Karen Cronick
In recent
years I have been reading about the Trojan experience. I call it an
“experience” because it was a founding event for the entire Greek civilization
that followed, but it comes to us through the lens of unwritten traditions,
through the songsters, their memories and their interpretations. The two main
sources, both from the poet Homer, are the Iliad and the Odyssey, and they
couldn’t be more different.[1]
These poems
were foundational for the Greek culture that began afterward some six hundred
years later. And they are still read as core myths for Western civilization. They
tell about the Greek siege of Troy and the return of the Greeks to their
homelands.
I have
examined the Iliad in Cronick (2026). I found it to be a coherent, reflective,
principled, and concerned examination of the participants’ motives and
characters. It is not a patriotic paean, because in it Homer sympathizes with
both the Greeks and Trojans. In fact, in the end it is more sympathetic to
Hector, the Trojan prince who defends his city and tries to find a peaceful
outcome, than it is with Achilles, the Greek warrior who kills him. It does not
take us up to the end of the war; rather it just warns us that the end will be
tragic and there will be nothing left. That there will be no true winners. The
Trojans will disappear and the surviving Greeks will go home, many to difficult
circumstances, each to their own kingdoms.
The
Odyssey, on the other hand, is a hymn to the Greek warrior Ulysses. He is
described as strong, eloquent, beautiful, seductive, invincible, courageous,
brutal, rapacious, and cruel. All these characteristics appear as praiseworthy,
as signs of rank and heroism. All are requirements for the ancient kings who
participated as commanding warriors. Ulysses was the leader of a small army of
patriots that got smuggled through the walls of Troy in the famous wooden
horse, and that emerged later in the night to kill and destroy most of the
remaining Trojan people there. This legend does not appear in the Iliad and is
only suggested near the beginning of the Odyssey. It is elaborated later by one
of the main characters, Helen.
Much of the
of the Odyssey is a description of Ulysses’ attempts to return to his own kingdom
of Ithaca after the war. After killing the remaining Trojans, he fills his
boats with his countrymen, the spoils of Troy, and the captives that now will
be his slaves. He sails first to Ismarus, City of the Ciconians. He deals with
that city straightaway: he says simply “them I slew…” (p 166). Again, he fills
his boats with loot and slaves, and heads on.
As he
travels on, he loses all the Trojan loot, his boats and even his countrymen. He
faces storms, monsters, seductive goddesses, and he even visits the underworld
of the dead where he is able to talk to some of his fallen comrades like Achilles,
and to see legendary figures like Sisyphus, still pushing his boulder up the same
hill. He even gets to talk to his dead mother.
But through
it all, Ulysses main motives are glory, plunder and revenge. And for the Homer of
the Odyssey these are admirable qualities. There is not a single instance in
which Ulysses gives up a possible benefit for himself in order to save someone
else. It is hard to believe that the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed by the
same poet.
Furthermore,
Ulysses is a liar, or at least a inventive narrator. The goddess Pallas (here
called Minerva)[2]
admonishes him:
“Canst thou not cease, inventive as thou art
And subtle, from the wiles which thou hast
lov’d
Since thou wast infant, and from tricks of
speech
Delusive, even in thy native land?” (p. 259).
Gifts,
pillage, and offerings
Wealth is
very important to Homer’s characters. Obtaining and displaying it is perhaps
their chief motive. The opulence of their palaces is deemed a virtue. The
desire for loot is the undercover reason for the Trojan war, and the Greeks
fight on for ten years until they can sack this city. Generosity is usually
class-limited, and members of each social order are generous with their own
kind, in a sort of reciprocal understanding. Visiting princes are treated with
opulence. The swine herder Eumæus is generous and kind with the unknown old man
who appears at his door, not realizing that he is Ulysses, disguised but
finally at home in Ithaca. The only open appeal to a shared ideal of generosity
may be Telemachus’ appeal to the suitors in his court to accept the apparent
beggar (also Ulysses in disguise) who appears at the banquet hall. When one of
the suitors, Antinoüs, complains about the beggar’s presence, Telemachus
replies: “thou lov’st not to impart To others, but to gratify thyself” (p.
337).
I have
already described how Ulysses first act on leaving Troy was to plunder the
kingdom of Ismarus. From then on, he either loots the kingdoms he visits, or he
is received as a recognized monarch and friend, and given ostentatious and
costly gifts when he leaves. In friendly kingdoms he and his sailors are
offered vast banquets of the best meats and wines for as long as they remain
there. The food is described in detail.
