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Almost every fortune and misfortune in The Odyssey is a scene of men eating or being eaten. Every kindness culminates in a meal, and nearly every trial culminates in cannibalism or poison. Scylla, the Cyclops, and the Laestrygonians all eat some of Odysseus's men; Circe and the Lotus Eaters slip the men harmful drugs; and the feast of the Cattle of the Sun results in the destruction of his remaining crew. The suitors dishonor Odysseus's household by their incessant feasting, and various people honor Odysseus by giving him food and wine. Odysseus often comments that all men are burdened by their base physical needs; perhaps the tedious human cycle of ingestion and excretion represents the vicissitudes of the mortal world as opposed to the clean permanence of the divine.
Food Quotes in The Odyssey
The The Odyssey quotes below all refer to the symbol of Food. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Book 7
Quotes
The belly's a shameless dog, there's nothing worse.
Always insisting, pressing, it never lets us forget –
destroyed as I am, my heart racked with sadness,
sick with anguish, still it keeps demanding,
‘Eat, drink!' It blots out all the memory
of my pain, commanding, ‘Fill me up!'
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Explanation and Analysis:
The belly's a shameless dog, there's nothing worse.
Always insisting, pressing, it never lets us forget –
destroyed as I am, my heart racked with sadness,
sick with anguish, still it keeps demanding,
‘Eat, drink!' It blots out all the memory
of my pain, commanding, ‘Fill me up!'
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 11
Quotes
Even so, you and your crew may still reach home,
suffering all the way, if you only have the power
to curb their wild desire and curb your own.
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Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Odyssey LitChart as a printable PDF.
Food Symbol Timeline in The Odyssey
The timeline below shows where the symbol Food appears in The Odyssey. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Book 1
...to speak to Odysseus's son Telemachus. Droves of men courting Odysseus's wife Penelope have been feasting for years in Odysseus's court, pestering Penelope and depleting the resources of the estate. Athena...
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Book 2
...gods. He asks the suitors to heed their shame and to leave his household, and threatens again that the gods will revenge their crimes. At that moment, Zeus sends an omen...
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Book 3
Nestor's son Pisistratus brings Telemachus and his men meat and wine, and encourages them to say a prayer for Poseidon. With instinctive tact, Telemachus...
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...he wishes the gods would give him the power to wreak revenge on the suitors feasting in his father's house. Nestor wonders whether Odysseus will ever return to punish the suitors,...
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The next day, Nestor holds a feast. When everyone is gathered, a goldsmith covers a heifer's horns in gold, Nestor pours purifying...
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Book 4
Telemachus and Pisistratus arrive at Menelaus's palace, where the king is celebrating the two separate marriages of his son and his daughter. Menelaus tells his aide Eteoneus to invite the...
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As Telemachus and Menelaus feast at the king's palace, the suitors feast and amuse themselves in Odysseus's palace. Antinous and...
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Book 7
...Alcinous's fruitful realm and luxurious household. He goes inside the palace, where many people are feasting, and puts his arms around Arete's knees – at that moment, the mist around him...
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Book 8
...crew of fifty-two men to transport Odysseus home; everyone else, he says, should gather to feast and celebrate. After everyone eats and drinks, the bard Demodocus sings about the battle between...
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...competitor; Athena in disguise praises him and goads him on, and Odysseus boasts that he'll defeat anyone in the crowd in any sport – anyone except the king, because he is...
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Book 9
...many spoils; Odysseus wanted to leave, but his men decided to stay and plunder and feast. Meanwhile the Cicones called their neighbors for backup, and the expanded army killed many Achaeans...
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After nine days, the ships reached the land of the Lotus Eaters. There, the crewmen that ate the fruit of lotus lost all desire to return and...
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...evening the Cyclops came home, closed the entrance to the cave with a giant rock, milked his sheep and goats, and lit a fire. Suddenly he noticed the men and asked...
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At dawn Polyphemus lit the fire, milked his sheep, and ate two more men for breakfast. He then left for the day,...
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Book 10
Odysseus begged Aeolus for help, but Aeolus believed that Odysseus's misfortune proved that he was hated by the gods, and turned him away. There was no wind to help them, so...
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...two days, and Odysseus went out and killed a deer to feed his men. They feasted and slept. The next morning, Odysseus told the men that he saw smoke rising somewhere...
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...Hermes, who was disguised as a young man. The god gave him a drug called moly that would make him immune to Circe's potion. When Circe touches you with her wand,...
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...must be Odysseus. When they retired to bed, Circe's maids prepared a bath and a feast. But Odysseus was too troubled to eat, so Circe transformed his crew from swine to...
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...of Fire and the River of Tears meet, to dig a trench there, to pour milk and honey, wine, and water for the dead, to sprinkle barley; finally, she said, he...
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Book 11
...they did exactly as Circe said: they dug a trench, offered libations, and sacrificed a ewe and a ram. Thousands of ghosts appeared when the blood started flowing. The first ghost...
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Finally Tiresias appeared. Once he drank the blood of the slaughtered animals, he told Odysseus that his journey home would be full of...
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...mother, and Tiresias explained that a ghost would speak only if it drank the animals' blood. Odysseus let his mother drink the blood, and suddenly she recognized him. She told him...
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Book 12
...When they came to Charybdis they carefully sail around the whirlpool, and Scylla grabbed and ate six men. Filled with grief and pity, the men sail away as fast as possible.
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...insisted that the crew needed rest. Odysseus made the men swear an oath not to eat any cattle, but they were trapped on the island for a month by an inopportune...
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...the cattle that had been killed: they bellowed and moved. But the men continue to feast for six more days before sailing away. As soon as they were out at sea...
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Book 13
The next day, King Alcinous stows Odysseus's many gifts on the ship and everyone feasts. When Odysseus walks onto the ship the next morning, he falls into a deep, sweet...
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Book 14
...still disguised as a beggar, walks to the swineherd's house. Eumaeus invites Odysseus in to eat and drink and tell his story. Odysseus thanks the swineherd for his hospitality, and Eumaeus...
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Book 17
...twenty years. Telemachus tells Eumaeus to instruct Odysseus-the-beggar to go around the table begging for scraps, and Athena seconds that advice: it's a way of separating the bad suitors from the...
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Book 18
...them against each other so that the suitors can enjoy the fight; the prize is sausage and a seat at the suitors' table. Odysseus-the-beggar pulls up his rags to reveal a...
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Book 20
Eurycleia instructs the maids to clean and decorate the house for the feast to be held during the archery contest. Odysseus ignores another...
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Book 22
...about to take a sip of wine. The king kicks the table and scatters the food on the floor, and the food mingles with Antinous's blood. He reveals himself to be...
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...when he returns for more weapons and leave him strung up in the storeroom in great pain. Athena appears in the guise of Mentor; she then turns into a swallow and...
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