118: Odyssey Book 7 and 8 – Games and Tears

Read Books 7 and 18 in the Mendelsohn translation of the poem. If you can find a quiet space read it outloud, imagine yourself to be a bard.

As you read, mark passages you would like to discuss together. Practise reading selected sections aloud so you are ready to contribute and can help one another appreciate the poem more fully during discussion. Prepare interpretive questions for the group.

Book 7 – The Palace of Arétê and Alkínoös
Guided by Athena in disguise, Odysseus enters the marvelous palace of Arétê and Alkínoös, with its golden dogs, bronze walls, and ever-fruiting orchards. He throws himself as a suppliant at the queen's knees, as instructed by her daughter Nausikáa. The Phaiêkians respectfully welcome him, though they wonder at his stranger’s appearance and clothing, which Arétê recognizes as her own handiwork given to Odysseus by Nausikáa. Odysseus tactfully explains his encounter with the princess without dishonoring her. Alkínoös promises a safe escort home and even offers him, in the next book, Nausikáa's hand if he stayed. A feast is arranged, anticipating further storytelling.

Book 8 – Games and the Bard
The next day, Alkínoös calls an assembly and proposes sending the guest home laden with gifts. A minstrel, Demódokos, sings of a quarrel between Achilles and Odysseus; the hero secretly weeps. Athletic games are held; when taunted as unathletic, Odysseus hurls a discus farther than anyone, reasserting his honor. Another song recounts Ares and Aphrodite’s adultery, then a third narrates the Wooden Horse and Troy’s fall. Again Odysseus hides his tears. Alkínoös finally notices the guest’s grief and presses him to reveal his name, origins, and the story of his wanderings—triggering the long retrospective narrative.
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For this series on Homer's Odyssey we will be using the new translation by Daniel Mendelsohn: Homer: The Odyssey. Translated, with Introduction and Notes. University of Chicago Press, April 9th, 2025.

Sessions devoted to Daniel Mendelsohn’s translation will alternate with meetings focused on a broader range of “Odysseiana,” materials that illuminate the transmission, reception, and interpretation of Homer’s poem across time. These companion materials will include ancient textual witnesses, archaeological and visual evidence, and modern thematic and analytical work that together situate the Odyssey within its cultural, historical, and performative contexts.

Textual materials
• Early manuscripts on papyrus and parchment from as early as the third century BCE, along with later medieval codices, show how the text of the Odyssey was copied, stabilized, and annotated over many centuries.
• A clay tablet from Roman-era Olympia, inscribed with verses from Book 14, offers one of the earliest substantial epigraphic attestations of the poem and illustrates its circulation in public and sacred spaces.
• Later printed editions, informed by Alexandrian scholarship and modern textual criticism, will serve as points of comparison for issues of wording, lineation, and commentary.

Archaeological and visual materials
• Vase paintings and other images from Greek pottery that depict scenes associated with the Odyssey—such as shipwrecks, supplication, or women at the loom—will be used to explore how ancient artists visualized narrative moments and social practices found in the poem.
• Museum collections, such as those of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, provide objects like armor, textiles, and domestic furnishings that help reconstruct the material world of Odysseus and his contemporaries.
• These artifacts will help connect specific passages in Mendelsohn’s translation to ancient views of the gods, warfare, hospitality, and poetic performance.

Thematic and analytical materials
• Scholarly discussions of themes such as cunning and intelligence, homecoming and estrangement, and the tension between order and disorder will frame close readings of selected episodes.
• Attention to the Odyssey’s origins in oral performance, including formulaic language, meter, and narrative framing, will complement Mendelsohn’s effort to reproduce the poem’s formal features in English.
• Companion texts from later epic and narrative traditions will be brought in to show how Homeric patterns are adapted, challenged, or echoed in subsequent literature.

Mendelsohn’s translation is also available on Kindle and as an Audible audio book. About Daniel Mendelsohn read here.