Was Hospitality Important To Circe's Divorce In Ancient Greece?

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Was hospitality an empty gesture in ancient Greece? You could look back to Circe, Calypso, and the suitors of the Odyssey, as they all point to one answer. Hospitality in Greece is a central value, however the most hospitable, or the people who take the most advantage of hospitality are often those with ulterior motives. Circe breaks hospitality when she invites men into her home to turn them into swines. Circe had invited Odyseeus’s crew into her home, she filled their bowls with a wonderful stew but “Once they’d drained the bowls she filled, suddenly she struck with her wand, drove them into her pigsties, all of them bristling into swine” (Homer 237, 261-263). This shows that Circe was more worried about playing scrabble with men and turning them into animals than respecting the code of hospitality. Even when she offers hospitality in the end, she still has the motive of playing scrabble with Odysseus, and just wants that from him. Calypso is the next to be inhospitable when she keeps Odysseus against his will in her home, even when he wants to go home. This is evidenced by the fact that he was “weeping there as always, wrenching his heart with sobs and groans and anguish, gazing out over the barren sea through blinding tears”…show more content…
They brought Penelope and Telemachus great grief, and they literally ate them out of house and home. Telemachus was so frustrated that he told a guest that they “court my mother, they lay waste to my house! They continue to bleed my household white. Soon—you wait—they’ll grind me down as well” (Homer 85, 288-293). We see the recurring pattern of the misuse of hospitality to fulfill selfish (often romantic) needs. The suspects of this crime will show one face on the outside while hiding their true intentions until it is too late to escape them. This is one more of the countless examples of this

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