S4, Episode 4: Odysseus of the Ajax versus Odysseus of the Odyssey

[00:00:00] Megan: Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Musings in Greek, Season 4, Episode 4. My name is Megan Hunter, and I’ll be your host on today’s episode, along with Nick as co host. In this episode, we’ll be looking at the character of Odysseus, both in the context of the Ajax and the Odyssey. Now that we’ve finished reading the Ajax, we’ll be able to compare and contrast Odysseus character in both stories.

After we do that, we’ll return to the discussion of moral codes and attempt to identify the code that Odysseus follows. Just for reference, our discussion will mostly be based around lines 1, 367 to 1, 420 of the Ajax, but we’ll also mention previous sections in our discussion today. Okay, let’s get started by talking about Odysseus and the Ajax versus Odysseus and the Odyssey.

So something that was brought up pretty early on in our discussion in class was that Odysseus and the Ajax seems more like Odysseus at the end of the Odyssey, even though the events of the Odyssey technically take place after the events of the Ajax. We did notice some characteristics of Odysseus carrying over, such as his wisdom that he certain events in the Odyssey, such as dealing with Polyphemus, giving out his name, and then realizing that that was something he shouldn’t have done.

Um, and then him later concealing his identity. So, characteristics like that, um, we noticed were We’re found in the Ajax, um, his wisdom and his relationship with Athena particularly.

[00:01:28] Nicolas: Yeah. And like, uh, we, we also saw, um, some other characteristics in the odyssey, even that weren’t present. Like I know a lot of people in our, in our class, when we talked about this, they kind of brought up how at the very end of the odyssey, Odysseus goes on just an absolute violent murder rampage against the suitors, which seems almost ill fitting for a man who.

Talks about not necessarily treating your enemies as harshly, because you don’t know, for instance, how long someone might be your enemy. But we, uh, we argued endlessly about that and weren’t sure whether it still fits Odysseus character or not.

[00:02:07] Megan: Yeah, it was, it was the type of thing where we, we began by saying, oh, well actually, Odysseus seems like, in Ajax, To be the Odysseus at the end of the Odyssey.

But then things like that came up in our discussion and then we realized, well, actually Odysseus in the Ajax seems to almost be an idealized version of himself. It’s like the culmination of all the wisdom he’s acquired, but actually because of certain events that happened at the end of the Odyssey, we didn’t even know if that.

if that could be said. One of the things that we, we had mentioned was that it’s important to, to remember that the Ajax was written hundreds of years after the Odyssey was being performed, and that the audience of the Ajax was very familiar with Odysseus’s character already.

[00:02:51] Nicolas: And I, I mean like the, the, I think we have to, Definitely take into account that the Athenians who were, who are witnessing this play put on at their festivals, right, they would have had their own relationships with the, uh, the Iliad and the Odyssey, and they would already have these kind of preconceived notions of who Odysseus was as a character.

I think that, although Sophocles is rewriting him to an extent for his own purpose, right, definitely it has to still fit into this mold of who Odysseus is, what are his characteristics. I think that’s a really good point, Megan.

[00:03:21] Megan: Yeah, because of that, it also then makes sense that some of the qualities of Odysseus that only develop at the end of the Odyssey are present in this work, because like you said, people already have their own impression and understanding of him going into this play.

And even Sophocles himself is using Odysseus based off of his own perception of him. He’s taking the qualities that, that he needs to fit the specific role in his play, and then he’s kind of turning Odysseus into a character that fits his character. his needs for the play. And that brings up another point of difference between these two works, which is Odysseus’s wisdom.

He’s of course portrayed as being wise in both works, but his wisdom seems to be different in both of them. We can see this through how he deals with moral dilemmas. So in the Ajax, he’s being forced to deal with a moral dilemma head on. Um, we, we can see that he’s having to reason out, um, whether or not he’s, The, the Greeks should be bearing the body of Ajax, and that’s the main conflict of the, of the play.

But in the Odyssey, the main conflict isn’t a moral dilemma. There’s still moral dilemmas within the Odyssey, but that’s not how they’re portrayed, that’s not how they’re set up. Um, instead, they’re, they’re conflicts that Odysseus has to solve or fix. Um, they’re things that he has to use his wisdom to overcome, in a way.

Um, But the conflict doesn’t lie in the fact that he’s dealing with a moral dilemma.

