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MEDON MEETS A CYCLOPS? ODYSSEY 22.310–80
Tim Brelinski
The Classical Quarterly / Volume 65 / Issue 01 / May 2015, pp 1 – 13 DOI: 10.1017/S0009838814000573, Published online: 02 April 2015
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009838814000573
How to cite this article: Tim Brelinski (2015). MEDON MEETS A CYCLOPS? ODYSSEY 22.310–80. The Classical Quarterly, 65, pp 1-13 doi:10.1017/S0009838814000573
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MEDON MEETS A CYCLOPS? ODYSSEY 22.310–80*
ὣς φάτο, τοῦ δ’ ἤκουσε Μέδων πεπνυμένα εἰδώς· πεπτηὼς γὰρ ἔκειτο ὑπὸ θρόνον, ἀμφὶ δὲ δέρμα ἕστο βοὸς νεόδαρτον, ἀλύσκων κῆρα μέλαιναν.
So [Telemachus] spoke, and wise Medon heard him; for he had crouched down and was lying under a chair, and had wrapped around himself the newly flayed skin of an ox, avoiding grim death. (Od. 22.361–3)
Immediately following the death of the suitors, near the end of Odyssey 22, we witness three scenes of supplication in quick succession. The first and unsuccessful suppliant is Leodes, the only suitor to survive, albeit briefly, the Mnesterophonia. The second and third suppliants, respectively, are the bard Phemius and the herald Medon. Leodes pleads directly with Odysseus for his life, citing his previous conduct, that he had said or done no wrong to the women of the household. He also claims that he had actu- ally attempted to keep the suitors’ bad behaviour in check, an assertion corroborated by the narrator’s own words (21.146–67). Odysseus rejects Leodes’ plea and decapitates the prophet, putting a sudden end to his supplication (22.310–29).1 After this failed sup- plication, Phemius nervously considers either seeking refuge at the altar of Zeus Herkeios, located in Odysseus’ courtyard, or directly supplicating Odysseus. He chooses the latter and also appeals to Telemachus as witness that he sang for the suitors only under compulsion (330–53). Telemachus intervenes and Medon, who overhears Telemachus’ plea for mercy on behalf of Phemius and Medon, suddenly jumps up, throws off the ox hide under which he has escaped notice, grasps Telemachus by the knees, and asks the young man to vouch for and save him from Odysseus too (354–77).
These three scenes of supplication, moving as they do from hostility, to seriousness, to humour, certainly take us, in an almost step-by-step fashion, from violence to levity. Opinion among commentators, in fact, is nearly universal that this discovery of Medon
* I wish to thank Daniel Holmes for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this article. Special thanks are owed to Jenny Strauss Clay both for her many helpful comments and criticisms on this paper and for her unflagging support generally. Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to the editor Andrew Morrison and the anonymous referee of Classical Quarterly for their challenging and thought-provoking comments and suggestions.
1 For a thorough discussion of supplication and a bibliography of previous scholarship, see F.S. Naiden, Ancient Supplication (Oxford, 2006); for these three supplications: pp. 3–4 and 11. See also M. Dreher, ‘Die Hikesie-Szene der Odyssee und der Ursprung des Asylgedankens’, in A. Luther (ed.), Geschichte und Fiktion in der homerischen Odyssee (Munich, 2006), 61–75, at 55–6; K. Crotty, The Poetics of Supplication: Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey (Ithaca, NY and London, 1994), 121–9 and 151–6; V. Pedrick, ‘Supplication in the Iliad and the Odyssey’, TAPhA 112 (1982), 125–40, at 133–4; J. Gould, ‘Hiketeia’, JHS 93 (1973), 74–103, at 80–1.
Classical Quarterly 65.1 1–13 © The Classical Association (2015) 1 doi:10.1017/S0009838814000573
under an ox hide is intended to evoke humour and provide relief from the high tension and drama of the Mnesterophonia.2 Indeed, Odysseus himself genuinely smiles for the first time in the poem when Medon hastily throws off the newly flayed skin and grasps Telemachus by the knees in supplication (22.371).3 This transitional scene, however, accomplishes more than simply lending humour and providing respite to the audience at a crucial point in the narrative. This deeper significance derives from an earlier inci- dent, the escape of Odysseus and his men from the Cyclops. Although some have noted that the herald’s method of concealment hearkens back to the seals’ skins under which Menelaus and his men hide in order to ambush Proteus (4.436–40),4 the larger context sug- geststhat Medon’s escape is an allusion toOdysseus’ ownandmore recentlynarrated escape from the cave of the Cyclops.5 This allusion is, in fact, part of a much larger web of allusions to the Cyclopeia on Ithaca, which ultimately point to a central issue of the Odyssey: the prob- lem of the reintegration of Odysseus into the post-heroic world of Ithaca.
