3- Penelope, model of motherhood and fidelity

Penelope was a beautiful young girl.
Several princes ask her father Icarios, King of Sparta and a champion horse racer, for her hand in marriage. To avoid quarrels between the suitors, Icarios forces them to compete in a race against him. Ulysses is the victor and wins Penelope's hand in marriage.
The man who would become the mythical king of Ithaca conquered Penelope ... at the races.

Forerunner of the medieval "champion", the Greek hero, prince or man of high rank, must sometimes win for his side in single combat (Achilles vs. Hector, for example).
But he must also "win" the heart of a noble lady in the presence of suitors, by force if necessary, or defend his honor when it is called into question.
Competing for a young woman's "hand" clearly didn't require her opinion.
Women were considered "minors" in the West until the early 20th century. That's 31 centuries since Homer's story.
Among the Achaean Greeks (as in many other civilizations), the father gave his daughter in marriage.
It wasn't until the Romans that the father gave "his hand" (i.e. authority over his daughter) to his future son-in-law. This marriage was called "cum manu", with the hand.
Put that way, it sounds nicer. The hand, well, it is the hand.
But just the hand isn't enough to ensure offspring.
The question of possession is never far away, and not just the hand.

The Roman Republic created a marriage in which the wife remained under the authority of the father (and not the husband), creating an unprecedented space of freedom and equality for women.
The Empire never ceased to curtail this freedom and equality.
Marriage remained a matter between two men: the father and the son-in-law.
This practice continued well into the Middle Ages.
This age-old system of "granting" a woman to a man is still with us today.
Royal authorizations given to court officials have become commonplace, and have survived in tutelary dowry agreements negotiated by ordinary people.
In this sense, the Odyssey is unfortunately not a backward-looking tale.

Penelope, wife of Ulysses, one of the most famous women of antiquity, was entrusted with strictly domestic tasks. A remarkable weaver, she was honored for this in Greek mythology. A model of motherhood and fidelity, she was nevertheless the wife of the legendary "Wanax", a mythical hero at the mercy of monsters and enterprising nymphs, who did everything in their power to prevent her from regaining Ithaca and thus her queen.
Penelope, a sort of ancient "house fairy", waits tirelessly for the hero's return, while the bewitching nymph Circe, also an outstanding weaver, contrives to "hold back" her husband by wielding poison and seduction.
The Greek mortal women of the Odyssey are imprisoned in a rigid morality of submission, while the beautiful immortal nymphs and goddesses are free to choose their lovers, using desire as an instrument of conquest and casting magical spells to perfect the desired result: to dominate and appropriate these mortal men... so demanding with their wives.

The Odyssey is disorienting.

4- Rigid Greek morality: fidelity and virtue

The ancient Greeks had an unfair and gendered notion of fidelity.
If a married man had sexual relations with a woman who was not his wife, and she was not married to another man, this was considered normal and acceptable.
It was also accepted that married men could have relations with prostitutes.
They were fulfilling their own desires, so there was nothing wrong with that.
However, if a woman had sexual relations with someone other than her husband, it was an unforgivable crime, one of the worst a woman could commit.
Even if the husband had been absent for years (10 years of war and 10 years of wandering the seas, for example).

Did Penelope have any choice but to faithfully await Odysseus' return, or the certainty of his death through the presentation of his remains?
The Greeks considered betrayal to be one of the worst crimes anyone could commit.
A wife's infidelity was therefore considered "the ultimate act of treason".
The crime was so serious that the husband was legally authorized to kill her on the spot if he caught her in the act.
Did Penelope remain faithful out of obligation?
The reasons for such injustice are rooted in the idea of the necessary "purity" of offspring.

Ancient men who left home for long periods (for war or to sea) regularly lived under the suspicion of their wives' infidelity, with a dishonourable corollary: the fear of having to raise another man's offspring as their own.
A consequence deemed even more infamous than the cause itself!

