Astute Hero and Ingenious Poet- Odyssey and Homer

Astute Hero and Ingenious Poet: Odysseus and HomerAuthor(s): W. B. StanfordSource: The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 12, Heroes and the Heroic Special Number(1982), pp. 1-12Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3507394 .

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PART I

HEROES AND THE HEROIC

Astute Hero and Ingenious Poet: Odysseus and Homer

W. B. STANFORD Trinity College, Dublin

Astuteness, shrewdness, artfulness, wiliness, slyness, craftiness, deceitfulness, cunning, and mendacity are not fit qualities for a hero of elevated epic. They all lie on the shadier side of cleverness. On its brighter side stand wisdom, prudence, sagacity, resourcefulness, and discretion, and these are

qualities that a hero may honourably possess. Cleverness itself, and its less

suspect synonym, intelligence, are ethically neutral terms, being applicable to honest or dishonest plans and actions. But they differ slightly in ethical tone. To be intelligent and not stupid was a normal characteristic of classical heroes, though Ajax and Heracles were sometimes presented as being rather deficient in intelligence, and of course even intelligent heroes like Achilles and Agamemnon could be stupefied by their passions. But cleverness

generally carried a slightly pejorative implication. Even when applied to honest and beneficial purposes it was not quite the thing for a pukka hero. The Wily Lad or Maui-of-a-thousand-tricks was all very well for folktales. Elevated literature demanded a loftier, steadier ethos for its protagonists.

Odysseus, the main subject of what follows here, is the only leading figure in the Homeric poems to be given a number of fixed epithets implying sheer cleverness and versatility. But three other figures in the early age of Greek

poetry and mythology share his reputation. One of them, Sisyphus, mentioned briefly in Odyssey xi as one of the sinners being punished in Hades, was villainously clever. Palamedes, not mentioned at all by Homer, was

respectably clever. And Autolycus, Odysseus's grandfather, according to Homer, was knavishly clever (his portrait as an engaging rascal in

Shakespeare's Winter's Tale is true enough to his classical reputation). Before

considering where Odysseus's own character lies on this spectrum it may be well to look at those three.



Hero and Poet: Odysseus and Homer

Sisyphus, mythical king of Corinth, first gained fame for astuteness by outwitting the craftiness of a notoriously clever cattle-thief by marking his own cattle under their feet. Other crafty exploits followed. The reason why after his death he was condemned to the perpetual task of rolling an

ever-relapsing stone up a steep hill (described in Odyssey XI. 593-600) is

variously reported. The favourite version is that he had the audacity to try to trick the god of the underworld, Pluto himself. Sisyphus is described in Iliad iv. 153 as 'craftiest of men for the sake of gain' (the Greek word used, kerdistos, implies profit-seeking as well as wiliness, a rather insulting term among reputable heroes secure in their rich possessions). To have Sisyphus as an ancestor was considered disgraceful in the ancient world, though oddly enough Mark Antony named one of his sons after him

Palamedes, the exemplar of virtuous cleverness, was, it seems, a

prominent figure in the Cypria, the early lost epic which described the initial

stages of the Trojan War. After the abduction of Helen Palamedes was sent with others to recruit Odysseus for war against the Trojans. Odysseus as a suitor of Helen had wisely persuaded all the other suitors to swear with him to avenge any violation of her marriage to the chosen hero. Now he found himself bound by his oath to leave his beloved wife and family and kingdom and to fight in what he could guess would be a long and destructive war.

Odysseus hit on a typically ingenious ruse to escape conscription without breaking his oath. He pretended to be mad, in the hope that the Greek recruiters would decide not to take him with them. (James Joyce took comfort from this tale when he was avoiding the war of 19 4-18, in neutral Switzerland: discussing Ulysses with a friend he remarked: 'Don't forget that he was a war-dodger. He might never have ... gone to Troy, but the Greek recruiting sergeant was too clever for him'.) But Palamedes exposed the deception by a ruse worthy of Odysseus himself. So Odysseus had to join the expedition. He cherished a grudge against Palamedes and eventually he deceived the leaders of the Greeks into believing that Palamedes was trying to betray them to the Trojans for gold. The Greeks then stoned Palamedes to death.

Homer says nothing whatever about this dastardly deed and never mentions Palamedes. Did he know the story and deliberately omit it as a slur on his hero Odysseus? Or was it a later invention typical of the period when Odysseus's character was generally denigrated? Certainly by the end of the fifth century B.C. Palamedes had become a hero venerated as a prototype of martyred innocence. Socrates when defending himself before the Athenian

jury cited him as such and implied that his accusers resembled the villainous Odysseus, and whenever anyone in the classical or medieval periods wanted to disparage Odysseus they mentioned this alleged crime of his against the noble and innocent Palamedes. Palamedes recurs as an emblem of noble wisdom murdered by villainous cunning all through the Troy Tale from Dares Phrygius until the end of the medieval period. Later he dropped out of literature almost entirely. Sisyphus survives mainly as a proverbial figure.

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Homer mentions Autolycus in Iliad x as having committed an act of

housebreaking and theft, and refers to him occasionally in the Odyssey as

Odysseus's maternal grandfather and one who 'surpassed all men in

thievery and perjury' (xix. 395-96). Earlier (xi. 85), however, he is described as 'great-hearted', which seems to imply that his heroic status was

accepted despite his thievishness (unless one believes that Homer's stock

epithets are sometimes grossly misapplied). There is a hint, too, in

Odyssey XIX that Autolycus had magical powers, or at any rate that his sons had, like Manannan Mac Lir the wily divinity of the Irish heroic narratives.

Obviously for Odysseus to have had a thievish grandfather was ignoble by high heroic standards. A non-Homeric tradition made matters even worse. It told that Autolycus was once so much impressed by a crafty ruse of

Sisyphus that he allowed him to have sexual intercourse with Odysseus's mother-to-be before she was legitimately married to King Laertes of Ithaca.

According to this report Odysseus would have had a double dose of deceitfulness in his heredity. But Homer always calls Odysseus the son of Laertes and never hints at any relationship with Sisyphus.

This intrusion of Sisyphus into Odysseus's parentage is typical of the constant villainization of Odysseus in the post-Homeric tradition from the fifth century B.C. to Joyce and Kazantzakis, as has been described elsewhere.* How low his reputation sank in common usage can be seen by the first specific definition of'Ulyssean' in OED ('resembling [him] in craft or deceit') in contrast with, say, Horace's eulogy of him in Epistles as 'choice

pattern of the manly and the wise'. The main reason for such a divergence of

opinion (contrast again Tennyson's noble figure with the despicable rapscallion of The Winter's Tale) is that cleverness and versatility are like blank cheques in terms of morality. You can fill them in with sums of good or evil, honesty or dishonesty, kindness or cruelty, praise or blame.

Odysseus never acts with dishonourable cleverness in the Iliad, though like all intelligent fighters he uses deceptive language to an enemy when

necessary (Iliad x. 382-83). He tells none of the flat lies that he tells in the

Odyssey. On the other hand he clearly had a reputation for craftiness and wile. He is addressed by a Trojan hero as 'much-praised Odysseus, indefatigable (or insatiable) in wiles and toils' (XI. 430), quite courteously it seems. Similarly Helen, who likes him personally, describes him as

'knowledgeable in all kinds of wiles and shrewd plans' (III. 202). Agamem- non in contrast is being arrogant and insolent when he shouts at him 'You