There are several factors that favour such a reading of Medon’s method of escape. First are the numerous references to the Cyclopeia in the Ithacan sequence. The earliest is in Book 13. When Odysseus awakes on the shore of Ithaca but is unaware that he is finally home, he exclaims (13.200–2):
ὤ μοι ἐγώ, τέων αὖτε βροτῶν ἐς γαῖαν ἱκάνω; ἤ ῥ’ οἵ γ’ ὑβρισταί τε καὶ ἄγριοι οὐδὲ δίκαιοι, ἦε φιλόξεινοι καί σφιν νόος ἐστὶ θεουδής;
‘Oh no! Whose land have I come to now? Are they violent and savage and unjust, or are they friendly to strangers and god-fearing men?’
2 W.B. Stanford, Homer: Odyssey Books XIII–XXIV (London, 19652), 386, at line 362; M. Fernández-Galiano, J. Russo and A. Heubeck, A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, vol. 3: Books XVII–XXIV (Oxford, 1992), 282–3, at lines 362–3; I.J.F. de Jong, A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey (Cambridge, 2001), 540, at line 371.
3 A point noted by both Stanford (n. 2), 386, at line 371 and Fernández-Galiano (n. 2), 284, at line 371. Odysseus does smile at 20.301, but this smile, as Stanford remarks, is more of a ‘sardonic humourless grimace’ occasioned by Ctesippus’ verbal and (attempted) physical abuse of Odysseus; see also D. Lateiner, The Sardonic Smile: Nonverbal Behavior in Homeric Epic (Ann Arbor, 1995), 193–5, for more on this sardonic smile. For the meaning of Odysseus’ smiles and how these smiles occur at important points in the action, mirroring the different stages of the hero’s resumption of power on Ithaca, see D.B. Levine, ‘Odysseus’ Smiles: Odyssey 20.301, 22.371, 23.111’, TAPhA 114 (1984), 1–9 (5–7 for an analysis of this particular grin).
4 Stanford (n. 2), 386, at line 362; Fernández-Galiano (n. 2), 283, at lines 362–3. The adjective νεόδαρτος, which is used in both scenes to describe the animal skins that conceal Menelaus and his men (4.437) and Medon (22.363), appears to be responsible for the focus on parallels with Menelaus. This is not to suggest that Menelaus’ hiding under a seal’s skin cannot be recalled here as well. Hiding under animals or animal skins and even inside animals (i.e. the Wooden Horse) is a common theme in a poem almost obsessed with the opposition of concealing and revealing (cf. E. Block, ‘Clothing makes the man: a pattern in the Odyssey’, TAPhA 115 [1985], 1–11, on cloth- ing, disguise and lying). Note too Odysseus’ earlier disguise as beggar to infiltrate Troy (4.242–9), and Calypso, whose very name suggests ‘concealing’ and ‘covering’, and Odysseus’ clever adoption of the name that is ‘no-name’. The numerous references to the Cyclopeia in these scenes, I argue (see below for details), prepare us to view Medon’s method of escape as belonging to this same series of allusions.
5 B.B. Powell, Composition by Theme in the ‘Odyssey’. Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie 81 (Meisenham am Glam, 1977), 46 correctly sees a parallel here with Odysseus’ escape from Polyphemus, but he simply mentions this in passing and does not develop the point further: ‘a vari- ation of the ruse by which Odysseus saved himself and his men from Polyphemus’.
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Odysseus utters this same phrase just two other times in the poem, the first on his awa- kening on Scheria (6.119–21), and the second before he sets out to reconnoitre the land of the Cyclopes (9.175–7). Now, finally on the shores of Ithaca, he is asking, in effect, whether this land will be inhabited by people like the Phaeacians or the Cyclopes. And the answer, interestingly, is both. Just as Odysseus will recombine elements of the Cyclopeia in his own palace so, too, will the Ithacans represent examples of both good xenia (Eumaeus and Penelope) and bad (the suitors and their partisans: especially Melanthius and Melantho).
