2.3 Telemachus' Tour (15:30)

From the "Greek and Roman Mythology" course - https://www.coursera.org/course/mythology - by Professor Peter Struck,
University of Pennsylvania

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As if we needed anymore indication from
book one that it was time for Telemachus

to, to grow up a little.
It actually comes out of Athena's mouth in

her disguise.
She's standing next to him on page 87 and

says you must not cling to your boyhood
any longer, it's time you were a man.

So, Telemachus realizes it's time to
change, somethings got to give.

It spurs him into his action of failed
attempt to rile the suitors in his of

beginning of Book two.
And then, he gets ready to haul off on

this tour with mentor as his guide,
Athena.

And when he does head out on this tour,
he's going to learn things.

Travels a way for him to gain knowledge.
And in his tour round these great capitals

in books three and four, what Telemachus
is really going to do is take a journey

into a past.
And this past is already something that

has a kind of grandeur to it.
He'll look at Pylos and this wonderful

wealthy citadel of, of, of that we see
with Nestor.

And then, we're going to move on to Sparta
and see Menelaus and Helen of Troy

herself.
We're going to see grand figures that are

already a mythic proportion according to
how Telemachus marshal his engagement with

them.
I thought in making this turn to this

grand past such as we're going to see in
three and four, I might just toss up here

a slide of a famous probably our most
famous ancient citadel from this time, the

citadel of Mycenae, Agamemnon's palace
This is so-called lion gate and it has an

air of majesty to it.
And, thinking back to the time when this

was built back in the first early, you
know, early, early, early times first

millennium BCE and even before these
citadels emerged up out of the out of the,

the plain around us and at a time, when
there were simple agrarian folk in most

parts of the world.
There would be these grand citadels.

And in the memory of time as the citadels
age and as history builds up around them,

and events take place that involve these
places, eventually people start to think,

my gosh, how in the world did they build
those things, anyway, all those centuries

ago?
And when they did that, they started down

a path of imaging that their ancestors
were greater than they were.

They even called these stones, Cyclopean
stones because they felt there was no way

a human being could have moved them and
they are kind of things that only a

Cyclops could move.
So, there was a, a, a kind of, of mythic

orientation toward their deep past that
the Greeks already had during Homer's

time.
The, the impulse here to look at your

ancestors as being much greater than you
were leads us to our first universal law

in the course.
I'm going to give you a few universal laws

in the course guarantee to be universal
money back guarantee.

And how much money do we pay for a course
there anyway?

Anyway, universal laws are money back
guarantee.

Universal law number one, nostalgia is the
most powerful force in the universe.

When people are looking back to their past
they always imagine that it must have been

better.
Seems to be something that is exhibited

across time and surely the Greeks are
susceptible to this form of nostalgia as

well.
So, Telemachus has his cue, it's time to

go and off he goes.
He's going to visit two amazing places.

Athena's going to bring him along.
He's going to see Nestor's coastal city.

And when he does, he's going to move from
the his edge of his island of Ithaca and

have a trip down by boat to Pylos.
Now remember, when he arrives by boat in

Pylos, what does he see there on the
shore?

There are nine divisions of 500 people
each.

So, already, we've got 4,500 people on a
beach, that's probably going to arrest

your attention.
And now in case, we haven't gotten your

attention, each of those groups of 500,
each of those nine groups of 500 is

slaughtering nine bulls.
So, we've got 81 bulls being slaughtered

simultaneously on a beach.
If that doesn't grab your attention, then

you probably need some smelling salts.
What Telemachus sees there absolutely is

just extraordinary to him.
The grandeur of this scene something

amazing.
And the display of wealth, the conspicuous

display of wealth.
81 bulls during Telemachus' time is, a, a

fortune to last, you know the equivalent
of a fortune that could last a huge chunk

of a lifetime.
And yet, here they are just being expended

in this one event on the shores as he
goes.

So, we know we're entering into a world of
grandeur.

And now, keeping in mind that this is a
world of grandeur, we're always going to

be remembering, although it's going to
take Telemachus a little while to remember

himself, that this should be the kind of
grandeur that exists in his household.

