Today, we turn our attention to one of the two major Greek epic poems that have been attributed in whole or in part to a blind poet who may or may not have ever lived and who may have been one or several men.  So much debate about things that we may never know.  To make things even more complicated, there are even groups of scholars who argue about whether there a third lost book and if even among the two books known if perhaps the ending of the Odyssey might have been written by one or more persons other than the one or more persons who allegedly wrote the book in the first place.  If all of this makes your head spin around at least a little, welcome to the club.  To me, perhaps the most important thing to be learned from all of this is that we human beings sure can find a lot to argue and debate about – a lot of which we probably will never know, is of little real consequence and to me, might as well be avoided as being meritless to the largest points of life.

In this instance, what I mean is that the focus of the Odyssey is the journey homeward by  Odysseus to his kingdom Ithaca after the fall of Troy in the Trojan War.  Without knowing all the infinite possibilities of detail described above what we can know and is of paramount importance here is that the Odyssey is considered a time classic and is a foundational work of Western literature. That is the important thing here.  At least to me the importance lies in the story and what we might draw from it.  At a later time, we will discuss all the further work this and its precursor the Iliad have spawned.  The more in depth details belong in the hands of scholars who have entire careers to build who dotted which ‘i’ and crossed which ‘t’.

This is a tale of adventure that spans ten years.  Think on that a moment.  I am not sure there is a reference anywhere to how it took to reach Troy, but, Odysseus then spends 10 years fighting the war and 10 years going back.  Is there any wonder that Penelope started allowing suitors for her hand in marriage?  What is a little unnerving on this part is that there is not a single mention of a well mannered man among them.  That makes me think that the Marines were on to something in their old ad campaigns about a good man being hard to find.  Come to think of it, I look around in the contemporary world and realize the world has not changed all that much.  Has it?

Then we approach the lot of poor Telemachus.  He grows up in a day and time when men were men (who perhaps acted more like swine) in a household headed not by his father but his mother.  Now, do not get me wrong.  I was a military dependent myself.  My dad was gone a lot.  But, we are talking a minimum of 20 years here.  And when Telemachus turns to the goddess Athena for advice on how to deal with 108 unruly Proci who were eating all the food, drinking all of the wine and assumingly making other messes of Ithaca, she advises him to stand up to these drunken louts and take them out.  Anyone else catching the odds here?  108 to one.  Excellent advice, right?

Getting past all of this, we find that there is a wonderful plot here filled with lots of adventure and much to think on as well.  The epic journey is so well remembered and part of our familiar jargon that we now call epic travel an odyssey.  Thank goodness all the one eyed giants and sirens and so on have gone by the way side.  I’m not sure we could find the travel insurance package that would cover all of that.  It should be noticed that interesting for the times these were the choices made by women and slaves were shown to have had significant impact on the events described.  I do not want to get too much into these events at this juncture because we will revisit these throughout the coming year.   We will leave most of these stories for later.

Today’s reading largely concerns Polyphemus.  He is the Cylopes who is the giant son of Poseidon and Thoosa in Greek myth.  Interestingly, his name means “abounding in songs and legends”.  That’s quite a quaint name for a savage man eating giant who appears to have little time for song or story in the Odyssey.  Maybe it was an off couple of days? Perhaps we should ask the nymph, Galatea? In any event, this round eyed beaut of a demigod decides to keep the king and his men because we all know that ten years of warfare makes for tender, tasteful warrior food right?

Well maybe I should just let Homer’s version of this tale tell what happened as it was intended instead of pointing out that a lot of prehistoric elephant like skulls were found throughout the Greek isles and that may have.. oh there I go again.  Please read the tale here:

http://www.bartleby.com/22/9.html#11

Or if you’re the listening kind, you might find this audiobook version of Book 9 of the Odyssey more appealing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPAM-scV320&t=724s