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Speaking of the Gods
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2009
Extract
In an excellent article on ‘The Philosophy of the Odyssey’ Dr. R. B. Rutherford draws renewed attention to the need to ‘distinguish between the poet's statements and the words of his characters’, and adds: ‘This principle also affects the view we take of the gods’ concern for justice in the Iliad: the Greeks, believing themselves in the right, sometimes declare that the gods must think likewise… But the scenes on Olympus which the poet allows us to witness do not generally bear this out.’
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 1989
References
NOTES
1. JHS 106 (1986), 145–62 at p. 153 n. 43. Dr. Rutherford kindly read a first draft of my own paper, and made helpful comments.
2. He refers to Dodds, E. R., The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1959), p. 11Google Scholar. See also Lloyd-Jones, H., The Justice of Zeus (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1971), p. 7Google Scholar (‘the viewpoint of the politics of Olympus … the viewpoint of the human actors …’).
3. Which therefore has to be imported by those who believe in a just Zeus: ‘… the listener [may] wonder why, nevertheless, [Zeus] allows the city to fall, even after he has discharged his promise to Thetis. The answer is that this has been made inevitable by Paris’ offence against hospitality, which is protected by Zeus ζένιος himself (Kirk, G. S. on Iliad 4.31–49Google Scholar).
4. Led up to by 356 and 365, and recalled by the blinded giant at 517. Homer is keeping the motif of host and guest continually before us.
5. Indeed his mention of Zeus need be no more than the frequent façon de parler by which humans refer to as Zeus' doing events that have already taken place and must therefore have been the doing of Ζεὺς τέλειος (see p. 39 below).
6. Though he is apparently regarded as such by Fenik, B., Studies in the Odyssey (Wiesbaden, 1974), pp. 222, 229Google Scholar.
7. A brief statement by Rutherford, art.cit. (n. 1), 148. Fenik, , op.cit. (n. 6), pp. 208–27Google Scholar concentrates on Poseidon's wrath against Odysseus.
8. See also 8.575–6; 9.175–6; 13.210–2 (there ironically of Ithaca, where, though this is home, there are ὑβρισταί to confront), with Adkins, A. W. H., Merit and Responsibility (Oxford, 1960), p. 65Google Scholar.
9. Perhaps Athene, whose character is so attuned to that of Odysseus, raises doubts that the cautious Odysseus might in any case entertain (see below, n. 24).
10. Dodds, , op.cit. (n. 2), p. 32Google Scholar and Lloyd-Jones, , op.cit. (n. 2), p. 30Google Scholar.
11. Note also, apart from passages to be discussed later, 14.53–54 (Odysseus to Eumaios: Ζεύς τοι δοίη, ζεῖνε, καὶ ἀθάνατοι θεοὶ ἂλλοι/ὂττι μάλιοτ' ἐθέλεις, ὃτι με πρόΦρων ὑπέδεζο (14.440–1 and 15.341–2 are similar); 14.158–9 (oath by Zeus and ξενίη τράπεζα, together with the hearth of Odysseus; so too 17.155–6 and 20.230–1, and cf. 19.303–4); 14.283–4 (Odysseus' false tale of his doings in Egypt: the Egyptian king protected him as a suppliant, because Διὸς ὼπίζετο μῆνιν/ξοινίου, ὄς τε μάλιστα νεμεσσᾶται κακὰ ἒργα); and especially 14.388—9, where Eumaios says he will respect and welcome the stranger not for any lying stories he may tell, but Δία ξένιον δείσας αὐτόν τ' ἐλεαίρων (note also 406), pity and piety going together. In all these cases, it is a matter of human words, not Homer's narration of divine attitudes. Men make play with the name of Zeus Xeinios to praise or influence others, or to keep themselves on the straight and narrow path.
12. Note especially their propensity to throw things: 17.462, 18.394, 20.299.
13. Note also 374, ἐὶ ξείνοις γελόωντες, and 382—3, τοὺς ξείνους ἐν νηΐ πολυκληἷδι βαλόντες/ἐςΣικελοὺς πέμψωμεν, ὃθεν κέ τοι ἃξιον ἃλΦοι, a perversion of the duty of hosts discussed above.
14. Cf. Iliad 13.624–5, cited above, p. 33. In both these Odyssean passages men reinforce their own disapproval of hybristic actions by attributing disapproval to the gods also. Compare Hesiod's employment of a just Zeus against the corrupt kings.
15. Fenik, , op.cit. (n. 6), p. 222Google Scholar is right to say that at least some parts of the poem show the gods overseeing ‘the working out of retributive justice’. Zeus' overseeing is from a great height.
16. Orestes' role is stressed in 3.195–8, 203, 306–8 and 4.546–7 (all from speeches by humans). Dr. Rutherford remarks to me that, though the gods draw the moral οὐκ ἀρετᾷ κακὰ ἒργα (8.329) from the discomfiture of the adulterer Ares, ‘it is the independent ingenuity of Hephaistos that traps the lovers, not a divine consensus of hostility to adultery’.
17. This may be thought an advance on the Iliad at least in the sense that there Thetis' appeal to Zeus is accepted by him because of what he owes to her, irrespective of the merits of the case and his own wishes (1.503ff.; cf. 394ff.). But Zeus' partiality for sacrifices, played on by Athene, is thoroughly Iliadic: that is why he favours Troy (Iliad 4.44–49).
18. =24.479–80. Zeus there again leaves action to Athene. He does go on to suggest a pacific solution to the problem of the kinsmen; but Athene has virtually suggested it to him – he encourages her πάρος μεμαυîαν (487).
19. In 5.146 Hermes, instructing Calypso to send Odysseus on his way, says: Διος δ' ἐποπίζεο μῆνιν: Zeus would be angry at a hitch in what was to be. Hermes has just told Calypso of the necessity that Odysseus should leave (113–4, αἶσα as well as μοȋρα: he amplifies Zeus' own words at 41).
20. Stressed at 3.219–22, 379; 13.314–15, 388. See the discussion in Stanford, W. B., The Ulysses Theme (Ann Arbor Paperbacks, 2nd ed. 1968), ch. 3Google Scholar.
21. Though she does help him a good deal in Scherie (and even gives him ideas at sea before he reaches there from Calypso's isle: 5.427, 437).
22. Lesky, Albin, A History of Greek Literature (London, 1966), pp. 69–70Google Scholar rhapsodizes about Athene's ‘courtesy’. But she has no alternative.
23. On testing in the Odyssey generally see Rutherford, art.cit. (n. 1), 158–9.
24. Athene is πολύβουλος (16.282), matching πολύμητις Odysseus. Homer lets her inspire Odysseus with ideas that he might have thought of for himself: the two merge into each other.
25. And favoured, so far as we are told, on non-moral grounds. Lloyd-Jones, , op.cit. (n. 2), p. 29Google Scholar seems wrong to say that she favours him because (inter alia) he is a good king, though he is. See again Stanford, loc.cit. (n. 20) and Rutherford, art.cit. (n. 1), 148 (‘her own affection for him is based on their similarity of character’).
26. Athene in reply says that she and Odysseus alone could triumph in a fight (49–51); but Zeus could hardly come down to earth for such a purpose. This passage is not the only one in which the problem of the suitors' kinsmen is raised before the (allegedly non-Homeric) showdown with them in Book 24. The vengeance of Odysseus on the suitors, whatever the role of Athene and Zeus, is in no way safeguarded from its natural consequence: the continuation of the vendetta. Odysseus had found the same with the Cyclops.
27. A ‘wish’ is a different matter (20.98, ἐθέλοντες: Zeus' omen presumably confirms that he did so wish).