And instead, these vagabonds are running
riot across it.

From Pylos and then, we go over land, over
to Sparta.

And at that point, we're going to meet
Menelaus, Agamemnon's very brother, and

Helen of Troy, that face that launched a
thousand ships.

We're going to have a private audience
with her through Telemachus' eyes, we're

going to see Helen.
Now, through this trip through this

traveling that Telemachus is going to do,
it's a way for him to gain knowledge.

And at the same time, he's mirroring in a
smaller, more controlled way, the kind of

adventure that his father is on.
For each of them the experiential

knowledge that's gained through traveling
is something that's profound, that's

powerful, that's life-shaping that gives
them tools, and that allows them to

advance in their own lives.
Travel is a deeply powerful tool according

to the scale of values.
So as he gets ready to make his journey,

makes his connection gears up his boat,
gets his provisions, makes his way to

Pylos, sees this grandeur, he sits down
and has his audience with Nestor.

When he gets to Sparta, he'll sit down and
have his audience with Menelaus and with,

with Helen.
Now, at each turn, the, the elders sit

back and listen to Telemachus' version of
events, and the first thing they do, when

they hear what is happening, is to react
the way, presumably, we're being taught a

person should react, they don't just feel
sorry for Telemachus, they don't pat him

on the head and give him some Kleenex,
they're angry.

They're angry.
The constant exhibition of Telemachus's

elders after he tells them this story is
to feel anger.

We see this multiple times as the story is
being told.

Athena has already shown it page 85, as
[unknown] mentor, she is outraged and she

talks about how shameful this exhibition
is.

On page 134, we hear from Menelaus, we
also hear from Nestor, that this is

shameful what's happening.
Anger comes up when they hear this.

The tour is partly an education for
Telemahus to be schooled in how his

emotions ought to be working.
His emotions need some calibration.

They need some changing.
Oftentimes, I think we think that emotions

are just kind of natural responses to
things and that just by nature you are

going to feel things like embarrassment,
or anger, or joy or what, whatever it is.

But the stance that Homer is taking here
in the Odyssey is a little bit different.

It seems that Telemachus actually needs
some schooling in this.

There's an acculturation that he needs to
do to know that it is right now to feel

anger.
That is the kind of emotional response he

should be having.
Each person that he talks to expresses

that.
Then also, at each turn, we hear a

particular name that's brought up.
When we're talking to Nestor on page 113,

the name Orestes comes up.
Athena disguised as mentor on page 115

talks about Orestes.
Menaleus, page 141.

After hearing the story of what's
happening in Telemachus household, talks

about Orestes, and in fact, casting our
mind back for a second, back to book one

Zeus in his introductory remarks right at
the very beginning, talks about Orestes

right on page 78 in the translation.
At each point a person who mentions

Orestes is an older authority figure.
They're reacting to this expression of

powerlessness.
In Zeus' case, it's the idea that people

just toss up their hands and it just feels
like everything is just faded and it's the

gods fault.
Instead, take action like that Orestes

did.
The mentor Nestor and Menelaus each after

they hear the story that Telemachus tells
and of his own pathetic powerlessness in

the situation say, oh, have you heard the
one about Orestes?

Now, what are they referring to?
What is this situation involving Orestes?

Well, it just so happens that the, one of
the famous stories of homecoming is

something that's already percolating in
the background of Homer's Odyssey.

When Agamemnon famously makes his way
home, he gets home pretty quickly.

It's not a struggle for him to get a ship
back to his to his citadel.

But when he does, he sees his wife.
Hello and I'm, I'm back home.

He doesn't realize that his wife has taken
up a liaison with a lover and that the two

of them go ahead and murder Agamemnon
shortly after he arrives.

Now, this is an awful thing, Clytemnestra,
Agamemnon's wife, and her lover killed the

head of household, Agamemnon, her husband.
Now, it just so happens that within the

Greek ethical code, if someone kills your
father as a son or a daughter, it is now

your duty to kill your father's killer.
Well now, what happens in Agamemnon's

family?
Agamemnon's own son and daughter are

responsible now for taking revenge against
this killer, which means for them, killing

their own mother.
This is a nasty business.

