Odyssey Reading Group: Book 6 Lines 1-23

Greek Homeric Greek and Early Greek Poetry
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Welcome to the Odyssey Reading Group! Anyone is welcome to join, regardless of their Greek ability. If you’re itching to explore Homer’s epic tale of survival, adventure, love, lust, kinship, betrayal and spooky dead people, hop on in, you’ll be very welcome. People who have some Greek but have never tried reading Homer before are doubly welcome.

Check the introductory thread for a description of how the group works. http://discourse.textkit.com/t/odyssey-reading-group-introduction/16714/1

Resources
We’re working from Geoffrey Steadman’s Odyssey Books 6-8, a freely-available pdf which you can download here https://geoffreysteadman.com/homers-odyssey-6-8/

An introduction to Book 6 and a list of resources for deeper study are available in the group dropbox folder https://www.dropbox.com/sh/bk06uapk0hhhbiz/AADhSIe4VqkH6JygAcW52wL-a?dl=0

Week 2: Friday 14th June
Next week we’ll be reading Book 6 Lines 24-47 – Nausicaa’s dream.

Text of lines 1-23

ὣς ὁ μὲν ἔνθα καθεῦδε πολύτλας δῖος Ὀδυσσεὺς
ὕπνῳ καὶ καμάτῳ ἀρημένος· αὐτὰρ Ἀθήνη
βῆ ῥ ̓ ἐς Φαιήκων ἀνδρῶν δῆμόν τε πόλιν τε,
οἳ πρὶν μέν ποτ ̓ ἔναιον ἐν εὐρυχόρῳ Ὑπερείῃ,
ἀγχοῦ Κυκλώπων ἀνδρῶν ὑπερηνορεόντων,
οἵ σφεας σινέσκοντο, βίηφι δὲ φέρτεροι ἦσαν.
ἔνθεν ἀναστήσας ἄγε Ναυσίθοος θεοειδής,
εἷσεν δὲ Σχερίῃ, ἑκὰς ἀνδρῶν ἀλφηστάων,
ἀμφὶ δὲ τεῖχος ἔλασσε πόλει, καὶ ἐδείματο οἴκους,
καὶ νηοὺς ποίησε θεῶν, καὶ ἐδάσσατ ̓ ἀρούρας.
ἀλλ ̓ ὁ μὲν ἤδη κηρὶ δαμεὶς Ἅϊδόσδε βεβήκει,
Ἀλκίνοος δὲ τότ ̓ ἦρχε, θεῶν ἄπο μήδεα εἰδώς.
τοῦ μὲν ἔβη πρὸς δῶμα θεά, γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη,
νόστον Ὀδυσσῆι μεγαλήτορι μητιόωσα.
βῆ δ ̓ ἴμεν ἐς θάλαμον πολυδαίδαλον, ᾧ ἔνι κούρη
κοιμᾶτ ̓ ἀθανάτῃσι φυὴν καὶ εἶδος ὁμοίη,
Ναυσικάα, θυγάτηρ μεγαλήτορος Ἀλκινόοιο,
πὰρ δὲ δύ ̓ ἀμφίπολοι, Χαρίτων ἄπο κάλλος ἔχουσαι,
σταθμοῖϊν ἑκάτερθε· θύραι δ ̓ ἐπέκειντο φαειναί.
ἡ δ ̓ ἀνέμου ὡς πνοιὴ ἐπέσσυτο δέμνια κούρης,
στῆ δ ̓ ἄρ ̓ ὑπὲρ κεφαλῆς, καί μιν πρὸς μῦθον ἔειπεν,
εἰδομένη κούρῃ ναυσικλειτοῖο Δύμαντος,
ἥ οἱ ὁμηλικίη μὲν ἔην, κεχάριστο δὲ θυμῷ.

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Hi everyone! I hope you had a good time reading some Homer this week. I re-read books 1-6 in Emily Wilson’s translation to get myself in the mood, which reminded me what a great story it is. If this is your first time reading the Odyssey and you have no idea what’s happened in Books 1-5, I’ve uploaded an introduction to Book 6 in the dropbox folder with a summary of what’s happened so far. At the beginning of Book 6, we leave Odysseus for 100 lines to get a little backstory for the Phaeacians, who will be very important in the next few books, and to be introduced to Nausikaa, the daughter of king Alkinoos.

I thought it would also be a good idea at this point to say what I, personally, am hoping to get out of the reading group – if anyone else would like to share what they’re hoping for, too, that would be great. My main aim is to ‘hear’ Homer’s voice when I’m reading – to be able to distinguish between changes of tone to the point where the character of the narrator shines through, rather than just being able to work out the face meaning of the text. If that’s the ‘wherefore’ of the reading group, then I suppose the ‘why’ is to use Steadman’s edition to not just build my passive vocabulary but to work intensively on small sections and pick apart the nuance, in the hope that it will develop that ability to ‘hear’ the narrator. Like I say, if you have any particular aims then please do share them.

