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Symbolae Osloenses:
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Happiness in Homer
a
Øivind Andersen
a
Department of Philosophy Classics, and History of
Art and Ideas, University of Oslo
Version of record first published: 02 Dec 2011.

To cite this article: Øivind Andersen (2011): Happiness in Homer, Symbolae

Osloenses: Norwegian Journal of Greek and Latin Studies, 85:1, 2-16

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 Symbolae Osloenses 85, 2011

HAPPINESS IN HOMER
ØIVIND ANDERSEN
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY, CLASSICS, AND HISTORY OF ART AND IDEAS
UNIVERSITY OF OSLO

The paper surveys some aspects of happiness in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Some
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introductory words on “what people wish for” and on the reunion of the spouses in the
Odyssey are followed by a brief survey of the Homeric vocabulary of “happiness” in its
subjective and objective aspect, the contrast between immortals and mortals and the
insecurity of human happiness are stressed. What human happiness is can be learnt e
contrario in the bereavement suffered by the warriors far from home and the loss
suffered by parents. Peace, the world of the similes, and especially life in Scheria serve as
pointers to the good life. The divinely given distribution of good and evil is at one point
important in the Iliad, while the Odyssey, man carries greater responsibility for how he
fares. The gaining of heroic glory can be seen as a form of happiness, and it also
mitigates the fundamental evil of death.

Eudaimoniê does not belong to the epic vocabulary. Homeric heroes are not pre-
occupied with “happiness”. But not everything is in a word and Aristotle has
taught us that everybody somehow strives after something that for him is eudai-
monia – whatever that is.1
When a character in Homer wishes somebody to fare well, he may pray for
Zeus simply to “fulfil the good that his mind wishes” without further specification
– whatever it is, as it were. Thus Eurynomos utters with regard to Telemachos:
“So may god grant him / good accomplishment for whatever he desires in his
mind” (eithe hoi autôi / Zeus agathon teleseien, ho ti phresin hêisi menoinâi) (Od.
2.33-4).2 Odysseus in a beggar's disguise utters the same wish with regard to his
son, in conjunction with a more specific prayer to Zeus: “Lord Zeus, let Telema-
chos be one of the prosperous / men (olbion einai), let everything befall him that
he desires in his mind” (17.354-5). Prosperity, olbos, is no doubt something that
most people would wish for themselves; we will come back to that. At Il.
14.221, Aphrodite lends her enticing belt to Hera with the words “And I say
that whatever you desire in your mind shall not go unaccomplished.” A
goddess herself and the belt being magic, Aphrodite has no need to wish for
what she knows will follow, viz., the fulfilment of Hera's desire for an eager
husband. When Odysseus wishes for Nausikaa that “the gods may give you every-
thing that you desire in your mind”, he specifies the “everything” (hosa) thus:
“may they grant you a husband and a house and sweet agreement / in all
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00397679.2011.631355
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 HAPPINESS IN HOMER

things, for nothing is better than this, more steadfast / than when two people, a
man and his wife, keep a harmonious / household; a thing that brings much dis-
tress to the people who hate them / and pleasure (kharmata) to their well-wishers,
and for them the best reputation” (Od. 6.180-5).3
That a wife should wish for a loving husband and that somebody should wish
for a young girl to become happily married is natural enough. That Odysseus in
the Odyssey should do so for Nausikaa, and expand on marital happiness, is all the
more natural. Odysseus strives to get back to his wife and family, the topic is
central to the plot of the poem. Odysseus' journey home is a sustained quest
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for that good life which for him will begin with his reunion with spouse and
son. In the Odyssey, that is the most important aspect of his homecoming,
although that homecoming includes also the reoccupation of his realm and the
regaining of royal authority – in a word, the greatest olbos.
At long last Odysseus succeeds. Penelope at that point has herself made a tor-
tuous inner journey. When at long last she acknowledges the stranger as her
husband, “her knees, and the heart within her went slack / as she recognized
the clear proofs that Odysseus had given; / but then she burst into tears and
ran straight to him, throwing / her arms around the neck of Odysseus, and
kissed his head, saying: / ‘Do not be angry with me, Odysseus, since, beyond
other men, / you have the most understanding….’” (23.205-10). Penelope feels
happy. Her relaxation leads to tears. As for Odysseus, her words “still more
roused in him the passion for weeping. / He wept as he held his delightful and
dutiful wife” (23.231f). In the simile that follows Odysseus is said to be as
welcome to Penelope as land is to shipwrecked sailors when they step ashore
(aspasios 23.233, 238, cf. aspastos 23.239): the wife is put in the position of the ship-
wrecked sailor her husband once was. Penelope simply “could not let him go from
the embrace of her white arms” (23.240). This is bliss of a kind that many can
recognize. We may note that the narrator does not predicate happiness on his
characters. Nor do the characters themselves say “Now, at long last, I am
happy”. No Homeric character says anything quite like that.
But people do feel happy and there are Homeric words for it, too. The essential
vocabulary for happiness or rather for the experience of feeling “happy” in various
ways, has been analysed by Latacz (1966) and can be further studied in the rel-
evant lemmata of the Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos. Latacz singled out five
roots that convey the experience of happiness, joy and satisfaction. We may ident-
ify them here by the verbs chairomai, gêtheo, eufrainomai, terpomai, iainomai. At
the height of happiness in the Odyssey only one of them is used: terpomai. Pene-
lope states that the gods granted them misery (ôpasen oïzyn) in order that they
should not enjoy their youth (hêbês tarpênai) (23.212); Odysseus at the end of
their encounter suggests that they can enjoy (tarpômetha) sweet sleep lying
together (23.255); later, we hear that they have “enjoyed (etarpêtên) their

