Books 5 and 6

[Kerstin]

The analogy that I was thinking of is that dark red wine is opaque like ink. And water in sufficient quantities can have the same "inky" appearance, especially when churned by storms.

[Lia]

Susan wrote: "recreate the voyage in a replica ship (not a raft ;).."

pffff, shameless amateur! Where's his kleos??

BTW, there was a theory that Odysseus sailed across the North Atlantic and encountered America (Henriette Mertz), I think you definitely deserve kleos if you tried to retrace that with a raft.

[Lia]

Ian wrote: "Some of the commercial publishers handling high-priced scholarly and technical works claim that they have only a small market, and they need to charge that much to cover their costs.

None of them seem willing to admit that the low sales of their book and journals are probably driven by the cost -- only institutions can afford them, and not all of them, leaving out most professionals and students."

That's exactly my point. I tried to get my local library to subscribe to an academic journal with an elevator pitch about making academic topics assessable to common readers. Turns out they charge a much higher fee for 'institutions' (i.e. libraries). The journal is already fully funded by the government/ the University, so why keep readers away with exorbitant fee? Wouldn't they rather more people read, cite, discuss their papers and become relevant?

Many of these ridiculously priced books are basically Ph.D grad thesis. They were written because they needed to publish to qualify for the degree, not because they need to make a living by writing. The argument of small market leading to high cost seems dubious.

[Everyman]

Lia wrote: "It sounds like he was thinking, or mentally bargaining, with the general idea of some god, like talking himself into believing that any deity out there is generally obligated to take care of a humble and unfortunate stranger. A bit like playing with the trolley problem inside his head."

Greek theology is a bit muddled, but they did believe that rivers were gods (we see this in the Iliad, too, where Achilles fought with the river Scamander).

We also see here the formula for Greek supplication:

"Reverend even in the eyes of the immortal gods is that man who comes as a wanderer, even as I have now come to thy stream and to thy knees, after many toils. [450] Nay, pity me, O king, for I declare that I am thy suppliant.”

The form of supplication was to kneel before the person (in this case the god) you are supplicating, grab him about the knees, and raise your head to him. I this way, first he can't escape your supplication. But if he chooses to reject you, your throat is open and defenseless to his knife to slit. So you are placing yourself totally as his mercy. Here Odysseus invokes this standard form of supplication.

Reverend even in the eyes of the immortal gods is that man who comes as a wanderer, even as I have now come to thy stream and to thy knees, after many toils. [450] Nay, pity me, O king, for I declare that I am thy suppliant.”

[Lia]

Patrice wrote: "anyone who has been to greece is struck by the beautiful blue of the ocean. it is exceptional but not at all like wine. maybe at sunset the change is striking.. that royal blue sea surrounds everyt..."

What about snot-green? Would snotgreen scrotumtightening sea work for that color?

[Lia]

Everyman wrote: "Lia wrote: "It sounds like he was thinking, or mentally bargaining, with the general idea of some god, like talking himself into believing that any deity out there is generally obligated to take ca..."

Thanks everyman (sounds like your brain recovered!) I really need to read that greek religion book Ian talked about :-)

I'm still stuck thinking he merely thought about supplicating, he did not in fact get down on his knees (not that it was an option, he's swimming). Is thinking the same as acting? What if Penelope THINKS about remarrying? Is that the same as having already betrayed Odysseus?

[David]

The wine-dark sea is a traditional English translation of οἶνοψ πόντος (oinops pontos), an epithet in Homer of uncertain meaning. A literal translation is "wine-face sea". The only other use of oinops in the works of Homer is for oxen, where it seems to describe a reddish color, which has given rise to various speculations about what it could mean about the blue seas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_da...

A characteristic of Homer's style is the use of epithets, as in "rosy-fingered" dawn or "swift-footed" Achilles. Epithets are used because of the constraints of the dactylic hexameter (i.e., it is convenient to have a stockpile of metrically fitting phrases to add to a name) and because of the oral transmission of the poems; they are mnemonic aids to the singer and the audience alike.

Handy list of other epithet's in Homer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epithet...

[Rafael]

Everyman wrote: "Lia wrote: "It sounds like he was thinking, or mentally bargaining, with the general idea of some god, like talking himself into believing that any deity out there is generally obligated to take ca..."

Great explanation. Good to know this.

[Ian]

Lia wrote: "The argument of small market leading to high cost seems dubious...."

This is going to be a long digression from the "Odyssey" -- anyone should feel free to skip it. It is in part a rant about business practices which impact all of us who read books.

