Written by Autumn Kennedy

    What does it mean to long for home? Only human beings long for home; what is it about human beings that makes us homesick, and what is it about home that satisfies this desire? And why do some, desiring home, never reach it? The epic poets Homer and Vergil raise these same questions by immersing the listener in the stories of Odysseus and Aeneas, two homesick wayfarers representing all of homesick, wayfaring humanity. The Odyssey and the Aeneid reveal the characteristics [of] home that satisfy homesickness: home is a place of belonging, identity, and rest, the place of one's own bed and table, the destination after the long, hard road. The philosopher Plato also raises these same questions about home, not about the desire for home specifically, but about every and all human desires, by investigating the nature of the soul in his work the Republic. His work reveals the characteristics of human beings that make us homesick: we have various kinds of desires in our souls, some mental, some emotional, some having to do with physical needs. And together, the Republic, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid uncover why some homecomings are successful and some are not: to be a success, the desires in the soul directed towards home must be in right relation to one another. The proper ordering of the soul, with each part of the soul performing its duty excellently, is virtue in the soul. And virtue is power to do good; therefore, if a virtuous man seeks to return home, he will succeed. Vices like greed and folly disrupt the order of the soul, rendering it powerless to come home. By investigating what the Republic, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid reveal, we may better understand what it means to long for home, to have “nostalgia.” Nostalgia is the longing of the whole soul for home, with each part of the soul desiring home in its own way; and nostalgia ordered by virtue drives men to reach their destination.

     The term “nostalgia” summarizes this desire for home. It is commonly used today to mean “a sentimental longing for the past” or “the feeling of a fond memory.” However, the word literally means “the pain of homesickness.” It is derived from the Greek nostos, meaning “homecoming,” and algos, meaning “pain.”¹ For the purposes of this investigation, “nostalgia” will refer generally to the longing for home, along with the homecomings (the Greek nostoi is often used to name these) which it inspires. In other words, “nostalgia” will refer to both the passion for home and its corresponding action, homecoming. Plato explains in the Republic that he may examine the actions of men by investigating the desires of their souls, since every action is prompted by desire. Therefore, we may examine the pursuits of home in the Odyssey and the Aeneid by investigating the motivating desires.

     Plato distinguishes three kinds of desire in the soul. The first kind is the appetitive desire, the love of things like money, food, or sex. Plato calls the part of the soul that desires these things the “appetitive part” and names the virtue appropriate to the appetitive part as moderation. The second kind of desire in the soul is the emotional or spirited desire, which is the love of victory and honor. The “spirited part” of the soul desires these things, and courage is its appropriate virtue. The third kind of desire is the intellectual desire, the love of wisdom and knowledge. The “intellectual part” of the soul desires these, and wisdom itself is its virtue; for the intellectual part of the soul, its desire converges with its virtue. The three parts of the soul relate to one another justly when the intellectual part governs the appetitive part with the help of the spirited part. The intellectual part must understand what is good, the spirited part must see that the good is followed despite any adversity, and the appetitive part must submit to the parts of the soul above it. The intellectual part needs the spirited part because otherwise it would fail to restrain the appetitive part. It needs the strength of the spirited part to seek the good and resist evil.²

     Using these categories of desire, we may say that nostalgia is the intellectual, spirited, and appetitive desire for home, home being the “good” that the soul pursues. It may seem strange to say that nostalgia includes an intellectual desire, when nostalgia today refers to a very sentimental, sometimes non-rational feeling. However, in Homer and Vergil, when people no longer desire their homes, they are said to be out of their minds. In the Odyssey, Helen reflects on her time at Troy, saying that eventually she came to her senses and started longing for home; thus, she correlates soundness of mind with nostalgia.³ Again, Odysseus and his men see that the lotus-eaters have forgotten the way home. The lotus was poison because it caused such forgetfulness.⁴ Nostalgia is quite rational.

     Only the intellectual part of the soul desires home as such, but the spirited and appetitive parts desire things related to home. The spirited part desires honor and victory; in the context of nostalgia, it desires the honor and victory of coming home against all odds. Both Odysseus and Aeneas suffered perilous voyages through the sea, and even when they arrived home, before they could enjoy it, they were forced to purge it of enemies. Odysseus had to cleanse his hall of the suitors; Aeneas had to rid Latium of Turnus. Such was their destiny, and no honor would have come in falling short of it. Dido and Circe, though they could offer the heroes many things, could not offer them the chance to attain the highest honor of reclaiming home; thus, the spirited part of the soul motivates the pursuit of home.

     The intellectual and spirited desires play the most prominent roles in nostalgia, but nostalgia also includes appetitive desire. Odysseus does desire the marriage bed, but again, he desires what is his own. He desires Penelope and no other, and he must return home to reunite with her.⁵ In this way, the appetitive desire is also directed toward home, and we may see how nostalgia is the intellectual, spirited, and appetitive desire for home, each in its own way.

