The Structure of the Odyssey

Homer’s image for an epic poem is a ‘path’ (oime). ¹ ‘When they had satisfied their desire for food and drink, the Muse sent forth the singer to sing the fame of men, from the “path” (i.e. epic)—the fame of which then reached the broad sky—the quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles, son of Peleus.’ ² This quarrel is, according to Stanford, an episode from a famous epic or ‘path’. When the singer begins his song, he is sent forth by the Muse: he speeds along the path of his song. When the bard turns from one subject of song to another, he ‘changes his walk’. Odysseus, asking Demodocus to sing a different song, says to him: ‘But now change your walk and sing of the arrangement of the Wooden Horse which Epeius made with Athene.’ ³ The singers are honoured, ‘because the Muse teaches them paths’; and Phemius in self-defence says to Odysseus: ‘A god has made to grow in my mind varied paths.’ ⁴ The singer in action is imagined as a man speeding along a path. Here the ‘path’ implies the direction the walker takes. The path therefore is the ‘plan’ or the ‘arrangement of events’, as the Yugoslav bards would call it. ⁵