[00:04:50] Nicolas: No, yes, certainly. I mean, I think in class we even talked about kind of how, uh, There’s so many things in the Odyssey that could have been written as moral dilemmas, right? Like, I mean, we already kind of talked about him killing the suitors at the end, or even how he treats his father, Laertes, when they’re back on, uh, Ithaca.

They’re both things that could have been turned into moral dilemmas by someone, if necessary. But the Odyssey just doesn’t really, it’s not its goal. It doesn’t take that perspective and examine those things as moral dilemmas. Like, uh, I mean, we can talk, I mean, you mentioned it, I think, briefly, but the kind of behavior of Odysseus towards, uh, Polyphemus, right, where he kind of, he incurs this wrath because he has this more Homeric, uh, character to him, this more heroic character where he, he feels needful to, to boast, right?

He’s not necessarily wise in the same way that when he gets to Ithaca, Uh, and then he’s talking to Athena. He realizes that maybe he should conceal his identity for a while. He doesn’t just charge into Ithaca, sword out, and kill all his suitors. He, he acts wisely and prudently in a way he doesn’t when he, uh, boasts his name to Polyphemus, bringing, uh, kind of an imprecation of doom.

[00:05:58] Megan: Yeah, he’s definitely not the type of wise character that That we see in the Ajax where he’s, he’s the one everyone comes to and is like, Oh, well, what should we do? And then he thinks of a logical conclusion to the problem, um, because in the, in the Odyssey, he’s more directly in the conflict in a way. Um, he’s in the center of it, but in the Ajax, he’s, he’s almost a bystander who is, who everyone is coming to for advice.

I mean, he’s still, he’s still in the conflict because. You know, Ajax had problems with him and Ajax tried attacking and killing him and the other Achaeans, but in this situation, it’s different because Later on, at the end of the play, it’s Agamemnon and Tuker that are the ones arguing on whether or not they should bury the body.

And then Odysseus kind of comes in as a third party and is like, we should, we should bury the body because that’s the right thing to do. Like you mentioned with the situation with Polyphemus, Odysseus is seeing that his crew is dying all around him. And the focus of that conflict is how Odysseus will use his wits to escape.

Rather than, oh, what’s the moral thing we should do here in this situation? Should we attack Polyphemus or should we try to reason with him?

[00:07:13] Nicolas: Yeah, no, and I think like even looking forward a bit and what the podcast are going to be talking about in a bit, right? We can look a little bit at how Odysseus is portrayed in the Philoctetes, right?

I mean, we see this different kind of Odysseus and how he uses his wisdom in the Odyssey, right? Where he’s, he’s very prudent and wise, but it’s in a, it’s in a very different way. It’s in a, it’s in a, somewhat cunning and conniving way, but not necessarily a bad way, right? And then when we look at him in the Ajax, right, he’s very much so like, uh, wise and almost like a, uh, a more, what we would think of as wisdom in like classical Athens, right?

A wisdom in terms of like thinking well and being prudent and being just in a lot of ways, right? In the Philoctetes, we see his, his wisdom and his kind of, uh, Cleverness portrayed almost more like deviousness, right? Which I think is a very different kind of portrayal of it. So it’s like, his, this obviously, Sophocles takes these Odyssean characteristics right from the Odyssey and just tears them in so many different ways, kind of fitting for the I guess the goal of his writing, which is very much so what you’re saying.

[00:08:17] Megan: Yeah, it is really interesting to compare because it is the same author writing the Philoctetes and Ajax. Um, and like today we mentioned how the Ajax was made more at the beginning of, um, the time he was, he was a playwright and then the Philoctetes was at the end. Um, and so it’s interesting to think about how his.

interpretation of Odysseus changes over time, or just at least the way that he needs Odysseus to be changes over time. Um, and how Odysseus as a character even evolves in a certain way, or goes backwards. Because in the Ajax, he is more of that, like, moral character who, who is doing what’s right, almost. Um, and he’s, he’s the one reasoning with everyone to do what’s right.

But in the Philoctetes, he’s He’s the one deceiving everyone. He’s, he’s using his lies to back up his, what he wants, and he’s using that to get things done. But after we talked about this, um, there was a question posed in class, um, of could Odysseus’s character be replaced by someone else in the play? Uh, to answer this question, we thought more about what Sopocles needed the role to accomplish, which is something we’ve talked about a little bit already.

