The Odyssey by Homer
PELEUSSon of Aiakos and thus a grandson of Zeus: the wealthy king of the Myrmidons in Phthie, and married to the immortal nymph Thetis (q.v.), by whom he is the father of Achilles. The sole reference in the Odyssey is a hopeful, but unanswered, query as to his well-being by the ghost of his son in the Underworld (11.494-503).
PELIASTwin brother of Neleus (q.v.), and son of Tyro by Poseidon. Tyro later married Kretheus, lord of Iolkos (q.v.), by whom she had a son, Aison. On Kretheus' death Pelias usurped his nephew's claim to the throne of Iolkos: he is connected to the Argonaut legend through his relationship to Aison's son, Jason (q.v.).
PELIONMountain range on the Magnesian peninsula (BA, 57, A-B 2), facing the NW Aegean: the furthest SE of three famous ranges, the other two being Ossa (ibid., A 2) and Olympos (ibid., A 1), west of the Thermaic Gulf. In the Underworld, Odysseus recounts (11.305-20) seeing Iphimedeia, whose two giant sons by Poseidon, Otos and Ephialtes, planned to scale the heavens by piling Ossa on Olympos and Pelion on Ossa, and would have done so had they not been killed, when still young, by Apollo.
PENELOPEDaughter of the elusive Ikarios, married to the long-absent Odysseus, who may or may not be dead, mother of a nervous (and possibly fatherless) son who is just coming of age, and persistently courted by an unpleasant group of well-connected young males who are more than ready to take every possible advantage of her unprotected vulnerability. She is probably in her mid-thirties and clearly an attractive woman: the suitors eagerly imagine themselves in bed with her (1.365-66; 18.210-13). Her brief married life, before Odysseus leaves for Troy, has been rewarding, to judge by her husband's moving encomium of the married state to Nausikaa (6.180-85) and the fact that he (unsuccessfully) feigns insanity in order to avoid joining the expedition (Cypr., arg. 5; West 2003, 70-73). She is in no position to evict her would-be suitors by force; instead, she stalls them with endless promises and devices, most notably the assertion that first she must finish the shroud she is making for Laertes, which she works at by day, but unweaves secretly at night (2.87-110; 19.138-56; 24.125-48). (That it takes the suitors three years to spot this simple ruse, and even then only when alerted to it by one of Penelope's maids, does not say much for their intelligence.) She is running out of excuses: her parents are urging her to remarry, Telemachos is of age, and worried by the wanton inroads on his patrimony, so that now (19.157-58), as she tells the stranger who is in fact her husband, "I can neither avoid this marriage, nor find/any other way of escape." Worst of all, Odysseus himself had told her, before he left, that if he was still absent "when you see our son full-grown and bearded,/then wed the man of your choice, leave this house for good." It is now, following the dream of the eagle and the geese (19.535-553), that she decides to set up the bow contest (19.570-81) as a last hope of escape. Could the stranger be Odysseus? After his interpretation of the dream, just possibly. If he is, he'll win the contest. If he isn't, she'll settle for "hated marriage" with whoever else wins it (at least he'll have to be strong). And she is craftier than her husband: it isn't until 23.205-8, when she's tested him with the question about their unique bed, that recognition is complete and she finally falls into his arms. This was the woman for whom Odysseus turned down an offer of immortality, and one can see why.
PERSEPHONEDaughter of Zeus and Demeter, wife (after abduction) of Hades, and in that capacity queen of the Underworld. As such she is referred to a dozen times, mostly as "dread goddess," in the Odyssey.
PHAIAKIANS (PHAEACIANS)The inhabitants of the (probably mythical) island of Scheria (q.v.), where Odysseus is, with the aid of Athene, royally entertained and then conveyed home to Ithake aboard one of their ships, loaded with expensive guest-gifts. The Phaiakians are both near kin to the gods (19.279) and dear to them (6.203); the gods attend their feasts (7.201-4). Their remote existence is idyllic, indeed quasi-paradisal: it seems to be eternal spring there, they have no wars, and are devoted to feasts, music, and dancing. Their luxuriousness is emphasized by their liking for hot baths, comfortable beds, and frequent changes of good clothes (8.248-49). Though unmilitary and not very athletic, they are nevertheless first-class seafarers (7.34-36 and elsewhere) with remarkable ships (8.556-63) and a tradition of conveying any who ask their help--a habit that, in Odysseus' case, gets them into serious trouble with Poseidon (13.125-64, 172-87), from whom their royal family (see s.vv. Alkinoos and Arete) is directly descended.
PHAIDRE (PHAEDRA)Daughter of Minos and Pasiphae, and sister of Ariadne (q.v.): mentioned by H. only as the shade of an old-time heroine in the Underworld (11.321). Her best-known role, that of would-be lover of her stepson, Hippolytos (made famous by Euripides in his play of that name), has no place here.
PHAROSName of an island adjacent to the coast of Egypt at what later became Alexandria, and the site of a great Ptolemaic lighthouse, which survived until shaken down by an earthquake in the Middle Ages. H. betrays his hit-and-miss knowledge of Egypt when he claims (4.355-57) that Pharos is a day's sail from land: it is now part of the coastline. "Pharos" became a synonym for "lighthouse" in several European languages.
PHEMIOSThe resident minstrel at the house of Odysseus. He entertains the suitors (1.154-55, 325-27), but not Penelope (1.337-52; brusquely corrected by Telemachos), with a lay describing the ill-starred return home of the Greeks; later, he does so again while they are feasting (17.261-63, 270-71), watched by Odysseus disguised as a beggar. After the slaughter of the suitors, he claims (backed up by Telemachos) that he only performed for them under duress (22.344-60), and says Odysseus would sorely miss his repertoire and god-given skills were he put to death. As Jenny Strauss Clay points out, his status "appears more precarious and less idealized than that of Demodokos" (HE, 2: 653), but both are credited by H. with a serious love for the poetics apparent in the Odyssey itself.
PHILOKTETESBest known for being bitten by a water snake on Tenedos en route to Troy and abandoned by the Greeks on Lemnos because of the foul-smelling wound that results (Cypr., arg. 9; West 2003, 76-77). However, when Helenos prophesied that Troy would never fall without the bow of Herakles, which was in Philoktetes' possession, Odysseus and Diomedes fetched Philoktetes and the bow from Lemnos: his wound was healed (probably by Podalirios), he killed Paris in single combat, and Troy fell (LI, arg. 2; West 2003, 120-23). H. mentions only that he came home safe after this, and that he was the one Greek archer who could outshoot Odysseus at Troy (3.188-90; 8.219-20).
PHOENICIA, -ANSPhoenicia is the Greek name (source uncertain) for a region including the city-kingdoms of Sidon, Byblos, and Tyre, roughly the E. Mediterranean coast occupied by modern Lebanon (BA, 69, B C 1-3). H. sometimes uses "Sidon" as a synonym for Phoenicia as a whole (e.g., at 4.83-84), but elsewhere he uses "Phoenicia" to indicate a specific location (e.g., at 14.290-91).
PHORKYSAn Ithakan harbor (13.96, 345) named after, and associated with, a homonymous Old Man of the Sea (1.72), a probably pre-Greek sea god, traditionally the father of Skylle (q.v.) and Thoosa, the mother of Polyphemos.
PHTHIEThe traditional kingdom of Achilles and his Myrmidons (11.496), of uncertain extent, but centered on the area of SE Thessaly by the Spercheios River (BA, 55, C 3), N. of the Malian Gulf, looking out E. toward Euboia.
PHYLAKEThe Thessalian town of E. Phthiotis (BA, 55, D 2) from which Melampous (q.v.) set out to drive the cattle of Iphikles to Pylos (15.235-36).
PIERIAThe stretch of mountainous coastline (BA, 57, A 1) that includes Olympos: facing the Thermaic Gulf N. of the Magnesian peninsula, and bounded at its upper end by the Haliakmon River. Pieria was where the gods descending from Olympos normally alighted (5.50; the Greek here is ambiguous as to whether Hermes made a landing in Pieria en route to Kalypso's isle or simply flew over it).
PLANKTAIBetter known to modern readers as the Wandering Rocks.
PLEIADESThis famous star cluster (of seven or eight stars, half a dozen large enough to be seen by the naked eye) has been recognized since remote antiquity. Its Greek name is of uncertain derivation but has been plausibly associated wi
POLYDEUKESSee s.v. Kastor.
POLYPHEMOSAn outsize, one-eyed, and voraciously cannibalistic giant of folktale (see also s.v. Kyklopes), who is, as Zeus relates it (1.63-79), a son of Poseidon by the nymph Thoosa. His blinding by Odysseus and his desperate comrades (9.307-542) is the motive for Poseidon's persistent (though circumscribed) malign wrath against them.