* For previous studies on Odysseus's intelligence and deceitfulness see: R. Z. Burrows, 'Deception as a Comic Device in the Odyssey', Classical Weekly, 59 (I965-66), 33-36; M. Detienne and J.-P. Vernant, Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society, translated byJanet Lloyd. (Hassocks, Sussex, 1978); M. E. Heatherington, 'Chaos, Order and Cunning in the Odyssey', Studies in Philology, 73 (I976), 225-38; D. N. Levin, 'Odysseus' Truthful Untruths', Classical Bulletin, 37 (196), 76; W. B. Stanford, 'Studies in the Characterization of Ulysses III: The Lies of Odysseus', Hermathena, 75 (1950), 35-48, and The Ulysses Theme. A Study in the Adaptability of a Traditional Hero, second edition, revised (Oxford, 1968); C. R. Trahman, 'Odysseus' Lies (Odyssey Books XIII-xix)', Phoenix, 6 (1952), 31-43.

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there, expert in evil wiles, with a mind set on crafty gain' (III. 339), and he goes on to accuse him of cowardice in the face of the foe. Odysseus boldly rebukes him for the charge of cowardice, but ignores the reference to evil wiles. Agamemnon them smiles at him and calls him 'God-descended, much-praised Odysseus' and says that they both in fact think alike: 'And if

anything bad has been said, let the gods nullify it all.' This is the tone of someone who thinks: 'Well, he's an astute fellow, but his heart is in the right place, and I like him'. Achilles in the embassy scene in Book ix seems to have much the same attitude towards him: Odysseus may be astute, but he uses his astuteness for good purposes. Shakespeare portrays Ulysses in a similar light (as I see it, but many take a different view) in Troilus and Cressida and so, too, Giraudoux in La guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu.

It was in the interval of time between the end of the Iliad and the beginning of the Odyssey that Odysseus devised his most famous stratagem, the Wooden Horse, as described in Odyssey IV. 271-89. Through it Troy at last fell, and for it Odysseus won perpetual admiration in the Greek tradition and perpetual execration among the Romans, who regarded Troy as the proto-Rome. Subsequently, according to a story which is poignantly recalled in Odysseus's visit to Hades (Odyssey XI. 543-67), Odysseus was awarded the supreme prize for heroic excellence in competition with the mighty Ajax. Accounts of this famous 'Judgement of the Arms' vary. But its ultimate significance is clear: intelligence is a more valuable quality for a hero than sheer strength, as Ovid makes Odysseus so ably argue in Metamorphoses 13.

In contrast with Odysseus's respectable sagacity in the Iliad his uses of his intelligence in the Odyssey seem at first sight to verge on the disreputable. He tells many adroit lies or half-lies: to King Alcinoos, to the Cyclops, to Athena, to the swineherd Eumaios, and to Penelope. But a distinction is necessary here. There are lies and lies. The medieval schoolmen dis- tinguished three kinds, the officious lie, the jocose lie, and the malicious lie. The officious lie (from officium, in the sense of a kindness rendered to someone who deserves it, or a duty) is a lie told for good purpose. If, for instance, an

obviously insane man carrying a hatchet breaks into your house and asks if

your brother is at home you are clearly entitled to deny it whether your brother is there or not. (To avoid a flat lie in such circumstances the schoolmen recommended using an equivocation: for example, if you and the lunatic happened to be able to converse in Latin, you might say non hic est, pronouncing the e long so as to make it mean 'he is not eating (from edo) here', so that he might think you said non hic est meaning 'He is not here'.) As will appear later, Odysseus brilliantly exploited this kind of equivocation in a famous incident.

The jocose lie was also regarded as venial. It was so called from its use in anecdotes told to amuse people, as in the riddle 'As I was going to Saint Ives I met a man with seven wives' etc. Everyone accepts these as harmless on the principle se non e vero, e ben trovato. All literary and artistic fiction is

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W. B. STANFORD

morally admissible on that ground: if the intention is to entertain and not to harm, no culpability is incurred. If people do no not recognize that fiction is fiction it is their own fault. When scholars try to locate the Island of Circe or the sea coast of Bohemia on a modern map they have only themselves to blame if they fail to find either of them.

