Moreover, Odysseus has made the prudent habit of regular sacrifice to the gods. The gods in this poem, like the human characters, prefer people who show them respect and provide plenty of lavish gifts. Gods in Homer, like humans, care about eating and drinking, and associate the proper forms of consumption with honor and identity. The consumption of meat and wine demonstrates the heroes’ close relationship to the gods, since these, unlike other foodstuffs, are always offered to the gods: a splash of wine from any drinking occasion is always poured for the gods (as a libation), and animals that are killed are always “sacrificed,” never merely butchered. The gods are the most important guests who are always present at human feasts.
Gods have their own particular interests. As father and king of the gods, Zeus takes a special interest in masculine political power. Chieftains in Homer, whether or not they descend from Zeus in terms of lineage, are often given the epithet diotrephes, “sprung from Zeus”; in The Odyssey, this epithet is applied exclusively to Odysseus himself, whose role as king of Ithaca is apparently important to Zeus. Zeus is associated with the eagle, the king of the birds, and at more than one key moment in the poem (including the omen in Book 3, and the dream in Book 18), eagles represent Odysseus himself as the king whose power as king, and capacity to exact retribution on his enemies, seem to be favored by Zeus. In Book 1, Telemachus’ attempt to speak out against the suitors is valorized by Zeus, who sends two eagles to swoop into the assembled crowd:
they wheeled and whirred and flapped their mighty wings,
swooping at each man’s head with eyes like death. (2.152–53)
The birds anticipate the moment, twenty-two books later, when Telemachus and Odysseus together will slaughter the suitors. The day before the massacre, in a memorably creepy episode, the prophet Theoclymenus is able to foresee the suitors’ deaths, when they lose control of their own faces, and their cooked meat begins to drip with blood; the prophet declares,
“Your faces, heads and bodies are wrapped up
in night; your screams are blazing out like fire.
The ornate palace ceilings and the walls
are spattered with your blood. The porch is full
of ghosts, as is the courtyard—ghosts descending
into the dark of Erebus. The sun
has vanished from the sky, and gloomy mist
is all around.” (20.353–60)
Even before their deaths at the human hands of Odysseus and his helpers, the suitors are doomed by a divinely ordained fate.
But there is more than one god in this poem, and more than one point of view from which to look at Odysseus. The god most hostile to the hero is Zeus’ brother Poseidon, the god of the sea, storms, and earthquakes. Indeed, the narrative of the poem can be seen as an extended balancing act between Athena’s desire to restore Odysseus to a place of honor and stability in his household, and Poseidon’s to curse him with eternal wandering. Poseidon is understandably angry that Odysseus tricks and blinds his son, Polyphemus the Cyclops, who in Book 9 calls on his father to curse the homeward journey of the man who maimed him. Poseidon is less prominent as a character in the poem than his rival, Athena; he gets far fewer speeches and far fewer appearances interacting with the human characters. But we can see his work behind every storm and shipwreck, and behind every disaster that befalls Odysseus’ unlucky fellow travelers.
Homer presents us with a world where gods mingle with humans, and may touch their lives in ways that are not always visible to the mortals involved. Great charm and magic comes from the notion that the divine and human worlds are less separate than we might otherwise imagine. Telemachus, for example, is guided by Athena on his journey, and the presence of the goddess imparts a special comfort and joy even to the most mundane moments of the trip.
Wind blew the middle sail; the purple wave
was splashing loudly round the moving keel.
The goddess surfed the waves and smoothed the way.
The quick black ship held steady, so they fastened
the tackle down, and filled their cups with wine.
They poured libations to the deathless gods,
especially to the bright-eyed child of Zeus.
All through the night till dawn the ship sailed on. (2.427–34)
Mortal characters, and their accessories, are very frequently referred to by the standard approbatory epithet, “godlike” (or variations thereof), and one of the most common epithets of all, dios—often translated as “noble” or “shining”—literally suggests “associated with Zeus” (the word has the same root as the Latin deus, “god”). The sixth-century BCE philosopher Thales said, “The world is full of gods.” This is certainly true of the world of Odysseus. On his travels, he meets a number of minor deities, including the “nymph” Calypso. “Nymph” is the normal Greek word for a human young bride, but it is also applied to goddesses who are particularly closely associated with the natural landscape in particular places; there are nymphs of the sea (Nereids), nymphs of the woods (Dryads), and nymphs of caves (like Calypso herself, whose name suggests “hidden,” and like the unnamed nymphs whom Odysseus greets as soon as he arrives back in Ithaca). Every place has its own special deity—some welcoming or helpful, like the White Goddess who rescues Odysseus from shipwreck, and some hostile, like Scylla and Charybdis—goddesses who emerge from the dangerous natural world.
A particularly important god in this poem about journeys and interactions between people from different cultures and different households is Hermes, the messenger god, the god of travelers. Hermes is a son of Zeus who has the ability to fly at supernatural speed, bringing news or passengers from one realm to another, wearing the magical sandals “of everlasting gold with which he flies / on breath of air across the sea and land.” Hermes can dive from sky to earth and down to the underworld, and can flash through water to travel across the sea:
He touched Pieria, then from the sky
he plunged into the sea and swooped between
the waves, just like a seagull catching fish,
wetting its whirring wings in tireless brine (5.50–53)
Hermes has a certain elusive quality, appearing and disappearing at will; he is, like Odysseus himself, a trickster. In the (post-Odyssean) “Homeric Hymn to Hermes,” this clever, deceitful thief acquires an epithet often used of Odysseus himself—polytropos, “much-turning.” Hermes plays a key role at three important junctures. He is the one who is sent down unwillingly from Olympus, to the distant island of Calypso, to persuade the goddess to release Odysseus; he saves Odysseus and his men from Circe; and in the final book, he is the one who leads the spirits of the suitors to the underworld.
The most important deity in the poem, however, is Athena, the goddess of technical expertise and strategic thinking. She is a military deity, often represented as dressed in battle armor, and she reminds Odysseus that she is the one who helped him sack the city of Troy, inspiring the construction of the Wooden Horse. Athena also presides over activities associated more with peacetime; Penelope’s weaving, no less than Odysseus’ fighting, is done under the aegis of Athena. Whereas Poseidon favors the untamed world of the stormy sea, Athena loves fixed settlements and the olive tree—a crop whose oil was used in archaic Greece for cooking and skin care. Poseidon makes the earth shake; Athena makes even the most rugged, barren landscape available for cultivation.