Homer’s Odyssey, like the man it describes, has “many ways.” Already in its introduction or proem, the poem raises its themes, including intelligence, politics, suffering, and ultimately homecoming. Odysseus is a paradigm case of man dislocated from civilization, defined not by his rank or even his martial virtues such as his courage, but by the versatile, shifting use of his mind to overcome the challenges before him. The questions the poem poses unfold into an implicit anthropology: Who are you? How does your identity depend on where you are from? What are your obligations to a stranger, and what are the limits of those obligations?
The Odyssey is foundational to Western culture because it conveys a critical framework for understanding what man is: a mortal being situated between the beasts and gods, dependent on inherited bonds while capable of judging them, responsible for action even as he is exposed to forces beyond his control. The central lesson of the poem is that entropy is always at work, and civilization must be actively recovered through memory, intelligence, strength, and the striving for return. The importance of this lesson increases as modernity weakens the bonds constitutive of identity. To read the Odyssey well is to receive an education in the habits of mind needed for governance, including the ability to improvise beyond prior experience, command of speech and persuasion, and strategic concealment and timing.
None of this means that the Odyssey is a comfortable, familiar home. The late Bronze age in which the tale is set is different from our own time in undeniable ways, some of which strongly contravene modern sensibilities. For some, the work may seem to constitute a poetic house of the dead. To find a reliable path through the poem, we should consider the themes most salient for us today: the problem of entering an alien world, the modern experience of rootlessness, the confrontation of Homeric virtue with post-Christian morality, and the role of Homeric images in sustaining Western memory.
Reading the Alien
The world that Homer depicts has many features easy for us to recognize. Tears after calamity, fear of death, longing for home, and joy at delayed reunion are all present. Yet there are also features alien enough to trouble that recognition. We need to avoid either of two errors. The first is to treat Homer’s Greeks as early, if primitive versions of ourselves, projecting our own post-Christian values and therapeutic categories onto them. The second is to treat them as utterly foreign and entirely inaccessible, as though they were creatures from a distant planet rather than men from the European coast. Both errors close off our access to the poem, which requires instead that we attempt to enter into the world of the Greeks before we judge it by the standards of our own.
The elements of Homer’s world alien to modern sensibilities are numerous and unavoidable. A few are worth naming directly, as they pose the greatest challenges to reading the poem with seriousness and depth from our inherently modern perspective. First, the gods in the Odyssey are depicted as real powers, deathless, partisan, concerned with honor, sometimes in mutual conflict. Odysseus is, for the most part, beloved of the gods, and especially by Athena, who admires his cunning. Poseidon rages against the hero out of personal spite. Second, human responsibility coincides with divine action, with neither obviating the responsibility of the other. In the proem, Zeus rebukes mortals for blaming gods for suffering they cause themselves. Odysseus’ men perish due to violating an explicit divine warning concerning the cattle of Helios; the suitors at Ithaca receive a similar warning from Theoclymenus before meeting their deaths. Third, the ethics of the poem center on considerations of hierarchy, honor, and shame, understood within concrete social relations. These values are not taken, as in our world, to apply universally among persons presumed to be equal. The society of the Greeks is far from our modern universal and homogeneous state. Fourth, retribution is understood to be a necessary part of justice. Wrongs generate an obligation of repayment, and for some wrongs repayment cannot be made in material goods. Zeus, in the proem, declares Orestes’ killing of Aegithus to be a model of such just retribution.
The alien elements make Homer’s poem, read in a form as close as feasible to the original, all the more indispensable to us. Its salience as a salutary contrast only increases in a culture that embraces ever more far-reaching forms of utilitarianism, themselves extending sometimes to encompass not only all humans but all creatures capable of experience, such as shrimp. Adaptations of the poem, as delightful as they can be, tend to select, or even inject, themes an audience already finds legible. In our day, those may include trauma, guilt, or psychological recovery. At the same time, the alien elements are simply omitted or overwritten. Yet if we cannot read foundational poems on their own terms, we become dependent on intermediaries who transform difficult concepts into more familiar and acceptable ones, even when the originals are more functional or perceptive. The past becomes accessible only by using contemporary frames of identity for affirmation or accusation. What is not allowed is for the poem to judge the reader, to declare, like Rilke’s archaic torso of Apollo, “You must change your life.”
