Examples Of Xenia In The Odyssey

During this course we have read and studied many stories and myths within mythology, many of which have shared similar tones, themes, and beliefs within them. One of the more popular elements found within these myths was the idea of xenia or the laws of hospitality. These laws were followed by all, regardless of status or class within society, within this period of civilization and were said to be created and enforced by the gods. The basic set of rules of hospitality were said to be that people were expected to open up their homes to visitors without question or hesitation, that they would feed them, bath them, give them gifts, allow them to stay the night, and give them anything they would need for the remainder of their journey while also

On Odysseus’ journey home he is consistently offered places to stay and given everything he needs without question by people that he has just met. The actions by these people are good examples of how to properly follow the rules of hospitality. While Odysseus has good experiences with hospitality on his journey home, his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus are not having the same positive experiences. They are instead being forced to offer hospitality to a group of suitors who are attempting to sway Penelope into marrying one of them. Although Penelope and Telemachus are following the rules of hospitality by offering the suitors food and a place to stay the suitors have taken it too far and are taking advantage of the situation by doing things such as butchering and eating the animals owned by the homeowners without asking permission first. Furthermore, even though Telemachus and Penelope are shown to be upset with the situation they are in, with Telemachus even breaking down into tears asking the suitors to leave, there is nothing they can do out of fear of the wrath of the gods for not following the rules of hospitality, so they continue to allow the suitors to stay. This example shows that people of this time did not actually want to follow these rules and were only doing it out of fear and not out of kindness like it is implied in parts of the odyssey during

In this myth Zeus goes down to Earth disguised as an old man and visits the temple Lycaeon. When Zeus enters the temple and makes his presence known the people in the temple start to pray but Lycaeon instead questions whether the old man is Zeus at all and planned to test him to find out the truth. Lycaeon’s first plan was to attack Zeus in his sleep and attempt to kill him, but he instead decided to kill and cook a hostage that was supposed to be under his protection and then feed him to Zeus. Zeus would see through this attempt to trick him, and he would then destroy the temple with his lightning. Lycaeon would then flee the temple into the woods where Zeus would punish him and turn him into a werewolf. The actions taken by Lycaeon in this myth are examples of not following the rules of xenia because he did not open his home up to Zeus while he was in disguise, made plans to kill him during the night and eventually killed and butchered a hostage to feed him to Zeus as a part of his test. Instead of testing whether the old man really was Zeus, Lycaeon could have avoided punishment by following the rules of hospitality that had been written by the gods. The story of what happened to Lycaeon could have then spread throughout the area and subsequentially through history inspiring fear of the god’s punishment if the rules of xenia were not followed by