But it basically, it needed to be someone who is wise, and should theoretically be against Ajax, um. because that added to the, to the drama of the, the conflict. Um, and it also, the character also needed to be someone who could speak to Athena on a more personal level. And in the end, we decided that only Odysseus could stand in as this character, partly because of his relationship with Athena.

To look at an example of their relationship in the Ajax, I’ll read a section from lines 74 to 76. I’ll be reading Odysseus role, and Nick will be reading Athena’s role. We’ll start with the Greek first, and then we’ll read the English translation from Sir Richard Jebb. What are you doing, Athena? I’m getting tired of walking.

I

[00:10:14] Nicolas: don’t know what to do with you. I’m

[00:10:18] Megan: sorry. I have to go. Now to the English. What are you doing, Athena? Do not call him out.

[00:10:27] Nicolas: Hold your peace. Do not earn a reputation for cowardice.

[00:10:31] Megan: No, by the gods. Let it content you that he stay inside. So in this section, Odysseus is able to question Athena and disagree with what she’s doing.

Not long after this, he understands why she’s doing what she is, but instead of just going along with what she’s saying and trusting in the will of a god, he asks her and questions her why she is doing what she’s doing, and even calls her out for For bringing Ajax to him

[00:10:58] Nicolas: now. Yeah, for sure. I mean, Odysseus, right?

He’s such a malleable character, but in a very good way, right? He’s not necessarily malleable by Athena because Athena straight up tells him right that he should laugh at the suffering of his enemies, right? But Odysseus also has this kind of prudence, right, this prudence and wisdom that tells him that maybe that’s not the right way for him as a mortal to act, right?

Which is kind of what he tells, he tells, uh, the Atreides at the end, right? He says, well, you, you can’t violate these laws of the gods, right? To bury Ajax, right? For your own kind of treating your enemy badly, right? Your own, um, pleasure from, uh, laughing in the face of your enemy’s suffering, right? So he definitely has that kind of malleability in order to not be, not malleability though in the way we think, because I almost think of malleability as, you know, easily influenced by other people, but almost malleability and not being, uh, so hard bent to what is the, the idea of everyone around him, right?

He’s more flexible in where his ethical standards lie.

[00:12:10] Megan: He’s definitely not the type of character that would always, whenever he’s faced with a conflict, I think there’s not some set way that he would go about handling it. Um, and I think it’s maybe Malibu in that way too, where he, he does what he feels he needs to in each situation and he’s able to approach situations differently.

With certain characters, you, you would expect them to, to handle a situation one way. Most of the time, there’s, there’s certain parts of their character that you would You would expect them to react in a certain way, but Odysseus is a little more fluid, I guess. He’s able to do what the playwright or the author wants him to do, um.

a lot of the time. And he’s even, when you were talking, it was reminding me maybe he’s even sort of a bridge between the gods and the, the rest of the Achaeans, um, because he’s able to take what Athena’s telling him and reminding him, um, which is, you know, do the will of the gods because you are immortal.

And he’s going off and reminding the Atreida that and reminding the rest of the Achaeans, like, we need to. Very Ajax, because this is what the gods tell us we need to do, um, you know, Ajax was a good person, uh, according to the, the standard of like what a hero is, so he deserves this basic respect.

[00:13:42] Nicolas: Oh yeah, for sure, and I mean, just like, looking at those lines we just read in Greek, I mean, Odysseus, when we talked about him as kind of a, A bridge between the mortals and the gods, I mean, he, he addresses Athena and says Tidros, right?

Athena, right? He’s, he’s asking, why do you do this, Athena, right? That’s not exactly what you expect someone to ask a god, right? The gods know what they’re doing, right? The mortals, they don’t, they don’t know what they’re doing. He’s, he’s questioning Athena in a way that I’m not sure, Most of the Homeric heroes could really do, right?

I don’t know if it would, I mean, part of Ajax’s problem is that he, he treats Athena so harshly. It’s like a, it’s an act of hubris, right? When he, he degrades Athena’s status by ordering her. I think he even used an imperative in what he tells to Athena in the, in the Ajax. And it’s a very different position that Odysseus is in where he can actually question Athena.