As promised, I’ll be kicking off the group with some of my own notes from the reading this week. Rather than posting every thought I’ve had and every bit of information I’ve tracked down, I thought a good format would be to pose some discussion questions based on my own reading. Some of these I’ve answered for myself this week, others I still don’t know the answer to. I thought they would make a good starting point but feel free to bring up anything else you’ve been thinking about.

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Edit: Due to popular demand, I’ve edited my original list of discussion questions to be less overwhelming.

  1. Who are the Cyclopes that were harassing the Phaeacians? Are these the same ones that Odysseus talks about later in the Odyssey? Are they really one-eyed?

  2. Why are Nausicaa’s slaves sleeping either side of the door?

  3. Line 8: ἑκὰς ἀνδρῶν ἀλφηστάων - Steadman gives us “grain-getting, grain-eating” as the translation for ἀλφηστάων here. The word appears in several other Greek texts (e.g. Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes line 770), always as part of ἀνέρας ἀλφηστὰς. When we find out more about the Phaeacians later in Book 6, the implication here is clearly that they have moved ‘far away from other people’, so why this strange adjective?

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Morphology questions:
Here are some brief notes from Stanford’s Commentary:
Line 2: “Worn out with sleepiness and toil.” ὕπνος is also used to denote sleepiness in the Iliad, Book X, 98.
Line 6: Stanford’s comments are in line with Smyth, although he goes as far as to say -φι could be considered “almost a genuine case ending”
Line 7: ἀναστήσας (ingressive aorist), ἄγε - there was some prolongation to his leading, so imperfect, εἶσεν, - the act of settling, hence the aorist.
Line 11: This line is used also in Book 3, line 410. Homer has a quite a lot of formulaic expressions for dying.
Line16: φυὴν καὶ εἶδος specify in what respect Nausicaa is ὁμοίη (like, similar) to the immortals.
Line 23:Stanford doesn’t comment on this, but I’m going with metrical convenience for ἔην. Each of those forms (ἦεν,ἤην,ἦν) is metrically different .

Metre:
ευ is a standard diphthong, so it gets one syllable. The one word that gets me is Ζεύς. Somehow one syllable just doesn’t seem enough. Be on the lookout though for ἐύ!

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Thank you for starting this thread and for your commendable industry.

I think your post is much too long to invite a considered response. Posting all you can think of in one go might be overwhelming. Perhaps next time you might consider splitting it into separate posts - general questions (who are Cyclopes? etc). Specific grammatical questions (what is the accusative of respect?). My reaction is where do I start do I have time to answer these questions. If you had asked a few at a time it would feel more manageable. I know you have split your post into clear sections but responding feels like work.

Is it not possible for you to answer some of these questions yourself? A google search for Greek accusative of respect quickly brings you here http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0007%3Apart%3D4%3Achapter%3D42%3Asection%3D97%3Asubsection%3D91. If you don’t understand this you could ask here with a focussed question about what you don’t understand.

“Handmaidens”

I note that you have read Emily Wilson’s translation so you will know that she translates ἀμφίπολοι here as slaves.

Others will disagree but I don’t like the translation “Handmaidens”. There is a discussion here which started on Translation questions and mentioned Wilson’s odyssey. http://discourse.textkit.com/t/translation-or-translation/16360/22

ὕπνῳ καὶ καμάτῳ ἀρημένος

You have to understand the oral origin of the poem and that it consists of phrases in various metrical arrangements. It is also poetry where the sound is an important factor. If you construe it as if it were prose you will go off in the wrong direction. That said surely being overcome by tiredness is not the same as being overcome by sleep, so there is no pleonasm?

Wilson’s translation here is interesting “Odysseus had suffered. In exhaustion/ from all his long ordeals, the hero slept.” That is pretty much how one might express it in English especially if one is sticking to a strict metrical scheme. But the Greek is obviously different. This immediately raises the problem of what a translation should be doing. Wilson can speak for herself on this in the introduction to her translation - a translator’s note.

Grammatically surely it is “he slept overcome by sleep and tiredness”. “ὕπνῳ καὶ καμάτῳ ἀρημένος” provides the explanation why he slept.

Thats enough for now

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Point taken. I agree that it’s a long post, but I should probably clarify what I’ve done here - this isn’t a list of questions that I want people to help me answer. I went and looked up anything I didn’t understand before putting the list together. Instead, this is a list of questions that I thought might arise for an intermediate reader, that would be useful to look up if they can’t answer the question themselves. So what I’m hoping is that, as you’ve done, people might pick up on one or two points to react to.

