In Books I through IV of Homer's Epic, we're gonna see the story unfold according
to the thread of Telemachus. He's gonna pull us through the different
twists and turns of the plot to get us started on the story.
We're gonna learn about Odysseus and his house, about Ithaca, about Penelope,
mostly through the eyes of Telemachus. We're gonna learn about what it is to be a
Greek hero through Telemachus's representation, but most of what
Telemachus is gonna teach us about hero-ness is gonna come in a negative way.
Telemachus is a young man, and he's not quite ready to step up into
the hero role that we're going to see his father has been executing out there in the
wider world for his adult life. Telemachus is indeed a young man.
He's twenty years old. His father's been gone for ten years of
of fighting and ten years of wandering. Not quite back yet.
So he's a young man. And surely by the standards of our day
that would count as a youth. Now in the Greek take on things though
twenty is plenty old enough to be out there taking some action.
In fact, the great Greek warriors who become grand heroes
get started on things at about that age, or a little bit younger.
Achilles was off conquering whole swatches of territory at this age.
Twenty is plenty old enough to step up and get things done, but Telemachus is just not quite
there yet. Now when we need him, we need him in
repose. He's in a reclining kind of position.
In this sort you can imagine a kind of silk like form that he has.
This is David's representation of him filtered through the Renaissance.
But truly captured something of what Homer had in mind with this figure Telemachus.
Young man not quite ready to take action and in this feeling of kind of languor over
the situation. When we meet Telemachus, he is in a
strange situation. He is daydreaming.
We, we have Athena come up and make contact with him, she's in disguise; makes
contact with him and then we jump in, the narrative jumps into Telemachus's head.
He could almost see his magnificent father here in the minds eye.
If only he might drop from the clouds and drive these suitors all in a route
throughout the halls. So Telemachus is just waiting for something, like a miracle to
happen, right? Well, you know, chances are his father is
not gonna just drop from the clouds and take care of things.
So he's waiting for something impossible and that's just not, sort of, natural hero
stuff to have happen. Instead, if something's going wrong and a
hero is around. A hero is gonna take care of business.
Heroes take things into their own hands and get things done.
Telemachus is not quite ready for that. Instead what he typically does is blame
the gods, blame the situation, blame fate, blame others, but especially he blames the
gods. Take a look at what he does on page 85
shortly after we meet him. Page 85 in Fagles's translation.
Once we were a wealthy house now the gods have reversed have reversed our fortunes
with a vengeance. The gods have invented other
miseries to plague me as well. So Telemachus blames what's happening on
the gods. Well, sure
from this we can understand that the Greeks did have a very broad understanding
of divine involvement in the world. And it might make perfect sense for
someone to turn around and say it's, you know, the gods' fault.
They're controlling things in a certain way, right?
Take a look at another example of this, pages 88 and 89. Telemachus jumps in, at a moment in
the conversation. Penelope has just come down, from her
chambers, she hears Phemius the bard singing tales of homecomings of the great heroes coming
back from Troy. Recall what we're reading here.
Homer's Odyssey is itself one of these kind of homecomings.
So Phemius's for us, doing within the Odyssey.
A kind of Odyssey taking about homecomings of the great heroes from Troy.
When Penelope hears this, she's sad, she wishes that Phemius would stop, and says "oh
please poet relent, don't do this." At which point Telemachus jumps in and says "mother that's
actually not fair, you shouldn't be blaming Phemius the bard, because bards are not to
blame." He says, pages 88 and 89, "Zeus is to blame. He deals tp each and every
laborer on this earth whatever doom he pleases." Now heroes typically don't jump
in with this kind of fatalistic talk. Yes, indeed it's true the gods are busy,
the gods are active, the gods are engaged in the world.
But they don't typically blame the gods for all the things that go on in the
world. When they reference that kind of aspect of
things, it'll be a different, something else is going on in a hero's mind.
And, if some nasty stuff is happening right in a hero's face, the hero doesn't
say, oh, there's nothing I can do, and just step back and say, the gods must be
in control of it, so, instead, I'm gonna sit back powerless, and withdraw.
They don't take divine involvement in the world as a way to sit back and exonerate
themselves from action that they're responsible for taking.
Heroes always jump in and try to take action as best they can.
