Multiplicities of Meaning

In order to answer the questions I have posed and explain why Odysseus silences Eurykleia, we need to pay attention to the connotations and implications of the language surrounding this moment. Many of Odysseus’ successes turn out to be characterized as deeply ambivalent, bearing a latent, more sinister meaning alongside a dominant, triumphal one. If we scrutinize the connotations of some otherwise unremarkable words and phrases, we will find moments, images, and descriptions that, while not at first glance bearing multiple meanings, seem to convey additional, more negative significance. The result of this reading is a multivalent Odysseus, a hero both celebrated and condemned.

I propose, therefore, to pursue a close reading of the connotation of some important moments in the poem. This procedure builds upon and extends the method Egbert Bakker uses in his recent work on what he calls ‘interformularity’ in the Homeric poems. Bakker shows how repeated diction represents the judgment by a speaker (a poet) that the different contexts in which this diction recurs are similar. According to Bakker, such repetitions exist on a continuum: less common expressions, which show up in a smaller range of contexts, are felt to indicate more similarity in their different situations; more common expressions indicate less similarity.Footnote ⁵ For the purpose of this study, I reformulate Bakker's analysis: the less common and more restricted an expression, the more specific and complex the connotations it bears; it has, as one linguist has put it recently, a richer ‘allusional texture’.Footnote ⁶ This ‘texture’—which is roughly equivalent to the way we informally use that somewhat imprecise term ‘connotation’—is nothing but the accumulated sense an auditor or speaker has of the contexts in which a term has occurred. In this way, if a speaker uses such an expression outside its typical context, an auditor may perceive an incongruity. There are limits to the sort of incongruity that will be found in the Odyssey. The poem uses a highly traditional language in a traditional genre. The poet of the Odyssey is an epic poet, not a modernist one creating radically new, exceptionally inappropriate expressions. The incongruities in the Odyssey are a matter of a difference between denotation and connotation, a word or phrase that, in its immediate context, appears to mean one thing, but when considered in its wider context, may mean something rather different in addition. Homeric poetry is not usually obscure in its reference. Apart from some archaic vocabulary, the poems tend to be quite clear on what they are describing, not uncommonly elaborating on an idea in order to clarify the reference. On the other hand, the full significance of a Homeric expression might be more ambiguous.

This multiplicity of meaning that some expressions bear might be called a type of irony. According to some broader definitions of the concept, irony involves latent, additional meanings, supplementing (and often undercutting) surface meanings, which a poet intends a perceptive auditor to detect.Footnote ⁷ The most accepted kinds of irony rely upon a verbal ambiguity, occasions where words mean more than one thing. For instance, the suitors pray for Odysseus that ‘Zeus would give to you…what you most desire’ (δοίη…ὅττι μάλιστ' ἐθέλεις, 18.112f.), thinking he is only a beggar who wants food, not realizing his ‘desire’ is actually their deaths. There are also situational ironies, when circumstances appear to be a certain way or that they will have certain results, but in reality are quite different or have quite different results. The suitors, for instance, in their effort to marry Penelope, become the celebrants of a mock wedding banquet for her re-marriage with Odysseus, with disastrous consequences for themselves. In dramatic irony, the latent, additional meaning comes at the expense of a naïve character who is only aware of the surface meaning of his or words or actions. Some of the examples I will analyze are of this last sort, as when, for example, Agamemnon describes the deaths of the suitors in ways that echo his own. All these types of irony are united by the way they depend upon a discrepancy between appearance and reality. There are other examples that do not easily fall under an uncontested definition of irony. Rather than enter into the long, fractious debate over the meaning of that term, I find it more expedient to frame my analysis in terms of connotations of meaning that change, and sometimes go as far as to contradict, a surface meaning. (I do, nonetheless, use irony as an analytical term at certain points where it is most appropriate.) We may consider moments and expressions multivalent when two different meanings, a surface meaning and a latent one, can be perceived.

In my analysis I also draw attention to some expressions where we may not easily be able to decide whether they are multivalent or not, whether the other contexts in which they are used change the connotation of the individual cases under consideration. Connotation, like irony, is to some degree in the eye (or ear) of the interpreter.Footnote ⁸ I, therefore, adapt Bakker's model of a continuum of interformularity in order to argue for a continuum of multivalence. Some words and phrases we will be able to say have definite connotations that place them on the more secure end of the continuum; others will have decidedly less definite ones, placing them toward the other end at the edge of what we might take to be multivalent.