3
 ØIVIND ANDERSEN

lovemaking” (23.300). The happiness of terpesthai is one with hedonistic over-

tones. A little later, Odysseus agrees to tell Penelope about what is going to
come, although, as he says, “your heart will have no joy in this (ou.thumos kechar-
êsetai), and “I myself am not happy… (oude gar autos chairô)” (23.266-7). This
signals another aspect happiness, rather like “having a pleasant feeling”. The
word-group is typically employed to describe reactions to positive news and plea-
sant surprises, gifts and favours in word or deed. I shall not pursue further the
mapping of the subjective or emotional side of happiness through semantic
(and etymological) analysis; I wanted only to point out how two relevant
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words come into play at the most happy hour of the Odyssey.
Turning now to what we may call the objective or external aspect of happiness,
the good life, makar and olbios (with their cognates) are the two Homeric words
that are most relevant, and which indeed seem to be most commonly translated
by “happy”.4 Both are words of commendation and admiration, whether they are
used by the narrator or spoken by characters in dialogue. Makar belongs mainly
and perhaps properly with the gods. When used of humans it will have connota-
tions to the divine sphere, implying ease and security and might. Olbios belongs
the human sphere and has connotations above all towards prosperity, being well
off.
Of the 17 instances of makar in the Iliad, 15 apply to the gods.5 We shall come
back to the makares theoi. The two remaining cases are a) in a simile in 11.68 (the
only instance in which the narrator calls a human being makar) where two reapers
work their way through the field of a man that is makar – surely a mighty man
who does not need to work himself; and b) in Priam's emphatic apostrophe to
Agamemnon as the enemy king has been identified for him by Helen at the ram-
parts: “ô makar Atreïdê, moirêgenes, olbiodaimon…” (3.182).6 His somewhat exces-
sive language may be justified by what follows: “many are these beneath your
sway, these sons of the Achaians”. Agamemnon is makar because of his might.
Of the 29 instances in the Odyssey, only four are not used of the gods. Those
four exceptions are a) 1.217 where Telemachos wishes that he had rather been the
son of some makar man, apparently, to judge from the context, meaning a man
“whom old age overtook among his possessions”; b) 6.154 (and 155, 158): Nausi-
kaa's parents and brothers are “three times makar” (this amplificatory expression
refers us to the makarismos-formulas used in weddingsongs), and the one who will
eventually marry her, is makartatos, “most makar”; c) 5.306: The storm-tossed
Odysseus considers those Danaans who perished at Troy to be three- and fourfold
makares, d) 11. 483-6: Odysseus tells Achilleus in the Underworld that he would
not count any man makartatos in relation to Achilleus, neither in the past nor in
the future, for “when you were alive, we Argives honored you / as we did the gods,
and now in this place you have great authority over the dead.” There follows of
course Achilleus strong protestation to the contrary, that he would rather be a serf

