1 As given above in note 2 to Chapter 4 and note 5 to Chapter 5, Homer scholar Erwin Cook sees Odysseus’ men as bringing on their own destruction by yielding to physical appetites.
2 John Gardner, in The Art of Fiction (New York: Vintage, 1985), calls frigidity “a fault of soul,” rather than of writing technique. But whose soul here—Homer’s or Odysseus’? “Strictly speaking, frigidity characterizes the writer who presents serious material, then … fails to treat it with the attention and seriousness it deserves” (p. 118). Gardner attributes this formulation to Longinus.
3 Twelve ships in the Iliad, 2:636f, orig. Karl Reinhardt, “The Adventures in the Odyssey” (1948), trans. H. I. Flower, in Seth Schein, Reading the Odyssey: Selected Interpretive Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 69-73. Also Ralph Hexter, “[The episode] provides the narrator a dramatic and economical way to dispatch most of Odysseus’ companions and all but one of his ships in one fell swoop, a move that the narrative shape of the Odyssey requires.” A Guide to the Odyssey (New York: Vintage, 1993).
4 Morally and politically, the storyteller’s art can be as explosive as nitroglycerine—witness the power of the nationalistic stab-in-the- back/revenge/rebirth story that the Serbians tell of their fourteenth-century defeat by the Turks in Kosovo, or the power that the stab-in-the-back rhetoric of the German defeat in World War I had in propelling Hitler to power. I believe it’s time we gave up the sentimental notion that art is always beneficent. Human art, like human language, is a phenomenon of nature, neither intrinsically good nor intrinsically bad.
5 Scholar Erwin Cook interprets Odysseus’ decision to tie up outside in exactly the opposite sense that I do here. He says, “Odysseus begins heroically enough by taking up a ‘wing position’ at the mouth of the Laistrygonian harbor analogous to the positions of Akhilleus and Aias at Troy.” Professor Cook sees this as Odysseus taking up the dangerous position on the exposed flank-thus protecting, rather than neglecting, the safety of his command. “‘Active’ and ‘Passive’ Heroics in the Odyssey” pp. 149-67.
8. Witches, Goddesses, Queens, Wives—Dangerous Women
1 Odysseus fears that Calypso plans this in Book 5; Clytemnestra as accessory to Agamemnon’s murder, 4:101f and 11:462ff; Penelope as possible threat, see Chapter 15 below; Helen spotting Odysseus when he infiltrates Troy in disguise 4:28 1ff; the old nurse Eurycleia identifies him from the distinctive scar on his thigh 19:528ff; the danger to Odysseus from Phaeacian toughs at Nausicaa’s beck and call, if she chooses 7:35ff (by inference); Circe—this chapter; Sirens 12:44ff; Scylla 12:94ff; Helen—the whole Trojan War. (All line numbers to Fagles translation.)
2 The portrait of the loyal swineherd, Eumaeus, and the various mentions of livestock and those who tend it suggest the following hierarchy of prestige in the world of Odysseus: beef cattle and horses at the top, pigs next, with sheep and goats at the bottom.
3 In some traditions Odysseus is descended from the god Hermes, through his grandfather Autolycus.
4 Copyright © 2002 by Dennis Spector, all rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. From The Exorcism of Vietnam [working title], mixed nonfiction history and interviews and pseudonymous autobiography, in preparation.
5 Copyright © 2002 by Dennis Spector. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
9. Among the Dead: Memory and Guilt
1 Large parts of Odysseus’ story of Hades are devoted to working his agendas to get his hosts to take him home, to pump up his own image, and to get more and more guest-gifts. Valuable guest-gifts, and “gift exchange,” are perennial subjects of scholarship on the ancient Mediterranean. They apparently represented a significant component of the ancient economy. These so-called prestige goods could be extremely, even obscenely valuable. The long list of famous women Odysseus says he met in the Underworld seems crafted to excite and please Queen Arete. In this he’s startlingly successful. When he finishes and says it’s time for sleep, she’s the first to speak up and mousetraps her noble guests into each bringing guest-gifts for Odysseus. But she still keeps his ride home dangling. King Alcinous finally awakens to the fact that Odysseus has not told him what he asked—Odysseus’ story of the Trojan War. The king skates on the thin edge of calling him a liar: (11:411ff, Fagles; emphasis added) “Ah Odysseus … one look at you
and we know that you are no one who would cheat us-no
fraud, such as the dark soul breeds and spreads
across the face of the earth…. Crowds of vagabonds
frame their lies so tightly none can test them. But you,
what grace you give your words….