Homeric ἀτασθαλίαι

One group of examples of the multiplicity of meaning that surrounds Odysseus’ exploits arises from the connotations of the term ἀτασθαλίαι in a speech by Odysseus. As Odysseus and his companions approach Thrinakia, the island on which Helios keeps his sacred cattle, Odysseus recalls the warnings that both Teiresias and Kirke had given him (12.266-69; cf. 11.105-17, 12.127-41). He then issues commands, three times—first to avoid the island (12.271-76) and then to leave the cattle unharmed (12.297-302, 320-23). This abundance of warnings of impending retribution is paralleled only by the even greater number that the suitors receive. Nonetheless, at the encouragement of Eurylochos, the companions ignore Odysseus’ admonitions, eat the cattle, and ensure their doom. Already with Eurylochos’ response to Odysseus’ first warning do we find an expression that connotes more than its surface meaning. Eurylochos claims they must stop to avoid the danger of sudden winds: at the island, one ‘might escape sheer destruction’ (ὑπεϰφύγοι αἰπὺν ὄλεθρον, 287). This is a bit of antiphrastic irony, since Eurylochos turns out to be disastrously wrong. Zeus will send winds that prevent their departure from the island (312-15) and destroy their ship—despite Eurylochos’ claim that the gods do not control the weather (290). The connotations of the verb (ὑπεϰ)φεύγω with the object αἰπὺν ὄλεθρον further underline an ironic identification of the companions with the suitors, since, in all the other examples of this collocation in the Odyssey (1.11, 9.286, 12.446, 17.47, 22.43, 67), the suitors are the only other ones who fail to ‘escape sheer destruction’. (The suitors’ doom is emphasized by negating the verb: οὐ φεύξεσθαι [22.67].)

Odysseus responds to Eurylochos’ foolishness with a second warning, but tries a different strategy. He has the companions swear an oath and he cites their ἀτασθαλίαι:

By issuing the previous warning and now having them swear an oath, Odysseus is creating a situation that has underappreciated depths of irony. It is only through these warnings that Odysseus is at this moment in the act of giving that his companions acquire the knowledge of the doom that is certain to fall on them should they eat the cattle. Odysseus’ warnings, in their various iterations, caution that on Thrinakia ‘there is a most terrible evil for us’ (αἰνότατον ϰαϰὸν ἔμμεναι ἄμμιν, 12.275) and that they should not eat the cattle, ‘lest something befall us’ (μή τι πάθωμεν, 321). These words have an intriguing relationship with the idea of ἀτασθαλίαι. The term ἀτασθαλίαι (always appearing in the plural) has a particular, almost technical meaning in the Odyssey. It signifies culpable error, made heedless of known destructive consequences, which are often prophetically revealed but always ignored. Zeus cites Aigisthos as a paradigmatic example: Hermes warned him that, if he seduced Clytemnestra and killed Agamemnon, he would face retribution (Od. 1.37-42). But, with another verbal echo to the companions’ fate, Aigisthos went ahead anyway, ‘though he knew sheer destruction’ (εἰδὼς αἰπὺν ὄλεθρον, 37). Aigisthos thus exemplifies mortals who suffer ‘because of their own recklessness’ (σφῇσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν, 34). ἀτασθαλίαι thus indicates an agent's culpability in his own suffering because he acted despite knowing the consequences.Footnote ⁹ In the scenario on Thrinakia, Odysseus’ admonitions provide the condition for the emergence of the companions’ ἀτασθαλίαι—that is, the foreknowledge of the consequences of their actions that makes them blameworthy. Thus, with an ironic circularity, Odysseus’ warnings, which he gives in order to protect his companions, allow Zeus to destroy them in response to Helios’ plea (12.376-83) while still upholding the principles of justice he articulated in his opening speech. Perhaps we can push the point further. Retributive justice is part of the cosmic order that Zeus maintains, and every case of ἀτασθαλίαι in the poems inevitably results in punishment, sanctioned by one or more gods.Footnote ¹⁰ Odysseus’ warnings effectively require Zeus to punish the companions. We might even say that, in his attempt to save his companions, Odysseus causes their destruction. Had Teiresias and Kirke not warned Odysseus, and Odysseus not warned the companions, they would not have perished on account of ἀτασθαλίαι. They might still have been killed, but their deaths would have a rather different moral inflection.Footnote ¹¹

This illustrates as well a more general point about ἀτασθαλίαι: it can only exist as an intelligible concept within the context of a larger narrative that provides a logical sequence of events to frame the actions of the agents involved. In other words, ἀτασθαλίαι only exists as a retrospective judgment on the character of agents once the final results of their actions can be seen. This post factum aspect of the application of the concept of ἀτασθαλίαι is evident, among other places, in the proem (1.7) and in Zeus's condemnation of Aigisthos (1.34f.), where both the narrator and Zeus ascribe this trait after their respective narratives have finished. This is true of all cases where a character mentions ἀτασθαλίαι.Footnote ¹² But in his warning to Eurylochos and his companions, Odysseus ascribes this trait to a hypothetical violator proleptically, before any crime has been committed. The audience—both the poet's and Odysseus’—knows full well that this threatened doom will occur: the proem proclaims as much to the poem's auditors at the outset, as does Odysseus’ condition as a solitary wanderer to the Phaiakians. Odysseus is likewise in a position of superior knowledge: even at the moment he is admonishing his companions, he knows that ignoring his warning means certain death. Properly speaking, a mortal should not be able to know this and escape the bounds of the poem's linear narrative. But Odysseus has already stepped outside the limits normally imposed on humans by traveling into Hades and learning from Teiresias, as well as from the divine source of Kirke, the secret truths of the course of his life and the outcome for the companions should they eat Helios’ cattle. And thus, from this privileged position of knowledge, Odysseus can warn his companions in terms of ἀτασθαλίαι, proleptically adopting a retrospective posture.

