Homeric Terms Glossary

This glossary gathers terms that recur in the Odyssey and on this site. It is intended for orientation, not to turn every occurrence into a complete explanation: a word’s precise sense always depends on its passage.

Timē (τιμή)

Honour, prerogative or recognised share. It may refer to the visible recognition owed to a hero and, in the case of gods, to the honour due to them; its particular sense depends on distribution, hierarchy and context.

Geras (γέρας)

A share, prize or prerogative of honour that makes the recognition owed to someone visible. In the distribution of booty, it may consist of a possession or captive allotted to a hero. In the conflict between Agamemnon and Achilles, taking Achilles’ geras also affects his timē: the material loss is a public affront.

Nostos (νόστος) / nostoi (νόστοι)

Nostos: “return, homecoming”. In epic poetry, especially the return home of a hero after war or wandering. In the Odyssey, it includes recovering a household, family, identity and place in the community, not simply reaching Ithaca. The plural is nostoi, “homecomings”; with a capital letter, Nostoi is also the conventional title of the lost Epic Cycle poem about the Achaeans’ returns from Troy. The title names a particular poem or tradition; the lower-case plural can refer more generally to several returns.

Hetaira; pl. hetairai (ἑταίρα / ἑταῖραι)

In historical Athens, a hetaira was a woman who could take part in male social settings such as the symposium, sometimes as a musician, companion or courtesan. The term does not automatically mean “prostitute” and does not name a single legal status: the social and economic situations of these women could vary. This use of the word for that category belongs to historical Athens; the Homeric poems do not provide sufficient grounds for identifying the women of the Iliad or the Odyssey with it.

Eídōlon (εἴδωλον)

An image, appearance, or representation of a person that reproduces recognizable features without necessarily being the person themselves.

In the Homeric poems, the term can refer to the shade of a deceased person, but also to a figure resembling someone still alive, such as the images created by gods to deceive or communicate with mortals.

Patroclus appears to Achilles retaining his appearance, voice, and clothing, but when Achilles tries to embrace him, he discovers that the figure has no bodily substance. This recognizable yet intangible likeness is an eídōlon.

The term therefore emphasizes the resemblance between an image and the person it represents. It is not necessarily equivalent to psychḗ, although both words can refer to the shades of the dead.

Iliad 5.449–453; 23.65–107. Odyssey 4.795–841; 11.204–224, 475–476.

Psychḗ (ψυχή)

In the Homeric poems, a term that refers, depending on the context, to the life lost at death and to the shade or image of the deceased that remains in Hades.

In scenes of death, the psychḗ is portrayed as something that departs from the dying person, associated with the loss of the last breath and of life itself. In the world of the dead, the term refers to a diminished form of existence that preserves the appearance and certain recognizable features of the person who once lived, but lacks the substance and vitality of the living.

The shades can remember, speak, and experience feelings, although their faculties are not always represented in the same way. The Homeric psychḗ should not simply be identified with the immortal soul conceived as a spiritual entity separate from the body in some later philosophical traditions. Homer offers no systematic explanation of its nature.

Iliad 16.855–857; 23.65–107. Odyssey 10.492–495; 11.204–224, 385–394, 475–476.

Thymós (θυμός)

A term associated with the breath of life, impulses, emotions, and certain activities of thought.

In the Homeric poems, thymós is involved in a person’s inner life: desire, fear, anger, courage, and deliberation. A hero may address his own thymós when considering what to do, almost as though engaged in a dialogue with himself.

Michael Clarke has emphasized its close association with breathing and with the Homeric conception of mental activity as inseparable from bodily existence. In scenes of death, the loss of thymós can express the extinction of life.

It should not be understood as a spiritual soul independent of the body, nor as a single, clearly defined psychological faculty. Its meaning varies according to context, combining aspects that we now tend to distinguish as physical, emotional, and mental.

Iliad 11.403–410; 20.403–406. Odyssey 5.298–312.

Phármakon / phármaka (φάρμακον / φάρμακα)

Phármakon is the singular and phármaka the plural. The word can mean a remedy, drug, poison or other active substance; its effect depends on the context. In Circe’s episode, the phármaka are the substances that transform Odysseus’ companions.

Môly (μῶλυ)

The plant Hermes gives Odysseus to protect him from Circe’s phármakon. Homer describes a black root and a white flower, but does not allow a secure identification with a modern botanical species.

