But unlike his encounter with Athena, Odysseus does not fear the swineherd; there is no need to claim having exacted revenge, so he shows his heroism in other ways. To this end, he makes various claims about his life: “[b]efore the sons of the Achaians embarked for Troy, I was nine times a leader of men…and much substance came my way,” “Ares and Athene endowed me with courage,” Zeus himself gave him ideas, and he led the ships to Troy with Idomeneus. Odysseus carefully enters many different characteristics of a hero into his tale. He was not only a warrior at Troy but a leader, echoing the famous Trojan heroes Achilles, Agamemnon, Hector, and even Odysseus himself. He hails from a wealthy, “godlike” family, and he has passed the test of heroism implicit in the accumulation of his own material goods. Finally, he has personally interacted with gods, whether this claim is to be taken literally or not. By his choice of story, Odysseus is able to stress his heroic qualities and test Eumaios’ loyalty by talking about Odysseus. He is becoming less afraid to name himself, implying he might be Idomeneus’ companion Meriones by saying that he led forces alongside Idomeneus; still, he cautiously does not directly divulge his name until he learns the situation in Ithaka.
Odysseus’ motive for lying to Antinoös is much more obvious: it reveals the latter’s haughtiness and partially justifies his upcoming murder of the suitor, while letting Odysseus secretly learn the minds of the suitors. Homer must make us dislike Antinoös enough that we will empathize with Odysseus in killing his rival. Of course, he is also obliged to stick with the account he told Eumaios, since the shepherd is present at the banquet. He therefore pretends to be a beggar, asking food of a rich man with far too much. He gives a shortened version of the origins he claimed to Eumaios which stresses his previous wealth and generosity. “I too once lived in my own house among people,” he says, “prospering in wealth, and often I gave to a wanderer…and I had serving men by thousands.” Odysseus even tells Antinoös that he seems “not the worst, but the best” of the suitors, and should therefore greet him graciously. Generosity toward strangers and guests is of paramount importance in the Odyssey, as evident in the juxtaposition between the Phaiakians’ and Polyphemus’ reception of Odysseus, for example. The contrast Homer sets up between the Cretan’s great charity and Antinoös’ poor hospitality, then, suggests his cruelty and even associates him with the Cyclops. By telling this lie, Odysseus is able to retain Eumaios’ trust while contrasting Antinoös’ greediness with his (character’s) own goodness.
Odysseus’ narrates his final “Cretan lie” about his past to his wife. Here he names both himself and his kin, claiming to be Aithon, brother of Idomeneus and grandson of the legendary Minos. He states that Odysseus came to visit his brother, but since he had already gone to Troy, Aithon instead entertained Odysseus and his crew for twelve days. It is noteworthy that Odysseus creates a name for himself in this lie now that he is aware of his situation; he has managed to enter the palace and is cognizant of the state of affairs in Ithaka. Also unlike the other stories, Odysseus dwells upon the description of himself (Aithon’s visitor) instead of his persona, and omits talk of war and warriors. Odysseus conscientiously chooses to emphasize personal traits over prowess on the battlefield, perhaps more in line with a female imagination of heroism. “Aithon” does not talk of Penelope’s husband leaving her to go to war but instead details Odysseus’ beautiful clothing and war spoils, as well as his own royal lineage. As he did to Eumaios, he declares a connection with the gods, though this time it is Odysseus who is described as “like the immortals.” Odysseus completely switches the focus of his lie to himself as Odysseus rather than as Aithon, and the lie comes to blur the men’s history and detail both men’s heroism. Besides making Penelope believe that Aithon is a hero and that Odysseus is still a hero as well, Odysseus must accomplish one more goal with Penelope: judge her reaction to the news that Odysseus is on his way home. He tells her, “I have heard of the present homecoming of Odysseus,” and she responds, “If only this word, stranger and guest, were brought to fulfillment, soon you would be aware of my love and many gifts.” While possibly hinting that she knows it is Odysseus who she is about to love, Penelope makes clear to the stranger/Odysseus that she hopes her husband appears soon, and after receiving her “consent” Odysseus is prepared to execute his plan to kill the suitors.
After discussing Odysseus’ motives for telling each of his Cretan lies, the question remains of why Odysseus chose Crete over any other fatherland. This question has puzzled scholars for years, and academics have suggested myriad explanations. For one thing, a claim to be from Crete would make sense given the imagined Cretan penchant for lying. Crete was far from Ithaka, “a fabled island of mystery,” so the veracity of his story could not be disproved by his audience who had not traveled there. Edward Schmoll goes on to suggest that Crete was a possible “symbol for a realm of the dead,” and that Odysseus’ claim he is from Crete echoes the heroic motif of going to the Underworld and coming home “reborn.” Emlyn-Jones proposes that the Cretan tales are meant to reiterate the principal themes of “hardship, restless wandering, capture by pirates/traders, abandonment on a strange shore, [and] hospitality offered…and violated” present in the rest of the epic. Finally, Steve Reece provides a controversial theory that Homer conflated many contemporary versions of the Odyssey, or else made up a new version altogether. He argues that in this pre-Homeric Odyssey “Crete held a central position of the tale of Odysseus’ return,” with Telemachus traveling “in search of news of his father not to Menelaus in Sparta but to Idomeneus in Crete.”
