Perversions of the Phaeacians

Abstract

As a traveler’s yarn of adventure and tale of yearning for home, Homer’s Odyssey has inspired artists for three thousand years.¹ In Books 6 through 13, Odysseus stands at a crossroads: one path continues homeward to Ithaca, the other to settlement abroad with the Phaeacians, a wealthy but isolated people of divine descent. After many brushes with captivity and death since departing Troy, Odysseus could abort his perilous journey by marrying the princess Nausicaa and receiving a share of island paradise from her father. In choosing homecoming, Odysseus avoids the moral failure of abandoning return and—even more problematic—perverting the cultural tradition underlying Homeric epic, which requires his homecoming.² If this man does not return to Ithaca, he would not be Odysseus—but what man would not have been tempted?