As I pointed out, these academic publishers' argument may even be getting things backwards, with the very high prices producing the very low sales -- driving up the costs-per-unit, leading to supposedly necessary price increases, which further reduce sales.

Some basic market economics seem to go right past their executives. Which is particularly odd, considering that printed books were the original mass-produced consumer product (especially after steam presses got going in the nineteenth-century). Instead, they are going for the luxury trade, which almost always has limited sales.

But the commercial publishing and book-trades also have long been full of what some observers consider marketing ideas that amount to superstitions.

For example, back in the early 1950s, Ian Ballantine founded Ballantine Books with the idea of publishing original fiction in simultaneous hardcover and paperback editions. He had formed the theory that, by-and-large, purchasers of hardback and paperback editions were separate markets, and the cheaper paperbacks wouldn't reduce sales of the more expensive versions.

At first this was a success. The hardcovers (for books like "Fahrenheit 451") got respectable reviews at a time when major periodicals ignored all original paperbacks as cheap trash. This drove purchases for both editions. Fred Pohl, a science fiction writer and veteran editor, was dubious about the whole project, until he saw people walk past a display of 35-cent paperbacks to get to copies that cost $3.50, and thus, happily, pay ten times more than they had to.

Then booksellers realized what was going on, and refused to accept the hardcovers, claiming that they couldn't sell them in competition with the cheap paperbacks. Since the hardcovers were no longer available to the public, they didn't sell, "proving" the theory that paperback editions necessarily cut into hardback sales.....

By the way, Ballantine Books survived this near-disaster, and Ian Ballantine later published the authorized paperback edition of Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," proving once and for all that the idea that "fantasy doesn't sell" was also wrong. (This actually, eventually, made an impact on publishing practices, unfortunately producing a lot of inferior fantasy books, but that wasn't his doing: while he and Betty Ballantine ran the company, editorial standards were very high.)

He then used some of the profits to take the risk of publishing inexpensive editions of Sierra Club photo books, in trade-paperback format, something else that "doesn't sell," but did. And he then went on to publish environmental literature, before other commercial publishers were willing to go into that market.

I heard him give a talk in which he explained that he had realized that the Sierra Club books would appeal to many Tolkien readers, and that those who enjoyed nature photography would probably be concerned about the natural environment, so each market opened the way for another.

Another such visionary was the late Jim Baen, who realized that very cheap, even free, digital editions of books could drive sales of paperback, and even hardcover, versions, and furthermore released these digital editions without DRM restrictions, so people could actually give them away.

Writers (as well as other publishers) were skeptical, but the former had to admit that their books from Baen outsold those issued by other publishers. (Either that, or Baen was paying royalties on non-existent profits....) Word of this spread quickly, as the science fiction and fantasy writers Baen Books publishes tend to talk to others in the same field.

Unfortunately, this practice caused Baen Books to have problems with Amazon, which didn't want to compete with free editions of the same books, and it apparently hasn't been their practice to add new titles to that list of free editions for a while now. As with Ballantine, the publisher just couldn't afford to be frozen out of the distribution system.

But the Baen Books experience was in line with the Oriental Institute's with free digital books, which I mentioned earlier: people who want the hard copies will buy them, if they are at all affordable.

The publishing industry at large still hasn't caught on, and probably never will.

[Thomas]

Lia wrote: "He didn't openly pray though -- he "prayed in his heart":
"

"Openly" is probably not the best description. He prays with faith that his prayer will be answered, as opposed to the distrustful stance he takes with other gods. It seems to me that he has no choice but to do this "in his heart." How else does a man who is half drowning in the sea pray? We can't expect him to offer a hecatomb, can we? :)

[Lia]

Thomas wrote: "We can't expect him to offer a hecatomb, can we? "

You CAN if you were Io, a tearful moo-cow supplicating to cow-faced Juno!

I guess I was being pedantic, sorry about that. He did sincerely believe the stranger-god would answer his not-suppressed-but-not-acted-out prayer.

[Lia]

Patrice wrote: "all of the talk of wine reminds me of a conversation i had with a friend who lives on Crete. she said every greek has grape vines in their backyard. its why greeks are so happy.

never thought so ..."

I propose a lab-session, we should test your theory with a drinking game using this:

* * * mp3 autoplay warning ↯* * *
https://www.oeaw.ac.at/kal/sh/demodok...

(Also, it's Odyssey book 8 in ancient Greek, so spoiler warning if you're fluent in Greek.)

[Susan]

David wrote: Maybe Odysseus is simply projecting his own wiliness?

Are gifts something to be ware of? Should Telemachus beware of Menelaus' gift?

*****

I think that’s it — as the wiliest of the Greeks, Odysseus is always looking for an angle and expects others to be doing the same.

On gifts, I found this helpful in thinking about the meaning of the gift exchanges:

“The word “gift” is not to be misconstrued. It may be stated as a flat rule of both primitive and archaic society that no one ever gave anything, whether goods or services or honors, without proper recompense, real or wishful, immediate or years away, to himself or to his kin. The act of giving was, therefore, in an essential sense always the first half of a reciprocal action, the other half of which was a counter gift.” The World of Odysseus, M.I. Finley

Finley discusses a couple examples. One is the exchange between Athena/Mentes and Telemachus in Book 1, where Telemachus offers Mentes a parting gift “Go to your ship happy in your heart, bearing a gift, valuable and very beautiful, which will be your treasure from me, such as dear guest-friends give to guest-friends.” Athena defers with “Do not detain me any longer as I am eager to be on my way. The gift, which the heart of a friend prompts you to give me, give it to me on my return journey that I may carry it home; choose a very beautiful one, that will bring you a worthy one in exchange,” (Book 1, lines 311-8)

Finley comments “Telemachus had said nothing about a counter-gift. Yet he and “Mentes” understood each other perfectly: the counter-gift was as expected as the original gift at parting. That was what gift giving was in this society. The return need not be forthcoming at once, and it might take several forms. But come it normally would....No single detail in the life of the heroes receives so much attention in the Iliad and the Odyssey as gift-giving, and always there is frank reference to adequacy, appropriateness, recompense.”

So, there were “strings” attached to all these gifts, at least among humans....

[Lia]

I have a question about the greek word for "godlike" -- so many characters and even objects are given the epithet "godlike" -- Nestor, Telemachus' bard (at least his voice anyway), the suitors' drink, Patroclus, Telemachus himself, Neleus's "godlike advice", Menelaus' house, Deiphobus (from Iliad in Menelaus's tale), Menelaus' shipmates, Eurymachus (suitor), Odysseus himself, Nausicaa called her people "godlike," Alcinous himself is also called godlike. It would take all day to list them all.

Are they all the same in Greek? (Antitheos)? Or are different epithets all being translated into "godlike"?

[Marieke]

Susan wrote: "David wrote: Maybe Odysseus is simply projecting his own wiliness?

Are gifts something to be ware of? Should Telemachus beware of Menelaus' gift?

*****

I think that’s it — as the wiliest of th..."

in some way we still do this today, albeit not in the specific form you describe here. Here you can note birthday gifts (each pretty must catalogued and something of similar worth given in return) or such a thing as picking up the tab. Although going Dutch isn't that common in the part of the Netherlands I come from, it is expected from you that each takes his turn in paying the bill after havind dinner or drinks

[Ian]

Lia wrote: "Or are different epithets all being translated into "godlike"?..."

Yes, they certainly are -- well, depending on the translation you are using.

A very quick and superficial search of the opening books shows that *antitheos* indeed seems to be the most common word to be so translated in the old A.T. Murray (Loeb Classical Library) version -- and it is even applied to Polyphemus.

But there are other words he so translated, too.

Telemachus has a bunch of them: I found *theoides,* *isotheos,* and *theoeikelos,* in the search almost at once (the last also in reference to Deiphobus, when Helen is calling out to the Greeks in the Horse), and stopped looking. (I also did only minimal searching of the Perseus dictionary resources, and may have missed some alternative translations that might have been used by other translators.)

I suspect from this that we are dealing with metrical formulas again, without much new information on the characters (or objects) so described, or even much appropriateness in some cases.

Perhaps it could be argued that some examples of these words (e.g., when applied to a Trojan prince like Deiphobus, or to one of the suitors) imply only "Very Important Person," but I doubt that listeners would have picked up on that nuance -- or any other -- as the narrative swept past particular instances.

In the case of Polyphemus, if the work was in prose, or lyric poetry, I would guess that it concedes that he is a son of Poseidon, but I would be a little wary of any such reading applied to Homer -- again, too likely to pass by unnoticed.

[Lia]

Thanks Ian, that really helps a great deal.

I'm reading The Unity of the "Odyssey" by George E. Dimock (one of the Loeb translators!).

