Name Magic in the "Odyssey"Author(s): Norman AustinSource: California Studies in Classical Antiquity, Vol. 5 (1972), pp. 1-19Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25010630 .Accessed: 18/09/2014 15:12

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NORMAN AUSTIN

Name Magic in the Odyssey For Anne and Adam Parry: In Memoriam

Phemios Terpiades, Aiolos, Arete, Kalypso, Melanthios, and Melantho-the names are but a few from the roster of what W. B. Stanford calls "Significant Names" in the Odyssey.1 A name like

Astyanax in the Iliad only calls attention to the rarity of paronomasia in the Iliad compared to the abundance in the Odyssey. The Odyssey has even such persons as Noemon son of Phronis, Intelligence son of Mind,

who comes into existence just after Athena has thrice called Telemachos

ovt' avoijwov (2.270, 278), and the suitors ov rt vocjgoves (2.282). From her conversation with Telemachos she proceeds directly to Noemon to obtain from him the ship which the suitors had refused. Noemon is

barely more than an epithet hypostasized for the nonce, as foil perhaps to the suitor Antinoos.

The frequency of Significant Names in the poem may help call attention to the most Significant Name, that of Odysseus himself. The significance of other names is generally obvious, and it is left to the audience to make explicit connections. The name of Odysseus, however, is the subject of the most conspicuous paranomasia in the poem. On four

1 See Odyssey, ed. W. B. Stanford, 2nd ed., I, (New York 1959) xxi-xxii, and his Ambiguity in Greek Literature (Oxford 1939), ch. VII. For brief discussions of the phe nomenon in the Odyssey see also Gisela Strasburger, Die keine Kdmpfer in der Ilias (Frankfurt 1954) 117, and Klaus Riiter, Odysseebterpretatinen (Gttingen 1969) 125. The Odyssey differs from the Iliad sharply in the frequency and variety of etymologizing and paronomasia; see L. Ph. Rank, Etmoogiseering en verwante Verscijnselen bij Homerus (Utrecht 1951). Lexical and

phonetic play (of which Significant Names are but one example) is an important part of the

Odyssey, but that is too large a topic to treat here.

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2 Norman Austin

occasions the verb ody(ss)omai is used of the hostility of the gods towards

Odysseus, once of Zeus, twice of Poseidon, and once of Zeus and Helios.2 To dispel notions of a merely fortuitous resemblance between name and verb, the poem makes the connection explicit in the digres sion on the scar where the verb occurs for the fifth time. There Autoly kos, asked to name his grandson, decides that since he has spent his life

odyssamenos many men and women, the apt name should be Odysseus "therefore let his eponym be Odysseus."3

Since antiquity the name of Odysseus has been the subject of philological controversy. It is probably of non-Greek origin and bears, therefore, no etymological connection with the verb odyomai, though the verb itself is a word of controversial meaning.4 Still the pun is there, whether by Orphic or diaskeuastic interpolation.5 It is a pun four times

foreshadowed, and cast finally in a crucial scene as the summation of the hero's identity. Homer insists on the pun, and our only doubt is

whether to translate the name in the passive or active sense, Odysseus the man who suffers pain or inflicts pain, the Hated or the Hater.

Modern critics, reading the name as emblematic of the active trickery 2 Zeus's alleged hostility towards Odysseus, 1.62; Poseidon's hostility,

5.340, 423; Zeus's and Helios's hostility, 19.275. 3 Ody. 19.407-409. The meaning of eponymon has given rise to some discus

sion. See M. Sulzberger, "ONOMA EffQNYMON," REG 39 (1926) 421-422, who argues that in Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns the word is descriptive of the possessor, that in Homer onoma eponymon "est le terme consacre pour designer le nom determine par la patronymie."

Arete is also an onoma eponymon (7.54), but there is no suggestion that it refers to anything but her character-"she who is prayed to," as Stanford translates in his edition.

4 The orthography of the name shows wide variation. See E. Wist, s.v.

"Odysseus," P.-W. Bd. 17 (1937), cols. 1906-1908, for dialectical variations and the etymolo gies proposed by earlier scholars. For the etymology see also Paul Kretschmer, Einleitung in die Geschichte dergriechischen Sprache (G6ttingen 1896) 280-282; G. M. Boiling, " The Etymology of O4Y727EYE," AJP 27 (1906) 65-67; W. B. Stanford, "The Homeric Etymology of

Odysseus," CP 47 (1952) 208-213; Rank (supra n. 1) 53ff. The etymology of Odysseus was a

subject of fascination in antiquity, and led to such ingenious hypotheses as the story that

Odysseus was born when his mother slipped during a rainstorm, and he received his name TELW Kara TC v o8ov aev Ze5S. K. Mar6t, "Odysseus-Ulixes," Acta Antiqua 8 (1960) 1-6,

argues that the Autolykos episode in the Odyssey is "ein heroisch zurechtgelegtes Erzahlungs zauberlied," in which the original pun was on ovAl / OvAvoaevs, proving that neither fascination nor ingenuity has abated.

s E. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums (Stuttgart 1893) II, p. 744, argues that the play at 1.62 on Odysseus / odyomai, and at 19.564ff on elephantos / elephairontai is charac teristic of Orphic etymologies. A glance at Rank, pp. 54ff will show that every instance where the verb odyomai occurs in the Odyssey has been athetized as the work of rhapsodes or diaskeu asts. But etymologies are so much part of the poem (as, for example, in Kalypso and the several occurrences of (amphi)kalypto used in reference to Odysseus, that their removal would require major surgery.

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Name Magic in the Odyssey 3 in Autolykos's nature, or seeing in it an anticipation of Odysseus's vengeance on the suitors, have preferred the active sense. Stanford, however, argues for a return to the passive sense, which was the common

interpretation of antiquity: Odysseus "the man doomed to odium." 6

Certainly Odysseus is both the recipient and the inflicter of pain, and

perhaps no better translation can be found than Dimock's, who suggests "Trouble" as the English equivalent for the name, a word which is

pregnant with both active and passive meanings.7 In Homer, as L. Ph. Rank reminds us, KaAE Za& is a

synonym for Etvac.8 The name is the man in the Odyssey, as the digres sion on the scar is meant to reveal. The identity of name and person thus endows the name with extraordinary potency, a potency felt in the varieties of name tabu which modern anthropology has been able to document. Claude Ldvi-Strauss tells a story of how he obtained the names of a band of Nabikwara Indians who would not repeat their names for him. One day a child, struck by another child, retaliated by telling Levi-Strauss the other child's name, whereupon the second child retaliated in reciprocal fashion by telling the first child's name. It was not difficult to gather thereafter the names of all the children, and

eventually of the adults, until the children's indiscretion was discovered

by the parents and silence enforced. For LUvi-Strauss had found a simple key to the secret; the utterance of another person's name was an act of overt hostility.9

We need not look to anthropology when the Polyphemos episode stands as paradigm in the Odyssey. When first asked by the

6 See his "Etymology" (supra n. 4). Rank, pp. 56-57, understands the name to anticipate Odysseus's vengeance on the suitors. E. Meyer, "Der Ursprung des

Odysseusmythus," Hermes 30 (1895) 267, argues that Odysseus can mean only "der Ziir nende," and interprets it as originally the "Beiname" of Poseidon, later transferred to the

mortal hero. 7 G. E. Dimock, Jr., "The Name of Odysseus," Hudson Review 9 (1956)

52-70, interprets the name as subjective and objective, though he would dismiss the idea of wrath or hatred implicit in the name and verb and connects odyssasthai with odyne instead:

Odysseus as the man who inflicts and suffers pain. Dimock writes cogently on Autolykos's naming of Odysseus, and on Odysseus's bipolar movement between Odysseus and Outis.

My attempt is to add to his argument by demonstrating that it is not only Odysseus himself but his friends too who recognize, and sustain, the bipolarity in his character.

8 Rank, p. 25, cites such examples as II. 4.60-61 and Ody. 6.244 for this

equation. 9 See his Tristes Tropiques, tr. J. Russell (New York 1963) 270. Cf. also the

California Indian Ishi who would never utter for anyone the name which had been given to

him; see Theodora Kroeber, Ishi in Two Worlds (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1961).

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4 Norman Austin Kyklops Odysseus will not divulge his name, but substitutes instead a name which is no name. After his escape from the Kyklops's cave

Odysseus hurls his taunt (9.502-505): "If anyone should ask who blinded you, say it was Odysseus sacker of cities, son of Laertes, who has his home in Ithaka." Polyphemos then invokes a curse on that same " Odysseus sacker of cities, son of Laertes, who has his home in Ithaka," identifying him with those very epithets in which Odysseus had exulted, and Poseidon fulfills the curse exactly according to Polyphemos's terms:

Odysseus returns home only after many years, his ship wrecked and all his comrades lost at sea. Odysseus's boast and its consequences are a clear moral on the disasters contingent on the indiscriminate utterance of a name.10

Odysseus repeats the pattern of withholding his name elsewhere. Among the Phaiakians, where his tactic is evasion rather than

pseudonym, he carries caution almost to the point of incivility. When Alkinoos tactfully angles for Odysseus's name by suggesting that the

stranger may be a god (but a strange god), Odysseus parries the hint by assuring his hosts that he is a mere mortal (7.208ff). Later, when the other guests have departed, Arete asks him directly "Who are you?" but he parries her question too by giving the story of his stay on

Kalypso's island, his arrival at Scherie,-and Nausikaa's kindness at the river (7.241ff). Alkinoos falls into a quibble on the propriety of Nausi kaa's behavior in abandoning the stranger outside the palace, and it goes unnoticed that Odysseus has answered Arete's question by giving only circumstantial information about himself.1 The next morning Alkinoos tries another tack: "this guest-I do not know who he is-" (8.28), but

again without success. In the evening when Odysseus begins to weep at the song which he himself had requested of Demodokos, Alkinoos halts

10 Calvin S. Brown, " Odysseus and Polyphemus: The Name and the Curse," Comp Lit 18 (1966) 193-202, discusses how Odysseus, by revealing his name, makes it possible for Polyphemos to lay a curse on him, and emphasizes the importance of Polyphemos's exact

repetition of Odysseus's name, patronymic and homeland for uttering an efficacious curse. As illustration of the magic power of a name he cites Penelope's thrice repeated phrase KKotAov cvotcarrnv (19.260, 597; 23.18), in which the name which is virtually tabu is altered to Kakoilion.

11 Arete's behavior in overlooking Odysseus's failure to answer her first

question has vexed some critics; for the "Arete-Frage," see Siegfried Besslich, Schweigen Verschweigen-Ubergehen (Heidelberg 1966) 60-69. More important is Wilhelm Mattes'

Odysseus bei den Phaaken (Wurzburg 1958). Mattes argues that the Phaiakian episode portrays the awakening of Odysseus to a consciousness of himself, and that in this connection the

concealing and revealing of the name plays an important part.

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Name Magic in the Odyssey 5

the song and demands to know the stranger's identity. Only then

Odysseus reveals his name (9.19-20): " I am Odysseus, son of Laertes, a concern to men for my craft, and my fame reaches heaven."

It requires four attempts of varying importunity at

eliciting his name; more than that, it requires a test of his prowess among the young bloods of the realm, then tests of the sincerity of his hosts' hospitality, and finally, the knowledge that Odysseus is an honored name in the bardic repertory at court, to give the man sufficient confidence to shed his anonymity and to reveal himself as the man whom Demodokos had honored in song, the myth in person.

Odysseus had learned well his lesson; he reveals his name now only to assured friends. At Ithaka Odysseus practises the same caution, but

with a different ruse. He hides behind a pseudonym once again while he tests his Ithakan hosts' sincerity, and becomes Odysseus publicly only after he has proved himself Odysseus in action.

A man who is always suspicious of possible treachery, who provokes the hostility of gods and men, and is absent from his home for twenty years has good reason to shield his identity. But

Odysseus is blessed with friends who respect the name tabus as much as he. Those closest to him treat his name as a treasure which must be shielded from vulgar display, protecting the man by repressing the name. Penelope and Telemachos are sparing in their use of the name

Odysseus, preferring instead formulaic expressions denoting his rela

tionship to them as husband or father. That in itself is perfectly normal. What is unconventional is the periphrasis with which Penelope twice

refers to her husband (4,724ff, 814ff):

rToaUw SeCAov . . v. otoAEovTa, rXavTotfs aperrjQ K?EKCPLEVOV ev IaJNXoLUo,

EaOAov, TOV KAEOS- Evpv) KaO' 'EMAASa Kal tea ov apyos.

"My good husband, lionhearted, practiced in all forms of arete among the Danaans, a good man, whose glory goes through wide Hellas and into the heart ofArgos": that is not the formula of everyday conjugality but a definition by significant attributes of the man whom she declines to name. The man whose name is known, that is Penelope's formula for

Odysseus. Penelope's formula in itself might seem no more than an

exaggerated honorific permissible in the Homeric aristocracy except

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6 Norman Austin

that it is without parallels in characters' utterances in the Iliad. There

characters, in describing another person, may substitute for the name a short formula expressing esteem, or their relationship as friend or kin. But the women of the Iliad, Andromache, Hekabe, Helen, Briseis, Kassandra, show no hesitation in using the names Hektor, Paris or Patroklos, nor do they use elaborate periphrases. Terms of affection or honorifics are alternatives rather than evasions, interchangeable with the name.

Penelope's formula is deliberate circumambulation around the name. She uses it in one speech where the evasive tactic is unmis takable. In Book 4, when Athena appears to comfort her in the disguise of her sister Iphthime, Penelope talks first of her husband, using her formulaic periphrasis, then of her son whom she also will not name, identifying him first as 7rasS and then referring to him only by pro nouns–rov (vv. 819, 820), o (v. 821), avTri (v. 822). After Athena's assurances of her son's safety Penelope reverts back to her husband, to

whom she still refers only obliquely (vv. 831-834): " If indeed you are a

god and come at the bidding of a goddess, tell me then of that other unfortunate man, whether he still lives and sees the light of the sun, or is

already dead and in the house of Hades." Throughout her speech she leaves both Telemachos and Odysseus unnamed, in spite of the knowl

edge that she is addressing a benevolent deity. If Penelope's formula for her husband is without parallel,

her evasion of Odysseus's name is part of a pattern which several other characters share. Telemachos gives an even more pronounced example of evasion at the beginning of the poem. When Athena appears at the

palace in Ithaka as a stranger, Telemachos receives her and in embar rassment at the too obvious disorder begins to explain his circumstances. In the space of twenty lines he mentions his father six times, but never

by name. It is avepos first, and only pronouns thereafter-KE-vOV, o, roV, KELvos (1.158-177). Athena then identifies herself as Mentes, an old

family friend, and their colloquy continues. Although any suspicions about the stranger should now be dissipated, Telemachos remains reticent. Athena remarks on the similarity between father and son, and

Telemachos in his reply mentions his father thrice, but always only by pronoun (w. 214-220). Athena asks further questions and Telemachos

replies again, talking exclusively of his father for another thirteen lines, but still no name (w. 231-244). Odysseus is KEtvoS avrjp (v. 233), KElVOV (v. 235, 243), ol (v. 239), Ltv (v. 241). Throughout their whole conversation in which Odysseus has been the principal topic, Tele

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Name Magic in the Odyssey 7 machos has studiously avoided naming his father. We may contrast his

speech with Athena's in the same conversation. She asserts her long standing friendship, recalls Odysseus's exploits as proof of her acquain tance, and compliments Telemachos on being the son of such a father. She mentions Odysseus by name seven times, always in a laudatory

manner, but encomia and shared confidences cannot elicit from Tele machos the name of the man on whom he had been brooding at the moment of Athena's arrival in the palace.12

Such is our introduction to Odysseus in the human world: the unnamed object of Telemachos's thoughts. In Book 5 the pattern is

repeated. Odysseus is again the unnamed man. Hermes visits Kalypso, and in response to her question as to the reason for his unusual visit

replies (5.105-115), "Zeus says that the most woeful man (&vSpa odivpd0raov) of all who fought at Troy is staying here. Him he commands you to send on his way with all speed, since it is not his fate to die apart from his dear friends, but rather to return home and see them again." Kalypso bursts into an angry denunciation of the vindic tiveness on Olympos and then alludes to her specific case. She refers to the mortal who is with her (Pporov Svpa, v. 129), and continues to refer to him thereafter by pronouns (vv. 138-144): "Him I saved when for him Zeus struck the ship…. Him wave and wind drove hither…. Him I loved and cared for. He may go then, if him Zeus commands, but be sure that I shall not send him away. I have no ship or crew to convey him over the sea, but to him I shall give my support that he may reach his homeland unharmed." In sixteen lines she uses the noun andra once, and

pronouns eight times, but Odysseus's name never. Hermes' delicate mission is entirely negotiated without either Hermes or Kalypso once

resorting to Odysseus's name. Hermes' mission is an unpleasant one, as he himself admits

in ironic fashion when he tells Kalypso that it was a long journey, which no one would voluntarily make, unrelieved as it was by any refreshment from sacrifices ascending from human cities en route (vv. 99-102).

Hermes conducts himself with as much tact as the circumstances permit. To name Odysseus would be an unnecessary harshness; more delicate to talk of that wretched mortal whom Zeus pities and wishes reunited

with his family. But if Hermes' obliquity springs from the tact appro priate to his mission and to his person as the divine messenger, Kalypso's

12 At 1.114ff Athena finds Telemachos seated among the suitors o'ao'oevos

rraer'p' aSev f vi e bipcatv.

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8 Norman Austin

reticence is not of the same order. She must acquiesce in Zeus's com

mand, but in acquiescing she relinquishes the man whom, as she says, she saved and protected. Even now, when protection is superfluous, she continues her gesture of protection by avoiding Odysseus's name, ineffectual though the gesture be. To the end she is Kalypso, the

Concealer.

Kalypso is but one in a series of concealers. Telemachos had already concealed Odysseus in the same way, as had Penelope, and Eumaios will later repeat the pattern which they had established. His is an unequivocal evasion, for he not only makes the same gesture as the others but defends it, thus providing the best argument that the prior examples were by deliberate intent. When Odysseus arrives at Eumaios's hut Eumaios welcomes him and begins to talk of his master in an

oblique way. He dilates at some length on the virtues of the good man who had given him possessions-a home, property, and a wife-but who had gone to his death in the war for Helen. He rails at the profli gacy of the suitors who must have received some rumor of the death of that good man and therefore devour his property with no thought of retribution. He then catalogues his master's holdings in sheep, pigs, and

goats. Through two speeches, extending over some fifty lines, his talk is

principally of Odysseus, but never a mention of his name (14.56-71; 80-108). The stranger, struck by the slave's laudatory effusion, asks the name of his wealthy and kindly master. Eumaios replies with another

lengthy speech, now warning Odysseus against attempting to persuade his master's wife with a fabricated tale, for certainly the man is dead, his

body left as prey for dogs or birds or fishes. He then laments the man who was kinder than father and mother to him (w. 122-147). For

twenty-two lines he talks now exclusively of Odysseus; once he calls him lrFov avaK7ra; once Penelope's husband (jroa'v), but otherwise it is all pronouns: KEdvov (v. 122), Tov (133), Tov (v. 135), o (v. 137). His

syntax parallels that of Kalypso's speech, with sentence after sentence

beginning with the pronoun which by its very emphasis makes the omission of the name all the more obvious. "Him … of him … Him … So he … Not such another master." Finally after this extraordinary

evasion of Odysseus's direct question, he names his master (v. 144): "Longing seizes me for Odysseus who is absent."

It is a dramatic postponement of the name, but drama is not Eumaios's purpose. He concludes his speech with an explanation of his reluctance to name Odysseus (vv. 145-147): "Him I dread to name

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Name Magic in the Odyssey 9 even when he is not present. For he loved me exceedingly and cared for

me. Rather I call him Honorable (70et-ov) even in his absence."13 At such points psychology and magic intersect. Odysseus's name is a tan

gible reality which Eumaios goes to remarkable lengths to circumvent. Eumaios can know nothing of Polyphemos invoking Poseidon's attack on Odysseus, but he lives in a world where such curses are potent weapons. In his world malevolent powers can manipulate a mere word to destroy a man, even if the man were a thousand miles away. Eumaios's very syntax is an apotropaic gesture to ward off the kind of

catastrophe which Odysseus had invited by pronouncing his name to

Polyphemos.14 The proem of the Odyssey assumes a new significance.

Andra… polytropon is how the first line of the Odyssey identifies the

subject of the poem. Later epics imitated the Odyssey in postponing the

subject's name, as in the Aeneid, which begins arma virumque cano and does not name virum until v. 92. It is easy to see in the postponement a form of amplificatio used for dramatic emphasis, similar to the practice found in tragedy.15 A comparison with later literary imitations, however,

13 Since Eumaios stresses the moral rectitude of Odysseus, I would translate

I0etos as "honorable," or even "honest," as counter to any suggestion of deceptiveness which Autolykos had invested in the name Odysseus, rather than simply as an expression of

intimacy or familiarity. Stanford at 14.147 combines the notions of respect and familiarity to

interpret it as "lord and brother." 14 There is one approximate parallel in the Iliad to these evasions. At

II. 24.493-501 Priam postpones Hektor's name until the very end of a priamelic sentence which begins with Priam's fifty sons, narrows to the nineteen born of the same mother, and

finally to Hektor. The enormity of his task compels him to postpone his request for as long as

possible. Achilles in his reply seems virtually to ignore Priam's request. He makes a speech of some thirty lines (w. 517-551), and only at the conclusion alludes to Priam's son, though not

by name. He does not name Hektor until v. 561, as if the name were too terrible to utter. F. Dornseiff, Die archaische Mythenerzahlung (Berlin and Leipzig 1933) 22, notes that post ponement of the name, though rare in epic becomes more common in tragedy, but in choral

lyric rather than in dialogues. But the Agamemnon gives a striking example of name evasion.

Though Klytaimnestra resorts to many circumlocutions for her husband, including an ex

travagant array of metaphors, in her speech at w. 855-908, she does not name him until her

triumphant moment at v. 1404: ofiro'ds oayv ya/pzvwv she says only when he is a corpse. Postponement of a name in choral passages can heighten tension, as E. Fraenkel notes in his

Commentary (Oxford 1950) at Ag. 681, but when characters, whether in Homer or in tragedy, postpone or evade a name, it reflects their inability to pronounce that name. When Kly taimnestra says at Ag. 1498-9: ptqS' e'rnAexO.6 AyapQsfvovlav etval a' aAoxov, we understand why she will not name the man until he is dead.

15 Periphrasis, ancient rhetoricians observed, is a form of amplificatio. See H. Lausberg, Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik (Munich 1960) 590. Lausberg (? 598) cites the

beginning of the Odyssey as an example of periphrasis used for dramatic effect in proemia, but

merely cites examples without further discussion. Even the postponement of the name in the

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10 Norman Austin

obscures the singular style of the Odyssey. In the Iliad, which is where

comparison should begin, Achilles son of Peleus strides angrily into view in the very first line. The proem names him twice in ringcomposi tion (the wrath of Achilles son of Peleus … Agamemnon and godlike Achilles, vv. 1-7). The proem of the Odyssey never names Odysseus, but refers to him only as andra, and then makes him the subject of six verbs and two

participles (vv. 1-10). The tale begins at v. 11, but even then Odysseus is not named. It is not until v. 21 that the name first appears. If we ask

why the Odyssey should adopt this style of introduction instead of the Iliadic ringcomposition, the answer lies in the pattern which we have

already discussed. The Odyssey introduces Odysseus obliquely because that is the way in which sympathetic characters consistently introduce or talk about Odysseus: the andra of v. 1 is virtually a formulaic peri phrasis for Odysseus through the poem (cf. Telemachos at 1.161, 233; Kalypso at 5.129). The man who… he… him alone…for him…

godlike Odysseus, that structure sustained over the first twenty-one lines of the poem is exactly the structure of Telemachos's speech in Book 1, of Kalypso's speech in Book 5, and of Eumaios's speech in Book 14. The

proem aligns itself with those who treat the name of Odysseus with reverence.

If Odysseus is the man whom friends will not name, he is also the man whose name is everywhere known, respected and feared. It is enough for Penelope to identify her husband as the man known

through all Hellas. Kirke, baulked in her spells, recognizes her victor

(10.330-332): "Ah, you are Odysseus polytropos, who, as Hermes often

said, would come here on his way from Troy." Polyphemos too had reasons to fear a man named Odysseus. When Odysseus identifies him self to Polyphemos, Polyphemos exclaims (9.507-512): "So Telemos the seer prophesied it all as it happened when he said that I should lose

my eye at the hands of Odysseus." It is ajustifiable boast when Odysseus introduces himself to the Phaiakians as "Odysseus known to all men for his guile, whose fame reaches heaven."16 The man whose reputation for harm follows him, and precedes him, the bane of mortals, and immortals too, whom the Sirens hail as "much-lauded Odysseus, great Aeneid is not simple amplificatio, since it serves to emphasize the priority of urbs over vir. Before Aeneas is named we must have the sonorous names genus unde Latinum / Albanique patres atque altae moenia Romae in w. 6-7.

16 Cf. also Athena's words to Odysseus at 13.237ff: "You must be from far away if you ask what this land is. It is by no means nameless. Many men know it, both those in the east and those in the west … The name of Ithaka reaches as far as Troy."

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Name Magic in the Odyssey 11

glory of the Achaians," this is the man whose name Eumaios fears to utter aloud.

"For you see that of living creatures it is the large ones which the god blasts, and he will not tolerate their ostentation, but the small creatures chafe him not at all…. For the god permits none but himself to think big." So Artabanos warns Xerxes in Herodotos's account (7. 10e). Odysseus's friends' reticence in naming him is the

protective cover necessary precisely because his is a name which already reaches heaven. Odysseus walks on the brink of hybris-Helios and Poseidon judge him guilty of hybris against their estates-and the dialectic of the poem is between acts of conspicuous assertion and

countering gestures of submission which will permit the man doomed to odium to survive divine or human envy. Eumaios, when he finally brings himself to utter the famous name, makes an evident apology for the indiscretion. He attempts to withdraw the utterance, or at least to

negate possible malignant effects of the utterance, by substituting another name-"but I call him etheios."

Eumaios's etheios is puzzling unless we understand it as

directly related to the meaning of Odysseus's name. So H. St. Sedlmayer understands it, although he sees Eumaios's words as simple apology for an inappropriate name rather than as protective euphemism. He inter

prets Eumaios thus: "Hassman hiess mein Herr, ich scheme mich, es zu

sagen, denn er liebte mich, sein richtiger Name ist Liebermann." 17 The whole of Eumaios's speech is a form of euphemism of the man with the odious name. Eumaios talks of his master's wealth, but his emphasis is on Odysseus's generous disposition of that wealth. Odysseus is a kindly master (anax euthymos), a second father to Eumaios. If Odysseus catches the eye of the gods, then let it not be the Odysseus of wars and trium

phant strategems but the Odysseus of moral rectitude. Eumaios will not

endanger the life of his master by calling him Odysseus, i.e., the sort of

17 H. St. Sedlmayer, "Lexicalisches und Exegetisches zu Homer," Zeitschr. f. d. osterr. Gymn. (1910) IV Heft, 294. Rank (supra n. 1) 63 sees it as "een euphemisme voor den naam Odysseus, die in 19.407-409 also 'Hater' wordt opgevat." A. v. Blumenthal, "Miszellen," Hermes 75 (1940) 124-128, so far misunderstands the import of Eumaios's

speech that he would emend ovo M4etv to ovordetv although the latter does not occur in the Homeric poems. Eumaios's etheios has perplexed many editors because they have not understood Eumaios's reluctance to speak the word Odysseus. Gabriel Germain, Genise de

l'Odyssee (Paris 1954) 116-121, believes that no trace of the mystic belief in the name persists in Homer; "la couleur magique" is recognizable, he writes, in the play on name in the

Polyphemos episode, but "semble inaperque de l'aede."

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12 Norman Austin

man who outwits or offends the highest deities on Olympos, but will name him the man of character (ethos), simply "the good man." Eumaios's conversation with the stranger is apotropaic first in avoiding the imperiled name, but then, when the name must be spoken, in

deprecating any implications which the name conveys. The persona which he renders of his master, however true, is nevertheless a camou

flage over more threatening personas. Eumaios thus expands on Penel

ope's similar but briefer strategem when she calls her husband "a good man, practiced in all forms of arete." If Odysseus himself may boast of his cunning and of the fears which it arouses in others, Eumaios and

Penelope will euphemize him, insisting instead on his arete.18 Eumaios negates that man of universal acclaim by putting

a more modest figure in his place. He goes further, to negate the man

altogether by denying his existence. Odysseus is dead, Eumaios asserts

definitely when he first talks to the stranger, and on that point he remains adamant. The suitors must have heard of his death; the stranger need not invent tales for Penelope's consolation, since her husband is surely dead. In their later conversations Eumaios steadfastly resists all the

stranger's prophecies, promises and bets that Odysseus is alive and about to return. Penelope later adopts the same stance (19.257-258): "I shall not receive Odysseus back into his house and land," she laments after the stranger has described Odysseus's dress of twenty years before. The

stranger then tells his story of Odysseus's imminent return, but her

reply is emphatic (19.313): "Odysseus will not return to his home." Later Odysseus corroborates her dream which had prophesied her husband's return, but she veers immediately to talk of the gates of true and false dreams. One last time the stranger asserts Odysseus's certain

return, but Penelope pleads fatigue and retires. Telemachos too had 18 Eumaios's etheios and Penelope's periphrasis which extolls Odysseus's

arete are part of the pattern by which various characters euphemize Odysseus to procure his safe return. Cf. Athena when she asks Zeus at 1.60-62, "Did not Odysseus give you pleasure (Xapltero) at Troy?" Or Mentor's assertion that Odysseus was a ruler as gentle as a father

(2.233-234), Penelope's claim that Odysseus alone saved Antinoos's father when all others would have assassinated him (16.424-430), and Philoitios's praise of blameless Odysseus's generosity (20.209-213). We may contrast Klytaimnestra's speech at Ag. 855-908, where she calls her husband first cdp SMe and then proceeds to build, as substitute for his name, a series of extravagant periphrases. Fraenkel at vv. 899-902 writes of her "lack of discretion in this string of eulogies," and Klytaimnestra brazenly concludes her eulogies at v. 904 with the pious wish: o06ovos 8 'CseaTo. While ostensibly euphemizing Agamemnon as the protector of the city Klytaimnestra makes him utterly vulnerable to divine phthonos, as Agamemnon understands all too well in his following speech (w. 914-930). Hers is an amplificatio used in

deadly irony.

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Name Magic in the Odyssey 13 behaved in exactly the same way. At Pylos Nestor muses that Athena

may come again to Odysseus's protection as she had in the past but Telemachos dismisses the suggestion as unwarranted optimism (3.227 229). Athena castigates him sharply for doubting the power of the gods but Telemachos replies (3.240-242): "Mentor, let us not talk longer of that. For him there can be no return."

Their certainty that Odysseus is dead may be genuine despair. But profound optimism finds articulation in the vocabulary of

despair, since overt acquiescence in the inevitable is one means to avert the inevitable. The precise proportions of despair and hope in their utterances we cannot measure without running foul of the Documentary Fallacy. But a deity, whom Telemachos recognizes as a deity beneath her disguise, has told Telemachos that Odysseus is alive. And Tele

machos, but moments after Athena's assurances, tells Eurymachos (1.413), "My father's return is not to be." Eumaios refuses credence to the stranger's tales and prophecies but repeats them later to Penelope

with an enthusiasm quite at odds with his ostensible scepticism. And

Penelope, while discounting the stranger's most emphatic predictions, all the while shares her private thoughts with him, relies on him to

interpret her dreams and to support her in a plan for something more than marriage, and lauds him as more dear and more intelligent than

any other guest who has visited her house.19 Despair there may be, but

despair may also be the exterior mask by which they protect themselves as much as Odysseus.

One of the largest episodes in Odysseus's wanderings is built on a name pun. Odysseus derives almost excessive pleasure from

outwitting Polyphemos with his punning pseudonym Outis, No-Man. It is a good pun because a double pun in Greek. Polyphemos, when

blinded, wails that 0rtns is killing him and his neighbors reply with the alternative negative u-rts-, thus unwittingly punning on uLrTs-, intelli

gence, the suffix of Odysseus's distinctive epithet polymetis. Odysseus, hearing their exchange on Outis and Metis as the cause of Polyphemos's pain, laughs that his name and his wit (onoma and metis) have deceived them.20

19 See 19.351-352, where Penelope indulges in superlative compliments, and this only shortly after the stranger has sworn on oath that Odysseus would return.

20 Outis bids fair to rival Odysseus for scholarly ink spent on its form and

meaning. Stanford AGL (supra n. 1) 104ff, discusses the involuted pun contained in O&is

OfICS / ptlj-I71T'i . See also A. J. Podlecki, "Guest-gifts and Nobodies," Phoenix 15

(1961) 125-133, who notes the pun on tis at 9.410 and the echo of the pun at 20.19-21

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14 Norman Austin

In this poem where beggars are kings, the wise foolish, the drunk accuse the sober of insobriety, grown sons masquerade behind

naivete, and a faithful wife beautifies herself for boorish louts whom she

despises, few events have only a surface. The figure of Odysseus is the central paradigm for the poem. Socrates primus ironiam introduxit, so runs the tenth thesis which Soren Kierkegaard defended at length in his

magisterial dissertation The Concept of Irony.21 Nineteenth-century philosophers read their Plato well but gave scant attention to pre Platonic Greek, else Kierkegaard might have recognized in Odysseus a

figure not only rivalling Socrates in eironeia but exerting an influence as

large as any man's on that philosopher. The ironist in Odysseus is no mere dissembler, nor merely the stylistic ironist who cultivates what

Kierkegaard calls the ironic figure of speech, the practice of expressing the opposite of what one means. Odysseus's irony takes form at a deeper level, foreshadowing, if not fully embodying, the "infinite absolute

negativity," which Kierkegaard placed at the heart of Socratic irony.22 So Odysseus's pun is amusing and ironic in itself, but

weighted with an irony larger than the immediate moment. Do we not hear this pun echoing through the poem, enacted or narrated in various forms? As when Odysseus disguised himself as a Nobody and crept into

Troy, and Helen alone recognized him (4.244-250). Even in the

Kyklops's cave he enacts the pun, disappearing into invisibility beneath the Kyklops's ram to make his escape. Then in the palace at Scherie he enters as a nameless beggar, and nameless he remains, a nobody, until

Alkinoos demands (8.550-554): "Tell us the name which your father and mother used to call you, and your fellow citizens. For no man, either good or bad, is anonymos." At Ithaka he becomes once again a

Nobody, first in Eumaios's hut, and then in the palace, where the suitors confirm him in that role with insults and humiliations. when Odysseus remembers that his ,4TIs led him out of the Kyklops's cave. There may be

many more than two puns in the name if we accept all arguments advanced. Konrat Ziegler, "Odysseus-Utase-Utis," Gymnasium 69 (1962) 396-398, argues that Outis is not a false name at all but an adaptation-" vielleicht als Kosename gedacht"-of the true name, which leads

to the fateful misunderstanding. J. Wohrmann, "Noch Einmal: Utis-Odysseus," Gymnasium 70 (1963) 549, remarks that C. T. Damm had commented on the similarity in sound between

Outis and Odysseus in his 1769 translation of the Odyssey. Rhys Carpenter, Folktale, Fiction and Saga in the Homeric Epics (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1958) 140, uses Photios's suggestion that Odysseus had been called Outis because he had big ears to support his theory of Odysseus as Bearson.

21 Soren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, tr. L. M. Capel (Bloomington and London 1968) 348, and passim through Part I.

22 Kierkegaard, pp. 63, 77, et passim.

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Name Magic in the Odyssey 15 Outis is not a convenient momentary inspiration but the

succinct expression of the other side of Odysseus's character: not

pseudonym but cognomen. That 'Tris is the alternate formfor oVirs is an accident of the language but an accident made central to the poem.

The play on OVIn-oVTns / rS-patcrts at 9.408-415 is but the

surfacing of a theme adumbrated at several points through the poem. This is an heroic saga rife with anomalies. The salient adventures of our

superhero include blinding a one-eyed drunken giant and creeping out of his lair by stealth; outwitting a sorceress with Hermes' help and then

reclining at her side for a year; listening to Sirens while fettered to his

ship's mast; allowing through negligence his men to be devoured or lost at sea; and retiring for seven years to a nymph's island. The only gains he has to show for twenty years of travel are not the fruits of conquest but gifts given in honor of his talents as story-teller, and even they are hidden away in a cave and never heard of again. The exploits for which he is remembered at Sparta are two forays into Troy, when he insinu ated himself into Troy first as a beggar, and then as the invisible cargo of a giant horse-invisibility camouflaged as the visible. Then it was that Helen called to the heroes within the Horse, adopting the voice of each man's wife and naming each by name (ovouaKAxr7r7v … . voiales,

4.278), and of all the heroes Odysseus alone could ignore the sound of his name and coerce the rest to acquiesce in the nonbeing in which he himself was already an adept. The epic of this hero who is praised as the wisest in council, the special ward of Athena, the man who makes even the gods to rage, trails off into obscurity, with a mention that his last adventure must be a quest for a simple pastoral folk who know not the

oar, and with the pinnacle of his career celebrated only by the dead in

Hades, by Agamemnon who interrupts his conversation with Achilles on their own funerals only long enough to hear the report of Odysseus's exploit, to comment that it had taken the better part of a month to

persuade Odysseus to enlist in the heroic expedition to Troy, and to

hymn an epinikion primarily to Penelope, to Odysseus as the husband of such a wife.23 Faced with such anomalies we may well ponder whether

23 Achilles and Agamemnon are extolling each other's honor when the suitors' ghosts arrive in the underworld (24.24-97). Agamemnon then addresses Amphime don, and recalls that it had taken a month for the fleet to reach Troy because of the difficulty he had in persuading Odysseus to join (w. 118-119). On hearing of the suitors' death he exclaims (v. 192) dfAsl Aaeprao iraE, TroAvpqxav' 'OSvaae^, but the rest of his praise is reserved for Penelope (w. 193ff). Her glory will never die, he says, and the gods will fashion a song of

beauty for her (w. 196-198).

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16 Norman Austin

Outis was, in fact, his name, and Odysseus but its extended echo rather than vice versa. Polyphemos scores, unwittingly, the last hit on the

Outis pun when he laments (9.513-516): "I had always expected it would be a Somebody (n.va c-ra idyav Ka KaAOV) who would come

here, but it turned out to be a little Nobody (oAiyos re Kal oVtl8avO Kat aKLKvS) who blinded me after overcoming me with wine." 24

Odysseusolymetis, when he is exercising his Metis, then is he invariably Outis.(Iis mask is his Metis; the face it displays to the world is Outis)Odysseus negates himself qua Odysseus, either by remaining anonymous, or by adopting, together with a pseudonym, a fictitious unreal persona. Even his false persona presents him as aristo crat bar sinister. For Eumaios he pretends to a reflected glory by casting himself as a companion of the great Troy. But for Penelope he pretends to still lesser glory, being content to play the younger son left behind

when others went to war, who meets Odysseus only by chance because

Odysseus is blown off course to Crete and comes looking for his brother Idomeneus who had already left Crete to assume heroic stature in Troy.

But those who are sensitive to Odysseus recognize familiar features behind the Outis mask, as Helen recognizes him beneath the welts and

rags when he steals into Troy. And as he talks to Penelope, first Penelope, and then Eurykleia, slowly begin to discern the true profile. It is at the

moment when he makes himself most Outis, when he declines the comforts of bed, bath, and clothes and opts for a primitive state of

nature, that they begin to recognize in the stranger Odysseus's double. If Odysseus constantly impersonates Outis, or undercuts

his achievements in various ways, his friends have been doing likewise. Is their recognition surprising, then, when his protectors have collabor ated in his negations by withholding his name, by euphemizing the

man of odium into the man of modest propriety, and even by refusing public credence in his survival ? To Polyphemos Odysseus gives his name thus (9.366-367): "No-man is my name. No-man is what my father and mother call me, and all my comrades." That is absolute truth. Not

Odysseus, but Outis they incant a screen around his own screens. It was sound poetic instinct which led the scholiast to interpret Odysseus

24 The play on Somebody and Nobody is, of course, one inherent in the

genius of the English language, but Polyphemos comes as close to that conceit as Greek will

permit him with his Tva … ovtr&avo'. As Eustathius remarks on 9.366, Odysseus's in

vented name Outis would give a genitive Outidos, and he sees a play on that stem in outidanos, as at 9.460, where Polyphemos calls Odysseus outidanos . . . Outis.

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Name Magic in the Odyssey 17

literally, as giving Polyphemos not a pseudonym but simply another name, or more correctly, the family's intimate sobriquet for Odysseus.25

Odysseus's family protects him, as he does himself, by withholding his name. But if to withhold the name is to conceal, to utter the name is to reveal. Somewhere protection must cease and revelation begin. Odysseus shows us the dynamics of that transforma tion among the Phaiakians. When anonymity is no longer possible, or

necessary, he asks Demodokos to sing a tale of guile, the strategem of the Wooden Horse which Odysseus devised and negotiated into the heart of

Troy. Demodokos sings the tale, it prompts Odysseus's tears, then Alkinoos's direct question, and finally Odysseus's answer: "I am that

Odysseus, known for guile" (cf. d'Aco…'OSvaaev' in Odysseus's request of Demodokos at 8.494 balanced by 'OSvaavrs .. . . SAotclv in the sentence in which he first named himself at 9.19). The name first invoked in song elicits the man's epiphany. But it was Odysseus first

who asked for the song which should reveal him. In Ithaka the structure of revelation is the same, though

with some complications caused by the multiple recognitions, and by Odysseus's necessity to reveal when others would conceal. They deny that he exists and he must become their bard who invokes Odysseus in

myth. But still, as before, the name conjures the man. At one point there is a remarkable parallel to the scene in Books 8-9. At Scherie Odysseus himself requests from Demodokos the tale which will reveal him. At Ithaka he requests a bath which will reveal him by revealing the scar.