POSEIDONThe second of Kronos' three sons by Rhea (the other two being Zeus and Hades), who share Earth and Olympos. Poseidon has the sea as his personal domain; Zeus gets the heavens; Hades, the Underworld. Poseidon, the Earth-Shaker, an ancient deity, is also closely associated with earthquakes. In the Iliad, he is consistently anti-Trojan. In the Odyssey, unlike the other Olympian deities, he has undergone no evolution toward an ethical morality. In his implacable pursuit of Odysseus for blinding of his son Polyphemos, he is totally impervious to justice or fairness, to the fact that this was done in self-defense, literally as a life-saver: "all that counts is the factum brutum of the blinding and the violation of his honor that it constitutes" (Friedrich in HE, 2: 687-88; and see citations ad loc.). Though Zeus (1.63-79; 13.128-33) ensures that Poseidon cannot disrupt Odysseus' predestined return to Ithake, the sea god can, and does, make that return as difficult and uncomfortable as possible; and even after his return, Odysseus must still, to satisfy the god's Iliadic sense of honor, make the long journey predicted by Teiresias (11.119-34) and establish a cult of Poseidon at the end of it. Poseidon's wrath extends even to his own kin, the Phaiakians, when he learns how generously they have treated Odysseus (13.134-58). Zeus concedes his right to punish them for besmirching his honor: Poseidon then petrifies the vessel that conveyed Odysseus home, and is only stopped from encircling the Phaiakians' city with a huge mountain by frantic prayer and sacrifice and a decision to no more offer sea passage to those who request it (13.172-87).
PRIAMKing of Troy, son of Laomedon, married to Hekabe (Hecuba), and the father of numerous offspring, including Hektor, Paris/Alexandros, and Kassandre (Cassandra). Long dead at the time of the Odyssey, he is mentioned there mostly in some variant of the phrase "Priam's city" as a synonym for Troy.
PROKRISOne of the odder, and more enjoyable, Attic heroines of olden time, seen by Odysseus as a shade in the Underworld (11.321). Daughter of Erechtheus and married to Kephalos, a mutually suspicious union that delighted Ovid (see Met. 7.690-892 and AA 3.687-746). A skilled herbalist, she reportedly cured Minos (q.v.) of a tendency to ejaculate snakes and scorpions, which, not surprisingly, had rendered him infertile (and sounds like a classic case of acute gonorrhea). On Prokris generally, see Gantz, 245-47, and Green 2004, 250-63.
PROTEUSOne (4.365, 382-93, 397-586) of various "Old Men of the Sea" mentioned in the Odyssey: see also s.vv. Nereus and Phorkys. He cares for a flock of seals, can take various shapes at will, and has the gift of prophecy: Menelaos (q.v.) induces him (4.454-61) to reveal (4.491-569) much about the fate of various Greeks after leaving Troy, and some of what the future holds for him, Menelaos, including the fact that after death he is destined for Elysium rather than Hades, since as Helen's husband he is also Zeus' son-in-law.
PSYRIELater known as Psyra, the modern Psara, a small landmark (3.171) island about 20 kms due W. of northern Chios (BA, 57, D 3): most famous for the heroic conduct of its inhabitants during the Greek War of Independence, whose massacre left the island deserted.
PYLOSThe coastal kingdom of Neleus (q.v.) and his long-lived son Nestor in the western Peloponnese, located roughly between the Gulf of Messenia in the south and the Alpheios River in the north, with an uncertain eastern frontier in the mountains with Arkadia (BA, 58, B 2-4). The actual royal city, "sandy Pylos," was on the coast (3.4-6), and for long it was assumed--in all likelihood correctly--that the Mycenaean palace excavated by Carl Blegen in 1939 down south at Ano Englianos, overlooking Navarino Bay, indicated its site. But more recent archaeology has opened up the possibility that one Pylos--Strabo (8.3.7) says there were several cities of that name--may have existed further north.
PYTHOThe ancient, and mysterious, name for Delphi (q.v.) or the oracular shrine there (8.79-81 is H.'s only mention of the shrine itself). Various explanations, none conclusive, were given for it in antiquity, which suggests that it may have been the site of an earlier, perhaps Mycenaean, sanctuary. The site reveals late Bronze Age occupation (OCD4, 427).
RHADAMANTHYSBrother of Minos, son of Zeus by Europa, daughter of Phoinix (Il. 14.321-22). These were "obscure figures with pre-Greek names who presumably came into Greek traditions from Crete" (Powell in HE, 3: 745). Why the Phaiakians should have conveyed him to Euboia to visit Tityos (7.321-24) is as obscure as the reason for his residence in Elysium (4.563-64). He is not recorded as a judge of the dead until Plato's day (see Powell, ibid.).
SAME (OR SAMOS)H.'s name for the Ionian island of the Kephallenes (modern Cephalonia, or Kefallinia), where the town on the E. coast of the island is still known as Sami. Doulichion, Same, Ithake, and Zakynthos all formed part of Odysseus' domain (Il. 2.631-37; Od. 9.21-27).
