One of the more famous extra-canonical stories about Odysseus is his hesitancy to join the Greek army prior to the siege of Troy. He had a newborn son and initially he didn’t heed the call to join Agamemnon at Aulis. An expedition was sent to encourage/ force him to join up, and he pretended to have gone insane; plowing erratically and sewing salt on his fields. His ruse was uncovered when his newborn, Telemachus, was placed in the path of the plow and Odysseus turned the blade before striking the child. He then left Ithaca, not to return for 20 years. Telemachus grows up fatherless and it shows.
Homer’s audience lives in a strictly patriarchal society; not only are women deprived of public leadership roles, but classical Athenian women were generally cloistered at home and deprived basic human dignities of mobility, association, and conscience. They were essentially trade goods for cementing alliances and legitimate reproduction of male heirs. Men were under far fewer social and sexual restrictions. The double standard of sexual fidelity vs promiscuity is clearly reflected in Odysseus’ self-reported years-long dalliances with Circe and Calypso compared with the tension driving Odysseus’ disguised return to Ithaca where one of his primary objectives is to assess Penelope’s fidelity. His anxiety is also reflected by the fact that one of the primary questions he asks the prophet Tiresias while in the Land of The Dead is about her faithfulness. The subtle and not so subtle jabs at Helen’s character and the obvious tension in her relationship with Menelaus, as well as the oft repeated tale of Clytemnestra’s treachery and involvement in the murder of her husband Agamemnon serve to underline the preoccupation with the physical and emotional fidelity expected of women but not of men by Odysseus and Homer’s audience. Many modern readers find this combination of oppression and double-standard to be unacceptable and off-putting for reading Odysseus as a hero. I find myself included in this group. There are many reasons I find Odysseus lacking in the “hero as an admirable exemplar of virtue” department, but these loom large. I’ll discuss my path to deeper empathy for him in another essay. The point I’ve distracted myself from making is this: Telemachus is lacking in social graces, rhetoric, and executive leadership and these deficiencies are attributed to growing up without a father in the home and the systemic disenfranchisement of women.
The second scene of The Odyssey is set during a feast at Odysseus’ home on Ithaca. The suitors have, as they’ve done for years, slaughtered some of Odysseus’ livestock and are engaged in gambling and lounging while they drink copious volumes of wine: basic bro-dude house party behavior. I imagine something akin to a media depiction of a college fraternity. In the midst of this revelry Telemachus daydreams:
“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 these suitors all in a rout throughout the halls and regain his pride of place and rule his own domains!”
As the fates would have it, Athena arrives, in disguise, at his doorstep as part of a multi-step plan to finally bring Odysseus home. Telemachus is a gracious host and demonstrates the proper protocols of Xenia showing that he is not totally ignorant of what is right and good. When his physical resemblance to his father is noted in conversation he reveals another deep seated personal anxiety:
“Mother has always told me I’m his son, it’s true, but I am not so certain. Who, on his own, has ever really known who gave him life?”
After a bit of conversation and coaching he decides to call an assembly of the remaining respectable citizens of Ithaca. In a well functioning, civilized society, the types of abuse being perpetrated by the suitors would be addressed through simple enforcement of law and custom, and violence should not be necessary, so if Telemachus can raise awareness about his plight, perhaps the problem could be solved with words and not swords. He gives an impassioned speech decrying the waste and abuse of the suitors and the real monetary damage they are doing to his estate, but in the end his words fall flat, not because they are untrue, nor because his complaint is unjustified, but because of his delivery:
“‘Look, you load my heart with grief- there’s nothing I can do!’ Filled with anger, down on the ground he dashed the speaker’s scepter- bursting into tears. Pity seized the assembly. All just sat there, silent… no one had the heart to reply with harshness.”