Each of the above theories about the use of Crete is unsatisfactory by itself, yet elements of various theories taken together can provide a more satisfying answer to the question at hand. First, the idea that Odysseus uses Crete as his homeland because Cretans were known as liars accounts for Odysseus’ lies too simply and does not explain the difference in the four tales he tells, but is nonetheless an important point not to be dismissed. Schmoll appropriately mentions Crete’s geographical distance from Ithaka and its mysteriousness, but his claim that Odysseus uses Crete as a metaphor for the underworld is problematic. True, it is a mark of a hero to visit (and return from) the underworld, but Odysseus has already made this journey earlier in the poem and another visit is unnecessarily repetitive. It is similarly unnecessary and repetitive to devote so many lines merely to ensuring that the listener recognize the epic’s central themes, and Emlyn-Jones fails to explain the primacy of Crete in these lies. Lastly, while Reece’s theory is interesting it does not account for the difference in the stories Odysseus tells Athena, Eumaios, Antinoös, and Penelope, nor does it adequately support his claim that Telemachus must have gone to Crete in search of Odysseus.
In contrast to the above theories, I would agree with Frederick Ahl that Odysseus’ “Cretan tales” are really the νόστοι (homecoming stories) of different heroes. After telling Athena his story, she praises his use of “μύθων…κλοπίων.” Ahl has attentively pointed out that the root of this phrase is κλοπ-, “to steal”, and he therefore translates it as “stolen narratives” rather than “artful” or “guileful,” as Cunliffe translates “κλόπιος” in his Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect. Ahl is not the only one to notice this etymology; Lattimore too translates this phrase as “thievish tales…near to [Odysseus] in [his] very nature.” As Reece has pointed out, Homer was one of the latest Greek bards, and the myths in circulation by his time must have been numerous, a mere fraction of which has been passed down to us. Foreign travel and its counterpart, homecoming, were becoming common occurrences (and surely preoccupations) around the time of the writing of the Odyssey, thanks to new advancements such as the trireme. It is reasonable to assume, then, that a plethora of legends about Trojan War veterans’ homecomings other than Odysseus’ would have been popular around this time. As such, Homer would have had plenty of fodder for the tale of his own hero’s homecoming.
Using Ahl’s thesis that Homer used other heroes’ myths as the basis for his Cretan tales rather than Reece’s theory of an alternate version of the Odyssey accounts for the holes in Reece’s argument. It is no longer necessary to posit that Telemachus made a different journey, and the variance in tales that he tells to each character can be attributed to the fact that each “Cretan lie” tells the story of a different hero. The particular hero he chooses for each story reflects his differing intention with each audience. In the lies to Athena and Eumaios/Antinoös, the unnamed characters are long-traveling Trojan heroes having been displaced from their fatherland (Crete) because of murder or piracy. Like for the heroes in the stories, travel abroad was surely a new and frightening experience for Homer’s audience. In Odysseus’ lie to Penelope, the character “Odysseus” who visits Aithon is also a travel-weary Trojan hero, and indeed this story completely overshadows the story Odysseus is supposed to be telling, effectively turning the last Cretan lie into another homecoming tale. Ahl concludes his argument by asserting that the “Odyssean tradition” has left “other rival νόστοι…systematically reduced to lesser status.” But Odysseus claims the histories of these three men because they are heroes with whom he wishes to equate himself. Homer is able to simultaneously pay homage to his inspirations by “rebirthing” their stories and suggest that Odysseus is an even greater hero than they. He is able to adopt their stories at his convenience while never losing his own. And if Crete really can be likened to the Underworld as Schmoll suggests, then using specifically Cretan homecoming tales alerts the listener that Homer is rescuing dying myths.
If Odysseus is telling the homecoming tales of his contemporaries, then the disparate frames of reference of Homer’s audience and Odysseus’ audience provide for multiple layers of dramatic irony. Odysseus would have known the Cretan soldiers at Troy, but his audience at Ithaka would not have. Since Odysseus went to Troy and then traveled for ten years, he would know the fates of his fellow warriors but his listeners would not. So like the bards within the Odyssey often do, Homer can “weave” the stories of other heroes into Odysseus’ story while giving his own audience a kind of godlike omniscience. The characters within the poem, although living in an era of mythical heroism, are more ignorant than Homer’s simple, pastoral audience. Finally, remembering the opinion that Cretans are liars adds a second element of irony to Odysseus’ lies. All he has to do is follow the mandates of ξενία (guest friendship) by giving some explanation of his origins, and Odysseus could have easily chosen a home not renowned for lying. By selecting the homecoming tales of Cretan heroes, however, ever-wily Odysseus signals to his audience that he is about to tell a lie, yet simultaneously tells another’s true story.
Odysseus’ Cretan tales, then, serve a triple purpose: heroization, contextualization, and irony. Most importantly, they ensure that each particular audience see him as a hero, however that listener might define heroism, while concealing his identity. Furthermore, Odysseus’ usurping of Cretan heroes’ stories legitimizes his own story by situating it within a larger tradition of homecoming tales. Homer is able to briefly recognize a host of heroes and νόστοι while telling his reader or listener that his hero is equally worthy. If anything, Odysseus is more of a hero, since the lives of his Cretan personae pale in comparison to the suffering and excitement he endured in books IX through XII. Finally, the Cretan tales enhance the overall story by adding elements of dramatic irony. A storyteller always aims to entertain his audience, and through the Cretan tales both Odysseus and Homer achieve this end, the former by telling a good story and the latter by giving his audience omniscience over his characters. To imagine the Cretan tales as miniature versions of three other Cretan heroes’ homecoming tales woven into Odysseus’ own tale rightly places Homer in an age-old tradition of storytelling, as well as depicting Odysseus as supremely clever and heroic.
Bibliography
Ahl, Frederick. “Wordplay and Apparent Fiction in the Odyssey.” Arethusa 35 (2002): 117-132.
Cunliffe, Richard John. A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect, S.v. “κλόπιος.”
Davison, J.A. “The First Greek Triremes.” The Classical Quarterly 41 (1947): 18-24.
Emlyn-Jones, Chris. “True and Lying Tales in the ‘Odyssey’.” Greece & Rome 33, No. 1 (1986): 1-10.
Haft, Adele J. “Odysseus, Idomeneus and Meriones: The Cretan Lies of “Odyssey” 13- 19.” The Classical Journal 79, No. 4 (1984): 289-306.
Homer, The Odyssey: Books 13-24. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995.
Homer. The Odyssey. Trans. Richmond Lattimore. New York: Harper and Row, 1965.
Reece, Steve. “The Cretan Odyssey: A Lie Truer Than Truth.” The American Journal of Philology 115, No. 2 (1994): 157-173.
Schmoll, Edward A. “The First Cretan Lie of Odysseus.” The Classical Bulletin 66, No. 3-4 (1990): 67-71.
Trahman, C.R. “Odysseus’ Lies (“Odyssey”, Books 13-19).” Phoenix 6, No. 2 (1952): 31-43.
Woolsey, Robert B. “Repeated Narratives in the Odyssey.” Classical Philology 36, No. 2 (1941): 167-181.
Chris Emlyn-Jones, “True and Lying Tales in the ‘Odyssey’,” Greece & Rome 33, No. 1 (1986): 3.
Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Richard Lattimore (New York: Harper and Row, 1965): XIII.261-3. Unless otherwise noted, all subsequent translations of Homer are also Lattimore.
C. R. Trahman, “Odysseus’ Lies (“Odyssey”, Books 13-19),” Phoenix 6, No. 2 (1952): 39.
See Adele J. Haft’s article “Odysseus, Idomeneus and Meriones: The Cretan Lies of “Odyssey” 13-19,” The Classical Journal 79, No. 4 (1984): 289-306.
In book XXIV Odysseus lies to Laertes that he comes from Alybas. But this lie will be disregarded in this paper because unlike the others he does not claim Cretan origins. Furthermore, I am in agreement with many scholars who reject this book as part of the original Odyssey, making his lie irrelevant in relation to the rest of the story.
Ibid., 178-84, 225-34, and 272.
Schmoll, Edward A., “The First Cretan Lie of Odysseus,” The Classical Bulletin 66, No. 3-4 (1990): 70.
Reece, Steve, “The Cretan Odyssey: A Lie Truer Than Truth,” The American Journal of Philology 115, No. 2 (1994): 165.
Of course, scholars debate how and when lying became a “Cretan” attribute. Haft suggests that “Crete’s renown for commercial enterprise and the close relationship between trade and piracy…as well as the unorthodox Cretan belief in a Zeus who dies and is buried on the island” (291, note 9) probably account for the reputation. But the Cretans could have become traders/pirates and claimed Zeus’ tomb long after the Odyssey was written down. If this reputation began after the compilation of the Odyssey, then the Cretan tales would begin it, not utilize it.
Ahl, Frederick, “Wordplay and Apparent Fiction in the Odyssey,” Arethusa 35 (2002):131.
Cunliffe, Richard John, A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect, S.v. “κλόπιος.”
J.A. Davison, “The First Greek Triremes,” The Classical Quarterly 41 (1947): 18.
