A Guide to the Odyssey: A Commentary on the English Translation of Robert Fitzgerald (58 page)

Kleitos: beautiful mortal in the family of Theoklýmenos, son of Mantios, grandson of Melampous, carried off by Dawn to live among the gods.

Klymênê: daughter of Minyas and Euryalê, mother of Íphiklos; her shade appears to Odysseus.

Klytaimnéstra: daughter of Tyndáreus and Lêda, sister of Helen, Kastor, and Polydeukês, wife of Agamémnon, mother of Iphianassa and Orestês, paramour of Aigísthos; she is complicit in the murder of Agamémnon and the actual slayer of Kassandra. She is slain by her son, Orestês. (In later myth, she has other daughters besides Iphianassa/Iphigenia.)

Klytóneus: Phaiákian prince, one of the sons of Alkínoös and Arêtê, winner of the footrace.

Knossos: the most important of the ninety towns found on Krete, about two and a half miles inland from the island’s north coast, site of palace of King Minos. Indeed, it was the center of Minoan culture.

Kreon: ruler in Thebes after the departure of Oidipous, father of Megarê.

Krete: modern Crete, by far the largest of the Greek islands, it had been home to the lavish and powerful Minoan culture in the second millennium
B.C.E
. (see also under Knossos, above). In the Homeric poems, it is still rich and populous, renowned for its ninety cities and mingling of tongues.

Krêtheus: son of Aiolos, husband of Tyro, father of Aison, Pherês, and Amythaón.

Kronos: pre-Olympian god, his role was usurped by his son, Zeus; hence Zeus’ patronymics Kronidês and Kroníon.

Ktêsios: ruler of the island of Syriê, son of Orménos, father of Eumaios.

Ktésippos: wealthy Samian suitor of Penélopê, he throws a cow’s foot at the disguised Odysseus’ head; killed by the cowherd.

Ktimenê: youngest daughter of Antikleía and Laërtês, sister of Odysseus, playmate of Eumaios.

Kydonians: people inhabiting the western part of Krete. Their city Kydonia is today called Canea.

Kyklopês: man-eating giants dwelling in a land far to the west; by occupying Hypereia they forced the Phaiákians to migrate.

Kyllênê: mountain in Arkadia; birthplace of Hermês and thus an important site of his cult.

Kypros: the eastern Mediterranean island Cyprus, birthplace and favorite haunt of Aphroditê. Rich in copper, in ancient times it was a critical source of the mineral, which takes its name from the island.

Kythera: island off the south coast of the Peloponnese, southwest of Cape Malea, home to the important cult of Aphroditê Ourania (Celestial Aphroditê). In some traditions, Kythera rather than Kypros is claimed to be the goddess’ birthplace.

Kythereia: epithet of Aphroditê, often used as a name for the goddess. It was assumed already in ancient times to have been derived from Kythera, q.v., but that is not certain.

Laërtês: son of Arkeísios, husband of Antikleía, father of Odysseus and Ktimenê. He had already turned over control of all affairs to Odysseus and retired to the country before the latter was called away to the Trojan War.

Laistrygonês: man-eating giants who destroyed all the ships of Odysseus’ fleet—with the exception of Odysseus’ own—and ate the crew.

Lakedaimon: Sparta and its territory, ruled in the Homeric poems by Meneláos.

Lamos: earlier king of the Laistrygonês, later said to be a son of Poseidon.

Lampetía: nymph, daughter of Hêlios and Neaira, with her sister Phaëthousa she guarded her father’s flocks and reported to him their slaughter at the hands of Odysseus’ men.

Laódamas: Phaiákian prince, favorite son of Alkínoös, winner of the boxing match.

Lêda: wife of Tyndáreus, mother of Kastor, Polydeukês, Klytaimnéstra, and Helen (the last a child of Zeus); her shade appeared to Odysseus (XI.343).

Lemnos: Aegean island with associations with the god Hephaistos, who had a cult there.

Leódês: one of Penélopê’s less boorish suitors and their soothsayer, son of Oinops, he was the first to try to string Odysseus’ bow and the first to fail.

Leókritos: one of Penélopê’s suitors, son of Euênor, his is the final speech in the Ithakan assembly in
Book II
; he dies by Telémakhos’ spear.

