Seoul Hero

Book 12 in “Homer’s” Odyssey occupies a pivotal place within the work, the twelfth of twenty-four books; it is also the last story that Odysseus relates before his return to Ithaca. In many literary works in the ancient world, it is the middle of the work that carries the most profound meaning. That may be true here (I can’t judge with certainty until I’ve read the rest). Book 12 has also been given added importance within the larger work by the prologue that begins Book 1, where it is explicitly stated that Odysseus’ men, being “reckless” and “blind fools” “devoured” the cattle of the Sun; the penalty for this, as the prologue states, was death to all but their captain. As we will see, the prologue is at odds with the actual story in Book 12, which suggests the same author was not responsible for both passages.

Basically, the book describes how Odysseus captains his boat and men from the realm of the dead, through a dangerous strait, avoiding Charybdis and skirting Scylla, and so comes to an island on which the sun-god, Helios, owns cattle. These cattle do not die, nor do they reproduce. Odysseus, warned by the ghost of the seer, Tiresias, and by Circe, instructs his men not to eat the cattle of the sun-god, which if they eat, they shall die. His men obey him, and that is when the trouble begins. A strong South Wind suddenly appears, blowing a gale of wind at them, keeping them pinned against the island and unable to move on. Initially, the men obey Odysseus, staying on the ship, and eating the rations that Circe had given them. After those rations run out, the South Wind still blowing, Odysseus lands on the island to pray to the gods. The gods send sleep on him, and at that point the men determine to slaughter the cattle of the sun-god, their ringleader, Eurylochus, arguing that if the gods show no mercy, it is better to die suddenly at their hands than to die slowly of starvation. Odysseus, having awakened, exclaims to the gods his dismay. (This is the second of two interesting parallels from the Pentateuch in this book: the first, an injunction not to eat divine food, I alluded to above. This particular episode reminds me of what the Israelites do when Moses and Joshua are up on the mountain receiving the Torah.) Helios’s daughter hears Odysseus, and then goes off to tell the gods. Helios blackmails Zeus into taking action, and all of Odysseus’ men drown when the “god whose shield is thunder” strikes the boat with lightning. Odysseus manages to pilot the boat through the whirlpool of Charybdis and ends out at the home of Calypso.

When compared to the introduction, which describes Odysseus’ men as impious fools, this book implicitly portrays them as victims of the gods, and even as let down by Odysseus. The entire journey past Scylla and Charybdis is a journey to nowhere, and Odysseus returns by the same route by which he had came. The journey seems entirely unnecessary. Why did he take his men there? Furthermore, the men are obviously the victims of the gods when the South Wind, which had not interfered with that stage of their journey, suddenly kept them pinned against the island until their food supply ran out. The situation was exacerbated by the gods themselves, who put Odysseus to sleep just before the fatal decision, and by Odysseus, too, whose cries alerted Helios’s daughter to the slaughtering of the cattle. (Presumably, Helios would have noticed sooner or later, however.) Odysseus, too, realizes that “some power was brewing trouble for us.”

In reading this book, I couldn’t help feeling very much at home with the thematic treatment of mankind’s presence in a dangerous universe. Euripides’ Heracles, and even The Iliad treat the same issue at length. In terms of survival and prosperity, it all comes down to something like luck, something like fate, and the disposition to endure: Odysseus is little better than his men, but he is beloved by Athena and fated to return home, whereas his men are not; Odysseus keeps going on–as a recurring refrain notes at several fatal points–saddened by the death of his men, thankful to have escaped the same fate. As a tale of life and providence of interest to average people, there are few better.