1. Rose, G., ‘The Unfriendly Phaeacians’, TAPA 100 (1969), 387–406Google Scholar at 388f., gives a list of modern critics who are in general agreement with C. Whitman’s assessment of Skheria as a ‘windless paradise’, and discusses their various attempts to explain away the more troubling aspects of their existence, particularly the potential hostility to strangers referred to by Nausikaa and Athene (6.273–85; 7.32f.). Rose convincingly argues that this potential lack of hospitality is neither typical of the treatment of strangers in the Odyssey nor an aberration owing to the Phaiakian commoners’ unfamiliarity with the aristocratic ideals of xenia. Fenik, B. (Studies in the Odyssey [Wiesbaden 1974], 126–30Google Scholar) discusses the threat posed by the suspicious Arete, while Most, G. (The Structure and Function of Odysseus’ Apologoi’, TAPA 119 [1989], 15–30)Google Scholar emphasises the need for Odysseus’ tales to win over his potentially threatening audience.

2. Vidal-Naquet, P., The Black Hunter (Baltimore 1986 [orig. Paris 1981]), 26–29Google Scholar; Clay, J.S., The Wrath of Athena (Princeton 1983), 125–32Google Scholar; Most (n.1 above), 24–30.

3. Lévi-Strauss, C., “The Structural Study of Myth’, in T.A. Sebeok (ed.), Myth: A Symposium (Bloomington 1955), 81–106Google Scholar at 105. Cf. also Walters, K.R., ‘Another Showdown at the Cleft Way: An Inquiry into Classicists’ Criticism of Lévi-Strauss’ Myth Analysis’, CW 77 (1984), 337–51Google Scholar at 351: ‘It is a key feature of this paradigmatic method that it collapses the apparent history or time-extension of myth to a synchronous moment.’ While small, discrete units of myth must be read syntagmatically (e.g., the throwing of a spear logically precedes the wound it inflicts; fathers beget children, not vice versa), their concatenation into narrative chains should not be read according to real-world notions of cause and effect (motivations for events are generally invented post hoc on the narrative level, while extended genealogies provide particularly compelling examples of synchronic repetition). Peradotto’s, J. enlightening discussion of Erikhthonios (‘Oedipus and Erichthonius: Some Observations on Paradigmatic and Syntagmatic Order’, Arethusa 10 [1977], 85–101)Google Scholar places too much emphasis on the apparently diachronic structure of the myth and the putative increase in fertility in the subsequent generations of the Athenian royal line; cf. Walters’ counter-arguments, 344 n.22 and 349f.—The oft-noted time-lessness of archaic treatments of myth, and in particular Pindar’s tendency toward synchronic treatment of victors and their mythic forebears, show that non-linear readings of myth were not foreign to Greek consciousness, particularly in the Archaic period.

4. I have chosen examples from four of the better-known autochthonous traditions: those of Thebes, Athens, Aigina and Israel (on the complex question of the relation between Near Eastern and Greek myth, see most recently the discussion of Mondi, R., ‘Greek Mythic Thought in the Light of the Near East’, in L. Edmunds [ed.], Approaches to Greek Myth [Baltimore 1990], 142–98Google Scholar; for possible Near Eastern influence in the Phaiakis, see p.8 below). The examples given are by no means exhaustive.—For the modified autochthony of Aiakos, see Carnes, J., The Uses of Aiakos: Myth and Politics in Pindar’s Aiginetan Odes (Savage MD 1994)Google Scholar; also Brelich, A. (Gli eroi greci [Rome 1958], 138)Google Scholar, who classes Aiakos with such other cryptoautochthons as Ogygos and Pelasgos, observing that autochthony ‘si esprime indirettamente, per allusioni, per varianti equivalent o sopravvive come traccia di una concezione non più direttamente documentata.’ The relative paucity and haphazardness of our sources, particularly for the myths of smaller states, has no doubt deprived us of more direct assertions of autochthony. Athens’ claim to exclusive autochthony (cf. inter alia Hdt. 7.161; Thuc. 2.36.1; Lys. 2.17) may also, given the cultural dominance of Athens in later antiquity, have led to the devaluation or suppression of non-Athenian autochthonous traditions. Moreover, our mythic model predicts that any given tradition will negate as well as assert its autochthony (cf. Lùvi-Strauss [n.3 above], 90–92), a factor which we may expect to have further reduced the number of instances of directly attested, literal autochthony which have come down to us.