Book 20 opens with an even more explicit reference to the Cyclopeia. As Odysseus lies down to sleep on the night before the archery contest, he hears his maids running about the place for a night-time tryst with the suitors. This causes him to exclaim aloud to himself (20.18–21):
τέτλαθι δή, κραδίη· καὶ κύντερον ἄλλο ποτ᾽ ἔτλης, ἤματι τῷ, ὅτε μοι μένος ἄσχετος ἤσθιε Κύκλωψ ἰφθίμους ἑτάρους· σὺ δ᾽ ἐτόλμας, ὄφρα σε μῆτις ἐξάγαγ᾽ ἐξ ἄντροιο ὀιόμενον θανέεσθαι.
‘Come on now, heart, endure! You endured another and more shameful thing on that day when the Cyclops, irresistible, devoured my good men; but you bore it until your cunning led you, certain you were dead, out of the cave.’
Odysseus’ reference to these past events is an important reminder to himself that, just as he had then to endure Polyphemus’ cannibalism,6 so now, too, he must endure the maids’ infidelity and the suitors’ devouring of his goods, if he is not to be the victim again, this time in his own ‘cave’. For his own palace has become a very dangerous place. The parallels with his former situation are obvious: if Odysseus had followed his first impulse and killed Polyphemus, he and his companions would have perished inside the cave; if he punishes the maids now, he will lose the element of surprise and the 108 suitors will make quick work of him.7
This dilemma leads Odysseus’ thoughts to another and related problem: what to do after the suitors are dead. Still unable to fall asleep, he is visited by Athena. He asks the goddess a most pertinent question, ‘What happens if I do kill the suitors?’ (20.41–3):
πρὸς δ᾽ ἔτι καὶ τόδε μεῖζον ἐνὶ φρεσὶ μερμηρίζω· εἴ περ γὰρ κτείναιμι Διός τε σέθεν τε ἕκητι, πῇ κεν ὑπεκπροφύγοιμι; τά σε φράζεσθαι ἄνωγα.
‘There’s something else too, and more important, on my mind: “If you and Zeus will it and I kill the suitors, how could I possibly escape and to where? Come on and think this over.”’
6 When Odysseus, enraged at Polyphemus’ first meal of man-flesh, contemplates stabbing the mon- ster, he suddenly realizes that to do so would mean their certain doom since they would not be able to remove the stone from the cave’s entrance (9.299–305). For a thorough discussion of the similarities between these two situations, see J. Strauss Clay, The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey (Lanham, MD, 19972), 121–5.
7 Cf. also Odysseus’ deliberation about how to respond to Melanthius’ abuse at the spring of the Nymphs (17.204–38). There, too, he chose restraint to keep his true identity hidden.
MEDON MEETS A CYCLOPS 3
Just as he must think twice before he acts in the matter of his maids, so here too must Odysseus keep his wits about him. If he does not, he will be caught in his own house and be surrounded again, this time not by a band of Cyclopes, but by his own towns- people. In fact, this is just what Odysseus successfully avoids by advising Telemachus, immediately after the Mnesterophonia, to bring in Phemius and the maids, who are to sing and dance so that anyone passing by would imagine that the house is celebrating a wedding (23.137–40):
μὴ πρόσθε κλέος εὐρὺ φόνου κατὰ ἄστυ γένηται ἀνδρῶν μνηστήρων, πρίν γ᾽ ἡμέας ἐλθέμεν ἔξω ἀγρὸν ἐς ἡμέτερον πολυδένδρεον. ἔνθα δ᾽ ἔπειτα φρασσόμεθ᾽ ὅττί κε κέρδος Ὀλύμπιος ἐγγυαλίξῃ.
‘Lest the rumour of the suitors’ slaughter spread through town before we get out to our many- treed farm. And there, then, we’ll see what plan Olympian Zeus will hand us.’