There is a kind of double determination that's at work in the Homeric world.
It's a certain kind of determinism if Zeus declares something, yes indeed it's going
to happen. If the gods are involved in it they're
much stronger than here than we mortals, so they're gonna kinda make stuff happen,
but that determinism doesn't turn. Into a kind of fatalism.
At least in the heroes minds. Fatalism is a discussion of the weak and
in this case Telemachus is expressing that weakness.
Whereas what a hero does is step up and say, yes, great things happen by the Gods,
and now, Gods, use my hands as instruments to execute your will and the fate of what's
about to happen. The heroes assume that they are powerful
cogs in the machineries of fate. And their hands are what's going to bring
the fated outcome to fruition. They need to be involved.
They need to be engaged. The more engaged the more heroic.
The less engaged the less heroic. So, Telemachus is giving us a side, the
less heroic version of this here. As if we needed more proof on this, we'll
see lots of examples when we come to Odysseus, of him acting in this kind of a
way. But take a look at the very beginning of
the epic on page 78 of Fagles' translation.
Within the first 100 lines, Zeus himself chimes in on this particular issue and
says, how shameless the way these mortals blame the gods.
From us alone they say come all their miseries.
Yes, but they, themselves, with their own reckless ways.
Compound their pains beyond their proper share.
So Zeus is saying, you human beings. Sure, we're in charge of stuff, we run
stuff. But you have to stop being reckless.
And you've gotta get engaged, and take care of business yourself.
Don't just sit back and blame us for all the bad things that happen.
Now, when Telemachus needs to make this turn from the kind of a person that sits
back and lets bad things happen, and feels bad for himself.
To the kind of person more like Odysseus who takes action, and gets, gets things
done. He's gonna need some guidance.
He's gonna need some help. The help Telemachus is gonna get is gonna
come in this figure of Athena, disguised usually as Mentor.
When she's, the senior person helping Telemachus around.
You'll see in the very, First time we see her in Book I, she's actually in the, in
the figure of Mentes, another, elder figure who shows up, but
typically as a Mentor. And for some of you out there who are
saying, wait a minute, does that have anything to do with the English word.
"mentor", from which we get a noun and a verb, mentoring, to bring someone along.
Yes, indeed, it does. The English word is just drawn directly
from the Greek proper name and it becomes a very, well, prominent word, even in a
contemporary discourse. So, Athena, in this disguise as mentor,
leads Telemechus along and brings him on a, a, on a kind of.
A journey literal as well as figurative in order that he can grow up.
That kind of back-and-forth starts to happen in Book I as Athena jumps in and
starts to help our youth, Telemachus along and she brings him
through the things that he needs to, to, to, to do in order to gain these new
capacities. To gain this new perspective.
Just really to grow up. We're gonna see Telemachus's travels
in our next book but in closing things off lets take an example of the old
Telemachus, the early Telemachus. As he shows
up Book I we see him feeling sorry for himself and daydreaming.
Athena comes along and kind of gets him going, but she does then help him, nudge him into
taking some action. So at the close of Book I he decides
he's going to call an assembly. Opening of Book II he does call the
assembly. When he does it's a pretty sad result.
He brings all the people together and says "Oh. You, suitors, I've had it up to here
with you." And he gesticulates and gets angry and
fulminates and says that he, this all has to stop.
At which point, what happens, his reaction in the crowd of the people who are
violating him. They all feel sorry for him.
They pat him on the head and they say aw, so sorry Telemachus we, you know, were
eating you out of house and home I can see how that makes you sad but really don't
blame us you should blame your mother. So they pass the buck and talk about as if
there is some abstract thing that is hurting Telemachus.
Don't take responsibility and they, and they surely don't engage Telemachus'
attempt to engage them. So Telemachus is not quite ready.
He does the right thing by calling the assembly, but he doesn't quite have the,
heft. In, within his society to pull this off.
Pity is not what you want to have happen when you come out and read a bunch of
people the riot act. Instead, you're looking for something
else. We're gonna see that something else get
stirred up in the suitors, but it's gonna take a number of books before we get
there. Once we do, those poor suitors, we, we
might start to feel a little sorry for them instead of them pitying Telemachus.
Next what we're gonna see is Telemachus off on his journey.
We'll talk about that in the next lecture.