Xairete to all the enlisted members to my good friend Maia, a true lover of Homer brilliant poems, and to my noble friend Ioanni, who serves his country honorably at those difficult times.

I will continue my brief examination of Love according Homer’s morality and ethics. I must state that Homer can positively be accepted as a most valuable source of the Mycenaean culture and way of life. In the first part of the Homeric Love message, I tried, as mush as that is possible from my experience of Homer, the ‘loving’ customs of the Homeric heroes, meaning their ideas to the human interrelationship and love affairs in general. We conclude that Iliad was not and still is not, a poem of warfare between two armies but additionally a poem of hostilities among human believes and moral views, conflict stuck between cultures and political, social environments and quarrels amongst immortals and mortals hearts.

Odyssey, the poem of the Odysseus return, is moreover a poem of wife-husband loyalty. Loyalty and faith, with the strictest meaning of the word, the reason is simple, Penelope waited her husband to return and remained untouched to her body and heart. Although, Odysseus remained faithful to her wife, shared his bed with Circe and Calypso, but he never forget his wife and home. That sows the differentiation between women and men faith, and how or what a woman can do to persuade a true faithfulness and, on the other hand, a man is aloud to act during his matrimony. The occasion of Odysseus was, I believe, what the Mycenaean culture accepted and further the historic era Greeks too. Odysseus remained faithful to his vow, that we must not forget was taken not only by the will of the state of men but also by the acceptance of the state of Gods, so his soul is clear and that gives him clarification of his faithfulness and so stated: “A man chafes at having to stay away from his wife even for a single month, when he is on shipboard, at the mercy of wind and sea, but it is now nine long years that we have been kept here;”

However, Circe and Calypso are not just simple women, but goddesses, they can do whatever they want to the mortal men. We well know what Circe can do to them! As a result Odysseus has a good excuse.

We, in addition, witness Agamemnon to state publicly that desired his slave girl Chryseis and fully disapproved his affection to his wife Clytemnestra, “I have set my heart on keeping her in my own house, for I love her better even than my own wife Clytemnestra, whose peer she is alike in form and feature, in understanding and accomplishments.” that may was the reason Clytemnestra killed her husband! Homer and Homeric Greeks do not approved insults either form a man to his woman or from a woman to a man. On the other hand Odysseus, regardless of his desire to reach home, son and wife was stuck for ten years with women, who do not have the riches or the beauty of his mortal woman, but even though he still remember her as “my woman of youth”.

So what is the major ethical point of the poem? I believe that it was stated at the sixth Rhapsody, when Odysseus addressed his wishes to Nausicaa: “May heaven grant you in all things your heart's desire- husband, house, and a happy, peaceful home; for there is nothing better in this world than that man and wife should be of one mind in a house. It discomfits their enemies, makes the hearts of their friends glad, and they themselves know more about it than any one.” (Odyssey, Book VI)

But the happy couples do not have happiness, and that is the story of Odysseus and Penelope, who were apart because of war lasted ten years and a almost never-lasted return of another ten year separation, and thus these years are huge period for a human life, because, “Men come and go as leaves year by year upon the trees. Those of autumn the wind sheds upon the ground, but when spring returns the forest buds forth with fresh vines. Even so is it with the generations of mankind, the new spring up as the old are passing away.” (Iliad. Book VI). At the time that Odysseus left for the war Telemachus was a baby when he returned his son was a man. How many years Penelope and her husband of love gone astray? But the real lovers feed love through their absent!

At the fifth Rhapsody Calypso, who wanted to kept Odysseus addressed her qualities and power and also promised him immortality. (Iliad, Book XIII) “Good luck go with you, but if you could only know how much suffering is in store for you before you get back to your own country, you would stay where you are, keep house along with me, and let me make you immortal, no matter how anxious you may be to see this wife of yours, of whom you are thinking all the time day after day; yet I flatter myself that at am no whit less tall or well-looking than she is, for it is not to be expected that a mortal woman should compare in beauty with an immortal."
"Goddess," replied Ulysses, "do not be angry with me about this. I am quite aware that my wife Penelope is nothing like so tall or so beautiful as yourself. She is only a woman, whereas you are an immortal. Nevertheless, I want to get home, and can think of nothing else. If some god wrecks me when I am on the sea, I will bear it and make the best of it. I have had infinite trouble both by land and sea already, so let this go with the rest."