It’s worth remembering here that an unknown portion of the able-bodied, respectable men of Ithaca, those with the physical and social clout to enforce custom and law, have been gone with Odysseus for nearly 20 years, and therefore it seems likely the real and perceived authority of this institution would have eroded substantially in the interim. Telemachus’ bid to solve his problem through an appeal to civil authority fails, and Homer makes sure we understand that this failure doesn’t fall entirely upon Telemachus. The assembly ultimately sides with him and one member prophesies doom for the suitors, but the unwelcome houseguests mock the idea that this collection of old men has the ability to enforce their judgments and meaningfully oppose their attempted power grab. Eurymachus, one of the few named suitors among the 108 that inhabit Odysseus’ home says:
“Who’s to fear? I ask you. Surely not Telemachus, with all his tiresome threats. Nor do we balk, old man, at the prophecies you mouth… The prince’s wealth will be devoured as always, mercilessly – no reparations, ever”
The clearest description of how Telemachus’ character is perceived comes after he declares his intention to leave Ithaca to search for news of his father. He says that he’ll spend up to a year trying to find him, or confirm news of his location or death, and at the end of that time, if Odysseus cannot be located or is confirmed dead he will choose a suitor for his mother. Another suitor, Leocritus, responds:
“He’ll sit tight a good long while, I trust, scrabbling for news right here in Ithaca – he’ll never make that trip”
He’s not only a do-nothing, but he’s perceived as easily influenced. Yet another suitor takes a more conciliatory route:
“Antinous, smiling warmly, sauntered up to the prince, grasped his hand and coaxed him, savoring his name: ‘Telemachus, my high and mighty, fierce young friend, no more nursing those violent words and actions now. Come, eat and drink with us, just like the old days. Whatever you want our people will provide. A ship and a picked crew to speed you to holy Pylos, out for news about your noble father.”
These suitors have been in his home for the past four years. Guys in their late twenties and early thirties hanging around his house during his late teen years probably did influence Telemachus. I imagine it to be something like having a bunch of social media influencers living in your house, basically the situation any parent whose kids have access to YouTube must navigate: Andrew Tate, Joe Rogan, Mr Beast etc. on tap without any mechanism to limit exposure. It’s a tribute to his mother’s influence that Telemachus is disposed to act upon Athena’s wise counsel and fight back against these interlopers in support of the father he has never known.
On the one hand we have a young man lacking confidence in his identity and abilities, and on the other we have a host of trouble makers trampling custom and common decency under foot fearless of the gods and human institutions. Two divergent expressions of social disorder and disruption. Both Telemachus and Penelope’s suitors experienced their formative years while at least 600 men from Ithaca and its surrounding islands were away at war. They are all from what some would call “broken homes” having grown up without fathers.
There’s a strain of social conservatism that recognizes these failings as parallel to some of the social ills plaguing our own time. I’ve just compared the suitors to social media influencers. Much has been made of the declining frequency of the traditional nuclear family and “broken homes” as detrimental to moral and social virtue resulting in increased rates of violent crime and poverty. I will plead ignorance on the actual quality and validity of data and their interpretation regarding these relationships. I grew up in an exceedingly supportive, stable environment and feel like I benefited substantially from the circumstances, but I have no genuine frame of reference for how disruptions of that structure influence developing humans. Ultimately I think there’s something to the idea that a stable, supportive environment where virtues are modeled is preferable to the lack thereof.
While I acknowledge my belief that individuals and society benefit from stable home environments, my perception of those who espouse policy measures based on these observations frequently suggest that the remedy is retrenchment of traditional roles and power structures following a specific historical cultural definition of a home. In my own tradition, in 1995, in the wake of the Hawaiian state supreme court allowing challenges to bans of Same-sex marriages, the LDS church published a document that has reached near canonical status. Commonly known as “The Family Proclamation” the statements made in the document have guided the social outlook of the organization and many of its members over the past 30 years. The language of the document is measured and open to a variety of interpretations, but an orthodoxy has grown up around it, and for more than a generation it has been used to justify a variety of doctrinal and political positions. The simple statement, “Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children“ can be interpreted in many ways, but there is one specific way that I heard extolled many times during my youth and adulthood. It has been consistently used to convince women that the pursuit of education and a career outside the home is somehow contradicted by divine mandate. Similarly, “The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity” is often quoted to bolster the institutional support of political measures against marriage equality. The statement “gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose” not only justifies strict adherence to gender roles in the traditional nuclear family but also seems to preclude the biology of intersex people and denies the validity of transgender identities. I’ll admit I was never a big fan of the document so I’m probably anchoring on what I believe to be the worst interpretations and abuses of authority associated with its promulgation here. Setting aside my biases, the truth remains that the LDS church is not alone in this point of view, by definition the term conservative suggests the preservation of historic norms. The question is: which historic norms are the ones which have proven beneficial in terms of fostering stable lives and societies, and which ones are traditions that can or should be discarded? In the “good old days” alluded to by many conservatives, adult women were often treated as minors before the law. I suspect even the most devoted “trad wife” would object to being stripped of basic human rights and liberties by the state. During the times of “The Founders” as well as in the heyday of the American middle class of the 1950s and 60s, eras for which many conservative pundits express fondness, sizable swaths of Americans were denied the fundamentals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness: basic human liberty and the rights of self-determination, access to the vote, and often severe limitations on utility of public and private infrastructure: schools, restrooms, transit, dining etc. Exactly which beliefs, actions, and social changes destabilize not just existing power structures, but actual human lives? Which ones are primarily beneficial? Can a society achieve stability without disenfranchising a subpopulation? Can groups be highly cohesive without also incurring the downsides of tribalism? The Odyssey doesn’t approach any of these questions directly, but I think it has a few opinions baked into the narrative.
