One of the major themes in the Odyssey is the guest-host relationship. One can generally group the people Odysseus meets into “good” and “bad” based on how they receive him as a guest. It is easy to understand why hospitable hosts are “good” and rude hosts are “bad,” but it is sometimes hard to understand the levels of hospitality and rudeness Odysseus encounters. The extreme generosity of a few of his hosts is particularly hard to understand given how different it is from the attitude toward strangers in the Iliad. My own inability to comprehend so much generosity to strangers caused me to ignore the fact that the Phaiakians didn’t even know Odysseus' identity when they began showering him with gifts and marriage offers.

On the surface, the Iliad is a story about a war. As such, it paints a picture of a very adversarial society. To say the least, characters in the Iliad tend to treat foreigners less than hospitably. Typically, any first-time reader of the Odyssey has never entertained the notion that Homer may not have written both it and the Iliad. By assuming that Homer wrote both epics, we assume that they were written around the same time. Therefore, we think of the Iliad as the only other source of information about Hellenic culture during that time. The logical conclusion of this line of reasoning is the belief that society won’t be much different in the Odyssey than it is in the Iliad.

As I read books VII and VIII of the Odyssey, I was still thinking of society in terms of the Iliad. When Odysseus encounters the Phaiakians, they immediately welcome him into their lives. “But come, raise the stranger up and seat him on a silver-studded / chair, and tell your heralds to mix in more wine for us” (VII, 162-3). It is only after Alkinoös tells the other Phaiakians that they will provide Odysseus with proper transportation back to Ithaka “without annoyance or hardship [and] in happiness and speed” that Odysseus tells them even part of his story (VII, 192-4). The next day, without knowing anything that happened to Odysseus before coming to Kalypso’s island, Alkinoös offers him Nausikaa in marriage. “I would dower you with a house and properties, / if you stayed by your own good will” (VII, 314-5).

At some point, while reading about the great generosity of the Phaiakians, I simply ceased to be conscious of the fact that they had yet to learn the identity of Odysseus. Reading the Odyssey as someone who has already read the Iliad, I had subconsciously come to believe that people aren’t that kind unless they know to whom they are being kind. For some reason, I didn’t gain any insight into the situation while reading about Telemachos’ encounters with Nestor and Menelaos, both of whom are perfectly hospitable before learning that he is the son of Odysseus. It didn’t occur to me that the Phaiakians were entertaining a complete stranger until Alkinoös comes right out and asks Odysseus to “tell [him] the name by which [his] mother and father called [him]” (VIII, 550). In blindly assuming that one man wrote both books, or even that they were written within a single lifespan, we blind ourselves to the great differences between the two.

In the Iliad, a virtuous person is one who is skilled in fighting. Wealth is a sign of virtue, and people grow wealthy through geros, or the spoils of war. In the Odyssey, on the other hand, virtue comes from seafaring. Wealth is still a sign of virtue, and characters now gain wealth through seafaring and trade. When he comes home from his own wanderings, Menelaos brings with him “many possessions, the burden his ships carried” (III, 312). Comparing the magnificence of Menelaos’ palace in Book IV to the descriptions of geros found in the Iliad, we see that one is able to accumulate far more wealth through trade than through plunder. The change in social norms necessary to transfer virtue from warriors to merchants is great enough to call into question the claim that both epics were written within the same lifetime. One has to consider whether it is possible for that kind of change to happen in so short a time.