Explore the interconnected themes of eating and moral degeneracy in ‘The Odyssey’ (e.g. the lotus-eaters, the eating by Odysseus’ comrades of the cattle of Helios, the gluttonous suitors, inter alia). What ramifications does this recurrent theme have for the moral cosmos of the poem as a whole?
Can you place it in the context of any other Greek ethical ideals beginning to take shape in the late archaic period (such as the Delphic oracle’s injunction “nothing in excess”, or the aristocratic ideals surrounding the custom of xenia)? The book “The odyssey” (can be one of the sources)
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