The same is true for his son Telemachus when he visits Nestor at Pylus, or
Menelaus and Helen in Sparta, asking for news about his father. Menelaus gives
him a:
“wrought elaborate, a cup Itself all silver,
bound with lip of gold.
It is
the work of Vulcan, which to me
The Hero Phædimus imparted, King Of the
Sidonians…” (p. 87).
Often the
gifts include food, wine, and elegant clothing.
Material offerings
are also made to the gods: for example, Nestor offers the goddess Pallas:
the “sacrifice [of] an heifer of the year,
Broad-fronted, one that never yet hath borne
The yoke, and will incase her horns with gold”
(p. 60).
Pallas is
pleased and even appears at the sacrifice.
Vengeance
Vengeance
is also a cultural value. Every insult and damage must be punished. But often
the punishments are new offences; this leads to the need for renewed vengeance,
and the chain is eternal.
Ulysses is
aware that his city -and his wife- are besieged with visiting princes who want
to take charge of the kingdom themselves. They are the “suitors”, the unwelcome
visitors who take advantage of Ulysses’ absence, and compete for his Queen
Penelope’s hand in remarriage. When
Ulysses finally arrives in Ithaca, after a first incredulity that he has at
last been able to get there, the goddess Pallas comes
to help him. One of the first requests he makes of the goddess is:
“Come
then—
Devise the means; teach me, thyself,
The way to vengeance, and my soul inspire
With daring” (p. 263).
She offers
her help, saying,
“Many, as I judge,
Of those proud suitors who devour thy wealth
Shall leave their brains, then, on thy palace
floor (p. 263).
She advices
him to go first to Eumæus’ house. He is the swine
herder,
“…he, alike, intends
Thy good, and loves, affectionate, thy son
And thy Penelope; thou shalt find the swain
Tending his herd” (p. 263).
She
disguises Ulysses as an old man, and he goes, asking for help. While conversing
with Eumæus he eats his dinner and fantasizes with his wish for revenge against
the suitors:
“meantime Ulysses ate and drank
Voracious, meditating, mute, the death
Of those proud suitors” (p. 269).
Eumæus asks
him who he is. He tells Eumæus a lengthy lie, but within it is a true
self-description: he says that for him:
“…household toils
Sustain’d for children’s sake, and carking
cares
T’ enrich a family, were not for me.
My pleasures were the gallant bark, the din
Of battle, the smooth spear and glitt’ring
shaft” (p. 273).
Even
Ulysses’ wife Penelope dreams of revenge. Before she knows that her husband is,
in fact, back home, she declares:
“But might he
Revisit once his native shores again,
Then, aided by his son, he should avenge,
Incontinent, the wrongs which now I mourn
[….] oh might it prove
A presage of inevitable death
To all these revellers! may none escape!” (p.
342).
Helen
Women have limited
options in the Odyssey, mostly in relation to their sexual desirably and fidelity.
Helen was
the supposed cause of the Trojan war. One interesting aspect of the Odyssey is
how almost all the characters cling (publicly) to this pretext for the war. The
Greeks all know that they stayed in Troy all those years to be able to sack the
city. It was one of the wealthiest kingdoms in antiquity. But somehow this
excuse is necessary. Homer gives numerous accounts of the Greek kings’ open
pillage in a number of different places, but in Troy everyone clings to this pretext.
Another
motive was Agamemnon’s desire for personal power, and although in the Iliad Homer
made it clear that Achilles had his doubts about
the prolonged conflagration, whose declared purpose he considered
"private" and not Hellenic, he wanted to participate, and traveled
without coercion from his native town Pythia to Troy, as the poem also tells
us, "voluntarily". He never sailed home, even after his dispute with
Agamemnon. He fully understood the real reason for the siege of Troy (Homer,
1989).
In the
Iliad Agamemnon called on the disperse Hellenic princes and kings to bring
their soldiers to fight Prince Paris and his kingdom to get his sister-in-law back.
We have said that we suspect that he may have had other hegemonic
and imperial interests, and that he was attracted by the possibility of
plunder. But the given reason for sailing off to Troy was to “rescue” his
brother Menelaus’ wife.
