Family Loyalty and the Home

On Reading Homer

Alex Thorn

Class of 2004

As Homer’s Odyssey is a story of conviction, travel and struggle, it is equally homage to the importance of loyalty and family. Odysseus’ entire fight to return home is born out of his desire to do just that: return home, to his wife, his son, his life. Thus, when it is threatened (at first by the disdain of Poseidon and then by the suitors), Odysseus responds with justice. The slaughter of one-hundred-and-eight is not murder, but the exhibition of the inviolability of the home and the consequences of violating ones family.

Though much of the emphasis in Homeric poetry often falls on what a man has done (Odysseus’ undying kleos due to his skillful conception of the Trojan Horse is a prime example), the status of man is more often the determinant of command and inheritance than his aptitude or past. Take Agamemnon’s Lord Marshall status, for example: he was at the forefront of the Achaen command because of his inheritance (he brought the most soldiers to Troy) and not his strength in combat. For, if one’s skill in battle were the determing factor in the amount of command he posessed, the afflicted Achilles would be the clear leader. However, because Agamemnon was the brother of the distressed party (Menelaus), he received the support necessary to lead the avengence.

It is this status that breeds a sense of loyalty among men: Agamemnon is our leader; follow him. However, as Odysseus and Telemachus prove, there is a deeper loyalty than that of social class, and that is the loyalty of the house and family, which, ultimately, is also the cause of social status (often through the family gift of inheritance). As in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, the family loyalty preceeds that felt within social class, yet both coexist. In the Iliad, Lord Marshall Agamemnon leads the battle as a matter of family loyalty (to avenge his brother’s aggrievances), while the other Achaen leaders arrive on the beaches of Troy out of social class based loyalty for Agamemnon and the pact they had all agreed on. In the Odyssey, the pinnacle of the excercising of family loyalty occurs during the father-son-massacre. Yet, in the world of Odysseus, the vengence taken against the one hundred and eight suitors is not murder, but an exercise in the conviction of family loyalty – an acceptable reason for the havoc that ensued – just as was the Trojan war.

You took my house to plunder, twisted my maids to serve your beds. You dared bid for my wife while I was still alive. (Odyssey 23, 35)

Clearly, Odysseus’ declared reasoning for the vengeance he is about to deal to the suitors is, for him, a matter of family honor. In fact, throughout the rest of the poem, when Odysseus is struggling – fighting – battling – to get home, Athena, Goddess of War, is at his side helping him, spurring him on. Yet, “for all her fighting words she gave no overpowering aid” (Odyssey 23, 220). Truly, as Odysseus’ protector, Athena has given him aid in all his other fights, so why not in this one? Now, back on his island of Ithaca, Odysseus’ is no longer fighting a political war based on combat… that is why Homer uses no battle vocabulary to describe the slaughter. Instead, Odysseus is now fighting for his family – his household – which Athena is not part of. He must cleanse his household of all evils, all threats to his family, all who have trespassed on his land.

In Texas, as well as in much of the nation, citizens possess the right to shoot trespassers in defense of their property, household, and family. Similarly, Odysseus has the distinct right to protect his household. And, though these suitors had committed no murders themselves, by treating his wife as a widow and his son as a fatherless teenager, the one-hundred-and-eight suitors did, essentially, kill Odysseus on Ithaca. Therefore, Odysseus’ seemingly grotesque and excessive retaliation is anything but; instead, his response is based on the same rules of family loyalty that brought Agamemnon and the Achaeans to Troy. And, because the suitors had literally killed him by acting as if his death were a certainty, Odysseus and his son act not only out of the need to cleanse their household, but also in self defense of the raging onslaught that, if had succeeded, would have ultimately left Telemachus with a household not worth inheriting – the gift of family.

The idea of family loyalty as a justified reason for bloodshed extends throughout both poems. In the early days, there was only a man and his home. The foundation of the American legal system is built upon the age old idea that when something bad was done to someone, those in relation to the victim were responsible for the vengeance. The idea of family omnipotence is essential to the Odyssey’s function – someone is always killing in the name of. And, in the world of the Greeks, there was no distinction between malicious homicide and justified killing, because every man’s kin was out for vengeance on his killer. Thus, the question as to exactly what was the Trojan War is imminent. Was it, as is commonly perceived, a battle between two warring states? Au contraire, the Iliad was merely a battle between families – an attempt by one family to regain a part of it that had been stolen by another family.

Essentially, book twenty-three of the Odyssey is the culmination of Odysseus’ efforts to return to Ithaca, though he arrived on the island before the Death in the Great Hall. Odysseus must slaughter these men, whether or not they want to fight him back, just as Achilles had to disgrace the body of Hector, despite how grotesque and seemingly unnecessary both acts were; they were both acts of family loyalty – Odysseus for his son, his wife, his home; Achilles for his brother in arms, Patroclus. Athena lets Odysseus and his son fight their own battle because their slaughter of the suitors truly is no war… but is, instead, the most vital traits of family and home: protection and group survival, the same need to protect ones kin that has spawned the laws and theories of the present, from the Fourth Amendment to the heart of Darwin’s theory of evolution.