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Odysseus and the Return of the Swallow

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

E. K. Borthwick
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Extract

In an article in CP 80 (1985), 33–34, entitled ‘Odyssey 21.411: the Swallow's Call', Luis A. Losada drew attention to the apparent oddity that the sound of Odysseus' bow-string, as he twanged it after stringing it in the presence of the suitors, is compared to the note of the swallow, since, for the most part, the swallow's twittering cry, in terms of sound quality, is traditionally associated in much of later Greek literature with either barbarian unintelligibility, loquacity, or sometimes lamentation – none of which is at all appropriate here. He suggests instead that a ‘thematic connotation’ was alluded to by Homer – the migratory cycle and vernal return of the swallow, and concludes that ‘the swallow and its call might well be called a quintessential metaphor for the idea of returning…No more appropriate bird call exists – the singing bowstring heralds the hero'sreturn.’

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , April 1988 , pp. 14 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1988

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References

Notes

1. Both the lamentatory and barbarian associations of the swallow (first attested in Hesiod and Aeschylus respectively) seem to be chiefly the product of the gruesome Attic Procne-Philomela-Tereus legend, which differs from the earlier myth alluded to in Od. 19.518ff., and which tarnished the otherwise generally favourable swallow lore.

2. See M. L. West on Hes. Op. 569, where this phrase's only other occurrence refers to the return of the swallow in spring.

3. Robinson, Philip S., The Poet's Birds (London, 1883), pp. 439–40Google Scholar comments that in the western tradition the swallow is especially ‘the bird of the hearth’. Tate, Peter, Swallows (London, 1981), p. 75Google Scholar reports that the same is true at the other extremity of its migratory life in southern Africa swallows are called intaka zomzi (birds of the home). For the swallow as friend of man, Aelian (N.A. 1.52) quotes lines from the Odyssey (15.72–74) about giving hospitality to a guest and speeding him on parting.

4. Note too the irony in Eur. H.F. of Heracles' return to the domestic hearth at 523 to save his family, only to kill them subsequently by the very eschara (922ff.).

5. The exceptional embargo on swallows in the house contained in the Pythagorean dictum χελιδόνα οἰκία μή ςέχου variously interpreted, was doubtless due to the sage's dislike of their interruption of his treasured silence.

6. For a modern example of swallows' access to the house itself even in colder climates, see Nicholson, E. M., Birds and Man (London, 1951), p. 210: ‘at one ancient house near Oxford where windows and doors were open throughout the summer, swallows regularly flew through the large hall.’ Tate (op. cit., p. 51) reports that during a cold English autumn in 1979 ‘swallows hurled themselves at house windows in East Kent, apparently in an attempt to get inside out of the cold’Google Scholar.

7. Cf. Oppian, , Hal. 5.579–86Google Scholar, Plut, . Mor. 928fGoogle Scholar.

8. It is true that Artemidorus also has a less favourable interpretation of swallow dreams, that they may presage θάνατον ώρων σωμάτων καί πένθος καί λύπην μεγάλην but, although the sequel in the Odyssey produced 108 such deaths, this does not seem to me such apposite symbolism as the Odysseus-Penelope conjugal reunion.

9. A Study of Bird Song (Oxford, 1963), pp. 136, 159Google Scholar.

10. By a curious mis-recollection, Amory, Ann (‘The Reunion of Odysseus and Penelope’ in Essays on the Odyssey, ed. Taylor, C. W., Indiana, 1963, p. 116)Google Scholar, attributes the swallow note, not to the moment of stringing, but of actual shooting – ‘the first arrow sings like a swallow’. This comparison is indeed not uncommon – cf. Shakespeare 2 Hen. iv 4.3.36 (Falstaff), ‘Do you think me a swallow, an arrow, or a bullet?’; Longfellow, Hiawatha xxi. 72, ‘Homeward shoots the arrowy swallow’ Mary Howitt, ‘The martin and the swallow/are God Almighty' bow and arrow’. In D'Annunzio's L'innocente (see below), swallows chase through the air ‘with the speed of arrows’, and ‘with a sharp cry, like arrows from a bow’Google Scholar.

11. For the association of the αϊθυια with Athena, see Thompson, D'Arcy, Glossary of Greek Birds (Oxford, 1936), p. 29Google Scholar.

12. Both αίϒυπίος and φήνη, said by Aelian (N.A. 12.4) to be sacred to Athena, are noted for ϕιλοστοργία (see D'Arcy Thompson, s.vv.). For στοργή as the mot juste for Odysseus and his family, see schol. Il. 2.292. Gilbert White, in his account of hirundines nesting in chimneys, twice cites the word to characterize the natural propensities of swallows (Natural History of Selborne, Letters 18–22).

13. Whether it is actually a bird name, or refers to a bird leaving the hall through the πή which lets out the smoke from the hearth, the swallow is obviously the appropriate bird to think of here. Boraston (loc. cit., p. 245) observes: ‘The swallow is mentioned thrice by Homer, and always in the house of Ulysses; no other bird is made to appear there, and the swallow occurs nowhere else.’

14. Similes in the Homeric Poems (Göttingen, 1977), p.139Google Scholar.

15. Die Antike Tierwelt (Leipzig, 1909), ii. 115Google Scholar.

16. According to de Vries, A. (Dictionary of Symbols and Imagery, London, 1974, p. 449)Google Scholar, swallows were sacrificed to the Lares because of their nests in the houses they guarded, and, to Tate, (op. cit., p. 69), those injuring them were punished because they were sacred to the Penates. In neither case is a reference for the statement given, and I should be glad if any reader of this article can provide themGoogle Scholar.

17. Users of D'Arcy Thompson's Glossary may like to correct the mysterious reference (p. 317) to Theoph. Samos. (without numerical location). I am grateful to Mr Nigel Wilson for identifying the correct passage for me.

18. Birds with Human Souls: a Guide to Bird Symbolism (Tennessee, 1978), p. 165Google Scholar. Unfortunately, she cites no references, but doubtless much derives from famous swallow references in Ier. 8.7 and Ps. 84.4. Ambrose (Hex. 5.17, vol. 14 Migne) devotes a chapter de hirundinis sedulitate, industria et pietate in filios.

19. Staunton's emendation love for lov'd is convincing. It is not agreed whether Shakespeare's martlet here is the house-martin or the swift, but the former in particular shares many of the characteristics of the swallow in traditional beliefs. The association of swallows and temples is of course familiar in classical literature – e.g. Ar. Lys. 774, Eur. Ion 171, Clem.Alex. Protr. 4.52, and cf. Ps. 84, quoted above, on the swallow finding a nest for herself in the tabernacles and altars of the Lord.

20. It is incidentally curious that the lines following this song describe the reaction of the listeners, who ‘like the Ithacensian suitors in old times/stared with great eyes, and laughed with alien lips’ – an allusion, of course, to the Theoclymenus prophecy of Od. 20.347, but the context of which closely parallels the description of the suitors' reaction to the stringing of the bow and its swallow note at 21.412.

21. I am indebted to my colleague Brian Phillips for the references in this paragraph, which are to the edition of L'innocente of Mondadori, Milan, 1979. For D'Annunzio's preoccupation with swallows, see also the curious details in the biography by T. Antongini (London, 1938), pp. 328, 446. Nostalgia for the ‘matrimonial nest’ also lies behind Frederick Delius's calling the third movement of his String Quartet ‘Late Swallows’–with reference to the happy associations of his wife's rural home at Grez. I might refer here to the fact that Puccini's opera La Rondine derives its name symbolically from the theme of the ultimate return to the domestic hearth of an unfaithful woman who had ‘flown away’.

22. Beethoven Studies, ed. Tyson, Alan (New York, 1973), pp. 123ffGoogle Scholar. Beethoven was passionately devoted not only to the Odyssey, but to the severely pious nature almanac of C. C. Sturm, Beobachtungen über die Werke Gottes im Reiche der Natur und der Vorsehung, for whose observations about the instinctive powers of swallows to return to their old nests without compass to steer or direct, and their family devotion, see his entries for April 27, May 1 (both marked by B. in his own copy). About this same period he wrote down in his Tagebuch the unidentified Italian lines ‘Scherz’ amando la Rondinella,/lieto gode la tortorella,/io sola misera non io goder' – the familiar contrast of the happy state of the most faithful of birds, and the yearnings of the frustrated lover. (See Beethoven Studies, ed. Tyson, III, CUP, 1982, p. 220.)Google Scholar For a curious comparison of the therapeutic qualities of B.'s own music to the swallow's family contentment, see Rorke, J. D. M., A Musical Pilgrim's Progress (Oxford, 1921), pp. 10, 91–92Google Scholar.

23. ‘No one can hear these songs adequately sung without feeling that there is something more in that music than the mere inspiration of the poetry’, Thayer, A. W., Life of L. van Beethoven (New York, 1921) II, p. 343Google Scholar.

24. Emeriia 42 (1974), pp. 47ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25. From his Poemi Conviviali (1904), of which Stanford, W. B. gives a sympathetic resume in The Ulysses Theme (London, 1963), pp. 205–8Google Scholar.

26. Μαῡρα μον χελιςόνια π' τν ἒρημο – no.259 in C. A. Trypanis, The Penguin Book of Greek Verse (1971). The appeal is addressed also to περιστέρια, the other traditionally faithful birds.