In the midst of the alien, Homer has a closeness to us that anchors his enduring relevance. He is not the West, but he stands at its beginning. The Greeks who came after Homer developed tragedy and philosophy through engagement with his questions. How does death grant or deny meaning to human life? How does excellence relate to political order? How can force be governed by speech? The beauty of Greek literature is the opposite of naïve. The measured lines of Greek poetry from Homer onward grapple with the most difficult aspects of life, including war and its consequences, reflecting a knowledge that civilization is achieved not by evading horror but by grasping it with image, rhythm, and limit. We need not ape Greek religion or cultural particulars to learn from Homer that courage includes a capacity for force, and that political order should place limits on that force. Homer’s alienness keeps his thought from being too easily assimilated to comfortable, familiar patterns; his nearness insists that it should not be ignored.
Odysseus the Displaced
The Odyssey, far from offering an uncomplicated affirmation of inherited identity, breaks down its traditional sources in name, father, land, and household, and offers a frame in which to think through its loss. At the beginning of the poem, Odysseus has lost each of these, and his return is complete only when all are regained. Thus, his arrival in Ithaca in Book 13 is only the beginning of his homecoming. In modernity, each of these bonds, now understood as unwelcome constraints rather than deep resources, has been weakened and made elective in a process that has carried both freedoms and spiritual ills. Modern man often suffers from a kind of homelessness, even sitting in his own house in his own country.
It now sounds old-fashioned, but even in modern English we used to speak of a man’s “good name,” meaning the reputation bound to his identity. A name is relational in that it allows one’s identity to be grasped by others over time, whether for good or ill. Through Homer’s account of Odysseus’ encounter with the cyclops Polyphemus, this ancient function of naming is put to the test. Odysseus calls himself Outis, Nobody, causing Polyphemus’ cries for help to misfire as his fellow cyclopes assume Polyphemus has been attacked by “no one.” The tactic seems to be a triumph of cunning. Odysseus, however, cannot ultimately bear this namelessness, as it would require him to forego his glory in the defeat of Polyphemus, glory which can attach itself to the hero only through the recitation of his deeds by name in song. He therefore reveals his name, allowing Polyphemus to draw down the wrath of Poseidon, dooming Odysseus to many years of woe. An analogous tension pervades modern concerns with the boundaries of legibility, from social media to financial technology to administrative bureaucracy. We often desire the many advantages and freedom of anonymity, but our social technology rests on the accountability and continuity of identity that is fixed by our names. The online “anon” is able to evade the punishment of the social order, yet to claim the fruits of his labor, he must take the risk of unmasking himself and revealing his name.
In the sphere of the family, Telemachus tells Athena that “No man knows his own begetting.” He is ostensibly referring to his uncertainty as to his literal paternity, but the statement resonates more deeply with the long absence of Odysseus and the void he has left in the political order. The Greeks understood fatherhood as the ground of social, economic, and political continuity among the generations. When Telemachus recognizes Odysseus in Book 16, it restores not only their personal relation but the possibility of coordination on the dangerous action needed to set Ithaca aright. When the scope of fatherhood is reduced, as in modernity, to a more minimal relation within the nuclear family, it naturally results in a kind of temporal parochialism in which the interests and preferences of a given generation are cut off from those that precede or follow. Long-term visions seem abstract and more difficult to act upon; the possibility of deep coordination between father and son is diminished.
A close reading of the Odyssey hardly bids us to return to ancestral villages or revive the worship of old gods. Its instruction penetrates more deeply to the relations on which identity rests, pointing us to those that most matter. Eumaeus the swineherd is a foreign-born slave, yet he is more faithful to Odysseus and integral to his household than the native elites who are besieging it. Loyalty, the poem shows, can be chosen, and betrayal can occur within one’s own class.
