In the context of its intended audience, the people of Ancient Greece, the Odyssey (and the rest of the epic cycle as set out by Homer and his contemporaries) is a lesson; a parable. It’s Aesop’s fables, if you replace the cutesy talking animals with pillagers, rapists, and war criminals. The phenomenon of the Greek hero cult is well documented, worship being afforded to them due to their divine nature – since traditionally, heroes were all in some way descended from one god (or goddess, but usually god) or another deciding to have their way with some mortal before booking it early the next rosy-fingered dawn. Just as the ever popular hero characters in modern media act as role models for contemporaneous lessons*, any tale involving one of the many characters from the Greek epic cyclic universe (or GECU, if you will) can therefore be interpreted as teaching something – some more overtly than others, as in the example of the Oresteia, which has a law-and-order-esque detailed trial scene to help codify the Athenian legal system in a piece of literature. What then, is the lesson of the Odyssey?
Well, like the man of many turns, this is indeed the epic of many themes and motifs, which will form the subject of the next few pieces published here, hopefully in a somewhat timely fashion.
*This is almost completely beside the point, but note the example of Captain America – originally a symbol of patriotism and all the ideals of a dutiful soldier written post World War II, now turned idealistic freedom fighter in the modern era. Coincidence? I think not.
The “Greek Epic Cycle Universe” . . . that’s a good way to put it.