Revealed in the context of Poseidon's hostility, Odysseus's name not only satisfies our awakened curiosity but shows a peculiar appropriateness: the epic verb odussasthai means "to will pain to," and Poseidon wills pain to Odysseus. This suggestion in turn heightens the meaning of the epithet antitheos , ''good as a god,'' here conjoined with Odysseus's name. Anti basically means "facing; opposite." Antitheos suggests a person who can be compared with, be matched with, stand in for, even oppose on equal terms, a god ( theos ). If, as the passage hints, Odysseus can survive Poseidon's hostility and come home safely, he will richly deserve his epithet. If, on the other hand, he cannot, the gods' purpose will be defeated, and there will be a rift in the universe.

But the epithet comes up so much, it didn't seem like anything specific to Odysseus.

I'm glad to find out it's more unique than that.

[Ian]

Susan wrote: "David wrote: Maybe Odysseus is simply projecting his own wiliness?

Are gifts something to be ware of? Should Telemachus beware of Menelaus' gift?

*****

I think that’s it — as the wiliest of th..."

I accidentally deleted a fairly long post on this topic while trying to edit it, so this time I'll try to be more concise.

In some societies, public gift-giving from one important person to another was not necessarily a friendly gesture, but a competition between them for prestige in the eyes of the larger community. There is a large anthropological literature on this.

I provided links to articles on gift-exchange in Homer in the thread on Books One and Two, message 194, and I'll include them here. One of the articles uses some of that anthropological background to gift-giving issues. If it seems too technical, the Wikipedia article on "potlatch," and the cross-references it provides in "See Also," may be helpful.

Discussion and Debate: Reciprocity in Aegean Palatial Societies: Gifts, Debt, and Foundations of Economic Exchange
https://www.academia.edu/32971104/Iro...

Homeric Reciprocities
by Erwin Cook
https://www.academia.edu/28099031/Hom...

[Lia]

About gifts: remember Iliad led to Odysseus' plight, and Iliad was the result of a contest of gifts: rather than their actual embodied merits, the goddesses made Paris decide which one of their gifts was most choice worthy, the rest (War of Troy, death, pain, exile, etc etc) is just the fall out from this gifting competition.

Very wise of Odysseus to think twice.

[Christopher]

There's a passage in the Iliad where Diomedes (I think) actually wounds Athena (again, if memory serves), which is a much more shocking example of a mortal on a level with a god than anything in the Odyssey.

Well, when I googled it, it was Aphrodite whom Diomedes wounded, which makes sense. Aphrodite was on the Trojan side.

[Rafael]

About the discussion over the word wine to refer to the sea. Did you ever heard about the red tide phenomenon? Could not this be the cause to this expression?

[Rafael]

I was wondering about a feature of the ancient greek nobility. It's interesting to notice that Nausicaa wash her (and others') clothes. Penelope do the chores with the slaves.

Its quite different from the medieval (also the oriental and the current) concept of nobility.

[Ian]

Rafael wrote: "About the discussion over the word wine to refer to the sea. Did you ever heard about the red tide phenomenon? Could not this be the cause to this expression?"

The article linked in message 50, above, briefly discusses this possibility, among other proposals.

As a southern Californian, I'm familiar with the red tide on our beaches, and might be thought inclined to favor the idea. I consider it just possible, at least if it is known in the Aegean.

But I tend to doubt it, as Homeric epithets usually seem to refer to some fairly permanent or regularly occurring features.

For those who are NOT acquainted with it, there is a Wikipedia article on the subject, complete with some spectacular photographs of the phenomenon. It gets a little technical in places, but of course one can skip them.

To quote it briefly: "Red tides are events in which estuarine, marine, or fresh water algae accumulate rapidly in the water column, resulting in coloration of the surface water. It is usually found in coastal areas."

It goes on (later) to state that the color is not necessarily red, and there may be no visible discoloration at all, and that it has nothing to do with the tides.

In some cases the algal bloom is toxic, and the article explains where, and why.

[Rafael]

Ian wrote: "Rafael wrote: "About the discussion over the word wine to refer to the sea. Did you ever heard about the red tide phenomenon? Could not this be the cause to this expression?"

The article linked in..."

Oh, sorry, I did not see it. I will read it.

[Lia]

Christopher wrote: "There's a passage in the Iliad where Diomedes (I think) actually wounds Athena (again, if memory serves), which is a much more shocking example of a mortal on a level with a god than anything in th..."

