Casually Completing Classics #8: The Odyssey Book 10

Book 10

 Been a while. I don't even remember exactly what I usually post in these.

My summary: Odysseus and the crew meet Circe. She turns his men to pigs, but Hermes helps him bone her and she turns them back. He stays a year! And she tells him to go me Tiresias's ghost in the underworld for directions.

I was willing to give Odysseus a pass for Calypso, since he makes a big deal about not agreeing to stay. He's presumably enchanted to some degree, and is at least partially held against his will. Fitzgerald uses some variant of, "but I never gave my consent" repeatedly. In this section he does "consent" to bring his ship ashore after Circe restores his men "being a man I could not help consenting." Variants of this appear a few times in this section, in relation to enjoying her hospitality. Since Hermes has explicitly given him "moly" (no consensus on what plant it is in real life from a quick Google) to make him immune to his charms, it seems like it's pretty much all on him. So, basically, he hangs out on the island banging the woman who tried to keep his men captive for a year while they feast... This seems questionable as a captain, and downright shitty as a husband (we're given no indication that he and Penelope are in an open marriage or something. I assume she'd have had a much better time with the suitors if so.) I wrote about how this is the "DumbAssHole" section a bit last time, and I think this is pretty close to the peak. At best, he's being a douchebag and delaying his travel. To make matters worse he's making his men (they want to leave before he does) hang out with a woman who turned them into pigs. I think if my captain spent a year banging someone who cursed me when I wanted to go home I'd probably mutiny. One of his crewmembers (Eurylochus) more or less says the same thing, but he winds up screwing everyone later in the book so it's kind of a wash. 

Fitzgerald uses the word "pickaback" the same way we use piggyback, which sounds more fun.

Homer does the thing Shakespeare does (who presumably got it from Homer) and has Hermes speak in rhyme here. He doesn't always have the gods do this, which seems kind of odd.