Here in the Odyssey we have a society in which the traditional roles of husband, wife, child, and even slave are not challenged in any way. There are no feminist, gay, trans, or racial equality “agendas” one can point at as the potential disruptors of the social norms under assault on Ithaca. The acceptability and desirability of slavery and patriarchy are not in doubt. Telemachus doesn’t grow up deficient in social graces because of disrupted gender roles or some nebulous moral decay. In The Odyssey, the fraying of the social fabric, the degradation of civil institutions and home life are deeply disturbed by war. The decision to engage in a protracted foreign conflict driven primarily by the hope of economic gain is the root cause of these social ills. Odysseus and the fathers of some of the suitors aren’t home because they’re on a beach at Troy trying to bring home treasure from a famously wealthy city. They cloaked their cause as a moral stand against a violation of social custom and norms, but sending 50,000-100,000 men to a foreign country for a decade to adjudicate a domestic dispute is clearly a disproportionate response. The Iliad and Odyssey make clear that getting rich and winning fame and glory was on everyone’s minds. Bad social policy driven by the relentless pursuit of economic gain is why Telemachus, Penelope, and so many nameless others throughout the Greek speaking world suffered from “broken homes”. I think it serves not only as a cautionary tale, but reminds us to look for structural root causes to perceived societal ills in our own time.
I think it noteworthy that adherence to a strict patriarchal order and disenfranchisement of women doesn’t prevent, but exacerbates the social problems on Ithaca. Penelope is an intelligent woman: she gets the better of Odysseus at least once, she manages a household and raises a child as a single mother, she fools the suitors for years and facilitates their slaughter. More on her strengths in another journal. Meanwhile among the Olympians Athena, a female free to act at liberty and who will never marry, not Zeus or Apollo, is the one who orchestrates this whole sequence of events. I don’t think Homer was a proto-feminist, but his characterization of women in general, and Penelope specifically seems to contradict the ideas that depriving women of basic human dignity and freedom and excluding them from power structures has a stabilizing influence on society. The youth of Ithaca aren’t OK, and the root cause is a traditional power structure making decisions with devastating unforeseen consequences (protracted war), and proximally we witness the deficiencies of a rigid social structure that systematically disenfranchises over half the population and deprives the society of intelligent, clever leaders. The former creates an enormous power vacuum, and the latter precludes its remedy. The Odyssey offers a clear indictment of the system it portrays.
Returning to Telemachus. The portrait Homer paints of him in the first two books is anything but flattering. This characterization definitely serves to bring the perilous situation to which Odysseus will return into sharp relief. His home is overrun by men in the prime of life who want to displace him from his position, marry his wife and kill his son. They fear neither social approbation nor divine prophecy. They have made enemies, but also have garnered influence over members of his household i.e. slaves. Odysseus has been away from home for 20 years and has no idea who he can trust in his own house, he’s outnumbered over 100:1 against younger opponents, his confidence in his leadership must certainly suffer from the fact that he’s lost all the men he took off to war with him, and no matter which version of his story you believe he’s spent years in captivity on his way home. Returning to claim his household and social position is not a trivial task, and great heroes often have a great support staff. Jason had Medea and the other Argonauts, Heracles had his nephew Iolaus, Theseus: Ariadne, Achilles: Patroclus, and Batman had Robin. Odysseus will not overcome these odds alone, and Telemachus ends up a powerful ally to his father. How does he transform from an inadequate child lacking grace, charisma, and confidence into a hero who stands by his father as they dispatch over 100 men bent on their destruction? It turns out there’s an age old formula humans can’t get enough of. There’s a reason we can’t get enough of Spiderman reboots. The hero’s journey is familiar and comforting yet is also flexible enough to be evergreen with possibilities that please and inspire humans throughout time and space.