5. In addition to the association of autochthony with a Golden Age, autochthons are often depicted as culture heroes and prōtoi heuretai (Dem. 60.5 and Plato Menex. 237E-238A credit Athens with the invention of agriculture; Pliny NH 7.197 lists other such discoveries). Autochthony was also central to the Athenians’ self-representational program, including their claim that, not having expelled the previous inhabitants of their land, they were the most just of all Greek states (Dem. 60.5; Lys. 2.17).

6. Infertility: Laios and Aigeus. Lack of male heirs: the Athenians Aktaios and Kekrops. Difficult succession: Oidipous; Aiakos; the Athenians Kranaos, Amphiktyon and Erikhthonios; Adam. Fratricidal strife: the Spartoi; Eteokles and Polyneikes; Peleus, Telamon and Phokos; Abel and Cain. Father-son conflict: Laios/Oidipous; Oidipous/Eteokles and Polyneikes; Aiakos/Peleus and Telamon.

7. In a closed system there is no sanctioned outlet for sexuality or aggression: no exchange of women, no warfare, no athletic contests. Thus we find incest and deadly competition among males (who are, of course, the only significant figures in the anti-female world of autochthony). Freud’s theory of the primal horde and totemic father murder (Totem and Taboo, tr. J. Strachey [Standard Edition, London 1953], 125–61Google ScholarPubMed), although discredited as a description of real-world social development, has some validity as a description of the fictive society of Greek autochthony myth. Freud’s ontogeny-phylogeny equation is reversed: the imaginary phytogeny of the myth reflects (although imperfectly) the real ontogeny of its authors. See also J. Carnes, ‘The Ends of the Earth: Fathers, Ephebes and Wild Women in Nemean 4 and 5’, forthcoming in Arethusa.

8. Cf. the exiles of Oidipous; Polyneikes; Peleus and Telamon; Cain. The incest problem is insoluble within a closed system: the descendants of autochthons must break out, or be cast out, to establish marriage exchange with other peoples (even in cases, such as that of Cain, where the existence of other peoples is logically precluded on the narrative level).

9. The apparently paradoxical closeness of the Phaiakians and Kyklopes is alluded to by Alkinoos, who equates the peoples in terms of their closeness to the gods, who ou ti katakrup-tousin, epei sphisin egguthen eimen,/hōs per Kuklōpes te kai agria phula Gigantōn (‘do not conceal themselves at all, since we are very close to them, as are the Kyklopes and the savage tribes of the Giants’, 205f.). Clay (n.2 above, 125–32), expanding upon a suggestion made by Vidal-Naquet (n.2 above, 27), demonstrates how the two peoples are related by their opposition to the heroic world of Odysseus in terms of agriculture, technology and exchange.

10. Di. Sic. 4.72; Hellanikos ap. Steph. Byz. s.v. Phaiax; Schol. ad Od. 13.130.

11. The Kerkyraians in historical times identified their island with Skheria (see, e.g., Thuc. 1.25; 3.70). Kerkyra, Aigina and Salamis were also linked as Asopidai and their native cities seem to have shared certain ways of appropriating the Homeric past; for the development of the Asopidai, see West, M.L., The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (Oxford 1985), 162–64Google Scholar.

12. The Phaiakians are also isolated by the wall built by Nausithoos (6.9). Although wall-building was a necessary part of the foundation of a city both in real life and in narrative, it came (not surprisingly) to be associated with autochthons; cf. Aiakos (Pi. Ol. 8), Ogygos (Apldr. 3.6.6; Eur. Phoen. 1113; Festus 178), and the so-called Kyklopean walls (Pi. fr. 169; Bacchyl. 10.77). In wall-building the isolation of autochthonous communities meets the role of their founders as prōtoi heuretai.—Citations from the Odyssey are from T.W. Allen’s OCT; translations are my own.