The third kind of lie, the malicious one, is universally condemned. But the commandment forbidding it in the decalogue has a firm limitation: 'Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.' In pre-Christian times among Greeks and Jews alike one's neighbour was generally regarded as consisting only of one's own kinsfolk, friends, and allies. To tell a malicious lie, that is, one intended to do harm to an enemy, was considered

permissible, and even moral until the revolutionary Christian doctrine of

loving one's enemies emerged, though Socrates ineffectually anticipated it. In fact even in avowedly Christian countries today the practice of telling lies and using deceptions to harm one's enemies, rivals, and competitors is obviously not extinct. In times of war it becomes rampant.

Let us consider Odysseus's many lies in the Odyssey in the light of these distinctions. When questioned by King Alcinoos in Phaeacia about the conduct of the Princess Nausicaa, Odysseus said that he personally had made the decision to enter the palace alone and not escorted by her (as a

suppliant normally should be treated). This is an officious lie and as such venial and even commendable. Nobody except a very strict Augustinian is likely to find it reprehensible. In fact judged by ancient standards it was

quite a generous act. Odysseus had nothing to lose by saying that Nausicaa herself had told him not to accompany her through the city for fear of causing malicious gossip. But apparently Odysseus had astutely perceived that Alcinoos was punctilious about observing the niceties of courtly etiquette, so he lied to save the likeable young princess from her father's wrath.

This is a simple example of officious lying. The tissue of lies and

deceptions that Odysseus used to escape from the Cyclops's cave is much more elaborate. The full complexities of the problem that faced him there have not always been recognized. First, the Cyclops must be rendered harmless. Secondly, he must not be deprived of his strength because he alone can remove the huge stone that blocks the exit from his cave. Thirdly, since he is sure, if injured, to call for help from his neighbours, some means must be devised for preventing them from coming to his aid and discovering the Greeks inside. And finally, when those three difficulties had been sur- mounted, there was the problem of how to get past the Cyclops if he guarded the exit after the stone had been removed. Four problems in all: Odysseus solved all of them with admirable ingenuity and resourcefulness.

First he sees that Polyphemos must not be killed, even if that were feasible in the case of such a gigantic hulk. The giant must retain his strength so as to be able to remove the crag that seals the door. So Odysseus and his companions blind his single eye, a feature that is essential to the whole plot.

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But now the trickiest problem arises. How can Odysseus prevent the ogre from successfully shouting to his neighbours for help? If they remove the crag and enter the cave, the Greeks are doomed. The solution is the famous 'My name is Noman' ruse, a lie, indeed, but what a complex lie!

To demonstrate the extraordinary ( and, so far as I know, unparalleled) ambivalences of this masterstroke of Odysseus's cleverness reference must be made to the words used in Greek text. The paronomasia exploits two pairs of related words in Greek which differ only by their tonic accent: Outis (invented, probably, by Homer for this scene) meaning 'Noman', and outis

meaning 'no one'; metis the form of outis which must be used in hypothetical and conditional clauses in Greek, and metis (sometimes personified as a divinity Metis) meaning intelligence and planning, as in the epithet (frequently and uniquely applied to Odysseus) among the Homeric heroes, polymetis, 'devising many plans'. Odysseus tells Polyphemos that his name is Outis (Odyssey IX. 366).When the blinded giant shouts for help the Cyclopes assemble at the closed mouth of the cave and ask him, rather petulantly, why he is disturbing their sleep with his yells: 'Can it be that metis [which has the meaning 'someone' in a question expecting a negative answer, as here] is trying to kill you by craftiness or force?' Polyphemos shouts back: 'My friends, Outis (Noman) is trying to kill me by craftiness and not by force'. The

Cylopes hear the name Ou^tis (with a rising-falling tone) as ou'tis (with a rising tone), which was not surprising considering the agony of Polyphemos, the bulk of the stone, and the sleepy time of night. So they replied rather unsympathetically that if ouztis, 'no one', is attacking him then he'd better pray to Zeus or his father Poseidon for relief from his pains (IX. 403-I2).

