3- Penelope, model of motherhood and fidelity

Penelope was a beautiful young girl.
Several princes ask her father Icarios, King of Sparta and a champion horse racer, for her hand in marriage. To avoid quarrels between the suitors, Icarios forces them to compete in a race against him. Ulysses is the victor and wins Penelope's hand in marriage.
The man who would become the mythical king of Ithaca conquered Penelope ... at the races.

Forerunner of the medieval "champion", the Greek hero, prince or man of high rank, must sometimes win for his side in single combat (Achilles vs. Hector, for example).
But he must also "win" the heart of a noble lady in the presence of suitors, by force if necessary, or defend his honor when it is called into question.
Competing for a young woman's "hand" clearly didn't require her opinion.
Women were considered "minors" in the West until the early 20th century. That's 31 centuries since Homer's story.
Among the Achaean Greeks (as in many other civilizations), the father gave his daughter in marriage.
It wasn't until the Romans that the father gave "his hand" (i.e. authority over his daughter) to his future son-in-law. This marriage was called "cum manu", with the hand.
Put that way, it sounds nicer. The hand, well, it is the hand.
But just the hand isn't enough to ensure offspring.
The question of possession is never far away, and not just the hand.

The Roman Republic created a marriage in which the wife remained under the authority of the father (and not the husband), creating an unprecedented space of freedom and equality for women.
The Empire never ceased to curtail this freedom and equality.
Marriage remained a matter between two men: the father and the son-in-law.
This practice continued well into the Middle Ages.
This age-old system of "granting" a woman to a man is still with us today.
Royal authorizations given to court officials have become commonplace, and have survived in tutelary dowry agreements negotiated by ordinary people.
In this sense, the Odyssey is unfortunately not a backward-looking tale.

Penelope, wife of Ulysses, one of the most famous women of antiquity, was entrusted with strictly domestic tasks. A remarkable weaver, she was honored for this in Greek mythology. A model of motherhood and fidelity, she was nevertheless the wife of the legendary "Wanax", a mythical hero at the mercy of monsters and enterprising nymphs, who did everything in their power to prevent her from regaining Ithaca and thus her queen.
Penelope, a sort of ancient "house fairy", waits tirelessly for the hero's return, while the bewitching nymph Circe, also an outstanding weaver, contrives to "hold back" her husband by wielding poison and seduction.
The Greek mortal women of the Odyssey are imprisoned in a rigid morality of submission, while the beautiful immortal nymphs and goddesses are free to choose their lovers, using desire as an instrument of conquest and casting magical spells to perfect the desired result: to dominate and appropriate these mortal men... so demanding with their wives.

The Odyssey is disorienting.

4- Rigid Greek morality: fidelity and virtue

The ancient Greeks had an unfair and gendered notion of fidelity.
If a married man had sexual relations with a woman who was not his wife, and she was not married to another man, this was considered normal and acceptable.
It was also accepted that married men could have relations with prostitutes.
They were fulfilling their own desires, so there was nothing wrong with that.
However, if a woman had sexual relations with someone other than her husband, it was an unforgivable crime, one of the worst a woman could commit.
Even if the husband had been absent for years (10 years of war and 10 years of wandering the seas, for example).

Did Penelope have any choice but to faithfully await Odysseus' return, or the certainty of his death through the presentation of his remains?
The Greeks considered betrayal to be one of the worst crimes anyone could commit.
A wife's infidelity was therefore considered "the ultimate act of treason".
The crime was so serious that the husband was legally authorized to kill her on the spot if he caught her in the act.
Did Penelope remain faithful out of obligation?
The reasons for such injustice are rooted in the idea of the necessary "purity" of offspring.

Ancient men who left home for long periods (for war or to sea) regularly lived under the suspicion of their wives' infidelity, with a dishonourable corollary: the fear of having to raise another man's offspring as their own.
A consequence deemed even more infamous than the cause itself!

A quote from Euripides puts it this way:
"Εὶ δὲ μήτηρ ιλότεκνος μᾶλλον πατρός - μὲν γὰρ αὑτῆς οἶδεν ὄνθ᾿, δ᾿ οἴεται."
(Euripides's Fragment 1015)
"A mother always loves her children more than a father does, for she knows they are hers, while he (only) thinks so."
(HARVARD University Press © 2023 President and Fellows of Harvard College)

" A mother always loves her children more than a father does, for she knows they are hers, while he (only) thinks so."