13. Rose (n.1 above) gives a good account of the specifics of xenia-violation in the Phaiakis; on the questioning of Odysseus as a result of formulaic variation rather than rudeness, see, however, Webber, A., “The Hero Tells his Name: Formula and Variation in the Phaeacian Episode of the Odyssey’, TAPA 119 (1989), 1–13Google Scholar.

14. Odysseus’ suspicion of even the polite request of Laodamas (143–57), coupled with his deprecation of guest-host competition (204–11), suggest that the agonistic nature of athletic contests makes them inappropriate within the context of xenia.

15. Shewan, A., ‘The Genealogy of Arete and Alkinoos’, CR 39 (1925), 145f.Google Scholar, argues for tokēes in an extended sense elsewhere in the poems, most notably in the phrase polis ēde tokēes. While the word here clearly must mean ‘ancestors’, its primary and most obvious meaning, ‘parents’, will first suggest itself to listeners. The overall impression of incest is strengthened, as Vidal-Naquet (n.2 above, 28) observes, by the homology between the Aiolians and Phaiakians: both provide Odysseus with supernatural pompē, during the course of which he falls asleep; each society is isolated and devoted to feasting; and each is separated from the outside world by bronze walls. We need not think, with Murray, G. (Rise of the Greek Epic [Oxford 1924], 125f.)Google Scholar, of bowdlerised incest, but rather of a partial assimilation of the Phaiakians to real-world social norms, an indication of their transitional status.

16. Free and easy intercourse with the gods is often part of a pre-lapsarian Golden Age fantasy. Cf. the shared feasting of gods and humans in the Prometheus myth, as well as the changing nature of divine-human relations in Genesis: while God speaks directly to Adam and Eve without any suggestion that such an occurrence is remarkable (3.8–23), Jacob, during his wrestling match (32.30), is amazed to be able to look at God’s face and still live.

17. Most (n.1 above), 23–30; Redfield, J.M., “The Economic Man’, in C.A. Rubino and C.W. Shelmerdine (eds.), Approaches to Homer (Austin 1983), 241Google Scholar.

18. Redfield’s assessment: ‘In hypo-entertainment the man away from home is treated as if he were not a man at all; in hyper-entertainment one fails to recognise that his home is not here but elsewhere. Both failures are somehow the same; the extremes meet. That is why the frivolity of hyper-culture has latent in it the savagery of hypo-culture’ (n.l7 above, 242). Most, in examining the structure of the apologos, has noted the excessive emphasis on hyper- and hypo-xenia and its expression through the extremes of cannibalism and marriage: ‘What could missing one’s train possibly have to do with falling among cannibals?’ (n.1 above, 24). He concludes that ‘the explanation for Odysseus’ adventures is obvious: they confront him with the two extreme versions of bad hospitality, exaggerated to nightmarish proportions and repeated with hallucinatory obsessiveness’ (n.1 above, 25). Both Redfield and Most make valuable progress in theorising the cultural assumptions of the Phaiakis and apologos, yet fail adequately to recognise the determining role of mythic logic. The obsessiveness of Odysseus’ adventures is typical of myth’s need to repeat (and its intimate connection with childhood fantasy), while the extremes of hyper- and hypo-culture meet because they serve as contrary terms in a dialectic concerning the development of human society.

19. Redfield, connecting their seafaring with xenia, points out that ‘entertainment, properly, involves generalised exchange; the same person is at one time guest, at another time host…. Their voyaging does not make them into guests, since their magic ships can make the longest voyage in a single day’ (n.17 above, 242).

20. Fenik notes the ‘strong, finely articulated erotic element’ of Odysseus’ encounter with Nausikaa (n.1 above, 127); Most (n.1 above, 27f. nn.60 and 61) gives a list of eight such hints, with Alkinoos’ assertion that he would be glad to have Odysseus as a son-in-law (7.311–14) capping the series.