He can say, no, let Ajax stay inside the hut, right? Yeah. So he’s definitely this kind of bridge character and it’s partially his relationship with Athena, which you can read endlessly into in the, uh, the Odyssey and also I guess the Ajax. So I think that’s definitely a unique characteristic of Odysseus in this case.

[00:14:59] Megan: Yeah, definitely. Even just the, the tea. In that sentence, like the, why the fact that, like you said, he’s able to question a God, why are you doing this? Um, and it’s, I feel like it’s even more powerful in the Greek because in the English, it’s, it’s something like we normally ask someone, Oh, why are you doing this?

Like, can you elaborate? But I feel like in the Greek, it’s just even more powerful. Um, and the fact that he’s talking to a God and questioning them. Cause like you said, if somebody else had done it, I don’t think Athena would be very, very kind in her response, or even. Maybe tell them why but that once again fits into the the role that Sophocles needed to fill here He needed someone to to question Athena.

Why because we he needed the audience to see why Athena was doing this.

[00:15:45] Nicolas: Sure Well, yeah, just also like the the lines right after that. I mean Odysseus addresses Athena with Kale right and Imperative right and he says Maidamos right like by no means don’t call him outside, right? That’s like very much. So like he’s he’s Quite literally ordering Athena what to do, which is, as you just said, and I think that’s just a really important part of this, he’s kind of transcending this regular mortal, um, heroic standard here.

[00:16:19] Megan: Yeah, I mean, nobody gets to order, order the gods around. So it’s, it’s really interesting that we’re seeing him using an imperative.

But going off of this conversation of why Odysseus, another topic that we brought back into our discussion was the moral code discussion, which we were starting to get at a little bit. Um, so previously we had talked about how Ajax follows the code of tus filos yu poen, tus ectros cacos poen, or do good things to your friends and bad things to your enemies.

But we hadn’t yet come up with a code for Odysseus. So since we finished reading the Ajax, we had a discussion in class trying to come up with a code that we felt fit Odysseus’s actions and reasoning. We originally came up with three different definitions in small groups, and then we debated them and tried combining them all together.

Um, so Nick, I think you were in the first group. Do you want to talk about what definition you guys came up with?

[00:17:15] Nicolas: Yeah, so a large part of what we were kind of saying is that humans, unlike the gods, are fallible, right? Humans, we don’t, we, as humans, don’t necessarily know who will be our friend tomorrow and who are, we know, we think we know at least who our friends are today, right?

But you know, your friends You might think they’re your friends, but for all you know, they’re all plotting against you. And maybe tomorrow, you’ll decide they’re no longer your friends, right? And maybe the person that is your greatest enemy right now, they are, in ten years time, your friend, right? So, we as humans can’t always know, Who to who to treat badly.

And if we kill all our enemies, right, it’s not necessarily and and leave them unburied, I think is almost more important here, right? We permanently damage them. We violate the laws of the gods in our hatred for them, right? It’s not necessarily, um, the just way to act, right? And I think that Odysseus, this was becomes very apparent in the Ajax when you look at the relationships between all the Greeks, right?

Because Ajax was, he defended the, the Atreidia. He defended the ships of the Argives, right? He, uh, the Achaean ships. He, he, he was one of their, like, greatest defenders of their, their lines, right? He, he, he, he. And yet by the end, here we see him kind of feeling wronged by not getting the arms of Achilles.

And suddenly he’s the greatest enemy of Odysseus and Menelaus and it’s it’s just it’s a very much so a switch and then we also see that with the sword of Hector right because Ajax dies on the sword of Hector, and it’s a gift that Hector gave him so it’s a he and Hector were almost friends and then he their enemies and they’re almost friends in a way they’re very friendly ish.

And then he dies on the sword of Hector while the enemy of. The, the Greeks, and with his only supporter, his wife, who is a, her, um, Techmessa, who’s a, a, a Trojan, right? So it’s, I think, a very interesting thing about how humans don’t always know what’s coming next, and for that reason, maybe we shouldn’t always necessarily treat our enemies poorly.

Poorly and those well, we should not necessarily not treat them poorly. I think it’s very much so like Divinely poorly like leave them unburied because at a certain point it’s it’s violating divine law Whereas the gods they they know they know who they they know who their enemies are and as such someone like Athena can Torment Ajax she can watch him suffer in his hut after he’s tied up and beating sheep And humiliated.

