The Odyssey by Homer
IPHIMEDEIASee s.v. Pelion.
ITHAKE (ITHACA)The home (and kingdom) of Odysseus and his family, Ithake is one of the Ionian islands; but whether his was the island still traditionally so named (BA, 54, C 5), or one of the other nearby ones, or the Pale (modern Paliki) peninsula (once an island) of Kephallenia/Kefalonia (BA, 54, B 5), as Bittlestone et al. 2005 argues, remains an open question (but this is the only solution consistent with H.'s description at 9.25-26 of Ithake as the "westernmost" of the group). H.'s other descriptions of the island can be checked at 4.605-8, and 13.242-47. For a balanced assessment favoring the traditional identification, see Haller in HE, 2: 423-24.
JASONSon of Aison (q.v.) and great-nephew of Pelias (q.v.); leader of the Argonautic expedition to Aia in Kolchis to recover the Golden Fleece. H.'s only mention of him is at Od. 12.69-72, where he and his famous ship, the Argo, are reported as the only ones hitherto to have successfully navigated the Wandering Rocks (Planktai), and they only through the assistance of Here because of her affection for Jason.
KADMOS, KADMEIANSIn the Iliad (4.385 and elsewhere), the Thebans are referred to as "Kadmeians," while Kadmos himself (Od. 5.333) is mentioned only as the father of Ino and was not regarded by H. as Thebai's founder (see s.v. Amphion). Herodotus (5.58-61) says he introduced the Phoenician alphabet (Phoinikeia or Kadmeia grammata) to Hellas, and linguistic evidence confirms his origins in the Near East (cf. West 1997, 448-50).
KALCHASChief diviner of the Achaian expeditionary force and "of the seers by far the finest:/he knew events present and future as well as from the past,/and had brought the Achaians' fleet safe to landfall by Ilion/through the diviner's art he had from Phoibos Apollo" (Il. 1.69-72). He correctly predicts that the war will last ten years (Il. 2.299-332) and pinpoints the cause of the plague bedeviling the Achaian camp as Agamemnon's refusal to ransom Chryseis, daughter of a priest of Apollo (ibid., 93-106). Kalchas also identifies an earlier offense by Agamemnon, his boast that he is a better hunter than Artemis, familiar from the Epic Cycle (Cypr., arg. 8; West 2003, 74-75). In retribution, Artemis withholds a sailing wind for Troy, and Kalchas says that in atonement, and to get a good wind, Agamemnon must sacrifice his daughter Iphigeneia (q.v.). Agamemnon does so, whereupon the wind changes and the fleet is able to sail. This may be the reason for Agamemnon's apparent dislike of Kalchas (Il. 1.105-8). H. carefully ignores the whole episode.
KALYPSOThe genesis, background, and familial details of the nymph Kalypso ("Concealer") vary so much from source to source (see Alden in HE, 2: 431-32) that there is much to be said in favor of the theory that she was H.'s own creation. She conceals Odysseus against his will for seven years (4.556-60, 5.13-17); his release in the eighth year ties in chronologically with a similar delay in Menelaos' return home from Troy (4.83); and it is vital to H.'s story (see 4.91 with n. 3) that they do not reappear prior to Orestes' revenge (3.36) on his mother and Aigisthos for the murder of his father, Agamemnon. Furthermore, Kalypso's island is defined by its extreme remoteness, and it seems to have no other occupants. Also, Kalypso herself has a suspicious amount in common with Kirke (both live in a wood on a remote island; both keep Odysseus off-scene with hospitality; both are beguilers, dread goddesses with human voices and habits: see Alden, ibid.). It is a fair presumption that both originally had a similar function: to ensure that Odysseus remains away from Ithake long enough for everyone to forget what he looks like, and, in particular, for Agamemnon's murder, and his son's revenge, to take place before Menelaos gets back home.
KASSANDRE (CASSANDRA)Daughter of Priam and Hekabe (Hecuba), she was raped by Aias (2) at the sack of Troy (SI, arg. 3; West 2003, 146-47), but then brought back to Hellas by Agamemnon as his concubine and slain with him by Aigisthos and Klytaimnestra (11.421-23). H. gives no indication of knowing about Kassandre's power of prophecy, though this is already mentioned in the Epic Cycle (Cypr., arg. 1; West 2003, 68-69).
KASTORTwin son (with Polydeukes) of Zeus by Lede. The two are brothers of Helen and Klytaimnestra and sometimes described as "sons of Tyndareus," Lede's husband and the "official" father of her offspring when occasion demanded. The twins were also regularly referred to as the Dioskouroi (Dioscuri), i.e., the "sons of Zeus."