Even earlier, when faced with a similar situation, Odysseus, to prevent the suitors from alerting the townspeople, stationed Eumaeus at the one spot (ὀρσοθύρη) where his opponents could conceivably carry the news of their ambush to the outside (22.126– 30). This idea was first aired by Eurymachus after Odysseus had refused his offer of a settlement (22.75–8). A little later, Agelaus attempted to implement the same plan and urged his companions to get to that very spot to raise the alarm (22.132–4). Whether captive or captor, Odysseus’ forethought nearly always renders his enemies resourceless.
These, then, are some concrete examples of the poet returning to the theme of the Cyclopeia immediately upon the arrival of Odysseus on Ithaca and even on the very night before and day of the Mnesterophonia. In a sense, Odysseus’ home has become the Cyclops’ cave; to escape these dangers Odysseus must employ both self-control and cunning: his signature qualities as embodied in the epithets πολύμητις and πολύτλας.
In addition to these references to the events and dilemmas Odysseus encountered and overcame in the Cyclops’ cave, there are also many repeated elements from the Cyclopeia which actually cast Odysseus in the unexpected role of Polyphemus,8 a role that has received too little scholarly attention.9 A brief review of the more obvious
8 This is not to suggest that Odysseus’ situation and actions on Ithaca simply repeat Polyphemus’ in the cave. Odysseus, as I will demonstrate below, reprises significant elements of the ogre’s role there, but he also repeats some of his actions as Polyphemus’ captive (e.g. he keeps the suitors from announ- cing their plight to the townspeople, which is parallel to Odysseus’ assumption of a false name to ren- der Polyphemus’ cries for help useless). Odysseus, thus, combines in this action his former role as captive (keeping his enemy from seeking help) and Polyphemus’ former role of captor (keeping his opponents shut in).
9 For an excellent but somewhat brief discussion of Odysseus as Cyclops, see M. Alden, ‘An intel- ligent Cyclops?’, in Σπονδὲς στὸν Ὅμηρο. Μνήμη Ἰ.Θ. Κακριδῆ (Ithaki, 1993), 75–95, who lists many of the following parallels between Polyphemus and Odysseus. Alden herself does not offer a convincing explanation for this pairing of hero and ogre other than to appeal (p. 76) to S. Fenik’s discussion of doublets (Studies in the Odyssey. Hermes Einzelschriften 30 [Wiesbaden, 1974], p. 142), suggesting only that the Cyclopeia is a preparatory doublet for Odysseus’ return to Ithaca as an intelligent ogre. While I agree with her characterization of Odysseus as an intelligent Cyclops, I offer a different solution to this unexpected pairing in the pages that follow. For additional discussion of the interconnectedness of Odysseus and Polyphemus, see particularly W.T. Magrath, ‘Progression of the lion simile in the “Odyssey”’, CJ 77.3 (1982), 205–12; N. Austin, ‘Odysseus
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details will suffice to illustrate this fact. Odysseus comes home to find his house occu- pied by strangers, who are slaughtering his animals, drinking his wine and eating his food, a situation not unlike the one Polyphemus experiences when he returns home only to find Odysseus and his men eating his cheeses, drinking his milk, and planning to steal his sheep (9.215–27). Just as Polyphemus makes certain his captives cannot escape by placing a huge door on his cave’s exit (9.240–3), so too Odysseus locks the suitors in his house and blocks their escape (21.240–1). Odysseus’ size and strength are also considerably greater than the suitors’. Our hero claims that Polyphemus lifted a massive rock and put it into place over the cave’s entrance as easily as a man puts a lid on a quiver (9.313–14). This brief archery simile looks forward to the slaughter of the suitors by a master bowman, who is also a master storyteller, which two roles are com- bined in the narrator’s description of Odysseus as he strings his bow on Ithaca. There the narrator notes that this bow, which no suitor is able even to bend (21.249–55; 24.170–1), is strung by Odysseus as easily as a bard fits a string to his lyre (21.404–11). And Odysseus does all this while seated (21.420)! Just as Polyphemus’ size shocks Odysseus (9.187–92), so too do the suitors stare in amazement at the beggar’s mighty arms and legs as he prepares to fight Irus (18.66–71). And Antinous recalls seeing Odysseus years ago and comments on his exceptional strength, noting that there is no man among them now