A quote from Euripides puts it this way:
"Εὶ δὲ μήτηρ ιλότεκνος μᾶλλον πατρός - μὲν γὰρ αὑτῆς οἶδεν ὄνθ᾿, δ᾿ οἴεται."
(Euripides's Fragment 1015)
"A mother always loves her children more than a father does, for she knows they are hers, while he (only) thinks so."
(HARVARD University Press © 2023 President and Fellows of Harvard College)

" A mother always loves her children more than a father does, for she knows they are hers, while he (only) thinks so."

One thousand four hundred years later, in the early Byzantine period, it became clear that this was a baseless moral double standard, and that men who cheated on their wives were committing exactly the same fault as women who cheated on their husbands. In particular, the Christian church father Ioannis Chrysostomos (349 - 407 A.D.) stated, "It's the same 'crime' for both."

As an adventure story, the Odyssey presents an ancient sociological model that accepts a postulate of differentiated virtue.
However, this differentiated Greek morality imposed by men does not exist on Olympus.
Men remain subject to the gods.
If domination over mortal beings is the prerogative of the Greek gods, subjugating women is perhaps not a power that men can exercise without limit.
The gods punish them by letting the nymphs play them.
A divine rebalancing of sorts.
Even if it takes place in mythology and not really in the earthly world..

Could a woman "take" a man's hand without asking her father, or even decide to unite with whomever she pleased without being considered "inferior"?
A mere mortal, no.
So you had to be immortal (or almost immortal) to "take" a man's hand.
Without being accountable to anyone. By seduction, even coercion, which demiurges can and do use.

Nymphs are particularly appreciated by Homer for this purpose.
Women who behave like men in love, equal in good and evil.
They are feminine divinities of nature, characterized by their beauty and often the offspring of gods, like Calypso, the daughter of Atlas.
They are long-lived but not immortal, although Homer maintains the ambiguity by sometimes referring to them cumulatively as "goddesses". Who, in turn, are immortal.
Calypso, for example, offers Ulysses "immortality" to keep him.
And Circe, a nymph expert in toxic seduction, almost immortal, who passionately takes hold of Ulysses, only to return him to his destiny out of necessity (see below).

In spite of him, and perhaps in spite of her.

A complex notion in this story, which, without contradicting ancient morality, can blend the liberated seduction of the demiurge nymphs with the strict, hierarchical virtue of women in Odysseus' time.

5- Circe the nymph magician: why give in to a mere mortal?

The myth of Circe was not created by Homer, but is drawn from ancient folklore handed down by the aedes (storytellers), notably in the epic of Gilgamesh (Babylon) dating from the 18th and 17th centuries BC.
Struggling with the worst misfortunes that are sent his way so that he never returns home (we'll see why a little further on), Ulysses takes a very long "break" in the arms of Circe, "Κιρκη"/ "Kιrkè", which means " bird of prey ", the magician known as "εὐπλόκαμος" / euplokamos, "with beautiful curls" ...and fearsome poisons.
Endowed, moreover, with a highly effective power that needs no mixtures to act: the art of seducing and arousing desire.

And it's best not to resist her, whether you're a mere mortal or a Greek god:
- One day, the sea god Glaucos asks her for a magic potion to win the favor of the beautiful nymph Scylla, who remains unmoved by her advances.
Circe falls in love with Glaucus, but he rejects her.
In revenge, she transforms the beautiful Scylla (who had asked for nothing) into a sea monster (who will now face another monster, Charybdis, in the Strait of Messina - hence the expression "falling from Charybdis to Scylla", going from bad to worse).
- Circe also punishes Picus, King of Italy, who has also refused her favors, turning him into a woodpecker...Cui-cui...Toc-toc...
Pushing open the door of Circe's luxurious residence should necessarily lead the visitor to extreme caution.

The greatest love affair of the magician " with the beautiful curls " is undeniably the one she has with Ulysses. It differs radically from the others.
What sense does it make?

After leaving the land of the Lestrygons (Bonifacio or Porto Pozzo), Ulysses and his companions arrive on Circe's island: "Aiaeea.

