The Virtue Of Honor In Odysseus The King

You are going about the regular, mundane tasks of your everyday life at home, when a knock is heard from the front door. You open the door to find an exhausted, though well-dressed, middle-aged man, likely of some central-European descent. You stand before him, stunned silent, as he asks you if he might find something to eat, and a place to rest in your home. Should you call the police? Direct him to a neighbor’s house? Drive him to a nearby hotel? Allow him to use the bathroom and send him on his way? Or would you welcome him into your home, show him to your dining room, prepare a three course meal, introduce him to your family, and ready the spare-room, all before asking his story? —Who he is, where he is from, and why he has come to your home. If you lived around the Mediterranean Sea during the Bronze Age, as did …show more content…
The people in this culture knew that generous hospitality was to be expected, and some knew better than others how it could be used to manipulate an unsuspecting guest. After landing on an unfamiliar island, Odysseus’s men have the expectation of being treated well, and therefore put down their guard, paving the way for Circe to lull them into passivity and lure them into her clutches. “On thrones she seated them and lounging chairs, while she prepared a meal of cheese and barley and amber honey mixed with Pramnian wine, adding her own vile pinch, to make them lose desire or thought of the dear fatherland.” Circe knew that these men would trust her. Having the expectation of hospitality everywhere they went left these men with a false sense of trust, and allowed Circe to take advantage of that trust by breaking it. Although Circe was a goddess, she still displays the characteristic of human nature which is to see a means of getting your way, and at least contemplate taking it. Yet there is still another function of hospitality which reveals significant truths of human