There is another possible explanation for how Odysseus can cite ἀτασθαλίαι in this passage, one that complicates his actions even further. Odysseus is, of course, relating the entire scenario retrospectively to the Phaiakians. He is, doubtless, giving his own, subjective version of events. How closely it matches an objective account of what happened cannot be known, and in an important sense there is no objective historical version of a mythic tale anyway.Footnote ¹³ But it is possible Odysseus has adapted his own speech after the fact, inserting a reference to ἀτασθαλίαι in order to underscore his companions’ culpability and his own blamelessness. Wolfgang Schadewaldt came to almost the same conclusion—only, as an analyst, he believed the reference to ἀτασθαλίαι was an interpolation by a later, moralizing poet designed to make the companions’ deaths fit the paradigm of Aigisthos.Footnote ¹⁴ But perhaps Odysseus is, in a sense, Schadewaldt's moralizing poet. After all, Alkinoos explicitly compares him to an epic poet (ἀοιδὸς) because of his narration of the apologoi (11.368). Like all narrators, Odysseus has freedom to portray events as he sees fit, within the bounds of what he can get his auditors to accept. And as the sole survivor, he need not worry about the Phaiakians having any competing narrative. Odysseus has every reason to frame events in the way that he does. He faces the problem of convincing the Phaiakians that he really is not to blame for the deaths of the previous sailors who were helping him get home. The Phaiakians would be much less likely to convey Odysseus home if he posed a danger to past (and future) shipmates. Odysseus, therefore, reassures his potential helpers that the companions’ deaths were their own fault and not his. And his ploy works: he gets the Phaiakians to help him get home—even though the crew of the Phaiakian ship will die at the hands of a god, just as the companions did. Even the poem's auditors are reliant upon Odysseus’ words for almost all the details of the apologoi. If Odysseus has retrospectively interpolated reference to ἀτασθαλίαι, this also casts Eurylochos’ reference to Odysseus’ own ἀτασθαλίαι—also as reported after the fact by Odysseus—in a different light.

This example of the ironies and multiple meanings that arise when Odysseus cites the companions’ ἀτασθαλίαι stands toward one end of the continuum. Because it is a specialized term with a fairly narrow set of contexts in which it occurs, the connotations it bears are especially pronounced and make the ironies and multiple meanings involved relatively secure. I will return at end of this article to the possible ironies surrounding Odysseus’ role in the death of the companions, with an example lying at the other end of the continuum.

A Multivalent Slaughter

Now I turn back to the context of Book 22 and the violent imagery of Odysseus’ triumph over the suitors. In the battle with the suitors, there are several other examples of apparently ordinary language that has darker implications. These are less obviously multivalent than the example from Book 12 of the companions’ ἀτασθαλίαι, but if we consider what this language connotes, a number of more negative meanings and ironies are suggested.

Midway through Book 22, Odysseus’ long-delayed, violent revenge upon the suitors is complete. Odysseus and his allies will move on to pass judgment upon and execute the suitors’ various helpers, but first the poet concludes this phase of action with a pair of similes—comparing the suitors to heifers agitated by a gadfly and to birds hunted down by eagles—and a simple but brutal final image of a floor running with blood. This image rounds off and summarizes all the preceding bloodshed. However, it has deeper resonances than are at first apparent.

The scene concludes thus:

The language of the last two lines resembles two scenes from the Iliad. Compare how Diomedes is depicted, when, accompanied by Odysseus and aided by Athena, he surprises and slaughters a band of sleeping Thracians:

Compare also how Achilles is depicted killing Trojan warriors he has pursued into the river Xanthos:

The parallelisms among these passages have been noted before.Footnote ¹⁵ A Greek hero ‘strikes’ (τύπτον/ϰτεῖνε/τύπτε, τυπτομένων/θεινομένων/θεινομένων) his enemies on both sides in succession (ἐπιστροφάδην); they die (in a genitive participle), giving out a ‘shameful groan’ (στόνος…ἀειϰὴς); ‘blood’ (αἵματι) stains the scene. Odysseus thus concludes his battle with the suitors like a rampaging Iliadic warrior. But there is a slight difference in the last half-line that drives home—in a literal sense—the violence of the Odyssey. In the Iliad, the ‘ground’ (γαῖα) or the ‘water’ (ὕδωρ) of the river are reddened by the slaughter. The scene of the fight is a battlefield. In the passage from the Odyssey, the poet has substituted the term δάπεδον, ‘floor’. This change of vocabulary reflects the change of scene: Odysseus has brought the battlefield of Troy into his own home. The Odyssey has become a poem of domestic violence.Footnote ¹⁶

This description of the suitors’ slaughter is later repeated almost verbatim by one of the recently deceased suitors, Amphimedon, in the underworld:

He is addressing Agamemnon's shade, and they begin their conversation on friendly terms (114). As Amphimedon tells it, he and the rest of the ‘ill-fated’ (αἰνομόροισιν, 169) suitors came to ‘an evil end’ (ϰαϰὸν τέλος, 124), an ‘evil death’ (θάνατον ϰαϰὸν, 153) at the hands of Odysseus and his allies. This is essentially an Odyssey told from the suitors’ point-of-view, and Amphimedon means the gory description of their deaths to invoke pity. Agamemnon has the opposite response. He celebrates Odysseus’ triumph, in particular by opposing the virtue of Odysseus’ wife, Penelope, to the depravity of his own, Clytemnestra.Footnote ¹⁷ Making matters more complex, Amphimedon describes Penelope's scheming actions in defeating them in ways that parallel how Agamemnon and Odysseus describe Clytemnestra's actions against Agamemnon in the first nekuia. Just as Clytemnestra ‘contrived a trap’ with her husband ‘far off’ (δόλον ἤρτυε τηλόθ’ ἐόντι, 11.439), so did Penelope ‘plot a trap’ (δόλον… μερμήριξε, 24.128; cf. 141) with her husband ‘long absent’ (δὴν οἰχομένοιο, 24.125). Agamemnon does not directly dispute this characterization, but his response reveals an incongruous analogy that Amphimedon does not perceive: the suitors’ deaths mirror Agamemnon's own. They both perished during a feast in another's home, through the schemes of a woman. Afterward, their killers, to their shame, did not respect their corpses (11.424-26, 24.186-90). In the first nekuia, Agamemnon had remarked to Odysseus on the pitiful scene of his death:

He died amid the accoutrements of a feast, in the blood-stained home of a man who had been his host and became his killer. Agamemnon emphasized the unusual intimacy of the scene by contrasting it with deaths on a battlefield (416f.). In the second nekuia, Amphimedon describes his and the suitors’ own deaths in much the same way, most importantly with the identical half-line that the narrator had used in Book 22 and Agamemnon had used in the first nekuia: δάπεδον δ’ ἅπαν αἵματι θῦεν. In this form, the clause appears in only these three places. With its domestic-oriented substitution of δάπεδον in place of the Iliadic language of open war, it is the definitive linguistic link between the suitors’ deaths and Agamemnon's own. This half-line image of a floor running with blood has particular weight in Book 22, where it stands as summary to the narrative of the general slaughter of the suitors. But its resonance with Agamemnon's death suggests an incongruous link—perhaps even an identification—between the suitors and Agamemnon. The clause takes on pathetic connotations from Agamemnon's death and thus has an additional layer of significance, perhaps even an ironic sense of sympathy for the suitors’ deaths. Is this link between the suitors and Agamemnon a reason to celebrate Odysseus? Agamemnon seems to think so, but it is unclear how much of the incongruity he detects—whether, that is, he is in on the potential irony. These resonances with his own death in Amphimedon's narrative may have moved him to praise Odysseus and Penelope for achieving the reverse of his fate. But if so, he limits the implications of this ironic identification by opposing Clytemnestra's evil ways to Penelope's virtue. And his conception of Penelope's virtue is rather sanitized: it consists of her memory of Odysseus (195) and, more vaguely, her ‘good sense’ (ἀγαθαὶ φρένες, 194), but with none of the trickery that she shows in the poem and that Amphimedon had mentioned. Agamemnon leaves that to Clytemnestra alone (199).Footnote ¹⁸ Agamemnon's interpretation becomes metapoetic, when he projects it to future audiences as two contrasting ‘songs’—one ‘pleasing’ (ἀοιδὴν…χαρίεσσαν, 197f.), one ‘hateful’ (στυγερὴ…ἀοιδὴ, 200)—with the aim of controlling what the ‘Oresteia’ and the Odyssey will mean. Agamemnon thus either effaces or reverses the ironic likeness between his own murderers and Penelope, Odysseus, and their allies. In either case, he is making a neatly schematized interpretation. But is it the only one that the poem provides? Or might the parallels between them—especially as signaled by this culminating half-line at the close of the suitors’ slaughter—have a more ironic and ambivalent meaning?

To return to the occasion that opened this article, we find that Eurykleia reacts to the suitors’ deaths in a similar way as Agamemnon does here—only, as we shall see, the ambiguities about what she is seeing and reacting to are even more pronounced. But first, it is useful to consider how the poet describes the spectacle that will confront her. Right before summoning Eurykleia, we see the results of the slaughter through Odysseus’ eyes:

The central point of comparison is how the suitors and the fish have been ‘heaped up’ (ϰέχυνται/ϰέχυντο)—a description intriguingly anticipated in the way Penelope earlier said that she dreamt her geese were ‘heaped up’ (ἐϰέχυντο, 19.539) after an eagle killed them in her hall. These geese, the eagle had told her in the dream, represented the suitors. In Book 22, the simile of the fish on the beach could have ended at this point. Penelope's geese make for an insightful comparison: they are simply dead, lying in a pile with their necks broken. But the simile of the fish continues: they ‘long for the waves of sea’ (ϰύμαθ’ ἁλὸς ποθέοντες) and ‘the blazing sun takes their spirit’ (τῶν μέν τ’ ἠέλιος φαέθων ἐξείλετο θυμόν). Set against the figurative image of the geese, the simile of the fish takes on more gruesome implications than are immediately apparent: the fish are not dead yet.Footnote ¹⁹ The last two lines of the simile adjust our sense of what Odysseus sees when he looks about the hall and sees his victims ‘in blood and dust, fallen in great numbers’ (ἐν αἵματι ϰαὶ ϰονίῃσι πεπτεῶτας πολλούς). Some are surely dead. But if we take the comparison to the logical conclusion that the simile would imply—a simile whose image of vainly flopping fish left to die slowly might otherwise seem gratuitous—many of the suitors, though mortally wounded, are still alive. They writhe and gradually expire, spreading further gore in Odysseus’ halls. This is the gruesome scene upon which Eurykleia will enter.

Odysseus next asks Telemachos to summon Eurykleia. He is going to ask her to bring in the loyal and disloyal female servants. The latter Telemachos will hang en masse. At this point, Odysseus is a bit vague: he tells Telemachos he has ‘a word…on my mind’ (ἔπος…ϰαταθύμιον, 392) for Eurykleia. The rare adjective ϰαταθύμιος, however, evokes a sense of foreboding. It appears only in two other places, both in the Iliad, modifying θάνατος in a negative construction in character-text. When Zeus apostrophizes Hektor as he prepares for his fatal battle with Achilles, he laments for Hektor: ‘Wretch! Not at all is death on your mind’ (ἆ δείλ’ οὐδέ τί τοι θάνατος ϰαταθύμιός ἐστιν, 17.201). In the third case, Odysseus tries to soothe his captive Dolon and get him to speak: ‘Take heart. Do not at all let death be on your mind’ (θάρσει, μηδέ τί τοι θάνατος ϰαταθύμιος ἔστω, 10.383). In both cases, despite the negative construction, the deaths mentioned do come. The third case especially provides a strong and ominous parallel for Odysseus’ words in Odyssey 22, since in both cases Odysseus is the speaker. Given this background, ϰαταθύμιον connotes impending death.

Telemachos leads Eurykleia into the halls and she finds Odysseus. The poet uses a provocative simile to describe the scene:

A simile comparing a hero to a lion is not, in itself, that remarkable. But here the focus is centered narrowly on the how the lion has ‘feasted’ (βεβρωϰὼς) upon its victims. Note the conspicuous detail of the lion's bloodied ‘cheeks’ (παρήϊά), rather than, for instance, ‘paws’, which would make for a more precise analogy to Odysseus’ bloodied hands. With this focus on the lion as a devouring beast, its gore-stained ‘face’ (ὦπα) makes it terrifying (δεινὸς). In the Odyssey, only here and one other place does a lion simile have feasting upon prey as its focus—tellingly, where Polyphemos eats two of Odysseus’ companions (9.292f.), a moment of outright cannibalism. In his vengeance against intruders upon his home, Odysseus has taken on a Cyclopean aspect.Footnote ²⁰ As in the case of the simile of heaped-up fish, this lion simile has gruesome implications: it seems as if Odysseus has feasted upon his enemies.

Interpreting this simile becomes more complex once we ask in whose mind it resides. It is sometimes put as a rule that characters are unaware of the similes the Homeric narrator makes.Footnote ²¹ But in this case, the poet deliberately obscures who perceives this likeness. The passage bears all the supposed hallmarks of embedded focalization: verbs of perception or finding (εὗρεν, ἰδέσθαι, εἴσιδεν), a verb of emotion (ὀλολύξαι), and evaluative language (δεινὸς, μέγα…ἔργον).Footnote ²² This suggests Eurykleia might be making the comparison. δεινὸς and ἰδέσθαι appear in the simile proper (405) and would seem to require a focalizer, but none is mentioned. Conceivably, we might understand an anonymous viewer of the lion, but the emphasis on ‘seeing’ in 405 and in 407 and 408, where Eurykleia is explicitly the subject, leaves the impression she is seeing the lion. In fact, when shortly after this scene Eurykleia reports this sight to Penelope, she repeats some of the narrator's language, including a shortened version of the lion simile (23.45-48).Footnote ²³ Nonetheless, the simile proper and the narrative frame have a striking difference in focus—in particular, on the point of who is stained by the blood. (Note the repetition: αἱματόεντα in 405 and αἷμα in 407.) The simile makes it the lion—that is, Odysseus. Eurykleia makes it the dead suitors. The poet has made a subtle and disturbing move. By placing the lion simile immediately before her reaction and suggesting she herself is seeing Odysseus as a lion, he makes Eurykleia seem to rejoice at the depiction of Odysseus as a man-eating beast, while the text only says she delights in the result of his battle: the suitors lying dead and the house standing ready to be reclaimed. The poet is building an implicit, darker ethical evaluation of Odysseus alongside the dominant, positive perspective.