Every journey and story is unique, but our brains can’t help but seek and impose patterns upon our experience. Joseph Campbell wasn’t the first to propose the idea of an archetypal foundation for hero stories, but his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the PBS series based on his interviews with Bill Moyers “The Power of Myth”, and perhaps most importantly his documented collaboration with George Lucas on the original Star Wars trilogy make his ideas about the universal aspects of how a hero develops in world myth and literature well known. His conception of the monomyth may be imperfect, but once you see it, it’s difficult to unsee. I won’t belabor the concepts but the basic ideas are that a hero somehow heeds a “call to adventure” in response to a crisis, leaves home on a journey, passes through challenges and temptations, is “reborn” or transformed, and returns home in possession of a boon that addresses the precipitating crisis. A tale as old as time.
I feel like I’ve beat the “crisis at home” part of this to death, so the next aspect to discuss is the “call to adventure”, the departure from the familiar which often takes the form of a physical removal from home. Hobbitses leave the Shire and sometimes get as far as Mount Doom. A budding wizard leaves Privet Drive and attends a selective boarding school called Hogwarts. Anakin and Luke both depart Tatooine in the company of strangers, priests of an obscure cult of “The Force”. Oedipus leaves Corinth to seek the truth at Delphi. Katniss represents District 12 in the Hunger Games. Bruce Wayne leaves Gotham before he can avenge his parents’ murder. You get the picture. The decision to leave itself is often a demonstration of courage and determination; our hero may meet resistance in the form of physical barriers, external dangers, emotional attachments, or relationship complications. Because our hero isn’t fully ripe, she often needs some aid in making this leap, encountering a mentor, or the unexpected arrival of timely help not only facilitates the departure, but marks our hero as chosen.
Telemachus’ journey may not appear particularly daunting or heroic: he’s going to the mainland to see if anyone knows his father’s fate or whereabouts. I think this underscores the act of departure, entering the unknown, the acceptance that a breaking point has been reached and something must change is the crucial component of Act 1. Telemachus must overcome numerous barriers to leave his island. It turns out the suitors are alarmed by his sudden change in attitude and behavior toward them. They hatch a conspiracy to kill him. He must leave his mother, and she is not pleased with his decision to leave, and especially with his decision to leave without telling her. Despite living on an island and being the son of a pirate warlord king, he has no idea how to gather and manage a seafaring expedition. Fortunately, he has the goddess of wisdom on his side. She comes to his house in disguise and consistently offers him encouragement and moral support, going so far as arranging for his ship and crew, and even riding shotgun as he sets off across the wine dark sea. Her involvement in his journey so exemplifies this role that the guise she takes, that of the old copper trader Mentor, has become the eponym for a wise guide to a budding hero.
In Act 2, initiation, the hero meets friends and enemies, and faces temptations, challenges, and ultimately she emerges from the most difficult of these challenges a profoundly changed person, armed with a boon that she can use to address the crisis back at home. Years after Thanos snaps his fingers, Tony Stark solves the age old problem of time travel. Moses encounters the burning bush and returns to tell Pharoah to let his people go. Jesus is tempted in the wilderness after fasting for 40 days and returns to Galilee bearing wisdom for the masses, he also returns from the realm of the dead carrying the light of eternal life. Lindsay Vonn battles back from ACL and MCL tears to once again mount the podiums of ski racing.
