Don’t Worry, Cringe Is Hot

Shell, limestone, and lapis lazuli game board, city of Ur, Sumer, circa 2450 BC

Homer’s Iliad, the first one hundred lines in Mycenaean Greek and Linear B:

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Adams third child, Seth: What is that?

Seth:

The strongest defense of Odysseus is offered by Arthur W. H. Adkins, who bases his argument on the logic of ethical justification used in fifth-century Athens. Adkins cautions against reading Odysseus's arguments anachronistically and ascribing to the Greeks present-day ethical understandings or sentiments (193). He argues that Odysseus's justification of the sacrifice of Polyxena accords with the fifth-century Greek commitment to competitive over cooperative values. Adkins's analysis is important for two reasons. First, it explains why the army might embrace Odysseus's reasoning. Even if Odysseus is assumed to be cynical, it is unlikely that the army could be so easily won over to his cynicism or, alternatively, so easily taken in by his manipulation unless his argument had some merit and spoke to an obligation that the Greek soldiers could recognize as making serious claims on them. Second, Adkins's defense recovers Odysseus as a character who cannot be reduced to a simple villain, and it shows that he need not be an insensitive and cynical opportunist, as he is, for example, in Sophocles's Philoctetes. Rather, he can be read as someone acting honorably and doing what the circumstances require.

The weakness of Adkins's account is that it omits precisely what Odysseus cannot see, and hence it misses Euripides's criticism of Odysseus's speech. Odysseus is untroubled by his argument, and he suffers from none of the self-division that besets the army as a whole. His loyalty is single; his concern is to ensure the strength of the Greek army. He accepts unquestioningly the ethics of competition, and thus he is blind to the injury that he inflicts. His exclusive commitment to the army is what makes him so terrifying. He is not corrupt or cynical, merely limited. His speech embodies the unreflective security that follows from the ethics of power. Other critics make clear Odysseus's limitation (Abrahamson 123-24n10; Conacher 157-58). For them, the sacrifice of Polyxena is an act of political expediency that violates nomos (law as an institution or practice grounded in convention) and that consequently cannot be justified. The response of the chorus supports their analy- ses. After hearing Odysseus reply to Hecuba, the chorus draws the following conclusion: "This is what it means to be a slave: to be abused and bear it, / compelled by violence to suffer wrong" (331-32). What the chorus does is to read an ostensible instance of peitho as an instance of bia. The chorus's reading of Odysseus's speech implies that one's position in a discursive situation is crucial, that when power is held unequally, force determines the outcome, and further that the force need not actively repress speech, be- cause the inequality of the speakers renders rhetoric irrelevant in the determination of the encounter. These observations outline the rhetorical crisis that Euripides seeks to dramatize in the scene. Hecuba's inability to get Odysseus to consider her words seriously exemplifies the rhetorical powerlessness of marginalized speakers.

Odysseus's complacent rejection of her pleas suggests his ethical failure, and the inadequacy of his response shows that political expediency need not derive from personal corruption but may reflect institutional and ultimately cultural containment. The scene's structure argues that peitho is not and cannot be effective in this situation, for persuasion depends on the relations that exist between speakers and audiences. Odysseus permits Hecuba to speak because he knows beforehand that she will not affect his decision. Hecuba is an aged female slave who has no power, and without power, she cannot speak in a way that might influence Odysseus. Hecuba's earlier act of charis did not enlarge Odysseus's sense of her humanity or of his own. This lack of effect is evident in Odysseus's reductive interpretation of his obligation to Hecuba. He is strictly legalistic in reading his indebtedness to her generosity, eviscerating the ethical force of her act. Because he holds power, her words cannot touch him. He is not, however, conscious of the heinousness of his action; rather, he remains oblivious to his cruelty, and when challenged, he displays the testiness of the bureaucrat accused of missing the relevant ethical issues and asked to understand better what a situation requires. When Odysseus feels that Hecuba does not appreciate his largess, he perceives her as an annoying petitioner who obstinately refuses to understand the reality of her situation and who, in her irrationality, does not realize the kindness offered to her. Consequently, it is not surprising that he retreats to the assertion that he is in charge.