Book Nineteen

All the time Odysseus has been reciting his adventures to Nausicaä's family, Telemachus has been staying with Menelaus and Helen. In Book Fifteen, Athena sends him a dream to tell him to head back home. Obediently, he departs--with some really amazing guest gifts. Menelaus clearly knows how to dish out the xenia as well as receive it!

It is in Book Nineteen that Telemachus finally grows up for real and begins to show good judgment on his own. He recognizes Athena this time, just as his father always recognizes Athena when she shows up, from the light that shines around her. He has learned to identify the gods when they appear among mortals, a sign that he has gained wisdom.

Speaking of xenia, notice that poor Penelope has to take the hospitality tradition into her own hands when Odysseus shows up. She has no male relations to take the responsibility off her hands, and she can't even rely on her servants: her maid Melantho, who should be deferential to a guest, instead behaves very rudely and accuses the disguised Odysseus of being a peeping Tom. Penelope herself has to intervene.

When she does intervene, she tells Odysseus the story of her plot to keep the suitors at bay, and how Melantho and the other maids foiled it by giving away the secret that she was unweaving by night everything she wove by day. Obviously, this story serves to show us that Penelope is an appropriate mate for wily Odysseus. But why do you suppose she tells it to this beggar? Homer could have just told us the tale directly, as an omniscient narrator.

Also, why does Penelope confide to the beggar that her strength to resist is almost gone, and why does she ask him about his ancestry? Some scholars have suggested that maybe at this point she has actually recognized him and is quizzing him to see if she's correct. But if that's the case, why does Odysseus lie to her in response? He's so secretive, always!

Is this a parallel for the banter that seems to go on between Odysseus and Athena every time they meet? Maybe Athena and Penelope have a lot in common.

Odysseus keeps up the secret even after he's recognized by his old nurse, Euryclea. His treatment of her seems unduly harsh for an elderly woman who's raised him since he was a baby, so clearly he feels that something important is at stake regarding the maintenance of silence about his true identity.

Don't you just love the digression where he talks about how his mother's father was favored by Hermes, and how he describes him, admiringly, as a thief and a swindler? And this is the man who bestowed Odysseus with his name!

Odysseus's final test comes from Penelope, when she gives Euryclea the order to move the bed. Odysseus points out that it cannot be moved, because it is carved out of a single olive tree around which the house is built. Isn't it appropriate that the tree is an olive, Athena's sacred plant?

And isn't it appropriate that this collection of exciting stories dissolves into yet more stories, as husband and wife lie in bed telling each other everything that has happened in the two decades they were apart? Odysseus does exactly what his mother told him to do when she met him in the underworld--he tells his stories to his wife--but Penelope meets him on his own ground and reciprocates. The two are well matched in that, as well.