4
 HAPPINESS IN HOMER

to a poor man on earth than a ruler below. But the relevant point in our context is
that clearly honour and might are important parameters when one assesses to
what extent someone is makar. The word makar, seemingly prone to be used
in the superlative, points in the direction of the greatest “happiness”, viz., that
of the gods; and it may be noted that in c) and d) above, the words refers to
men that are dead. The word makar, however, seems also to suffer some devalua-
tion, not least in the superlative, where it may have become a word of courteous
commendation. Neither is there is much force in the verb makarizo (to deem
makar) in the three instances the verb is used in Homer: A person richly bestowed
with gifts will be deemed to be makar by those who encounter him.7
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The adjective olbios makes only one appearance in the Iliad. After Achilleus has
told Priam about Peleus's past olbos and ploutos, he adds: “We hear that you, too,
old man, prospered once” (olbion einai, 24.543). Both in the context of the
meeting between Achilleus and Priam (24.536) and in the only other instance
in which olbos is used in the Iliad – in 16.596, on another Myrmidon, the
obscure Bathykles, who had dwelled in his home in Hellas and stood out for
his olbos and ploutos, – riches is clearly essential to the “happiness” in question.
Also on the eight occasions when olbos is used in the Odyssey the word is paired
with ploutos. The words are for all practical purposes synonymous. In five of
the eight Odyssean instances8 the point is that it is the gods, or Zeus, that give
or take away (or has given or has taken away) olbos; in the remaining three
cases the olbos in question is a hope for the future or a state of the past.9 Olbos
is not something that one can count on to last.
Of the fifteen instances of olbios in the Odyssey, two belong in the last book. In
both of them is olbie used in an address. Agamemnon greets Achilleus in the
second Nekuia as “olbie son of Peleus, godlike Achilleus, who died at Troy”
(24.36) and his thoughts turn to Odysseus after the suitors have told him
about what happened in Ithaka: “olbie son of Laertes, who had a faithful
wife…” (24, 192); it may have no greater force than a conventionalized address.
All instances of olbios come in direct speech, and again the word is associated
with the gods, in wishes or prayers that they may give or make things olbia,.10
We already mentioned Odysseus's wish for Telemachos that he may become
olbios and have his wishes fulfilled (Od. 17.354); we may add here Agamemnon's
words to Odysseus in the Nekuia on Telemachos who is olbios because his father
will come back to him (11.450). In 18.218 Penelope upbraids Telemachos for not
treating his unknown guest properly: From his looks a stranger would say he were
the son of an olbios man… there is a kind of absence here as well, a want or a wish.
It is characteristic of happiness in Homer, and I think in Herodotus as well,
and for the Greeks – and perhaps quite generally – that happiness has not come
to stay. In Homer, happiness is dispensed at the gods' discretion. To Odysseus
and Penelope, the quintessentially happy couple, happiness did not come easily

5
 ØIVIND ANDERSEN

in the first place. As Penelope explains, “the gods granted us misery, / in jealousy
over the thought that we two, always together, / should enjoy our youth, and then
come to the threshold of old age” (23. 210-12). The jealousy word is agasanto, a
term regularly used for the envy of the gods in Homer. Odysseus, in turn,
with his very first words to his wife after the embrace, says: “Dear wife, we
have not yet come to the limit of all our / trials. There is unmeasured labour
left for the future, / both difficult and great, and all of it I must accomplish”
(23. 248-50). He refers obliquely to the prophecy of Teiresias. Although he pro-
poses that they go to bed, Penelope insists on first hearing further details, and
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Odysseus goes on to tell about his future wanderings, a perspective not suited
to gladden their mind, as we may remember (23. 2667). But the prospect, in Teir-
esias' prophecy and Odysseus's life, of a death “in the ebbing time of a sleek old
age” (gêrai hypo liparôi arêmenôi, 23.284, cf. 11. 136) makes Penelope at least
capable of hoping that “If the gods are accomplishing a better (areion) old age,
/ then there is hope that you shall have an escape from your troubles” (23.286-
7). Not exactly a “they lived happily ever after.”11
Marital happiness unlimited belongs in the utopian world of the Phaiakians.
Before Odysseus meets the royal couple, Athena explains to him the genealogical
link between husband and wife and tells him that Alkinoos made Arete his wife,
“and gave her / such pride of place as no other woman on earth is given / of such
women as are now alive and keep house for husbands. / So she was held high in
her heart and still she is so, / by her beloved children, by Alkinoos himself, and by
/ the people….” (7.66-71). When they have provided a bed for Odysseus, they
themselves go to bed – “but Alkinoos went to bed inn the inner room of the
high house, / and at his side the lady his wife shared his bed and couch”
(7.346f.).12
In the Iliad – and let us not forget that the whole war has come about because a
marriage was violated – Achilleus asks Agamemnon's ambassadors rhetorically:
“Are the sons of Atreus alone among mortal men the ones / who love (phileousi)
their wives” (9.340f).13 And he goes on: “Since any who is a good man (anêr
agathos), and careful, / loves (phileei) her who is his own and cares (kêdetai) for
her, even as I now / loved this one from my heart (ek thymou phileon), though
it was my spear that won her.” Over and above what we know marriage to
entail as a social and political institution, Achilleus obviously puts a high emotion-
al value on the relationship between man and woman. The trusting and happy
relationship between man and woman and especially between husband and
wife appears to be crucial to the idea of happiness in Homer.14 Helenos sees
that the Trojans, hard pressed as they are, need to be halted “before they
trample into their women's arms, and become to our enemies a thing to take
joy (charma) in” (6.81f.). The natural instinct of the Trojan fighters is to seek
the security of their women's embrace. Helenos tells Hektor to encourage

