Dolios in "Odyssey" 4 and 24: Penelope's Plotting and Alternative Narratives of Odysseus's Νόστος Author(S): BENJAMIN S

Dolios in "Odyssey" 4 and 24: Penelope's Plotting and Alternative Narratives of Odysseus's νόστος Author(s): BENJAMIN S. HALLER Source: Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-2014) , Autumn 2013 , Vol. 143, No. 2 (Autumn 2013), pp. 263-292 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43830263 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-2014) This content downloaded from 128.95.104.109 on Thu, 04 Feb 2021 19:01:05 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Transactions of the American Philological Association 143 (2013) 263-292 Dolios in Odyssey 4 and 24: Penelope's Plotting and Alternative Narratives of Odysseus's vógtoç* BENJAMIN S. HALLER Virginia Wesleyan College summary: The abortive messages that Dolios almost but never conveys from Penelope to Laertes and from Laertes' farm to Penelope in Books 4 and 24 of the Odyssey allude to alternative versions of Odysseus s vóaToç in which Odys- seus returned to Ithaca with an armed band and expelled the suitors with the knowing collusion of Penelope and Laertes. By referencing these epichoric variants, Homer creates a narrative opening for his original audience to infer that Penelope and Laertes conspire to use the palace and Laertes' farm as power centers from which to lead the insurrection against the suitors upon Odysseuss return, while at the same time articulating norms of licit and illicit means of trickery through the divergent fates of Dolios and his "bad seed" offspring Me- lanthios and Melantho. INTRODUCTION IN THE PAGES THAT FOLLOW, I ARGUE THAT THE RECURRENCE OF THE SLAVE Dolios at key junctures of the narrative can shed light on the Odyssey in two distinct ways. The first is by illuminating the contours of lost regional (epichoric) alternative versions of Odysseuss homecoming that were familiar to Homer and his audience. Such versions, work by Reece and Marks has shown, may be provisionally reconstructed from "fossils" in our Odyssey , such as Odysseus's lying tales of less supernatural travels, and passing allusions to a version of Odysseus's slaying of the suitors through open force assisted by armed warriors rather than through the disguise and bow contest. Homer not only preserves traces of, but also purposefully alludes to, these epichoric variants in our Odyssey in order to guide how the audience fills in gaps and * The author would like to thank the Editor of TAPA , the anonymous referees, and Andrew M. Miller for reading drafts of this article and for offering much thoughtful and useful criticism. © 2013 by the American Philological Association This content downloaded from 128.95.104.109 on Thu, 04 Feb 2021 19:01:05 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 264 Benjamin S. Haller inconsistencies in the tale, such as the message that Dolios never gets a chance to deliver from Penelope to Laertes in Book 4. Familiarity with a variant tale in which Dolios actually assists in bringing about the slaying of the suitors might well have prejudiced listeners to infer that an arrangement exists between Odysseus, Penelope, and Laertes: if something should go wrong in the palace during Odysseus s absence at Troy, Laertes will maintain the farm as a fallback position to which Odysseus will repair upon his return. Second, the choices that Homer makes among variant versions of the story of Odysseus s homecoming help to illuminate his narrative strategies and audience. In particular, unlike variants that emphasize Odysseus s recapture of the palace by force, the canonical Odyssey emphasizes Athena s providential good counsel, or (ifjTic;, and Odysseus's initiation of Telemachos into its proper use, as father teaches son to outwit the tricks, or ôóXoi, of social inferiors like Melanthios and Melantho.1 Dolios and his children Melanthios and Melantho thus also function synchronically in "our" vulgate version of the Odyssey as ways of exploring the licit and illicit uses of deceit and trickery, the root meaning of the father s name (Dolios ~ ôóXoç), in the poem.2 The version of the tale that has come down to us in the vulgate as our Odyssey is more suited to a Panhellenic audience: Homer rejects and elides from his narrative the many-branched tree of progeny that Odysseus sires in epichoric and cyclic tales, which assert shared descent from Odysseus to bolster contemporary dynastic claims and alliances. In place of these, the poet instead opts for a more universal tale underscoring the continuity of a legitimate Arceisiad dynasty whose power is supported by the gods.3 1 Our Odyssey thus offers homecoming by the clever stratagem of the bow trick (a Pióç-vóotoO, while earlier variants had Odysseus employ a more Achilles-like brute force (a ßii]-v0crro<;). 