In Books 2-4 Telemachus travels to the mainland. His first stop is Pylos where he meets the long winded Nestor. After Telemachus makes his inquiry, for perhaps the first time ever, Nestor doesn’t have a lot to say except that Odysseus was really as great as everyone says, but he has no idea where he may be. How is this a challenge or trial? As noted above, Telemachus is not confident in speaking to adults, and here he is faced with speaking to a bonafide war hero, a participant not only in the Trojan war, but an argonaut. Nestor famously gives exceptionally long speeches and occasionally dispenses sage advice at the end of them. We all know a Nestor. Some of us might even be a Nestor. The challenge Telemachus faces is conducting a useful conversation with a more mature, famous rambler. A gracious, well intentioned rambler, but a rambler nonetheless. He does so. Additionally he must participate in the rituals of Xenia. I think we should interpret this first interaction abroad as a challenge in two ways. Telemachus has always resided in the palace of Ithaca, he’s never been in the position of being the guest in this relationship, and the experience of Xenia with which he is most familiar is one of abuse. The suitors have long overstayed their welcome, refuse to depart, and are shameless in their profligate waste of their host’s resources, they’re even plotting to kill him. Can Telemachus not only assert himself, presenting himself as something approaching a peer to the great king of Pylos, but can he conduct himself properly as an honored guest? After all the rituals of a warm welcome are observed and Telemachus quits himself ideally, Nestor turns to him and asks him his business, and Homer informs us, “Telemachus was thoughtful but not shy”. He engages his host in conversation and when he gets to the touchy subjects: how his concerns about his own paternity, the anxiety he feels that his father may be lost, and his ability to send the suitors packing, he is vulnerable and honest about his lack of confidence, but he doesn’t break down like he did at the public meeting. If things are getting a bit too much for him he goes so far as to contradict a goddess disguised as Mentor:
Telemachus said apprehensively, “Mentor, this is upsetting. Change the subject. He has no real chance now of getting home. The gods have fenced him round with death and darkness. Let me ask Nestor something else—he is wiser and more informed than anyone.
Homer takes this moment to have Nestor fill Telemachus in on some of the details of Agamemnon’s murder, and offer up Orestes as a model son who avenged his father:
How fortunate the dead man had left a son to take revenge upon the wicked, scheming killer, that Aegisthus, who killed Orestes’ father. My dear boy, I see that you are tall and strong. Be brave, so you will be remembered.
Telemachus’ sights remain low, and he’s unsure of his ability to succeed in his ultimate quest to rid his house of the unwelcome suitors, but his expression about deliverance has changed, he responds to Nestor:
Orestes took revenge. The Greeks will make him famous through the world and into future times. I wish the gods would grant me that much power against those men who threaten and insult me—those cruel suitors! The gods have not yet granted us this blessing, my father and myself. We must endure.
Now, he wishes not only for his father’s return, but for the power to work alongside him in defeating their shared adversaries. This is a change from the daydreaming boy convinced of his own impotence.
Telemachus parts ways with Mentor at Pylos. Nestor doesn’t have any information about Odysseus, but he knows Menelaus endured a harrowing journey back from Troy and perhaps he would know or may have heard something. The best way to get to Sparta is by chariot. Telemachus doesn’t have one, but Nestor suggests that his own youngest son, Pisitratus, could journey with him to Sparta. We’ve just entered college road trip territory. Athena/Mentor knows the types of shenanigans two dudes in their late teens and early twenties can get into on the road and wisely announces she’s gonna stay back with the ship. Up until now Athena/Mentor has been the driving force of this journey, now Telemachus, mostly on his own initiative, ventures further into the unknown. Again, this is progress.
In the time honored tradition of “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”, Homer doesn’t offer much detail about the journey to Sparta, a gap I’m convinced someone could have a lot of fun writing into. They arrive at Menelaus’ palace just as a wedding feast celebrating the dual marriages of Menelaus’ daughter by Helen, Hermione, to Achilles’ son Neoptolemus, and Menelaus’ son by a slave/concubine/war trophy, Magpenthes to Alector’s daughter Iphiloche, is beginning. The two are welcomed warmly, washed, anointed, clothed, and sat next to Menelaus at the head of the banquet. Talk about hospitality, and possibly a very awkward situation. The college road trip immediately transitioned into wedding crashing, a not inconceivable outcome, and nobody blinks. The customs of Xenia are honored.
