Olympus Read online

  In the Ramayana, when searching for Sita, Hanuman and his fellow monkeys are given food and shelter by the damsel Swayamprabha. She is lonely and desperate for companionship so she tries to make them forsake their mission and stay with her. But Hanuman insists on leaving. Unable to persuade Hanuman, impressed by his single-mindedness, she lets them go. In the tale, Swayamprabha functions like Calypso.

  Calypso is the daughter of the Titan Atlas. She hopes that Odysseus will forget his home and embrace immortality. But Odysseus resists. He yearns for home, his place in the world and society, and accepts his mortality. He knows that immortality, like death, means giving up the good life that only humans can experience even as they yearn for their place in the world and dread the inevitability of death.

  Unlike in his adventures with Polyphemus and Circe, Odysseus has neither the physical nor the psychological strength left now to break free from Calypso’s island on his own. The gods have to intervene: and so Athena complains to Zeus who sends his messenger ordering Calypso to let Odysseus go.

  In the twentieth century, Captain Jacques Cousteau, the French mariner, became famous for his books and films on undersea research. His ship, the Calypso, became as famous as him. The Odyssey is structured as a flashback. It begins with Odysseus on the island of Calypso, ten years after the Trojan War, having spent three of those years wandering the seas on various adventures and seven imprisoned by the nymph.

  Homer’s Odyssey is written in a Greek dialect which is often called Homeric Greek.

  Phaeacians

  While Zeus had forgiven Odysseus his many faults, Poseidon had not. He knew that he could not stop Odysseus from reaching home, but he refused to let it be easy. So he whipped up a storm that shattered Odysseus’s raft, and watched as Odysseus tossed and tumbled on the waves, and was dragged naked to the island of the Phaeacians, covered in salt and filth.

  Here, the local princess Nausicaa—who was playing ball on the beach while her maids were washing clothes—found him, gave him clothes and invited him to her father’s house where he was made welcome, though not without some suspicion, by the king and his queen. ‘Tell us your story,’ said the queen Arete after Odysseus had been bathed and fed and made comfortable. So Odysseus told them his great adventure since he had left Troy, tales that involved monsters and gods and nymphs and cannibals. At the end of it, the king and queen were not sure if he was lying or telling the truth. They found it hard to believe that this was the legendary Odysseus.

  ‘But the Trojan War ended ten years ago!’ they remarked.

  Odysseus started to weep for he realized his son would now be twenty, if alive, and his wife no longer the young maid he had left behind. Would his father still be alive? Feeling sorry for him, the king Alcinous decided to take him at his word. ‘Our sailors will take you to Ithaca. They know where it is.’

  Odysseus was in a deep sleep when the Phaeacian ship reached Ithaca. Not wanting to disturb his slumber, the sailors left him sleeping on the beach and returned home. When Odysseus awoke, he was not sure where he was. He asked a passing shepherd who said, ‘Ithaca!’

  In Mohiniattam, a classical dance form that emerged in the state of Kerala, beautiful young women often play with balls to enchant men. They are often free to play in the midst of household chores like washing and collecting water, performed outside the house. A similar scene is played out on the beach on the island of the Phaeacians.

  It is suggested that there is unrequited love between Nausicaa and Odysseus as he never shares any information about Nausicaa with his wife, Penelope.

  Since Nausicaa is the first mythic character shown to be playing a game with a ball, she is considered an inventor of ball games.

  Scholars have speculated that Nausicaa may have been the real author of the Odyssey considering the realistic description of the washing scene.

  According to Aristotle, Odysseus’s son Telemachus eventually marries Nausicaa.

  A common technique in ancient Greek epics is the use of narration by the hero of the tale. In the Odyssey, Odysseus narrates his adventures to the king of the Phaeacians. In the Aeneid, Aeneas narrates his adventures to Dido.

  Penelope

  Odysseus did not reveal his identity to anyone, for Tiresias had told him that there would be trouble when he arrived home.

  As there had been no sign of Odysseus in the ten years since the Trojan War, his neighbours had assumed he was dead. They were eager to claim his beautiful wife and his lands and his sheep as their own, ignoring the protests of young Telemachus. The suitors came every evening to his house and ate all they could find in the kitchen and the larder, forcing the servants to serve them. ‘You must select one of us as your husband,’ they threatened Penelope when she protested, ‘or we will rape you and your servants, kill your son and burn down your house.’

  Penelope managed to keep the men at bay by declaring that she would marry them after she finished weaving a shroud for her father-in-law, Laertes, who was old but still alive. All day she would weave the shroud, but at night, she would unravel it, removing the threads, so that the shroud was never finished.

  Every day she hoped that Odysseus would return before her deception was caught, yet there was no sign of him, and now she had no choice but to choose a new husband from amongst the suitors, or risk rape and plunder.

  Chastity is a very important notion in Hindu mythology. The chastity of a wife grants protection to the husband, while her infidelities make him vulnerable. Chastity is admired in Roman and Christian mythology too, with Penelope being lauded as the epitome of wifely virtue and chastity. However, in these mythologies chastity is not associated with any mystical powers.

  Widow remarriage is rare in Hindu mythology, and limited mostly to vanara (monkey) and rakshasa (barbarian) women, not women of high status like epic heroines.

  Weaving is a feminine activity in Greek mythology. Penelope, like Circe and Calypso, is shown weaving by Homer. When Heracles is forced to cross-dress as a woman and serve Omphale, he too is portrayed holding a spindle.

  For three years, Penelope weaves by day and unravels by night the shroud meant for her father-in-law. This act resembles the meaningless, monotonous, repetitive suffering of those cast into Tartarus.

  Suitors

  When Odysseus entered his own house, he found that Penelope had organized a contest, the winner of which could claim her and her husband’s house as his trophy. No one recognized him, except his old dog Argus, who wagged his tail before breathing his last. The servants were too distracted to notice him, as they were busy catering to Penelope’s suitors.

  Unable to ignore their attentions any further for fear that they would harm her son and her servants, Penelope declared to the suitors that she would marry the man who could perform a particular feat: string Odysseus’s bow and shoot an arrow through the metal hoops of twelve axes placed in a single row. ‘Odysseus could do it. So must my next husband,’ said Penelope.

  The suitors liked the idea and began to try one by one. But to their shock none could even string the bow. This made them angry: Was this yet another ploy by Penelope to keep them away?

  Odysseus suddenly walked up and said, ‘May I try?’ The suitors scowled at the temerity of the stranger but Penelope said that no guest in the House of Odysseus would be turned away.

  To everyone’s astonishment, the stranger effortlessly strung the bow, and shot an arrow through the twelve hoops of the axes. This was no stranger—this was Odysseus! Before anyone could utter a word, Odysseus picked up another arrow and struck one of the men who had abused his wife. Then he shot another arrow, and another. Telemachus joined him, as did the servants of the household. Before long, every ‘suitor’ had been killed.

  Like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the Odyssey also speaks of an archery contest as a method to identify a suitable groom for a noble lady. This suggests a common Indo-European root, an ancient tribal custom according to which, in case of a conflict, the better warrior wins the woman.