chapter 5 Feasting in the land of the dawn “Will you not stop this woeful bloodshed? Don’t you see that you are devouring each other in the heedlessness of your noos?” (Empedocles, Fr.B136 DK) The adventure in the cave of the Cyclops creates a rift between Odysseus and his men the full impact of which will not become apparent until much later, and that will not concern us as such until Chapter 6. It is announced in Odysseus’ mysterious explanation for Zeus’ refusal to accept the sacrifice of the Cyclops’ sheep: the god was already “pondering how they could all come to perish, the well-benched ships and my trusted Companions” (9.554–5). The next two adventures demonstrate the lines along which the Companions’ demise will play out. The Aiolos episode has the Com- panions act in “heedlessness” (ἀφραδίῃσιν, 10.27), as they open the Bag of the Winds, having no access to the privileged information Aiolos had given to Odysseus alone: the hero comes to be separated from his crew as an individual facing a collective, just as he was presented to us in the poem’s proem. This points ahead to the final stage of mutual alienation, the hero’s solitude in the adventure of the Cattle of the Sun. The Aiolos episode also continues the theme of unreal abundance, as Odysseus and his men are feasting for an entire month in Aiolos’ hall, whose dais is perpetual (αἰεὶ ... δαίνυνται, 10.8–9). The detail that his house is κνισῆεν, ‘filled with the steam of burning fat’, suggests that the eternal, copious meal consists of beef, miraculously procured on this floating island. The Laestrygonian episode highlights the new developments by copying essential features of the Cyclops adventure, over and above the paradig- matic features that the two episodes have in common (see Chapter 2). Once more Odysseus’ Companions get eaten by monstrous cannibals and again an enclosed space plays an essential role: the ships are moored in a fjord-like harbor with steep cliffs on either side and a narrow entrance Copyright © 2013. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. University Press. © 2013. Cambridge Copyright 74 Bakker, Egbert J.. The Meaning of Meat and the Structure of the Odyssey, Cambridge University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/washington/detail.action?docID=1139629. Created from washington on 2021-02-03 14:20:47. Hunting to survive 75 1 (10.87–90), recalling the Cyclops’ cave. But whereas it was Odysseus who urged entrance into the fateful cave in the face of opposition from his Companions, here he is the only one who is prudent enough not to enter, mooring his ship outside. For the crews of the other eleven ships the closed harbor becomes a death trap paradigmatically equivalent not only to the Cyclops’ cave for the Companions who died there, but also to Odysseus’ hermetically closed megaron, in which the Suitors were trapped in order to be massacred. The parallelism of the fate of both groups is underscored by similar imagery: in both cases the victims become fish caught in order to be consumed. The Laestrygonians destroy the ships with large boulders thrown from above and then, spearing them like fish, carry them away as a “joyless dais” (ἀτερπέαδαῖτα, 10.124); and the Suitors are likened to fish dragged in nets out of the water to die on the beach piled on each other (22.383–9)ina simile to which we will return in Chapter 6. Hunting to survive Being eaten is also a leading theme in the second of the three extended episodes in the Otherworld, even though no one actually gets eaten, at least none of Odysseus’ Companions. Circe is often called a “witch” or a “sorceress,” but a variety of anthropological perspectives, derived from diverse regions around theworld,willallowustobemoreprecisethanthatanddomorejusticetothis goddess’ role and importance in the Odyssey.Circe,asOdysseusinformshis audience at the beginning of his telling of the episode (10.137–9), is the daughter of Helios the Sun and the Oceanid Perse, and sister of Aietes, the “man of Aea.” The latter family relation links her with the myth of Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece, which takes place at Colchis in the Caucasus. A detail provided later in the episode confirms that Circe has in fact to be located in the far east, since her island is where the “dancing-places of early- 2 born Dawn” are located and where the “risings of Helios” occur (12.3–4). She 3 seems to be associated with the dawn in more than a mere spatial sense. 1 Identified by M. L. West (2005: 49–53), on the basis of earlier scholarship, with the Balaclava harbor in the Crimea. 