Odyssey 2.157-322
This episode marks the first—and I believe, only—in-person appearance of Mentor, Odysseus’ appointed estate manager, in the whole Odyssey. But he appears twice in this passage, the second time as Athena’s disguise. She then appears as Mentor on multiple occasions in the course of the telling. Indeed, the line,
Μέντορι ϝεἰδομένη ἠμὲν δέμας ἠδὲ καὶ αὐδήν
Seeming to be Mentor, not just in build but in her voice as well
which appears in this passage before Athena’s speech to Telemachus, is also the last line of the whole poem. Of course in this guise Athena is to be a ‘mentor’ to Telemachus in the first part of the Odyssey. But it almost seems as if the performer hits on an idea here that gives him some flexibility and comic potential. For one thing, the announcement about the voice means he doesn’t have to keep doing Athena’s voice, however that was handled, but the voice of a regular sort of male. And as we shall see, this figure of Mentor allows the performer to engage in some ‘fourth-wall’ comedy. Mentor in this way becomes a very thin mask for the performer himself, who, as a matter of course, has to imitate a variety of people ‘not just in build, but in their voice as well.’
It seems to me to be pointed that the Odyssey ends by pointing to this fourth wall, or rather to the performer himself. The Iliad performer seems rather to aim for transparency, to get out of the way of the simile or the scene. That poem’s last line is an evocation of Hector Horse-Tamer at his funeral, to which we are made witnesses or auditors. Such a name-and-epithet evocation raises the question what Hector has become, now that he has been burnt to ashes and bones. The scene is the thing, not the artist. But throughout the Odyssey, the teller seems to get involved in the telling, trying on his guises with a sense of fun, and participatory fun at that. Let me suggest this as an hypothesis, at any rate, which you are invited to test or try on as we proceed.
Also in Greek:
‘Yesterday’s God’: Homer in English