Odyssey 14

In the epic poem Odyssey, Homer delineates the homecoming of a great warrior and the hero of the epic Odysseus from the Trojan War. Though seemingly, it might sound like a male-dominated ancient myth, women pull the strings in the Odyssey, whether it may be Helen of Troy who inflicted upon the spears and arrows thirst for blood or may it be Circumspect Penelope who motivated Odysseus to come home. Also goddess Athene, nymph Kalypso and Circe, mortals Nausikaa and Klytaimestra serve as strings of the harp for Odyssey. Odyssey, by giving a significant and a dynamic role to the women, thrusts a pinnacle change in the ancient regard of women as mere instruments of pleasures.

Athene in Odyssey is a supernatural divinity, directing the story to a dramatic end. It was gray-eyed Athene who helped Odysseus make his way home. She, by her supernatural powers, sometimes veils Odysseus, (VII 14-17)

Then Odysseus rose to go to the city. Athene

with kind thought for Odysseus drifted a deep mist about him,

for fear some one of the great-hearted Phaiakians, meeting him,

might speak to him in a sneering way and ask where he came from.

or sometimes decorates him. (XXIII, 159-61)

Athene suffused great beauty, to make him

taller to behold and thicker, and on his head she arranged

the curling locks that hung down like hyacinthine petals.



Athene modifies the conditions to abet Odysseus his way home. (VI 13-14)

It was to his house that the gray-eyed goddess Athene

went, devising the homecoming of great-hearted Odysseus

She also accentuates Odysseus’ wish to go home. She constantly reminds him of his dear wife and his own country by saying:   (XV 20-23)

For you know what the mind is like in the breast of a woman.

She wants to build up the household of the man who marries her,

and of former children, and of her beloved and wedded husband,

she has...