See Ian's list of "godlike" epithets, surely it can't be unique that Odysseus happens to give the gods a good run for their hecatomb. And surely there is more than one way to be a match.

I think Dimock is specifically talking about Odysseus's ability to endure the pain these gods throw at him. You know how everybody from Helen to Telemachus is blaming Zeus for the sufferings of subjects of songs, and Zeus is trying to vindicate himself.

I also don't think they (the Olympians) approve or admire injuring the gods, so wounding them make them impious, and not necessarily god-like. (They do seem to excuse Odysseus injuring Polyphemus, but then I'm not sure if Polyphemus counts, he's only half Olympian.)

I could be wrong, the more I think about it, the more this Zeus agenda sounds like the Biblical god testing Job, or Faust. So maybe I'm projecting later works onto early theodicy.

[Susan]

Ian wrote: "Susan wrote: "David wrote: Maybe Odysseus is simply projecting his own wiliness?

Are gifts something to be ware of? Should Telemachus beware of Menelaus' gift?

*****

Thanks for all the supplemental material you’ve been sharing, Ian. It’s great to have those resources available to dig deeper on topics of specific interest and to come back to.

As for gift exchanges in early Greek society, I must confess that as a general reader I find a certain circularity to discussions on these (and other topics) since they tend to draw heavily on interpretations of the available literary sources, especially Homer. However, it’s interesting to speculate on the web of obligations in Books 3-4 between Odysseus/Telemachus and Nestor/Menelaus, which surely includes Odysseus’ service/support in the Trojan War.

[Susan]

Marieke wrote: in some way we still do this today, albeit not in the specific form you describe here. Here you can note birthday gifts (each pretty must catalogued and something of similar worth given in return) or such a thing as picking up the tab.

*****

Great point. Dítto Christmas gifts. I suppose there would be a certain social awkwardness then as now if the gifts were not somehow comparable.

[Ashley]

This episode of RadioLab deals specifically with color in Homer:
Why Isn't the Sky Blue?

"What is the color of honey, and "faces pale with fear"? If you're Homer--one of the most influential poets in human history--that color is green. And the sea is "wine-dark," just like oxen...though sheep are violet. Which all sounds...well, really off. Producer Tim Howard introduces us to linguist Guy Deutscher, and the story of William Gladstone... Gladstone conducted an exhaustive study of every color reference in The Odyssey and The Iliad. And he found something startling: No blue! ... across all cultures, words for colors appear in stages. And blue always comes last. Jules Davidoff, professor of neuropsychology at the University of London, helps us make sense of the way different people see different colors in the same place..."

[Ian]

Ashley wrote: "This episode of RadioLab deals specifically with color in Homer:
Why Isn't the Sky Blue?..."

Thanks. That was a fascinating discussion

I was familiar with a little of the material (like the green/blue problem), not in any systematic way, mostly through trying to read a (difficult) discussion of color vision, which I consulted over the problems of translating color words.

I immediately thought of the Egyptians as an exception to the "blue" rule, not through any knowledge of the language, but because they imported a blue stone, lapis lazuli, all the way from Afghanistan, and presumably valued it as different from what they could find or make at home. (So did some other ancient peoples: I have to wonder if any systematic study of color words has been given to some other really ancient languages, like Sumerian.)

The lack of "blue" in the Hebrew Bible is not evident in some translations -- the Modern Hebrew word for blue is "tekhelet," and there is a tendency to read that meaning into the Biblical text. In ancient times, however, it referred to dyed cloth, not a specific color: it seems to have covered a range of colors, from pale blue to deep purple -- the famous Tyrian purple (unless that was red).

The mollusc that produced this dye, which is color-fast once it has been allowed to soak into the fabric, has *probably* been identified, and it seems that the color produced depends in part on how much sunlight the raw dye is exposed to after it is extracted from its source. (There is chemical explanation, which of course I don't follow at all.)

This is a live issue in some Orthodox Jewish circles, because there is a specific Biblical commandment to wear a "blue" fringe on the corner of a garment, one which has been in abeyance since Talmudic times, because the source of the correct dye was declared unavailable. The story gets more complicated from there, with issues like whether a synthesized chemical dye is a legitimate substitute, and, of course, exactly what color is involved.......