6
 HAPPINESS IN HOMER

them and then to proceed to the city to instruct the women to approach Athena
with prayers. And “as Hektor had come to the Skaian gates and the oak tree, / all
the wives of the Trojans and their daughters came running about him / to ask
after their sons, after their brothers and neighbours, / their husbands (6.237-
40). Hektor first does as he was asked and goes to his mother to instruct her
about the prayers, then, on his own account, he visits Paris at whose place we
get a glimpse of a not very supportive wife and a not very happy relationship;
Hektor then makes clear that he will go to his own house before returning to
the battlefield, “so I can visit / my own people, my beloved wife, and my son,
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who is little, / since I do not know if ever again I shall come back this way, /
or whether the gods will strike me down at the hands of the Achaians” (6.365-
8). He does not find Andromache at home, and learns that she is not with her
in-laws nor with the other women at Athena's temple – she has gone with the
baby to the great bastion of Troy like a madwoman, as she has heard that the
Trojans were losing. The deeply moving scene (6.394-496) between man and
wife and child needs no rehearsing here – Andromache returns home, “turning
to look back on the way, letting the live tears fall.”15
In Homer people fall in love, and there is romantic tenderness. They could
have their Valentines. In the utopian land of the Phaiakians, Nausikaa dreams
of marriage although “she was ashamed to speak of her joyful (thaleros) marriage
to her dear father, but he understood….” (Od. 6. 66f). We perceive in her a fas-
cination and a fondness for the enigmatic stranger. Alkinoos indeed wishes that
the stranger would take his daughter as a wedded wife (7.311-15). The relationship
ends, however, with Nausikaa's “Goodbye, stranger, and think of me sometimes
when you are /back at home”, as she appears from behind a pillar “with the gods'
loveliness on her” (8.457-68). At the end of the Iliad, at the most brutal juncture of
the action, as Hektor is going to die, he realizes that it is no good trying to talk
gently to Achilleus – “whispering like a young man and a young girl, in the way / a
young man and a young maiden whisper together. (Il. 22.127-8).
It is part of the tragedy of the Iliad that men – the heroic protagonists no less
than the common warriors, on both sides – are isolated from their dear ones and
may be killed and buried far away from their family and fatherland, and that those
at home shall not receive them back. The motif appears already in the second
killing of a Trojan: Aias strikes down “the son of Anthemion / Simoeisios in
his stripling's beauty, whom once his mother / descending from Ida bore
beside the banks of Simoeis / … but he could not / render again the care of
his dear parents; he was short-lived, / beaten down beneath the spear of high-
hearted Aias… ” (4.473-9). Diomedes goes after “the two sons of Phainops,
Xanthos and Thoon, / full grown both, but Phainops was stricken in sorrowful
old age / nor could breed another son to leave among his possessions. / There
he killed these two and took away the dear life from them / both, leaving to

7
 ØIVIND ANDERSEN

their father lamentation and sorrowful affliction, since he was not to welcome
them home from the fighting / alive still….” (5.152-8). And we have, e.g., Hip-
pothoos, heroically trying to drag away Patroklos' body: “There his strength
was washed away, and from his hands / he let fall to the ground the foot of
great-hearted Patroklos / to lie there, and himself collapsed prone over the dead
man / far away from generous Larisa, and he could not / render again the care
of his dear parents; he was short-lived, / beaten down beneath the spear of
high-hearted Aias.” (17.298-303).16
Most of those sad remarks on not coming home are in the words of the poet. It
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adds to the pathos when the characters reflect on the issue. Patroklos is moved to
pity on seeing the Achaian leaders wounded: “Poor wretches, you leaders and men
of counsel among the Danaans, / was it your fate then, far from your friends and
the land of your fathers, / to glut with your shining fat the running dogs here in
Troy land?” (11.815-7). The wounded Sarpedon begs Hektor to rescue his body
“since otherwise in your city / my life must come to an end, since I could
return no longer / back to my own house and the land of my fathers, bringing
/ joy to my own beloved wife and my son, still a baby” (5.685-8). Successful war-
riors may rejoice in the terrible fact. Hektor takes pride in having killed Hyper-
enor – “I think that his feet shall no more carry him / back to his beloved wife and
his honoured parents” (17.27f.). Ilioneus, the only son borne by his wife to
Phorbas, is killed by Penelos, who vaunts over the corpse: “Trojans, tell
haughty Ilioneus' beloved father / and mother, from me, that they can weep
for him in their halls, since / neither shall the wife of Promachos, Alegenor's /
son, take pride of delight (ganyssetai)17 in her dear lord's coming, on that day /
when we sons of the Achaians come home from Troy in our vessels” (14.501-4;
the Boiotian Promachos had been killed by Akamas just before).
Those that fight also suffer far away from home and kin. Aias encourages his hard
pressed companions to resist the attacking Hektor: “Do you expect, if our ships fall
to helm-shining Hektor, you will walk each of you back dryshod to the land of your
fathers?” (15.504-5). Achilleus reminds Agamemnon of the fact that he came to Troy
only for the Atreids' sake. Phthia, where the soil is rich and men grow great, is
distant, over the seas (Il. 1.152-58). As he faces Priam, he laments, that he sits “in
Troy, far from the land of my fathers” (24.541). Agamemnon is aware that being
kept away from home is a strain on the army. In his appeal at the peira he refers
to the nine years that have passed: The ships are rotting – “and far away our
own wives and our young children / are sitting within our halls and wait for us,
while still our work here / stays forever unfinished as it is…” (2.136-8). That
leaders keep their men away from home is used as a reproach not only on the
Achaian side, but also by Trojan allies. Glaukos asks Hektor if he has quite forgot-
ten his “armed companions / who for your sake, far from their friends and the land
of their fathers, / are wearing their lives away” (16.537-9).

