Calculated Fictions: The Logic Of Odysseus’ Lies

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Od. 13.256-273

“I heard of Ithaca even in broad Krete
Far over the sea. And now I myself have come
With these possessions. I left as much still with my children
When I fled, because I killed the dear son of Idomeneus,
Swift-footed Orsilokhos who surpassed all the grain-fed men
In broad Krete with his swift feet
Because he wanted to deprive me of all the booty
From Troy, over which I had suffered much grief in my heart,
Testing myself against warlike men and the grievous waves.
All because I was not showing his father favor as an attendant
In the land of the Trojans, but I was leading different companions.
I struck him with a bronze-pointed spear as he returned
From the field, after I set an ambush near the road with a companion.
Dark night covered the sky and no human beings
Took note of us, I got away with depriving him of life.
But after I killed him with the sharp bronze,
I went to a ship of the haughty Phoenicians
And I begged them and gave them heart-melting payment.”

“πυνθανόμην ᾿Ιθάκης γε καὶ ἐν Κρήτῃ εὐρείῃ,
τηλοῦ ὑπὲρ πόντου· νῦν δ’ εἰλήλουθα καὶ αὐτὸς
χρήμασι σὺν τοίσδεσσι· λιπὼν δ’ ἔτι παισὶ τοσαῦτα
φεύγω, ἐπεὶ φίλον υἷα κατέκτανον ᾿Ιδομενῆος,
᾿Ορσίλοχον πόδας ὠκύν, ὃς ἐν Κρήτῃ εὐρείῃ
ἀνέρας ἀλφηστὰς νίκα ταχέεσσι πόδεσσιν,
οὕνεκά με στερέσαι τῆς ληΐδος ἤθελε πάσης
Τρωϊάδος, τῆς εἵνεκ’ ἐγὼ πάθον ἄλγεα θυμῷ,
ἀνδρῶν τε πτολέμους ἀλεγεινά τε κύματα πείρων,
οὕνεκ’ ἄρ’ οὐχ ᾧ πατρὶ χαριζόμενος θεράπευον
δήμῳ ἔνι Τρώων, ἀλλ’ ἄλλων ἦρχον ἑταίρων.
τὸν μὲν ἐγὼ κατιόντα βάλον χαλκήρεϊ δουρὶ
ἀγρόθεν, ἐγγὺς ὁδοῖο λοχησάμενος σὺν ἑταίρῳ·
νὺξ δὲ μάλα δνοφερὴ κάτεχ’ οὐρανόν, οὐδέ τις ἥμεας
ἀνθρώπων ἐνόησε, λάθον δέ ἑ θυμὸν ἀπούρας.
αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ δὴ τόν γε κατέκτανον ὀξέϊ χαλκῷ,
αὐτίκ’ ἐγὼν ἐπὶ νῆα κιὼν Φοίνικας ἀγαυοὺς
ἐλλισάμην καί σφιν μενοεικέα ληΐδα δῶκα·

This is the first ‘lie’ Odysseus tells upon his arrival on Ithaca. He does not know that he is speaking to Athena and a scholiast explains his choices as if he were speaking to a suitor or one who would inform them.

Scholia V ad. Od. 13.267

“He explains that he killed Idomeneus’ son so that the suitors will accept him as an enemy of dear Odysseus. He says that he has sons in Crete because he will have someone who will avenge him. He says that the death of Orsilochus was for booty, because he is showing that he would not yield to this guy bloodlessly. He says that he trusted Phoenicians so that he may not do him wrong, once he has reckoned that they are the most greedy for profit and they spared him.”