Maybe next week I’ll start with one question or point of interest instead and see how we go.

I agree - I actually took this from Murray’s translation, but the word’s quite loaded so I’ve changed it in my post. My point was more ‘why are they sleeping next to the door’? Merry thinks that this is a sign of Nausikaa’s chastity, with them so close to the door that no one could open the door without waking them. This could be an echo of Penelope saying she surrounds herself with servants to keep the suitors away in 18.182–4.

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Thank you for bring Stanford to the party! This is the only commentary I can’t get my hands on.

Merry and Riddell say “The change of tense shows that the second fact is the result and completion of the first”, but both of those explanations make sense to me.

My British pronunciation as Zoos is a huge help with Ζεύς :slight_smile:

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what I want to know is what do people think about Emily Wilson translating ἄνδρα πολύτροπον as “a complicated man?” lol

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this isn’t a list of questions that I want people to help me answer. I went and looked up anything I didn’t understand before putting the list together. Instead, this is a list of questions that I thought might arise for an intermediate reader, that would be useful to look up if they can’t answer the question themselves.

That it is very considerate and helpful but maybe its better only to ask questions where you can’t find the answer otherwise these threads will soon become unwieldy. You will end up composing a commentary. Also it takes some effort to answer questions. Better to make sure that the answers are really needed. Of course anyone is welcome to ask even the most elementary question. The forum exits in part to provide help.

A start on answering your first three narrative questions can be found by looking at Vol 1 of the OUP Commentary by Heubeck, West and Hainsworth. The Cyclopes seem to be the same as those of book ix " to judge by their lawless behaviour" . Interestingly “this is the only point where the Cyclopes are allowed to be human”. But Κυκλώπων ἀνδρῶν seems to be an adaption of the formula Φαιήκων ἀνδρῶν. See p 293 of Heubeck. The Homer Encyclopaedia also has an entry for Cyclopes which is helpful.

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I definitely agree with Seneca about keeping the posts to the point. Don’t ask more than a couple of questions and don’t make more than a few points per post; choose what you find most interesting. The point is to get the discussion started, and then people will raise other points they find interesting. On the other hand, it would be nice if you could copy-paste the relevant text at the beginning of each thread, so that at the beginning of this thread for example we would have lines 1-23 for reference.

I have already expressed my opinion on the subject: http://discourse.textkit.com/t/wilsons-new-odyssey-translation-in-the-new-york-times/15399/2 I propose that if we wish to discuss Wilson’s translation, we do it either in that thread or in the one linked by Seneca.

I think you might also call this “inchoative imperfect”. It would mean something like “started lead_ing_”. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0007%3Asmythp%3D1900

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For the 4th narrative question, why the handmaidens are sleeping on either side of the door, Ameis in his Odyssee für Schulgebrauch, offers simply, “zur Bewachung” (as guards, sentinels, lit. for the purpose of watching out for)

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ἀλφηστής here is an epithet, in Epic poetry it only ever occurs in the various inflections of ἀνέρες ἀλφησταί. It is related to the verb ἀλφάνω, which means to earn. I don’t think that it is particularly strange here, just epic formula.

Historical Linguistics has progressed a bit on this front, especially after the deciphering of Linear B. -φι can be considered a fossilized instrumental case that is retained in certain set words. other examples include νοσφι and ὄρεσφι. Sihler says “The suffix is more liberally attested in [Mycenean], po-pi ‘with feet’, ko-ru-pi ‘with helmet(s)’ … In other words, the [Proto-Greek] element which is no more than a remnant in the usual [Greek] lexicon here looks like a fully paradigmatic case marker.” (257.8 in Sihler)

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Hi! Welcome to textkit, did you come across from Reddit?

The reason I find this formula so interesting is that there seems to be quite a bit of disagreement about the etymology of ἀλφηστής. Hesychius defines it as inventive (εὑρετικός) and judicious (συνετός) as if from ἀλφάνω, but Heubeck, West and Hainsworth disagree that it’s from ἀλφάνω and suggests ἄλφι (grain) + ἔδω (eat), which is the translation Steadman is giving us in the gloss. I think I’m right in saying that ἀλφάνω and ἄλφι are unrelated.

Most of the translations go with something like ‘men of toil’. Butler goes with ‘all other people’. I just think it’s interesting that either ‘men who earn/labour’ or ‘grain-eating men’ are taken in this epithet to mean ‘the rest of civilisation’.