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 HAPPINESS IN HOMER

War is considered an evil in the Iliad as well as the Odyssey. “It is clear in Homer
that the soldier would, in general, prefer not to fight.”18 The Achaians rush for the
ships and home the moment they see a chance, and there is much need for
encouragement and self-encouragement on the battlefield. Nestor devices a
tactic that allows for the presence of kakoi and that shall force even the reluctant
(ouk ethelôn tis) to fight (Il. 4.297-300). There is criticism of excess in fighting. In
his furious speech over the vanquished Peisandros Menelaos condemns the
Trojans for robbing him of his wife and damns them for their blind fury in fight-
ing: They cannot be glutted full of the close encounters, although there is satiety
in all things, “in sleep, and love-making, in the loveliness of singing and the inno-
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cent dance”. The heroic fighter adds: “In all these / things a man will strive sooner
to win satisfaction than in war.” The Trojans alone are more keen on fighting
than on anything else (13.636-9). The priamel contrasts the Trojan priority –
bloody fighting – with what anybody else would put first: love and song and
dance. Homer here allows us a rare glimpse of his good life from within the
horrors of the battlefield. Menelaos is hardly untypical in his distaste for war.
After the war, he has time to reflect. As we encounter him back home in
Sparta, sitting amongst the spoils of Troy, he laments: “I wish I lived in my
house with only a third part of all / these goods, and that the men were alive
who died in those days / in wide Troy land far away from horse-pasturing
Argos” (Od. 4.97-9). We may note here again the “far away” topic, as we may
also in Nestor's equally sombre reflections on the losses in war at home in
Pylos: He thinks of the sorrows that they suffered “in that country” (en ekeinôi
demôi); there (entha) lies Aias, there Achilleus, there Patroklos, there his own
dear son Antilochos. Not even five years would suffice to tell of all the kaka of
the war (Od. 3.103-14). Homeric warriors and heroes are out to win renown in
battle – but they prefer peace and they long to come home and to be reunited
with their parents, or with wife and children. That is the good life that they
are missing before Troy.19
If we search for the good life in Homer, one obvious direction in which to look
is towards Scheria and the opulent and luxurious life of the Phaiakians. Theirs is
an idealized world, inaccessible to humans, but it is not an absurd utopian anti-
world. King Alkinoos memorably sums up what has been called “the Homeric
good life”20 in a few words: “and always the feast is dear to us, and the lyre
and dances / and changes of clothing and our hot baths and beds” (Od. 8.248-
9). Athletics apparently is also important to them: they are good at running,
according to the king, but he admits – and appropriately so in the aftermath of
Odysseus' athletic feats – that “we are not perfect in our boxing, nor yet as wres-
tlers” (8.246-7). They take it easy. Nestor's Pylos and Menelaos' Sparta take on
some almost Phaiakian features; in Pylos the men “were gathered in session, /
where Nestor was sitting with his sons, and companions about him / were

9
 ØIVIND ANDERSEN

arranging the feast, and roasting the meat, and spitting more portions” (3.31-33); in
Sparta there is the double wedding feast and the generally relaxed atmosphere (in
spite of the slight tension between Helena and her husband).
In the Iliad, we get a brief glimpse of what a good life entails in the Troy that
once was, the well-built city of the broad streets, with its treasures and garments
and extended family life of Priam and his household. During Achilleus' pursuit of
Hektor around the walls of Troy, they pass by the two springs of whirling Ska-
mandros, close to which were “the washing-hollows / of stone, and magnificent,
where the wives of the Trojans and their lovely / daughters washed the clothes to
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shining, in the old days / when there was peace, before the coming of the sons of
the Achaians” (22.153-6). The scenes on the shield of Achilleus have also been said
to be “those of prosperous settled societies at peace, representing the Homeric
picture of the good life” – although, since the shield is a microcosm and mirror
and not a utopian counter-world, death and destruction are also present.21
There is the wedding scene, already mentioned. And there is the administration
of justice, there is reaping and herding, mirth and dance and soft garments.
To the pointers to the good life in the Iliad generally we may finally add some
of the Homeric similes, especially those everyday scenes that in addition to illus-
trating some feature of the action give us glimpses of life as it is, or as it was, or
could be, far away from the battlefield: The mother waving away the fly from the
baby's face, the wanderer on the mountain track, carpenters felling trees, the
herdsman driving his cattle home, goatherds separating their flocks, sheep
waiting to be milked, etc. It is a world of toil, but also a world of peace.
But the good life is above all reflected in another realm: in heaven.22 Human
life may be good in comparison to whatever might await them below in gloomy
Hades. But man lives to die. That cannot but make human beings fundamentally
unhappy.
The gods, we recall, are eminently makares. They are rheia zôontes, living at
ease, they do not have to toil to subsist, they move around swiftly, they are not
bothered by bad weather, and they do not on the whole have to take things
seriously. The gods are “carefree (akêdees) always” (Il. 24.526). But it is not
only their easy life, their life style, that makes them so utterly different from
us, and presumably makes them makares. It is primarily the fact that they do
not live to die. In Il. 1.339 the makares theoi and the thnêtoi antrhôpoi are com-
bined and contrasted in one verse, while in 5.442 the athanatoi theoi are paired
with the chamai erchomenoi anthrôpoi, humans that walk on the ground. The
gods are often athanatoi (e.g. 1.503, 520) or aien eontes (1.494 etc.) or ambrotoi
(20.358, 24,460). In 6.527 and often at verse end the gods are epouranioi theoi aiei-
genêtes, gods that forever exist in heaven. Apollo will not fight with Poseidon “for
the sake of insignificant mortals” (brotoi deiloi), “who are as leaves are, and now
flourish and grow warm / with life, and feed on what the ground gives, but then