KEPHALLENIA, -ENESThe Ionian island known to H. as Same, or Samos (BA, 54, B 5), was also called Kephallenia (modern Kefalonia, or Cephalonia). The force brought by Odysseus to Troy included men from Same, Zakynthos, and "the mainland opposite" (probably Akarnania), as well as from Ithake itself (Il. 2.631-36; cf. Od. 20.210, 24.355, 429). The ancient Kephallenes were subject to Odysseus and before him to his father, Laertes (Od. 24.378).
KIKONESA Thrakian tribe (9. 39, 47, 59, 66, 165; 23.310) who fought on the Trojan side (Il. 2.846-47). Their chief place (9.40, 198) was Ismaros, on the mainland northeast of Thasos. This was the first landfall of Odysseus and his contingent--blown somewhat off course by the wind--on their return from Troy; they sacked it, with much slaughter, but lost many men themselves in a counterattack by the natives.
KIMMERIANSA mysterious mythical race dwelling near the boundary of Ocean, close by the Underworld, in sunless gloom: referred to briefly by Odysseus (11.14-19). Their exact location (like much of H.'s description of the environs of Hades) is uncertain, and has been debated: for an excellent brief survey, see Romm in HE, 1: 167. Whether they are identical with the historical Kimmerians (Assyrian Gimirri, the "Gomer" of the Bible), who briefly terrorized Phrygia and Ionia in the eighth century b.c.e., after being driven out of S. Russia, remains unknown, but seems highly unlikely, if only for geographical reasons.
KIRKE (CIRCE)Daughter of Helios, the sun god (q.v.), sister of Aietes (q.v.) and thus an aunt of Medea (10.135-39; Hes., Th. 956-57). Kirke is a powerful sorceress with many magical drugs at her disposal, who, like Kalypso (q.v.), lives seemingly alone, apart from maidservants (and variously drugged animals) on a remote island, Aiaia (q.v.). Odysseus and his crew (by now the only survivors of his original contingent; see s.v. Laistrygonians) spend a year with her. Having earlier acquired the magical plant moly from Hermes (q.v.), he is proof against her magical wiles. When she can't bewitch him, she invites him into her bed, and, after he has made her swear a great oath not to harm him, he makes love to her. Again like Kalypso, she then becomes his helper--but also lays on them, before they can hope to make their way home, the journey to the Underworld, where Odysseus must consult the ghost of the seer Teiresias (10.483-551). On the way back from the Underworld, they briefly rejoin her, and now are briefed about the dangers (Sirens, Skylle and Charybdis, the Wandering Rocks) they will encounter and given a clear warning against killing or otherwise molesting the famous cattle of her father, Helios (q.v.). The various parallels with Kalypso are many and striking (see, e.g., Felson in HE, 2: 441). Both are described as wanting him for a husband; in the last resort, both are there to forward the narrative and (as Felson stresses) to test the strength of Odysseus' longing for home (which here even outmatches the promise of immortality). Tactfully, when recounting his adventures to Penelope, Odysseus makes no mention of the sex.
KLYTAIMNESTRADaughter of Tyndareus and Lede; sister of Helen and the Dioskouroi; wife of Agamemnon; mother of Orestes and several daughters, including Iphigeneia (or Iphimede, or Iphianassa). She is mentioned once only in the Iliad (1.113-15), where her husband compares her, unfavorably, to his current prize captive, Chryseis. But in the Odyssey, she is referred to several times, with varying degrees of condemnation (most vehemently by Agamemnon's ghost), as the example of a faithless wife, ultimately complicit in her husband's murder (3.263-72, 11.409-34, 24.199-202).
KNOSOS (CNOSSOS)Major city of Krete (Crete), on a hill near modern Iraklion (Herakleion), dating back at least as far as 1900 b.c.e. Knosos acquired its modern fame from the excavations and imaginative reconstructions carried out by Sir Arthur Evans from 1900 on. H. refers to it once only in the Odyssey, as a great city ruled by Minos, during a quick sketch of Krete, delivered by Odysseus to Penelope in one of his fictitious cover stories (19.
KRETE (CRETE), KRETANSThe "great island" (still known as such--to megalonisi--by modern Greeks) that lies like a rugged mountainous bar, about 160 miles in length, across the southern entry to the Aegean Sea (q.v.). The brief sketch of the island given at 19.173-81 (see s.v. Knosos) offers a fair notion of the degree of knowledge concerning it and its inhabitants available in H.'s day. The Catalogue of Ships shows a major contingent of eighty ships sailing to Troy from the island (Il. 2.645-52) under Idomeneus (q.v.), which is consonant with modern knowledge of a Mycenaean takeover of the island c. 1450; but Idomeneus is listed as the grandson of Minos via Deukalion, which hints at the real mythic gap in later Greek recollections of Krete's past. Odysseus locates several of his fictitious cover stories there and poses as a Kretan himself: it is tempting to argue that H. made him do so having in mind the old proverb that "All Kretans are liars," later made famous by the paradox of the philosopher Epimenides (sixth century b.c.e.). It is the kind of mischievous joke that would be very much in character.
