If you’re tired of all the Dylan content–too bad. The allusions will continue until morale improves.

I’ve written on Tempest‘s “Narrow Way” before. I’ve even written on “Narrow Way” and Homer before. But I’m going to do it again.

Here are some lines I didn’t discuss in the last one:

We looted and we plundered on distant shores
Why is my share not equal to yours?
Your father left you, your mother too
Even death has washed his hands of you

It’s not a stretch to say that the lines in bold have a Homeric vibe. The idea of distant travel and plunder might understandably put one in mind of the Odyssey. For example, this book compares the lines to the Odyssey‘s opening lines. (I quote the Fagles translation because Mr. Dylan is, for whatever reason, a Fagles Man.)

Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns 
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.

But I think the reference is actually to the Iliad.

In Book 1, Agamemnon and Achilles–who are, in fact, “looting and plundering on distant shores” (i.e., around Troy)–quarrel over whether Agamemnon should get a war-prize to replace the abducted Chryseis, whom he has to return to her father to put a stop to Apollo’s plague. Achilles rebukes Agamemnon thus, complaining that he never gets as much of the spoils as Agamemnon does (Fagles again):

My honors never equal yours,
whenever we sack some wealthy Trojan stronghold--
my arms bear the brunt of the raw, savage fighting,
true, but when it comes to dividing up the plunder
the lion's share is yours, and back I go to my ships,
clutching some scrap, some pittance that I love,
when I have fought to exhaustion.
                                    No more now--
back I go to Phthia. Better that way by far,
to journey home[1]  in the beaked ships of war.
I have no mind to linger here disgraced,
brimming your cup[2] and piling up your plunder.

Incidentally, “plundering” may be at the heart of what it means to be a hero. No one knows the etymology of the word for certain, but that is one possibility:

The English word hero, like its many cognates in other European languages, derives from the Greek hērōs. This is a mysterious word of unknown origin. Some have traced its ancestry back to the Proto-Indo-European root *ser-, to guard, protect. Or possibly (and unsettlingly?) its root is *sérṷ/*sóru-, loot, booty. (Anthony Welch, The Epic: A Very Short Introduction, p. 31)