Nostoi/Odyssey/Telegony: New Perspectives on the End of the Epic Cycle

A similar geographic pattern, or itinerary, is shared by some early epic nostoi involving ports of call in Egypt, Phoenicia, and a Greek state. The term metanostos suggests that some nostoi may have had an analogical structuring influence on others, and that a fairly specific itinerary was expected of many nostoi.

This paper approaches the relationship between the Odyssey’s nostos and other ‘Nostoi’ from two perspectives. First, rather than privileging either the ‘lost’ poems or our extant epic as primary in a ‘vertical’ relationship (with one influencing the other(s) exclusively), I assume a horizontal dynamic wherein the reconstructed poems and the Odyssey influenced the character, structure and composition of each other while developing in an oral tradition (cf. Nagy 1999 [1979]; Burgess 2003; Graziosi and Haubold 2005).

I seek to re-evaluate the Telegony in light of a tendency of early Greek epics to set heroic generations, especially fathers and sons, into a paradigmatic relation with one another. I argue specifically that the Telegony controverted this tendency and thereby projected a different historical vision of the heroic age and its demise.

This paper reevaluates the Odyssey’s pervasive theme of recognition vis-à-vis the Telegony and its portrayal of the death of Odysseus. The impetus for this inquiry is a simple contrast in the skeletal plots of the Odyssey and Telegony: the former is driven by recognition scenes resulting in the hero’s success, while the latter predicates the hero’s doom on failed recognition.

Debate persists over the value and significance of the final episode in Odyssey 24 in which Odysseus and the male members of his household dominate the suitors’ male relatives in combat (Taplin, 33; Slatkin, 327). This two-part paper offers a new analysis of the poem’s ending. Part I uses two sources of comparanda to denaturalize the battle’s presence in the poem: from both mythographic and folkloristic perspectives the battle appears exceptional. Part II explains the thematic impact of this break with precedent.

The existence of cyclical poems next to the Iliad and Odyssey can lead to gemination: the cyclical poem can be seen either as a (lost) source on which the Homeric tradition draws or as a form of “fan fiction,” providing the sequel or prequel to the plot of the Homeric poem, filling in its gaps, or detailing events outside of the plot that are referred to in the poem.