Even as the last two lines describing Eurykleia's reaction seem to distance her celebratory gesture from the more sinister aspects of the foregoing simile, resonances in this language undercut any easy escape from the darker implications of her reaction. The verb ὀλολύζω and its related noun ὀλολυγή are rare in Homer, but normally signify a pivotal moment in sacrificial ritual: when the victim is killed and its blood spilled, the female celebrants make this onomatopoetic cry.Footnote ²⁴ Eurykleia's shout, then, connotes ecstatic joy at (human) sacrifice, particularly given the copious blood (407).

To describe the scene as a μέγα…ἔργον is also multivalent and ironic. A superficial reading of the collocation as a ‘great deed’ might seem to valorize Odysseus’ actions. But upon closer examination, it has darker connotations. It appears on ten other occasions in the Odyssey. In each of these, it represents a negative judgment, usually by someone harmed or disadvantaged by the deed or by someone sympathetic to that perspective. Nestor twice uses it to describe Aigisthos’ crimes against Agamemnon (3.261, 275); Antinoos uses it to refer to the fact that Telemachos has left on a journey, which he fears is in search of men to fight them (4.663); Eurymachos repeats Antinoos’ line when he learns Telemachos has made it back safely (16.346); Odysseus uses it to describe Epicaste's incestuous marriage (11.272) and to describe the companions’ feasting on Helios’ cattle (12.373); Penelope uses it to rebuke Melantho's conduct with the disguised Odysseus (19.72); the narrator uses it to describe the suitors’ becoming armed (22.149), as seen by Odysseus; the final assembly in Book 24 has Eupeithes using it to describe how Odysseus killed the suitors (and the companions?), while Halitherses gives a competing description of the suitors’ crimes using the same phrase (24.426, 458). All of these instances are in character-text or are, as in the case of 22.149 (‘it seemed to him’, αὐτῷ φαίνετο), clearly focalized by a character. Setting aside the case of 22.408, the collocation would seem to signify an act judged to be disastrous.

So a μέγα ἔργον is an ‘enormity’, in the precise meaning of the word, as ‘a gross and monstrous offence’, a ‘deviation from moral or legal rectitude’—thus, the title for my article.Footnote ²⁵ This particular connotation is stronger in the Odyssey than in other Greek literature.Footnote ²⁶ But this meaning appears to be at odds with Eurykleia's celebratory shout. And if anyone is acting as focalizer, it can only be Eurykleia, who ‘looked upon’ (εἴσιδεν) the deed. If we interpret this passage informed by the connotations surrounding this language, a pronounced irony emerges. A moment of apparent praise carries overtones of moral censure. It is as if Eurykleia, in the process of celebrating Odysseus’ victory, unwittingly also adopts the suitors’ perspective. She is about to do something no ally of Odysseus has yet done: delight in an act while admitting its evil. She is about to make the ritual cry of a witness to a sacrifice, which is suggestively made to seem like an act of cannibalism—in short, an enormity.

To bring us to the answer to the question I posed at the beginning of this article, Odysseus silences Eurykleia because he is sensitive, perhaps in a way she is not, to the potential more sinister meanings of his triumph. He cloaks his fear of such multiplication of meanings in piety:

He does not want his role as a sacrificer of the suitors openly acknowledged. (Note his repetition of the verb ὀλολύζω in 411.) Odysseus safely returns the focus back upon the suitors, using the strong deictic pronoun τούσδε. He eliminates himself from the suitors’ deaths. Now it is ‘fate’ (μοῖρα), their own ‘cruel deeds’ (σχέτλια ἔργα), and ‘recklessness’ (ἀτασθαλίῃσιν) that triply determine their downfall. As in the case of Phemios, Odysseus tries to control the interpretation of his triumph and fend off the dangers of irony. (Though, as we shall see, he does not completely succeed.) Perhaps, then, there is a further multivalent implication when the poet describes the blood of the slaughter as ‘unspeakable’ (ἄσπετον, 407). This adjective derives from the verb ἐννέπω (cf. ἔννεπε, ‘tell’, in 1.1), and ultimately from the root *sek^w -. In typical usage, the adjective describes things, like an expanse of sea (5.100f.), which are too large to be put into words.Footnote ²⁷ It should be noted, however, that words formed with the suffix -eto- need not refer to ‘ability’ only (cf. παγετός, ‘frost’, from πήγνυμι, ‘to harden’). It may be pushing a multivalent interpretation further than the evidence allows—certainly, this example lies toward the less secure end on the continuum of connotation—since the adjective seems elsewhere to be restricted to ideas of immensity (though cf. the unusual usage at Hymn. Hom. Ven. 237). But given Odysseus’ injunction to silence in this passage, this adjective, applied only here to ‘blood’ (αἷμα), might connote not just an inability to articulate the scale of the slaughter but an impermissibility. On this reading, this blood—the concrete, tangible sign of Odysseus’ violence within his own home—cannot, must not be mentioned.

