Modesty and the Bashful Beggar

Hidden behind our need for financial support is the profound reality of what our college’s education confers upon our students—the tradition that has formed the greatness of the Western world, the great questions, the faith enduring for 2000 years through many different cultures and regimes. The great heritage of our civilization has been imperiled, and this college exists to help restore the household of the Good.

Rereading great books always brings new perspectives. I don’t just mean that the reader has changed (that old truism) but also that immediate circumstances can heighten the meaning of passages read dozens of times. That has been my experience this month with the second half of Homer’s Odyssey, which my section of freshmen is reading. Far from feeling epic, much of the description of the household in Ithaka feels like a 19th-century novel—interactions between masters and servants, concern with manners and with proper or improper ways of serving meals, details about furniture and bedding. Into this rich domestic world, which has been taken over by the overbearing suitors of Penelope, comes an old beggar: bald, slack-skinned, in need of a bath, his clothing in rags—one of those homeless unfortunates you would be embarrassed to give a second glance. No one would take him for anyone important.

The man is so down on his luck that he cannot even master the fundamentals of begging. Penelope’s son Telemachus sees him and sends the swineherd Eumaios to him with food: “Take all this and give it to the stranger, but also tell him / to go about among the suitors and beg from all of them. / Modesty, for a man in need, is not a good quality” (Lattimore translation). Later in the same book of the Odyssey, Penelope sees the beggar hanging around on the margins of the household as though he were afraid to enter. She says to Eumaios, “You do not bring him, Eumaios? What is this vagabond thinking? / Does he fear some indignity, or is he otherwise bashful / about the house? A bashful vagabond makes a bad beggar.”

In Greek, the word for “modesty” and “bashfulness” is aidōs, which can also mean shame, reverence, self-respect, conscience—everything from “the fear of God” to the quality that keeps us from basely yielding to fear or appetite. In the Iliad, great Telamonian Ajax urges his fellow Achaians to stand fast against the Trojans who are about to burn their ships: “Dear friends, be men; let shame [aidōs] be in your hearts, and discipline, / and have consideration for each other in the strong encounters.” In Robert Fitzgerald’s translation, aidōs is “hanging back” (“Hanging back is no asset to a hungry man”), but we could also interpret it as pride—in other words, “Pride is no asset to a man in need.”

Both Telemachus and Penelope urge this beggar to get over his embarrassment, because his circumstances make his otherwise admirable self-esteem an obstacle. I am reminded of Shakespeare’s Roman warrior Coriolanus, who needs to show his battle scars to the common people and ask for their votes if he wants to be consul. He hates the very idea of it, and at the last minute, he balks: “I will not do’t,/Lest I surcease to honor mine own truth/And by my body’s action teach my mind/A most inherent baseness.” His pride not only deprives him of Rome’s highest office, but it leads directly to his banishment from the city and his estrangement from those who love him most. He cannot be taught to humble himself and ask for something from others.

In the Odyssey, the advice to the beggar in Ithaka has its satisfactions, because both Telemachos and the reader (though not Penelope) know that the man being urged to get over his aidōs is none other than Odysseus, one of the greatest heroes of the Trojan War, a man whom Zeus himself describes as “beyond all other men in mind.” The advice to Odysseus to put aside his pride strikes home in this reading because the Biden economy has forced Wyoming Catholic College to make more pleas than usual for support to help sustain this heroic education. When the college needs money, hanging back is no virtue. Hidden behind the need is the profound reality of what this education confers upon our students—the tradition that has formed the greatness of the Western world, the great questions, the faith enduring for 2000 years through many different cultures and regimes. The great heritage of our civilization has been imperiled, and this college exists to help restore the household of the Good.

At one point before Odysseus and Telemachos begin their attack on the suitors, Telemachos lists all the suitors and asks his father how they can possibly overcome more than a hundred men by themselves. Odysseus’ piety—pagan though it is—moves us with recognition: “Hear me and understand me / and consider whether Athene with Zeus father helping will be / enough for us, or whether I must think of some other helper.”

At Wyoming Catholic College, we look to God and Our Lady, whose help can come in many ways.

Republished with gracious permission from Wyoming Catholic College‘s weekly newsletter. 

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The featured image is “A Beggar” (between 1715 and 1776) by Charles François Hutin, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.