Telemachus is a bit overwhelmed. The riches Menelaus gained in Egypt on his return from Troy fill the palace; the rumor is that he’s now the wealthiest Achaean. While they’re dining, before any business is transacted, Menelaus believes one of his young visitors bears a striking resemblance to a long lost friend, and laments the decision to go to war, he regrets the lost years, all the dead soldiers, especially those with whom he interacted with the most, especially that genius Odysseus. He goes so far as to say he’d trade his wealth to have his companions back.
I can take no joy in all my wealth. Whoever they may be, your fathers have surely told you how much I have suffered! I lost my lovely home, and I was parted for many years from all my splendid riches. I wish I had stayed here, with just a third of all the treasure I have now acquired, if those who died at Troy, so far away from Argive pastures, were alive and well. I sit here in my palace, mourning all who died, and often weeping. Sometimes tears bring comfort to my heart, but not for long; cold grief grows sickening. I miss them all, but one man most. When I remember him, I cannot eat or sleep, since no one labored like him—Odysseus. His destiny was suffering, and mine the endless pain of missing him. We do not even know if he is still alive—he has been gone so long.
Ok, all his friends are only worth two-thirds of his wealth. Who says you can’t put a price tag on friendship? Between this lament, and the arrival of Helen, she of the face that launched a thousand ships, Telemachus falters and can’t summon the courage to speak, so his wingman Pisistratus picks up the conversational slack for a bit. Eventually Menelaus speaks directly to Telemachus asking him his business. Telemachus takes a breath and introduces himself and his quest:
King Menelaus, son of Atreus, I came in search of news about my father. My house is being eaten up; our wealth is ruined. My whole home is full of men who mean me harm—my mother’s loutish suitors. Each day they kill more sheep, more longhorn cattle. So I am begging you, here on my knees, tell me the dreadful news, if he is dead! Perhaps you saw it with your eyes, or heard tales of his travels. He was surely born to suffer in extraordinary ways. Please do not try to sweeten bitter news from pity; tell me truly if you saw him, and how he was. If my heroic father ever helped you at Troy when things were bad, keep that in mind right now, and tell the truth.
Regardless of how painful it may be, he wants the truth. I think this is also progress. Menelaus launches into a complicated story about his own journey home, being stranded in Egypt, his wrestle with a sea god Proteus who tells him not only how to get home, but informs him about the many disasters that cut down others returning from Troy, another mention of Agamemnon’s fate and Oresetes’ revenge, and finally a sliver about Odysseus being held captive on Calypso’s island. Ah Ha! A new hope! That was years ago, but it’s something. After completing his story Menelaus assures the boys they’re welcome to stay as long as they like and they’ll be sent home laden with gifts. We know Telemachus has been dazzled by this man’s wealth, we know how unpleasant things are at home, we know the suitors plot to intercept his voyage and kill him, there are plenty of temptations for Telemachus to stay here, for awhile at least, and not rush home. After all, Menelaus’ information is years-old stuff. What’s the hurry?
A temptress or a femme fatale is a relatively common feature in hero quests. Despite the fact that Telemachus is a handsome young dude, Homer makes no clear references to romantic or sexual temptations for him, but the temptation to linger and not continue on his voyage is personified by a woman. Helen. Her? Again? As you can imagine Menelaus and Helen have a complicated marriage, and during the night they swap stories involving Odysseus that took place in the waning days of the Trojan war that expose some of their conflicts. What started as a celebration of two marriages just might spiral into a fight about their own, but it doesn’t. Helen anticipated emotions might run high this evening and had previously mixed a special cocktail she’d learned about in Egypt for the purpose of keeping emotions in check:
Then the child of Zeus, Helen, decided she would mix the wine with drugs to take all pain and rage away, to bring forgetfulness of every evil. Whoever drinks this mixture from the bowl will shed no tears that day, not even if her mother or her father die, nor even if soldiers kill her brother or her darling son with bronze spears before her very eyes.
