A Guide to the Odyssey: A Commentary on the English Translation of Robert Fitzgerald by Ralph J. Hexter, Robert Fitzgerald
Authors: Ralph J. Hexter, Robert Fitzgerald
Tags: Literary Criticism, Language Arts & Disciplines, Poetry, Ancient & Classical, History and Criticism, Epic poetry; Greek, Translating & Interpreting, Homer, Greek Language - Translating Into English, Greek Language, Fitzgerald; Robert - Knowledge - Language and Languages, Epic Poetry; Greek - History and Criticism, Odysseus (Greek Mythology) in Literature, Translating Into English
Ads: Link
than the mortals of their own day (a vision of continuous human decline made even more explicit in the myth of the successive ages of humanity, starting with the gold age and descending to ever baser metals); and linked, in that humans of the poet’s day are supposed to be morally educable by the examples of the heroes of the past.
THE GODS
The heroes rather than the gods are the models of exemplary behavior. It is easier to say what Homer’s gods are not than what they are. Historically, the Olympians too are palimpsests and superregional composites. Each embodies traits attributed by local cults to various deities worshiped at different sites over centuries. As something like a pan-Hellenic culture was forged (and at the time Homer lived, this national culture was still at a relatively early stage of formation), traits were added so that Aphroditê, to take one example, combines elements of a graceful and pacific sky deity, traces of whose cult can be found on the island of Kythera, with those of a fertility goddess worshiped in Paphos on Cyprus. (Among her other eastern Mediterranean/Anatolian connections, note that she favors the Trojans in
The Iliad.
) Not as many of the Olympians have important roles to play in
The Odyssey
as in
The Iliad
. Athena, Poseidon, and Zeus are the only three gods who are important throughout
The Odyssey
. Hermês functions as messenger of the gods; as far as the machinery of the plot is required, we could do without the rest of the divinities. But they are there. Apollo and Artemis are invoked, and Hermês is also mentioned in his guise as the guide of souls to Hades. Hêra, Zeus’ consort, is relatively marginal in
The Odyssey
. Were it not for the amusing story of the dalliance of Aphrodite, goddess of love, with Ares, god of war, they, along with the aggrieved husband, Hephaistos, god of fire, would hardly appear at all.
Lesser gods and goddesses play important roles in
The Odyssey
, such as Leukothea, the sea nymph who helps Odysseus land among the Phaiákians, and Eidothea and her father, Proteus, with whom Meneláos has traffic. These may have been gods of local cults that were not internationalized in religious practice, but they achieve that wide renown, in mythology at least, thanks to Homer’s poems. Figures such as Kalypso and Kirkê were probably never actually worshiped as even minor divinities; in other versions of the homecoming narrative, the females who delay the hero’s return might be sorceresses or merely mortal temptresses.
It is important to note that despite the range and significance of roles the gods play in
The Iliad
and
The Odyssey
, the Homeric poems were never sacred texts in the way that the Jewish or Christian scriptures, or the Koran, were and are. Many of the gods’ quarrels and battles recall divine battles and interventions preserved in the Hindu Vedas and the ancient Near Eastern texts (in Babylonian, Akkadian, Sumerian), as well as in the myths of Africa, the pre-Columbian Americas, and the European North. (Many scholars have found traces of such battles in early books of the Jewish Bible, but these are submerged as deeply as possible by the redactors and subsequent interpreters, for whom any implications of polytheism are distinctly heretical.)
Homer’s gods partake to some extent of the nature of these fierce and autonomous deities known from a wide range of cultures. Their battles may originally have represented the imagined wars of various natural forces (light and dark, land and sea). But they are also members of a polity not unlike an ideal monarchy (which is not to say that none of the other pantheons just mentioned exhibits a political structure). While each of the Olympians has rights over aspects of the lives of men and women everywhere, each has special privileges in his or her domains as well as favorites among mortals. Like a king ruling over his nobles, Zeus is the supreme god, who under ideal circumstances hopes to keep his
THE GODS
The heroes rather than the gods are the models of exemplary behavior. It is easier to say what Homer’s gods are not than what they are. Historically, the Olympians too are palimpsests and superregional composites. Each embodies traits attributed by local cults to various deities worshiped at different sites over centuries. As something like a pan-Hellenic culture was forged (and at the time Homer lived, this national culture was still at a relatively early stage of formation), traits were added so that Aphroditê, to take one example, combines elements of a graceful and pacific sky deity, traces of whose cult can be found on the island of Kythera, with those of a fertility goddess worshiped in Paphos on Cyprus. (Among her other eastern Mediterranean/Anatolian connections, note that she favors the Trojans in
The Iliad.
) Not as many of the Olympians have important roles to play in
The Odyssey
as in
The Iliad
. Athena, Poseidon, and Zeus are the only three gods who are important throughout
The Odyssey
. Hermês functions as messenger of the gods; as far as the machinery of the plot is required, we could do without the rest of the divinities. But they are there. Apollo and Artemis are invoked, and Hermês is also mentioned in his guise as the guide of souls to Hades. Hêra, Zeus’ consort, is relatively marginal in
The Odyssey
. Were it not for the amusing story of the dalliance of Aphrodite, goddess of love, with Ares, god of war, they, along with the aggrieved husband, Hephaistos, god of fire, would hardly appear at all.
Lesser gods and goddesses play important roles in
The Odyssey
, such as Leukothea, the sea nymph who helps Odysseus land among the Phaiákians, and Eidothea and her father, Proteus, with whom Meneláos has traffic. These may have been gods of local cults that were not internationalized in religious practice, but they achieve that wide renown, in mythology at least, thanks to Homer’s poems. Figures such as Kalypso and Kirkê were probably never actually worshiped as even minor divinities; in other versions of the homecoming narrative, the females who delay the hero’s return might be sorceresses or merely mortal temptresses.
It is important to note that despite the range and significance of roles the gods play in
The Iliad
and
The Odyssey
, the Homeric poems were never sacred texts in the way that the Jewish or Christian scriptures, or the Koran, were and are. Many of the gods’ quarrels and battles recall divine battles and interventions preserved in the Hindu Vedas and the ancient Near Eastern texts (in Babylonian, Akkadian, Sumerian), as well as in the myths of Africa, the pre-Columbian Americas, and the European North. (Many scholars have found traces of such battles in early books of the Jewish Bible, but these are submerged as deeply as possible by the redactors and subsequent interpreters, for whom any implications of polytheism are distinctly heretical.)
Homer’s gods partake to some extent of the nature of these fierce and autonomous deities known from a wide range of cultures. Their battles may originally have represented the imagined wars of various natural forces (light and dark, land and sea). But they are also members of a polity not unlike an ideal monarchy (which is not to say that none of the other pantheons just mentioned exhibits a political structure). While each of the Olympians has rights over aspects of the lives of men and women everywhere, each has special privileges in his or her domains as well as favorites among mortals. Like a king ruling over his nobles, Zeus is the supreme god, who under ideal circumstances hopes to keep his
Similar Books
