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"No other woman, with spirit as stubborn as yours, would keep back
as you are doing from her husband who, after much suffering,
came at last in the twentieth year back to his own country.
But always you have a heart that is harder than stone within you."
(Od. 23.1003) |
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In the third place, Odysseus and Penelope share the epithet  , which rather than 'having a good mind' appears to mean 'restraining one's mind', said of a person "who does not allow his impulses and thoughts to lead to wrong words or actions".43 Their capacity to control their emotions, to remain silent, or to say something other than what they feel, marks Penelope and especially Odysseus as the typical heroes of the Odyssey, poem of disguise and dissimulation. They do exactly what the central hero of the Iliad, Achilles, detests:  ("for as I detest the doorways of death, I detest that man, who hides one thing in the depths of his heart, and speaks forth another": Il. 9.3123). In contrast to this Iliadic ideal, the message or rather one of the messages of the Odyssey seems to be that secret thinking is at times to be preferred to speaking or acting. Or as Redfield aptly puts it: ''Achilleus beherrscht seine Mitwelt im Tun und stirbt . . . Odysseus herrscht nur in Gedanken und überlebt."44 |
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Ameis K.F. and Hentze C. (18941909) Homers Odyssee (Leipzig: 18941909). |
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Amory A. (1963) "The Reunion of Odysseus and Penelope", in Essays on the Odyssey, ed. C.H. Taylor (Bloomington: 1963) 10021. |
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Auerbach E. (1953) Mimesis. The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (transl. by W.R. Trask, Princeton: 1953). |
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Austin N. (1969) "Telemachos Polymechanos", California Studies in Classical Antiquity 2 (1969) 4563. |
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(1975) Archery at the Dark of the Moon. Poetic Problems in Homer's Odyssey (Berkeley-Los Angeles: 1975). |
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Bal M. (1985) Narratology. Introduction to the Theory of Narrative (Toronto: 1985). |
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Barck C. (1976) Wort und Tat bei Homer (Hildesheim: 1976). |
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43 Stanford (1963) 33; cf. H.W. Nordheider in the Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos, s.v.: "klug, vorsichtig, (mit Selbstkontrolle)", and Winkler (1990) 1367. This interpretation of  accords well with the original meaning of  , which is 'hold' or 'retain' rather than 'have' (I thank C.J. Ruijgh for this observation). |
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44 (19689) 75. The same idea has been voiced by Stanford (1963) 33, but, in my opinion, far too strongly (and with little understanding for the Iliad): "In so far as Homer has any moral message in the Iliad and the Odyssey it comes to this: only by Ulyssean self-control and moderation can men achieve victory in life. In contrast the wrathful, vainglorious Achilles, the arrogant, grasping Agamemnon, the headstrong Ajax, the self-centered, unscrupulous Autolycus, paid their penalties." |
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