Sound familiar? To me this bears a striking resemblance to the encounter with the Lotus Eaters. Odysseus’ men who ate the Lotus suddenly lost their motivation to do anything but eat Lotus. They had no ambition to continue their journey home. At any rate I think it fair to see this whole evening with Menelaus and Helen not only as another exercise in the appropriate practice of Xenia, not only as a key revelation about Odysseus’ fate, but as a genuine potential distraction from the quest. How will Telemachus proceed? His response is telling. The next morning he is up with the sun, he seeks out his host to thank him for his hospitality, after being assured of all the comforts and riches Menelaus intends to bestow upon him Telemachus responds:
Then tactfully Telemachus replied, “Please do not keep me here so long, my lord. Indeed, I would be glad to stay a year; I would not even miss my home or parents— I get such pleasure listening to you. But my poor friends are surely tired of waiting in Pylos. You have made me stay too long. And for a gift, please only give me treasure. You keep your lovely horses here; I cannot transport them all the way to Ithaca.
He not only speaks for himself, but he has an agenda and he presses his host, the richest man he knows, to bend his will. In Book 1 Telemachus’ word means nothing. He’s dismissed, he’s mocked, he’s impotent, now his words carry weight and demand attention. For the remainder of the Odyssey whenever Telemachus speaks in a moment of tension or conflict everyone notices. The text’s refrain is generally something like “His flying words hit home” (17:58) or “Telemachus replied with calculated purpose” (18:23). The description often used to mark heroes in epic, “godlike” is applied to his appearance. He confidently makes plans and commands those around him and when he re-enters his home on Ithaca there is a distinct change in how he is perceived, “Athena poured unearthly grace upon him. Everyone was amazed to see him coming. The suitors gathered round and spoke to him in friendly tones” (17:62). Even though they’re actively plotting to kill him, they’re no longer comfortable openly opposing his will in his own home. He’s returned home a changed man, but what boon did he gain in his travels? What gives him this confidence? He hasn’t fought anyone. He faced no monsters. Everywhere he went he was treated exactly how he should be. And I think that is the point.
Telemachus’ journey is not mere filler to give Odysseus time to get home to Ithaca. He learns some potent truths and returns home a changed man. His concepts of Xenia were warped by the suitors; he probably knew how things “should have been”, but hadn’t actually experienced them. He now sees how these practices are more than a hospitality manual or stale ritual, he understands how they guide relationships and foster respect and reciprocity. One who properly practices Xenia understands one’s duties to one’s fellow man and the gods. Similar to The Iliad, our hero is marked by his proper practice of Xenia in the face of insult and inhumanity. He has learned the truth about himself and the full extent of the abuse he and his mother have endured. More than the waste of household wealth, these men have marked themselves as anti-social monsters and he sees them for what they are and sees himself as part of the solution rather than a passive victim of circumstance. What about his lack of combat skill and experience? He now knows he can confidently stand shoulder to shoulder with heroes from prior generations in social interactions asserting his will over Nestor (we skipped over this episode) and Menelaus. How is confidence in speech and proper understanding of Xenia going to rescue his father or get rid of the suitors? I’m not certain there’s a clearly causal linkage. One possibility is that internalizing the civic and personal virtues of Xenia marked one as a responsible, mature adult and that was enough. Something as simple and primal as “now you’re a real man, go forth and conquer”. In the last essay I noted the root “xenos” had several meanings, perhaps this passage to maturity marks the development of independent judgment. Telemachus understands the distinctions of Xenia and feels comfortable and confident to act on that judgment. This would not be the first cultural association linking differentiation of good and evil with independence and maturity. I’ve repeatedly mentioned that the entire Trojan War centered on a violation of Xenia, so embracing violence based on this virtue has marked many other heroes in Homeric epic, so why not this boy? Bottom line: Homer reveals that Telemachus really is his father’s son. His physical strength, quick wits, and bravery were already there, he just needed the confidence to use them. The text implies he could have strung his father’s bow when all others failed and his coolness under fire and abilities in combat are documented in Book 22. Telemachus’ quest was a search for self-efficacy.
We’re denied the training montage and Rocky celebrating atop the stairs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but I think there’s something powerful going on here. The Odyssey examines the practice and abuses of Xenia in uncountable ways, but I think the most powerful argument of Xenia being the hallmark of civilization and a powerful moral force is the fact that the solution to the crisis of culture represented by a lost generation of ill-mannered men, and the transition from boyhood to hero is a proper understanding of the virtues of kindness and generosity generating lasting bonds of trust and friendship that enable our latent attributes to blossom independent the potential violence that follows in this text. If that’s not a powerful and timeless message worthy of repeating in song and story for thousands of years I don’t know what is.
MaximumKungFu 