The Gods Must Be Crazy!
As in all Ancient Greek myths, the Olympian Gods are prevalent throughout the entire story. The Odyssey is no exception. People constantly pray to Zeus, Poseidon, and numerous other deities to provide them with good luck and to soothe their anger. However, the gods really just do whatever they please. The most recent example would be Poseidon turning a ship and it's crew to stone and then raising a mountain in front of the Phaenician harbor. The Phaenicians are descendants of Poseidon himself, and they are pleading with Poseidon and giving him sacrifices, but he seems not to care. All because they helped one man get home.
The gods really seem to just choose whichever outcome is most or least convenient, adding their own twists depending on their powers. Athena chooses to give great assistance to Odysseus and Telemachus because... she just likes them? Zeus (supposedly) causes a storm that doesn't let Odysseus and his crew go home for a month which inevitably makes it so they eat the cattle of Helios (Zeus should probably have seen that coming). The gods in Greek mythology have always been fickle beings. Zeus sleeps with almost every woman except Hera, every god has their favorite hero, and every god vies for the most worship. However, the depictions of Zeus, the almighty pinnacle of Olympus, head of the pantheon, causing suffering was something that contrasts deeply with how we usually view Zeus: the righteous figure.
Although at the beginning of the book, Zeus said the humans should not blame their misfortune on the gods, the gods have been quite cruel at times. I feel like the flawed and cruel nature of the immortals is a key aspect of Ancient Greek culture, and makes the pantheon more interesting, since the gods all have human qualities.
The gods really seem to just choose whichever outcome is most or least convenient, adding their own twists depending on their powers. Athena chooses to give great assistance to Odysseus and Telemachus because... she just likes them? Zeus (supposedly) causes a storm that doesn't let Odysseus and his crew go home for a month which inevitably makes it so they eat the cattle of Helios (Zeus should probably have seen that coming). The gods in Greek mythology have always been fickle beings. Zeus sleeps with almost every woman except Hera, every god has their favorite hero, and every god vies for the most worship. However, the depictions of Zeus, the almighty pinnacle of Olympus, head of the pantheon, causing suffering was something that contrasts deeply with how we usually view Zeus: the righteous figure.
Although at the beginning of the book, Zeus said the humans should not blame their misfortune on the gods, the gods have been quite cruel at times. I feel like the flawed and cruel nature of the immortals is a key aspect of Ancient Greek culture, and makes the pantheon more interesting, since the gods all have human qualities.
I wrote my blog post about something similar! To me it seemed really unfair that the Phaeacians should be so heavily punished when Poseidon's grudge was against Odysseus. I like your point about how possible immorality of the gods adds interest to the story, because I had never thought about that before but I definitely agree.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely true! The gods are very fickle in their decisions and really do whatever they want. One thing I find particularly interesting that you mention here has to do with when Odysseus' crew eats the cattle of Helios. It's a situation that sort of sets home for me how much the gods don't care about humans. It seems pretty realistic to partially blame the crew's death on the gods. First, there is a humongous storm soon after they stop on the island, forcing them to stay there for longer, and then, the gods send sleep to Odysseus, preventing him from stopping his crew from eating the cattle. There are a lot of interesting questions of what could have been that center around the gods' involvement in certain events.
ReplyDeleteI saw this post after I posted my own blog post on this topic, which I also titled “the gods must be crazy”. Weird coincidence! Regardless, interesting post, I think both of us went in slightly different directions. I totally agree that the gods seem very fickle and unpredictable, especially towards mortals. For all our talk of whether Poseidon and Zeus were “fair” to punish the Phaeacians, I feel like maybe we should just put away the idea that the gods are fair at all, since nothing really requires them to be.
ReplyDeleteNice post! Poseidon's punishment for the Phaecians was definitely really unfair. I think most of us were originally inclined to see the gods as arbiters of justice (maybe because of our modern ideas about gods) but Homer makes it clear that when the gods react to mortals' actions, they think more about themselves than the mortals. Maybe when Zeus said that mortals shouldn't blame their misfortune on the gods, he didn't mean that the gods react fairly to mortals' action but rather that the gods are the way they are and the mortals should just accept that the gods are going to be unfair and act accordingly. But that still isn't fair because the gods are so fickle and unpredictable.
ReplyDeletethe gods are very impulsive and obviously hold much less value in human life for most people, but i think they pick select people to screw around with and make into their entertainment.
ReplyDeleteI think that sometimes an underlining theme in a lot of these stories is that life is unfair. And that even if a person does everything right it doesn't exempt them from having disasters to come to them. Only change is that it comes in the form of god so that people can't scream that god will avenge him for the injustices caused to him when they are the ones being struck down by a god. So although a story, I think sometimes its a stab at the underlying works of life outside of these stories.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting point because the gods are supposed to represent what sort of values humans appreciate (like xenia for example). By this depiction of the gods, despite their godly powers, act very human in the way that they interact and respond with their emotions. I often wonder why the gods are depicted as somewhat flawed when they should be setting an example to the humans. Two thoughts that I could come up with are perhaps they portray the gods as more human in their emotions so that they are more relatable to their human worshippers. Or maybe this is Homer's way of criticizing the gods, as humans can be resentful about misfortunes in their lives and want to blame it on the gods.
ReplyDeleteI found it interesting how the Gods acted very human, very often letting their emotions control them, yet still thought themselves to be vastly superior, deserving of humans' utmost respect. The Gods obviously have way more power than any human, but I'm not sure how morally superior they are.
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