KRONOSYoungest of the Titans, son of Ouranos (Heaven/Sky) and Gaia (Earth). By his sister Rhea he sires the Olympian family of deities; for H. he is mostly (and in the Odyssey exclusively) mentioned in formulaic terms as the father of Zeus (1.45, 81, 386, etc.).
KYDONIA, -ANSA settlement (modern Chania) and ethnic group of western Krete (Crete): a part of Menelaos' fleet puts in there after a storm (3.292). Linked with Knosos (Cnossos) and Gortyn as one of Krete's major cities.
KYKLOPESA "species of one-eyed giants, pastoral and primitive, who live in caves, isolated from each other, and are violent towards men" (Hernandez in HE, 1: 186-87). Odysseus' description of them in bk. 9 is our major source, and there are signs that H. may have modified the evidence of folktales for his own purposes. Surprisingly, though "wild" (agrios), they, and the Giants, like the Phaiakians (7.205-6), are close kin to the gods.
KYKLOPSSee s.v. Polyphemos.
KYTHERAAn island off the southernmost tip of the Lakonian peninsula in the Peloponnese (BA 57, D 5 and inset), referred to by H. in the Odyssey (9.81) as a sailing landmark missed by Odysseus when blown off course--and into regions better known from myth--during his homeward voyage. Kythera was also associated with Aphrodite (see 8.288 with n. 2 ad loc. and 18.193).
KYTHEREIATitular epithet for Aphrodite (8.288, 18.193), reflecting her cult on that island.
LAERTESSon of Arkeisios (in a one-son sequence, 16.117-21), married to Antikleia (q.v.), and the father of Odysseus. He has already seemingly resigned his kingship to Odysseus before the latter leaves for Troy, and he is shown throughout the Odyssey living away on his farmstead in neglected squalor, mourning his son's absence. He is sufficiently rejuvenated by Athene after Odysseus' return, however, to join in the fighting and to kill Antinoos' father, Eupeithes (24.520-25).
LAISTRYGONIANSThe most lethal of Odysseus' off-the-map encounters (cf. Louden in HE, 2: 454) is with these brutish quasi-mythical cannibals (10.81-133, 23.318), who destroy the whole of his flotilla, save his own ship, and proceed to devour the crews. The episode shows Poseidon's malign curse (after the blinding of his son the Kyklops) already taking full effect. The details of the episode (Louden, ibid.) bear a striking resemblance to some pre-Homeric version of the Argonautica legend.
LAKEDAIMON (LACEDAEMON)The long valley of the Eurotas River, running NW up the inner, western part of the easternmost of the three southern Peloponnesian peninsulas, between the Parnon and Taygetos mountain ranges (BA, 58, C-D 3-4): the equivalent of modern Lakonia, including Sparta. For H., it was the realm of Menelaos (3.326; cf. Il. 2.581-87), who took a contingent of sixty ships to Troy from the region. Sparta's conquest of eastern Messene (q.v.; c. 700-670) is implied (Il. 9.149-53 = 291-95) by Agamemnon's offer to Achilles of seven cities actually located in Messenian territory (cf. Eder in HE, 2: 452-53), with implications for the dating of both Homeric epics.
LAPITHSAn Achaian clan from Thessaly: they brought a forty-ship squadron to Troy, led by Leonteus and Polypoites (Il. 2.738-47). The latter was the son of Peirithoos and Hippodameia, at whose wedding the Centaur Eurytion (q.v.) got drunk and tried to rape the bride (21.293-98).
LEDE (LEDA)Daughter of Thestios, married to Tyndareus, king of Sparta, and by him (or Zeus) mother of the Dioskouroi (Kastor and Polydeukes), Helen, and Klytaimnestra. Her coupling with Zeus when the god assumed the likeness of a swan became famous in art. H.'s sole reference to her in the Odyssey (11.298-300) is when she is included among the famous women of the past whose shades are seen by Odysseus in the Underworld.
LEMNOSA volcanic island in the NE Aegean (BA, 56, A 1-2), where Philoktetes was left behind during the voyage to Troy because of a foul-smelling wound caused by a bite from a water snake (Il. 2.721-24), and where Hephaistos landed after being flung down from Olympos by Zeus during a domestic dispute (Il. 1.590-94), thus causing his lameness. The island's smoking fumeroles probably suggested a connection with Hephaistos' smithy and furnace; his association with Lemnos was general, and established early (8.283, 294, 301).
