Fall Digital Archive

Activity 1

Hopefully this group is treating their guest well... you never know who your guest could be

We’ve all had a guest over before at least once in our lives. In almost every culture, it is typical to bend over backwards to ensure the comfort of your guest. It is unlikely that you treated your guests well because you thought they might be a god. The practice of xenia is a set of hospitality rituals that originated in ancient Greece in which roles were placed on both the guest and the host. People did this partly to avoid the chances of accidentally upsetting a god in disguise, so it was easier to show kindness to everyone rather than figure out who was a god and who wasn't.

In comes Odysseus of Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey. Odysseus is this larger-than-life heroic figure who stumbles across the land of the cyclopes, foreign creatures. As someone who claims to be good at everything and well-versed in their culture, surely you’d think he knew the importance of xenia and would adhere to it. These cyclops were described as inhuman and brutish creatures. This raises the question: is xenia strictly for humans? Are non-humans not worthy of xenia? As stated previously, xenia is practiced out of fear of angering the gods. But, aren’t the gods non-humans themselves? The gods were definitely capable of shapeshifting into different creatures. What made Polyphemus, the specific cyclops that Odysseus angered in book nine, unworthy of xenia? Was it his physical otherness? Odysseus is harsh in his description of Polyphemus and his fellow cyclopes companions, calling them “lawless brutes” (9. 120). I mean, you don’t treat people differently just because they look different. Was it because of Odysseus’ sense of heroism? While there is no concrete answer as to why Homer violated xenia with Polyphemus, it is interesting to compare hospitality rituals in our own lives to that of ancient Greece.