Emulating Excellence
The Greek Arete is often translated as virtue, but its sense in Homer is closer to excellence than moral goodness. It is the capacity to perform a needed function well, whether fighting, planning, speaking, or ruling. Odysseus’ excellence is manifold. He is a warrior capable of lethal violence, but he is not known chiefly for combat on the battlefield. Rather, he is exceptional in his range of action, surviving by adapting, improvising, and planning. His description as polytropos or “many ways” in the proem is later elaborated as polymetis or “many-skilled,” for his excellence cannot be reduced to a single disposition. He can turn in many ways without losing his orientation. Excellence in the modern world no less requires this ability to act effectively in novel situations where existing scripts are not available, to see the truths of a situation even when it differs from the institutional explanation.
What the Greeks possessed was a willingness to look without flinching at human mortality, recurring strife, human inequality, physical vulnerability, personal and social betrayals, and the frequent necessity of force. They had a certain clarity in rejecting the “just-world” fallacy: the expectation that outcomes must conform to some notion of moral fairness. The Odyssey embodies this austere clarity by showing that success depends on one’s navigation of the unfair. Odysseus returns to Ithaca not because his journey is safe, or because he deserves rest, but because he rises to the danger placed before him. He enters his own hall as a beggar and delays retaliation, because he does not assume that the world to which he is returning means him well. Penelope prevails because she conceals her intentions, postpones unfavorable decisions, and maintains a screening fiction through the weaving and unweaving of Laertes’ shroud. Arete demands command over the timing of action, however full of passion we may be to act.
The post-Christian societies of the West often elevate (and perhaps over-exaggerate) particular elements of the Christian moral framework, such as compassion, equality, and peacefulness, inflecting them with modern concerns of safety and therapeutic well-being. In this, post-Christian morality carries an antipathy toward social structures and practices that contradict these modern values, regardless of whether or how the promoted values may be pro-social or functional for human life. The Odyssey, in contrast, puts forward the case for moral discrimination as a necessary regulator of other values. Odysseus extends mercy to the bard and the herald in Ithaca, but only after he ascertains that they did not take part in the suitors’ offenses. He pursues particular loyalties to wife, son, father, and kingdom, minding that they form the structures through which social responsibility becomes possible. He employs craft and force against Polyphemus only when the Cyclops shows himself by his violent appetites to be outside the bonds of hospitality and reciprocity. He rejects the safety, pleasure, and even immortality offered by Calypso in favor of a hazardous journey to a rugged home, because he prefers the assertion of his identity over comfortable self-preservation. The navigation of life requires at different times mercy and severity, truthfulness and concealment, patience and attack. Any morality that does not embrace this full range of human action within its conception of virtue will not successfully orient man to excellence.
Retributive justice begins with a true respect for human agency. Whatever the gods may decree, men make choices for which they are responsible. The offenses of the suitors are deliberate, long-lasting, and severe. They drew down the resources of the household, corrupted its servants, courted its queen, and plotted to murder Odysseus’ son. They even receive repeated warnings, including demands to leave from Telemachus and omens of the consequences of persisting from Theoclymenus. Their terrible, savage slaughter by Odysseus—described in visceral detail by Homer—is a matter of moral and social necessity. Still, Odysseus forbids Eurycleia to rejoice over the deaths: as much as justice may require killing, even in the Greek world one ought not delight in it.
Homeric Virtues
The qualities of cunning, endurance, and memory, in which Odysseus mostly excels and sometimes fails, are central to the poem. Cunning, or metis, is intelligence adapted to concrete, difficult, volatile situations. It entails the knowledge of when to speak, hide, wait, test, strike, or yield, an embodied intelligence that goes beyond any intellectual understanding or decision procedure. The Cyclops episode richly illustrates the quality. Trapped by the giant stone Polyphemus rolls across the mouth of his cave, Odysseus observes, offers wine, and sharpens a huge stake before he and his men can together blind Polyphemus and ultimately escape by hiding under the departing rams of the Cyclops’ flock. More than mere deceit, his metis is the crafting and execution of an effective plan. Homer reinforces the admirability of this cunning when Athena meets Odysseus in Book 13, and the goddess praises him for it, indifferent to whether Odysseus adhered to our modern standards of “fair play.”
