(The Cretan Lies) provide an interesting corrective to the heroic code as presented by Sarpedon in the Iliad. That code is built on the interplay of privileges and obligations, with the availability of wealth and luxury goods (including meat) for participation in a prestige economy of gift exchange taken for granted. Odysseus' Cretan Lies show a very different picture. This is a world not of established heroes, whose first preoccupation is kleos and the need to live up to the reputation of their fathers, but of restless adventurers and self-made men. For these figures wealth is not to be taken for granted, but has to be actively pursued, and acquired with ingenuity and resourcefulness. Metis is for these people in the margins of the heroic world more important than bie, mind more import than might. In this connection, Olga Levaniouk has recently drawn attention to the peculiar way in which Odysseus casts himself in the Cretan Lies, in particular the one he tells Penelope. In the tale to Eumaios he is the bastard son of a rich Cretan, Castor son of Hylax, and does not receive much of the inheritance; and in the tale to Penelope he is the younger son of Deucalion son of Minos, with Idomeneus as the older, and "better", brother. In the second case Odysseus significantly names himself Aithon, "Burning", a name signifying unfulfilled desire and need for adventurous action.
In this important way the traits of the disenfranchised younger or illegitimate family member come to typify Odysseus king of Ithaca himself, even though he is an only, not a younger son. But he is like a younger brother to heroes with much larger and more centrally located estates. Odysseus is the quintessential self-made man, smart, gain-seeking and resourceful.
The Meaning of Meat and the Structure of the Odyssey, by Egbert J. Bakker
