Greek Customs In The Odyssey

Thousands of peoples of thousands of cultures exist today. Each existing culture possesses customs valuable to its people. One method of discovering the importance of certain customs to cultures is to examine their literature. For example, Homer conveys many significant Greek customs throughout the novel, The Odyssey. In his novel, he explains the importance of hospitality to the Greeks through the actions of Circe, the goddess, when she takes care of Odysseus’s men, and Maron when he provides a gift of gratitude to Odysseus. A need for order and justification also exemplifies another important custom of the Greeks within The Odyssey .Author Homer utilizes examples of Odysseus’s murdering of the suitors who take over his home and Poseidon’s

Looking at Circe’s hospitality, she aids Odysseus’s men when they stumble upon her house in the land of Aeaea. In her home, she pampers the men with furniture and nourishment. Although Circe possesses evil intentions and turns the men into pigs, she still reflects important Greek customs when she provides complete strangers with a roof to stay under and nourishment to consume (Homer 128). Not only does Circe provide great hospitality to Odysseus’s men, she also offers great hospitality to Odysseus. After Odysseus convinces the goddess to turn the pigs back into humans, Circe bathes, dresses, and houses Odysseus for an entire year and gifts him when he exits (Homer 129-131). Circe assists the men out of the goodness of her heart, and Homer assures the Greek readers that they should ack with the same kindness. Another example that supports Homer’s implication of the importance of hospitality of Greeks occurs when Maron Euanthiades, the priest of Apollo who Odysseus saves, gifts Odysseus extravagantly. “I had glorious gifts from him: have gave me seven talents’ weight of worked gold, he gave me a mixing-bowl of solid silver, but besides that, he gave me great jars of wine, a whole dozen of them, delicious wine, not a drop of water in it, a divine drink” (Homer 110)! Maron envelops excellent hospitality when he provides urbane gifts to the man who saves him.

Throughout the text, the idea persists that when humans obey the orders of gods, they have success and receive praise and when humans disobey the orders of gods, they struggle and receive punishment. For instance, men of Odysseus’s troops are killed because of disobeying the sun god, Hyperion. The narrator explains that Odysseus attempts to protect his men, but they die of their own madness, which in this case would be eating the cattle of the Hyperion sun god when no permission exists to do so. From witnessing the result of disobeying a god, Homer implies to readers that possessing respect for the gods proves vital and if a mortal disobeys a god a severe punishment persists. Another example that Homer utilizes in his novel to prove the importance of piety to the Greeks is Aeolus, a friend of the gods and the manager of the winds, who offers to assist Odysseus and his men travel home. “When at last I spoke of leaving, and asked him for help on our way, he was glad to consent, and did everything he could. He gave me the skin of a nine-year ox, which he flayed for us and made into a bag; and in this he bottled up the blustering winds”(Homer 120). Odysseus knows that neither he nor the crew should open the bag.The crew of Odysseus opens it regardless, and Aeolus discovers that the crew floats back