LECTURE 6
THE OIKOS & RESTORATION
LECTURE OUTLINE
1. The oikos and kingship
2. Families & War
3. Penelope, Odysseus’s wife
4. Laertes
5. After the War
THE OIKOS
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Oikos—household, private, composed of kin+
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Composition of the oikos
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Family—Patriarchal structure, wife runs the house
(including craft-work like weaving)
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Includes grown children & their families
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Servants & slaves
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Retainers—Non-kin aristocrats attached to the house
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Guest-friends
RULE
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Rule (basileus)
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Translated as “king,” perhaps “ruler” or “prince” is
closer to the reality
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You rule your oikos (private) and local kingship
(public)
KINGSHIP IN ITHACA
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The situation (1.444-62)
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Telemachus’s private problem (marriage, oikos) is bound
up with the political problem (kingship)
•
Oikos problem
•
•
Wealth being consumed
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Penelope’s remarriage & role in the house
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Telemachus is ready to assert his rule over oikos
Kingship problem
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Penelope and the selection of the next king?
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What Telemachus needs from the assembly
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Goal: Resolve the private problem
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Needs support or sympathy from the people
•
•
Mentor & Halitherses
Telemachus travels to Pylos & Sparta
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Friends outfit the ship
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Contact his father’s old allies
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Suitors feel threatened & plot to murder Telemachus
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Does Odysseus’s return solve the problems?
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Yes, through force
•
Killing of the suitors solves the private problem
•
•
But it starts a blood-feud
•
Questions legitimacy of Odysseus’s kingship
(24.470-5)
Peace is made. Ithaca & House of Odysseus are
restored.
FAMILIES & WAR
•
Problem: Kings are gone for 10-20 years
•
What happens when you’re gone & when you
return?
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Agamemnon in Mycenae
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Betrayal, murder, revenge
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Telemachus compared to Orestes
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Menelaus & Helen—Restored House of Sparta
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Double wedding
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Sadness in the court
•
•
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As cause of the Trojan War
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Helen’s drug & self-vindicating story
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Menelaus’s response
Restoration without the feelings
What will the fate of Odysseus’s house be?
LAERTES
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Marginalizes self from house & civilization
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Lost to depression and grief over his son and wife
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Worry about Telemachus pushes him farther
(16.156-66)
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Athena (1.119-25)
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Penelope’s hope for Laertes (4.828-35)
•
•
He was the king before, what happened?
Anticleia in the underworld (11.214-25)
REUNION OF FATHER & SON (BK24)
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“Long-enduring” Odysseus sees his father & weeps
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Debates whether to embrace or to test Laertes
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Questions to reproach Laertes
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Bring him out of isolation & grief, reclaim his
dignity
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“Whose slave are you? Whose orchard are you
tending?” (284)
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Odysseus’s lie draws out Laertes, builds his hope
•
Odysseus drops disguise (352-64)
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Laertes asks for proof Odysseus is his son
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Laertes revived & restored to civilization
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Regains memory of himself (417-8)
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Three generations on the battlefield together!
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Laertes’s spear
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Peace is made
AFTER THE WAR
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Siren’s song lures Odysseus (12.205-6)
•
•
•
They understand as others won’t
What the veteran carries home
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Guilt that others didn’t make it
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Dread about what waits at home
Menelaus’s retirement dream (4.185-203)
MENELAUS, BROKEN
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On Pharos, marooned & broken (4.391-419)
•
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“do you like your pain?”
Told of his brother’s fate
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“I’d no desire / to go on living and see the rising light
of day” (606-7)
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“How long must you weep?”
•
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“I felt my heart…glow once more in my
chest” (617-8)
Yet unhappy in Sparta (4.100-3)
ODYSSEUS, BROKEN & RESTORED
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Weeps daily at Calypso’s
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Shipwreck nearly breaks him (Bk5)
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Weeps while Demodocus sings of the war
(8.585-97)
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Odysseus finds war waiting for him at home
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Athena calls on him to have restraint
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Stop the “great leveler, War”
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“He obeyed her, glad at heart”