Throughout the poem, Odysseus is “much-enduring” or polytlas, keeping his mind fixed on Ithaka even as he suffers greatly. Endurance serves his goal of returning to and restoring his household. On Calypso’s island, he endures grief. When he suffers abuse and humiliation from his own servants on Ithaca, he brings to mind his captivity in the Cyclops’ cave and urges himself to endure yet more. Passion must not be vented in untimely action. In Homer, Odysseus is not defined by what has been done to him, but rather by his willingness to suffer to attain his goal. Yet suffering itself does not ennoble. The companions all suffer and die, some, such as Elpenor, absurdly. The suitors and corrupted servants suffer pain and terror, without gain. The endurance that rises to the level of excellence is governed by its end, its telos.
Memory in the Odyssey is constituted by the experience of being bound: to absent persons, to intangible institutions. It is the source of Odysseus’ desire to return home. Forgetting offers peace at the price of identity, exemplified by the lotus-eating in Book 9. The various recognition scenes on Ithaca all tie memory to the gradual reconstruction of identity. Odysseus’ old nurse-maid Eurycleia famously recognizes him through his childhood hunting scar, bringing to mind their ancient shared history. Penelope finally confirms her recognition of Odysseus through his knowledge of their marriage-bed. Laertes recognizes Odysseus through his memory of the precise trees the father gave his son as a child. Identity is a life-story, physically displayed in body, place, and action.
The Poem of the Future
Homer condenses complex observations about social institutions into memorable scenarios that allow the reader to recognize recurring human challenges. His images embody and illustrate abstract concepts with vivid narrative detail. Corruption becomes local elites who consume the resources of a kingdom while presuming to court the queen. Legitimate authority becomes a king who endures beggary until he can string a bow. A wife’s fidelity becomes a bed constructed with a secret shared only by her husband. Such images can, and for the Greeks did, deeply shape social perception and self-understanding. Rules may purport to state what one may or may not do, but images show the motives and drives that give rise to characteristic situations.
Homer’s key images illuminate the workings of his civilization and retain relevance to our own. The treatment of strangers, codified as xenia, entails reciprocal obligations of respect between guest and host. Xenia can be violated from either side, and the poem repeatedly shows the grave consequences of such violations, in contrast to a unilateral post-Christian humanitarianism. Penelope weaving and unweaving a burial shroud for Laertes provides a compact image of cunning through reversal in a work of familial and religious piety. Service toward an outward form and its quiet undoing can be an effective political action. Telemachus before the assembly illustrates the limits of political forms without power: he employs his authority as heir to summon the assembly and attempt to remedy Ithaka’s disorder, but cannot do so without the power of the king Odysseus. Odysseus’ exploits disguised as a beggar on Ithaca show that a leader must assess the true condition of his authority apart from its formal appearance. Over two millennia later, Shakespeare would employ this image as Henry V wandering in disguise among his men before the battle of Agincourt.
Yet, literature must be shared to be effective. When images such as Homer’s are no longer understood, our literature and our own self-understanding become impoverished. Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation The Odyssey seems to reflect precisely such an impoverishment has already taken place. Without great unifying texts, complex situations cannot as easily be referenced in shared figures, and judgment tends to literality and shallowness. Culture loses the ability to distinguish hospitality from exploitation, cunning from fraud, or retribution from sadism. Homer does not ask us to adopt a particular ideology or ethnicity; he holds open a space of human possibilities under the greatest civilizational duress.
Civilizations decline and sometimes collapse. The Bronze Age Mycenaeans did so dramatically, as did many of their neighbors in the 12th century B.C., and others before and since. To sustain itself or recover from decline, a civilization must repeatedly recover authority from chaos, obligation from appetite, and true names that have been hidden. The Odyssey relentlessly points forward, showing that every future worth building relies on human excellences that cannot be devised from scratch. Odysseus turned away from the life of the gods to fight his way back to Ithaca, a poor and rugged kingdom, to build it anew. It is best to live in a civilization that is vibrant and expansive. When we do not, the second best is to battle all the way home.