1 00:00:04,083 --> 00:00:09,096 So, meanwhile. While Odysseus is making his connections 2 00:00:09,096 --> 00:00:13,716 with Eumaeus Telemachus is off in the farm [inaudible]. 3 00:00:13,716 --> 00:00:17,226 And Athena says, well gosh, it's time to get going, Telemachus. 4 00:00:17,226 --> 00:00:20,801 Time to move to the next stage. She appears to him in a dream. 5 00:00:20,801 --> 00:00:25,241 This appearance is a kind of standard feature of how epic poetry works. 6 00:00:25,241 --> 00:00:30,710 Homer understands that dreams come in the form of usually the person is fast asleep 7 00:00:30,710 --> 00:00:35,608 in the middle of the night a god or goddess will take a particular form hover 8 00:00:35,608 --> 00:00:38,994 over the person's head, and say, hey you, why are you asleep? 9 00:00:38,994 --> 00:00:41,988 You should be nervous. You got all this stuff to worry about. 10 00:00:41,988 --> 00:00:45,842 And then tells the person that they should wake up, because of all the stuff they had 11 00:00:45,842 --> 00:00:48,902 to worry about, close quote. Then the person who has the dream. 12 00:00:48,902 --> 00:00:51,925 Starts to wake up and says, oh my gosh. Why am I sleeping? 13 00:00:51,925 --> 00:00:54,835 I need to start worrying about stuff, and that's the end. 14 00:00:54,835 --> 00:00:59,427 Dreams appear as a hovering presence over the top of a person's head giving them 15 00:00:59,427 --> 00:01:03,860 some kind of news that's supposed to shake their world and rock their world. 16 00:01:03,860 --> 00:01:08,149 This is a turning point for Telemachus. Now Athena, he's back, in her good graces, 17 00:01:08,149 --> 00:01:10,555 and it's time to get off to the next stage. 18 00:01:10,555 --> 00:01:16,518 The movement is quick, away from Menelaus' palace back through Pylos, and over to 19 00:01:16,518 --> 00:01:19,326 Ithaca. On the way tough he picks up this person, 20 00:01:19,326 --> 00:01:22,571 Theoclymenus. This is a person who has an interesting 21 00:01:22,571 --> 00:01:25,785 story, He is because of a blood guilt on the lamb. 22 00:01:25,785 --> 00:01:31,555 He is running away from his hometown and is trying to find a place to go and he 23 00:01:31,555 --> 00:01:35,788 wants passage to Ithaca. So Telemachus says sure, okay, I'll take 24 00:01:35,788 --> 00:01:38,776 you on. And some of you out there are saying, wait 25 00:01:38,776 --> 00:01:42,766 a minute isn't this guy a murderer? How can you just take on this guy and 26 00:01:42,766 --> 00:01:46,035 bring him to your own place? Well, in the Homeric times the idea of 27 00:01:46,035 --> 00:01:50,373 having a blood guilt because you killed someone and therefore, being in exile 28 00:01:50,373 --> 00:01:55,037 didn't necessarily mean that you were some kind of crazed murderer and there's no way 29 00:01:55,037 --> 00:01:58,048 that we'd talk to you. Oftentimes, what it was, the way it was 30 00:01:58,048 --> 00:02:02,376 processed through Homer's aristocratic environment was, well, this person got 31 00:02:02,376 --> 00:02:06,408 into a bad argument with some other aristocratic person and they came to a 32 00:02:06,408 --> 00:02:10,430 kind of duel type situation and the one aristocrat had to kill the other 33 00:02:10,430 --> 00:02:13,460 aristrocrat. But that's tough luck for both of them. 34 00:02:13,460 --> 00:02:18,444 Surely the dead one and also for the other guy who is now banished from his city. 35 00:02:18,444 --> 00:02:23,317 So there's a way in which the, the person escaping the blood guilt is someone that 36 00:02:23,317 --> 00:02:28,032 is a sympathetic, a slightly sympathetic character who needs some extra help. 37 00:02:28,049 --> 00:02:32,023 Theoclymenus is this particular one so Telemachus takes him on. 38 00:02:32,023 --> 00:02:34,561 His name is interesting. Theoclymenus. 