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True and Lying Tales in the Odyssey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

Chris Emlyn-Jones
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Extract

What is truth and what are lies in the Odyssey? Odysseus in his lying story to Eumaios (14.192ff.), just as the sea-nymph Eidothea in her true advice to the weather-bound Menelaos (4.383ff.), claims to be speaking μαλ' ἀτρɛκέως, ‘quite precisely’. As all politicians are aware, if you wish to stand a chance of being believed it helps to emphasize the accuracy of what you are saying; this introductory line was as much a formula for Homer as it is today.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , April 1986 , pp. 1 - 10
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1986

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References

NOTES

1. It should be noted that Odysseus explicitly claims ἀλήθɛια only for the actual truth (e.g.16.226), but it is doubtful whether the poet intended this to be significant; when giving Penelope a version of his activities since she has last seen him which omits any hint of Odysseus' presence, Telemachos claims, notwithstanding, to be speaking ἀληθɛίην (17.108).

2. αἶνος = ‘story with a moral’ or here more appropriately, ‘with an ulterior motive’.

3. See Ancient Society, 8 (1977), 1–19Google Scholar.

4. See scholium on 14.199 quoted in Trahman, C. R., Phoenix 6 (1952), 31–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. This translation, supported by a scholium on 11.366, seems preferable to Lattimore's ‘from which no one could learn anything’.

6. Yet note that Eumaios describes this part of Odysseus' tale as οὐ κατὰ κόσμον (14.363), a description which although clearly implying its supposed falsity, nevertheless also contains an underlying implication concerning its artistic arrangement: ‘not in order’.

7. See Walcot, , op. cit., 1ff.Google Scholar

8. For a subtle analysis of this story see Walcot, , op. cit., 10ff.Google Scholar

9. See my discussion of the recognition sequence, G & R 31 (1984) 1ff.Google Scholar and focussing on evidence from the scholia, Richardson, N. J., Liverpool Latin Seminar, 1983, 219–35Google Scholar.

10. See Studies in the Odyssey (Wiesbaden, 1974), pp. 5ff.Google Scholar

11. Ibid., pp. 168ff.

12. See my discussion op. cit., 7–8.

13. Cf. e.g. Iliad 1.366–8.

14. The intrusive third persons (ἐμὰχοντο/βάλλον: 9.54–55) in a first person context might suggest a variant form of the narrative or a ‘floating tale’ (see Stanford, W. B.Homer, Odyssey (London, 1958), note ad loc)Google Scholar.

15. W. B. Stanford, op. cit., note on 14.262, thinks that hybris does not refer to the act of piracy but to the neglect of suitable safety precautions, on the grounds that piracy, as ‘quite a gentleman's profession in the Heroic Age’, would not be so described. This is surely wrong: 1) Hybris is a word closely related to gratuitous violence or the threat of violence (see LSJ ad loc. and Fisher, N., G & R 23 (1976), 177–93)Google Scholar; 2) Odysseus in his beggar's persona could not count on Eumaios having the same attitude to piracy as the ‘gentleman’ heroes of the Iliad (hybris is not mentioned in the book 9 version of the story, delivered to the aristocratic Phaeacians); 3) Odysseus goes out of his way, in this episode, to dissociate himself from the attack which he might, therefore, quite consistently condemn as hybris.

16. The need to test also applies to friendly listeners and extends well beyond the exigencies of the situation (see my discussion, op. cit., 8 and Walcot, , op. cit., 19–20)Google Scholar.

17. This paradeigmatic function is also notable in the Iliad, e.g. Phoinix at 9.524–99; Nestor at 11.655–761. It passes, more formalized, into Greek lyric and elegiac poetry.

18. For examples of a true story related to an αἶνος, see Nestor using Agamemnon's fate as a warning to Telemachos not to stay too long away from home (3.313–6), and Menelaos deprecating comparison between his palace and Olympos by recounting briefly the trouble he has undergone to amass his treasures (4.78–93).

19. For preoccupation with the ‘real’ stories, see Woodhouse, W. J., The Composition of Homer's Odyssey (Oxford, 1930)Google Scholar.

20. Walcot, , op. cit., 9Google Scholar.

21. Homer, not without irony, one supposes, twice likens Odysseus in his stories to an aoidos (Alkinoos at 11.368 and Eumaios at 17.518). This and other references suggest that the poet was using his hero's narrative skill as a reflection of his own.

22. Likewise the Aitolian wanderer who lied to Eumaios at 14.379–85 represents a variant on the ‘I have seen Odysseus and he will soon be home’ theme.

23. See esp. Kirk, G. S., The Songs of Homer (Cambridge, 1962), p. 360Google Scholar. In talking of ‘flagging tempo’ and describing one such story as a ‘digression’, Kirk seems to me to misconceive the essentially paratactic structure and leisurely pace of Homeric epic.

24. See Gaisser, J. H., HSCP 73 (1969), 26–32Google Scholar, who remarks on the lively staccato style of 13.256–86 (the most ‘improvisatory’ of Odysseus' stories, see above n. 8) and also the elements of structure in 14.199–359.

25. The author wishes to thank Desmond Costa for reading a draft of this paper and making a number of helpful suggestions.