21. Woodhouse, W.J., The Composition of Homer’s Odyssey (Oxford 1930), 64Google Scholar, argues that Homer has ‘sadly mutilated and dislocated’ an older story of a stranger’s winning of the king’s daughter. Krischer, T., ‘Phaäken und Odyssee’, Hermes 113 (1985), 9–21Google Scholar, modifies Woodhouse’s thesis to posit that Homer has adapted the story of the contest for Penelope to Nausikaa, creating in Skheria a ‘Gegenbild von Ithaka’ (19). I would assess the relation not as specific borrowing from or conflation of older stories, but rather the Odyssey’s drawing on the common stock of Greek myths concerning the winning or bestowing of a daughter (several of which, such as the contests for Atalanta and Hippodameia, exhibit untraditional gender relations and queered exchange).

22. Fenik (n.1 above), however, makes a strong case for Arete’s questioning of Odysseus (7.233–39) as being sufficient to fulfil the earlier predictions of her importance in the stranger’s reception. There are also contradictory impulses at work here: as Segal, C. points out (‘The Phaeacians and the Symbolism of Odysseus’ Return’, Arion 1.4 [1962], 17–64)Google Scholar, the Phaiakians function on narrative and symbolic levels as a transitional society, one which is a necessary ‘halfway house’ in preparing Odysseus for his return to Ithaka. Skheria, while it may exhibit numerous features of the fantastic societies of the apologos, must nevertheless be a recognisably normal enough society to effect Odysseus’ return.

23. Hippolyte’s attempted seduction of Peleus (Pi. Nem. 4.54–58 and 5.26–34) occurs in a typically autochthonous context: Peleus has gone into exile for the killing of his half-brother Phokos. Cf. the similar attempt by Stheneboia on Bellerophon, in exile for the killing of his brother (Apldr. 2.3.1 and Tz. Lye. 17). On the relation between aggressive female sexuality and autochthony myth, see Carnes (n.7 above).

24. As is the case with Hippolyte and Stheneboia, we may suspect that the traps set for Odysseus by women owe not a little to projection, and are perhaps more realistically described as inverted temptations. On the temptation offered by Kirke, see Segal, C., ‘Circean Temptations: Homer, Vergil, Ovid’, TAPA 99 (1968), 419–42Google Scholar.

25. Cf. Vidal-Naquet (n.2 above), 27f.; Redfield (n.17 above), 241f.

26. The Homeric audience will of course hear of Nausikaa’s reception of Odysseus first, and will not have the Laistrygonian episode as a direct model; I mean to suggest rather that each incident draws upon a mythic typology of encounters with out-of-place women which would be known to the audience and which would imbue each encounter with a sense of unease. Such unease is largely allayed on the narrative level by the friendliness and charm of Nausikaa (as well as by the poet’s assurances that Odysseus will find safe homecoming from Skheria [5.31–42]), yet as Most points out (n.1 above, 27–30) a certain amount of tension concerning Odysseus’ safe return is maintained throughout the Phaiakis. Similarly the military and predatory imagery of Odysseus’ initial encounter with Nausikaa highlights the awkwardness and danger of the situation.

27. As such it forms the cornerstone of civilisation, of culture as opposed to nature: ‘It is no exaggeration, then, to say that exogamy is the archetype of all the manifestations based on reciprocity, and that it provides the fundamental and immutable rule ensuring the existence of the group as a group’ (Lévi-Strauss, C., The Elementary Structures of Kinship, tr J.H. Bell et al. [Boston 1969], 481Google Scholar).

28. Similarly ambiguous in their relation to the gods are the Kyklopes, whom Alkinoos likens to the Phaiakians in their closeness to the gods (7.205f.), and who trust in the gods (pepoithotes athanatoisin, 9.107), yet express their contempt for them (ou gar Kuklōpes Dios aigiokhou alegousin / oude theōn makarōn, epei ē polu pherteroi eimen, ‘for the Kyklopes do not care about aegis-bearing Zeus, nor the other immortal gods, since we are far stronger than they are’, 9.275f.). Again, the simultaneity of opposites (favour and defiance) is problematic only on the narrative level.