[Lia]

The way Homer personified time:

“Then Dawn came from her lovely throne, and woke the girl. She was amazed, remembering 
her dream, and in a fine dress, went to tell
 her parents, whom she found inside the hall.
Wilson trans.

reminds me of the dancing girls in Joyce’s Ulysses (Circe episode):

(From a corner the morning hours run out, goldhaired, slimsandalled, in girlish blue, waspwaisted, with innocent hands. Nimbly they dance, twirling their skipping ropes. The hours of noon follow in amber gold. Laughing, linked, high haircombs flashing, they catch the sun in mocking mirrors, lifting their arms.)
Ulysses. Gabler Ed. p. 469

[Lia]

Rafael wrote: "I was wondering about a feature of the ancient greek nobility. It's interesting to notice that Nausicaa wash her (and others') clothes. Penelope do the chores with the slaves.

Its quite different..."

What I find really interesting is that Nausicaa owns so much clothing, she is in a position to give them away. Whereas Odysseus is naked.

I'm only guessing here -- it seems like making, taking care of weaved materials is the economic function of "upper class" women. Fabrics were treated as high value loots, having a skilled weaver in the house increases the household's gift-giving (i.e. political) power. Even princesses and queens participate in fabricating them.

Many classical tales of otherwise "silenced" females were told using fabrics as well -- Penelope unweaving, undoing the suitors' plan. Clytemnestra weaving and dying the purple tapestry that separated Agamemnon from his Kingdom. Philomela telling her sister about her rape after her rapist cut off her tongue by weaving a message... handling of fabrics seems to signal female agency against all odds.

And yet, Nausicaa, endowed as she is with all that fabrics, she acts more coy than Odysseus. It seems her father sees right through her, he immediately understands what his "shy" daughter desires despite her beating around the bush. She's a princess, but she clumsily devised a pointless plan just to hide her encounters from the gaze of the commoners.

Naked and exhausted, Odysseus won the concealment contest hands down-- she tells her slaves "No living person ever born would come to our Phaeacia with a hostile mind," Odysseus is the hostile mind that sacked Troy. And she taught him how to defeat the guarded King's defense -- through her mother.

Mother and daughter tag-teamed to defeat the Island's defense. (Thanks to Athena, obviously.) It seems women were never truly powerless, even in an explicit patriarchy.

[David]

Naked man discovers naked women playing ball on the beach. A cliche so ancient that at first it seemed to be an anachronism.


Beach ball sans the naked people.

TRIGGER WARNING! - unsans the naked people
[broken link]
Someone let me know if that link works or not.

[Thomas]

David wrote: "TRIGGER WARNING! - unsans the naked people
https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=46457A...
Someone let me know if that link works or not. "

Nope. And I was so hoping to find naked people on the internet this morning! (May I presume there is a western canon association here? ;)

[David]

Sorry that link did not work Thomas,


Naked people sans the beach ball. You will just have to mentally picture the beach ball above photo-shopped in there over all the naughty bits.

And to show its art and not gratuitous naked people which the cliche has become since Homer's time, here is a title, artist, and some dates to make it legitimate: Nausicaa - by William McGregor Paxton - 1869 - 1941

[Rex]

For a century or so the claim has circulated that the ancients just couldn't see blue, a thesis that is (as I understand) controversial at best. Check out, for instance, this Quora thread. Also, this entry in the Encyclopedia of Color Science and Technology, which gives a good overview of the historical-linguistic issue of color identification.

[David]

My Lombardo translation has 16 instances of the word "blue". Here are two.

III.6 To the blue-maned Lord of the Sea.

VI.53-54 Her mother sitting by the hearth with her women, Spinning sea-blue yarn. . .

[Rex]

"Blue-maned" is κυανοχαίτης, which literally means dark-haired. In the second example, the word is ἁλιπόρφυρα, usually understood to be purple.

[Thomas]

For what it's worth:

κυάνεος 1 κύανος

1.properly, dark-blue, glossy-blue, of a serpent's iridescent hues, Il., Hes.; of the swallow, Simon.; of the deep sea, Eur.
2.generally, dark, black, of the mourning veil of Thetis, Il.; of clouds, Hom.; of hair, Il.; κυανέη κάπετος a deep dark trench, id=Il.; κυάνεαι φάλαγγες dark masses of warriors, id=Il., etc.

[Lia]

https://www.nature.com/articles/018676a0
https://www.nature.com/articles/018700a0

These (century old) Nature articles reacted to Gladstone's analysis by saying that Gladstone had some misconceptions about colour-blindness (i.e. he thought the condition cannot coexist with perfect feeling for form), which probably explains why Gladstone didn't seriously consider the possibility that Homer himself suffered an eye defect. The author (William Pole) went on to argue colour-blindness would be consistent with Gladstone's list of peculiar Homeric colour/ hue treatments.

