'Myth Clash'; Comparisons of Characters in Odysseus and Heroides

'Myth Clash' Assignment 1

Introduction

The present paper is an attempt to provide a comparison of the portraits of the main characters ‘Odysseus’ and his wife ‘Penelope’ by the two famous literary figures, Homer and Ovid, in their famous works Odysseus and Heroides 1 respectively. The study highlights their similarities as well as contrasts their differences.

Context

The Ovid’s Heroides is a collection of the verse letters between the heroines and their lovers from the classical stories. Heroides 1 is the letter from the Penelope written to her husband Odysseus, who was away from her for twenty years in the Trojan War. The work particularly shares the perception of Penelope on the eve when Odysseus returns. The letter has a special significance as it effectively captures the epistolary style markers demonstrating imitatio and aemulatio occurring at a natural point of time making it connect to the audience. The Homer’s classic Odyssey on the other hand is a chronicle of the adventures of the Odysseus.

Analysis

The urge and the longing for the return of the Odysseus is the theme that underlines the characterization in the works of both Homer’s and Ovid and therefore the two works bear striking similarity about the use of language as well as the principal premise.

The Homer’s Odysseus depicts the defining leadership features of strength, bravery, graciousness, grandeur, confidence in his authority as well as an unquenched thirst for glory or kleos. He had a marked intellectual ability and his sharp thinking helped him in some difficult facets of his life for example when he makes an escape from the Cyclops cave in Book 9(Book IX:152-192)

“So all day long till the sun set we sat and feasted on copious meat and mellow wine, since each of the crews had drawn off a large supply in jars when we took the Cicones’ sacred citadel, and some of the red was left. Looking across to the land of the neighboring Cyclopes, we could see smoke and hear their voices, and the sound of their sheep and goats. Sun set and darkness fell, and we settled to our rest on the shore.

As soon as rosy-fingered Dawn appeared, I gathered my men together, saying: “The rest of you loyal friends stay here, while I and my crew take ship and try and find out who these men are, whether they are cruel, savage and lawless, or good to strangers, and in their hearts fear the gods.

With this I went aboard and ordered my crew to follow and loose the cables. They boarded swiftly and took their place on the benches then sitting in their rows struck the grey water with their oars. When we had reached the nearby shore, we saw a deep cave overhung with laurels at the cliff’s edge close to the sea. Large herds of sheep and goats were penned there at night and round it was a raised yard walled by deep-set stones, tall pines and high-crowned oaks. There a giant spent the night, one that grazed his herds far off, alone, and keeping clear of others, lived in lawless solitude. He was born a monster and a wonder, not like any ordinary human, but like some wooded peak of the high mountains, that stands there isolated to our gaze.”

or when he slaughters the suitors (Book XXIV: 196-201)

“So the great soldier took his bow and bent it for the bowstring effortlessly. He drilled the axeheads clean, sprang, and decanted arrows on the door sill, glared, and drew again. This time he killed Antinous.”

He is projected as an articulate speaker who can easily convince and win the trust of his audience as depicted in his address to Nausicaa on the island of Scheria.

The characterization of Penelope in Homer’s Odyssey is that of a strong and clever woman. In spite of the fact that she had not seen her husband for twenty years and she was under pressure of the several suitors to remarry, her love for Odysseus is unyielding and she does not lose faith in her husband. Her astute delaying tactics to put off the suitors reveal her sly and artful side. Her decision to marry the winner of the archery contest is based on her awareness that only Odysseus is only capable of doing so.

Both the works present Penelope as a loyal woman.

“wept as he held his lovely wife, whose thoughts were virtuous … and she could not let him go from the embrace of her white arms” (Book 23: 231-240).

All we hear later is that they "gladly went together to bed, and their old ritual” (Book 23: 296)

“She set up a great loom in her palace, and set to weaving a web of threads long and fine. Then she said to us: "Young men, my suitors now that the great Odysseus has perished, wait, though you are eager to marry me, until I finish this web, so that my weaving will not be useless and wasted. This is a shroud for the hero Laertes, for when the destructive doom of death which lays men low shall take him, lest any Achaian woman in this neighborhood hold it against me that a man of many conquests lies with no sheet to wind him." So she spoke, and the proud heart in us was persuaded. Thereafter in the daytime she would weave at her great loom, but in the night she would have torches set by, and undo it. So for three years she was secret in her design, […]”. (Book 2: 93-106)

“Iste quod est, ego saepe fui: sed fors et in hora hoc ipso eiecto carior alter erit.

Penelope poterat bis denos salva per annos vivere, tam multis femina digna procis; coniugium falsa poterat differre Minerva, nocturno solvens texta diurno dolo; visuram et quamvis numquam speraret Ulixem, illum exspectando facta remansit anus.

Nec non exanimen amplectens Briseis Achillem candida vesana verberat ora manu; et dominum lavit maerens captiva cruentum appositum flavis in Simoente vadis, foedavitque comas, et tanti corpus Achilli maximaque in parva sustulit ossa manu; cui tum nec Peleus aderat nec caerula mater, Scyria nec viduo Deidamia toro.

