The Odyssey

“Tell me about a complicated man,

Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost

when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy,

and where he went, and who he met, the pain

he suffered on the sea, and how he worked

to save his life and bring his men back home.

He failed, and for their own mistakes they died.

They ate the Sun God’s castle, and the god

kept them from home. Now goddess, child of Zeus,

tell the old story for our modern times.

Find the beginning.” 

Archaic epics typically begin, as the Odyssey does, with an invocation of the Muse. The Muses were daughters of Zeus and minor goddesses of various art forms. The poet is asking the Muse to serve as an intermediary between the gods and himself, essentially elevating his poem to a sacred text that comes from the gods themselves. The invocation summarizes the poem’s main events, indicating that the poet’s purpose was not to surprise audiences with a new story but to entertain and enlighten them through his skill telling a familiar story.

“Go blame your precious mother! She is cunning.

It is the third year, soon it will be four,

that she has cheated us of what we want.

She offers hope to all, sends signs to each,

But all the while her mind moves somewhere else.

[...]

Athena blessed her with intelligence,

great artistry and skill, a finer mind

than anyone has ever had before,

even the braided girls of Ancient Greece,

Tyro, Alcmene, garlanded Mycene—

none of them had Penelope’s understanding.” 

The speaker in this passage is Antinous, who complains that Penelope has been leading the suitors on, simultaneously promising but withholding. Athena’s blessing marks Penelope as an exceptional woman. A crossover goddess, Athena is a frequent patron of heroes (almost always male) and goddess of domains specific to both men (e.g., strategic warfare) and women (e.g., weaving). Her special attention to both Odysseus and Penelope is unusual within the body of ancient Greek myths, which Antinous alludes to here. Alcmene, for example, was Zeus’s lover and Heracles’s mother, yet even she did not possess Penelope’s exceptional skills.