[Lia]

Why did Odysseus compare Nausicaa to a palm tree, and more importantly, why wasn't Nausicaa insulted? Wouldn't YOU be mad if someone calls you a palm tree?

[David]

Rex wrote: ""Blue-maned" is κυανοχαίτης, which literally means dark-haired. In the second example, the word is ἁλιπόρφυρα, usually understood to be purple."

Maybe the word blue for the ancient Greeks was something like the word "snow" is for the Inuit. The inuit have no single word to describe snow, but many specific ones instead.
Washington Post: There really are 50 Eskimo words for ‘snow’

[Marieke]

David wrote: "Rex wrote: ""Blue-maned" is κυανοχαίτης, which literally means dark-haired. In the second example, the word is ἁλιπόρφυρα, usually understood to be purple."

Maybe the word blue for the ancient Gre..."

It is also possible that there wasn't an ancient greek word for blue, because they saw it as a different color. The same goes with 'orange' in English: it didn't exist until travelers brought back oranges, having the same color. Before that the color was described as 'light-red'

[Lia]

the podcast that Ashley shared in message 86 explicitly compared Ancient Greek's missing blue to what we know about Eskimo's sensitivity to blue (well, shades of white.)

[David]

Lia wrote: "Why did Odysseus compare Nausicaa to a palm tree, and more importantly, why wasn't Nausicaa insulted? Wouldn't YOU be mad if someone calls you a palm tree?"

One of the most impressive features of the meeting between Nausicaa and Odysseus in Odyssey vi is the hero’s reference to his journey to Delos and the young palm-tree he saw next to Apollo’s altar there. This piece of information has instigated a serious debate concerning both its origin and its function in the Nausicaa-Odysseus episode. . . .

According to Hainsworth, “Odysseus appears to allude to his voyage to Troy (or Aulis), but a visit to Delos is otherwise quite unknown.” [6] There is, however, a scholium by Aristarchus (EPQ ad Odyssey vi 164) referring to a visit of Odysseus and Menelaus (followed by the entire Greek fleet) to Delos to seek the daughters of Anius, who were able to relieve the famine of the Greek army by producing food:
More: https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/d...

I would only add that a palm tree has a few very favorable traits, shade, protection from the wind, wood for building: recall that Odysseus is a carpenter, natural beauty, etc. These traits can probably be taken literally and metaphorically.

[Christopher]

"Blue acid") because of its acidic nature in water and its derivation from Prussian blue. ... The radical cyanide in hydrogen cyanide was given its name from cyan, not only an English word for a shade of blue but the Greek word for blue (Ancient Greek: κυανοῦς), again owing to its derivation from Prussian blue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroge...


The translator who went with "blue-maned" was being literal.

But it doesn't seem one can go on with "the Greeks had no word for blue," when the word which means "blue" doesn't count.

Prussian blue:

[Ian]

David wrote: "Lia wrote: "Why did Odysseus compare Nausicaa to a palm tree, and more importantly, why wasn't Nausicaa insulted? Wouldn't YOU be mad if someone calls you a palm tree?"

One of the most impressive ..."

Thanks for the link to the Tsagalis chapter: I had completely missed it, and the story of miraculous supplies it brings up, when searching for something on Greek logistics at Troy. (When I mentioned their plundering of Troy's friends and neighbors for supplies and captives, and how that triggered the opening situation of the Iliad: see message 98 in the thread about Books Three and Four.)

I may never have come across the daughters of Anius story before, at least not in detail, or not for a great many years -- very likely the latter. It does show that *someone* had noticed the problem of feeding the army at all, let alone for ten years.

I *should* have remembered its magical provisions, as a counterpart to Biblical manna, which also gets around the problem of feeding a large population without agricultural resources, and for an even more prolonged period -- forty years.

And I do mean LARGE: the Biblical census of the tribes in the wilderness gives 600,000 adult males, specifically not counting the women and children, making supplying the Greek army at Troy seem a trivial problem.

Rabbinic tradition also provided a necessary counterpart to manna, a miraculous water source, the "Well of Miriam," which followed Moses' sister, and appeared whenever the Israelites paused in their journey.

This story seems to have been generated by a detail from the existing narrative, like the mention of the palm tree on Delos. In this case, the puzzle was the panic over water *immediately* after the death of Miriam, and the instruction to Moses and Aaron to produce a (new) miraculous spring from a stone, in Numbers 20:1-13. Someone seems to have noticed the problem of where they had been getting water -- in a rocky desert -- ever since leaving Egypt.

[Ian]

Lia wrote: "Why did Odysseus compare Nausicaa to a palm tree, and more importantly, why wasn't Nausicaa insulted? Wouldn't YOU be mad if someone calls you a palm tree?"

I stumbled across a possible answer while reading "The Gods and Heroes of Ancient Greece: Identities and Transformations" in Claude Calame, in Chapter 13, "Identities of Gods and Heroes: Athenian Garden Sanctuaries and Gendered Rites of Passage" (pages 259 & 261 -- 260 is an illustration). He has more details on the subject, but I've included the key sentences:

"The palm tree, on the other hand, to judge from the role that it plays in the myth of the birth of Apollo from Leto’s womb on the island of Delos, seems to be symbolically connected with childbirth. ... The symbolic significance of the palm tree had no doubt less to do with the loss of virginity or the notion of fertility in its widest sense than with the capacity for procreation that meant that girls were now of marriageable age."

Assuming that the same symbolism is at work in the Odyssey, the comparison may be another instance of Odysseus hinting, very politely, at Nausicaa's age and attractiveness to possible husbands, without putting himself forward as a suitor.

[Thomas]

Lia wrote: "Why did Odysseus compare Nausicaa to a palm tree, and more importantly, why wasn't Nausicaa insulted? Wouldn't YOU be mad if someone calls you a palm tree?"

I think the answer is in the text itself.

I gazed at that for a long time with my heart full
of wonder, since no tree like it ever sprouted up from the earth,
and I'm in wonder the same way before you, my lady, and in awe,
and dreadfully afraid to touch your knees...

Odysseus, hero of the war in Troy, is afraid of a young girl. Nausicaa is an object of wonder and fear, an alien he doesn't know what to make of. For someone who has been in the company of a genuine goddess for years, isn't it strange that he has this reaction to human civilization? Or is it not strange at all?

Nausicaa tells him "You don't seem like a bad man or a fool," maybe because this is the image he is projecting, and she consoles him. She tells her friends not to be afraid and reminds them how good Phaeacians treat strangers. She leads Odysseus to a sheltered spot where he can bathe, and he is embarrassed.

The roles are reversed -- the war hero is like the child in need of comfort and consolation, and the child is like a parent. It's all very curious, but I think the point of the palm tree is that normal everyday civilization has become alien to Odysseus. The world is upside down.

[Rex]

" In Homer’s poem, Odysseus grounds his argument that Nausicaa might be one of the immortals on a logically impossible non sequitur. He declares that he once saw something like her, a young shoot of a palm springing up beside the altar of Apollo in Delos (Odyssey 6.160–65). A logician scorns his implicit syllogism. However, he means that Nausicaa inspires the same awe in his soul as the young palm shoot did."
— James M. Rhodes, Eros, Wisdom, and Silence: Plato's Erotic Dialogues (here noting echoes of the Odyssey in the Phaedrus

I'm also reminded of how Elaine Scarry makes much of this passage in On Beauty and Being Just .

"Odysseus’s speech makes visible the structure of perception at the moment one stands in the presence of beauty. The beautiful thing seems—is—incomparable, unprecedented; and that sense of being without precedent conveys a sense of the 'newness' or 'newbornness' of the entire world.... Odysseus startles us by actually searching for and finding a precedent; then startles us again by managing through that precedent to magnify, rather than diminish, his statement of regard for Nausicaa, letting the 'young slip of a palm-tree springing into the light' clarify and verify her beauty. The passage continually restarts and refreshes itself.... Homer recreates the structure of a perception that occurs whenever one sees something beautiful; it is as though one has suddenly been washed up onto a merciful beach: all unease, aggression, indifference suddenly drop back behind one, like a surf that has for a moment lost its capacity to harm."

[Ian]

Academia.edu has come up with an interesting discussion of "brilliance" (rather than color) in ancient perceptions of objects, particularly in religious contexts (where we have epigraphic descriptions -- inscriptions -- to give us contemporary reactions).

You will have to scroll down past front-matter to get to the article, but it is there. Be warned: it has a lot of un-transliterated Greek, which may make it hard to follow.

The article is: All that Glitters is not Gold.... (The Vocabulary of Light Reflected), by Clarisse Pretre. It originally appeared in Kermes, an on-line journal.

https://www.academia.edu/35917677/All.....,