Testing

Whether testing a person is, like guest-friendship, a social institution in the Homeric world, it is difficult to ascertain; it is certainly a recurrent theme in the Odyssey, with a clearly patterned sequence. In order to describe this sequence we must compare several instances of testing in the poem and abstract from them their common pattern. The situation in which testing a person or making trial of a person arises is this: after ten years of the Trojan War, and in some cases more years of wanderings, the king of the land returns home. One such king, Agamemnon, is murdered by his wife and her lover who has usurped the kingship. ¹ In the Underworld Agamemnon therefore warns Odysseus not to return openly, but in disguise; and Odysseus returns as an old dirty beggar. From the security of this disguise he explores the lie of the land: he tests the members of his household, that is, the members of his own family, his retainers and his slaves. The question asked, or more often implied, is this: ‘Are you still Odysseus’ friend, and will you fight for him?’ This question can only be asked in safety as long as Odysseus is unrecognized. If the answer is in the affirmative, and if the time is ripe, Odysseus may reveal his identity. Then the person tested in turn proceeds to test Odysseus in order to find out whether Odysseus is really the man he says he is. There are then two types of testing: Odysseus coming home tests the loyalty of those at home (type 1); and those at home test the truthfulness of Odysseus regarding his identity (type 2). All this forms of course part of the major theme of ‘recognition’. Testing of the first kind precedes recognition; testing of the second kind follows it, and confirms it.