Crying

The Odyssey is surprisingly pretty fun to read for an epic poem (I didn't get along with Paradise Lost nearly as well). We've talked about a couple of the things that seem kind of weird now, like random travelers just stopping by places and getting served prime pieces of meat, but another thing I found a bit strange was the amount of crying people did. The stereotype today is that men especially don't cry, but for everyone it's a sign of weakness to do it for too long or when you're trying to make a point. Telemachus crying during his speech seems to be greeted with a bit of awkwardness -- Homer says people are afraid to respond because he's crying, but one of the suitors still shuts him down, so if it was any sort of strategy it didn't really work. If Telemachus isn't strong enough to keep his emotions in check long enough to tell the suitors off, is he really a man yet?

Telemachus's speech is maybe the worst offender but Odysseus also does a lot of random crying -- for example, in Book 5, we find him on Calypso's island "weeping there as always, wrenching his heart with sobs and groans and anguish." Hasn't he been there for years? Yeah, it's a bad situation but did he really just spend his time sitting around and crying? I'm not sure if people actually cried a lot more then, Homer just wanted to make things dramatic, or Odysseus and his son are particularly emotional, but as Menelaus quotes Proteus when he's telling his storys: "How long must you weep? Withering tears, what good can come of tears?"