You have told your story with all a singer’s skill….
But come now, tell me truly: your … comrades—did
you see … down in the House of Death,
any who sailed with you and met their doom at Troy?
The night’s still young. Is he setting a trap for Odysseus, hoping to show him up as a scammer? The Iliad is the definitive text on the war, which Demodocus, the court bard, knows all about and has sung about for the king. But by this point in Odysseus’ story, King Alcinous already knows that more than eleven out of twelve Ithacans have died on the way home in the charge of their captain—who has survived, but not arrived with even one shipmate from the remaining vessel. Where are they? Odysseus pretends to misunderstand and replies with an account of the senior Greek officers he met in Hades, starting with Agamemnon, and moving on to Achilles and Ajax. In doing so, he not only gives the impression of being their equals at Troy, but also subtly one-ups each of them. If all we had was the Iliad, we might remember Odysseus this way: “Mmmm, let me think … Odysseus … oh, yes, he was one of Agamemnon’s staff officers, a pretty good one, as I recall.” Nobody would have to stop and think who Agamemnon, Achilles, or Ajax were.
2 Achilles in Vietnam, “Guilt and Wrongful Substitution” chapter.
3 This is essentially Sophocles’ version in the Ajax. In case you are thinking that Odysseus received the arms of Achilles as an apt reward for the ruse of the Trojan Horse, Achilles’ death and the award of his arms occurred before the war’s sudden end in victory for the Greeks. In some respects this play about Ajax’s suicide presents one of the most sympathetic pictures of Odysseus in all of Athenian tragedy. See Charles Segal, Tragedy and Civilization: An Interpretation of Sophocles (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 148-50. Sophocles’ Philoctetes is more representative in that it foregrounds Odysseus’ manipulativeness and deceit toward the noble-spirited son of Achilles, Neoptolemus.
4 Sometime around the beginning of the fourth century B.C.E., an associate of Socrates named Antisthenes “wrote a pair of speeches as if they had been delivered by Ajax and Odysseus during the infamous dispute over which of them should inherit … the armour.” Jon Hesk, Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 118-21, gives a fascinating summary and analysis of these speeches.
5 William Mullen, “Pindar and Athens,” Arion New Series ⅓, 1974. I thank Professor Mullen for drawing this to my attention and supplying the quotation.
6 Gregory Nagy, Introduction to the Knopf edition of Fitzgerald’s Iliad translation, p. xv.
7 Nemean 3:48ff (deer and lions); Isthmian 5:38ff (combat kills).
8 Stanford, The Ulysses Theme, pp. 102-17.
9 Ibid., p. 110.
10 Ibid. p. 111. Classicist Charles Segal describes Odysseus’ religious views thus: “His gods are simply the appendage of his own purposes.” Sophocles’ Tragic World, p. 100.
11 John P. A. Gould, “Sophocles,” Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed., ed. Simon Hornblower and Anthony Spawforth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 1423. For the military background of Athenian tragic theater see J. Shay, “The Birth of Tragedy—Out of the Needs of Democracy,” Didaskalia: Ancient Theater Today, vol. 2, no. 2, April 1995. Online: didaskalia.berkeley.edu/issues/vol2no2/ Shay. html.
12 The ellipses are Mary Garvey’
s. E-mail of December 10, 2001. Quoted by permission. “Hierarchies of suffering” were discussed in Achilles in Vietnam, pp. 192 and 239n 10.
13 See pp. 65-75 and 192.
14 The text leans in the direction of Odysseus being aware of the death, but being unwilling to take the time to perform the death rites. Nothing in what Circe says to him suggests that he would have to return to her island after the trip to Hades, so at the time he left, he could not have been thinking, “We’ll do this when we get back.” This is either another example of Odysseus’ indifference to the welfare of those serving under him, or of his being so “fried” that he just says, “Don’ mean nothing, drive on.”
15 Perhaps Odysseus was responding to the threat “or my curse may draw god’s fury on your head” (11:81, Fagles), which Elpenor also said. Who knows what the dead are capable of?