On the way back to his house and wife Odysseus was cursed by Poseidon and fell to the land of the Phaecians. He met with the daughter “of great Alcinous” Nausicaa, a girl who washed her cloths with her servants. A scene never disregarded, because of the importance of female freedom. Nausicaa helped Odysseus. She alleged, “When you have got past the gates and through the outer court, go right across the inner court till you come to my mother. You will find her sitting by the fire and spinning her purple wool by firelight. It is a fine sight to see her as she leans back against one of the bearing-posts with her maids all ranged behind her. Close to her seat stands that of my father, on which he sits and topes like an immortal god. Never mind him, but go up to my mother, and lay your hands upon her knees if you would get home quickly. If you can gain her over, you may hope to see your own country again, no matter how distant it may be." (Iliad, Book VI). That is one of the best examples of a couple that have one of the unsurpassed understandings, like the one of Ector and Andromache.

Although, if a individual really loves we can witness easily to his/her feelings and action the uncertainty and distrust, that is the scene of reunion of the famous couple. The only way for Penelope to understand her real husband was a trick, and hence, that was the last deed for Odysseus, it will be fine if we will remember it again: "My dear," answered Penelope, "I have no wish to set myself up, nor to depreciate you; but I am not struck by your appearance, for I very well remember what kind of a man you were when you set sail from Ithaca. Nevertheless, Euryclea, take his bed outside the bed chamber that he himself built. Bring the bed outside this room, and put bedding upon it with fleeces, good coverlets, and blankets."
She said this to try him, but Ulysses was very angry and said, "Wife, I am much displeased at what you have just been saying. Who has been taking my bed from the place in which I left it? He must have found it a hard task, no matter how skilled a workman he was, unless some god came and helped him to shift it. There is no man living, however strong and in his prime, who could move it from its place, for it is a marvellous curiosity which I made with my very own hands. There was a young olive growing within the precincts of the house, in full vigour, and about as thick as a bearing-post. I built my room round this with strong walls of stone and a roof to cover them, and I made the doors strong and well-fitting. Then I cut off the top boughs of the olive tree and left the stump standing. This I dressed roughly from the root upwards and then worked with carpenter's tools well and skilfully, straightening my work by drawing a line on the wood, and making it into a bed-prop. I then bored a hole down the middle, and made it the centre-post of my bed, at which I worked till I had finished it, inlaying it with gold and silver; after this I stretched a hide of crimson leather from one side of it to the other. So you see I know all about it, and I desire to learn whether it is still there, or whether any one has been removing it by cutting down the olive tree at its roots."
When she heard the sure proofs Ulysses now gave her, she fairly broke down. She flew weeping to his side, flung her arms about his neck, and kissed him. "Do not be angry with me Ulysses," she cried, "you, who are the wisest of mankind. We have suffered, both of us. Heaven has denied us the happiness of spending our youth, and of growing old, together; do not then be aggrieved or take it amiss that I did not embrace you thus as soon as I saw you. I have been shuddering all the time through fear that someone might come here and deceive me with a lying story; for there are many very wicked people going about. Jove's daughter Helen would never have yielded herself to a man from a foreign country, if she had known that the sons of Achaeans would come after her and bring her back. Heaven put it in her heart to do wrong, and she gave no thought to that sin, which has been the source of all our sorrows. Now, however, that you have convinced me by showing that you know all about our bed (which no human being has ever seen but you and I and a single maid servant, the daughter of Actor, who was given me by my father on my marriage, and who keeps the doors of our room) hard of belief though I have been I can mistrust no longer."
Then Ulysses in his turn melted, and wept as he clasped his dear and faithful wife to his bosom.”

The actual epic is ending when Eurynome showed Odysseus’ and Penelope’s the bed by torch light and thus the last act be a God “ Then Minerva bethought her of another matter. When she deemed that Ulysses had had both of his wife and of repose, she bade gold-enthroned Dawn rise out of Oceanus that she might shed light upon mankind.” The time that the couple had lost could be gained once more; the poem is a hymn for the faithful marriage, which was known to the early Greeks.

Yours,

Nikolaos Cleomenes.