In English one can reproduce the equivocation effectively enough in terms of stress rather than of pitch-variation by the difference between 'Noman' pronounced as a proper name like Newman, with a single stress on the first syllable and syllablic juncture, and 'no man' with equal stress on both syllables and syllabic separation. But Odysseus as he tells the story of the Phaeacians develops the paronomasia much further. As soon as the other

Cyclops had gone away, he says 'my heart laughed at how my name and blameless intelligence-and-planning (metis) had deceived them' (ix. 413-I5). Then he started 'weaving all kinds of wiliness and metis' in order to solve the

problem of how to get out of the cave (xI. 422). As every schoolboy used to know, this was successfully done by tying his companions under the sheep (not the goats for an obvious reason) which Polyphemos had to let out to pasture. Odysseus himself held on under the belly of the big ram, so eventually they all escaped.

But here Homer could not refrain from giving the outis paronomasia a further twist. When Polyphemos in his lonely anguish addressed the ram as his only loyal companion before it left the cave (unaware, of course, that Odysseus was anxiously holding on underneath) he ended his speech with the phrase 'the evils which no-good Noman (outzdanos ... Outis) brought me',

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and he repeated the word outidanos in his final shout at Odysseus on his ship (xI. 460, 515). Here, with a touch of irony perhaps, Homer has contrived that the word which saved Odysseus earlier in the incident should now be

incorporated into a derogatory term for the astute hero whom he so often called polymetis. Thus can puns be turned against the punster.

There is further evidence that Odysseus/Homer (for who can distinguish them when Homer makes Odysseus tell the tale?) revelled in this elaborate paronomasia. Long after the escape from Polyphemos, Odysseus, when lying disguised as a beggar in his own palace, had to listen to his disloyal and adulterous maidservants laughing gaily as they went to consort with the evil suitors of Penelope (xx. 6-2 I ). He could barely restrain himself from getting up and killing them, for disloyalty of that kind was a paramount crime in the heroic world. But though his heart 'yelped inside him like a bitch with her cubs when a stranger approaches', he held back, reminding himself how he endured in the Cyclops's cave until his metis saved him.

Another aspect of this prodigious pun perhaps deserves a moment's attention. By causing Odysseus, the man of much metis, to effect his escape by means of variants on the word metis Homer has, as it were, made the word become flesh for a moment. What was a descriptive term becomes an

operative term, the key that safely unlocks the door of the monster's cave. It is as if the word for Aladdin's 'open sesame' were also a description of Aladdin's own chief characteristic.

Brilliantly conceived and successful as Odysseus's deceptions of the Cyclops were, yet he deserves to be censured for his own foolhardiness at the beginning of the episode. When he and his companions first entered the cave and had helped themselves to food from it, the others begged him to leave at once and return to their ship. But Odysseus was not persuaded, though, as he recognized afterwards, it would have been much more sensible and

profitable (kerdion, IX. 228) to have done so. He gave two reasons for this foolish decision: 'I wished to see the owner himself and to find out whether he would give me guest gifts'. Soon the Cyclops arrived and devoured six of the companions before Odysseus could operate his plan to save them. Such was the disastrous result of Odysseus's self-confessed inquisitiveness and acquisitiveness.

The second of these motives would seem rather unbecoming in a modern hero. But among the Homeric heroes it was the rule rather than the exception: witness the fatal quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon about their possessions at the beginning of the Iliad. On the other hand inquisitiveness is not a salient quality among the Iliadic princes, rich and self-centred as they mostly were. But it often accompanies high intelligence, and that presumably was what Homer intended to show in the personality of Odysseus.