One might object to the interpretation I have offered of the ironies in Book 22 by saying that this book is essentially ‘Iliadic’: in that context, similes of feasting lions and phrases like μέγα ἔργον do not have the negative connotations I have drawn out. There is some truth to this, but this ‘Iliadic’ scene comes at the dramatic climax of a different poem, which along the way has prepared a different set of expectations to this same language. That the simile of the devouring lion comes right after Odysseus has slaughtered the suitors in a feast heightens our attention to its cannibalistic implications. Moreover, every battle scene, every scene of beastly slaughter in the Iliad takes place outside the walls of Troy. The inevitable devastation of the households of Troy is kept at a safe distance from the Iliad proper, removed to foreshadowing allusions. The Odyssey similarly foreshadows a bloody conclusion within a domestic space—only it also narrates this ending in detail. The Iliad's battlefield intrudes upon the Odyssey's oikos. Perhaps the entire ‘Iliadic’ battle with the suitors, placed in the context it is, allows the poem's auditors a different perspective on the same heroic tropes in their Iliadic context. We might say that the Odyssey ironizes the Iliad.

This sense of Odysseus’ fear of the darker meanings of his triumph finds support in another, closely connected passage. Moments before Odysseus checks Eurykleia, the bard Phemios begs Odysseus to spare him. The suitors made him do it, he claims (351-53). This exculpating appeal to ‘necessity’ (ἀνάγϰη) is unsurprising, since the narrator has twice already mentioned how Phemios sang ‘by necessity’ (ἀνάγϰῃ, 331, 1.154)—though Phemios strengthens the point by implying the suitors used sheer physical force against him (353). More surprising is Phemios’ warning to Odysseus:

What sort of ‘grief’ (ἄχος) is meant here? And how is it connected with Phemios’ role as a singer of epic poetry? The simplest explanation is that Odysseus would feel ‘remorse’—as ἄχος often means—at losing the pleasures of listening to song.Footnote ²⁸ But Phemios has promised more than this; or, more precisely, has promised to sing a certain kind of pleasing song. Charles Segal has shown how, in the Odyssey, heroic song brings private grief to those it personally concerns and public joy to everyone else.Footnote ²⁹ In another tradition of poetry, hymnic poetry, the subject and auditor of a song are typically the same—the gods, who delight in hearing their actions recounted and praised in song.Footnote ³⁰ Phemios is offering to sing something approaching a hymn to Odysseus. When he says he would sing to Odysseus, ‘as to a god’ (ὥς τε θεῷ, 349), he aligns his potential patron with the first half of the pair of audiences—‘the gods’ (θεοῖσι, 346)—he mentioned a few lines earlier. Odysseus has the opportunity to have his triumph over the suitors celebrated in song by an eyewitness, who, because he is ‘self-taught’, is particularly able to transform these events into song.Footnote ³¹ Odysseus can influence poetic tradition and shape how his fight with the suitors will be remembered. As we shall see, this is not unlike the way he controls the narrative of his wanderings, making himself the filter through which not only the Phaiakians but also the Odyssey's audience know this part of his story.

Nonetheless, this would be an attenuated meaning for ἄχος, amounting to little more than regret. Phemios’ threat of ἄχος has an instructive parallel in the embassy to Achilles in Book 9 of the Iliad. On that occasion, Odysseus himself is the speaker and he warns Achilles that he will face ἄχος if he refuses to join the fight against Hektor (Il. 9.249). Odysseus means that Achilles will lose an opportunity for gaining honor (258, 302f.) and glory (303). But his words encode another, ironic meaning for the poem's audience: a graver ἄχος will come upon Achilles when, because of his continued refusal to fight, Patroklos will fight in his place and die. The analogy between these two moments is strengthened by the identity of the line, up to the bucolic diaeresis, that in both poems refers to the ἄχος to come. These words—‘There will be grief for you in the future…’ (αὐτῷ τοι μετόπισθ’ ἄχος ἔσσεται, Il. 9.249 = Od. 22.345)—appear only at these two places. And, in a striking reversal of the Iliad's context, Odysseus becomes the addressee. The parallels of both diction and context suggest something like an allusion to the Iliad, as well as a parallel in the meaning of ἄχος in both cases. It is as if Phemios is using Odysseus’ own words against him. Does this mean Phemios knows the Iliad, or a proto-Iliad? (After all, he has already sung of the events after the Trojan War: 1.326f.)Footnote ³² However we are to imagine Phemios’ knowledge of the Iliad's diction, the poem's audience, nonetheless, would grasp that this phrase carries more serious connotations than just the loss of the pleasure of song.

Perhaps with these words Phemios is alluding to the possibility that another sort of song could be sung about Odysseus’ deeds, one that would bring him grief. It has often been said that Phemios escapes, in part, because the poet of the Odyssey is lenient toward his fellow singer, whom he depicts as knowing the Iliad, or at least quoting it with an unwitting dramatic irony. The line between the inside and outside of the poem becomes blurred. At this moment, Phemios is in a sense standing outside the frame of the poem, as if he knows other poets would not look kindly on killing one of their own. By sparing the singer, Odysseus shows he is aware that his actions might be interpreted differently. Rather than give future singers reason to blame him and produce songs that would condemn him, he co-opts Phemios in order to control the meaning that the slaughter in his hall will have. A potential alternative interpretation has been foreclosed. Phemios will produce hymns of praise to Odysseus, and future singers will sing heroic songs of his deeds. Because Odysseus chose to heed the warning that Achilles neglected, the potential but unrealized darker song about Odysseus can now only be glimpsed by the shadow cast by Phemios’ threat of ἄχος for Odysseus.

