Jtdylktuy

In the Odyssey, Penelope is courted by 108 suitors, who camp out in her house/royal court indefinitely, behaving badly, while she delays them. I'm having trouble understanding the historical and cultural context here. Is enough known about the culture of Homeric Greece to definitively explain what's going on, or is it subject to interpretation? It seems clear that the suitors have an understandable motive (to take over the kingdom of Ithaca). It's less clear to me whether their behavior is meant to be seen as a total violation of cultural norms, or what norms might be violated. Features of the story such as the great length of time and the large number of suitors seem like exaggerations for effect, but are the aberrations meant to excite horror in the listener, or are they just exaggerated versions of plausible events when a queen was widowed?

The suitors end up getting killed, which is seen as just. In this culture, do they deserve death simply because they persistently courted Penelope, or because they abused her hospitality, or because of their separate misdeeds, such as the plot led by Antinous to murder Telemachus?

Does Penelope fail to eject them because she lacks the physical power, because she lacks the legal and political authority, or because she's behaving as an exaggerated model of hospitality?

Hospitality is a virtue that was much admired in the ancient world and is modeled by Telemachus in his interaction with Athena. If great hospitality is seen as an obligation of a rich noblewoman, then is she enhancing her legitimacy by showing such extreme hospitality?

If her problem is lack of physical power, does this imply that the entire kingdom of Ithaca is completely undefended simply because one man, the king, is dead or absent? Wouldn't Odysseus have made provisions for the security of his kingdom, court, and family before leaving for Troy? If Penelope wanted to kick the suitors out, could she appeal to her slaves to help her with physical force, or would that be out of the question culturally (cf. Confederate horror at freedmen fighting for the Union)? Would the suitors have weapons, armor, and training that would make it difficult for non-nobles to eject them by force?

Xenia is a concept that represented the relationship between guests and hosts in Ancient Greece, and is a recurring theme in the Odyssey, Iliad, and other Greek works. Essentially, Penelope was fulfilling the expected cultural role of a generous host, whereas the suitors were breaking their role as courteous guests. For adhering to that culture's expectation of hospitality, Penelope and her family were rewarded, and for breaking the customs the suitors were justly punished.

Owners/caretakers of a home were expected to be hospitable to any guests or travelers that might show up at their door, offering them food and drink, a bath, and even gifts when they finally leave. It was the duty of a host to take care of guests, because the guest could be a god in disguise who would reward or punish the host's behavior. In the Odyssey, Penelope/Telemachus were fulfilling this custom as expected, such as offering the suitors endless food and drink and Telemachus being courteous to the disguised Athena.

As guests of a house, travelers were expected to be courteous to the hosts, offer a gift if possible, and not be a burden. The suitors clearly broke every part of this custom, and as punishment they were killed by Odysseus upon his return.

The host-guest relationship, and why you shouldn't abuse it, is demonstrated several times in the Odyssey: the cyclops Polyphemus was far from hospitable to Odysseus and his men, so none of the gods (except Polyphemus' father, Poseidon) cared when Odysseus broke his role as a courteous guest by blinding Polyphemus. Circe was turning guests into animals, so Hermes helped Odysseus confront her, showing that not even gods were above being hospitable to guests.

Actually, it is quite easy to understand even from today's perspective :

• Penelope still has presumably living husband. There is no definite proof that Odysseus perished, and Penelope refuses to declare him dead. It is entirely in her right to do so, even in modern times.




• Odysseus has a son and heir. Telemachus would legally be new king of Ithaca if his father is dead. Even if inhabitants didn't want him as a ruler, they didn't have right to rob him of his father property. Instead, as you mentioned, some of them even plan to kill him.




• Abusing hospitality. Suitors were living in Odysseus's home for a long time, essentially uninvited and unwelcome. This would be considered unappropriated and even illegal both then and now.




• Penelope was not attracted to anyone of them, and they were not worthy of her hand. It is given that suitors were nowhere near manly as Odysseus. Indeed, at the end of Odyssey, they were tested with Odysseus's bow, and none of them could draw it. Yet, they are forcing themselves to Penelope. Although the marriages were arranged at those times, woman of her social status could choose someone who would be a worthy husband, and none of them deserved her.

