Here we consider feminine authorship in the Odyssey directly, as a question, refracted through the mythic figures in the Epic.

In Behind the Sunset Veil, a novel about time travelers jumping back to 323 B.C. to rescue Aristotle and bring him forward to serve as a dinner table conversation companion for the architect of a generation ship, I had to face this question. At this time, seeing how important literate female companions were to men married to doe-eyed house wives, to the point of Aristotle marrying one, I surmised that The Odyssey had been begun by Homer and completed by a daughter. That was before I had listened to these poetic epics [Theogony, Works and Days, Shield of Herakles, Iliad, Beowulf, Odyssey, Roland, Orestes, Oedipus, Prometheus] over a hundred times, and realized, that although I had shed much modern thought, I was still viewing poems written to be heard, and composed by homeless men. Like David, Patrick, Hesiod, Theognis, Alceus, Orion of Optima, Solon and Tyrteus, Homer seems to have been wandering when he composed. Since he survived to be published, home must have meant a great deal to him. Home is something, like many things, that you value most when you lose it, as I did in 2000, 2002, 2010 and 2018, now, finally inured to the homeless state.

In 2012, I wrote the profile of a fictional consort [who must have existed under many unknown names]; a literate woman, a skilled musician, able to memorize verse, discuss its merits, recite it—especially, I should think the female dialogue and chorus—discuss prose, and advise her patrons, all powerful men, on what must be going through the pretty, alien heads of their wives and daughters, living in that other wing of the house. Such a woman surely had input in the works of her patrons, such as Aristotle, who wrote no verse but wrote the On Poetics.

Here I should state that one of the candidates for the posthumous Homer of The Odyssey, is the daughter of Theophrastus, the student of Aristotle, who wrote his work, just as Arrian wrote Epictetus as his student. She and another woman taught philosophy in Sicily in the 200s B.C. as Greek birthrates sank.

However, the mind of the philosopher usually makes for verse and prose that are not appealing. The Odyssey was performance art about the survival of bloodlines, about a meek woman, sought for her absent King and husband’s patrimony by weak men, a woman who had but one child, a son, who, any husband she took would kill or banish. There is very little power in Penelope, and not much vaginal authority. The old house maid owns more grit. Penelope hides in the shadow of departed Odysseus; and, when a man like him [Odysseus pretending to be a traveler who met himself to test Penelope to make sure she would not team up with a suitor and kill him] she expressed meek desire for this man and his protection. If he would have brought news of Odysseus death, Penelope might have clutched his knees as a supplicant and asked him to deliver her and her son from peril. An Iron Age Woman being circled by predatory men, does not want a hot young stud, she wants a man of an iron mind in full command of cold steel. Penelope is not the place to look for a female author, but rather for the influence of female consorts, performers—even song-stitching slave girls—the wives of barons and lords that the poet performed for, and perhaps the Pythia or some other female oracle. Poets were singing to men, but for Heaven, where it was said but a slim few entered.

Reading the Odyssey

While reading The Odyssey and The Iliad as a post-Christian, Christian or Neo-Pagan man [which seem to be my three primary metaphysical reader demographics], I suggest the following guide to the feminine, that is, to the extent that we are not seeing feminized eunuchs, luxury-emasculated artists and plain old sissies like those of Late Antiquity.

Zeus, is more often referred to as God, The Almighty, Time-holder and Father-of-gods-and-men, than as Thunder-chief. He is highly congruent with the God of the Old and New Testament, and is written about in that same language. Generally, the angels of the Bible make the form of named entities in Greek Epic: Iris, Hermes, The Bad Dream of Agamemnon, and Eagles.

Athena, or Thought-lady, shares the powers of her Father like no other, cloaked in storm, knows his will without being told, and may be reckoned as the Holy Ghost, a portion of the Trinity, with Apollo most congruent with The Son. Apollo is also a manifestation of The Word.

Circe and Calypso are elder yet minor powers that, in Christian terms, are represented by those latent powers of creation that God summons in Genesis to generate according to his will. They are very much creatures of The Waters of The Deep that God’s spirit prowled over in the beginning. These goddess figures, represent to this writer, the deep desire of Odysseus to realign himself with his hunter ancestors, to give off the burden of command and go native with some savage girl, like Fletcher Christian. But, there was too much of Captain Bligh in Odysseus, who was the craftiest pirate of Remote Antiquity. His journey by sea was a migration epic like, The Aeneid, The Argonautica and Beowulf, not unlike the reverse migration taken on by Gilgamesh in the wake of his loss of his only war brother, Enkidu.

That loss, women have heard much of, when they pour wine or beer for their men returned from adventures, from cattle drives to war. There is a case for a female voice in The Wanderings. The female authority represented by the goddess and the nymph are those gotten by aiding a man and being his comfort, not the modern twist of ideal that comes from the mothering of fatherless sons.

A modern woman in the plight of Penelope would do what they did when their husbands failed to return on time from war [Japanese and American service wives] get their husband declared dead and remarry. But an iron age queen who would be sentencing her son to death is evil on that count, and Penelope comes off as a standard good woman easily written by a country music singer/song writer, who is a man.

The only real demonstration of feminine authority in ancient Greek myth is that of Agamemnon’s savage slut wife. All the rest come off as meek to reasonably reserved, including Helen. If there is a master composer who was a woman among the authors of The Odyssey, I would place her not in Sicily, but in Alexandria under the Ptolemy Kings, perhaps a consort to Theocritis or Apollonius, both of whom wrote of Heracles and Jason in their epics and in some short works.

I do contend that numerous female influences rose during the probably thousand years that hundreds of poets composed and performed The Odyssey. There were probably a handful of female recitals of portions at private symposiums that influenced men of verse. But to me, as a writer, with an ego, who was a fighter, just as the ancient poets were—for they were not permitted to be free men if they did not box and wrestle and bear arms—I imagine writing an adventure story about the President and the First Lady after his attempted assassination, and know, that I would be far more concerned with how she regarded the work, than him, for a woman who attains the top rank in society, has an ear for the word equal to her husband’s use of it to command his subjects. So, I ponder that Homer was probably mighty concerned with how the wife of the Kings of Lydia, Thessaly, Thrace or Macedon regarded his portrayal of Penelope, just as the composer of Beowulf made certain to depict the Queen of Hereot. Even Teraldus the Norman depicted the princess and daughter of Marsille the Moorish King, in a sympathetic light, an appealing woman on a perilous perch, who has nothing more to effect her own destiny then the selection of the man that will care for her.