"And we sailed far from there, sad in heart to have lost all our dear companions, though joyful to have avoided death. And we came to the island of Aiaiè, where lived the beautiful-haired Kirkè, venerable and eloquent goddess, sister of the prudent Aiètès. And both were born of Hèlios, who enlightens men, and their mother was Persè, whom Okéanos begat. And there, on the shore, we led our nave into a wide harbor, and a god led us there. Then, having disembarked, we stayed there for two days, our souls overwhelmed with fatigue and pain. But when fair-haired Éôs brought in the third day, taking my spear and sharp sword, I left the ship and climbed to a height from which I could see men and hear their voices. And from the steep summit where I had ascended, I saw rising from the wide earth, through a forest of thick oaks, the smoke of Kirkè's dwellings."

Lestrygon country - Bonifacio or Porto Pozzo

As is often the case, the first encounter begins with an attempt to poison the visitor(s).
So there's nothing unusual about Circe. All's well, so to speak.
After turning almost all of Odysseus' crew into pigs (classic), Circe attempts to poison Odysseus (normal).
Had he not benefited in extremis from an antidote given by Hermes to resist Circe's poison, he would have succumbed (logical).
But thanks to the protective god's antidote, the poison doesn't work, and Circe has to face up to the bravery of the Greek hero, who has just emerged from ten years of war, knows how to overcome his fear and wields his cunning to perfection.
He imposes his fierce determination on Circe, sword in hand.
Circe must give in to Ulysses.
Is she really? Would the beautiful, seasoned sorceress be willing for once?
The hero is "rewarded" by the sulfurous nymph (in the sense of hydrogen sulfide, a deadly poison produced by organic decomposition, which Circe must know):

She asks him to join her in her bed, guaranteeing he'll be safe.
"Our bed," she says, "in a ἱερὸς γάμος" / "hieros gamos", in a " sacred marriage ".
A sweet sweet rather...? No, no, " holy "...Hola...what exactly is this " sacred "with this beautiful poisoner...?
Without consulting his lawyer or taking out life insurance, Ulysses accepts.
The unfiltered Odyssey reveals Circe's art of seduction.

Like any poetess or aède (like Orpheus), she wields a charming language to achieve her ends.
- The verb that designates her oratorical power is θέλγειν / "thelgein", which means " to charm with magical enchantments, to seduce ".

As the Roman Tacitus, master of rhetoric, expressed it so well, with that ancient art of the verb, as precious as it is precise:
"Eloquentia magna flamma est; materia nutrit, vivificat et ardet ut lucet."

"Great eloquence is like a flame; matter nourishes it, movement invigorates it and it is by burning that it projects its brilliance".

The art of words and seduction in a single being, casting terrible spells.
Which the nymph can voluntarily put an end to, if she agrees.
Is this a ruse, or should the hero of Troy resist her?
Has Ulysses "only" accepted a carnal relationship that doesn't offend the differentiated Greek morality, or has he been deceived by Circe?
Ulysses listens to her, and Circe gives in.
Or the other way around.
Is it right...or not.
The Odyssey leaves the reader in suspense.

Circe's charm, in the original sense of the word, is so effective that it makes Ulysses a passive man who forgets the necessity of his return by sharing Circe's bed for a long time.
Could it be that Circe's secret aim is to assuage Poseidon's anger against Ulysses (see below)?
At least three children were born of their union.
So Ulysses resisted the nymphs... as best he could.
Penelope was waiting for him on Ithaca.
This enduring carnal relationship between the king-hero determined to find Penelope and a renowned seductress-poisoner with multiple victims is accepted by Greek morality.
An appraisal far removed from our Judeo-Christian morality.
Virtue and fidelity are dissociated in Odysseus' world.
He can remain faithful to Penelope by uniting with Calypso, Nausicaa and Circe, provided he does not offend the virtue of the 13th century BC.
As these nymphs were neither fully mortal nor married, no husband would have to raise another man's offspring without his knowledge.
So he respects Greek virtue and doesn't cheat on Penelope..
CQFD.

Simplistic?
Yes.

6- Ulysses, between virtue and passion.

So, Ulysses was a faithful and loving husband in 13th century BC Mycenaean Greece, breaking no fundamental rules of honor.
His carnal adventures are part of the epic tale, described quite naturally in the Odyssey.
Seven years with Calypso and over a year with Circe, each of whom had one or more children by the Greek hero par excellence.
In Mycenaean Greece, this did not deter the king-hero from his ardent desire, the only ultimate goal of the Odyssey intended by Homer: to find Penelope after twenty years of estrangement.

