Homeric Gods example essay topic

Assess The Significance Of The Gods In Assess The Significance Of The Gods In Homer's Iliad And Odyssey It is the gods, not fate, who are concerned with the activities of human life in both the " Odyssey could be conceived even without any intervention of the gods. Others argue that nothing happens in the poem without the prompting of a god. The wrath of Achilles is explainable in its own right; and yet Apollo and Zeus come into the picture. Do we have a divine plan or simply a human quarrel with dire consequences?

Neither alternative can be exactly true. Achilles' wrath is momentous, and its import cannot be measured in ordinary human terms. Thus any sudden important happening spells bewilderment; it suggests a god. Human and divine power merge together. Gods and men are interdependent.

This view is confirmed by the way Homer paints the gods when they are left to themselves. For in their Olympian abodes (as in 1.571 ff.) they pale into a desultory immortality. The Olympian scenes are the only ones in which anything frivolous takes place. It is from the human action that the gods draw their life-blood. By being so frequently associated with specific heroes, they themselves become human and even end up resembling their heroes. Apollo shares in the generous versatility of Hector, while Athene is associated with the prepossessing stateliness of Achilles and Diomedes.

Such relations are no matter of course. What connects these pairs is actual contact, accessibility, recognition, and closeness. These immortals are more at home on earth than in heaven. Although they are far from being omniscient or omnipotent, they make up for any such deficiencies through their intense presence at crucial moments – as when Achilles, on the point of attacking Agamemnon, is checked by Athene: And amazed was Achilles, / he turned, and instantly knew the goddess Pallas Athena; / and dread was the light of her eyes.

(1.199 ff.) The goddess stands out much more powerfully here than when, for example, she chides Aphrodite on Olympus (5.420 ff. ). To be dramatically effective, a god must appear suddenly, as if from nowhere – often taking the shape of a friend or relative but always somehow recognisable. The anthromorphic appearance is tinged with personal appeal.

We have a mysterious familiar image. The imponderable element in life's incidents thus finds a persuasive way of manifesting itself. It is no wonder that Homer, a lover of visual forms, gave the gods such prominence, leaving out as much as possible the shadowy idea of an all-encompassing fate. The gods of theIliad no struggle for the transcendental cause. The Homeric gods have a different sphere.

Their power lies in the immediate present. What we see is a divine immanence in things. What could be more repellent to common religious feeling than the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon revolving around a question of booty? And yet the deepest instincts are brought into action, passions and resolutions rise to full power; surely the crisis cannot be taken for granted; a god must lurk in these unleashed energies. The gods watch, witness, participate, and help bring events to a crisis. Their movements are as free as human action is fluid in its ebb and flow.

They are poetically conceived according to the needs of the moment, not subjected to any rule. We can find no theology here. Louder and stronger than any ritual prayers, we hear a cry prompted by the occasion – that of Glaucus (16.514 ff.) or of Ajax (17.645 ff. ). The gods listen, and in most cases they respond. But let us not expect them to be just or fair (Athene tempts Pandarus in 4.92 ff. and dupes Hector in 22.226 ff.

). Their strength lies in intensifying the sense of life, and yet in doing so they inevitably increase the poignance of what is at stake, including the issue of right and wrong. All serious poetry of early Greece involves the gods. The presence of divine agents, visibly at work in what happens, enables the poet to show the meaning of events and the nature of the world. In the' Iliad OdysseyIliad 24.527-33); this sort of careful self-justification was by no means in his style. Care is taken in the' Odyssey that they do respond to the inextinguishable cry of the human heart for justice.

It can be argued that the " Odyssey