τὸν μὲν ἐγὼ κατιόντα] σκήπτεται τὸν ᾿Ιδομενέως υἱὸν ἀνῃρηκέναι, ἵνα αὐτὸν πρόσωνται οἱ μνηστῆρες ὡς ἐχθρὸν τοῦ ᾿Οδυσσέως φίλου. ἑαυτῷ δὲ ἐν Κρήτῃ υἱούς φησιν εἶναι, ὅτι τοὺς τιμωρήσοντας ἕξει. καὶ τὸν ᾿Ορσιλόχου δὲ θάνατον λέγει διὰ τὴν λείαν, δεικνὺς ὅτι οὐδὲ ἐκείνῳ παραχωρήσει ἀναιμωτί. Φοίνιξι δὲ πιστεῦσαι λέγει, ἵνα μὴ ἀδικήσῃ, λογισάμενος ὅτι οἱ φιλοκερδέσταται αὐτοῦ ἐφείσαντο.
V.

 

Image result for Odysseus Medieval

Orsilochus is a name of a son of Diokles as well.

“Such Was My First Introduction to the Classics”

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Winston Churchill, My Early Life:

“Then we quitted the Headmaster’s parlour and the comfortable private side of the house, and entered the more bleak apartments reserved for the instruction and accommodation of the pupils. I was taken into a Form Room and told to sit at a desk. All the other boys were out of doors, and I was alone with the Form Master. He produced a thin greeny-brown-covered book filled with words in different types of print.

‘You have never done any Latin before, have you?’ he said.

‘No, sir.’

‘This is a Latin grammar.’ He opened it at a well-thumbed page. ‘You must learn this,’ he said, pointing to a number of words in a frame of lines. ‘I will come back in half an hour and see what you know.’

Behold me then on a gloomy evening, with an aching heart, seated in front of the First Declension.

Mensa            a table

Mensa            O table

Mensam         a table

Mensae           of a table

Mensae            to or for a table

Mensa              by, with or from a table

What on earth did it mean? Where was the sense of it? It seemed absolute rigmarole to me. However, there was one thing I could always do: I could learn by heart. And I thereupon proceeded, as far as my private sorrows would allow, to memorise the acrostic-looking task which had been set me. In due course the Master returned.
‘Have you learnt it?’ he asked.

‘I think I can say it, sir,’ I replied; and I gabbled it off. He seemed so satisfied with this that I was emboldened to ask a question.

‘What does it mean, sir?’

‘It means what it says. Mensa, a table. Mensa is a noun of the First Declension. There are five declensions. You have learnt the singular of the First Declension.’

‘But,’ I repeated, ‘what does it mean?’

‘Mensa means a table,’ he answered.

‘Then why does mensa also mean O table,’ I enquired, ‘and what does O table mean?’

‘Mensa, O table, is the vocative case,’ he replied.

‘But why O table?’ I persisted in genuine curiosity.

‘O table, you would use that in addressing a table, in invoking a table.’ And then seeing he was not carrying me with him, ‘You would use it in speaking to a table.’

‘But I never do,’ I blurted out in honest amazement.

‘If you are impertinent, you will be punished, and punished, let me tell you, very severely,’ was his conclusive rejoinder.

Such was my first introduction to the classics from which, I have been told, many of our cleverest men have derived so much solace and profit.”

Half Words

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ἡμιβάρβαρος: “half a barbarian”

ἡμίβιος: “half-alive”

ἡμίβροτος: “half human”

ἡμίβρωτος: “half-eaten”

ἡμίγαμος: “half-married”

ἡμιγένειος:  “half-bearded”

ἡμιγέρων: “half an old man”

ἡμίγραφος: “half-written”

ἡμίγυμνος: ‘half-naked”

ἡμιδακτύλιον: “half a finger’s length”

ἡμιδράκων: “half-dragon”

ἡμίθηρ: “half a beast”

ἡμίκακος: “half-evil”

ἡμίκενος: “half-empty”; cf.  ἡμίμεστος: “half-full”

ἡμικρής: “half-a-Cretan”

ἡμιμαθής: “half-learned”

ἡμιμανής: “half-mad”

ἡμιμεθής: “half-drunk”

