Question

Which excerpt from The Odyssey best shows that the ancient Greeks greatly valued the idea of home?

What of those years
of rough adventure, weathered under Zeus?
The wind that carried us west from Ilium
brought me to Ismarus, on the far shore,
a strongpoint on the coast of Cicones.
And this new grief we bore with us to sea:
our precious lives we had, but not our friends.
No ship made sail next day until some shipmate
had raised a cry, three times, for each poor ghost
unfleshed by the Cicones on that field.
They fell in, soon enough, with Lotus-Eaters,
who showed no will to do us harm, only
offering the sweet Lotus to our friends—
but those who ate this honeyed plant, the Lotus,
never cared to report, nor to return:
My home is on the peaked sea-mark of Ithaca
under Mount Neion's wind-blown robe of leaves,
in sight of other islands—Dulichium,
Same, wooded Zacynthus—Ithaca
being most lofty in that coastal sea,

Answer 1

The lines that most clearly show that the ancient Greeks prized home are the contrast between the Lotus-eaters and Odysseus’s longing, especially:

- “but those who ate this honeyed plant, the Lotus, / never cared to report, nor to return,”

and immediately after:

- “My home is on the peaked sea-mark of Ithaca / under Mount Neion's wind-blown robe of leaves…”

Explanation: the first line makes explicit that giving up the will to “return” is an unnatural loss, while the second is a proud, concrete portrait of Ithaca that anchors Odysseus’s identity. Together they express the Greek ideal of nostos (homecoming) and the importance of oikos (the household/home) as the true goal of a hero’s journey.