I just finished reading Homer’s Odyssey, an ancient Greek epic poem published circa 700 BCE, and came across an interesting tidbit in the text. The poem follows Odysseus’ journey back to his home in Ithaca following the Trojan war – a central event in Greek Mythology.
His ships get blown off-course, and long story short, his only hope to make it back home to Ithaca is to head to the islands of the dead, and talk to the ghosts he finds there to find a viable return path.
When he arrives there, he gets instructed by the spirit of the seer, Tiresias, who states that if Odysseus and his men resist killing and eating cattle which belong to the god of the sun, they will all make it home alive. However, if they do consume the cattle, the seer states, then Odysseus’ men are fated to die, and Odysseus will return home to a dire situation after spending many more years at sea.
Spoiler alert - Odysseus’ men do kill the cattle of the sun god, and Odyessus does return home to a dire situation: a group of suitors have been feasting in his keep, draining his resources.
While Tiresias’ first instructions are central to the plot of the Odyssey, it is Tiresias’ last instruction to Odysseus which intrigues me. Tiresias states that Odysseus must first set things in order at home, and after that, start travelling again:
“Go forth once more, you must… carry your well-planed oar until you come to a race of people who know nothing of the sea, whose food is never seasoned with salt, strangers all to ships with their crimson prows and long slim oars, wings that make ships fly. And here is your sign– unmistable, clear, so clear you cannot miss it: when another traveler falls in with you and calls that weight across your shoulder a fan to winnow grain, then plant your bladed, balanced oar in the earth, and sacrifice fine beasts to the lord god of the sea, Poseidon (11.138-149)”
The misidentification of Odysseus’ oar for a winnowing tool for grain is a unique omen. Odysseus is meant to interpret this as a sign that he has traveled sufficiently far enough from the sea and has reached the opportune moment to make a sacrifice to Poseidon, a god who caused him much misfortune by blowing his ships off-course.
Interestingly, the visual of an oar stuck in the ground does appear for a different reason earlier in the poem - just stanzas before Tiresias’ instructions to Odysseus, the spirit of Odysseus’ shipmate Elpenor, who perished on the goddess Circe’s island, asks Odysseus to recover his body, and make a burial mound for him on the coast and mark the mound with the oar he rowed with during his time on Odysseus’ ship.
To Elpenor, the oar is representative of his life rowing at sea alongside crewmates - a life which is both brutal, and full of comradery. To both Elpenor and Odysseus, the oar planted in the ground represents finality, the final stroke at the end of a long journey at sea.