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Ah, right. I had forgotten this other etymology. Chantraine offers an interesting comment in his entry on ἀλφηστής, saying “P. Mazon pense que les deux significations ont coexiste, estimant que S. Phil 709 le sens est ‘mangeurs de pain’ mais Aesch. Sept. 769 ‘entrepenants’”

So it seems even the tragedians weren’t quite sure what it meant!

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That’s really interesting. I googled mangeurs de pain and ended up down a rabbit hole - seems the French really go in for this as a term, including for this bit in book 10:

οἵ τινες ἀνέρες εἶεν ἐπὶ χθονὶ σῖτον ἔδοντες (line 101)

which is funny, because the men in question actually eat other men. So it seems like eating grain/bread is sort of = making your way in the world which is sort of = living. If ‘breadwinning men’ didn’t sound so god awful it might fit.

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Beekes, R. (2010). A. Lubotsky (Ed.), Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Vol. 1 & 2, p. 77). Leiden; Boston: Brill.

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In many respects, the Phaeacians are the antithesis of the Cyclopes, and I think they are reminded of for that reason. An important theme throughout the Odyssey is hospitability – note how many times the scene of receiving a visitor occurs, with variations: Telemachus and Athene-Mentes, Nestor, Menelaus, Calypso and Hermes. Generous hospitability is the ideal, but look at the suitors for an example of abusive guests. Phaecians are a fabulously civilized, wonderfully organized people with excellent manners, the Cyclopes are their diametrical opposite in every possible way – asocial, anarchist cannibals, who don’t work their land or sow. Could you possibly find a worse host than the Cyclops Polyphemus – eat Odysseus’ companions and as guest-gift, offer to eat Odysseus last? So I suspect that hinting at them is part of building up the expectations of the audience – who are these Phaeacians? How will they react to Odysseus?

I don’t think it’s ever mentioned in the Odyssey that the Cyclopes are one-eyed, though the story clearly requires it. It’s a funny omission.

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The Phaeacians are such an interesting bunch. The complete opposite of the Cyclopes, you’re right, and yet also different from the Achaeans/Argives/Danaans. We’ve already had Telemachus being received as a guest by Nestor and Menelaus with open arms simply because of the fact that he is a stranger. That, and his apparent nobility when he speaks, seem to be the only qualifications needed for feeding your guests, providing them with a place to sleep and giving guest-gifts. Asking who you are and where you come from is secondary to showing that you are a warm-hearted host.

If the Achaeans are our μέν, then the Phaeacians in Book 7 are our δέ when:

καὶ τότ᾽ Ὀδυσσεὺς ὦρτο πόλινδ᾽ ἴμεν: ἀμφὶ δ᾽ Ἀθήνη
πολλὴν ἠέρα χεῦε φίλα φρονέουσ᾽ Ὀδυσῆι,
μή τις Φαιήκων μεγαθύμων ἀντιβολήσας
κερτομέοι τ᾽ ἐπέεσσι καὶ ἐξερέοιθ᾽ ὅτις εἴη.

The Phaeacians are μεγαθύμων, but this surely can’t mean ‘great-hearted’ in the sense of being warm and welcoming to all strangers if Odysseus has to be shrouded in mist to avoid their taunts. ‘High-minded’ seems to fit better and I can’t help feeling that the narrative voice thinks the slightly messier, warm-hearted guest culture of the Achaeans is better than the colder, neater, more polite reception of guests by the Phaeacians. After all, Odysseus is still desperate to go home after meeting them. It reminds me of how, in the Lord of the Rings, when you meet the elves you’re like ‘oooh they’re so polite and advanced and magical’, but you’d still rather live in the Shire with a pint of good ale by the end.

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It seems to me that θυμός is the ”breath of life” and corresponds to the impulsive part of the mind - passions, anger, courage, strong emotions in general. Hence θυμόω ”make angry” for instance. φρένες on the other hand are an actual organ - ”midriff” according to the traditional interpretation, but more likely ”lungs” or more generally ”organs of the thoracic cavity”. The θυμός inhabits the φρένες, which correspond to the more intellectual, less impulsive parts of the human mind. This is at least how I see it.

This is discussed in another lengthy and convoluted thread. http://discourse.textkit.com/t/iliad-13-441-444/13332/1

(Edited once. As moderator, when I edit my posts, there is no notice that I did it, so I wrote this myself. And Sean, I have no idea why there was a devil :smiling_imp: before your quote, I didn’t put it there on purpose, and now I removed it!)

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Hi there,

On v. 9: ἀμφὶ δὲ τεῖχος ἔλασσε πόλει

Is ἀμφὶ connected to πόλει as a preposition (+D.)? Is it common to have the case far away from the preposition? Or is ἀμφὶ just an adverb?