SCHERIAThe land of the Phaiakians: as described to Odysseus by Nausikaa (6.204-5), it is remote and sea bound, so probably an island, though this is never actually stated. The climate seems to be one of eternal spring. The inhabitants are great sailors. The royal court is by and large a happy institution, and its king, Alkinoos (q.v), and his family--not least his wife, Arete, and daughter, Nausikaa--are memorable individuals. A final fairy-tale touch is provided by the gold and silver dogs, the work of Hephaistos, that stand guard on either side of the entrance doors (7.91-94): "immortal creatures, and ageless all their days," a semi-formulaic line that cleverly leaves us in doubt as to whether the immortality is metaphorical or, as with Hephaistos' speaking and thinking gold robots in the Iliad (18.417-21), magically actual. Scheria itself similarly hovers between fantasy and reality.
SIDON, SIDONIANSThe leading city-kingdom of Phoenicia, located some 35 kms N. of Tyre on the coast of Lebanon (BA, 69, B 2): attested as early as the fourteenth century b.c.e., and a key Mediterranean trading center. Its importance is evident from the fact that for H., Sidonians are often synonymous with Phoenicians (see, e.g., 4.618; 13.285; 15.118), and their city is associated with wealth and fine craftsmanship (615-19; 15.425; cf. Il. 6.289-92, 23.740-45; HE, 3: 798).
SIRENSCuriously, H. "gives the Sirens no names, no genealogy, no appearance, and no story" (Scodel in HE, 3: 805): all we know from Odysseus' version of his encounter with them is that they are two in number (12.52, 167), live on an island not too far from Skylle and Charybdis (12.39, 54, 158-200), possibly are able to still local winds (12.168-69) in order lure passing sailors to their deaths by their singing (12.39-44, 184-88), lay claim to omniscience (12.189-91), and are pictured as sitting in a flowery meadow among the rotting corpses of their victims (12.45-46). H.'s reticence to let us know more about them may well be due to the fact that the evidence, from both literature and the visual arts, is not only vast but wildly contradictory (see Scodel, ibid., and OCD4, 1272, for illuminating samples). They have also been allegorized as representing anything from fleshly lusts to the thirst for knowledge.
SISYPHOSSon of Aiolos, and mythical founder and king of Ephyre (later Korinthos/Corinth), seen by Odysseus in the Underworld (11.593-600) as one of the three great sinners, hopelessly pushing a huge boulder uphill. We are not informed there what the specific offense was that led to this. In the Iliad, Sisyphos is described (6.152-54) as unrivaled for wiliness, and the copious mythical anecdotes about him (inter alia, he contrived to cheat death, both actual and personified: see OCD4, 1373) confirm his portrayal as a classic trickster.
SKYLLE (SCYLLA)As in the case of the Sirens (q.v.), H.'s description of Skylle is highly selective; though in bot
SKYROSThe easternmost, and furthest south, of the northern Sporades islands in the Aegean (BA, 55, G-H 2-3), off the SE coast of Euboia. Mentioned in the Odyssey (11.509) as where Odysseus fetched Achilles' son, Neoptolemos, from to join the fighting in Troy. Skyros is thus also the site of the young Achilles' concealment, disguised as a girl, by his mother, Thetis, to save him from his foreordained early death. But masculinity will out: while in hiding among the girls at the Skyrian court of King Lykomedes, Achilles contrives to impregnate the king's daughter Deidameia (see Gantz, 581-82), and Neoptolemos is the result.
SOUNION (SUNIUM)Southern cape of the Attic peninsula (BA, 59, D4), described by Nestor--in a rare reference (3.278) to anywhere in Attika other than Athens--as "sacred Sounion, the headland of Athens."
SPARTAIn the Odyssey, the equivalent of Lakedaimon (q.v.) as defining the postwar realm of Menelaos and Helen (see, e.g., 1.93; 2.214, 32, 359, etc.). How far that realm reflects a distant historical reality at a plausible date for the Trojan War and its aftermath remains uncertain, though the post-Mycenaean Dorian newcomers do seem to have taken an interest in the region's existing mythical traditions.
TANTALOSWealthy legendary king of Sipylos, on the border of Phrygia and Lydia, a son of Zeus and father of Pelops and Niobe. Seen after death by Odysseus in the Underworld as one of the great exemplary sinners (11.582-92), up to his chin in water, yet unable ever to get a drink or to reach the fruit so tantalizingly (hence the epithet) close to him. As with Sisyphos, we're told the punishment but not the crime. Tantalos in life, as one of the first generation of mortals, had successfully petitioned Zeus for the privilege of living as well as--and, in particular, dining with--the gods. Presumably his offense had something to do with this, but exactly what is disputed. In any case, Zeus hung a rock over his head to limit his enjoyment. The most tempting theory is that he invited the Olympians to dine with him and served them up the cooked body of his son, Pelops, to see if, in their divine omniscience, they would recognize it and refrain from eating such fare. All of them did, except Demeter, who was mourning the loss of her daughter, and consumed one shoulder of Pelops without noticing. When the gods magically reconstituted the boy, he thus needed an ivory prosthesis to replace it (see Gantz, 531-35, with refs.).