like Odysseus was then (21.85–95). Descriptions of blood and brains also abound in both the Cyclops’ cave and in Odysseus’ palace. Polyphemus dashes the heads of Odysseus’ companions against the rock like puppies, and their brains and blood wet the ground (9.289–90); he also tells his favourite ram that he would splatter his cave with Nobody’s brains, if he could just get hold of that good-for-nothing Nobody (9.458–60). Athena likewise assures Odysseus that the suitors’ blood and brains will splat- ter the threshold (13.394–6). And in the case of Antinous, Odysseus’ first kill, the blood that flows from his nostrils is described with an adjective, ἀνδρόμεος ‘of man, human’ (22.19), that appears only four times in the Odyssey; the other three occurrences are all applied to Polyphemus’ meals of man-flesh (9.297, 347, 374).10 Odysseus’ first victim, then, is connected semantically with the Cyclops’ victims, which suggests that the type of slaughter that is to follow Antinous’ death will be as bloody and inexorable as Polyphemus’. Then there is Theoclymenus’ eerie vision (20.351–7) of the suitors’ coming death, which includes a description of the beautiful walls and pillars spattered with their blood. And Odysseus and his allies, after the suitors have been routed by Athena and
and the Cyclops: who is who?’, in C.A. Rubino and C.W. Shelmerdine (edd.), Approaches to Homer (Austin, 1983), 3–37; and E.J. Bakker, ‘Polyphemus’, Colby Quarterly 38.2 (2002), 135–50. The sui- tors, too, act in many ways like Polyphemus, particularly in their eating and drinking and treatment of strangers. Ctesippus, a suitor described as knowing ἀθεμίστια (20.287), an adjective applied to Polyphemus’ thoughts as well (9.189), even goes so far as to throw an ox’s hoof at Odysseus as a ξείνιον (20.287–303), an obvious reference to Polyphemus’ promise to eat Nobody last as a ξείνιον (9.355–70). For detailed discussion of this and other features shared between Polyphemus and the suitors, see especially S. Reece, The Stranger’s Welcome: Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality Scene (Ann Arbor, 1993), 165–87. Cf. also Alden (this note), 75–6, 89–94; Powell (n. 5), 43–6; and S. Saïd, ‘Les crimes des prétendants, la maison d’Ulysse et les festins de l’Odyssée’, in Études de littérature ancienne (Paris, 1979), 9–49. There is, of course, much more to be said about the poet’s use of narrative repetition in general, and Odysseus’ reprisal of the Cyclopeia on Ithaca in particular. Just such a study forms a chapter in my dissertation ‘Narrative patterns in the Odyssey: repetition and the creation of meaning’ (Diss., University of Virginia, 2008), 59–104, which I am currently revising for publication.
10 Both Saïd (n. 9), 40–1 and Reece (n. 9), 174–5 discuss this connection but to make a different point, that the poet is linking the punishment visited upon the suitors with that applied to Polyphemus.
MEDON MEETS A CYCLOPS 5
simply run for any cover they can find, pace back and forth throughout the halls and strike the suitors on the head and the ground is said to flow with blood (22.308–9; 24.183–5). Finally, in a manner reminiscent of Polyphemus’ sitting in the doorway of his cave and waiting for Odysseus and his companions to attempt to escape, Odysseus, perhaps recal- ling the earlier escape of Phemius and Medon, returns to the slaughtered suitors lying in the blood and dust to see if any are trying to escape death by concealment (22.381–2).11
In addition to the above reminiscences of the Cyclopeia, all of which favour a read- ing of Medon’s successful escape as one more reference to the events in that dark cave, Medon’s situation also corresponds more closely to Odysseus’ in the cave than to Menelaus’ on the beach. Odysseus hides under a ram to escape a menacing monster who knows no mercy (9.424–61); Menelaus lies under a skin to ambush a god (4.435–55). The former is defensive, seeking to escape certain death, the latter aggres- sive. Moreover, the hide with which Medon is concealed is the by-product of the suitors’ depredations on Odysseus’ herds, a fact made clear by the adjective applied to this ox hide (νεόδαρτον, 22.363). Thus, Medon attempts to escape detection under the hide of an animal that belongs to Odysseus, just as Odysseus escaped death beneath an animal that belonged to Polyphemus. The shared predicament and method of escape, then, of both Odysseus and Medon are alone sufficient reason for reading Medon’s escape as an allusion to Odysseus’ own. The palace has become the cave and Odysseus the Cyclops.