     We have said that the intellectual part of the soul desires home as such, and this means that it desires the greatest goods of home. Home is a place of identity, belonging, and harmony, three goods which are closely related and which both Odysseus and Aeneas pursue. As for identity, Odysseus seeks to return to it as king of Ithaka, husband of Penelope, and father of Telemachos. Odysseus does not long for any home, but his own particular home.⁶ Though he is offered seemingly superior or at least easier forms of home along his journey, he refuses them all.⁷ Ithaka remains his fatherland, and anything about his identity is on Ithaka. 

     Aeneas, on the other hand, chases a home more ideal and less particular than Odysseus, but he still struggles to realize a specific identity. He searches not for the land where he was born, but the land of his forefather Dardanos.⁸ He is not Aeneas of Troy; he seeks to become Aeneas, founder of Rome, husband of Lavinia, father of the lord of Alba Longa. The intellectual part of the soul desires such an identity that rests in a home. 

     Closely following the blessing of identity is the blessing of belonging. Just as formal cause and final cause are inseparable, so are the identities of characters in the epics and their destinies. Home is a place of purpose whether or not it is a place of familiarity. Latium is Aeneas’ true home because, even though he grew up in Troy, Latium has his destiny. He cannot walk Zeus’ path for him in Troy, since Zeus has required him to establish a city of rest not just for himself and the Trojan remnant, but for the whole world.⁹ Again, Eumaios, the faithful swineherd of Odysseus, lives in Ithaka but is not a native Ithakan. He does not live in a familiar land; he longs to see his family and fatherland again.¹⁰ Yet, he belongs in Ithaka because he aids his lord Odysseus in reclaiming the royal hall. Eumaios’ purpose is on Ithaka even when his family is not, and the intellectual part of the soul desires this true belonging in a home.

     The last good of home, also closely following the other two, is harmony. Telemachos recognizes this when he visits Sparta. In the house of Menelaos, he declares that he cannot feel homesick there.¹¹ This may sound strange, considering that the Odyssey is about a return to Ithaka. But, Telemachos says this because Menelaos’ house has the exact kind of good that he longs to have in his own house: harmony and rest. Menelaos, the husband, has arrived safely from Troy, and Helen, the wife, has reunited with him. Their house is peaceful, prosperous, and strong. Telemachos longs for his own father and mother to be reunited, and for the suitors who waste their house to be driven out. Again, Aeneas and the Trojans lament many times in the Aeneid that all they desire is a place of rest. These three goods—identity, belonging, and rest—are what the intellectual part of the soul yearns for when it thinks of home.

     We have thus examined the three parts of the soul separately as regards nostalgia, but the desires driving nostalgia do not exist in isolation, operating and pursuing ends independent of one another. Homecoming is not many pursuits, but one pursuit.  Sometimes in the Odyssey and Aeneid, it is not clear what primarily drives homecoming—the goddess of Wisdom leads Odysseus while the goddess of Love leads Aeneas—but, in the most important scenes in these epics, a clear hierarchy emerges of how the pursuits of the soul integrate to make a successful homecoming, namely, the hierarchy Plato outlines. To put this hierarchy in the language of the story, the intellectual part needs a teacher, the spirited part needs a captain, and the appetitive part needs a master. In the pursuit of home, the intellectual part needs counsel: direction for finding the way home and a vision of the home it is after. Then, such knowledge of good things ahead will rouse the spirited part to fight, to make the vision a reality, and to subdue anything opposed to it, enemies within its own soul or enemies without. Thus Aeneas, in his opening speech in the Aeneid, speaks to his shipwrecked comrades in this way: first, he reminds them of their goal, the home they desire: “We hold our course for Latium, where the Fates hold out a settlement for us.” Next, in light of this, he inspires their hearts, “Now call back your courage, and have done with fear and sorrow.”¹²

     Further, a scene in the Odyssey illustrates the tripartite structure of nostalgic desire in macrocosm. This scene is the encounter with the Sirens.¹³ In the tripartite structure, Odysseus represents the intellectual part and his men are the spirited part. Odysseus has set course for home, just as the intellectual part sets course for the good. Specifically, Odysseus has set the ship on course with the men rowing it, just as the intellectual part sets out good habits for the body to do, and the spirited part moves the body [to] carry them out. Thus, the whole ship is on its way home just as the whole soul is on its way to virtue. Then, when Odysseus knows that he will encounter a temptation to steer the ship off course (the Sirens), he lashes himself to the mast of the ship. In the same way, the intellectual part, in the face of temptation, will lash itself to the good habits of the whole soul. Thus, Odysseus avoids the disaster of dashing the ship upon the rocks, and the soul avoids doing evil deeds with the body. Therefore, just as the soul escapes temptation to pursue the good, the Ithakans escape the Sirens to continue home.