ἡμιτελής: “half-done”

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‘The Colloquial Readiness of a Vulgar Mechanic’

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J.E. Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship Vol. II

Joshua Barnes (1654 — 17 12), of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, began his literary career by producing a fanciful little volume written in English, but interspersed with Greek verses, called Gerania or ‘News from the Pygmies’ (1675) Elected Fellow of Emmanuel three years later, he became Professor of Greek at Cambridge in 1695. In the previous year he had edited the whole of Euripides in a single folio volume, an edition reprinted at Leipzig and Oxford. This was followed by his Anacreon (1705), which attained a second edition. Finally he embarked on an edition of Homer, for which he failed to find a publisher. Its publication in 1710-1 was only made possible by his persuading his wife, who had inherited a small fortune from her first husband, that the real author of the Homeric poems was Solomon. With all its imperfections, it has been recognised as a work of greater utility than any of its predecessors, and ninety years elapsed before any distinctly superior edition appeared. The editor’s facility in writing and in speaking Greek was remarkable. When the Greek archbishop of Philippopolis visited Cambridge in 1701, Barnes, at the request of the Vice-Chancellor, presented him for an honorary degree in a Greek speech that is ‘still preserved’. In the preface to his poem on Esther, he tells us that he found it easier to write his annotations in Greek than in Latin, or in English. There was nothing, however trivial, that he could not turn into Greek. Bentley, who fully acknowledged his ‘singular industry’ and ‘most diffuse reading’, used to say that he understood about as much Greek ‘as an Athenian blacksmith’, presumably implying that he had rather the ‘colloquial readiness of a vulgar mechanic’ than the erudition, taste and judgement of a scholar. In the year after the publication of his Homer he died, and was buried at Hemingford Abbot in Huntingdonshire. Greek Anacreontics were written for his monument, but a Cambridge wit suggested a terser epitaph describing him as felicis memoriae, expectans judicium. Barnes, in his edition of Euripides, had accepted the ‘Epistles of Euripides’ as the genuine writings of the poet; Dodwell, in his treatise De Cyclis Veterum, had followed the data presented by the ‘Epistles of Phalaris’ in determining certain points of chronology. The errors of both were happily corrected when the spuriousness of the Epistles of Phalaris and of Euripides was conclusively proved by Bentley, who is the foremost representative of the next period of Scholarship.”

 

 

Effusive Praise for an Emperor With Homer

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Greek Anthology, 15.9: Ἐγκώμιον εἰς Θεοδόσιον τὸν βασιλέα (by the Poet Cyrus)
[A praise-poem for the Emperor Theodosius]

“You bear all of *Aiakos’ grandson’s famous deeds
Except for his illicit love; you shoot like Teucer,
But you weren’t born a bastard; you have a gorgeous form
Like Agamemnon, but wine doesn’t make you insane.
I compare your understanding to divine Odysseus in every way,
But you abstain from evil tricks. And you pour out a honeysweet voice,
King, equal to that of the old **Pylian, but before
You witness time wearing out a third generation of men.”

Πάντα μὲν Αἰακίδαο φέρεις ἀριδείκετα ἔργα,
νόσφι λοχαίου ἔρωτος· ὀϊστεύεις δ᾿ ἅτε Τεῦκρος,
ἀλλ᾿ οὔ τοι νόθον ἦμαρ· ἔχεις δ᾿ ἐρικυδέα μορφήν,
τὴν Ἀγαμεμνονέην, ἀλλ᾿ οὐ φρένας οἶνος ὀρίνει·
ἐς πινυτὴν δ᾿ Ὀδυσῆϊ δαΐφρονι πᾶν σε ἐΐσκω,
ἀλλὰ κακῶν ἀπάνευθε δόλων· Πυλίου δὲ γέροντος
ἶσον ἀποστάζεις, βασιλεῦ, μελιηδέα φωνήν,
πρὶν χρόνον ἀθρήσεις τριτάτην ψαύοντα γενέθλην.

