Athena, Eros, Odysseus, Nausicaa, Laundry at the Shore, a Lion and a Ball in the Odyssey

 Athéna, Éros, Ulysse, Nausicaa, des lavoirs, un lion et une balle dans l’Odyssée

Athena, Eros, Ulysses, Nausicaa, washhouses, a lion and a ball in the Odyssey

This paper re-reads the beginning of Odyssey VI to study the choreography played by Nausicaa and her followers who mark the rhythm of their dance with a ball. While the erotic atmosphere of the passage is undeniable, it is important to note the absence of Eros as a god and not to link too quickly the Homeric hall with the image of an Eros sphairistes that Anacreon proposes in his fragment 358 PMG.[NOTE0] After a critical review of a few studies that have dealt with this theme, our enquiry returns to the Homeric text and analyses two images: the balloon lost in a whirlpool and the comparison of Odysseus with a mountain lion. The face-to-face between Nausicaa and Odysseus is a major issue in the poem and the hero, observed by Athena who is testing him, must resist erotic desire as much as his warlike instinct. Eros is absent in this Book VI where it was up to Athena to conduct the action and deflect the throw of the ball. We must wait for Apolionius of Rhodes to see again the God of love playing with a ball in the Greek Epic. 

Introduction

After ten years of waiting, Ulysses’s return to Ithaca appears to be in jeopardy. To the ten years of war have been added as many years of wandering. The hero pays a heavy price for any fault committed against the gods. Wrath of Poseidon of course, but for an act committed during the return journey, when, to escape this raw flesh-eater, Ulysses blinded the Cyclops, son of the god. Anger of Zeus also, directed against the companions of Ulysses who committed the sacrilege of sacrificing the oxen of the Sun. We have to go back higher. As Jenny Strauss Clay noted, the Odyssey is also underpinned by a third anger, the less obvious and the most important, that of Athena, protector of Ulysses certainly, but who had her reasons for refusing her her protection during the first nine years of his return 1.

Many of the characters in the Odyssey recall the goddess’s anger, without ever explaining its cause. In song I, Phemios sings for the pretenders "the fatal return which Athena imposed on the Achaeans" 2; his listeners would not listen to him if Ulysses were not one of those Achaeans who were victims of the goddess. In song III, Nestor is more precise when he reminds Telemachus, in search of his father, of Athena's anger, augmented by that of Zeus, against the Achaeans: because all had not been "just and reasonable" (οὔ τι νοήμονες οὐδὲ δίκαιοι) 3. Unlike Ajax, who is explicitly implicated by Nestor, Ulysses is not directly named, but it is obvious that he is one of those unjust heroes4. Let us also quote Hermes who says more to Calypso in a passage, perhaps corrupted or reworked. Evoking the fate of Ulysses, the god returns to Athena's anger striking the Achaeans at the time of return:

But at the time of the return, they [?] Offended (ἀλίτοντο) Athena who unleashed against them a fatal wind and violent waves. Then all the other valiant companions perished, but he [Ulysses] the wind and the waves carried him away and threw him on these shores [Calypso Island] 5.

Ancient commentators were already astonished at this passage, which seemed to them to contradict the story. The first difficulty is to identify the subject of the verb "to offend" (ἀλίτοντο) and to know if it concerns all the Achaeans or only Ulysses and his companions7. Difficult to decide, but in both cases Ulysses is involved. And what storm is it? The storm that rises after the sacrilegious sacrifice of the oxen of the Sun? But this storm is caused by Zeus (XII, 405) and not by Athena. The scholies are right, there is an inconsistency. We can think of an alternative version, an interpolation or a reworked text. But the easiest way is to admit with Jenny Strauss Clay that the memory of Athena’s anger haunts the Odyssey: a paradoxical observation since the goddess is Odysseus’s official protector8. However, an event took place which should explain why the goddess abandoned her hero for more than nine years. The poet of the Odyssey is careful not to be too specific on a subject which would require the incrimination of Ulysses. We know from other sources (the Epic Cycle, the tragedy) and various allusions within the Odyssey itself that Ulysses committed faults which exceed, in their gravity, those that may have been committed in his house, the suitors or the servants whom he will punish so violently on his return9.

After ten years and while Ulysses is the prisoner of a nymph ready to give him immortality, Athena has chosen to end her anger. Ulysses is among mortals the hero who best resembles him, his double in the world of men; the story that will tell the glory of one will also tell that of the other. The goddess therefore has an interest in favoring the hero's return and in forgetting the reason for his anger. After ten years, she convinces Zeus that it must be so. She designs her plan, while retaining the right to test the intelligence and loyalty of her champion until the end. Without Athena, Ulysses could have remained forever the prisoner of Calypso, a hero of whom men would have known nothing and whose history would have remained permanently absent. There is a narrative suspense in the Odyssey that stems from the very possibility of the story. It is about rediscovering the story of a missing hero, reconstructing a past that will however retain its shortcomings. The epic of the return must return Odysseus to the word that can tell. It is not only a question of withdrawing the hero from the Nymph who confiscated him from men, but of knowing exactly what he could have done during a journey of which he remained the only witness, he "who knows how to give lies. 'appearance of truth12'.

This requires the intelligence of a perfect script, and Athena is good at weaving a plan, unless her intelligence is never that of the poet who sings it. Aristotle once said of the Odyssey that it was a well "woven" poem (peplegmenon), while he defined the "plot" (plokê) as an interlacing13. It is hardly surprising that the epic of the return of Odysseus has become a reference work for studies in narratology14. More than the Iliad, the Odyssey multiplies and interweaves levels of discourse and interrelated plots. The arrangement work gives the impression of hearing several stories that come together as one. The attention of listeners is suspended waiting for the success or failure of nested scenarios. At the beginning of song VI, Athena approaches her hero to help and test him. Ulysses plays the possibility of his reception among the Pheacians. Athena has planned a complex scenario, which involves Nausicaa, the Phaeacian princess. It remains to be seen whether the goddess has foreseen everything, if the protagonists, who have their freedom of reaction, will act as she foresees, and how it is up to the poet, expert in stories, to integrate the plan of the god into the own organization. of his poem.

https://books.openedition.org/editionsehess/31765

ΣΗΜΕΙΩΣΕΙΣ

[NOTE0]. http://www.aoidoi.org/poets/anacreon/anacreon-358.pdf

ΒΙΒΛΙΟΓΡΑΦΙΑ

https://books.google.gr/books?id=-5lOEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA13&lpg=PA13&dq=Ath%C3%A9na,+%C3%89ros,+Ulysse,+Nausicaa,+des+lavoirs,+un+lion+et+une+balle+dans+l%E2%80%99Odyss%C3%A9e&source=bl&ots=08H-OkXZpe&sig=ACfU3U1YNINdJRjIFM9wDRd4WzsRey-jpg&hl=el&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwih_IPesrv0AhVxgv0HHVRsBWMQ6AF6BAgXEAM#v=onepage&q=Ath%C3%A9na%2C%20%C3%89ros%2C%20Ulysse%2C%20Nausicaa%2C%20des%20lavoirs%2C%20un%20lion%20et%20une%20balle%20dans%20l%E2%80%99Odyss%C3%A9e&f=false
Bouvier, D. 2021. "Athena, Eros, Odysseus, Nausicaa, Laundry at the Shore, a Lion and a Ball in the Odyssey," in Dossier : Éros en jeu (Metis N.S. 19), Paris / Athenes, pp. 13-35.