10
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again / fade away ad are dead” (21.464-6). Men may share the sentiment: “As is the
generation of leaves, so is that of humanity”, Glaukos says, “The wind scatters the
leaves on the ground, / but the live timber burgeons with leaves again in the
season of spring returning. / So one generation of men will grow while another
/ dies” (6.146-50). Moreover, the gods are ageless, “unageing”, that is: forever
young. The word agêraos, whenever it appears, is always paired with athanatos.
To be old like Priam and Peleus means not only to be weak and exposed to
risks, it means that you are very much reminded of your human condition.
The poet projects unto the heavenly screen aspects of a life that humans
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cannot have. The gods' good life serves as a foil to la condition humaine.
It is in the divine sphere also that we find the explanation for why all humans
have their share of unhappiness, and some are utterly unhappy. The allegory of
the two jars in the last book of the Iliad is a pedagogical device by which Achilleus
attempts to soothe Priam's grief as he comes to ransom Hektor's body (and
through which the poet teaches his audience about life):
Come, then,

and sit down upon this chair, and you and I will even let
our sorrows lie still in the heart for all our grieving (achnymenoi per). There is not
any advantage to be won from grim lamentation.
Such is the way the gods spun life for unfortunate (deiloi) mortals
that we live in unhappiness (achnymenoi), but the gods themselves have no sorrows
(akêdees).
There are two urns that stand on the door-sill of Zeus. They are unlike
for the gifts they bestow: an urn of evils (kaka), and urn of blessings (eaa).
If Zeus who delights in thunder mingles these and bestows them
on man, he shifts, and moves now in evil (en kakôi), again in good fortune (en esthlôi).

But when Zeus bestows from the urn of sorrows (ta lygra), he makes a failure
of man (lôbêton ethêke), and the evil hunger drives him over the shining
earth, and he wanders respected neither of gods nor mortals.
(24.522-33)
Thus it will seem that in the Iliad, it depends upon the will or whim of Zeus
whether somebody is more or less unhappy. In the Odyssey on the other hand
man is charged with greater responsibility for how he fares. In his first speech
in the poem, in what has been called the first theodicé. Zeus explains to the
other gods, and the poet to the audience, that many humans suffer more than
what is allotted to them, but that “the mortals put the blame upon us / gods,
for they say evils come from us, but it is they, rather, / who by their own

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 ØIVIND ANDERSEN

recklessness (athastaliai) win sorrow beyond what is given (hyper moron)” (1.32-4).
Man is responsible for his own happiness at least to the extent that he is able to
curb his recklessness and thus avoid unnecessary suffering. But humans do not
curb and control themselves. Zeus exemplifies this on Aigisthos, who took over
the wife of king Agamemnon and murdered the king on his homecoming day.
He thus earned himself his own death. In the Odyssean model, however, the
stress is less on the fact that one's own conduct can lead to suffering hyper
moron than on the fact that such conduct should be easy to avoid. At least in
Aigisthos' case it was: He knew, the poet lets Zeus say, that he did the wrong
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thing, for the gods themselves had warned him through Hermes not to kill
Aigisthos nor to court Klytaimestra, since vengeance would then come upon
him from Orestes (1.37-43). That people are warned and thus should be able to
steer clear is clearly important to the poet: It is postulated in the case of Aigisthos
(it seems not to be part of the tradition) and it is made much of in the two ethi-
cally most challenging extinctions in the poem: that of the last group of Odysseus'
men who are swallowed up by the sea because they, in spite of Odysseus' warn-
ings, slaughtered and ate the oxen of the sun (book 12), and that of the suitors
(book 22), who may be said to have been warned variously over an extended
period of time. While Aigisthos had a divine warner and the crew had Odysseus,
the suitors are warned and reminded of proper behaviour i.a. by the disguised
beggar. The warning resides less and less in the status of the warner. It will end
up as an inner voice, a moral sense.
In the Odyssey, Aigisthos, Odysseus' men and the suitors ignore warnings and
must die. In the Iliad, Patroklos, Hektor and Achilleus must die. They also are
warned of consequences of what they do, or they are aware of them and know
only too well what is to come. Patroklos is commissioned by Achilleus to fend
off immediate danger, but emphatically told to come back when he has driven
the Trojans from the ships, and not take on Troy without him, and not in the
pride and fury of fighting, go on slaughtering the Trojans, …. 2026;. Apollo
who works from afar loves these people dearly” (16. 87-96). Even so, Patroklos
lets himself be carried away, with fatal consequences for himself (16. 684-91;
783ff). Various characters – Andromache, Helenos, Poulydamas, Priam and
Hekabe – warn Hektor against fighting or against facing Achilleus, and Patroklos
prophesies his approaching death (16.852-4). And, although he is sometimes
under the illusion that he can carry the day, he knows full well that his personal
prospects are not the best, and that Troy shall fall some day (6.448). Still he has to
do what a man has to do – he has learnt to fight always in the forefront (6.444-6)
and he would be ashamed “before the Trojans, and the Trojan women with trail-
ing garments”, were he to shrink away from fighting (6.442 = 22.105). Achilleus
knows, or rather, he is reminded by his mother at a point where there are no
other options open for him, that his own death will follow soon upon his