*Achilles
**Nestor

Disco o Missorium Teodosio MPLdC.jpg

Spurious Lines and Bastard Sons

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Some of the language used by scholiasts to designate sections of the  Odyssey as spurious is based in a metaphor drawn from the legitimacy of offspring. As such, it might be rigidly authoritarian and misogynistic in emphasizing one (paternal) authority and one legitimate text.

Schol. HQ ad Od. 13.320-323

“These lines are spurious…”

νοθεύονται δ′ στίχοι.

Schol H. ad Od. 15.19

“Some people think these lines are illegitimate…”

ἔνιοι τοὺς γ′ νοθεύουσιν…

Schol. H ad Od. 15.45

“This [line] is spurious because it is adapted from a half-line from book 10 of the Iliad

νοθεύεται ὡς διαπεπλασμένος ἐξ ἡμιστιχίου τῆς κ ᾿Ιλιάδος (158.)

 

νοθαγενής: “base-born, illegitimate”

νοθεία: “birth out of wedlock”

νοθεύω: “to adulterate; to consider spurious”

νοθογέννητος: “of spurious origin”

νοθοκαλλοσύνη: “counterfeit beauty”

νόθος: “bastard”; in Athens, any child born of a foreign woman.

Schol. A ad Il. 5.70a

“He really was a bastard: this is because it was the barbarian custom to make children from many wives.”

ὅς ῥα νόθος μὲν ἔην: ὅτι βαρβαρικὸν ἔθος τὸ ἐκ πλειόνων γυναικῶν παιδοποιεῖσθαι. A

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Very-Profitable (?): Odysseus, Turning Away from Truth

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After Odysseus realizes he is not lost, but is in fact in Ithaca, the narrative describes him preparing to speak.

Od. 13.250-255

“So she spoke, and much-enduring, shining Odysseus
Was delighting in his own paternal land which Pallas Athena
Declared to him, the daughter of Aegis-bearing Zeus.
Then he responded to her with winged words—
He didn’t speak the truth, but he chose the opposite to that,
Since he was always fostering very-profitable thought in his chest.”

ὣς φάτο, γήθησεν δὲ πολύτλας δῖος ᾿Οδυσσεὺς
χαίρων ᾗ γαίῃ πατρωΐῃ, ὥς οἱ ἔειπε
Παλλὰς ᾿Αθηναίη, κούρη Διὸς αἰγιόχοιο·
καί μιν φωνήσας ἔπεα πτερόεντα προσηύδα· —
οὐδ’ ὅ γ’ ἀληθέα εἶπε, πάλιν δ’ ὅ γε λάζετο μῦθον,
αἰὲν ἐνὶ στήθεσσι νόον πολυκερδέα νωμῶν·

Schol.HV ad Od. 254 ex:

“Odysseus turned to the opposite; to the opposite of the truth which is he took up a story for a second time.”

πάλιν δ’ ὅγε λάζετο] εἰς τὸ ἐναντίον ἔστρεφεν. H. εἰς τοὐναντίον τοῦ ἀληθοῦς, ὅ ἐστιν, ἐκ δευτέρου δὲ τὸν λόγον ἀνελάβετο. V.

The scholia says this but misses the fact that in archaic and classical Greek poetry this compound is only applied to Odysseus.

Hesychius

“fostering a polykerdea mind: This means turning his deceptive and lying thought to many things, devising different thoughts for different matters”

νόον πολυκερδέα νωμῶν· τὸν ἀπατηλὸν καὶ ψεύστην νοῦν ἐπὶ πολλὰ τρέπων· ἄλλο ἐπ’ ἄλλο διανοούμενος (ν 255)

πολυκερδέα· πανοῦργον: polykerdea: doing anything, i.e. wicked.

But: πολὺ κέρδιον· πολὺ βέλτιον: polu kerdion [means] much better.