To sum it up, suitors acted dishonorable in many different ways, abusing customs and laws of their (and our) times because they had physical and political power to back them up. Purpose of whole epos was to show what is proper behavior, and what is abominable to gods and punishable by death.

I ran this by my friend Matt Colvin, whose degree is in, and who teaches, classics. Here are his insights into the cultural context:

Mickey,

Missing from this discussion is the simultaneous second prong of the suitors’ strategy: namely, if they cannot make Penelope marry one of them, they can at least devour and waste so much of Odysseus’ household’s wealth as to diminish or cripple his family’s ability to contract and reinforce ties of xenia with other noble families in the Mycenaean world.

Also missing from that Stackexchange discussion is the function of Agamemnon as a mirror-story that contrasts with the central plot of the Odyssey. Agamemnon’s story comes up many times: Zeus’s first speech in Odyssey book 1 is a complaint about how Aegisthus, the successful seducer of Agamemnon’s wife Clytemnestra, has disobeyed the gods. Aegisthus is described with many of the same epithets and formulas as the suitors: both are “reckless” and disobey divine warnings against their attempted usurpation. Clytemnestra is herself the cousin of Penelope and both sister and sister-in-law of Helen of Troy, wife of Agamemnon’s brother Menelaus. Agamemnon is of course murdered by Aegisthus and Clytemnestra (Odysseus dialogues with his shade in Hades), and the suitors threaten to kill both Telemachus and Odysseus himself should he show up. Finally, Agamemnon’s son Orestes is held up many times as a model for Telemachus to emulate.

The fragility of noble power in Homeric society is also evidenced by the words that King Priam speaks to Achilles when he comes to his tent to ransom the body of Hector:

"Remember your own father, great godlike Achilles-

as old as I am, past the threshold of deadly old age!

No doubt the countrymen round about him plague him now, 

with no one there to defend him, beat away disaster.

No one — but at least he hears you're still alive

and his old heart rejoices, hopes rising, day by day,

to see his beloved son come sailing home from Troy.” (Iliad 24.483-489)

Telemachus’ inability to use force to evict the suitors from his house makes clear that their continued feasting is not merely bad etiquette, but a political power play in a society where wealth and hospitality were the means by which the noble families maintained their power — and where insufficient wealth or strength could spell overthrow by rival families. That Agamemnon was murdered and that Achilles’ father was presumed to face “disaster” without his strong son there to “beat away disaster” suggests that this sort of fragility was not unusual in the society that produced the Homeric epics.

Is enough known about the culture Homeric Greece to definitively explain what's going on, or is it subject to interpretation?

No. Enough is not known. All history is subject to interpretation. Here however the interpretation being requested is improper. The bow of conjecture is too great for History to be able to string it. Particularly in relation to a multiply redacted document making a claim about a purported single exceptional instance.

The interpretation of mythic cultural texts in the way you’re proposing is impossible to do historically. Other humanities may be able to assist you, classics and literary criticism off the top of my head.

The answer here is based on the often mnemonic values of mythology. In times where writing was uncommon or not yet invented, an oral tradition of parallels and metaphores was used often including analogies to create a story about the heavenly bodies in relation to time. Stories like the Odessy may hold Zodiacal and time keeping clues. The number 108 in relation to a female without a husband present may hint to the visibility of the constellation Virgo (specifically Spica) in relation to the sun. At the end of this post I will include a mail from Chris Johnson who has found a calendric explanation how the discovery of the length of the solar year was extended to 365,2 days when it was written. It is very informative as he puts it in perspective in interpretations of earlier calendrical information in older mythologies.

The folk etymology of the name Penelope is given as having to do with weaving. I give an example of such a folk etymology: που είναι όλα υφή meaning from Google Translate: ‘which are all textured’ (texture interpreted in the context of weaving). The word υφή is synonymous for grain and that might refer to Virgo, or better to Spica (the ear of Grain) in Virgo. And this star was useful for agriculture (grain).

Mind this answer is to share the knowledge of possible interpretations of the 108 suiters. Because it is mythology one must mind that interpretations are often speculative and may need to be revised or debunked in the light of better evidence. If true mythology may hold valuable historical records of the history of time keeping. Enjoy reading the links!

