At the end of the Trojan War — ten years in the winning — Odysseus wants nothing more than to return home to Ithaca. Unfortunately, he offends the god Poseidon on the way; because of Poseidon’s interference, it takes him ten more years, and the help of the goddess Athena, to make his way back.
Poseidon and Athena are central to the narrative of the Odyssey and, of the gods, receive the most attention. It is interesting to note how differently Homer characterizes the two immortals: they are opposed in kind as well as in purpose. Athena’s role is, from the beginning of the first book, an active one: she takes advantage of Poseidon’s absence to speak in the council of the gods and persuade Zeus to allow Odysseus to go home. In later situations, she acts with foresight and initiative. Again and again she is the one responsible for setting events in motion, such as Telemachus’ departure from home. Poseidon is relatively passive by contrast, and he does not so much act as react. While he can be moved to take a hand in events, he rarely starts anything.
Athena is also a personal god, while Poseidon appears as a force of nature. Many times Athena takes mortal form to visit humans; Poseidon’s form is usually of the sea itself. This is linked to the fact that Athena’s power comes from skill and trickiness of thought whereas Poseidon’s is a brute natural power. Throughout the Odyssey there is a contrast between what is achieved through skill, thought, and deception, and what is done by force. Athena herself is much like Odysseus (as she herself points out in a conversation with him in Book 13). She plots and deceives, but her ends are typically just and measured, not out of keeping with the offense. One incident in the Odyssey reflects her unbridled wrath - the punishment of Ajax - but it is in fact Poseidon who carries out the execution. Poseidon, when he is angry, is anything but subtle: he stirs up the sea, he strikes down Ajax with his trident, and, on one occasion, he turns an entire ship full of people into stone. Athena’s reactions to anger tend to be in the form of clever and human-oriented revenge: planting disagreement in the minds of the Achaeans, for instance.
If Athena is the divine embodiment of Odysseus’ guileful cleverness, then Poseidon is tied to the uncivilized, inappropriate behavior of those Odysseus is forced to fight. The Cyclops, who eats several of Odysseus’ men, is Poseidon’s own son; we see in the trip to the underworld that two of Poseidon’s other sons tried to pile Mt. Pelion on Mt. Ossa and assail Olympus itself, overturning divine decrees and threatening the established order. Most of Odysseus’ enemies — in particular the Cyclops, but also the brutal Laestrygonians, the suitors who break civilized rules, and sea-dangers Scylla and Charybdis — in fact partake to some degree of the same negative qualities associated with Poseidon or with his children: primitivism, lawlessness, brutality, and often monstrous size. Odysseus survives these encounters by drawing on the cleverness and capacity for endurance that he shares with Athena.
The Odyssey opens near the end of Odysseus’ journey. In Ithaca, Odysseus’ son Telemachus is nearly a grown man, and suitors have besieged his wife Penelope, trying to persuade her to remarry. They are the worst imaginable guests: they come to Odysseus’ house day after day, eating his food, abusing his servants, and being rude to his family. Their presence also bears the threat of worse to come: even when Odysseus eventually arrives at home, there is the danger that the suitors will try to kill him.
What happens in Ithaca is vital to the story as a whole, and Homer begins his narrative there, perhaps to prepare us for the fact that Odysseus’ trials will not be over when he reaches his homeland. What is perhaps harder to understand is why he spends so long — the first four books, in fact — on Telemachus, before he ever gets to the topic of Odysseus’ own journey.
One purpose of these opening books, I would argue, is to establish a sense of what is normal and appropriate against which the experiences of Odysseus will stand out all the more clearly. The issue of hospitality is central to the entire poem: to be either a bad guest (as the suitors are) or a bad host (the Cyclops, Calypso, Circe and others) is an offense against Zeus. In Telemachus’ reception of the disguised Athena, and in his own journey, we get a description of what good hospitality looks like. The host sees to the needs of the guest — food, certainly, but often a bath or some kind of washing as well — and only afterward asks the guest about himself. The guest is then supposed to explain his origins and what he is doing there. The host provides a place to sleep; and, before the guest leaves, the host also offers him valuable gifts to take away with him. This establishes a guest-friendship between the guest and host; the host may later, if he chooses, become the guest by returning the visit.
The exact description varies from instance to instance, and may incorporate some parts of the ritual (the food) but not others (the bath.) Homer has set passages in which he describes each of these important steps, which are often repeated verbatim on each occasion: this is a poetic device that is perhaps especially to be expected from oral poetry, where one might want to have to remember only one way of describing how the maid sets out the table for the guest; it has, however, the additional effect of heightening the sense that these are customary actions, repeated in the same way whenever they occur.
The hosts who receive Telemachus (ie., Nestor and Menelaus) behave properly, setting an implicit example; Menelaus also remarks explicitly on the right way to treat a guest. One must, he says, allow the guest to stay as long as he likes, but not detain him if he wishes to go. Later we will see Calypso failing to obey this very important rule of hospitality.
Guest-host scenes in Homer often also serve as a place in which internal stories appear. The guests and hosts may exchange news, or a bard may come and sing stories about other people. In the court of the Phaeacians, Odysseus tells the story of his experiences at sea; he also hears the story of Hephaestus and Ares as sung by the bard Demodocus. In Telemachus’ travels, the stories are primarily stories about Odysseus. This gives us an idea, before we ever see him, of what Odysseus’ primary characteristics are. They also show us that Odysseus already possesses a certain kleos, before we ever see him in the narrative.
The stories of Helen and Menelaus particularly set up the homecoming of Odysseus: Helen tells about how he came into Troy disguised as a beggar, while Menelaus describes how he forced the men inside the Trojan Horse to be silent when Helen was trying to trick them into speech. Later, when Odysseus comes to Ithaca, he will again use the ploy of disguising himself as a beggar; and only because he is able to wait silently for the opportune time will he be able to overcome the suitors.
So the narrative of the journey of Telemachus, then, serves the twofold purpose of exemplifying good hospitality and of setting up the character of Odysseus.