Lesbos: relatively large Aegean island not far from the coast of Asia Minor.
The Iliad
reports that it had belonged to Priam’s kingdom before Akhilleus took it. It was a natural staging point for the Greeks on their way back from Troy: in
The Odyssey
we hear that Nestor, Meneláos, and Diomêdês stopped there before setting out across the open sea for home. On an earlier occasion, Odysseus bested Lesbos’ king, Philoméleidês, at wrestling.

Lêto: lesser goddess, mother of Artemis and Apollo, whom she bore to Zeus on the island of Delos after long wandering; she was raped by the giant Títyos, for which he suffers unceasing torment in Hades.

Leukothea: “the bright goddess,” a sea nymph, the divine avatar of Ino (q.v.); it is she who gives her magic scarf to Odysseus, adrift in the sea after a shipwreck, to ensure him safe landfall.

Lotos Eaters: peaceful people whose land Odysseus reached after being driven by a storm ten days past Kythera. Their placidity seems to derive from the properties of the herb they consume, and those of Odysseus’ companions who partook of it lost their will to return home.

Maira: in Homer only a name—her shade appears to Odysseus—but from other sources we hear that she was a companion of Artemis, who shot her when she bore Lokros to Zeus.

Malea: Cape Malea, a promontory which forms the southeast tip of the Peloponnese; its treacherous winds posed a problem to sailors attempting to round it.

Mantios: grandfather of Theoklýmenos’ forebears, son of the seer Melampous, father of Polypheidês and Kleitos.

Marathon: village in Attica on Athena’s itinerary from Skhería to Athens. In 490
B.C.E
. it was the site of a famous battle, in which the Athenian general Miltiades, commanding ca. 9,000 Athenians and ca. 1,000 Plataians, turned back a much larger army of Persians.

Maron: son of Euanthês, priest of Apollo at Ismaros in the land of the Kikonês; he gave Odysseus the potent wine with which the hero drugs Polyphêmos.

Mastor: father of Halithérsês, q.v.

Medôn: herald or crier in Ithaka; spared in the general slaughter of the suitors, of whose crimes he was innocent.

Megapénthês: illegitimate son of Meneláos (the mother was not Helen but a slave), he married the daughter of the Spartan Alektor in a double wedding ceremony which took place on the day Telémakhos arrived in Sparta. The other couple in the ceremony was his (legitimate) half-sister, Hermionê, and Neoptólemos.

Megarê: daughter of Kreon, wife of Heraklês; her shade appears to Odysseus.

Melampous: Pylian lord who after many travails won Neleus’ daughter, Pêro, to be his brother Bias’ bride (see XV.282–300 for the story). He was the father of Antíphatês and Mantios, and great-grandfather of Theoklýmenos.

Melánthios: Ithakan goatherd and hanger-on of the suitors, son of Dólios, q.v., and brother of Melántho. Impudent to Odysseus upon meeting him, in disguise, approaching his own home, and on the verge of helping the besieged suitors regain their arms, he is caught by Eumaios and Philoítios, trussed up, and ultimately given an ignominious death.

Melántho: most outspoken of the treacherous maidservants in Odysseus’ home and sister of Melánthios, she is sleeping with the suitor Eurýmakhos; she is hanged along with the other maidservants by Telémakhos.

Memnon: well known from the epic cycle (especially the
Aithiopis
, which follows
The Iliad
and tells of subsequent battles for Troy), he was the king of the Aithiopians, the son of Dawn (Eos) and Tithonos, and nephew of Priam; after the death of Hektor and then of the Amazon Penthesileia (the latter also in the
Aithiopis
), he was the last best hope of Troy. He killed Nestor’s son Antílokhos but was himself killed by Akhilleus, who like Memnon was the son of a goddess and bore arms crafted by Hephaistos. Zeus granted Memnon immortality after death.

Meneláos: son of Atreus, brother of Agamémnon, king of Sparta, husband of Helen, whose abduction by the Trojan prince Paris (also called Alexander) sparked the Trojan War. With Agamémnon, he convinced Odysseus to join the Greek expeditionary force (see XXIV. 130–35).

Mentes: Taphian captain, son of Ankhíalos; in his guise Athena first appears to Telémakhos.