Curiosity comes out again in Homer's account of the encounter with the Sirens. The Sirens do not try to tempt Odysseus with sensual delights, apart

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from the music of their song. Instead they offer him information about 'everything that happens on the richly fertile earth', in other words a kind of global news-service. Odysseus found this irresistible. Fortunately, however, he had taken the precautions suggested to him by Circe (the wax in his companions' ears, himself bound to the mast) so that he heard the famous song but escaped death on the ghastly heap of men rotting on their bones which lay beside the sweet singers. Homer makes it clear that if Odysseus had been free to follow his inclinations he would have gone to his doom out of curiosity. Only his prudence in following Circe's advice saved him (Dante in

Inferno 26 and Kazantzakis in his Odyssey preferred, unhomerically, to portray him as eventually following his curiositas to his death at the limits of the known world. Tennyson in his Ulysses emphasized his curiosity but left his ultimate fate unknown).

Inquisitiveness and acquisitiveness, then, may explain Odysseus's uncharacteristic imprudence in staying on to see the Cyclops, though they hardly excuse it. But Odysseus's rashness did not stop there. It flared up again towards the end of the incident when the Greeks were sailing away from the island of the Cyclops. Then Odysseus saw fit to shout his scorn and defiance not just once, but twice, at the blinded monster. His second shout was after the great crag hurled by Polyphemos had almost smashed their

ship, and after his companions had begged him not to be so rash: 'You obstinate fellow, why do you want to provoke this savage?' (Ix. 494).

Why indeed, many commentators have asked. Why should the prudent hero have been so imprudent, when no element of curiosity or cupidity was involved? Perhaps the best explanation is that in a moment of triumph after a

frightful ordeal even the most intelligent person may become rashly boastful. Odysseus is human, not a robot. It would give him enormous pleasure to tell the Cyclops, 'If anyone asks you about the hideous blinding of your eye tell him Odysseus, the city-destroyer, the son of Laertes, who dwells in Ithaca blinded you', though he cannot have been quite so pleased when Polyphe- mos in return derided him contemptuously as a 'no-good-man'. How

typically humane it was of Homer.to let the ogre have the last word so

effectively! Other commentators, dissatisfied with psychological interpretations,

prefer to explain Odysseus's foolhardiness here and at the beginning of the encounter in terms of analytical criticism. They suggest that Homer took over a folk tale of how a Wily Lad outwitted a one-eyed giant. Variations of such a story have been collected from a vast number of Indo-European sources ranging from Iceland to India. The details vary, but the central features of the blinding and the escape remain remarkably consistent.

If Homer was using a folk tale, then Odysseus's ethical faults in coping with Polyphemos could be remnants of a brash but cunning folk hero like Jack the Giant-killer. Such characteristics are not expected to preserve a consistent level of astuteness. Indeed the story is often most acceptable when

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the hero first gets himself into a fix by acting quite foolishly and then wins success by a stroke of supreme cunning. This may be the right explanation. But it implies incompetence on Homer's part in his handling of pre-existing material. Analytical scholars are generally pleased to allege faults of that kind. It enables them to dissect the Homeric poems more plausibly. But why assume that we know Homer's job better than he himself did?

There is, however, another reason for seeing traces of a folk hero in

Odysseus: the curious fact that in the early Greek tradition apart from the Homeric poems he had the second name, Oulixes (with variant spellings), which is also attested in the Latin Ulixes, the English Ulysses, and the Irish Uilix (the Etruscans called him Utuse, which some connect with Outis). Perhaps this variation indicates that originally there were two Greek

exemplars of intelligence, a Mycenaean warrior-hero named Odysseus, described or invented by an early composer (one must not say 'writer' now) of aristocratic epic, and a Wily Lad named Oulixes. Then a poet of genius, perhaps named Homer, combined the two into one complex hero, who at times did not conform to normal heroic standards.