2 Critics have suggested two distinct etymologies for Dolios s name. While some author- ities - including Lambertz 1914; Erbse 1972; and Frisk 1954-73 - derive his name from ôoOXoc;, slave, this etymology has proved problematic in the light of Mycenaean dohelos. Heubeck 1992 on Od. 24.222 accordingly favors a derivation from ôóXoç, "trick, stratagem." See also Pauly- Wissowa s.v. "Dolios"; von Kamptz 1982: 1 15 (§39bl); Thalmann 1 998: 69n54. For Homeric wordplay and the deliberate use of redende Namen by the poet, see Peradotto 1990: 94-95, 102-4; the first chapter of O'Hara 1996; and Louden 1995. 3 See Marks 2003: 2 1 0, 22 1-22 and my discussion below of Marks's work and of Reece 1994. For other alternative vcxjtoi, see Proclus 's summary of the Telegony, Hyginus 126, Epit. 7.34-40; as well as Odysseus's "Cretan lies" and Amphimedon 's account of Odysseus's return at Od. 24.167-68. For the one glancing allusion to Telegonos in our Odyssey , see 11.134-38. This content downloaded from 128.95.104.109 on Thu, 04 Feb 2021 19:01:05 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Dolios in Odyssey 4 and 24 265 METHODOLOGY Objections might be raised to my assertion that a contemporary audience would have read Penelope s abortive plan to send Dolios to Laertes as indica- tive of the existence of more extensive plotting between daughter-in-law and father-in-law: this interpretation asks the audience to fill in much missing background material to Book 4 of our Odyssey based on their knowledge of other versions of the epic. Nevertheless, two recent scholarly trends offer grounds for regarding this approach as plausible: ( 1 ) narratological work on the role of audience expectations in shaping narrative, and (2) Neoanalytic scholarship on the role of alternative vóatoi of Odysseus, partially recon- structable from hints in our Odyssey and other sources, in shaping these same audience expectations.4 Narratological theory helps to illustrate how it serves Homer s dramatic purposes to court ambiguity and to suggest outcomes, some likely familiar to the audience from alternative tales of Odysseus s vócnroc;, which do not actually transpire. Felson-Rubin emphasizes this performative aspect of Homeric poetry, in which the cioiôóç fashions his narrative in collaboration with his audience, alternatively teasing, gratifying, and frustrating their expectations.5 Homer offers hints, but no explicit determination regarding the motives and personal histories of a number of characters like Dolios. By their very internal contradictions, such characters provide invitations to speculation, jumping- off places for audiences to instantiate the Penelope or the Dolios of their choice through imaginative engagement with the data provided by the poet.6 Second, work by Marks and Reece, supplemented with observations drawn from Lord 1960, reminds us that audience members would not engage in such speculation in a vacuum, but in the light of other iterations of the story 4 For Neoanalytic approaches to the Odyssey , which, as Reece 1994: 157-58 observes, are reconcilable with Oral Theory, see further Kullmann 1984 and M. W. Edwards 1990. 5 Felson-Rubin 1994: 10. Felson-Rubin proposes a strategy of discourse analysis pio- neered by Bakhtin 1981, 1986 and Vološinov 1986, in which narrative is "dynamic and interactive, like a courtship dance" (Felson-Rubin 1994: 10). For compatible interpreta- tions of ambiguity and indefinite alternative points of interpretation in the Odyssey , see Doherty 2002 on narrative openings; Peradotto 1990: 59-93, who demonstrates how Teiresias's prophecy of an "inland journey" and Odysseus 's lying tales of homecomings via Thesprotia (14.314-33, 19.269-307) serve as plot matrices mapping out potential hypothetical narrative directions available to the aoióóę; and Richardson 2006. 6 Felson-Rubin 1994: 16-18 observes that Penelope s machinations vis-à-vis the suitors can be interpreted variously as instantiations of a Bride Prize, Adultery, Frigidity and Tease, and/or Loyalty and Cunning plot pattern. See also Felson-Rubin 1994: 125-28 (esp. her reading of Bal 1987: 107-8). This content downloaded from 128.95.104.109 on Thu, 04 Feb 2021 19:01:05 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 266 Benjamin S. Haller of Odysseus s travel and returns current at the time.

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