She can laugh at it, but Odysseus feels like it’s not right to laugh at anything. He even says, well, I could see myself in that situation, right? So that’s part of it, right? He sees this kind of constant changing part of humanity.

[00:20:03] Megan: Yeah, as you, as you were talking, I was starting to think maybe Odysseus is aware of this heroic maxim and.

It’s not that he follows it, but he acknowledges that one day, like you said, your friends may become your enemies. And so in that way, humans are fallible. They’re going to make mistakes. And you can’t judge someone’s entire, you can’t judge someone’s entire life up to their mistakes. You have to still acknowledge that they were once your, your friend, or they were, they once did good things for you.

And so maybe that’s his explanation for why Ajax needs to be buried, because he did once do good things for the Achaeans. Um, the second definition was a little more based off of the, the line of who deserves respect. Um, so I think the second definition was that all people deserve a basic form of respect.

We went on to elaborate that all people actually means a certain class of people. people, a certain type of people, um, and in certain contexts. So it’s not actually all people. Um, but in Ajax’s case, this includes him. He’s a hero who fought for the Achaeans. He did noble things. Therefore, he deserves basic form of respect.

The evidence for this was seen in line 79 of the Ajax, when Athena is telling Odysseus to laugh at Ajax’s misfortune, like you mentioned before, Nick. Um, another one of the pieces of evidence for this was in line 13, when Odysseus is saying that the right thing to do is to bury Ajax because he was a great warrior.

And then the third definition that everyone came up with was that we must follow the rules of the gods. So in the end, after discussing all of the different definitions we came up with, we decided that Odysseus moral code was something along the lines of, it is because humans are fallible that they need to be subject to the rule of the gods.

This definition kind of explains why Odysseus thought that Ajax needed to be respected on that basic level. Um, Because the role of the gods tells him that, you know, the dead should be treated in a certain manner. Just to wrap up, we started our conversation by thinking about the ways in which Odysseus is portrayed in the Ajax vs.

Odyssey. We realized that Odysseus is used to fulfill a particular role in the Ajax, which may be why we see some of the characteristics we do. We then went on to consider if the role of Odysseus in the Ajax could have been replaced by another character and came up with the answer that it could only have been him.

Finally, we concluded that Odysseus follows the moral code that it is because humans are fallible that they need to be subject to the role of the gods. Now I’ll just take a few minutes to talk about my experience of being teacher of the day in art class. Overall, I really enjoyed the experience. Um, I’ve actually been working as a supplemental instruction leader for the past two and a half years, and that really showed me how much I, I enjoy teaching.

I’ve never had to do anything quite like teaching a Greek class, though, um, so when I approached it, I wanted to first figure out what I wanted the focus of the session to be, and what I wanted everyone to take away from the session. Um, when I was thinking about this, I decided that I wanted to, um, approach examining Odysseus as a whole since we had just finished the Ajax, and we could compare him in that work versus him in the Odyssey.

After I decided on that, it wasn’t too difficult to come up with a plan on how I wanted to execute my idea. When it came to actually teaching the class, I realized that there are a lot of different things that you have to keep track of and keep in mind as a teacher. As a teacher, you have a different role than the students.

And even though there were times when I wanted to pitch in my thoughts, I had to instead figure out when I should comment and when I should let someone else comment. As a facilitator, you have to make sure that you are directing the conversation. That doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t be part of it, but you need to learn how to express your thoughts in a way that lets people focus on a specific part of the conversation, or even leads them to something that you want to discuss.

It was really cool getting to see how everyone formed their own opinions and then debated them with the rest of the class. Like we mentioned in this episode, there was some debate over whether Odysseus in the Ajax seemed like Odysseus at the end of the Odyssey or not. So it was really cool to get to facilitate that discussion and see what everyone had to say.

I think that’s probably what I’ll also remember the most, just how, how interesting it is to be able to direct a conversation and to let people go down rabbit holes in a way, um, to pick apart a work such as the Ajax, and Odysseus as a character. All right, that’s it for today. Once again, my name is Megan Hunter, and this is episode four of season four of Musings in Greek.

My co host Nick will be back as the host for episode five, so make sure to check that out. Thank you so much for listening, and don’t forget to submit a comment or review to help other listeners find our podcast. Thank you and goodbye.