16 7th Annual Meeting, International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, Washington, D.C., 1991.
17 Achilles in Vietnam, p. 198ff.
18 Ibid., p. 71.
19 Frederick Ahl and Hanna Roisman in their book The Odyssey Re-Formed (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), p. 131.
20 Ibid. I owe this insight, slapping my forehead with my hand, to the classical scholars Frederick Ahl and Hanna Roisman in The Odyssey Re-Formed. At 15:399f the loyal swineherd Eumaeus confirms this, saying Anticleia “died of grief for her boy.”
21 While some veterans with complex PTSD seem devoid of conscience, others seem to suffer an excess of it. Their conscience stands in the way of their getting help from people who both want to help and have demonstrated ability to help. These veterans know about “secondary trauma,” psychological injury to mental health professionals working with them. Because the veterans know, they keep silent about their worst demons, until they have observed the therapist and his or her setting long enough to know that it is safe—for themselves and for the therapist. About ten years ago, when I had only three years experience and was still quite green, I was sitting eating a sandwich in a group therapy room a quarter hour before a therapy group I was to conduct. Because our program is based on the concept that the veterans heal one another through the power of their community together, they are encouraged to consider the rooms “theirs” and to come early and stay late. One veteran came with some photographs of enemy soldiers he had blown apart with his M-79 Thumper, the shotgun-style grenade launcher. Out of respect for the dead, I put down my sandwich, but made the error of not explaining why I put down my sandwich. The veteran grabbed back the pictures looking stricken, fearing he had made me sick to my stomach. These photographs were intensely meaningful, important, and also probably harmful for him to dwell on privately, without anyone to “process” the feelings, memories, and thoughts that they evoked. His fear of hurting me shut down his chance at that bit of recovery. He never brought the pictures to the clinic again, despite offers to structure the encounter any way he felt safe. The subject of clinician self-care and prevention of secondary trauma in the mental health workplace is a large one. Dealing with secondary trauma is not a secondary issue to the success of the treatment enterprise. See J. Shay and J. Munroe, “Group and Milieu Therapy for Veterans with Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder,” in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Comprehensive Text, ed. Philip A. Saigh and J. Douglas Bremner (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1999), pp. 391-413. Access to the literature of secondary trauma as an occupational exposure in many fields of work can be found in the bibliography to the second edition of Secondary Traumatic Stress, ed. Beth Hudnall-Stamm (Lutherville, Md.: Sidran Press, 1999).
22 Yael Danieli, International Handbook of Multigenerational Legacies of Trauma (New York: Plenum, 1998).
23 Lawrence A. Tritle, From Melos to My Lai: War and Survival (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 184.
10. What Was the Sirens’ Song?: Truth As Deadly Addiction
1 George Hoffman and a number of other veterans who have never been my patients speak in their own names and have generously allowed me to use their words here. This is excerpted from the complete “War Story,” which can be found in a collection of George “Sonny” Huffman’s writings on the Web at www.vietvet.org/sonny.htm. George Huffman reserves all rights.
2 In fairness to those who recall the songs’ appeal as sexual, there are strong sexual associations to the grassy meadow (lēimon was also used to refer to the female genitals) on which they sing and the “” (thelgousin) effect of their songs. See Jean-Pierre Vernant, “The Refusal of Odysseus,” trans. V. Farenga, in Schein, Reading the Odyssey, p. 186n 9.
3 Pietro Pucci, “The Song of the Sirens,” in Schein, Reading the Odyssey, p. 191.
4 Ibid. This is one of the main points of Pucci’s paper.
5 The Sirens, in a line not quoted above, speak of veterans “delighting in” (terpsamenos) their song, 12:188, orig.
6 Willy Peter: white phosphorus incendiary.
7 Ahl and Roisman, The Odyssey Re-formed, p. 147. Elsewhere, I have tried to put the Homeric word thumos back into current circulation as a less pathologizing and prejudicial term than “narcissism.” See Shay and Munroe, “Group and Milieu Therapy for Veterans,” pp. 391-413, especially the section “Destruction of Normal Narcissism.” See also J. Shay, “Killing Rage: Physis or Nomos— or Both?,” in War and Violence in Ancient Greece, ed. Hans van Wees (London: Duckworth and Classical Press of Wales, 2000), pp. 31-56, especially the section “Honor, Narcissism, and Thumos.”