     When the soul preserves this hierarchy of desires, the homecoming will ultimately be successful. But, as Zeus says at the beginning of the Odyssey, if the order of desires is disrupted, the homecoming fails and disaster follows. Zeus names two things which rob mortals of their homecoming: greed and folly.¹⁴ The spirited or appetitive parts may rebel against the intellectual part in greed, or the intellectual part may foolishly lose sight of home. In the Odyssey, the appetitive desires of Odysseus’ crewmen greedily mutiny against their captain’s orders. They are hungry, and their mistake is not in feeling hungry, but in letting their bellies overpower their minds so much that they eat the sacred cattle of Helios and are cursed.¹⁵ “The cruel belly, can you hide its ache?” laments Odysseus. “How many bitter days it brings! Long ships with good stout planks athwart—would fighters rig them to ride the barren sea, except for hunger?”¹⁶ Though hunger may make men feel like beasts, they only really are beasts when they make hunger their master. Odysseus’ crewmen only became bestial when they ate the sacred cattle. Ironically, it is Odysseus’ dog Argos who provides the example of how to deal with bodily passions like hunger. Argos really is a beast; he is a dog, dogs often representing carnal desire. And yet, he does not forget his master Odysseus. His animal desires are not his master; Odysseus is.¹⁷ Argos has not given in to greed, and so he fulfills his part in the homecoming: to see his master again.

     Folly, the other vice besides greed which may rob men of their homecoming, plagues Aeneas in the first half of the Aeneid. Aeneas constantly forgets that he must settle in Italy. He tries to settle first in Thrace, then Crete, then Carthage, and at one point he plans to settle in Sicily, but disaster meets him every time. He meets the cursed Polydorus in Thrace,¹⁸ the Trojans are struck with plague on Crete,¹⁹ and Carthage starts falling into ruin the longer he lingers with Dido.²⁰ Though Aeneas is given prophecy after prophecy about Italy, it is not until his visit to the underworld that a prophecy surely fixes itself in Aeneas’ mind. Anchises shows Aenas a great series of visions of future Rome, and he does this “to fire his love of glory.”²¹ Anchises is reordering Aeneas’ soul: he shows the intellectual part the good it is after, and this arouses the spirited part, which up to this point rebelled against Aeneas. Up to this point, Aeneas had “gone to Italy not of his own free will,”²² but now he emerges from the underworld with a fixed sense of purpose, never wavering from it again. Aeneas’ new shield, with the visions from the underworld wrought on its surface, symbolizes this freedom from folly.²³ Now Aeneas, with the vision of Rome in his mind, can effectively fight to make it a reality.

     Thus we may see how nostalgia is the intellectual, spirited, and appetitive desire for home, and when these three desires are in proper hierarchy, the homecoming is successful. We may also see, then, that Plato’s categories of desire, appearing simplistic on the surface, may actually be applied to evaluate more complicated human desires, even when the good desired by the intellect is not the good as such, but a thing that is good. Home, though not the highest good, is nevertheless a very high one. Plato, after all, in order to investigate the nature of the soul and human desires in the Republic, first examines the real home of human beings, the just city. Nostalgia is one of the best words that we have to describe the deep ache all men have felt since the Fall, and the deep longing all Christians feel for the New Creation.

Autumn Kennedy is a former homeschool student from Cincinnati, OH. She is currently pursuing a bachelor's degree in Liberal Arts at New College Franklin in Franklin, TN. She loves to study mathematics, write poetry, and read medieval literature.

Bibliography

Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Robert Fitzgerald. United States: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.

“Nostalgia.” Etymonline.com. Accessed November 15, 2024, https://www.etymonline.com/word/nostalgia.

Plato; Hutchinson, D. S.. “The Republic” in Plato: Complete Works. United States: Hackett Publishing Company, Incorporated, 1997.

Vergil. The Aeneid. Translated by Robert Fitzgerald. United Kingdom: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2013.

Footnotes

[1] “Nostalgia,” Etymonline.com, accessed November 15, 2024, https://www.etymonline.com/word/nostalgia.

[2] Plato; D.S. Hutchinson, “The Republic” in Plato: Complete Works (United States: Hackett Publishing Company, Incorporated, 1997), 1059-1077.

[3] Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Robert Fitzgerald (United States: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998), 60-61.

[4] Homer, The Odyssey, 148.

[5] Homer, The Odyssey, 87.

[6] Homer, The Odyssey, 3.

[7] Homer, The Odyssey, 87.

[8] Vergil, The Aeneid, trans. Robert Fitzgerald (United Kingdom: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2013), 68.

[9] Vergil, The Aeneid, 12-14.

[10] Homer, The Odyssey, 252.

[11] Homer, The Odyssey, 70.

[12] Vergil, The Aeneid, 10.

[13] Homer, The Odyssey, 214-216.

[14] Homer, The Odyssey, 4.

[15] Homer, The Odyssey, 219-223.

[16] Homer, The Odyssey, 319.

[17] Homer, The Odyssey, 319-320.

[18] Vergil, The Aeneid, 66-67.

[19] Vergil, The Aeneid, 70-71.

[20] Vergil, The Aeneid, 98.

[21] Vergil, The Aeneid, 191.

[22] Vergil, The Aeneid, 108.

[23] Vergil, The Aeneid, 256.