Leaving the nymphs behind, the hero longs to find the woman of his life.
Without questioning his wife's opinion about the children conceived and born "overseas".
If Poseidon is the secret instigator of Calypso's or Circe's desire and passion to deceive Ulysses, all these considerations give way to the hero's love for Penelope.

The "Telegonia" (after the Odyssey) shows that Ulysses has not broken with Telegonos, his son conceived with Circe.
And the Odyssey reveals that poor Calypso, inconsolable after Odysseus' departure, then met Telemachus (Odysseus' son), immediately feeling an ardent passion for the young man.
She offers him immortality, as she did her father, to stay with her...
Either Odysseus, father and son, use an intensely aphrodisiac after shave, or the nymphs are prey to a relational loneliness linked to their isolation on remote islands, which drives them to unite with the two travellers from Ithaca.
And to a kind of depressing boredom caused by immortality, which is of little interest without the love of a mortal...

It's worth noting that Odysseus' companions in misfortune don't have the same appeal: turned into pigs, devoured by the Cyclops, drowned...
The Odyssey focuses on a number of mythical characters whose cumulative qualities "deify" them as the story progresses.
Is The Odyssey a human adventure, or a tale to the glory of the Greek gods, who are the sole masters of whatever outcome they please, without yielding to mortal weaknesses?

Twenty years of wandering far from Penelope, without seeing her or hearing the sound of her voice, will have changed nothing.
Ulysses' passion for the woman whose hand he has received is such that it will never fade.
Is this a myth reserved for heroes, or does it apply to "ordinary" people?
The logic of the Homeric narrative chooses those who are out of the ordinary, but they remain models for other men.

So let's give it a try...

7- Suffering, persecution and death of the Greek hero (Telegonia)

If necessary for his glory, the hero must suffer to honor the gods, who are busy moving the mortal pawns on their chessboard.
Ulysses is admired by his people and renowned for his " mètis ".
Yet this gift offends a god (and not the least).
The Odyssey, which was supposed to be the hero's deserved return to his queen, becomes a series of sufferings and persecutions for Ulysses.

He had made a mistake: he had gouged out the eye of the cannibalistic Cyclops Polyphemus, son of Poseidon and the nymph Thoôsa (the Cyclops had eaten four of his sailors as a dish of the day...).

Ulysses, using his "mètis had told Polyphemus to call himself "Nobody".
By this ruse, he prevented Polyphemus from referring to him by his real name to the other Cyclops.
Taking advantage of Polyphemus' sleep, Ulysses and his crew gouge out the giant's single eye using a fire-hardened olive stake.
When the cries of pain attract the other Cyclops and they ask Polyphemus who did it...he can only answer "it's Nobody" !
They think he's gone mad and leave him to his fate.

But having blinded the giant while he slept, Ulysses, believing himself to have vanquished him and out of danger, wants the Cyclops to know who the mortal is who has played him for a fool: tauntingly, fishing with boasting, he reveals his true name: "Ulysses".
A mistake with terrible consequences. Cyclops enlists the help of his powerful father, Poseidon, to chastise this cunning but reckless mortal (for once):

"Listen, blue-haired Poseidon, master of the lands! If I am truly your son, you who claim to have made me, prevent this Odysseus, Scourge of the Cities, from returning home!"
(Odyssey, IX, 528-530.)

From that day on, Ulysses had to suffer Poseidon's wrath on land and at sea, despite the courage of his men and the protection of the other gods.
He will have to suffer the evils inflicted on him by Aeolus, the Lestrygons, Circe, the Cimmerians, the Sirens, Charybdis and Scylla, the Sun's cows, Calypso's island, the Phaeacians and Nausicaa..
After ten years of war on "Ilios", he is now condemned to another ten years' absence, lost in an alienating and cruel wandering far from Penelope. Watching his sailors and friends die one by one on his return.
Until he was left alone to face his destiny.
So many obstacles prolonging the ordeal of the Mycenaean Wanaka, including seduction and carnal relations with nymphs who, by holding him back, ultimately contribute to Poseidon's vengeance. And not to the success of this man's quest, even if he is a mythical hero.
Duplicity?
Circe seems to be in a class of her own.
In the Odyssey, Odysseus' only known son is Telemachus, the child he had with Penelope.