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 HAPPINESS IN HOMER

killing of Hektor (18.95-126). Achilleus' is an even more complex case than that of
Hektor. But however we come to terms with him as a character, we shall have to
admit that he, too, does what he has got to do, for his friend, but also for his glory
- “Now I must win excellent glory” (kleos esthlon) 18.1219 - even if it entails his own
death. Life is not the ultimate good.
The ultimate goal is to gain glory – honour (timê) and fame (kleos). That is
what the Homeric hero is committed to strive for. To achieve it will – almost
by definition, I would say – give him satisfaction and mean utter self-realization.
This is the other kind of good life in Homer: the life in accordance with heroic
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values. It is a good life - a kind of happiness, that it is possible to enjoy. For to

achieve glory, one does not have to die. Glory is gained in the first place by
killing others, not by being killed oneself. Nestor is not less of a hero for being
a survivor. But death is always lurking near at hand. It is precisely the fact that
man is mortal and must die anyway, that makes it a small thing for a hero to
die sooner rather than later.23 The locus classicus for this heroic ethos is Sarpedon's
words to Glaukos as he ponders the question why it is that
you and I are honoured (tetimêmestha) before others
with pride of place, the choice meats and the filled wine cups
in Lykia, and all men look on us as if we were gods
and we are appointed a great piece of land by the banks of Xanthos,
good land, orchard and vineyard, and ploughland for the planting of wheat?
Therefore it is our duty in the forefront of the Lykians
to take our stand, and bear our part of the blazing battle,
so that a man of the close-armoured Lykians may say of us:
“Indeed, these are no ignoble men (aklees) who are lords of Lykia,
these kings of ours, who feed upon the fat sheep appointed
and drink the exquisite sweet wine, since indeed there is strength of valour in them, since
they fight in the forefront of the Lykians.”
(12.310-21)
The timê they enjoy manifests itself in olbos as we can see, although the word itself
is not used here. Sarpedon goes on to compare their predicament as mortals to the
life of the ageless gods. Had they been able to live on forever, ageless, immortal,
there would be no incentive to fight. But because death is certain and omnipre-
sent they should dedicate themselves to fighting even unto death – “win glory for
ourselves, or yield it to others” (12.328). The gods in their ageless immortality have
no such noble goals to live for.
That other good life, the Odyssean happiness of a long and safe life, is the
option that the greatest of the heroes, Achilleus rejects. In the Iliad he is “a
man with a short life“ right from the start (1.352), for, having been presented
by Thetis with the choice between a long life with no kleos esthlon if he

13
 ØIVIND ANDERSEN

abandoned the expedition and returned home, and a short life with kleos
aphthiton (“unperishing glory”) if he remained a Troy (9.410-16) – as a
true hero he had no real choice, although as a human being he must be
allowed to toy with the idea of going back (9.169-71). One could say time
has proven him right.

Notes
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1. Nicomachean Ethics I.4; Rhetoric I.5.