In both the
Iliad and the Odyssey Helen is called beautiful. Paris was so infatuated with
her that he caused the total destruction of his kingdom Troy when he brought
her home.
In the
Odyssey we are told how, after the war, when Ulysses’ son Telemachus reaches
Sparta in search of news about his father, he is attended by both Menelaus and
Helen. The couple seems to have been reconciled after her recapture at the end
of the war. The text has several interpretations. Menelaus becomes nostalgic,
remembering Ulysses in the old Trojan battles, and his listeners, Telemachus
and Helen, “weep”:
“Argive Helen wept
Abundant, Jove’s own daughter; wept as fast
Telemachus and Menelaus both” (p. 71).
But Helen
is cautious. When her husband and Telemachus go off to supper, to talk about
the war, she slips a some sort of concoction, a herbal antidepressant, into
their drinks to keep things calm:
“But Jove-born Helen otherwise, meantime,
Employ’d, into the wine of which they drank
A drug infused, antidote to the pains
Of grief and anger, a most potent charm
For ills of ev’ry name.
Whoe’er his wine
So medicated drinks, he shall not pour
All day the tears down his wan cheek, although
His father and his mother both were dead,
Nor even though his brother or his son
Had fall’n in battle, and before his eyes”
(p.74).
She clearly
is worried about the still-compelling emotions that the memories of war -and
her role in it- may revive. She offers her own interpretation of the war’s
final events after the Greeks use the wooden horse to sneak into Troy and
overtake it. She describes her encounter with Ulysses inside the city, which she
describes as a collaboration. She says she helped him in his conquest of the
city and laments having left Menelaus:
… Ulysses … took
A tatter’d garb, and like a serving-man
Enter’d the spacious city of your foes.
So veil’d, some mendicant he seem’d, although
No Greecian less deserved that name than he. …
Oh what wailing then
Was heard of Trojan women! but my heart
Exulted, alter’d now, and wishing home;
For now my crime committed under force
Of Venus’ influence I deplored, what time
She led me to a country far remote,
A wand’rer from the matrimonial bed,
From my own child, and from my rightful Lord
… me alone he not deceived
Who challeng’d him, but, shrewd, he turn’d
away.
At length, however, when I had myself
Bathed him, anointed, cloath’d him, and had
sworn
Not to declare him openly in Troy
Till he should reach again the camp and fleet,
He told me the whole purpose of the Greeks.
Then, (many a Trojan slaughter’d,) he regain’d
The camp, and much intelligence he bore
(p.74-75).
This is a
clearly self-serving speech. Helen is cordial, but careful. She accepts that
she was a “wand’rer” but declares that she was instrumental for Ulysses’
success in the attack inside Troy. She undoubtedly needs to justify her actions
and wants to be acceptable to the Greeks. Anyway, Menelaus has forgiven her.
But when
Ulysses finally reaches his own kingdom, Ithaca, and before revealing his true
identity, he approaches Eumæus, his swine herder to get information about his
realm. Disguised as an old man, he tells him about some of his voyages. In this
conversation he refers to Helen as the cause of the war and all the deaths at
Troy:
“[…] my companions, in the end destroy’d; […]
Victims of a pernicious woman’s crime (p. 221).
And Eumæus shares this negative opinion about Helen:
“…I would
That the whole house of Helen, one and all,
Might perish too, for she hath many slain
Who, like my master, went glory to win
For Agamemnon in the fields of Troy” (p.267).
The only
desirable feminine attributes in the Odyssey are beauty and chastity. There are
two other feminine models that we can compare to Helen. The first is Clytemnestra,
Agamemnon’s wife and Helen’s half-sister. Before the play begins, and before she
and Agamemnon are married, he has already killed her son from a first marriage,
throwing him against a rock so that her only children will be his own (Aeschylus
(458 B,C /n.d. B). Later, also before the Odyssey begins, he has sacrificed
their daughter Iphigenia to appease the gods before he sailed off with his army
to Troy (Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides, written in 405 b.C.). Clytemnestra
has every reason to hate him. After he has left, she rules his kingdom Mycenae together
with her lover Aegisthus. When her husband finally returned, she and Aegisthus
kill him in his sleep. If Helen is a model for unwise loving, Clytemnestra is a
model for resentful grief and loathing.
The other
model is Penelope. She is represented as both beautiful and utterly faithful.
For over twenty years she has actively mourned her husband´s absence, and cries
constantly, alone in her chambers, although she is besieged by numerous
suitors. Her grief is featureless, flat, and without nuance.
There are
other important feminine characters but they are goddesses, like Athena (also
known as Pallas and Minerva), Calypso, and Circe. Athena is Ulysses’ constant guide,
divine friend, and protector. Clalypso and Circe want to control him and both
fall in love with him. Circe is a witch
who likes to turn men into animals. When Ulysses arrives at her island, she uses
her magic to convert some of his sailors into pigs. He was able to get them
back, again as humans, but she kept him with her for a whole year. Finally, she
facilitated his departure and gave him advice about how to sail on. Especially
she warned him about how to avoid being trapped by the sirens who lure
vulnerable sailors to their doom.
Agamemnon
Agamemnon
is a shadow figure in the Odyssey and his presence is a fascinating literary
devise. His history is known to all the characters, and we, as readers
(listeners) also know him to be complex, power-hungry, and incapable of love.
But to understand this influence it is necessary to refer to other sources.
Once we know about him, we have to accept the underlying specter of his
presence throughout the whole Odyssey.
He was the
son of King Atreus, and the brother of King Menelaus of Troy (Helen’s rejected husband),
Clytemnestra’s second husband, and the father of Iphigenia, Iphianassa,
Electra, Laodike, Orestes and Chrysothemis. He was the king of Mycenae or Argos.
And he was
also the commander of the fleet of disperse Achaean princes (much later called
“Greeks”) that answered his call to the siege of Troy in order to “rescue”
Helen from Paris’ abduction of her.
There are
many legends regarding Agamemnon, beginning with Homer’s Iliad (1989) and centuries
later, theatrical works such as Aeschylus’ trilogy The Oresteia (n.d. B) that
was presented 800 years afterward in Athens in the year 458 b.C. It described
how Agamemnon was murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus when
he returned home from the war. It later recounts how his son Orestes’ killed both
his mother and her lover in revenge for his father’s assassination. Orestes
goes mad afterward, pursued by the furies. It was not a happy family.
I have
already mentioned Agamemnon’s lust for power. He sacrificed his daughter
Iphigenia to the goddess Artemis in order to get enough wind for his army to
sail off to Troy, as we know from the play Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides (1997).
Once in Troy he was a weak leader and wrangled with prince Achilles, thus
causing this warrior to refuse to participate for a long time in the war. Little
of this is mentioned in the Odyssey, but it is a supposed background, and the
characters are aware of it.
When in the
Odyssey Ulysses visits the underworld of the dead, Hades, and converses with
some of the deceased, he also encounters Agamemnon who continues to express his
old resentments. He continues to accuse his wife Clytemnestra: he considers her
to be:
“Detestable […]
The murther[3]
of the husband of her youth[4].
I thought to have return’d welcome to all,
To my own children and domestic train;
But she, past measure profligate, hath poured
Shame on herself, on women yet unborn,
And even on the virtuous of her sex” (p. 223).
He goes on
to advise Ulysses not to trust any woman, and begrudges him for having a living
(and loving) son who will embrace him on his return to Ithaca. Agamemnon never
mentions why his wife might have rejected him. In his own eyes he was heroic
and blameless.
Ulysses
comes home
Ulysses has
finally returned to Ithaca. He has been disguised as an old beggar by the
goddess Pallas who tells him to look for the swine herder Eumæus´ house because this man will be loyal to him.
There he is received and hospitably entertained although his host does not recognize
him. Ulysses spends the night there and makes up a story about who he is. He
hears more about how the suitors have depleted his fortune eating and drinking
at his expense, and demanding that Penelope declare herself a widow and marry one
of them. Eumæus tells Ulysses learns how she has accepted the obligations of a
hostess, but that she has refused all matrimonial offers. Eumæus stops talking,
but Ulysses goes on fantasying about how to get rid of the suitors.
He ceas’d, meantime Ulysses ate and drank
Voracious, meditating, mute, the death
Of those proud [suitors]. (p. 269).
His son Telemachus
is still in Sparta with Menelaus. But some sort of action is urgent. Minerva (Pallas,
Athena) goes to him and tells him he must return urgently because even
Penelope’s own father is taking one of the suitors seriously. She tells
Telemachus:
“ Thy spotless mother, whom her brethren urge
And her own father even now to wed
Eurymachus, in gifts and in amount
Of proffer’d dow’r superior to them all.” (p. 285).
Telemachus must
elude the suitors that are waiting to kill hm and get back to Ithaca. As soon
as he lands, she says, he must also look for Eumæus, the faithful swine herder,
who will help him as he has Ulysses.
In Book XIX
Penelope still does not know that the old beggar that her son and Eumæus have
brought to their palace is Ulysses, although she finds a certain resemblance to
him in this guest. She tells him about a dream she had, and he says, somewhat
deceptively (p. 383):
Thy dream’s plain import, since Ulysses’ self
Hath told thee […]; thy suitors all
Must perish; not one suitor shall escape.
She doesn’t
believe him. And Ulysses still doubts his capacity to get rid of the many intruders.
He still has made a only four alliances, and only he and his son are trained as
warriors. After all, it is just he, his son Telemachus, the poet Eurymachus,
the swine herder Eumæus, and the cow herder Philoetius, against a multitude. He
tells Minerva:
But, not without anxiety, I muse
How, single as I am, I shall assail
Those shameless suitors who frequent my courts
Daily; and always their whole multitude.
This weightier theme I meditate beside;
Should I, with Jove’s concurrence and with
thine
Prevail to slay them, how shall I escape,
Myself, at last? (p. 387).
Minerva
answers him:
I tell thee plainly. Were we hemm’d around
By fifty troops of shouting warriors bent
To slay thee, thou should’st yet securely drive
The flocks away …. (p. 388).
Ulysses
hatches a plan to get rid of the numerous suitors. First, he has his son tell Penelope
to declare a contest in which the winner will be chosen as her next husband.
The contestants must use Ulysses´ bow, that has been stored all these years of
his absence, and using it they must be able to shoot one arrow all the way through
twelve sequentially mounted rings. Penelope accepts this, but is terribly sad
because she thinks the contest is a real one, and she will have to marry the
winner.[5]
After the competition there will be a feast with lots of food and wine, and
they will all be together, mostly unarmed and unsuspecting.
She declares
the contest and many of the suitors try to win it. Of course, none of them has strength
enough to even bend the string of Ulysses’ bow. They all fail. At the end
Ulysses picks up his bow, and without even standing up, gets his arrow through
all the rings.
With such facility Ulysses bent
His own huge bow, and with his right hand
play’d
The nerve, which in its quick vibration sang
Clear as the swallow’s voice. Keen anguish
seized
The suitors, wan grew ev’ry cheek, and Jove
Gave him his rolling thunder for a sign
[…] True he lodg’d
The arrow on the centre of the bow,
And, occupying still his seat, drew home
Nerve and notch’d arrow-head; with stedfast
sight
He aimed and sent it; right through all the
rings
From first to last the steel-charged weapon
flew
Issuing beyond, and to his son he spake.
Thou need’st not blush, young Prince, to have
received
A guest like me; neither my arrow swerved,
Nor labour’d I long time to draw the bow;
My strength is unimpair’d (p. 316)
And then he
waits. He has not tried to use that bow for 20 years, and still he has had the
strength and dexterity to do it. And he never doubts his ability.
A terrible
battle ensues, with four armed men against many opponents. Ulysses and his
three accomplices kill all the suitors, many of whom plead for mercy. For
example:
Then flew Leiodes to Ulysses’ knees,
Which clasping, in wing’d accents thus he
cried.
I clasp thy knees, Ulysses! oh respect
My suit, and spare me! (p. 429).
But all
die. The dining hall is a ghastly mess and has to be cleaned up before they
call Penelope and tell her that Ulysses has, in fact returned, and has freed
her from the suitors. At first she doesn’t believe that this man is really
Ulysses. She finally accepts him when he can describe the chamber they once
shared. Their joy is great and finally:
The chambers appertain’d,[…]
transported they
To rites connubial intermitted long,
And now recover’d, gave themselves again (p. 446).
They make
love, they talk about everything that has happened in their twenty years of
separation, and regain their marital bliss. Then Ulysses goes off to find his
father, and tell him what has happened.
But to the woodlands go I now—to see
My noble father, who for my sake mourns
Continual; (p. 449).
Meanwhile,
the townspeople that were allied with the suitors begin to rebel against Ulysses.