Xenia (ξενία)

A relationship of hospitality and reciprocity between host and guest. It involves food and shelter, but also obligations and bonds that may endure across generations; it is not simply friendliness to a stranger.

Oûtis (Οὖτις)

“Nobody.” The false name Odysseus gives Polyphemus. When the Cyclops calls for help, the name lets his words be understood as the claim that no one is attacking him.

Mḗ tis (μή τις) / mêtis (μῆτις)

Mḗ tis means “no one”; mêtis is cunning intelligence. In the Polyphemus episode their similar sound makes Odysseus’ false name part of the poem’s wordplay, without making the two forms etymologically identical.

Polýphēmos (Πολύφημος)

The Greek name of Polyphemus. It combines polý- (“much”, “many”) with a word family associated with speech, report and fame; it may be understood approximately as “much spoken of” or “widely famed”.

Sḗmata lugrá (σήματα λυγρά)

The “baneful signs” carried by Bellerophon in the Iliad. Homer does not identify their form or writing system; they are a rare example of a message fixed in signs and interpreted by another person.

Oîkos (οἶκος)

Household: house, family, property, dependants, work, lineage and authority understood as one connected social and economic unit. It is not merely a modern nuclear family.

Dêmos (δῆμος)

The people or community, especially as assembled or recognised in a public setting. In Homer it can carry collective weight without constituting an impersonal state authority.

Anássein (ἀνάσσειν)

“To be lord” or “to rule.” The verb may describe the authority of a king and that of the head of a household; the shared vocabulary does not erase the difference of scale between the two.

Poinḗ (ποινή)

Compensation, retribution or penalty, especially in connection with a death or grave harm. It may name accepted compensation that contains a conflict, but it can also take on the sense of retaliatory violence.

Ápoina (ἄποινα)

Goods offered to recover something or repair a damaged relationship. They may ransom captives or bodies and can also name the gifts with which Agamemnon seeks to reconcile himself with Achilles; they are not simply the same as poinḗ.

Tísis (τίσις)

Retribution or requital for a wrong. Its force depends on the situation: it can mark a claim for redress, an act of punishment or the retaliation that follows a killing.

Hyperbasíē (ὑπερβασίη)

Transgression or overstepping, especially a violation of recognised limits or obligations. In the Odyssey, Odysseus uses it of the suitors’ accumulated wrongdoing.

Erinyes (Ἐρινύες)

Divinities associated with the pursuit of bloodshed within a family. In the later story of Orestes, they make visible the demand for vengeance left unresolved after the killing of Clytemnestra.

Thémis (θέμις)

A recognised norm, custom or proper procedure within social and religious order. In Homer it is not simply written law and may also refer to divine will.

Kosmos (κόσμος)

A Cretan civic magistracy, not the modern sense of “cosmos”. At Dreros, an inscription limited the immediate reappointment of the office-holder.

Boustrophedon (βουστροφηδόν)

An inscriptional layout in which alternate lines run in opposite directions, like an ox ploughing a furrow and turning back.

Agélē (ἀγέλη)

A Cretan age-group associated with civic training. Its precise institutional form varies by period and city.

Moicheia (μοιχεία)

A Greek legal and social term often translated “adultery”, but broader and dependent on context. It should not be equated mechanically with a modern legal category.

Woikea (ϝοικέα)

A technical Cretan term for a dependent or enslaved woman. Its exact legal status and semantic range remain debated.

Dromeis (δρομεῖς)

A Cretan civic designation for free male witnesses, associated with age-grade and civic training. Whether it necessarily implied full citizenship is debated.

Keimḗlia (κειμήλια)

Valuable stored possessions or heirlooms that preserve wealth and social memory; not merely private “treasures”.

Linear B

The syllabic writing system used for Mycenaean Greek in the palace records of the second millennium BC. Its signs normally represent syllables; it is not an alphabet.

Logogram

A sign that represents a commodity, object or category rather than a syllable. In Linear B records, logograms can identify goods or materials alongside syllabic writing.

Epic Cycle

A conventional name for lost or fragmentary archaic epic poems that developed episodes before, during and after the Trojan War and other heroic traditions. Their contents are known mainly through summaries, quotations and later testimony, not through complete surviving texts.

Palladium

The sacred image associated in later traditions with Athena’s protection of Troy. Versions differ about its origin, theft and later fate; it should not be treated as a Homeric fact.