However, according to the "Trojan cycle", another legend attributed to Eugammon of Cyrene, an ancient Greek poet of the Archaic period (560 BC), Telegonia follows on from the Odyssey.

From her love affair with Ulysses, Circe is said to have conceived several children:
- Telegonos, who founded the city of Tusculum,
- Latinos, the founder of Latium,
- Agrios, whose name means "the Savage",
- Nausithoos, according to Hygin in the 1st century AD,
- Romos, Antias and Ardéas, eponyms of the three cities of Rome, Antium and Ardée,
- A daughter Cassiphoné, who married either his brother Telegonos or his half-brother Telemachus, whom she killed, depending on the version...

Ulysses had a son with the sorceress, Telegonos, who still does not know his father. After the king's return to Ithaca, he sets off to find him, impatient to see him.
When he arrives in Ithaca, Telegonos and his crew help themselves to food.
Alerted by what appears to be looting, Ulysses goes to fight and defend his island.
Telegonos, who had never seen his father and could not recognize him...kills him.
All this way for a tragedy that makes Telegonos a paricide, he who was eager to find his role model, his father.

It is in this atmosphere of great gaiety, which sees all the actors collapsed, that the mythical hero dies, a just and brave king, admired by all, loved by his sons Telemachus and Telegonos, Penelope and probably Circe.

Is he dead?...really dead, or will the gods who protected him descend from heaven to "rectify" this dramatic scenario?

No, they won't. No one is going to bring him back to life.
With this unparalleled Odyssey, still fascinating after 3,000 years, Ulysses has fulfilled his destiny: his memory will be eternal.

He will be the pride of the Greek world and the chosen one of the gods, who are merciless with some men, but who sometimes love them enough for some to reach posterity.
Help yourself and heaven will help you.

Realizing his mistake, Telegonos takes his father's remains, along with Penelope and Telemachus, back to Circe.
According to other storytellers, Circé then makes Telegonos, Telemachus and Penelope immortal (which seems difficult for a nymph who herself is not immortal); Penelope marries Telegonos and Circé marries Telemachus...(!)
Apparently, these authors don't accept the Odyssey's dramatic ending, and move away from the painful myth of the Greek hero (in a Hellenic version of Harry Potter).

You can't beat fate.

8- Personal interpretation of this long story

If we take a more intimate look at the Odyssey, there's a lot more to the story than the Iliad, with its monumental buildings and fortresses assaulted by the clash of arms, the wooden horse imagined by Ulysses that ensures the Achaeans' victory, and the sacking of Troy and the blazing inferno that follows.

The Odyssey is also the seat of seduction, which proves to be a perfidious instrument of the nymphs, orchestrated by Poseidon.

She gives this Homeric tale a humanity that merges with the deity of Olympus, creating for centuries the most magnificent of adventure tales.
The story can be read differently depending on how you approach it, and everyone can find a meaning to it according to the hierarchy of their feelings.
Virtue, loyalty, duplicity, desire, morality, passion, courage, bravery, heroism..

Why did you write The Odyssey: the return of the hero?
This theme has been saturated since the dawn of writing by countless stories (of very uneven quality).
More than the physical return itself and its emotional corollary of reunion, it's the motivation for the return that's important to Homer:

Whatever the secret purpose of the nymphs in retaining Ulysses, or Penelope's desire to find her royal Ulysses at all costs, crowned with glory, these men, heroes though they may be, cannot live without these women.

Only death can stop them.

Like Hector, the model Trojan prince in love with Andromache, attentive father to their son Astyanax, an exemplary son and brother of great wisdom, often considered the true hero of the Iliad. He knows that Achilles, drunk with vengeance, will kill him and that he will never see Andromache again. He will die a hero's death, his body dragged by the victor's chariot beneath the walls of Troy, an unbearable ordeal for the woman who feared he would fight the Greek master of single combat.

