Odyssey 10.190–93
The hero feels he has no craft left in him to devise a stratagem for a successful homecoming, and his despair is expressed as a feeling of disorientation. He is no longer able to distinguish between orient and occident. In effect, the hero is experiencing a loss of orientation in his noos or ‘thinking', and this loss is currently blocking his nostos ‘homecoming'.
The hero's despair makes his comrades despair as well: as soon as they hear the news of their leader's disorientation, they break down and cry (10.198–202) as they recall Antiphates the Laestrygonian and Polyphemus the Cyclops (199–200). The recalling of these two monstrous figures evokes not only some of the worst moments experienced by Odysseus and his comrades since they left Troy, but also some of the worst moments experienced by all the Achaeans when they were still at Troy. Strangely, when the comrades of Odysseus recall Polyphemus, the monster is described by way of the epithet megalētōr ‘great-hearted' (10.200), and this same description applies also to Antiphates in an alternative version of a verse attested elsewhere in the Odyssey (10.106). Beyond these two attestations, this epithet occurs nowhere else in the Odyssey, whereas it occurs regularly as a conventional description of generic warriors in the Iliad (BA 20§4n8). Why, then, are these two Odyssean monsters described by way of an Iliadic epithet? It is relevant that Antiphates, like Polyphemus, is an eater of raw human flesh in the Odyssey (10.116). In the Iliad, the urge to eat raw human flesh is experienced by heroes in their darkest moments of bestial fury, as when Achilles says he is sorely tempted to cut up and eat raw his deadliest enemy, Hector (22.346–7). So the heroic disorientation of Odysseus in the Odyssey evokes nightmarish memories of heroic dehumanization in the Iliad (BA 20§4).
Despite such moments of disorientation for Odysseus, his noos ‘thinking' ultimately reorients him, steering him away from his Iliadic past and toward his ultimate Odyssean future. That is, the hero's noos makes it possible for him to achieve a nostos, which is not only his ‘homecoming' but also the ‘song about a homecoming' that is the Odyssey. For this song to succeed, Odysseus must keep adapting his identity by making his noos fit the noos of the many different characters he encounters in the course of his nostos in progress. In order to adapt, he must master many different forms of discourse, many different kinds of ainos. That is why he is addressed as poluainos ‘having many different kinds of ainos ' by the Sirens when he sails past their island (12.184; BA 12§19n1; PH 8§30).
Even the transparent meaning of Polyphemus (Poluphēmos ), the name of the Cyclops blinded by Odysseus, foretells the hero's mastery of the ainos. As an adjective, poluphēmos means ‘having many different kinds of prophetic utterance', derived from the noun phēmē ‘prophetic utterance' (as in 20.100, 105; HR [= Nagy 2003] 55–9); this adjective is applied as an epithet to the singer Phēmios (22.376), portrayed in the Odyssey as a master of the phēmē ‘prophetic utterance' (BA 1§4n1). In the case of Polyphemus, the very meaning of his name, which conveys the opposite of the meaning conveyed by the false name of Odysseus, Outis ‘no one', foretells the verbal mastery of the hero who blinded the monster.
After the return of Odysseus from Hades, he finds his way to the island of the Phaeacians, where he starts the process of rebuilding his epic identity from nothing by retelling for them all his experiences since he left Troy. This retelling, which extends from the beginning of Rhapsody 9 to the end of Rhapsody 12, is coterminous with the telling of the Odyssey up to the point where Odysseus leaves the cave of Calypso. Then, after Odysseus finishes his narration, he leaves the island of the Phaeacians and finally comes back home to Ithaca, where his narration is taken over by the master narrator of the Odyssey. The process of rebuilding the hero's epic identity continues in the master narration, but now the direct mode of speaking used by Odysseus in retelling his ongoing nostos to the Phaeacians gives way to an indirect mode, analogous to the indirect mode of speaking that he had used earlier before he made contact with the Phaeacians. Now, after the Phaeacians, Odysseus becomes once again the master of the ainos.
From here on, the tales Odysseus tells are masterpieces of mythmaking as embedded in the master myth of the Odyssey. One such tale is a “Cretan lie” told by the disguised Odysseus to the swineherd Eumaeus about the Trojan War (14.192–359; BA 7§26, 12§14); at a later point in their verbal exchanges, Eumaeus refers to another tale told by Odysseus about the Trojan War (14.462–506) by describing it as a faultless ainos (14.508; BA 12§§14–16). As a master of the ainos, Odysseus keeps on adapting his identity by making his noos fit the noos of the many different characters he encounters. And the multiple ainoi of Odysseus can thus be adapted to the master myth of the Odyssey.
Homer and Greek myth Nagy, Gregory. In The Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology, edited by Woodard, Roger D, 52-83. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