8 Pucci, Odysseus Polutropos, p. 212n 7.
9 J. Shay, “Achilles: Paragon, Flawed Character, or Tragic Soldier Figure?” Classical Bulletin 71:117-24 (1995).
10 Republic X 621c.
11 2.583.
12 Translated by Janet Lloyd (New York: Zone Books, 1999), p. 87.
13 Segal, Singers, Heroes, and Gods in the Odyssey, p. 103.
14 In the eyes of bureaucracies, more syllables is always better: Is there any substantive difference in meaning between the four-syllable verb “adjudicate” and the one-syllable verb “judge”?
15 My esteemed colleague in Commandant of the Marine Corps Trust Study Bruce Gudmundsson, a world-class military historian, gives the following comments on the “Dolchstoss von hinten.” First, many soldiers from the front felt that they had not been beaten—much like many American Vietnam veterans say “we won every battle”—and thus were baffled and humiliated by the surrender. Second, the phrase was not originally a nationalist, right-wing coinage, but actually first used by Friedrich Ebert, a Social Democrat, the first chancellor of the Weimar Republic, to some army troops. When I asked Gudmundsson what Ebert had in mind, he said it probably referred to (a) the British blockade, which Germany saw as a violation of international law and illegitimate, and (b) Germany’s geographical “back,” which was exposed to the knife by the collapse of Bulgaria and the Austro-Hungarian Empire after the Battle of Salonica. The phrase was subsequently appropriated and exploited to great effect by ultranationalist groups such as the Nazis.
11. Scylla and Charybdis: Enemies Up, Down, and Sideways
1 12:113, Fagles.
2 Lieutenant General Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once … and Young (New York: Random House, 1992), p. 345.
3 More dangerous women! Both Scylla and Charybdis are gendered female.
4 Cook, 1999, p. 157.
5 The text is not crystal clear as to whether Circe’s instruction to put everything into speed was aimed at avoiding Scylla’s jaws altogether, not veering into the whirlpool, or at limiting her catch to six, not giving her a shot at another six by hanging around to fight. Heubeck and a number of other scholars come down squarely that Circe’s warning is that Scylla “may sally forth a second time … with six heads, and attack you again.” See his commentary to 12:122-23, orig.
6 A. Heubeck and A. Hoekstra, A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, vol. 2. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 130.
12. The Sun God’s Beef:The Blame Game
1 12:298, Fagles.
/> 2 Cattle rustling was apparently a major sideline for Greek warriors. I imagine their society being much like the present-day herding society in the horn of Africa, where herdsman and warrior are called by the same word and where men are always armed to the teeth when they tend their cattle. When Achilles and Agamemnon blow up in the opening book of the Iliad, Achilles sneers, (Iliad 1:175ff, Fitzgerald; emphasis added) You thick-skinned, shameless, greedy fool!
Can any [Greek] care for you, or obey you,
after this on marches or in battle?
As for myself, when I came here to fight,
I had no quarrel with Troy or Trojan spearmen:
they never stole my cattle or my horses. This is an insight into the world of these Greek warriors of the Archaic Period. Achilles doesn’t say “the Trojans never burned our town or raided our shipping,” but “they never stole my cattle.”
3 Scholars Ahl and Roisman comment, “Eurylochus usually spots Odysseus’ intent to endanger his comrades or treat them unfairly.”
4 Homer scholar Erwin Cook disagrees with my finding irony here and says that here “Zeus” simply means “the gods” and that the sun god’s island and the gale are simply workings out of the divine plan set in train by the Cyclops’ curse (personal communication).
5 24:468ff, Fitzgerald.
6 See Segal, Singers, Heroes and Gods in the Odyssey, p. 217.
7 We can recall that the other time Odysseus fell asleep, on the way from the island of the King of the Winds straight home to Ithaca, it didn’t come out well.
8 Ahl and Roisman, The Odyssey Re-Formed, p. 151.
9 Ibid., p. 150.
10 Ex. 32. Homeric scholar Donna Wilson: “a traditional theme common to Homer and Israelite tradition alike that the people fail to restrain themselves in the long absence of a leader; the suitors do the same thing” (e-mail, December 18, 2001).
11 See Dereliction of Duty by U.S. Army armored cavalry Major H. R. McMaster (New York: HarperCollins, 1998).
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