Examples Of Loyalty In The Odyssey

Loyalty: Something everyone desires Ancient Greeks were a wise lot who valued qualities and traits in humans quite a bit. The Odyssey, an epic written by Homer, is a text that exemplifies traits that the ancient Greeks value through various instances. Written during the ancient Greek time period, the story follows the protagonist, Odysseus, on his journey home, to his kingdom Ithaca, after the Trojan War has ended. He encounters many obstacles, monsters, and temptations on the voyage home but faces them with his head held high. He finally returns back to Ithaca after a long 20 years and reunites with his wife. During those 20 years though, many desirable traits have been shown in Odysseus as well as in other people and symbols. One trait that

Being reward for loyalty, or being punished for disloyalty has shown up in the epic specifically through examples of Odysseus’s men and Penelope. Odysseus had obtained a bag of fair wind from the wind god Aeolus, which was supposed to help them get home, but “while Odysseus is sleeping, the men open the bag thinking it contains gold and silver. The bad winds thus escape and blow the ships [offcourse]” (Homer 386). The gods had originally given a gift to Odysseus and his men for having stayed loyal to their country Ithaca and wanting to return their to see their loved ones. However, Odysseus’s men did not know what the gift was, even though Odysseus told them not to worry about it. Unfortunately, since the men had a brief slip in their loyalty to Odysseus, they

When Odysseus had finally returned to Ithaca, Penelope needed to test whether he was really who he claimed to be so that her 20 years of loyalty would not go to waste. She tests Odysseus by asking her servant to “Place [the bed] outside the bedchamber [her] lord / built with he own hands” (Homer 23.28-29). Odysseus instantly gets angry at this statement because no one could someone move their bed (it was made out of an olive tree). It simply was not possible as the olive tree was rooted in the ground for years and had grown its roots deep into the ground making it and unmovable giant. The fact that the tree is deeply rooted shows how Homer intends the olive tree to symbolize the unshakeable the loyalty between Odysseus and Penelope. The bed itself was their marriage bed, which already symbolizes loyalty, but now it is also cemented in the floor further strengthening their bond. Odysseus says, “An old trunk of olive grew like a pillar on the building plot / and I laid out our bedroom round the tree” (Homer 23.41-42). Odysseus had built their whole room around this single tree. To build a whole room with his own hands for their marriage shows the amount of dedication Odysseus has for Penelope. For Odysseus and Penelope, this room therefore must be very special since so much hard work and effort