The Significance of the Host/Guest Relationship in The Odyssey Essay

The Odyssey is an epic poem attributed to the now-famous Greek poet, Homer, written approximately in the early sixth century B.C.E. The poem shares the tale of the wily adventuring solider, Odysseus', return from the Trojan war to his wife and home in Ithaca. The poem details his misadventures, the efforts of his son, Telemachus, to find him, and revenge on his wife's suitors. While many themes run through this poem, the most prevalent is that of hospitality. The Host-Guest relationship is significant in the Odyssey as it acts as one of the main thematic devices used by Homer and examples of good hospitality versus bad hospitality and their results serve as the main plot elements throughout the tale. The Host/Guest relationship, also known as the Guest-Friendship relationship was a complex relationship based on a series of ambiguous hospitality laws. "Guest-friend."..is the English rendition of the Greek xenos ...The same Greek word meant `stranger', `foreigner', and sometimes `host', a confusion symbolic of the ambivalence which characterized all dealings with the stranger in the archaic world." The system itself involved a few rituals. The host was not to ask the identity of the guest until after they have eaten, bathed, rested and/or received gifts of monetary value. The gifts varied depending on the seeming status of the guest. Lower class guests received only food, while higher classes received anything from jewels, to weapons to livestock. The Host/Guest relationship is one of the main virtues of the Homeric Greeks. It served as "the alternative to marriage in forging bonds between rulers; and there could have been no more dramatic test of its value in holding the network of relationships together than just such a cr... ... of either guest, nor host, the system of hospitality served as stability and protection in a time of suspicion and danger. Bibliography Beer, Josh, PhD. Lecture: Epic, Carleton University: Classics 2009, September 24th 2003. Beer, Josh, PhD. Lecture: The Odyssey, Carleton University: Classics 2009, October 29th 2003. Beer, Josh, PhD. Lecture: The Odyssey, Carleton University: Classics 2009, November 5th 2003. Finley, M. I. The World of Odysseus. Revised. Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd., 1967. Homer. The Odyssey. Walter Shewring, translator. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. Lang, Andrew. The World of Homer. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1910. Seymour, Thomas Day. Life in the Homeric Age. New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1963. Stagakis, George. Studies in the Homeric Society Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag GMBH., 1975.