This is ugly, and this is awful.
In Homer's version of it, the part that's

really emphasized is the lover part,
Aegisthus.

It's, he's talked about as the one most
responsible for the death of Agamemnon.

So, Orestes goes ahead and takes care of
business and kills Aegisthus.

But it's a messy story.
It's already messy in Homer's time.

And if you get even messier when we
concentrate on it in our out weeks of the

class, we're going to turn to, after we
turn to classical Athenian tragedy we're

going to see the story of Agamemnon told
through Aeschylus' eyes.

My goodness, that's going to make my hairs
grow.

But when Homer focuses on it, what he
means to point is, Orestes in a situation

that was very ugly and very nasty, he had
the gumption to do what needed to be done.

Even in a situation where that was nasty,
nasty business, Orestes, did, what needed

to be done.
Orestes and the story of run, cycling

around Agamemnon show up multiple times in
Homer's Odyssey.

And in relation to Telemachus, they always
show up as this kind of coda tom that's

placed on the end of Telemachus feeling
sorry for himself in the code that comes

from a more, from an older more
experienced person saying, you know what,

even in the nasty business that Orestes
had to take care of, his house was all

messed up and Orestes came in and took
care of business.

So when Telemachus is being schooled on
how he should be reacting to the world,

he's being introduced generally to the
grand and aristocratic world that is his

birthright, that he ought to be enforcing
to be his own on the island of Ithaca,

he's being introduced to an emotional
response.

He's being enculturated to the right
emotional response.

Anger is what the person is supposed to
feel when something as nasty as what is

happening in your house is happening.
Not pity , not sorry for yourself.

Not powerlessness.
He's also being schooled in historical

lessons.
By saying, look, if you're in this

situation, you think you've got it bad,
well, don't overlook what happened in a

similar, you know, in a, in a situation
that was surely as bad as yours, and

probably much worse.
Also, Orestes took care of business in his

own situation.
And you, as the son of a father whose

being displaced by people that are eating
you out of house and home, it's going to

be incumbent upon you, their hinting,
hinting, hinting to take action yourself.

Go ahead and be the Orestes of your own
story and take action.

Now, in book four, there's a wonderful
scene that I just wanted to spend a little

bit of time with, we get to after we've
had a chance to meet Nestor and his

amazing display of wealth we get a chance
to see what's happening, in the, the house

of house of Menelaus.
We also get to see that beautiful woman

Helen of Troy herself.
She comes in and has an entrance into the

story.
We get to hear from her and hear her own

story.
When she does jump into the story there

are some interesting things for us to
recognize.

First of all, her beauty.
Her bewitching guile.

It's extraordinary.
It's, it's obviously overwhelming.

She is indeed the face that launched a
thousand ships.

When we get to see her she brings in a
nice bowl for us to drink from that is

going to soothe our, our pains or else an,
an alcoholic beverage.

But she also adds to it something extra,
something special.

These are special drugs that she got on
her sojourn in Egypt when she and Menelaus

were blown off course.
And these drugs, she can now mix into

wine, that mix into this wonderful potion,
where no one could feel any pain for

having had it.
The narcotic effect of the wine is another

thing that seems to be hovering around the
aura that is Helen.

So, in the case of Helen, we have beauty,
we have magical power, we have

intoxication.
A little bit of danger, as well, because

she can bring you out of this world.
All of these things together showing up in

the figure of Helen, this is a cluster of
ideas that we're going to see visited

regularly in Homeric epic.
Of women who have power.

Who have very clear erotic dimension to
their power.

Who also are mixed up in the idea of, of,
of magic.

Who have extraordinary beauty.
And who when they arrive in a room, turn

lots of heads.
There's a tremendous power that Homer sees

in, in this cluster of ideas, and we're
going to see it represented in multiple

places as our story moves forward.
Not least, when we turn to away from our

story of Telemachus in the first four
books of the Odyssey and move on to meet

our hero, the man himself the, the, the
man the muses are singing of, Odysseus.

He'll appear in our next lecture.