One thousand four hundred years later, in the early Byzantine period, it became clear that this was a baseless moral double standard, and that men who cheated on their wives were committing exactly the same fault as women who cheated on their husbands. In particular, the Christian church father Ioannis Chrysostomos (349 - 407 A.D.) stated, "It's the same 'crime' for both."

As an adventure story, the Odyssey presents an ancient sociological model that accepts a postulate of differentiated virtue.
However, this differentiated Greek morality imposed by men does not exist on Olympus.
Men remain subject to the gods.
If domination over mortal beings is the prerogative of the Greek gods, subjugating women is perhaps not a power that men can exercise without limit.
The gods punish them by letting the nymphs play them.
A divine rebalancing of sorts.
Even if it takes place in mythology and not really in the earthly world..

Could a woman "take" a man's hand without asking her father, or even decide to unite with whomever she pleased without being considered "inferior"?
A mere mortal, no.
So you had to be immortal (or almost immortal) to "take" a man's hand.
Without being accountable to anyone. By seduction, even coercion, which demiurges can and do use.

Nymphs are particularly appreciated by Homer for this purpose.
Women who behave like men in love, equal in good and evil.
They are feminine divinities of nature, characterized by their beauty and often the offspring of gods, like Calypso, the daughter of Atlas.
They are long-lived but not immortal, although Homer maintains the ambiguity by sometimes referring to them cumulatively as "goddesses". Who, in turn, are immortal.
Calypso, for example, offers Ulysses "immortality" to keep him.
And Circe, a nymph expert in toxic seduction, almost immortal, who passionately takes hold of Ulysses, only to return him to his destiny out of necessity (see below).

In spite of him, and perhaps in spite of her.

A complex notion in this story, which, without contradicting ancient morality, can blend the liberated seduction of the demiurge nymphs with the strict, hierarchical virtue of women in Odysseus' time.

5- Circe the nymph magician: why give in to a mere mortal?

The myth of Circe was not created by Homer, but is drawn from ancient folklore handed down by the aedes (storytellers), notably in the epic of Gilgamesh (Babylon) dating from the 18th and 17th centuries BC.
Struggling with the worst misfortunes that are sent his way so that he never returns home (we'll see why a little further on), Ulysses takes a very long "break" in the arms of Circe, "Κιρκη"/ "Kιrkè", which means " bird of prey ", the magician known as "εὐπλόκαμος" / euplokamos, "with beautiful curls" ...and fearsome poisons.
Endowed, moreover, with a highly effective power that needs no mixtures to act: the art of seducing and arousing desire.

And it's best not to resist her, whether you're a mere mortal or a Greek god:
- One day, the sea god Glaucos asks her for a magic potion to win the favor of the beautiful nymph Scylla, who remains unmoved by her advances.
Circe falls in love with Glaucus, but he rejects her.
In revenge, she transforms the beautiful Scylla (who had asked for nothing) into a sea monster (who will now face another monster, Charybdis, in the Strait of Messina - hence the expression "falling from Charybdis to Scylla", going from bad to worse).
- Circe also punishes Picus, King of Italy, who has also refused her favors, turning him into a woodpecker...Cui-cui...Toc-toc...
Pushing open the door of Circe's luxurious residence should necessarily lead the visitor to extreme caution.

The greatest love affair of the magician " with the beautiful curls " is undeniably the one she has with Ulysses. It differs radically from the others.
What sense does it make?

After leaving the land of the Lestrygons (Bonifacio or Porto Pozzo), Ulysses and his companions arrive on Circe's island: "Aiaeea.

"And we sailed far from there, sad in heart to have lost all our dear companions, though joyful to have avoided death. And we came to the island of Aiaiè, where lived the beautiful-haired Kirkè, venerable and eloquent goddess, sister of the prudent Aiètès. And both were born of Hèlios, who enlightens men, and their mother was Persè, whom Okéanos begat. And there, on the shore, we led our nave into a wide harbor, and a god led us there. Then, having disembarked, we stayed there for two days, our souls overwhelmed with fatigue and pain. But when fair-haired Éôs brought in the third day, taking my spear and sharp sword, I left the ship and climbed to a height from which I could see men and hear their voices. And from the steep summit where I had ascended, I saw rising from the wide earth, through a forest of thick oaks, the smoke of Kirkè's dwellings."

Lestrygon country - Bonifacio or Porto Pozzo