On Spica and its importance in agriculture:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1304.2176.pdf

And here is the calendrical explanation of 108 suiters by Chris Johnson: (text can be found on the Norse Mythology Yahoo Group (posted 7 may 2017);
“Before, I mentioned that Homer's Secret Odyssey didn't quite get it right - it has the structure right and the 19 year Metonic cycle is certainly right, but there are a few puzzles that they mess up and the whole 22/7 thing is just a misunderstanding. My comment was that it had to do with a different fractional division of the year and the Tithi year or lunar year divided by 360. This is the heart of the matter - there were different ways to divide the year in the past and some of them were more accurate than others. Obviously, the first couple of attempts at forming a calendar were probably more inaccurate than later attempts.

So, the story in the Odyssey is that Odysseus' pig keeper, Eumaios, has 12 pig sties inside his (Odyseus') house with 600 sows. Outside, he has 600 boars that have been reduced to 360 by the suitors of Penelope.

I already showed that Penelope was a version of the Nakshatra Kritikas as she is a "spinner" or "weaver" and the "108 suitors" of Penelope, which is 27 x 4 are a typical division of the Nakshatras called the "padas" or "feet" of the Nakshatra.

So why 600 and why 108?

The answer has to do with the stories of both Noah, Utnapishtim and Bergelmir.

I'm sure most people are familiar with the Noah's Ark story. The story of Utnapishtim is mostly the same, but Noah is called Utnapishtim. He is a character in the Epic of Gilgamesh who is tasked by Enki (Ea) to abandon his worldly possessions and create a giant ship to be called "The Preserver of Life." He was also tasked with bringing his wife, family, and relatives along with the craftsmen of his village, baby animals and grains. The oncoming flood would wipe out all animals and humans that were not on the ship, an idea mirrored by the biblical story of Noah's Ark, only with Noah's Ark, it was a ship that was 300 Cubits long by 50 wide by 30 high. Utnapishtim's vessel or refuge was square with sides of 120 cubits. 4 x 120 deg. = 120 deg. in modular arithmetic so lets say the sum of its' sides is 120 cubits total.

Bergelmir was the 3rd cosmic giant, grandson of Ymir. William says in his essay on the Groti mill (http://www.germanicmythology.com/original/cosmology5.html ) "From Snorri’s statements that the frost giants were drowned in Ymir’s blood, and that Bergelmir and his family were the only ones to escape to re-establish the frost giants, it is evident that he is identifying Bergelmir’s situation with that of Noah (Genesis 6–8), and probably relying on apocryphal accounts of the survival of the giants after the Flood (Og took refuge on the roof of Noah’s ark in Rabbinic tradition). Such tales were known in Anglo-Saxon England and early medieval Ireland (James 1920, 40–41; Carney 1955, 102–14). In accordance with his interpretation of Bergelmir’s situation, Snorri refers to the lúðr (‘mill frame’) as if it was already a possession of the giant (it is sinn, ‘his’), into which he and his family could step, as if into a sea vessel which could surmount the waves of blood. In following this tradition, Snorri has ignored the text of Vm 35, which states that Bergelmir ‘was laid on a lúðr’. Snorri’s tale of Bergelmir therefore does not go far towards explaining the myth of Vm. The word lúðr has, rather unnecessarily, given rise to a good many interpretations bearing at most a tenuous relation to the recorded meaning of the word in Old Norse, namely ‘mill-frame’. If Bergelmir was placed on a mill-frame, he was clearly ground up: Rydberg (1886, I 431–32) long ago suggested that after the world was formed from the body of the first giant Ymir the act of creation continued with the milling up of Bergelmir to produce the soil and sand of the beaches (cf. the sand described as ‘meal’ by the companions of Amlethus in the citation from Saxo above); equally, Bergelmir might represent an alternative mode of creation, syncretised genealogically by making him the grandson of Aurgelmir (who is produced from the primeval waters and then engenders the race of giants according to Vm 31)."

