Guess who's coming to dinner

I've been blogging off and on lately about Beowulf, along with current events. It really is a cool story with both ancient and universal themes.

One big theme in the ancient and medieval world was the problem of hospitality or how to deal with guests, hosts and strangers. It may well be that humans are hard wired to have an in-group/out-group orientation, which makes dealing with strangers, singularly or in groups, an ambiguous matter. New people might prove to be good friends or dangerous enemies and both host and guest posed potential threats to each other.

Issues of guests, hosts and hospitality were major themes in the Iliad and Odyssey and other Greek myths as well as in the Bible and other sources. It's no surprise that this is also an issue in the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, which portrays societies that spend at least part of the time raiding each other.

What would you do if 15 heavily armed proto-Vikings showed up on your doorstep? Or, if you were one of the 15, how would you convince those who met you that you meant no harm? And, by the way, how much mead is there in the cellar, anyway?

Before any major monster-killing can be done, these kinds of details have to be sorted out. More on that to come.

WHAT'S NOT ON THE TABLE. Here's an op-ed by a co-worker of mine about what is missing from deficit reduction discussions.

THE LESS BAD PARTS of President Obama's proposed budget are discussed here.

STICKER SHOCK. A new Harvard study of the costs of coal finds a bigger bottom line.

AN ODD COINCIDENCE. It just so happened that just before the basically nonviolent Egyptian revolution burst upon the scene I started rereading a volume of Gene Sharp on non-violent action. I couldn't help thinking of him as events unfolded. Here's a profile of Sharp from today's New York Times.

OLD DOGS. Here's a look at the canine family tree from wolf to woof.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE CYCLOPS, CONSIDERED AS CHEESEMAKER

The Odyssey series continues, along with links and comments about current events. We're just now at the part where he meets the cyclops.

Speaking of which, sometimes El Cabrero's Spousal Unit reminds me of a cyclops. I'm not saying that she's a one-eyed giant cannibalistic monster, necessarily. Let's just say they have common interests. He's got goats (and sheep) and is a cheese maker.

When Odysseus and his men visit the cyclops Polyphemus cave, he is still out with his herd. It sounds a bit like Goat Rope Farm, only on a much larger scale. As Odysseus puts it,

'So we explored his den, gazing wide-eyed at it all,
the large flack racks loaded with drying cheeses,
the folds crowded with young lambs and kids...
And all his vessels, pails and hammered buckets
he used for milking, where brimming full with whey.'

We get a glimpse of the giant at work:

Back he came from the pasture, late in the day,
herding his flocks home...
Then down he squatted to milk his sheep and bleating goats,
each in order, and put a suckling underneath each dam.
And half of the fresh white mile he curdled quickly,
set it aside in wicker racks to press for cheese,
the other half let stand in pails and buckets,
ready at hand to wash his supper down...

It sounds kinda like home to me...

But I digress. As mentioned earlier, a major theme in Homer's epics is that of xenia, the sacred guest host relationship. Odyseus and his men get off on a bad foot, entering his cave without asking or being invited. They build a fire and started chowing down on the cheese before he even gets home. Didn't these guys ever hear of Miss Manners?

Polyphemus doesn't like surprises:

'Strangers!' he thundered out, 'now who are you?
Where did you sail from, over the running sea-lanes?
Out on a raiding spree or roving the waves like pirates,
sea-wolves raiding at will, who risk their lives
to plunder other men?'

Based on their past behavior, that's pretty much exactly what Odysseus and his men are. It's just about supper time...

More tomorrow.

NOT SO GOOD. A Rutgers University scorecard on the state of American workers found some disturbing--but not surprising--trends.

REDISCOVERING AN OLD FRIEND. AP reports that more Americans are using public libraries in hard economic times. I can't imagine how people could do without them in the best of times. At any given moment, El Cabrero is abusing the borrowing privileges of about four different library systems.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, here is an item on books that changed history.

STILL MORE on CEO pay.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A WORD ABOUT A WORD

Rubens' painting of "Jupiter and Mercurius in the house of Philemon and Baucis," by way of wikipedia.

Welcome to Goat Rope's ongoing series on the Odyssey of Homer. Each weekday post contains a nugget from that great epic that has delighted people of all ages from ancient times. You'll also find links and comments about current events.

A central theme of both the Iliad and the Odyssey is the that of xenia or hospitality, a sacred obligation in parts of the ancient Mediterranean world. In those days, travel was dangerous and there was an acute shortage of Holiday Inns. It was a custom that a traveler could approach a house--generally but not always one of similar social status to the traveler--and ask for a meal and a place to sleep.

The host had a sacred obligation to wash, feed and shelter the guest and to take care of basic needs before asking any questions. The guest was to respect the host, take what was given and not abuse the privilege or outstay one's welcome. Often, hosts and guests exchanged gifts and retained a special bond.

It was a little risky and scary to take a complete stranger in, just as it was weird to put yourself at the mercy of a stranger if you were the traveler. For this reason, the custom acquired a divine sanction. One of Zeus' main titles was Zeus Xenios, or god of travelers and he was said to punish those who abused hosts or guests.

The ambiguity of the situation can be seen in the differing meanings of the word xenos: host, guest, stranger, alien, friend. You can see a little of this in English with the similarity between the words "host" and "hostility."

Abuse of xenia was the cause of the whole Trojan war. The Trojan prince Paris abducted Menelaus' wife Helen when he was a guest in the latter's home. Since all Greek leaders had sworn to uphold the marriage, the stage was set for war when King Priam of Troy allowed the couple to enter the city.

The obligations of xenia could also prevent people from fighting. At one point in the Iliad, the Greek Diomedes and the Trojan Glaucus decide not to fight when they realized that their fathers had been xenoi or guest-friends. They exchange armor instead (with Diomedes getting the better deal).

The Odyssey is all xenia all the time as Telemachus travels in search of his father and Odysseus bounces from island to island. There are very good examples of xenia in the story, such as the hospitality shown by Nestor and Menelaus to Telemachus and that of the Phaeacians to Odysseus. There are also examples of very bad xenia--like the cyclops who liked to eat his "guests" or the suitors of Penelope who abused their status as guests and devoured the wealth that belonged to the family of Odysseus. At one point, Odysseus, disguised as a beggar is abused by the suitors in his own home.

As in the Bible, sometimes divine beings would come disguised as guests--and woe to those who mistreated them. (For that matter, the story of Lot and Sodom in Genesis is really about the abuse of hospitality, not homosexuality.) The importance of hospitality is echoed in the New Testament epistle Hebrews (13:2), where it is said that

Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.

So just remember, if you want to stay on Zeus's good side, don't devour your guests or run away with the significant others of your host.

Is this a useful blog or what?

MY BAD. Those Gentle Readers who subscribe to Goat Rope via email may have gotten a mistaken post Sunday night. El Cabrero hit the wrong button and published an unfinished draft intended for later this week by mistake.

TOWARDS A GREEN ECONOMY. Here's something about what it may look like.

SOCIAL SECURITY may or may not be wearing a bull's eye again soon, but this memo from the Economic Policy Institute counters fear mongering about it.

POVERTY DAY. On Tuesday, the government will release the latest numbers on poverty, incomes and health insurance coverage. Here's a brief from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities on what to look for.

MALE ANIMALS TEND TO BE SHOWOFFS to a far greater extent than females, with various kinds of wild displays. My guess is that you have already noticed this. Recent research in biology may have found a genetic mechanism that opened the way for all that strutting around.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED