The notion that a story both as grand and as detailed as The Odyssey sprang from an entirely oral tradition is, for the modern audience, nothing short of remarkable.  Our ancient powers of memory have been neglected in favor of the ability to prioritize amongst constant and contradictory sources of input.  Rather than navigating wine-dark seas, we weather an unending tempest, and without the anchor of the written symbol, we consider ourselves lost. 

            To witness the coherence and color of such a tale as The Odyssey is to be joyfully reminded of our real human capacities, both for memory and for invention.  Where many ancient epics present us with a fragmented face, the Man of Sorrows beams out at us despite centuries of oral transmission, written transcription and foreign translation.  Gilgamesh and Roland are ciphers come from alien lands; Odysseus still extends a roughened hand in greeting.

            In the essay to follow, I hope to celebrate and emphasize the human ingenuity of this epic—ironically, through tracing the ingenuity of its most important deity, Pallas Athena.  The Odyssey can be examined effectively through any number of lenses, but one of the most absorbing views is found by gazing through the flashing eyes of Zeus’ favorite daughter. 

            One of the things which lends the Odyssey a strangely modern feeling is its willingness to dash full-hearted between times, places, and people—an athleticism that only the gods can rival.  Sure enough, Athena is the only person whose influence is present in each scenario and for every character.  The sole exception is the lengthily-recounted folk tale which bears Odysseus from the shores of Troy to the arms of Calypso, and even this can lapse be explained upon an examination of her motives within the story.

            Her actions range from the immensely subtle—even altering the trajectory of a thrown ball—to the shamelessly godly.  She dons a fantastic range of disguises, both male and female, and wanes from solid flesh to invisible vapor at will.  She is the daughter of Zeus, able to hold sway at Olympian councils, yet she dines at Nestor’s table and strolls through the pig pens of Eumaeus without concern.  She coaches Telemachus, teases Odysseus, comforts Penelope:  she also reprimands, forces, or deludes each as she sees fit. What on earth does she want?  If it were a matter of mere fondness for a entertaining favorite like Odysseus, she would play a role more like to that of Hermes in the story—a magical helper, showing up now and again with a lucky ace to be drawn from the appropriate sleeve.  Instead, she pulls every trick in the kit, and then goes on to exert herself even further in the name of influencing the storyline.

            What I propose in this essay is that Athena’s driving desire is to establish equilibrium for Ithaca, which is to say, for Odysseus; his kingdom and his family all translate into aspects of himself, and he cannot be brought to a state of balance unless they are repaired as well.  Appropriate to this proposal is the fact that Athena’s primary feature as a goddess is her divided nature; female but manly, crafty but warlike, godly but personable.  This devotion to balance provokes her to complicated measures on behalf of the wandering king and his kin, with each shift of circumstance producing a wide range of effects not always immediately visible.  Even her most outright acts can be stripped to reveal complex mechanisms beneath, with each gear working to produce the most stable outcome possible.  The Odyssey in Athena’s hands becomes a finely tuned machine, requiring much maintenance but tremendous at its task. 

            However, it would be a mistake to think of Athena as a sort of omnipotent engineer manipulating a witless pile of parts.  First of all, it can be easily demonstrated that she is not all-powerful over circumstance.  More important to disproving this view is the fact that, in exchange for her support, she demands strenuous efforts from all of her mortal contacts, of the physical but also of the emotional kind.  She will light the hallway, but Odysseus and his son must still walk down it.  In this way she makes impossible tasks plausible, but gives way for their accomplishment to be heroic.

            Using this premise, the action of the main story can be lent singular motivation and be traced to a unique origin—her desire to restore the life of Odysseus to a semblance of what it was on the day Achaean warships pulled up to shore seeking men for Troy.  Rather than reducing the story to a series of predestined events, it lends it an even greater sense of urgency and emphasizes the serious value of human action in conjunction with divine will. 

            Beyond that, it suggests in the gods a level of care for the individual wellbeing, and even emotional development of, their mortal charges—albeit occasionally distracted or ornery in its expression.  Athena is not acting with global implications (as at Troy), but for the interest of a single person and that which he holds dear.

            Therefore the view of the story which I aim to present will hopefully humanize it even further, despite its Olympian heroine.  As the Odyssey sprung from a society which had been atomized into small tribes and reduced to a level of rural simplicity[1], this theme should be fitting.  While the great empire of Mycenae had fallen into the decay of legend, human presence persevered.  In the face of such a catastrophic loss of resources and infrastructure, the importance of human tenacity and ingenuity must have been brought to the fore.  In this they must have placed their real value, and while the Odyssey is rich with the imagined glories and luxuries of the past, it is unquestionably about a return to self, family, and community.

            To this end, I do not intend to structure this essay as a project of purely academic research.  Too often the use of such language and methodology can strip a text of its warmth and vitality, and in the case of the Odyssey such a treatment becomes swiftly disheartening.  There is furthermore quite an abundance of meticulous scholarship on almost any topic of choice contained within:  the lack is more sorely felt in the area of writing accessible to the layperson who has been transfixed by the light and heat given off by such a marvelous tale.  This necessitates looking at the poem in the context of translation.  Translation necessarily transforms a text, but to dismiss translation as a hopeless compromise is to do a disservice both to the power of the original story and the necessary changes it will undergo in passing through any modern mind, regardless of the language at hand.  We cannot read the Odyssey as Greeks, anymore than Homer’s audience could listen to it as Achaeans. 

            For my purposes I’ve chosen the translation offered by Robert Fagles in its most recent Penguin edition.  Although Fagles has been occasionally criticized for the reach of his poetic license, his is the most vibrant translation clearly geared towards an American audience, and the sheer vitality and warmth of his interpretation is undeniable.  Since its publication it has become the broadest gateway through which the American student or reader enters the world of Odysseus and Athena.  As a result, this essay will essentially be an interpretation of the text as told by Fagles, and might contain points or inferences which the serious scholar of Homer will argue are not clearly present in the original.  In cases of extreme sensitivity I have prevailed on the greater knowledge of Prof. Mary-Hannah Jones to guide me past the Scylla and Charybdis of a modern mindset and a contemporary translation. 

            With all of this taken into account, the decision has been made to avoid long references to secondary academic and historical sources.  I wish this not to be seen as a rejection of the academic method of inquiry, but rather as another genre entirely:  a thoughtfully offered thematic argument which intends not to dissect but to lend further life to a vibrant tale, celebrate its intricacies, and, with some luck, entertain.  Since one can only tell stories to the living, this essay is addressed to the modern reader.  Just as Athena keeps the disguise of Mentor, the Odyssey will dress itself to walk among us, changing as we change in order that it might continue to bear influence on us.  This is the shape and time this essay chooses to greet and address.  It is a goal on human scale, of which I hope the ancient storytellers would approve.