So we see Bergelmir and his wife ride out the flood of Ymir's blood on a "lúðr" which is the box under the stone wheel on a grain mill where the milled grain collects. Presumably, it was a square box, just like Utnapishtim's ship or refuge. Lets also assume that, like the Utnapishtim boat, it had sides of 120 units long. The "grains of sand" that Bergelmir is ground up into or the milled grain is a metaphor for the days of the year that are being ground out by the Groti mill. This means that the Groti mill is a "year mill."

If we go back to Noah's Ark, the perimeter of the sides of the ship = 300+300+50+50 or 700 and adding 30 for the height gives us 730. Half of that is 365 - so we see that Noah's Ark is a "Year Ship" of 365 days.

The Noah's Ark story says Noah was 600 years old at the beginning of the Flood. I won't torture you with recounting all the events of the flood, but the important point for this part of the story is that the flood waters rise for 5 months of 30 days each (150 days) and then the rise of the waters stops and the ark comes to rest on the mountains.

600 is a unit known as the Babylonian "Ner" or 600 years. The storyteller is drawing our attention to this number and if we take this 600 year period and multiply it by the 365 units of Noah's ship, we get 219,000 "days" over 600 years.

We know that 365 days is not the right figure for our solar year since the true figure is closer to 365.25 days and around 550 BC, most of the ancient world had also figured it out and it came time for a new calendar that took account of the new understanding.

If we multiply 365.25 days x 600 years, that equals 219,150. If we subtract: 219,150-219,000 we get 150 days!

That means the "flood" is a metaphor for the "swelling" of days over 600 years that happened after the reform of the calendar to make it more accurate. the ".25" adds up to 150 days over 600 years. The "entire population of the earth that is killed" means all the days of the old, inaccurate year are drowned in the "flood." Noah and his family (3 sons and 3 wives plus Noah and His wife = 8 people)
represent the years of the new Octaeteris calendar that had been modified to be more accurate than the earlier (inaccurate) 365 day calendar of the Egyptians and old mesopotamians of 12 months of 30 days plus 5 epagomenal months. This year could have started in 4362 BC according to Egyptian records.

Thanks to Nicky Drumbolis for that explanation - I would never have been able to deduce Odysseus' year without his help (see his essay: Noah by the Numbers).

Now for what I deduced: The odyssey has the same type of calculation but it is hidden in the 600 sows and 600 boars reduced to 360 by the suitors (plus the 5 people that Ken Woods identifies for the epagomenal days) = 365 days for the year.

I made the the same calculation that 600x365=219,000 days since those numbers are both symbolically encoded in the text, but when I started looking for the 150 day period, I couldn't find it. I did notice that the total number of Suitors of Penelope was 108 however.

It struck me that the suitors had to be the "dead days" of the inaccurate year that had to be "killed" to make a new calendar that was accurate but why only 108?

I then noticed that of the 50 servant maids, 12 of them had helped the suitors and were killed by Odysseus after he killed the suitors. This adds up to 108 + 12 = 120.

That 120 number again, just like the sides of the boat of Utnapishtim but it doesn't equal 150. We do see the Ner again with 50 servant maids x 12 who were killed for a total of 600.

The Odyssey was written about events happening around 1200 BC after the "fall of Troy" which also might have been a mythical symbol of time. The original Egyptian solar year of 365 days was long known and was not accurate. Since we already suspect what the meaning of the 150 compared to the 120 means, we can derive the answer by going backwards through the same calculation and add 120 to 219,000 this equals 219,120 and then if we divide this by 600 (219,120/600) it equals 365.2!

This means that an incremental improvement upon the calendar appears to have been made or rediscovered around the time of Homer (he writes of 1200 BC but lived about 850 BC) of a solar year being 365.2 days long instead of 365 days long! Later on, the author of the Noah's ark story made the "fix" even better and added an extra .05 to the story for 150 days over 600 years.

This means that the year of the Odyssey was 365.2 days long instead of 365 or 365.25 days long (as the days of the Noah's Ark story were measured) and this was also probably the same length of year that the Norse had and the story of the Flood of Bergelmir is a "Flood of Days" just like the Noahs' ark story, but just a little different, probably indicating that it was created earlier than the Noah myth or that it derived from the Odyssey story or the Utnapishtim story.”