29. The precise nature of Poseidon’s threat—burying the Phaiakians under a mountain or cutting them off from the sea?—is not entirely clear. As Peradotto argues (Man in the Middle Voice [Princeton 1990], 77f.Google Scholar n.l8), at Od. 8.511 amphikaluptō seems to mean ‘enclose’ rather than ‘cover’ (the city of Troy encloses the Trojan Horse). In other contexts, however, the verb clearly implies covering (as at Il. 8.331 [= 13.420], used of protecting a soldier with a shield). The apparent ambiguity may in fact be the result of spatial perspective: the walls of both cities and houses (Od. 4.618 [= 14.118]) are said amphikaluptein those within, and reluctance to see the former as covering is due to an insistence that the covering be complete in three dimensions; yet the cover provided by a shield is not complete. On the semantics of kaluptō, and in particular the difficulty of interpreting its use in various constructions, see Dyer, R., ‘The Use of Kaluptō in Homer’, Glotta 42 (1964), 29–38Google Scholar. In attempting to decide the issue on non-semantic grounds, Peradotto argues that the shutting off of the Phaiakians would ‘seem more reasonable by the norms of a verisimilitude that sees divine “justice” in terms of equivalent retaliation.’ Non-equivalent and massive retaliation, however, is never far from the gods’ hearts, as shown by the destruction of Troy; for the Phaiakians we might rather expect the punishment appropriate within the context of myth, where there are numerous precedents for the chastisement of uppity autochthons. This would seem to argue for (without demonstrating conclusively) the threat of burial. Either punishment, of course, has the effect of returning the Phaiakians to their original state of isolation, quashing once and for all any notions of a smooth transition from autochthony to normal society.

30. Lévi-Strauss (n.3 above), 90–92; for a defence of the method and a discussion of the ‘Potiphar’s Wife’ motif as an inversion of Oidipous, see Walters (n.3 above), 342f. Inversion wreaks havoc with narrative, but since myth has no real chronology or cause and effect, there is a functional equivalence between an assertion that stones become humans and one that humans become stones. While the basic structure of the myth may remain the same, its social or literary function will naturally influence the selection of particular variants.

31. Niobe and Lot’s Wife, like the Phaiakians, are punished for transgressions against the gods (a feature common in the narratives of many ‘downward’ transformations; cf. Ov. Met. passim). Note also the transformation of Aglauros, daughter of Kekrops, into stone as punishment for interfering with Hermes’ desire for her sister Herse (Paus. 1.18.2f.). Analogous is the transformation of Kadmos and Harmonia into snakes (Eur. Bacchae 1330–43; Apldr. 3.5.4; said by Ovid [Met. 4.563–603] to be a punishment for the killing of Ares’ sacred snake), which inverts the transformation of the dragon’s teeth into the Spartoi.

32. Besides his association with the volcanic Lemnos and Aitna (Callim. Diam. 47; Verg. Aen. 8.416–22), his lameness is an index of his autochthony: ‘In mythology it is a universal character of men born from the earth that at the moment they emerge from the depth, they either cannot walk or do it clumsily’ (Lévi-Strauss [n.3 above], 91). On the phenomenon of limping heroes in general, see Brelich, A., ‘Les Monosandales’, La nouvelle Clio 7–9 (1955-7), 469–84Google Scholar, who notes the primitive, pre-social character of limping and one-shoed heroes. There is perhaps an element of sexual symbolism here as well.

33. The Greek and non-Greek evidence is analysed by Faraone, C., ‘Hephaestus the Magician’, GRBS 28 (1987), 255–80Google Scholar. The most important parallels for their connection with autochthony myth are: 1. Tantalos’ theft of a Hephaistos-made golden dog from Pandareus (Sch. ad Od. 19.518; Ant. Lib. 36); 2. Hephaistos’ gift of the bronze giant Talos to Minos (Apldr. 1.140–42; Ap. Rhod. 4.1639–93; Sch. ad Plato Rep. 337A). Both Tantalos and Talos exhibit the tl- root which elsewhere has chthonic connections (Atlas; Telamon); Tantalos suffers the chthonic punishment of being buried under a mountain; Talos’ vulnerable ankle may be a variant on autochthonic lameness, and his habit of scorching intruders with fire further identifies him as a chthonic monster. The existence of automata on Rhodes (Pi. Ol. 7.95 and scholia ad loc.) may also be relevant, especially in light of the island’s vegetal birth (Pi. Ol. 7.69f.).

