![]() Timing, then, is crucial to the epic’s story-line, and the most threatening challenges Odysseus’ faces are often posed by those who try to delay his νοστος. ![]() With the suitors growing ever more impatient and Telemachus verging on manhood, the situation at Ithaca has become untenable left much longer, Odysseus’ household is bound to collapse under their pressure. Aside from the parallels it creates between father and son, the ‘Telemachy’ has another important function: it reminds us that time is slipping by, adding a sense of urgency to Odysseus’ homecoming (νοστος). Will it boast the exotic luxury and splendour of Sparta, mirror the piety seen by Telemachus at Pylos, replicate the idyllic monarchy of Scheria, or fall into the same savage rusticism of the Cyclopes? They each learn much from their adventures, and both return to Ithaca wiser and more cunning than they left it. ![]() His narrative echoes the travels of Odysseus himself, although on a far more modest and realistic scale, as both father and son experience foreign, unfamiliar societies which invite us to consider where Ithaca sits (or will sit) by contrast. In the meantime, the first four books (known as the ‘Telemachy’) instead focus on his son’s quest to discover the fate of his father, journeying to seek news from Nestor and Menelaus, other Iliadic heroes and his father’s comrades. ![]() Replicating their long separation from Odysseus, the poet withholds our first encounter with the hero until the start of Book 5, where he is introduced sitting on the rocks of the nymph Calypso’s island, weeping and wistfully longing for home. They are steadily losing hope, however, since it is now approaching the twentieth year of his absence, and his household has been overrun by 108 audacious young men who consume his stores, woo Penelope and abuse Telemachus, on the cusp on manhood but nonetheless unable to assert any sort of dominance over this large group of adversaries. The poem begins on Ithaca, while the hero is away from his homeland, still making his way back from the Trojan war, unbeknownst to his wife and son who can but pray for his eventual return. The poet exploits and plays with this concept so that we too experience the passing and halting of time with the same eagerness, frustration and suspense as the characters. Taking up less than 20% of the poem’s verses, his tale spans a disproportionate chronological period of eight years, leaving us with a slightly skewed perspective of time in the Odyssey. During this time, nobody gets eaten by a giant or visits the land of the dead such stories are contained in Books 9-12, in which Odysseus himself tells the Phaeacian king of his tormented travels from Troy, in the hope of receiving an embassy that will finally take him home to Ithaca. From the start of the epic to its end, we witness the events of 40 days (17 of these are covered in a single couplet!) and the last half of the poem is dedicated to less than a week’s worth of action. They are indeed woven into the stories of fantastical monsters and exotic encounters, but many of Odysseus’ most memorable adventures actually fall outside the parameters of the narrative itself. The themes of family, glory, time and truth all have a part to play in making the poem an enduring exploration of human nature and society. And yet, in reducing the epic to such a sequence of swashbuckling encounters, we risk occluding many of the finer motifs and messages presented by the poet over the course of its 24 books. With its famous episodes of the Lotus-Eaters, Cyclops and Sirens, it is no surprise that Homer’s Odyssey has lent its name to this genre of an adventure story. In common parlance, ‘odyssey’ is generally used to describe an arduous journey undertaken by a weathered hero, striving against the odds to overcome a series of challenges and conflicts. ![]() There is a time for many stories, and a time for sleep too Time in the Odyssey – Mia Forbes looks at the second epic ancient Greek poem attributed to Homer ![]()
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