For Ulysses, the hero who survives Poseidon's trials, even after ten years of Trojan swords and arrows, then another ten leaning over the rail with a greenish complexion, or tied to the mast so as not to give in to the Sirens' song on a raging sea full of deadly bugs, he must go and join the woman without whom he can only exist, without living.
Whatever the cost.

If you'd like to try your hand at this heroic "model", which is beyond the reach of the average person, you'll need to combine the following ingredients:

- To be a true mythical hero, returning home victorious from a 10-year war on stormy seas.
- To be the spouse of a hyper-faithful queen, stuck for 20 years on an island weaving carpets without giving in to a horde of suitors.
- Know a goddess (not the car) who's very much in love with you, and who will almost die of grief (she's immortal) when you abandon her after 7 years together, along with several of your children.
- Having in your relationship another delinquent nymph who poisons all that is masculine, seeking to enslave men, who is nevertheless an expert in desire, making sure that she will only give it to the lucky one of course...without turning him into a pig on a bored evening,
- Gouge out the eye of a cannibal Cyclops who eats your mates, using a tree trunk and escaping clinging to the bellies of unwashed sheep, taking in their fine scent so that the blind giant doesn't smell you and eat you too,
- Find a god from Olympus at the bottom of the ocean, Poseidon the Cyclops' father, who will vent his wrath on you because of this, imagining a thousand torments for your exclusive attention for 10 years.
...etc.

At the end of his epic, is Ulysses still a mere mortal?
By dominating Circe with his "half-breed (in ancient Greek " μῆτις" , cunning intelligence, a term that has no dedicated word in our language), Ulysses saved his crews.

Circe could turn men into docile wolves, subdued lions or (less fashionably) pigs. The symbolism of the animal chosen had a meaning.
The position of women in antiquity, confined in a man's world where they were legally only minors (including in the century of Pericles - the great Greece) perhaps deserved a lesson in modesty.
Ulysses recovered for a long time from the emotions caused by his ordeals, replacing them with other, non-lethal ones.
Thanks to Circe, who gave him prudent advice, showed him the roads to follow and restored his crew to human form, he was able to continue his quest.
And satisfy the will of his patron gods by assuming his destiny, by offering himself up, as it were.

Had Circe succumbed to her own desire, skilfully used until then to enslave men, what did she want to do with Ulysses?
- Hold him back to satisfy Poseidon's curse against the heroic king.
- Hold him back simply to keep him.
- Show him the way back to help him find his queen and son.
- Show him the way back, so that in Ithaca he can meet their son Telegonos, whom he didn't know (one of Odysseus and Circe's children).
This marks the tragic end of the epic, of the "cycle".

Telegonos is said to have taken Ulysses' body back to Circe.
In other words, a hundred kilometers south of Rome, at the foot of the "Monte Circeoa limestone massif bathed by the Tyrrhenian Sea which, in ancient times the island of Eea.
Monte Circeo has since been attached to the mainland by the draining of the marshes. Even today, when viewed from the sea, it has the appearance of an island.

Perhaps Ulysses never returned to Greece.

The notion of "Greece" didn't exist in those days. Only the "Aegean world", augmented by conquests in the western Mediterranean, was vast and plural, the shifting domain of the so-called "Mycenaean" kings.
That Ulysses should return forever to Circe would come as no surprise.
Circe, don't you have a clue?
You who, by giving him a son, led him to his destiny and offered him his final resting place.

More details.

For them to change history, only the tomb of the hero king will put an end to the"Trojan Cycle".
The man has become a myth, while his gods have long since lost all their believers.
Like Poseidon, who martyred Ulysses and today has nothing left but his hair on the seabed, brittle and torn off by anchors or asphyxiated by modern poisons (Circe should appreciate), the posidonia ("poseidônios").

This Odyssey is not just another adventure.
It's been going on for thirty-two centuries, and it's still not over.
Without Ulysses' body, the end of the epic has yet to be written.
Let's find it.

So that the aedes can finally tell the story of this impossible union between a hero-king and a nymph magician who, no longer having to obey Poseidon, finally found a way to keep this mortal close to her.

For ever and ever.

...that's a lot of seasons on Netflix.

Phil