Odysseus, Famed Storyteller, Experiences Speechlessness

Whispers of war float like the smoky tendrils of mournful spirits found over the forests of Hades, thirsting for blood; whispers, hoping for confirmation or denial, arrived first with a foreign ship sailing into the harbor. On a fine dusk that will never grow hazy in my memory, Helios hovering over my head as he did in this sweltering Ithacan summer, I went to fetch water with the other kitchen maids. In the courtyard paved with cobblestones worn down by the heels of great men, I glanced over the broad back of the ocean and recognized, to my surprise, a trim ship emblazoned with the triumphant red and gold of Sparta, home of legendary conquerors. 

We hurried back into the cavernous shade of the palace, where the cooks told us that agile King Odysseus would host the Spartans in his halls and set us to work preparing for our honorable guests. Odysseus’ most experienced servants, myself among them, could anticipate the revelry brought on by any group of sailors sent abroad, and we scrubbed down the oaken tables in the palace’s hall, butchered the finest cattle, kneaded soft bread, and set out pitchers and basins made from the finest gold to rinse the guests’ hands. Just after Helios had driven his chariot from the sky, bringing night to Achea, a group of men, said to travel this earth trading slaves, entered the hall. Agile King Odysseus greeted them as a man on his deathbed gathers in his arms his long-lost family, and his slaves escorted our guests, at least thirty hulking men in total, up the winding marble stairs. The men, caked in the dirt of a month’s journey, bathed and dressed then descended the steps, where they sat down around the oaken tables of the hall.

The hungry visitors held out their golden goblets, shouting for servants to bring mellow wine, and took up fine pieces of meat. As I stood along the inner wall, dressed in my smock the color of the poppies growing along the cliffs, the reverberations of conversation from the head of the table reached me. King Odysseus, a famed orator, and able Queen Penelope traded stories with their guests, but while Odysseus, a true diplomat, began the discussion by complimenting the maverick build of the Spartan ship and its well-trained crew, the conversation soon shifted to the goings-on of red-haired Menelaus, the well-armed king of Sparta. 

When asked of Menelaus, the captain raised an eyebrow and a glint, similar but less brilliant than the twinkle in the eye of mischieveous Athena, appeared in his eye. He lifted the corner of his mouth in a smirk. Menelaus, he said collusively, had experienced a curse from the gods, or a cruel twist of fate; his radiant wife, Helen, said to be the likeness of the Aphrodite herself, had eloped with a Trojan prince, leaving her heartbroken husband in a rage. The Trojans, in a blunder surely frowned upon by Zeus, our great and powerful patriarch, refused to return her. Hearing this news, able Queen Penelope, rolled her eyes and glanced fleetingly at agile King Odysseus. However, even as the traders around him continued to swig wine and fill the hall with shouts of laughter, the charisma which characterized Odysseus deflated, and he stared down at his plate. His cheeks, made ruddy by a lifetime of revelry and victory, turned pallid, and his lips pursed. I could no longer hear his recognizable laugh, booming and uplifting, as the oblivious guest recounted stories of Helen’s wild escapades. Able Queen Penelope, staring at Odysseus with widened eyes, swiftly turned to voluble guest and stopped his story mid-sentence. In her porcelain fingers, she clasped his calloused hand, laughed infectiously, and waved over an eager attendant to pour the guests more wine.

Three main choices: While working on this epic-style piece, I looked to embellish much of the original version and chose several adjectives with the goal of conveying the normalcy of preparing for guests. Specifically, I wanted to balance the grandiose descriptions with sentences like “Odysseus’ most experienced servants… could anticipate the revelry,” which implied that visits from nobles occured frequently, and by indicating this, I hoped to further emphasize the strangeness of Odysseus’ sudden silence. I also used visual descriptions of the visitors, such as “the men, caked in the dirt of a month’s journey, bathed” and “the hungry visitors” which exaggerated the importance of Odysseus and Penelope’s hospitality; by showing that their hosts’ amenities acted as a relief for their tired guests, I aimed to cast Odysseus and Penelope into a favorable light. Lastly, I included a brief and almost discursive description of the narrator’s dress, comparing it to “the poppies growing along the cliffs,” to mimic the Ancient Greek style of focusing on the narrator’s own position when telling a first-person account, but because the narrator’s experiences are barely emphasized in the main actions of this story, I included this information about their personal position as a bystander.