Odyssey Reading Group: Book 6 Lines 262-294

Well, if Homer and the Odyssey is to be taken as evidence, the aoidos does perform to a predominantly male audience. Doesn’t the fact that Penelope is in her room when he sings precisely show that she is not part of the intended audience? Her knowing the stories is another thing altogether. I think the other Homeric banquets with a performing bard are a predominantly male affair as well (in one episode we have the feeling that Arete was dining with the men when Odysseus arrives to Alcinous, but there’s no question of a bard in there).

I don’t think you understood the point I was trying to make. Of course what Nausicaa is saying is, at least on the surface, a moralizing platitude. My point was that ἀνδράσι μίσγηται has, in this context, the meaning “to be in contact in men”, but the other idea, “to have sex with men”, is too obvious to be a blunder from the part of the poet. A well-educated 15-year-old girl isn’t supposed to talk so plainly about sex to a middle-aged strange man, it would be too shocking even if the point was to moralize. The point is that it’s a double entendre, for which I gave to alternative explanations (either Nausicaa is aware of it or she isn’t).

I’ve suggested before that another female character, Calypso, is also supposed to be a slightly amusing character to the predominantly male audience. I think in both episodes we have a masculine view of women with humorous undertones. “Can’t live them, can’t live without them”, that sort of thing. (http://discourse.textkit.com/t/odyssey-reading-group-book-6-lines-1-23/16728/24)