The Olympian Gods and Religion

The Olympian Hierarchy

The religion of Homer's world is polytheistic. The Olympian gods — twelve in number, dwelling on the peaks of Mount Olympus in northern Greece — form a ruling family of divine beings, each with distinct powers, personalities, and spheres of influence. Zeus is king, the wielder of the thunderbolt, and the most powerful of the gods; but his power is not absolute. The other gods have wills of their own, and their intrigues, quarrels, and alliances drive much of the action of both the Iliad and the Odyssey.

The hierarchy, roughly, is this. Zeus and his brothers Poseidon and Hades divided the world between them after the overthrow of their father Cronus and the Titans. Zeus took the sky, Poseidon the sea, Hades the underworld of the dead. Hera is Zeus's wife and queen, the goddess of marriage and childbirth, perpetually jealous of her husband's infidelities. Athena, goddess of wisdom, crafts, and strategic war, is Zeus's daughter, born fully grown from his forehead. Apollo is the god of the sun, of prophecy, of music, and of plague. Artemis, his twin sister, is the goddess of the hunt and of wild things. Hermes is the messenger god, the guide of travelers and thieves. Aphrodite is the goddess of love and beauty, married to Hephaestus, the lame smith of the gods. Ares is the god of violent war, hated by his own parents. Demeter is the goddess of grain and harvest. These are the great Olympians — plus Hestia, the goddess of the hearth, who rarely appears in the narratives but whose presence is implied in every household fire.

Gods in the Odyssey: Friends and Enemies

The Odyssey is, in many ways, the story of a man caught in the machinery of divine will. Odysseus has both gods who champion him and gods who hate him. The central tension of the divine plot is the conflict between Poseidon, who is determined to make Odysseus suffer for the blinding of his son Polyphemus, and Athena, who is equally determined to bring Odysseus safely home.

Poseidon's hatred is the engine of Odysseus's suffering. It is Poseidon who raises the storm that destroys his last ship on the journey from Calypso's island; it is Poseidon who, in the mythic past, had already cursed the Phaeacians for helping Odysseus. Athena, by contrast, is Odysseus's constant advocate — she argues for his release with Zeus on Olympus, she appears in disguise to guide Telemachus, she transforms Odysseus's appearance at key moments, she stands beside him in the final battle against the suitors. The two gods are, in effect, playing a game with Odysseus's life as the stake — though the implication throughout is that Athena's will, aligned as it is with Zeus's, will ultimately prevail.

The Minor Divinities

Below the Olympians stand a host of lesser divinities who also play crucial roles in the Odyssey. Calypso, the nymph of the island of Ogygia, is a daughter of Atlas; she holds Odysseus as her lover for seven years, promising him immortality if he will stay with her, and only releasing him when Zeus sends Hermes with the command. Circe, the enchantress of the island of Aeaea, is a daughter of the Sun; she transforms Odysseus's men into swine and then, defeated by Odysseus's will (and by the herb moly that Hermes gives him), becomes his host and guide, instructing him on the journey to the Underworld and advising him on the dangers of Scylla and Charybdis.

Then there are the nymphs of the caves and rivers, the Sirens who sing men to their deaths, Scylla the six-headed monster, Charybdis the whirlpool, the Sun god Helios whose sacred cattle Odysseus's men slaughter — and, of course, the dead themselves, the shades of the Underworld, over whom Hades and Persephone preside. The Homeric cosmos is alive with supernatural beings, every landscape peopled with its own local gods and spirits.

Theodicies: Why Do Humans Suffer?

The first book of the Odyssey opens with a remarkable theological speech. Zeus, looking down from Olympus upon the world of men, complains: "Oh for shame, how the mortals put the blame upon us gods, for they say evils come from us, but it is they, rather, who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given" (Od. 1.32-34). To illustrate his point, he tells the story of Aegisthus: how Aegisthus seduced Agamemnon's wife Clytemnestra, murdered Agamemnon on his return, and was in turn killed by Orestes — a sequence of events that the gods had warned Aegisthus against, but which he chose to pursue anyway.

This passage is the opening statement of the Odyssey's theology. The gods are not responsible for human evil. Humans bring suffering upon themselves through their own folly. But this is only half the story. The gods do dispense fate — or, rather, Zeus dispenses fate, and the other gods work within its limits. The concept of moira (fate, or "portion") is fundamental. Every human being has a moira, a share of life allotted to them at birth, which the gods themselves cannot — or, at least, do not — overrule. The tension between Zeus's will, the individual wills of the other gods, the moira of each human being, and the free choices of mortals themselves, is the invisible engine that drives the entire theological apparatus of the poem.

Sacrifice, Prayer, and Omens

The ritual practices of Homeric religion are simple and omnipresent. The most important ritual is sacrifice: the killing of a domestic animal (a sheep, a cow, a pig, an ox) at an outdoor altar, the burning of certain portions for the gods (the thigh bones wrapped in fat, and the entrails), and the sharing of the cooked meat among the assembled community. Sacrifice is the central act of commensality between humans and gods — a meal shared, a bond renewed, a favor requested or acknowledged.

Prayer is equally ubiquitous. The characters of the Odyssey pray constantly, on every occasion: before a journey, before a meal, before a contest, in the moment of danger. Prayer is typically spoken aloud, with arms raised to the sky, and accompanied by a vow — a promise of a future sacrifice or offering if the god grants the request. The efficacy of prayer is assumed. The gods hear and answer. But they answer on their own terms, and not always with what the suppliant expects.

Omens and signs form the third pillar of religious practice. Eagles flying past on the right or left, lightning, thunder, dreams, the behavior of birds — all are interpreted as messages from the gods, indications of their pleasure or anger. The interpretation of omens is a skilled art; Halitherses, the seer of Ithaca, is the character who performs this role most often in the Odyssey. Dreams, too, are channels of divine communication: Penelope's dream of the geese and the eagle, sent from the gates of ivory and horn, is a prophecy of the slaughter of the suitors, though she herself does not understand it until after the fact.

Zeus and the Disposition of Moira

And so we return to Zeus, at the center of it all. Zeus Xenios, the protector of strangers. Zeus Horkios, the guardian of oaths. Zeus Moiragetes, the dispenser of fate. The Zeus of the Odyssey is a complex figure — sometimes playful, sometimes terrible, sometimes a distant bureaucrat of the divine bureaucracy, sometimes the impassioned father of a passionate family. He is not a god of abstract justice. He is a king, ruling a court of squabbling relatives, balancing competing claims and competing wills, moving the pieces on the board of the world.

Odysseus's nostos, in the end, is permitted by Zeus. It is Zeus who, in Book 1, agrees with Athena that Odysseus has suffered enough. It is Zeus who sends Hermes to Calypso to command his release. It is Zeus who sends the favorable winds that carry the Phaeacian ship to Ithaca. And it is Zeus whose thunderclap on the day of the bow contest — a sign, sent at Odysseus's prayer — confirms that the king has divine sanction for the slaughter that follows. The Odyssey is not a tragedy. It is a comedy: a story of restoration. But the restoration is not of the hero's making alone. It is the gift of Zeus — the final portion, the moira, that the king of gods has allotted to the long-suffering man of many turns.