A brief battle ensues, but Pallas convinces most of the populace to go home,
and she tells Ulysses that from then on there must be peace. This is the only
instance in the whole Odyssey that a battle ends in such a way. The Odyssey
ends with these words.
Laertes’
noble son[6], for wiles renown’d!
Forbear; abstain from slaughter; lest thyself
Incur the anger of high thund’ring Jove.
So Pallas, whom Ulysses, glad, obey’d.
Then faithful covenants of peace between
Both sides ensued. (p. 470).
Final reflections
The Iliad
and the Odyssey are two very different poems, both are attributed to the blind
poet Homer who was said to live in the VIII century b.C. Together they tell
about the first time that the disperse Hellenic kingdoms collaborated in a joint
effort. There are many characters, each with their own motives, and a many different
cultural values, some of which are conflictive. But the main message has to do
with cultural identities: all were Hellenic and shared dialects of the same language,
and beliefs in the same deities.
The Iliad’s
main message laments the loss of life and the final end of the kingdom of Troy.
The Odyssey’s message is one of conquest and regal majesty, at least until the very
last verse when the goddess Pallas asks for peace at the end of the poem.
Ulysses is
brave and brutal, handsome and persuasive. He was an ideal for Hellenic masculinity.
His trip home is a long adventure, which he really has no need to hurry. He
even visits Hades, the abode of the dead, and is able to confer with the
residents there.
The political
world that Ulysses travels through is very different from the one that will be
founded by the Athenians three centuries after Homer’s life. The only suggestions
of this new world lie in Homer’s lamentations about death and war. But even
though the Athenians finally establish the first constitutional democracy eight
hundred years after the seige, they never stop going to war. They become a
colonial kingdom, and later when Alexander the Great conquered Athens, they participate
with him in conquests that remind us of the values that led the Hellens to
Troy.
From then
on the world has had to wait for the 20th century of our modern era
to find concrete, global, and structural attempts to negotiate world peace.
The values
of vengeance and domination are still with us. Military might is still highly
desired, and capable soldiers are heroes.
References
Aeschylus,
Agamemnon. Theoi, e-texts library. Available in:
http://www.theoi.com/Text/EsquiloAgamemnon.htmlESQUILO (458 bC/sf). Retrieved
on 6/12/2020.
Aeschylus
(458 BC /n.d A.). Agamemnon.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14417/14417-h/14417-h.htm
Aeschylus (458 B,C /n.d. B). The Oresteia. BooKey. https://cdn.bookey.app/files/pdf/book/en/the-oresteia.pdf
Cronick,
Karen(2026) The ancient Greeks and us. Blog:
Reflexiones4-Karen.
https://reflexiones4-karen.blogspot.com/2026/07/the-ancient-greeks-and-us-english.html
Homer. (Siglo VIII B.C. /1989). The Iliad of Homer. The Guttenberg Project.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6130. Retrieved on 6/30/2020
Homer (2022).
The Odyssey by Homer. Pixabay. Pressbooks (https://pressbooks.com). [This work has been adapted from
The Odyssey, a title from the eCampusOntario Public Domain Core Collection.
This work is in the Public Domain.]
Iphigenia
in Aulis by Euripides | Open Library. (405 b.C./1997). Open Library.
https://openlibrary.org/books/OL668998M/Iphigenia_in_Aulis
Historiae
(n.d.). Greek tragedy:, Sophocles and Euripides:
https://historiaeweb.com/2018/05/12/tragedia-griega/
Sophocles
(442 BC / n.d.). Antigone. EXLIBRIS.
https://omegalfa.es/autores.php?letra=&pagina=22#
[1] The Iliad and the Odyssey, are
among the major cultural corner stones of Western literature. They were likely being
sung by diverse troubadours between 1100–800 a.C.). The versions attributed to
Homer probably were composed in the VIII c. b.C. They may have been written down
finally somewhere around the V century b.C., or even later. Before that they
existed only as oral traditions.
[2] Pallas has several names that are
used indiscriminately: Pallas, Minerva and Athena.
[3] “Murther” is murderer.
[4] He is referring to himself,
Agamemnon.
[5] This solution motivates me to
make another commentary about women’s place in the ancient Hellenic world.
Penelope cannot either choose a husband that appeals to her, or remain a
(supposed) window if she wants to. She believes that she must remarry, and she
that she must choose her husband on the basis of his dexterity in battle.
[6] Laertes’ noble son is
Ulysses.
