in Odysseus halls, Athena and Telemachus have a conversation. And Athena inspires Telemachus by assuring him that his father is still alive. Then she turns and observes the behavior of the suitors. Homer tells us, still the clear eyed goddess reassured him. Trust me, the gods have not marked out your house for such an unsung future. Not if Penelope is born a son like you. But tell me about all this and spare me nothing. What's this banqueting, this crowd carousing?

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And what part do you play yourself? Some wedding feast, some festival? Hardly a potluck supper, I would say. How obscenely they lounge and swagger. Here, look. Gorging in your house. Why, any man of sense who chanced among them would be outraged seeing such behavior. Athena provokes Telemachus with this, and Telemachus goes on to complain that he doesn't have the power or the authority to dismiss the men. The men are there, ignoring young Telemachus and always trying to win the favor of Penelope. Telemachus goes on to say this curious detail about his mother's Listen, all the nobles who rule the island's roundabout dulykion and same, and wooded Zacynthus too, and all who lord it in rocky Ithaca as well, down to the last man. They court my mother, they lay waste my house. And mother, she neither rejects a marriage she despises, nor can she bear to bring the courting to an end while they continue to bleed my household white. Soon you wait, they'll grind me down as well. Shameful, brimming with indignation, Pallas Athena broke out. Now, Telemachus here presents us with an interesting detail and a difficult question. Mother neither rejects a marriage she despises, nor can she bear to bring the courting to the end. Why, if Penelope despises the proposed marriages, why, if she is not interested in these suitors, does she not bring the courting to an end? It's a very interesting question, one that Telemachus himself can't answer and one that sits for us as a very important issue at the opening of this poem. In fact, this question is repeatedly phrased over the course of the Odyssey and becomes one of the dominant motifs or questions that we have regarding our characters. What is Pythagoras Penelope, really up to with the suitors who are besieging her household? We'll follow this question as we go. Indeed, Penelope, like Odysseus, is going to be somewhat difficult to pin down. If Odysseus is a man of twists and turns, and of Metis, Penelope, too, presents interpretive difficulties for us. What exactly does she want? What are her ends? What are her aims? Now, we'll get a glimpse of Pineapple Penelope in just a moment. But first Athena encourages Telemachus. She tells him he should gather all the nobles in a council the next morning to see if they will restrain the suitors. And then she says if they won't, he should sail to the mainland of Greece to visit Nestor in the city of Pylos. And then Menelaus in The city of Sparta, visiting those two men who had been with his father at Troy. They had both returned home. They're veterans who knew Odysseus well. And Telemachus, Athena advises him, should go to those cities to see if those veterans had heard anything about his father. We can see here Athena's important role in the Odyssey, in getting all of our action moving. She sends Hermes to Ogygia to free Odysseus. And she inspires Telemachus to move to the mainland of Greece. Now, at the end of this inspiring speech to Telemachus, she flies off like a bird. And Telemachus realizes that he's been speaking to one of the gods. He is heartened and and inspired by this. And then our narrative turns to Penelope. Homer tells us, amidst them still the famous bard sang on. And they sat in silence listening as he performed the Achaeans journey home from Troy. All the blows Athena doomed them to endure. And now from high above in her room and deep in thought, she caught the inspired strains. Icarius's daughter, Penelope, wary and reserved, and down the steep stair from her chamber she descended not alone. Two of her women followed close behind. That radiant woman, once she reached her suitors, drawing her glistening veil across her cheeks, paused now where a column propped the sturdy roof, with one of her loyal handmaids stationed either side. Suddenly dissolving in tears and bursting through the bards inspired voice, she cried out, phemius, so many other songs you know to hold us spellbound. Works of the gods and men that singers celebrate. Sing one of those as you sit beside them here. And they drink their wine in silence. But break off this song, the unendurable song that always rends the heart inside me. The unforgettable grief. It wounds me most of all how I long for my husband alive in memory always, that great man whose fame resounds through Hellas right to the depths of Argos. Now Telemachus, having been inspired by Athena, tries to act like the man of the house and tells his mother to go back to her chamber and that he will deal with the suitors. But the depiction of Penelope here is quite interesting. That she is high up in her room and deep in thought, and that when she comes to the suitors, she descends to them. Penelope is high, both because her chamber is above them, but also symbolically. She sits above them. She is the thing the suitors are striving for. She's also the person Odysseus is striving to return to. She's also deep in thought. She resonates with Odysseus in this way. She is Metis. She has her own cunning, her own intelligence. Here now, why Penelope will come down to the suitors and in front of them and express her longing for her husband without dismissing or sending the suitors away again expresses this question. What is it that Penelope is after? What is what is she motivated by? What is she aiming for? We have here in book one of the Odyssey, a very interesting situation. Clearly we have a police in crisis, we have a marriage under assault. We have a lost ruler and a God setting things in motion. What Penelope is up to on Ithaca and Telemachus adventures on the Greek mainland are what we'll look at in our next lecture.

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