#canevaro

But Helen, daughter of Zeus, thought of another thing, and immediately she threw a drug into the wine from which they were drinking, a drug that banishes pain and allays anger, and makes one forget all evils. He who should swallow it, once it is mixed in the mixing bowl, would not for the whole day let tears fall down his cheeks, not if his mother and father should die.

That Helen ‘thought of another thing’ is the first indication in this passage of her elevated agency. She is an interloper in a formula which usually has Athena as its subject. The phrase is often used to flag up a crucial change in narrative direction. [...] In thinking of another thing, Helen decides to change the direction (more specifically the mood) of the visit.

Like Circe, Helen will manipulate the men, altering their minds. And like Circe, she does so not through direct interaction but by tainting one of the staples of xenia: the wine.

When the pharmakon is first mentioned at Od.4.220, its nature is not specified. Will it be good? Baneful? Man-slaying? All of the possibilities are raised elsewhere in the poem. In the next line we are told what it does: it banishes pain and anger, and makes one forget all evils. It appears to be good. However, in what follows it seems that the numbness it offers is excessive, as not even the deaths of mother, father, brother, and child will register. Like Circe’s drug, Helen’s takes away memory — though it makes one forget all evils rather than one’s fatherland, the effect is essentially the same, as the breaking of emotional familial ties will inevitably dull the desire for nostos.

Zeus’ use of the jars is one which blurs boundaries, as he mixes (ἀμμείξας) goods and evils. I discussed in Chapter 4 Helen’s use of pharmaka in Odyssey 4, drugs from Egypt where there are φάρμακα λυγρά as well as ἐσθλά, and which are mixed (μεμιγμένα).

These were the kind of helpful drugs the daughter of Zeus had, good ones, which Polydamna gave her, wife of Thonus, from Egypt, where the grain-giving field bears the most drugs, many good when mixed, but many baneful.

In dosing her guests, dulling their emotions and their desire for homecoming, Helen performs an essentially transgressive role in this book of the Odyssey. As I noted, in the Odyssey 4 passage Helen draws a link with Zeus’ control over men’s fate:

But the god Zeus gives different things at different times, good and evil, for he can do everything.

[...] It recalls the story of Zeus’ jars at Il.24.527–31, in which Zeus mixes fortunes for men from two jars, one of evils and one of blessings. Indeed, Helen herself mentions this ability of Zeus just a few lines later. Though she does not mention the jars explicitly, the power of Zeus is described in terms of gifts of good and evil.

Quando si entra nella vita degli altri si percorre un sentiero dove bisogna essere cauti, rispettosi e camminare in punta di piedi senza la pretesa  di fare quello che si vuole, perché un sentiero è un sentiero e non un terreno abbandonato.