This is all conjectural. To return to further wiles and ruses by the

Odyssean Odysseus: in the rest of the poem he freely and readily tells lies to

protect himself and his associates. When a simple lie will serve he tells one, as when he informed the Cyclops that his ship had been wrecked though in fact it was quite safe. If elaborate fictions are needed to protect his disguise he concocts brilliant mixture of fact and fancy, as in his long tales told to Eumaios and Penelope. Even when he has been fully re-established in his

kingdom, he conceals his identity from his aged father for a while. Finding him pathetically alone at work in his rural garden digging with bowed head round a stubborn stump, Odysseus first pretends to be a stranger who had once entertained Odysseus: 'and no mortal was dearer to me among all the

guests who came to my home from far away' (xxiv. 267). At this Lairtes, beginning to weep, sadly describes the sorrows of Ithaca and his fears for his son's fate and asks the stranger who he is. In reply Odysseus tells him that he is Eperitos the son Apheidas, the son of Polypemon from Alubas (which could imply 'Strife-man, son of Spare-nothing, son of Much-woe, from

Wandertown'), and that it was over four years since Odysseus had met him. Then, we are told, 'a dark cloud of grief overcomes Laertes. As a sign of utter desolation he takes dust from the ground with both hands and he heaps it over his grey head, moaning continuously (215-16). At last Odysseus is moved with compassion. He embraces his father, kisses him, and tells him who he is. Laertes demands some proof of his identity. Odysseus gives two, an ancient scar and a memory from his childhood. Laertes, with no

expression ofjoy, puts his arms round his long-lost son, almost fainting. Many readers have found this callous deceit by Odysseus hard to accept.

It has been explained, or explained away, on formalistic, analytical, psychological, and physiological grounds. Even if, as some think, Odysseus

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0o Hero and Poet: Odysseus and Homer

wanted to avoid the effect on a frail old man of a sudden shock, he hardly needed to concoct another of his elaborate aliases and alibis. Yet whatever way one tries to explain Odysseus's conduct here, the scene is wonderfully effective, and Homer is at his best describing it. Once again we have his poetic dexterity and Odysseus's pragmatic dexterity merging into each other.

The fact is that Homer, at any rate as I read him, revelled in the ingenuity of his ingenious hero. While he feels sympathy and pity for the Iliadic heroes, Achilles, Hector, Priam, and others, for Odysseus his feeling is more like empathy than sympathy. Not, of course, that Odysseus is merely Homer himself incarnated in a different age and style, like the autobiographical heroes of modern times. Instead one can make a much subtler equation: the supreme intelligence of Odysseus in the Odyssey is equal to the supreme intelligence of Homer in composing the Odyssey. This equation operates with special effect when Homer makes Odysseus tell his own fabulous adventures in Books Ix-xII. Is there a literary stratagem here? Is Homer hinting, 'Well if some of my hearers are disinclined to believe these tales of ogres and witches and enchantresses and wind-kings, just remember that it isn't I, Homer, who is telling them, but the Odysseus of the many deceptions'?

Aristotle in his Poetics gives support to this view, though without formulating it so explicitly. He observes that the poetic illusion often depends for its effect on a special kind of fallacy called paralogismos, which is used by orators as well as by poets. This paralogismds relies on the common

tendency to confuse cause with consequence (logicians call it the fallacy of

affirming the consequence, as when one argues that since the ground is wet after it has rained therefore when the ground is wet it must have rained, though in fact there may have been a flood or a spill). Aristotle illustrates the effect of this fallacy from Odysseus's false tale to Penelope in Odyssey XIX. 215-50. When Penelope asks for proof that the stranger (Odysseus in disguise) has told the truth about seeing Odysseus in Crete, he describes an unusual brooch which he wore (ingeniously, 'he' here can mean both the true and the fictitious Odysseus). Penelope accepts his accurate description as proof of his lie, reasoning that because the stranger has described the brooch accurately he must be telling the truth. In terms of paralogismds she has inverted the true proposition, 'A truthful man must describe things accurately', into 'A man who describes things accurately must be truthful'.

This, Aristotle asserts, is exactly how Homer creates verisimilitude. He lards his fictions with verifiable facts so that his audience, deceived by paralogismos, believe him fully. In that way, as Aristotle says in a phrase to

delight all who wish to defend the autonomy of poetic fiction against factualists and historicists, Homer taught poets 'to tell lies in the proper way' (Poetics 24. I46oa 8-I9).

Homer himself made it as plain as he could within his principle of almost

complete self-effacement that he greatly admired the Odyssean quality of



W. B. STANFORD

metis. In Iliad XXIII. 3I3-25 Nestor, the emblem of mature wisdom and

sagacity in the Homeric poems, when advising his son how to win a chariot race eulogizes metis, employing the same word four times in six lines and three times in emphatic position at the beginning of a line. He tells his son: 'Put metis of all kinds in your heart' (in other words 'be poljmetis' like Odysseus) 'for by metis a wood-cutter does much better than by physical force; by metis again a pilot keeps his swift ship straight on the winedark sea when the winds are buffeting it; by metis charioteer outstrips charioteer.'

Further, in the Odyssey Homer gives Odyssean metis its highest testimonial by portraying Odysseus as the special favourite of Athene (who in this poem is a kind and helpful goddess unlike the Valkyrie of the Iliad). After Odysseus has safely reached Ithaca in Book xIII Athene plays a genial trick on him. First she covers the land with a mist so that he fails to recognize it. Then, disguised as a young shepherd, she approaches him. He asks her for

protection and for information about where he is. She tells him, 'You're a fool, stranger, or else you have come from far away if you ask what country this is, because it's certainly not nameless'. Then to tantalize him she gives a

prolonged description of the island before naming it. After a moment ofjoy Odysseus, 'always exercising his much-wily-for-gain (polykerdea) mind', tells an elaborate lie about being a refugee from Crete. When he has finished his highly convincing, pathetic, and untrue story Athene smiles and strokes his hand affectionately. Changing into her own divine form, she tells him: A man would have to be wily-for-gain and tricky in every sort of deceit - and even a God, too - to out-do you. What stubbornness, what a variety of metis, what an insatiable appetite for wiles, you have, that even in your own country you won't stop your inborn subterfuges and tricky stories! But come on, don't let's talk like that any longer. We're both experts in wiliness-for-gain, you being best by far of all mortals in counsel and speech and I famous among all the gods for metis and wiliness-for-gain. Yet you didn't recognise me as Pallas Athene, daughter of Zeus, though I have been your helpmeet and protector in all your toils ... Well, anyway, I've come here now so as to weave metis with you.

Polymetis Odysseus is annoyed at being outwitted. He replies: 'It would be hard even for a very knowledgeable man to recognize you when he meets you since you keep changing yourself to look like all sorts of people'. Perhaps, he thinks, she is tricking him further in saying he's in Ithaca: 'I think you're mocking me by saying that, just to cheat my wits'. Athene replies, 'To be sure you always have this kind of mind in you. All the same I can't abandon you in your trouble, because you are so considerate [epetes, a disputed term], so shrewd-hearted and so self-possessed'. She goes on to advise him and to promise him her constant help in the future. Then she perpetrates a further deception by disguising him as an old beggar, so that for the next few days he must live a life of total deceit among his own people.

This is a charming scene. It has been justly compared with some of the affectionately-bantering dialogues that Shakespeare gives to his heroes and heroines in his livelier comedies, where, indeed, we find an equally ingenious

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12 Hero and Poet: Odysseus and Homer

sort of double deception when female characters who are male actors play the part of women disguised as men. It could be (but it is only a guess) that Athene's attitude to Odysseus here, almost 'Shake hands, brother: You're a

rogue and I'm another', embodies Homer's own personal attitude to his versatile, plausible, ingenious, fiction-spinning hero. For what else was Homer himself in his poems but a superb illusionist?



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Astute Hero and Ingenious Poet- Odyssey and Homer