Cunning intelligence, and why the poem prizes it.
The Odyssey’s first line calls its hero the man of many turns. Before the audience knows anything else about Odysseus, they know that his defining quality is a cunning, practical, adaptable intelligence, the ability to read a situation and find a way through it that no one else saw. That quality is mētis, and the poem prizes it.
1.1 polytropos 1.65–67 Zeus’s judgement 1.96–105 Athene as Mentes 1.97–108 the suitors miss the stranger 1.239–305 Athene’s plan
Have your Book 1 workbook open alongside this page. Quotations on this page give the workbook’s own line numbers.
The Odyssey’s first line describes its hero as polytropos, the man of many turns, many ways and many devices, and says nothing about bravery or strength. His defining quality is a kind of intelligence: cunning, practical, adaptable cleverness. That quality is mētis.
This is a deliberate contrast with the Iliad, whose greatest hero is defined by strength and rage. The Odyssey sets out to celebrate a different excellence.
Mētis is easiest to recognise by its tools.
What unites them is that each finds a way round an obstacle. That is the essential shape of mētis: it takes the indirect route, where biē would take the direct one.
Common mistake. Mētis is much wider than lying. Planning, patience, tact and knowing what not to say are all mētis, and several of them appear in Book 1 without a single lie being told.
Mētis in the Odyssey is not Odysseus’s alone. Athene, his divine patron, is the goddess of exactly this quality, and every one of her interventions in Books 1–4 is a piece of cunning, with no display of power. Penelope has held off the suitors for years by wit alone. Telemachus, across these four books, is learning it.
The Telemachy is partly the story of mētis being passed down a household. The suitors are the counter-example: they have numbers, confidence and a plan, but no real intelligence about the situation they are in.
Book 1 establishes Odysseus’s mētis by reputation, shows Athene using it in person, and gives Telemachus his first chance to use it himself. The suitors show none at all.
The poem opens by asking the Muse for the story of a resourceful man who wandered, suffered and struggled to bring his comrades home.
On Olympus Zeus calls Odysseus the wisest man alive.
Athene arrives as Mentes, an old family friend, and tells Telemachus that his father will find a way home.
The suitors play counters at the door while only Telemachus sees the visitor.
Athene sets out a sequence of steps: an assembly, a voyage for news, then dealing with the suitors.
Asked about the visitor, Telemachus gives a plain answer and keeps his suspicion to himself.
Tell me, Muse, the story of that resourceful man who was driven to wander far and wide after he had sacked the holy citadel of Troy. He saw the cities of many people and he learnt their ways. He suffered great anguish on the high seas in his struggles to preserve his life and bring his comrades home.
Book 1, workbook lines 1–5
The poem defines its hero by his mētis before it tells us anything else about him. This fits the poem’s deliberate contrast with the Iliad, whose greatest hero is defined by strength and rage.
‘Nonsense, my child!’ replied the Gatherer of the Clouds. ‘How could I ever forget the admirable Odysseus? He is not only the wisest man alive but has been the most generous in his offerings to the immortals who live in the wide heaven.’
Book 1, workbook lines 59–62
Athene has just called him “the wise and unlucky Odysseus” (workbook line 46). Poet and king of the gods agree from the start that Odysseus is defined by his mind.
… on reaching Ithaca she took her stand on the threshold of the court in front of Odysseus’ house; and to look like a visitor she assumed the appearance of a family friend, the Taphian chieftain Mentes, bronze spear in hand.
‘… Your father will not be exiled much longer from the land he loves so well, not even if he’s kept in iron chains. He will think of a way to return – he is endlessly resourceful.’
Book 1, workbook lines 93–96 and 179–181
The whole intervention is indirect and persuasive, and it is designed so that Telemachus ends up wanting to do what Athene wants him to do.
She found the insolent Suitors sitting in front of the door on hides of oxen they themselves had slaughtered, playing with counters; … The first to see her was Telemachus the godlike youth, who was sitting disconsolate among the Suitors …
Book 1, workbook lines 97–104
The suitors miss the stranger at the door, dismiss the possibility of Odysseus’s return, and never suspect that they are being watched by a god. Their failure of intelligence is as marked as their failure of hospitality. Later Eurymachus can only say that the visitor “jumped up and was gone so suddenly that he gave one no time to get to know him” (workbook lines 357–358).
‘Tomorrow morning call the Achaean lords to Assembly and announce your decision to them all, asking the gods to witness what you say. Tell the Suitors to leave and go home. … Choose your best ship, man her with twenty oarsmen, and set out to inquire after your long absent father. … This settled and done, you must think of some way of destroying this mob in your house, either by cunning or in open fight.’
Book 1, workbook lines 238–258
The plan is strategy in place of force. It changes Telemachus’s position without a blow being struck.
‘Eurymachus,’ the sensible Telemachus replied, ‘it is certain that my father will never come back. … As for my guest, he is an old friend of my father from Taphos. He introduced himself as Mentes, the son of wise Anchialus, and chieftain of the sea-faring Taphians.’ This is what Telemachus said, but in his heart he knew her for an immortal goddess.
Book 1, workbook lines 359–366
This is Telemachus’s first act of restraint in the poem and a first sign that he has inherited his father’s mētis.
| Character | Mētis? | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Odysseus | By reputation | Polytropos 1.1; Zeus’s praise 1.65–67; the beggar in Troy and the Wooden Horse (Book 4). He is absent, but his cleverness is present in every book. |
| Athene | By nature | Disguise as Mentes and Mentor; a step-by-step plan; never a display of force. |
| Penelope | Fully | Three years of delay by the web trick, undone only by betrayal. |
| Telemachus | Learning | Restraint with Eurymachus; the stealthy departure; tact over Menelaus’s gift. |
| Menelaus | Borrowed | Gets home by following Eidothea’s trick. |
| The suitors | None | A crude ambush plan; they miss the stranger, the omen and the god. |
Mētis involves deception, and later Greek writers were sometimes uneasy about Odysseus for exactly that reason. Within the Odyssey, however, cunning is consistently rewarded and its absence is punished.
The poem’s working answer seems to be that intelligence used to protect a household, defeat an enemy or get home is heroic, and that the same act is judged by what it is for. Athene’s lies serve a plan and are admirable; the suitors’ hidden ambush serves murder and is not.
Remember. Odysseus is also physically formidable, and force will be needed when he returns, so mētis does not simply replace biē. The question is which of the two the poem puts first, and in the Telemachy every success belongs to intelligence.
These are positions for you to test against the text. Decide how far the text supports each one, and mark your verdict.