2 Nakassis 2004: 222–3; M. L. West 2005: 43–5, 2007 (seeing “dawn” in the etymology of Aea). Ballabriga 1998: 139–53 argues for actual geographical reflection in the Odyssey, and discusses the ambiguities of Circe’s location along the east–west axis. 3 M. L. West (1997: 408) brings out the solar connections of Circe through her name: the manifest connection with κίρκος, ‘falcon’, may reflect Egyptian iconography, where the Sun God is represented as a falcon, also in Phoenician art under Egyptian influence. In addition, the Hebrew word for ‘falcon’, he notes, is ‘ayyah. Copyright © 2013. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. University Press. © 2013. Cambridge Copyright Bakker, Egbert J.. The Meaning of Meat and the Structure of the Odyssey, Cambridge University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/washington/detail.action?docID=1139629. Created from washington on 2021-02-03 14:20:47. 76 Feasting in the land of the dawn In addition to the east–west axis, sources for the Circe episode have been 4 located in the north and in the south (Mesopotamia). Suggestive evidence, however, as we will see later in this chapter, comes from the very area where the Odyssey locates her. Circe’s solar connections, as daughter of Helios and a goddess associ- ated with the dawn, are significant, since there is, as we will see, a contrastive relation between her island Aeaea and Thrinacia, island of the Sun and located in the far west. Moreover, both father and daughter are owners and protectors of animals, albeit in very different ways. But Circe has more functions. She can change humans into animals, has Underworld associations, is interested in having sex with the traveler who meets her, and is capable of procuring paradisiacal abundance. There is, as we will see, a common denominator to all these seemingly disparate functions. The paradigmatic relations between the various instantiations of the basic story pattern as discussed in Chapter 2 point up further meanings. On Aeaea things are not what they seem to be, and the charms of the island’s mistress belie the important characteristics she has in common with the monstrous Cyclops: both have received prophecies about Odysseus’ coming (9.507–14; 10.330–2), both serve as the goal of a quest and at the same time helper, as part of a wider quest. Circe’srole as helper, or “donor” in Propp’s terminology, which, as we saw in Chapter 2, relates her to Siduri in Gilgamesh,consistsinsending Odysseus to the Land of the Dead, where he is to consult Tiresias, and in providing directions for the continuation of the journey. But the most important link between Circe and the Cyclops is that both are Masters of Animals. The Cyclops and Circe episodes stand out from the other instantiations of the quest/reconnaissance pattern in that both encounters are preceded by a hunt during which smoke is sighted, betraying the presence of the antagonist. This shared feature is striking, but so are the differences. On Goat Island the hunt was a collective undertaking: the entire company hunts a large number of animals out of an “unlimited” pool of game; on Aeaea it is Odysseus alone who hunts and his catch is a single, if enormous, animal. On both islands the game is presented as food for the Compa- nions, but whereas on Goat Island, as we saw, the nymphs stir up the animals “so that the Companions could have a meal” (ἵνα δειπνήσειαν ἑταῖροι, 9.155), on Aeaea it is the hero who takes the initiative to “give the 4 Carpenter 1956: 18–19 (north); Crane 1988: 61–75 (Mesopotamia). Copyright © 2013. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. University Press. © 2013. Cambridge Copyright Bakker, Egbert J.. The Meaning of Meat and the Structure of the Odyssey, Cambridge University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/washington/detail.action?docID=1139629. Created from washington on 2021-02-03 14:20:47. Hunting to survive 77 Companions a meal” (δεῖπνον ἑταίροισιν δόμεναι, 10.155). Whereas the hero and his Companions were a coherent community in relatively good spirits on Goat Island, they are now divided, as the rift between Odysseus and his men begins to appear, into a passive and dejected collective, on the one hand, and an energetic but solitary hero, on the other. Odysseus has to share agency with “some god” (10.157) who takes pity on the lonely hero in stirring up the large stag to cross his path. True to “Jörgensen’s Law,” which specifies that as a first-person narrator Odysseus has an experiential perspective different from that of the omniscient epic 5 narrator, the hero is ignorant of the identity of the god responsible for this piece of good luck. The text never reveals the identity of this god, but we may perhaps suspect Hermes, for reasons to be detailed later.