The Content of the Odyssey and the Iliad

Despite the rather sanitized version of the Iliad in the movie Troy its not a very good representation of that classic.  In the movie there are no deities intervening, nor is there anywhere near the amount of gore in the movie that there is in the Iliad– page after page of heads and arms and legs being lopped off, or people being run through with spears etc.  The book itself could be triple X rated for vivid violent descriptions again and again.  And as Lombardo makes clear, the novel really revolves around Achilles and his anger over Helen being stolen by the Trojans, and over the way matters were handled by Agamemnon, which as the later volume, the Odyssey shows, got his come-upance  when he got home to Mycenae and discovered his wife had run off with another man…. and worse.

The Odyssey on the surface is much more interesting, as it is not all blood and guts and is much more diverse.  What will it take for Odysseus to get home after 20 years of trying, and when he gets there, will he be able to clean up the mess in his own dining hall?  Inquiring minds want to know.  Along the way he must deal with Calypso (a femme fatale of a demi-goddess), the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, a Cyclops, the loss of his men, and of course his long absence from home, with Penelope and his son Telemachus unable to entirely hold down the fort until he gets there,  as Penelope has way too many suitors who are eating her out of house and home.   Lombardo’s translation does an excellent job of making clear all the difficulties Odysseus faced on his way home.

There are three themes in both of Homer’s works I want to deal with. Let’s first tackle  Hades, not to be equated with Hell.  Hades is the land of the spirits of the dead.  You have to cross the underground river Styx to get there. The lowest and gloomiest portion of the underworld is called Tartarus, reserved for the worst of the worst among human beings.  Interestingly, in the NT it is where the naughty angelic spirits end up (cf Jude and 2 Peter 2).  There is no direct mention of Elysium in these two volumes, the idea that there is a paradise island or retreat somewhere in Hades for heroes, and the good and the noble. Clearly, behavior in this life affects the afterlife outcome.  There is a particularly touching scene near the end of the Iliad where Patroclus,  Achilles best friend and companion, who has been slain by Hector, comes to Achilles in a dream and comforts him and helps him begin to get beyond his grief.   One may compare this to the medium of endor story about the spirit or shade of Samuel being consulted.  The concept of Sheol in the OT is pretty similar to the Greco-Roman notions about the afterlife in Hades, the land of the dead.

The second thing to deal with is the theology about the gods.  There are gods for any and all occasions and varying skills and tasks, but there is one deity that stands above them all, and it is Zeus, or in Roman parallels Jupiter Optimus Maximus.  Hermes (=Mercurius in Latin) the messenger god is the mailman among the deities who conveys Zeus’ messages.  The gods are not only involved in human affairs, they even take sides in the Trojan War, which is one reason the war just goes on and on and on.  But even these lesser gods cannot give a person a reprieve from their fate.   Achilles is destined to die much too young, though along the way he is allowed some freedom of choice.  Hector likewise had his final outcome determined in advance.   Yes, you can butter up one deity or another with delicious sacrifices and gifts and manage to sometimes persuade them to help with this or that, or forestall this or that.  Asclepius the healer god can intervene and prevent an early death in some cases.   These gods, as have often been noted, behave like spoiled brats at times, and they have way too much power and do what they want– good or bad.  Not only are their personal deities of various sorts, both male and female (Athena features prominently in both volumes, as someone looking after Odysseus and the Greeks even though Odysseus is a minor figure in the Iliad), but even the winds and the hours are divinized in Homer’s work.   These gods, like humans in these epics highly value honor, and try to avoid shame.   Telling the truth is not seen as always the highest of virtues, though when one swears an oath one had better fulfill it.   The point of sacrifices is to get on  or stay on the good side of this or that deity, which is another way of saying to avoid or propitiate their anger when a human being does something wrong and falls afoul of some god.  The problem of course was figuring out who was blessing you and who was cursing you.  As Plutarch once remarked (and he was a priest), ‘nowadays Mt Olympus is overcrowded).  Pagan religion was an uncertain thing because how was one to know which god needed to be entreated or placated.  Yes, you could figure this out in some cases since some gods like Asclepius had specialities— like healing.   But most of the time you are not sure.    This of course less of a problem in a monotheistic religion, but only in a monotheistic religion do you have one omnipotent deity, which raises the question of theodicy– why do bad things happen to God’s people.   A pagan could answer this in a heartbeat— you’ve falled afoul of this or that sometimes malevolent deity.

In addition to all this, there seems to be a sliding scale between deities and humans, because gods sometimes mate with humans, resulting in demi-gods like Hercules (Herakles) or Achilles.  There is not a sort of absolute distinction between the Creator and the creature in such theological thinking.  The overall impression one gets from reading Homer is that the deities really do care about human beings and their lives and fates, but there are some things Zeus has determined which cannot be changed.