Just as Beowulf marks a story telling tradition that antedates even Gilgamesh written thousands of years earlier, the Odyssey, which was supposedly—and disputedly so—written by Homer 20 years after the Iliad, echoes in its themes a great antiquity compared to its parent text.

The Odyssey concerns the eleven year voyage of Odysseus returning from the nine year Trojan War. His wife Penelope—remarkably in an age before dentistry—is still beautiful and sought after by the local men. These men, collectively known as the suitors, basically represent the cowardly stay behinds in time of war, like the rich draft deferment brats of the Vietnam Era, who stayed at home got high and broke down sexual barriers, while the working class and poor guys died in Indochina so LBJ would have something interesting to talk about while he was on the toilet.

Odysseus, transliterated, means ‘Grieved-lord’. He was the guy played by Sean Bean in the movie Troy who always had a plan, and was credited with designing the Trojan Horse which was supposedly built by Epeus the boxing carpenter. Odysseus was played by Kirk Douglas in an old film adaptation of the story, which does the drama surrounding the suitors some justice. For you MMA guys Odysseus was the mythic prototype. He drew with the giant Ajax in wrestling and could box the ears off of everyone but Epeus.

The brief sampling below utilizes the new verse translation of Allen Mandelbaum.

Like the Iliad the Odyssey is told in 24 books, being two tales in one, and actually quite sophisticated and more likely to fit the modern novel-based idea of an adventure tale then the Iliad. As Odysseus tosses his crew like so many dice at the craps shoot of life, his son Telemachus [Complete-fighter] plots to foil the suitors making claims to his inheritance. Many supernatural adventures ensue for Odysseus. I would like to sight one example of honor interplay in antiquity.

While he reclines as the guest of the Phaeacians a loud mouthed wrestler challenges Odysseus, the guest of honor, to compete in the contests. He rises angrily and challenges all of those present except for his host’s son [the host being out of the question as the hierarch] to box or wrestle. He spends a great deal of wind demeaning those who would dishonor a guest with a challenge and goes on to state that his counter challenge does not include Prince Laodamas [Man-subduing]. The king then rises and admits that his people are no match for men such as Odysseus, that they are really best at dancing, and must coexist with the more physical world through courtesy.

In many ways The Odyssey offers counter points to the more brutal Iliad, with the gods stopping the carnage of the final battle on Ithaca instead of fanning the flames of slaughter as at Troy. So, as the Iliad showed how the ruling class brings mankind into submission and spiritual emasculation, The Odyssey seems almost as if it was written by a female author making a liberal counterpoint to the cautionary Iliad, or perhaps an older world-weary poet wanting to crown at least one hero of Troy’s story with a happy ending.

In any case the feast of the Phaeacians offers an example of the interplay of every nuance of the perennial honor cult of man in such a way as to demonstrate that with the right leader in charge these can be complimentary notions.

The concluding scenes, that offer the most drama concerning the duping then slaying of the suitors by Odysseus and his son, speak to the degeneracy of a home based ruling class, and also the ideal of patrimony and the belief in the genetic transmission of goodness, honor and privilege, and seems incredibly modern, as if it could be written by Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Lothrop Stoddard, or my Uncle Bernie.

For the postmodern man reading on masculinity I suggest Book X

And where does the seductress take Odysseus?

To bed?

To Hell?

In his interaction with the confounding mysteries of the world Odysseus, ‘man of many wiles’ essentially the hero of all of curious mankind, is constantly reminded that he must outwit man, woman, god and beast if he is to maintain his honorably autonomous status [essentially 'agency'] as a leading—if grieved—man. And the plight of men who did not lead, even if only themselves, is plain by the fate of his crew, munching the feed the goddess casts at her feet for the pigs being fattened for the never-ending feast of life.

*Vegas or Manhattan, take your pick.

**I read Circe as the metaphor for the seduction of civilization and the erosion of honor that such vast association threatens.

***A mythic figure associated with travel, messages, and the search for the truth, or ‘gnosis’