LESBOSLarge island in the NE Aegean (BA, 56, B-D 3-4), close offshore in the Gulf of Adramyttion to the Troad. Nestor and Menelaos both stopped off there en route home from Troy (3.168-69); Odysseus had a wrestling bout there, watched by "the Achaians" (4.342-44, 17.133-35).
LETODaughter, surprisingly, of Titans (Koios and Phoibe [Hes., Th. 404-06]), and, by Zeus, mother of the twins Apollo and Artemis (6.106). In the Odyssey, she is mentioned in connection with the punishment meted out to Tityos, a giant son of Gaia (Earth), in the Underworld for raping her (11.576-81).
LEUKASOne of the larger Ionian islands, directly facing the coast of Akarnania (BA, 54, C 4) and partially linked to it at times by a sandbar in a very narrow, and shallow, strait. Notorious for the sheer 2,000-ft. drop from its SW promontory, Cape Leukatas. Traditionally, criminals were thrown down from there, and picked up in waiting boats if they survived the fall.
LIBYAA part of North Africa roughly congruent with its historical homonym, and famous for its rich fertility (4.85-89). Odysseus also mentions it as a popular slave market in one of his fictitious cover stories (14.295-97).
LOTUS-EATERS (lotophagoi)Ever since Herodotus (4.177) named a people on the Libyan coast lotophagoi (without identifying them with those of the Odyssey), there have been efforts to identify the real-life originals of H.'s happily passive race of lotus-eaters (9.82-104) and, in particular, the "lotus" involved, regarded by some as a kind of jujube. Like Helen's nepenthe (4.219-34), this "lotus" may have had an actual original, but in either case it is unlikely that H. was familiar with it.
MAIAA daughter of Atlas (Hes., Th. 938-39), and mother of Hermes by Zeus (14.435).
MALEAThe promontory at the southernmost tip of the eastern, Lakedaimonian peninsula of the Peloponnese (BA, 58, E 5), slightly NE of the island of Kythera, and notorious from earliest times for dangerous, sudden, and unpredictable gales and storms. In the Odyssey, Menelaos, Agamemnon, and Odysseus are all blown off course on their homeward voyage from Troy as they round Cape Malea (3.287, 4.514, 9.80, 19.187), the last geographically recognizable point for Odysseus before his passage into the quasi-mythical world of the Phaiakians (q.v.).
MARATHONA coastal deme of Attica, across the strait from Euboia: H. describes Athene as passing that way (7.80-81) en route to Athens: see also s.v. Erechtheus.
MEDONA herald, loyal to Odysseus, who performs duties for the suitors out of necessity (16.251-52, 17.172-73) but informs Penelope (4.677-715, 16.411-13) of their plot to waylay and kill Telemachos; he is therefore spared by Odysseus (22.358-80), along with the minstrel Phemios (q.v.).
MELAMPOUSA famous seer in the early heroic tradition. From Messenia he came to Argos, where he cured the daughters of the king, Proitos, of madness, married one of them, became king himself, and sired a line of seers that included his great-grandson Amphiaraos (q.v.) (15.238-42; Finkelberg in HE, 2: 502). But H. is especially interested, for some unfathomable reason, in a seemingly irrelevant myth he
MELANTHIOSA goatherd, son of Dolios (q.v.), who serves the suitors; notable, among many such figures, mostly near-anonymous, for the striking way in which he is individualized as a three-dimensional character. His utterances are trenchant and vivid, remarkable for their "bold metaphors . . . colloquial color, proverbial expressions, and earthy realism" (Thalmann in HE, 2: 503). He also apes the aristocratic speech, manners, and outlook of the suitors (17.220, 222; 20.180-82), and his insults foreshadow those of Eurymachos (Thalmann, ibid.). His death, at the hands of Telemachos and his assistants (22.474-77) is peculiarly unpleasant, and all of a piece with the (equally excessive) vengeance carried out on the suitors.
MELANTHOMelanthios' sister, who becomes Eurymachos' mistress. This is especially shameful because she was brought up by Penelope like her own child, indeed spoilt by her (18.321-25). Melantho is the only one of the twelve serving girls hanged for fornicating with the suitors (22.461-73) who is characterized in detail, like her brother, whose talent for colorful verbal abuse she shares (e.g., at 18.321-42, 19.65-95).
MEMNONKing of the Aithiopes (q.v.), son of Priam's brother Tithonos (q.v.) and Eos (the Dawn) (4.186-88; 11.522). He kills Antilochos (q.v.) at Troy, but is then himself killed by Achilles (Aeth., arg. 2; West 2003, 110-13).