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Tuesday
This past weekend, when Julia and I were visiting our grandchildren in Georgia, we discovered that Esmé, Etta, and Eden have all fallen in love with the new musical version of The Odyssey. It’s a dark show but, then again, it’s a dark story. As I listened to them talk about it, I thought of the difficult position in which Telemachus finds himself. It’s not unlike what Congressional Democrats and principled Congressional Republicans (if there are any left) are undergoing at the moment.
While, like Telemachus, they reside in the king’s palace and supposedly have power, they are actually in thrall to a group of thugs who are busy ransacking the place and gobbling up the wealth.
I’ve written in the past about how the words that Odysseus uses to summarize the suitors could be applied to Trump, Musk & Company. Odysseus delivers the assessment after throwing off his beggar’s disguise and addressing them directly:
You yellow dogs, you thought I’d never make it
home from the land of Troy. You took my house to plunder,
twisted my maids to serve your beds. You dared
bid for my wife while I was still alive.
Contempt was all you had for the gods who rule wide heaven,
contempt for what men say of you hereafter.
Your last hour has come. You die in blood.
Before Odysseus returns, however, Telemachus must figure out other ways to resist. If he shows himself too bold, they will kill him, and indeed they attempt to ambush his ship as he returns from a voyage. We therefore watch him thrashing around impotently, somewhat like Democrats Chuck Schumer in the Senate and Hakeem Jeffries in the House.
Telemachus, who at this point is 19 or 20, turns to the general populace for help, calling for a counsel of the island’s elders. Appealing to their sense of what is right, he describes what the suitors are doing to his property:
No; these men spend their days around our house
killing our beeves and sheep and fatted goats.
carousing, soaking up our good dark wine,
not caring what they do. They squander everything.
We have no strong Odysseus to defend us…
Then he admits his impotence:
and as to putting up a fight ourselves—
we’d only show our incompetence in arms.
Expel them, yes, if I only had the power;
the whole thing’s out of hand, insufferable.
My house is being plundered: is this courtesy?
Where is your indignation? Where is your shame?
While he gets their sympathy, however, that’s all he can get and he ends by feeling sorry for himself:
And in hot anger now he threw the staff to the ground,
his eyes grown bright with tears. A wave of sympathy
ran through the crowd, all hushed…
Those assembled are too cowed to come to his aid, just as Congress is cowed by Trump, Musk and MAGA. When the old men witness what appears to be an omen and interpret it–a pair of fearsome eagles could represent Odysseus and Telemachus wreaking vengeance upon the plunderers—the suitors will have none of it. Eurýmakhos, for instance, responds to the interpreter in words reminiscent of Trump threatening to send people who criticize him to El Salvador’s notorious prison:
You should have perished with him—
then we’d be spared this nonsense in assembly,
as good as telling Telemakhos to rage on;
do you think you can gamble on a gift from him?
Here is what I foretell, and it’s quite certain:
if you, with what you know of ancient lore,
encourage bitterness in this young man,
it means, for him, only the more frustration
he can do nothing whatever with two eagles—
and as for you, old man, we’ll fix a penalty
that you will groan to pay.
The same thing happens when another of the old men, Mentor, speaks up to complain about the assembly’s inaction. First, Mentor:
I find it less revolting that the suitors
carry their malice into violent acts;
at least they stake their lives
when they go pillaging the house of Odysseus—
their lives upon it, he will not come again.
What sickens me is to see the whole community
sitting still, and never a voice or a hand raised
against them—a mere handful compared with you.
To which another suitor, Leókritos, points out that, even were Odysseus to return, he wouldn’t stand a chance against the young men. It’s like Trump saying that, even if the courts rule against him, he’s the one that has all the power:
“Mentor, what mischief are you raking up?
Will this crowd risk the sword’s edge over a dinner?
Suppose Odysseus himself indeed
came in and found the suitors at his table:
he might be hot to drive them out. What then?
…he’d only bring down
abject death on himself against those odds.
Having laid out the situation, Leókritos then essentially tells the assembled old men to get lost—”Now let all present go about their business”—on which note all “were quick to end the parley.” Telemachus may have called the meeting but the suitors end it and return to the house of Odysseus.
Unfortunately, we have no Odysseus to come save us. But we can learn from him the importance of being strategic. Odysseus figures out who he can count on as allies and whom he should see as enemies. He also figures out which venue gives him the greatest chance of success.
And in the end, he overcomes the odds and reestablishes legitimate rule. No wonder my grandchildren like the story.
