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The Hero’s Journey

Homeric Greek

νόστος

Nostos

nostos

Return, homecoming, especially the return from abroad or war.

Etymology

Greek νόστος, homecoming or return voyage. From the o-grade of PIE *nes- (to return home) via νέομαι, to come or go back (Beekes). The asterisk on *nes- marks a reconstruction, not a tablet. Nostalgia is a later coinage (1688, Johannes Hofer: nostos + algos, pain). Do not read the modern compound backward as the Homeric definition.

Historical usage

In Homeric diction nostos is the return from war, especially by sea, and the story of that return. The Odyssey is a nostos that keeps failing until it succeeds at a cost.

The lost Nostoi of the Epic Cycle treated other Greek homecomings from Troy, many of them disastrous.

Later development

Modern criticism uses nostos as a name for return narratives generally. That extension is scholarly shorthand, not Homeric law.

Why it matters here

Nostos is earned by stories in which home is a problem, not a default ending. Some roads have no nostos. Ovid’s do not. Orpheus’s does not, for the person led.

Stories that hold this word

Relationship type is not optional

A word present in a source text is not the same as a later critical term applied to that story.

  • In the source text

    The Odyssey

    Homeric diction: the return from war, and the story of that return.

  • Later critical term

    Orpheus

    Later application: a return emptied for the person led. Not Homeric diction.

  • Later critical term

    Ovid at Tomis

    Later application by absence: this road has no nostos.

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