34. On the relation of mythic background and narrative foreground, see most recently Slatkin, L., The Power of Thetis (Los Angeles 1992)Google Scholar, and Nagy, G., ‘Mythological Exemplum in Homer’, in R. Hexter and D. Selden (eds.), Innovations of Antiquity (New York 1992), 311–31Google Scholar. For the Odyssey as a ‘dialogic’ text maintaining tension among its component parts without giving absolute authority to any, see Peradotto (n.29 above), esp. 32–93. We may add to Peradotto’s discussion of Kalypso in light of Bakhtin’s typology of narrative (53–56) the observation that the autochthonous Phaiakians also represent a ‘centrifugal’ voice—one which challenges the norms of human (and divine) society—and which, by virtue of being abandoned by both hero and poet at 13.187, remains in unresolved conflict with the centripetal force of the remainder of the poem.

35. For the persistence of mythic habits of thought among even the most sceptical ancient thinkers, see Veyne, P., Les Grecs ont-ils cru à leurs mythes? (Paris 1983), 52–68Google Scholar.

36. The extent to which narrative and mythic ways of understanding conflict and interact needs further investigation, and will probably, given the paucity of the evidence, always remain difficult to perceive. I would suggest, however, that the length and complexity of the Phaiakis allows it to be devoted more fully to mythic logic: the contradictions generated by myth’s tendency to assert both A and non-A are relatively inconspicuous in the midst of Odysseus’ tension-filled reception and fantastic apologos.

37. The notion of myth acting not merely as a fossilised substratum but as an active, generative principle of the text may be disturbing, insofar as it runs counter to our notions of poetic autonomy and creativity (as does the acknowledgment of the Homeric poems as part of an oral tradition). Yet not only is such a decentering of the author consistent with the mainstream of modern critical tradition, but it is implied rather strongly in the Odyssey itself. As Peradotto has shown (n.29 above, 94–170), the text emphasises on numerous occasions that even the smallest and most seemingly fixed units of speech, such as proper names (and with them individual identity), are socially determined.

38. For a synopsis of earlier approaches, see Most (n.1 above), 14–19.

39. See also Most’s, ‘The Stranger’s Stratagem: Self-Disclosure and Self-Sufficiency in Greek Culture’, JHS 109 (1989), 119–43Google Scholar.

40. Certain questions concerning the motivation of individual elements within the tale (e.g., the wisdom of telling the Phaiakians of Poseidon’s wrath given the prophecy recounted by Alkinoos at 8.563–69) may now strike us as ill-formulated. The mythic imperative to depict a consistent world co-extensive with that of Skheria will outweigh, both for Odysseus and Homer, the problems occasioned by minor narrative inconsistencies.

41. See Peradotto’s admirable discussion (n.29 above, 94–163) of the poem’s obsession with questions of naming and identity.

42. Autochthonous traditions typically founder on the question of succession (note the absence of heirs for Aiakos; the long list of autochthonous Attic kings; the daughters of Kadmos). With myth failing to provide a clear answer, ad hoc solutions, such as that of Euripides’ Ion, were cobbled together.

43. On the individual psychological symbolism of transitions in sleep, see Segal (n.22 above, 45f.), who emphasises from a different perspective the irreconcilability of the two worlds.

44. The fate of the Phaiakians, the occasion for suspense and speculation on the narrative and historical levels (given their later association with Kerkyra), is of curiously little significance on the level of myth, where their two fates are functionally equivalent. If destroyed, they suffer the fate appropriate to rebellious autochthons; if cut off (either by their own renunciation of pompē or by Poseidon) they relapse into isolation, in either case affirming the irreconcilability of autochthony and civilisation.—Mythic logic may thus play a role in the motivation of the Phaiakians’ fate. Since myth does not demand a resolution of the ambiguity, the poet is free to structure the narrative according to rhetorical or historical considerations.