College Literature

At Od. 18.163, achreîon is best etymologized as being derived from áchri "until." There is thereby an explicit indication that Penelope is "biding her time" when she appears before the Suitors. Subsequently, at 19.250, 23.94-95, 23.206, and 24.346, there are four references to recognition. Against the perspective of Linear B, a Bronze Age writing system, "read" emerges as a potentially defining nuance for forms of anagignó*sko* "recognize" in these passages. One of the four, 23.94-95, has regularly been considered from a perspective of non-recognition; however, agnó*saske, the verb form which supposedly indicates this, is unparalleled in Homer. It is therefore reasonable to consider reading aggnó*saske, viz., a form, with apocope, of anagignó*sko*. Corroborating the importance of Mycenaean Greek for the Odyssey are various Iliad parallels, especially the ivory simile associated with the wounding of Menelaos at Il. 4.139-47; this resonates both with various Knossos tablets which combine ivory and crimson and with Od. 23.200-01, describing how Odysseus's and Penelope's bed was decorated. Finally, book 24 rounds out the treatment of recognition and suggests an identification of Aktoris, who had been mentioned at 23.228, as Dolios's wife.