Yet, is youth truly priceless? Greek myth suggests not. Again we can consult Homer to help along our understanding, this time the Odyssey. After being shipwrecked on an isolated island, Odysseus attracts the eye of the beautiful and powerful nymph Calypso. She takes him in as her "husband" in a relationship that Homer describes as an "unwilling lover alongside a lover all too willing." (Odyssey, Book 5, line 172). Here he has the chance to live like a god: daily banquets, a divine romance, and eternal youth--all that Solon said was equivalent to great wealth.

But Odysseus still longs for his home, and his faithful wife, Penelope. Rejecting the offer from Calypso to live eternally with her on her paradisal island, Odysseus springs at the opportunity to continue his voyage home when Zeus forces his release. Some things are more valuable than even great wealth.

This is not an uninformed and foolish choice on the part of Odysseus. Chronologically in the Odyssey he has already ventured to the Underworld and seen what was waiting for him in death. There he heard the famous declaration from Achilles that he would "rather slave on earth for another man...than rule down here over the breathless dead." (Odyssey, Book 11, 556-558). Odysseus knows the stakes. Understandably for a man like Achilles, a young unmarried warrior, death should be avoided at all costs. But that is not Odysseus.

For the still living hero there is something essential to his humanity that is not found in paradise. He will even sacrifice immortality for the chance to return to it. The message is powerful: there can exist something redemptive in the frailty and brevity of our existence. This makes Odysseus a truly human hero. He has no divine blood and never shirks off his humanness. As a result he provides a route for confronting mortality. For him it is building a good home. The lyric poets arrive at different answers.