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UMI: GREEK CHARACTERS OMITTED.
IN A BRIEF NOTE in his The Theme of Mutilation of the Corpse in the Iliad, Charles Segal classifies the mutilation of Melanthius (Od. 22.474-77) as a asignificant exception" to Homeric practice.1 In the Iliad, Segal observes, threats of abuse of a corpse occur "in contexts where there is a marked awareness of cruelty and violence." One thinks readily of the many heated scenes in that poem in which a warrior, caught up in the carnage of battle, vows to leave the body of his opponent as carrion for birds and dogs. Likewise in the Odyssey, the suitors' threat to toss Eumaeus' body to dogs and vultures (21.363f) and their plans to send the hulking Irus to be mutilated by Echetus the ogre (18.84-87, 115f) occur in scenes that emphasize the lawless violence of these intruders into Odysseus' house. But the context of Od. 22 provides no such violent setting that would prepare the reader or listener for the sudden lopping of Melant us nose, ears, hands, and feet and the tossing of his severed genitals "to the dogs to eat raw." On the contrary, only 60 lines earlier Odysseus had restrained a jubilant Eurycleia from exulting over the sight of the slain suitors. "Rejoice in silence," he bids her, "for it is sacrilege to exult over the slain. It was the fate of the gods and their own wretched actions that brought these men to ruin" (22.413,... ...). Following on the heels of this reprimand, the viciousness shown towards Melanthius is indeed puzzling. It would seem to negate W. B. Stanford's eloquent defense of this hero as "a man well integrated both in his own temperament and with his environment ... [who is] essentially self-possessed, fully able to control conflicting passions and motives."2
As curious as the execution itself, however, is the emotional distance that separates Odysseus from the atrocity. Melanthius is killed not by Odysseus but by his two loyal servants, Philoetius and Eumaeus, along with Telemachus. The poem does not explicitly state that Odysseus has ordered the execution. For this reason, it has been proposed that the idea of punishing Melanthius originates with "the swineherd, the cowherd, and perhaps- one hopes not-Telemachus ... Odysseus himself ... had no...