Lacrimae Rerum

In the Aeneid, upon viewing graphic depictions of battles from the Trojan War in a Carthaginian temple, Aeneas uttered a now-famous quotation: “Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem tangunt.” A translation made by Robert Fagles reads, “The world is a world of tears, and the burdens of mortality touch the heart.” Aeneas, recognizing scenes of battle in which his dear comrades had fallen, realized the futility of war and the omnipresence of human suffering. This sequence in Virgil’s Aeneid also bespeaks the theme of storytelling and its tremendous power to summon emotions from the human spirit—a theme that is duly echoed in Homer’s The Odyssey.

In The Odyssey, there are two sequences in which a very similar situation is repeated. In both Book 4 and Book 6, the telling of stories brings the protagonist—In Book 4 the protagonist can be said to be Telemachus, and in Book 6 it is Odysseus—to tears. While Menelaus describes Odysseus’s plight to Telemachus, the boy begins to weep from memories of his father (lines 126-130). In the scene’s conceptual counterpart in Book 6, in lines 99-104, Odysseus buries his face in his cape in order to prevent King Alcinous from seeing him cry as events from the Trojan War are recounted.

The purpose of this repetition appears to be threefold. Firstly, as The Odyssey unfolds, Homer depicts in great detail the process of Telemachus becoming—or realizing that he is—Odysseus’s true son. There are several scenes in which Telemachus is seen to be similar to Odysseus, including a clever reference in lines 455-457 of Book 2: “…and the men fell in and fetched down all the stores and stowed them briskly, deep in the well-ribbed holds as Odysseus’ son directed.” The latter part of the description appears to be a direct allusion to the image of Odysseus stowing his crew inside the well-ribbed holds of the Trojan horse—the use of “Odysseus’ son” in lieu of “Telemachus” appears to support this analysis. Secondly, both scenes appear to share in common the theme previously drawn from Virgil’s Aeneid: human life is wasted in warfare, and suffering is universal. Telemachus weeps for his father’s wasted life, and Odysseus weeps for the lives of his dead comrades and fellow warriors. The final purpose of this repetition could possibly be an explanation for why Homer writes epic poetry—it shows storytelling as something intimate with the human spirit, something that has the power to draw emotions from deep within us.