Tunc igitur, verus gaudebat Graecia nuptis, tunc etiam caedes inter et arma pudor.”(Heroides1:1)

Hoc genus infidum nuptarum, hic nulla puella nec fida Evadne nec pia Penelope.”(Heroides 1: 23)

Translation: What that one is, I often have been: but perhaps in time after, this one will have been removed and another will be more dear.Penelope was able to live pure through twice ten years, such a woman worthy of many suitors; the false weaving was able to postpone a marriage, loosening the woven cloth of the day in nocturnal trick; and although she never hoped that she would see Odysseus, she remained, having become an old woman by waiting.Nor did Briseis, clinging to lifeless Achilles, not beat her white cheeck [with] impassioned hand; and the grieving captive washed the bleeding master positioned in the golden shoals by Simois, and she darkened her hair and she lifted the body of great Achilles and the very large bones in her small hand; who then Peleus had not aided nor his mother of the blue sea, nor Deidamia, on a destitute bed in Scyros. Then, in short, Greece rejoiced [in] honorable wives, then also propriety [lived] amongst bloodshed and arms. (Source: http://www.stanford.edu/~plomio/penelope.html)

The Odyssey projects Penelope as steadfast but having little control and authority in her world. It is evident from the fact that as she is put to sleep repeatedly by Athena and her only actions constitute to stall the suitors, wait for the homecoming of her husband and also soon as her son grows enough to look after she readily transfers the control of the household to him and starts spending her days longing for her husband sleeping and crying paying least attention to the happenings around her.

“always with her the wretched nights and days also waste her away with her weeping" (Book16: 38-9); she ‘grieve[s]’ and ‘tremble[s]’ when Telemachos leaves on his vision quest (Book 4: 819); she's suffered "sorrows beyond all other who were born" (Book 4: 722). She even wishes for death: "How I wish chaste Artemis would give me a death so soft, and now, so I would not go on in my heart grieving all my life, and longing for love of a husband excellent in every virtue” (Book 18: 202-204).

In contrast to this portrayal the Ovid’s characterization presents Penelope as an angry woman protesting the long absence of her husband, honest in her yearning to meet him again to express her pain but also nurturing little fears about his well-being. In the following quotation she expresses to her husband that she is unaware of his where about whether he is alive or not but she will always be faithful to him.

“Me pater Icarius viduo discedere lecto cogit et immensas increpat usque moras. Increpet usque licet - tua sum, tua dicar oportet; Penelope coniunx semper Ulixis ero. Ille tamen pietate mea precibusque pudicis frangitur et vires temperat ipse suas.

Dulichii Samiique et quos tulit alta Zacynthos turba ruunt in me luxuriosa proci, inque tua regnant nullis prohibentibus aula; viscera nostra, tuae dilacerantur opes. Quid tibi Pisandrum Polybumque Medontaque dirum Eurymachique avidas Antinoique manus atque alios referam, quos omnis turpitor absens ipse tuo partis sanguine rebus alis?

Irus egens pecorisque Melanthius actor edendi ultimus accedunt in tua damna pudor.”(Heroides 1:81)

Translation: My father Icarius compels me to leave my widowed couch and he continuously protests my unending delay. It is permitted that he scold [me] - I am yours, it is proper that I be said yours; Penelope, wife of Odysseus, I will always be. Nevertheless that one [Icarius] is disheartened by my piety and my chaste prayers and he himself tempers his own demands

(Source: http://www.stanford.edu/~plomio/penelope.html)

Those of Dulichium and Samos and those whom lofty Zacynthus bore, an extravagant mob of nobles presses on me, and in your own palace they play the part of king with none prohibiting; our body and your wealth are being torn [from you]. Why report to you of Pisander, and of Polybus, and of dreadful Medon, and the greedy hands of Eurymachus and Antinous, and of others, you yourself being disgracefully absent are sharing other things with all of them by means of your own blood?

Needy Irus and Melanthius, driver of the eating of the flock, are the ultimate disgrace against your ruination.

This version of Penelope in contrast to the version of Homer and it is much in command of her household activities. It is evident from the demonstrations about her standing up before her father or the act of asking her son to probe about his father as well as her interrogations with the travelers to know about her lost husband. Here she acts proactively to find about Odysseus and attempts to contact him herself rather waiting helplessly like a bystander for him to come as in Homer’s work.

Conclusion

The Heroides by Ovid presents Penelope in satirical tone rather than that of the traditional portrayal by Homer.The Ovid’s description of the Penelope's character particularly is contrasting to one derived from reading the Odyssey in all her actions and concerns.Ovid’s Penelope is clever and practical than Homerian emotional and bitter Penelope. The characterization of Odysseus is not that different across the two works except that the Odyssey by Homer discusses his adventures in detail while the Ovid’s work provides the caricature of the same from the perspective of Penelope.

References

<http://escholarship.org/uc/item/18j8344n.pdf.>

<http://www.academia.edu/1427778/Penelope_Homeric_Fantasy_or_an_Example_of_Greek_Womanhood>

<http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Greek/Odyssey10.htm>

<www.bartleby.com › Fiction › Harvard Classics › Homer › The Odyssey‎>