23.77 Eurykleia speaking to Penelope about Odysseus

“He would not allow me to say anything, thanks to the [devious thoughts] of his mind”

οὐκ εἴα εἰπεῖν πολυκερδείῃσι νόοιο.

24.167-8 Amphimedon telling the story of the slaughter

“But he ordered his wife with [very devious thoughts]
To set out the bow and gray iron for the suitors…”

αὐτὰρ ὁ ἣν ἄλοχον πολυκερδείῃσιν ἄνωγε
τόξον μνηστήρεσσι θέμεν πολιόν τε σίδηρον

 

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A Senile Illusion

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R.C. Jebb, Bentley:

“The distinctive feature of Bentley’s Homeric work is the restoration of the digamma. Bentley’s discovery was too much in advance of his age to be generally received otherwise than with ridicule or disbelief. Even F.A. Wolf, who yielded to few in his admiration of the critic, could speak of the digamma as merely an illusion which, in old age, mocked the genius of Bentley (senile ludibrium ingenii Bentleiani). At the present day, when the philological fact has so long been seen in a clearer light, it is easy to underrate the originality and the insight which the first perception of it showed.”

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Why We Love Drama

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Augustine, Confessions 3.2:

“The shows at the theater seized me, full of images of my woes and the tinder for my fire. Why is it that humans wish to grieve there when they watch mournful and tragic things, which they would nevertheless not wish to suffer themselves? And yet, the spectator wishes to suffer from them and the suffering itself is the pleasure. What is this other than extraordinary insanity? For each person is moved by those things more as he is less healthy in regard to such feelings, and although it is called misfortune when he himself suffers them, it is called mercy when he feels sympathy with others. But what kind of mercy is there in fictional and theatrical things? The audience is not called forth to help, but is only invited to suffer, and he favors the actor more in proportion to how much more pain he himself feels. But if those human calamities, whether ancient or invented, are thus presented that the spectator does not grieve, then he will depart despising and criticizing them; but if he is suffering, he will remain fixed in his seat, and will cry as he rejoices.”

rapiebant me spectacula theatrica, plena imaginibus miseriarum mearum et fomitibus ignis mei. quid est quod ibi homo vult dolere cum spectat luctuosa et tragica, quae tamen pati ipse nollet? et tamen pati vult ex eis dolorem spectator et dolor ipse est voluptas eius. quid est nisi mirabilis insania? nam eo magis eis movetur quisque, quo minus a talibus affectibus sanus est, quamquam, cum ipse patitur, miseria, cum aliis compatitur, misericordia dici solet. sed qualis tandem misericordia in rebus fictis et scenicis? non enim ad subveniendum provocatur auditor sed tantum ad dolendum invitatur, et actori earum imaginum amplius favet cum amplius dolet. et si calamitates illae hominum, vel antiquae vel falsae, sic agantur ut qui spectat non doleat, abscedit inde fastidiens et reprehendens; si autem doleat, manet intentus et gaudens lacrimat.

The Learning of Greece & Rome Neglected

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Edward Gibbon, Memoirs of My Life and Writings:

“The design of my first work, the Essay on the Study of Literature, was suggested by a refinement of vanity, the desire of justifying and praising the object of a favourite pursuit. In France, to which my ideas were confined, the learning and language of Greece and Rome were neglected by a philosophic age. The guardian of those studies, the Academy of Inscriptions, was degraded to the lowest rank among the three royal societies of Paris: the new appellation of Erudits was contemptuously applied to the successors of Lipsius and Casaubon; and I was provoked to hear (see M. d’Alembert Discours preliminaire a l’Encyclopedie) that the exercise of the memory, their sole merit, had been superseded by the nobler faculties of the imagination and the judgment. I was ambitious of proving by my own example, as well as by my precepts, that all the faculties of the mind may be exercised and displayed by the study of ancient literature.”