The digression on the scar is the equivalent of Demodokos's song of the Wooden Horse. It too is a tale of Odysseus, the particular tale on the name of Odysseus, and it precipitates Eurykleia's recognition (19.474): "So you are Odysseus, my child." In both scenes Odysseus's request leads to a story about Odysseus, which leads in turn to the revelation of

Odysseus. But revelation does not begin when Odysseus chooses at

Scherie or at Ithaka. The Telemachy is invocation on a majestic scale. It is there we see first the dynamics of concealment and revelation. Telemachos and Penelope confess that Odysseus is lost, but Athena names Odysseus even if they will not. Against Telemachos's protests Athena, as Mentes, insists on Odysseus's existence. She gives as the reason for her visit the report that Telemachos's father was back in his

25 The scholiast on wvo0a KAVrOV at 9.364: KAVTov oVK 6v8o0ov, &A' ie oi

KaAoVJ/la, d datIv eiwvviov. Cf. also Eustathios on the passage.

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18 Norman Austin

own home (1.194-195); she notes in Telemachos the image of his father as he was at the same age before he left for Troy (w. 208-210); she asserts that the gods have not left his family nameless (v. 223); finally, she relates the paradigmatic story of Odysseus and his poisoned arrows, and, as we know from the digression on the scar and Demodo kos's song of the Wooden Horse, paradigmatic stories are incantations. Then Telemachos goes abroad so that others may continue what Athena had begun. Everywhere, with or without prompting, Odysseus's name rises to men's lips. Nestor praises Odysseus for his craft and his

counsel, remembers Athena's special concern for Odysseus, and ex claims on the similarity in speech between father and son. At Sparta the incantation continues. In a miniature anticipation of Odysseus's identification scene in Scheria, there is a moment of extraordinary finesse when both Telemachos and Odysseus are revealed in a single image. Menelaos begins with a story of his travels which leads him to lament the loss of his friends, in particular Odysseus, for whom, as he

supposes, Laertes, Penelope and Telemachos must even now be

grieving (4.78-112). A tale casually begun becomes an incantation of both father and son. It concludes with the name of Odysseus and then of Telemachos, and there, miraculously, is Odysseus before Menelaos's

eyes, but reincarnated in the son who conceals his grief as his father will do in Scherie. "I was just now recollecting Odysseus in my story (,pqpv,7,vos &ap,' '08vcrOjt uvO&eorv)," Menelaos remarks when Helen

guesses the identity of their young guest (vv. 149-152), "and look, there are his feet exactly, his hands, his eyes, his head and hair." But the

conjuring is not yet done. The image must move into still sharper focus with more definitive stories. Helen tells of Odysseus entering Troy as a spy (as Telemachos enters Sparta incognito), and Menelaos casts

Odysseus as the principal actor in the story of the Wooden Horse, both the architect of the strategy and the man responsible for its success.

Telemachos, now revealing his mother's trait, reacts to the surfeit of information exactly as his mother will when Odysseus will tax her with

prophecies past endurance, by pleading fatigue and requesting permis sion to retire. The next day the stories find fulfillment: the image comes into sharp focus when Menelaos tells Telemachos that Odysseus is alive on Kalypso's island.

Once Odysseus is resurrected for Telemachos the scene shifts abruptly from Sparta back to Ithaka where Penelope attempts a brief but unsuccessful attempt to invoke Odysseus. Hearing of Tele

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Name Magic in the Odyssey 19

machos's departure from Ithaka, she exclaims (4.710): "Was it so that his name too might be lost among men?" but Athena appears that

night to reassure her as to her son's safety. Penelope talks to Athena of the husband she has lost (a7&rrAeua), then of the son who had gone away (~f/). She becomes sufficiently emboldened to ask whether the other

hapless man-KE?VOV &ovpov (v. 832)-is alive or dead. Athena replies (vv. 836-837): "As for that one-KEcvov-I shall not say." Penelope

had called Odysseus dead and will not name him, and for her he re mains shrouded. She must wait until Book 19. Then the scenes which took place in Books 1-4, where Telemachos had denied while others had insisted on Odysseus's existence, will be exactly replayed, except that the stranger who will do for Penelope what Mentes had done for

Telemachos will be Odysseus himself. Assuming in his own person the roles of Mentes, Nestor, Menelaos, and Helen in the Telemachy,

Odysseus will conjure himself into being with stories (which will sound like versions of Menelaos's stories), prophecies and reiteration of his

name, until Penelope and Eurykleia are astonished to discover in the

stranger's hands and feet, voice and physique, the features of Odysseus. Thus Book 5: the Epiphany. Odysseus awakes from his long

sleep and decides to reenter the world, to give up Outis for Odysseus.26 It seems all his will, his initiative, first since Kalypso puts the choice before him, and then because on Ithaka he will find himself given up for lost and must recreate Odysseus when others insist on Outis. But his

apparently self-willed resurrection is the final event necessary to com

plete the pattern already woven by others. He had called himself

No-man, but the inner circle too had called him No-man to conceal him

psychologically as Kalypso had concealed him physically, until a friend on Olympos decides to end his anonymity. She first articulates his name and its reverberations radiate from Olympos to Ithaka, from Ithaka to Pylos, and thence to Sparta, until the echo reaches an island far out to sea, beyond the paths of men and gods. Odysseus could not

know that what woke him was the sound of his own name summoning him from far away.

University of California Los Angeles

26 Kalypso the Concealer offers Odysseus the

choice of remaining with her

or returning to his home at 5.203ff. Note Aei0as in her request (v. 205), and 04AXo in his

reply (v. 219).

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