The Odyssey reflects an awareness of the many diverse peoples who inhabited the territories around mainland Greece. During the Bronze Age, in the fourth to second millennia BCE, the Minoans, who may have been proto-Greek speakers, inhabited Crete, while other proto-Greek speakers lived on the Cycladic islands of the Aegean, and others again on the mainland. These people left tantalizing glimpses of their cultures, through material remains, including wall paintings and pottery and ruined palaces and homes. In the sixteenth to twelfth centuries BCE, the so-called Mycenean Greeks established a powerful civilization on the Greek mainland, with grand palaces in locations such as Mycenae itself, but also in many other cities, including Pylos (home, in The Odyssey, of old King Nestor). The Myceneans had a system of writing known as Linear B, a syllabic script that was used by scribes to make administrative records on clay tablets. But when Mycenean civilization fell—perhaps due to invasion by non-Greek people or, more likely, because of civil warfare and possibly climate change—the great palaces were destroyed and, with them, the Linear B writing system was lost.
In the Greek “dark ages,” from the twelfth to the eighth centuries BCE, Greece was illiterate, and it was in this period that the oral poetic tradition that led into The Odyssey developed. The stories and myths that circulated in this period reflected memories and fantasies about the lost cultures of the Minoans and the Myceneans—although they were also drawn from neighboring cultures, such as the civilizations of the ancient Near East (including Egypt, Iran, the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor). The oral tradition provided Greek-speaking people with a way to remember and memorialize the cultures that had been lost, including the wealthy and hierarchical civilization of the Myceneans.
The legends of the Trojan War—tales of a great conflict, the fall of a mighty people, and the attempts of scattered survivors to regain or build new homes—are informed by folk memory of this fallen culture. The Iliad tells the story of a conflict between two elite warrior kings, Agamemnon of Mycenae and Achilles of Thessaly—perhaps echoing a real collapse of Mycenean civilization through civil war. In The Odyssey, the rich palaces of Nestor on Pylos and Menelaus in Sparta may reflect folk memories of Mycenean grandeur. Crete is another important point of reference in The Odyssey. When Odysseus in Ithaca tells false tales about himself, he often says that he comes from Crete—which may echo archaic Minoan or Mycenean myths, and reflect a cultural memory of the days when Crete was at the center of Greek-speaking civilization.
It is hard to say how much the Homeric poems depict the realities of actual historical events, such as “the” Trojan War. In the late nineteenth century, an amateur archaeologist named Heinrich Schliemann excavated a site in Turkey, Hissarlik, that he theorized was the original Troy. He made some extraordinary discoveries, including a cache of gold that he labeled “Priam’s treasure”; later, on a different excavation in Mycenae, he claimed to have uncovered the real tomb of Agamemnon. Modern archaeologists tend to be more skeptical, and to lament the way in which Schliemann—like other archaeologists of his time—rashly shoveled his way into the earth, destroying a vast amount of evidence in the process. Hissarlik is still identified as the site of Troy, but it is now generally believed that there were at least nine towns built in the area over the course of some three millennia, from early Bronze Age settlements to a Roman imperial city. Some of these cities were destroyed by natural means, such as earthquakes, and others were destroyed by fire and war; but we cannot identify any one of these multiple destructions with the single sacking of Troy described in Homer.
It was from the Phoenicians that, in the middle of the eighth century, Greece adapted their alphabetic system of writing. The Phoenicians, a trading, seafaring people who originated from the western part of the Fertile Crescent (in the area which now includes Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Israel, and Jordan), are portrayed in the poem as rich traders who are liable to trick, rob, and enslave the unwary. Odysseus tells his swineherd, Eumaeus, an elaborate false story that he came from Crete, stayed in Egypt for seven years getting rich, and then was tricked by a “cunning man” from Phoenicia into sailing with him; the Phoenician hoped to trade him as a slave, for a profit. Eumaeus replies with his own, presumably more truthful story, which again involves being tricked and trafficked into slavery—which explains how he has ended up in Odysseus’ own household.
These sinister, deceitful, profit-mongering Phoenicians are ostensibly contrasted with Odysseus himself. Similarly, the seafaring people of Taphos are described as “pirates,” who live by looting, robbing, and enslaving their neighbors—in contrast to the maritime wanderings of Odysseus, whose only goal is to reach his home. But the line is uncomfortably difficult to draw. Odysseus is depicted as a master of deceit, a compulsive liar; he is also, like a Phoenician or Taphian trader or pirate, hoping to return home with as large a pile of loot as he can. He enriches himself from the sacked city of Troy, and from various other places along the way, where the inhabitants either willingly equip him with presents (as in the case of Calypso, Circe, Aeolus, and the Phaeacians) or are robbed by Odysseus and his men. When telling the story of his various adventures to the Phaeacians, Odysseus begins with an episode in which he and his men stop by the city of the Cicones. He explains,
I sacked
the town and killed the men. We took their wives
and shared their riches equally among us. (9.41–43)
No justification is given for this act of plunder; it is presented simply as the kind of thing that Odysseus does, or perhaps the kind of thing that any Greek man would do, given the chance. A little later, Polyphemus the Cyclops asks Odysseus suspiciously if he is a “pirate,” like people who “risk their lives at sea to bring disaster / to other people.” Odysseus’ answer is notably equivocal. He declares that he and his men are part of the great expedition to Troy, and claims
We are proud to be the men of Agamemnon,
the son of Atreus, whose fame is greatest
under the sky, for sacking that vast city
and killing many people. (9.263–66)
Being a “hero,” heros—which in archaic Greek suggests a warrior, and does not imply virtue—is different from being a “pirate” in that it is a much more positive term, which a man can proudly apply to himself; nobody in Homer admits to being a pirate. Like pirates, warriors sack towns and kill the inhabitants; the main difference is scale. Odysseus goes on to infiltrate the enemy’s dwelling, maim him, and poach his beloved sheep, the wealth of his household—an act that is clearly analogous to the hero’s previous triumph over the Trojans.
The late eighth century was a period of increasing trade across the Mediterranean world—including trade of objects, stories, skills (like writing), ideas, and people. It was also a period in which Greek speakers had begun to create colonies. Colonization was a way to improve trading opportunities and increase the wealth of the originating city or settlement, as well as to house a growing population. Greek colonies developed in Libya, in southern France, along the Black Sea, and on the southern coast of Italy and Sicily—later known as Magna Graecia, “Big Greece.” The Odyssey shows an acute awareness of the processes of colonization, and Odysseus himself seems sometimes to think as much like a colonizer as a pirate. When scoping out the uninhabited island adjacent to that of the Cyclopes, he gives a description that sounds like an advertisement for prospective colonial inhabitants, as well as a critique, from the colonizer’s point of view, of the natives who have failed to exploit their country’s natural resources: