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Timothy Dolch IPS 8311: Homer and Vergil One of the most perplexing events in the Odyssey is Penelope’s decision to test her suitors by means of Odysseus’s bow. The fortuitous nature of this decision has been the mainspring of a variety of speculations concerning the causal sequences within the narrative and Homer’s thematic intentions. I propose to discuss the questions raised by Penelope’s decision as well as several theories that attempt to explain it. I conclude that even though the plot resolution of the Odyssey is credible, some of the questions must remain open. In this way the Odyssey is true to life. I group the questions surrounding Penelope’s decision to initiate the bow contest into two categories. First, there is the question of divine involvement in human decisions. Homer initially attributes the decision to Penelope, but later he credits Athena with putting it into her mind. Second, there is the question of Penelope’s recognition of Odysseus. On the surface of the text, she does not recognize him until he describes his bed to her after killing the suitors. However, her decision to initiate the bow contest after the disguised Odysseus assures her that he will soon return, suggests, to some interpreters, a silent collusion between them. Divine Intervention At the beginning of book 21, Homer tells us: Now the bright-eyed goddess put it into the mind Of Icarios’ daughter, the prudent Penelope, To set the bow before the suitors and the gray iron In Odysseus’ halls as a contest and a start for slaughter.1 1 21.1-4 1 In this passage the action of Athena appears crucial. Odysseus had been trying to think of a plan of attack against the suitors since he arrived in Ithaca, but apparently he is unsuccessful. He makes some preparations together with Telemachos, removing the weapons from the dining hall and discussing whether to look for more comrades.2 But these preparations do not amount to a plan. Only the intervention of Athena moves the plot forward. If we are meant to take Athena’s intervention seriously, then there are two different lessons we might draw from it. The first is that it would confirm the correlation of Athena and Odysseus. Both are shrewd, and Athena intervenes shrewdly on Odysseus’s behalf where his own shrewdness falls short. She could almost be considered his personal patron deity.3 Homer’s point in this could be that the divine appears to us in our own form, confirming the strength of our central disposition. The Biblical statement, To the faithful you show yourself faithful, to the blameless you show yourself blameless, to the pure you show yourself pure, but to the crooked you show yourself shrewd.4 expresses something of the same theme. The second lesson of Athena’s intervention would be to affirm Odysseus’s active dependence on divine aid. The chief gods in the Odyssey, Athena and Zeus, clearly favor the justice of Odysseus’s dispatch of the unjust suitors. Zeus provides omens and Athena provides promises of direct support for Odysseus.5 Odysseus acts in expectation of their help by preparing for the battle even though he has no definite plan for how it will take place. His own 2 16.233-320, 19.1-35 3 13.296-301 4 Psalm 18:25-26, NIV 5 13.392-96; 16.170-1; 18.112-18; 19.535-58; 20.47-51, 98-121. See Rozokoki, Alexandra, “Penelope’s Dream in Book 19 of the ‘Odyssey,’” The Classical Quarterly 51, no. 1 (2001): 4. 2 wisdom is not enough to accomplish his task, but he follows the signs he is given and puts himself in the place suitable for receiving divine assistance, which comes in the provision of the bow. Yet against these interpretations of the significance of Athena’s intervention stands the fact that Homer has Penelope announce her decision two books earlier, with no reference to divine intervention.6 Penelope has been discussing a dream about Odysseus’s triumphal return with Odysseus himself, still disguised as a beggar. Odysseus assures her that the dream is true, but she does not believe him. She then tells him of her intention to set up the bow contest and marry the winner. No supernatural explanation is given or required; her decision is her own. She tells Odysseus of it the night before Athena is supposed to have put it in her mind. The apparent conflict between the two accounts of Penelope’s decision can be explained in several ways. We could theorize that books 19 and 21 were composed at different times, perhaps even by different authors, and that the final assemblage is simply inconsistent. I find this hard to believe, because there is a single line of development. Moreover, the two accounts can be more easily reconciled. Again, we could say with Walter Allen that Homer “sacrifices the credibility of the character of Penelope to his plot.”7 On this interpretation there are inconsistent accounts of Penelope’s decision because Homer is interested more in drama than in Penelope. This seems a drastic narrowing of the scope and interest of the poem, however. Surely Homer is concerned with more than just cobbling a plot. Furthermore, Penelope is a major character,8 and 6 19.571-74 7 Allen, Walter Jr., “The Theme of the Suitors in the Odyssey,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Society 70 (1939): 116. 8 On Homer’s exploration of the character of Penelope see Chris Emlyn-Jones, “The Reunion of Penelope and Odysseus,” Greece & Rome, Second Series, vol. 31, no. 1 (Apr. 1984): 10-14. 3 her integrity as a character is important to the integrity of Odysseus and to his interactions with her, and thus to the plot as well. There are two ways to reconcile the two accounts of Penelope’s decision without impugning the integrity of the poem or its characters, both of which involve attention to timing. One way is to recognize that the opening of book 21 may be telling us that Athena’s intervention was in the decision to put the bow out that very morning, not necessarily in the decision to use the bow simpliciter. Penelope’s statement in book 19 does not commit her to immediate action, and the fact that Odysseus urges her not to “delay this contest any longer” may suggest that she has already been delaying carrying out a decision that she had made some time earlier.9 Another way to reconcile the accounts is to say that they represent an instance of the narration of simultaneous events as if they happened consecutively. Homer has been shown to use this authorial technique in other places.10 Taking this view, we may suppose that book 21 is telling us that Penelope’s decision on the previous night was just as much Athena’s doing as her own— an instance of dual causality. We may then infer that Homer begins the book by restating the decision in order to remind his audience what has occurred, to credit Athena with it, and thereby to introduce the proximate cause of the events to follow. Admittedly, the gap of a whole book casts doubt on this interpretation. On the other hand, the book-length gap between Penelope’s discussion with Odysseus and the contest itself calls for some kind of reminder. In any case, it is not my intention here to defend this interpretation, only to suggest it as a way to explain the apparent conflict between the two accounts of Penelope’s decision. 9 19.584 10 Basset, Samuel E., “The Suitors of Penelope,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 49 (1918): 47-49. 4 If we take either of the latter two interpretations just presented, the lessons discussed above retain their validity as reflections on an integral narrative. Athena’s intervention could still be a necessary source of Odysseus’s style and success. Nevertheless, the purely human account of Penelope’s decision in book 19 provides grounds for questioning the moral deductions. We could perhaps naturalize the lesson of active dependence into something like, “chance favors the prepared mind,” and explain the correlation of Odysseus and Athena as due to the projection of the divine from the self. On these points, it seems to me, the questions must remain open, for Homer does not explicitly settle them for us. Penelope’s Recognition of Odysseus I turn now to the questions of Penelope’s recognition of Odysseus. A major problem surrounding Penelope’s decision to initiate the bow contest is the possibility of her recognizing Odysseus prior to the contest. The dramatic recognition scene in book 23, in which Penelope refuses to believe Odysseus until he describes the master bed that he built into the house, has not convinced some critics that she did not recognize Odysseus sooner. According to these critics, the fortuitousness of her decision to bring out the bow is strong evidence for the view that she has recognized Odysseus and now uses the bow contest to provide him with the means to destroy the suitors. Before addressing the question of whether Penelope recognized Odysseus before the bow contest, we should ask the logically prior question whether Penelope wanted the suitors to be killed, or whether she actually wanted to marry a suitor. Some scholars point to her description of her dream to Odysseus in book 19 as evidence that she wanted to marry a suitor. In the 5 dream, she saw a flock of geese devoured by an Eagle.
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