Mentor: Ithakan, son of Álkimos, contemporary of Odysseus; it is to him that Odysseus entrusted his home and family when he went to Troy, and he remains a staunch ally. Athena disguises herself as Mentor more than once.

Mesaúlios: assistant of Eumaios, bought from Taphian slavers by the swineherd on his own out of his own earnings.

Messenians: residents of Messênê, which does not solve the problem. Debate still rages about the exact location or locations Homer meant, since the confusion of multiple Messênês is augmented by the multiple Ortílokhos’ and Phêrais involved in any argument. It is probably simplest to think of Messênê as a region
in the southwestern or south central part of the Peloponnese. Even if this were some day proved to be wrong, doing so would hardly have impeded appreciation of
The Odyssey
.

Minos: king of Krete, brother of Rhadamanthos, husband of Pasiphaae, father of Ariadnê and Deukálion, and in later accounts other children, i.e., Phaidra; also later is the story that he had Pasiphaae’s offspring, the minotaur, enclosed in the labyrinth. The Homeric Minos is particularly dear to Zeus: after his death he became a judge in Hades and he is received by Zeus every ninth year in private council. (On a possible Egyptian prehistory for Minos, his brother, and the Minotaur, see Bernai,
Black Athena
2.171–86.)

Minyai: a legendary Greek people at Orkhómenos, ruled by Amphion.

Moulios: soldier from Doulíkhion and herald of Amphínomos.

Muse: daughter(s) of Zeus and Mnemosynê (memory), at an early but not certain point conceived of as nine in number; the Muse is or the Muses are source and guarantor of the memories and stories sung by poets (see notes on I.1 and XXIV.63, above).

Mykênai: Mycenae, one of the oldest cities in the district belonging to Argos, in
The Odyssey
sometimes used interchangeably with Argos. It was the center of the all-important Mycenaean culture; archeology (with Schliemann at Mycenae from 1874) and documentary evidence now suggests a chronology of Mycenaean culture developing from perhaps as early as the late eighteenth center
B.C.E
.—dating remains controversial—to a high point (ca. 1470–1230
B.C.E.)
only to suffer a swift collapse (by ca. 1150
B.C.E.)
.

Mykênê: daughter of Inakhos, she is clearly the eponymous heroine of Mykênai, but we have information neither on her connection to that city nor on the story of her “coronet” (II.128).

Myrmidons: name of a people from Thessaly, the men constitute the vassals of Pêleus and the troops of his son, Akhilleus. In Homer, their home was described as “Hellas and Phthia” (on which, see under Hellas, above). Slightly later tradition has the Myrmidons arise from ants [Greek
myrmêkes
] when Zeus responded to the prayers of Aíakos (q.v.) for human companions, Aíakos having been left alone on the island Aigina, named after his mother, whom Zeus had seduced and abandoned there.

Naiadês: water nymphs.

Neaira: nymph who bore Phaëthousa and Lamperia to Hêlios.

Nausikaa: Phaiákian princess, daughter of Alkínoös and Arêtê. At Athena’s prompting she takes her companions to the shore to wash her linens, arriving there just in time to aid the shipwrecked Odysseus. Like her ancestor Nausithoös, she has a name beginning with an element which means “ship,” appropriate for the Phaiákians, who were renowned for their sailing.

Nausíthoös: king of Phaiákia, father of Rhêxênor and Alkínoös, grandfather of Arêtê; under his leadership, the Phaiákians migrated from Hypereia to Skhería.

Neion: mountain on Ithaka mentioned only by Homer; it remains uncertain to what actual topographic feature of Ithaka it refers. The same is also true of an Ithakan mountain called Nêriton in the Greek behind IX.25 and XIII.440; rather than prolonging this double confusion, Fitzgerald has called both mountains “Neion” in his translation. (In the catalog of ships in
The Iliad
, Nêriton is an island or city near Ithaka [II.632]; since Nérikos, q.v., is on Leukas, this Nêriton is often taken to be on or the same as Leukas.)

Neleus: son of Poseidon and Tyro, brother of Pelias, he lived at Pylos and, with Khloris, his wife, he had many children, among who were Nestor and Pêro.

Neoptólemos: son of Akhilleus and Deidamia, bridegroom of Hermionê, q.v. (later tradition knows him as Pyrrhos/Pyrrhus as well).