39 00:02:34,561 --> 00:02:40,300 Harkings back to two Greek words meaning someone who listens to, or someone who 40 00:02:40,300 --> 00:02:44,716 hears and then Theo, a God. Theoclymenus has a special close 41 00:02:44,716 --> 00:02:48,236 relationship with the gods. He is capable of reading signs. 42 00:02:48,236 --> 00:02:51,191 He's a stranger who is brought into the mix. 43 00:02:51,191 --> 00:02:55,402 You know, you know, Odysseus' home city of Ithaca, who's an exceptional sign reader. 44 00:02:55,402 --> 00:03:00,585 This is going to be something that becomes an important theme for us as these books 45 00:03:00,585 --> 00:03:03,424 unfold. We're going to watch signs galore as they 46 00:03:03,424 --> 00:03:07,288 unfold in these, coming books. Yes, lots of them are going to be signs 47 00:03:07,288 --> 00:03:10,549 from the gods. But they're also going to be special human 48 00:03:10,549 --> 00:03:15,032 to human kinds of communications and secret codes that especially Odysseus and 49 00:03:15,032 --> 00:03:19,450 Penelope engage in. The idea of a stranger from the outside 50 00:03:19,450 --> 00:03:22,408 world in Theoclymenus is also mirrored in Odysseus. 51 00:03:22,408 --> 00:03:24,474 He too is a stranger from the outside world. 52 00:03:24,474 --> 00:03:29,226 And remember what we already know about strangers, as we heard in our 53 00:03:29,226 --> 00:03:32,991 demonstrations of Xenia. We hear this in Nausicaa's mouth Hey 54 00:03:32,991 --> 00:03:37,553 careful strangers might come from Zeus. There's a sense of slight spookiness, 55 00:03:37,553 --> 00:03:41,954 interest, interest about a stranger, a little bit of mystical quality. 56 00:03:41,954 --> 00:03:44,972 They could have a kind of divine inflection to them. 57 00:03:44,972 --> 00:03:50,002 Well that's surely, Odysseus is constantly being mistaken for a god, isn't he? 58 00:03:50,002 --> 00:03:53,037 And Theoclymenus has this special kind of god connection.. 59 00:03:53,037 --> 00:03:57,492 Now, we're going back to Eumaeus. The hut there as Odysseus and he are 60 00:03:57,492 --> 00:04:02,013 making a connection. Eumaeus then gets a chance to tell his 61 00:04:02,013 --> 00:04:05,014 tale. It's a connection that he gets to make 62 00:04:05,014 --> 00:04:08,014 with Odysseus. Odysseus gets to listen and be a 63 00:04:08,014 --> 00:04:12,417 sympathetic audience to Eumaeus. A nice way for him to make a further bond 64 00:04:12,417 --> 00:04:17,087 with this, with this man. And he learns more things about the lay of 65 00:04:17,087 --> 00:04:22,022 the land around Odysseus' spot. All of this intelligence Odysseus is 66 00:04:22,022 --> 00:04:27,026 gathering in, in a, in a very subtle way. Now as the back and forth carries forward 67 00:04:27,026 --> 00:04:32,029 Odysseus is learning the things he needs to know, getting prepared the sign readers 68 00:04:32,029 --> 00:04:35,049 are coming in. Telemachus is on his way back, we're on 69 00:04:35,049 --> 00:04:40,040 our way to what's gonna happen, crucial moment that's going to happen in the book. 70 00:04:40,040 --> 00:04:45,006 Six, Sixteen Odysseus is going to start a series of reading mediums that's going to 71 00:04:45,006 --> 00:04:48,045 bring him back to those inner chambers inside his house.