2. Translations are taken and sometimes (as here) adapted from Lattimore's Iliad (1951) and Odyssey
(1965). I follow Lattimore's spelling of proper names.
3. For the difficulties especially of line 6.185, see Hainsworth ad loc. in the Oxford Commentary
(1988). That other people, friends or foes, are positively or negatively affected by how people
fare, and are thus made more or less happy, is common human experience, and such sentiments,
as Hainsworth points out, are typical of the archaic period. We may note that Odysseus here
explicitly points to the “distress” (or “pains”: algea) that befall those that are not pleased by
what they see: mention the opposite as well, the negative in addition to the positive and vice
versa is also a feature of Greek thought and linguistic expression, and, as we will see, the
happy man in Homer is often highlighted by contrast. The vocabulary of emotional unhappiness
and human misery in Homer is even richer than that of “happiness”.
4. Eudaimôn and eutychês are not Homeric words. For the study of the four words mentioned, see
de Heer (1969); some pertinent remarks also in McDonald (1978), ch. 1.
5. Priam in Il. 24. 377commends his cautious helper with the words: “You are of makares parents” –
which, indeed, is true enough, since Priam talks to Hermes. It may be a rare use of makar used of
men, but is rather hyperbolic on the part of Priam or ironic on the part of the poet.
6. The hapax moiregenes can be understood as “born by moira” or “born with a favourable moira”;
in both it would convey the meaning “favoured by moira”. Olbiodaimôn, another hapax would
convey essentially the same: a person whom a (his?) daimôn has made olbios.
7. Od. 15.538: Telemachos tells the seer Theoclymenos he will give bestow so many gifts upon him
if what he says proves to be true that a person who meets him will pronounce him makar; simi-
larly 17.165 and 19.311 (Penelope to Odysseus).
8. Od. 3.208 (Telemachos to Nestor), 4.208 (Menelaos to Peisistratos), 6.188 (Nausikaa to Odys-
seus), 18.19 (Odysseus to Iros), 18.273 (Penelope to Odysseus).
9. Od. 18.123 (Amphinomos to Odysseus; as a change from kaka), 20.200 (Philoitios to Odysseus;
he has just called Odysseus dysmoros, he says he has many kaka, and goes on to blame Zeus for
not pitying man and mixing him up in kakotês and algea), 14.206 (The disguised Odysseus to
Eumaios about himself once having had olbos and ploutos – and presently reporting his kêdea
thumou (“my heart's tribulations”).
10. Od. 4.148, 6.413, 24.402, 13.42, 17.354. 17.420, 1976, 18.138 (Odysseus was once prosperous,
fortune changes).
11. As in Herodotus, happiness is precarious and unstable. Another common idea is that man is
taken to the peak of happiness as a preliminary to disaster. The idea is illustrated in an exemplary
way in the case of Hektor and Patroklos in the Iliad, and the idea also underlies the career of
Achilleus, who knows that he shall die soon after he has achieved his greatest feat. Cf. Rutherford
(2001), esp. 275-9.
12. lechos porsyne kai eunên: “Served as bedfellow” Lattimore has it.

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 HAPPINESS IN HOMER

13. The word for wife here is alochos, a bedfellow Cf. Il. 1.113f. where Agamemnon protests that he
prefers Chryseis to his kouridie alochos Klytaimestra.
14. Let us also not forget the importance of weddings in the Odyssey. At Telemachos' arrival in
Sparta, Menelaos is about to celebrate a double wedding, both for a son and a daughter, with
many neighbours and townsmen present, and with an inspired singer playing his lyre, and
dancers and acrobats (Od. 4.1-19). After the suitors have been disposed of, the men
and women of Odysseus' household dressed in their finery and there were song and dance –
and people outside would say, “Surely now someone has married our much-sought-after
/queen; hard-hearted, she had no patience to keep the great house / for her own wedded lord
to the end, till he came back to her” (Od. 23 149-51). A wedding scene is also depicted in the
city at peace at Achilleus' shield (Il. 18.491-6).
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15. A continuation of sorts follows in 22.437-515, as Andromache, not yet informed about Hektor's
death and preparing a hot bath for his return, hears from the great bastion the noise of mourning
and sorrow and in a frenzy runs out of the house, only to find out that the terrible thing has
happened, leading to her long speech about what Hektor meant to her and what his death
means to her – dysammoros (22.485) – and their son. Finally, in Andromache's lament for
Hektor (24. 725-45), she includes wives and children of Troy generally – “wives who before
long must go away in the hollow ships…”.
16. Cf. e.g. also Il. 13. 363ff and 13. 427ff., and Achilleus' concern about his father who was left
behind in Phthia (Od. 11.495-9, Il. 24.486-9, 19.321-37.
17. The verb ganymai makes only a few appearances in Homer. It is etymologically related to gêtheô
and lat. gaudeo.
18. Griffin (1980) 92, with reference to Strasburger (1954) 232. See also Griffin (1992).
19. See the remarks in Macleod (2001) 301.
20. Taplin (2001) 347.
21. Taplin (2001) 357.
22. Gould (2001), 350 interestingly considers the society of the gods as “in some sense a norm of
‘reality’ by which to measure the deviant tendencies of the Greek and Trojan social models.
23. Well put by Owen (1978) 102f: The hero has “the power to make his life glorious. Because it is all
that a man has and is, because it is brief and uncertain and death ends all, man has the oppor-
tunity to transform his life into a splendid thing by his courage in risking it. Thus man himself
imposes a value upon life, and he reates it out of the very thing that robs it of value. He cheats
death of its victory by making it the servant of his glory”.

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