Losing the Companions

By way of a coda, I adduce one more example of darker, multivalent meanings surrounding Odysseus’ successes. This time it is at the less secure end of the continuum. As I adumbrated a moment ago, Odysseus is unable to keep alternative interpretations of his defeat of the suitors from being voiced. In the final book of the poem, the relatives of the suitors threaten vengeance against Odysseus. They are led by Eupeithes, the father of the leading suitor, Antinoos. He indicts Odysseus by citing the death of both the companions and the suitors, lumping them together as ‘Achaians’:

Eupeithes considers these two groups of men—balanced against each other with τοὺς μὲν and τοὺς δ’—equivalent for the purpose of condemning Odysseus. Might Eupeithes’ argument that Odysseus is to blame for ‘losing’ (ὤλεσε) the companions provoke us to reassess the way we interpret the verb (ἀπ)όλλυμι in contexts referring to the death of the companions? The verb has a range of meanings—from passively losing to actively destroying—that rests on an ambiguous sense of agency.Footnote ³³ Eupeithes certainly intends it in the more active sense, if not quite all the way to ‘kill’: he does use a more explicitly active verb, ἔϰτεινε, to describe how Odysseus dealt with the suitors. But there is just enough ambiguity in ὤλεσε to let Eupeithes implant the idea that Odysseus might have killed them, while not losing his audience with a patently exaggerated claim. And his speech is effective. When he finishes, all the Achaians are gripped by pity, and soon half of them will launch a retributive attack against Odysseus. After all, none of them knows what happened to all those who left with him and why Odysseus has returned alone. Eupeithes’ speech reveals that this language of ‘losing’ the companions can mean something rather sinister. This darker connotation hovers behind other instances of this language.

Earlier, Polyphemos had prayed to Poseidon that, if Odysseus must survive, then at least let him return home only after ‘having lost all his companions’ (ὀλέσας ἄπο πάντας ἑταίρους, 9.534). Later, this same clause appears when Teiresias and Kirke inform him how this would happen—as a result of harming Helios’ cattle. Odysseus is presented with two outcomes upon coming to Thrinakia and encountering the cattle:Footnote ³⁴

How active a role for Odysseus are we to understand ὀλέσας in 114 to imply? Teiresias and Kirke are vague on this point. They mention only ‘destruction for your ship and companions’ resulting from harming Helios’ cattle. There is a curious grammatical detail that has not received much attention and further confounds identifying the agent responsible. The prediction that Odysseus and his companions will ‘find’ cattle on the island is put in the plural (εὕρητε)—as is the possibility that they all might, though suffering, make it home (πάσχοντες, ἵϰοισθε; cf. 11.104). But all the other verbs in the passage are in the singular, referring to Odysseus alone. This is a bit odd with σίνηαι (112), which would seem to make Odysseus responsible for harming the cattle. Given the other plural verbs, the immediate context does not account for the verb's singular number. The poet has chosen to have Teiresias and Kirke articulate it as they have, even though Odysseus will not touch the cattle. Similarly, making Odysseus the subject of the active aorist participle ὀλέσας underscores his possible role in the companions’ deaths. The poet could have made the companions the subject of ὄλλυμι in the middle voice, as he does on other occasions when describing their deaths at Thrinakia (1.7, 19.277).Footnote ³⁵

The phrase ὀλέσας ἄπο πάντας ἑταίρους appears on one more occasion. Awaking on Ithaca and encountering Athena, Odysseus complains that she did not help him in his wanderings until he reached Phaiakia (13.316-22). Athena responds that she was not willing to oppose Poseidon but was still confident of his return:

Note that she includes losing the companions as part of his return. There is a slight temporal infelicity here, since she says that her reason for not helping is Poseidon's anger over the blinding of Polyphemos. But this happens after dozens of the companions are already dead at the hands of the Cicones and Polyphemos. (And Odysseus had mentioned all the wandering since sacking Troy.)Footnote ³⁶ It is as if Odysseus were always fated to lose the companions (note the ποτ’ in line 339); or, to put it differently, needed to lose the companions in order to return. Might, then, these earlier references by Teiresias, Kirke, and Athena connote a darker meaning, that Odysseus is ultimately responsible for the lives of the companions, that he, in effect, might kill them? This is perhaps to push the interpretation too far. Odysseus never uses outright violence against them. But it has been argued that the Odyssey we have has indications of another kind of Odysseus, a more sinister one, which the poet of our Odyssey has revised and pacified.Footnote ³⁷ Perhaps, from time to time, this darker Odysseus and the ironies of his return and revenge still peek through our poem to disturb our settled views.