During the course of the Odyssey, Athena runs a spiraling orbit around Achaea, and Odysseus is unquestionably at its center.  As the first four books progress, we and Athena draw closer and closer to him—beginning high on Olympus, journeying down to Ithaca’s kingless halls, passing through the uncertainty of his estranged son, out into the memories of his old companions, and finally into the heart of his grieving wife. 

            What is her ultimate purpose for Odysseus, and why this long approach?  The most practical answer is that she wants to Odysseus to enjoy a successful journey home, and that the lengthy lead-up to this process is simply preparing the stage for his grand entrance.  As the last chapters have demonstrated, this is a narrow view of a larger truth.  For Odysseus to return home, he must also return to himself, and that is far more complicated than simply surviving the trip. 

            Even after this long lead-up, we still must make two more stops:  the first on Olympus, where Athena rallies Zeus for the second time.  She issues the following punishing description of Odysseus’ plight:

“Think:  not one of the people whom he ruled

remembers Odysseus now, that godlike man,

and kindly as a father to his children.

                                                            Now

He’s left to pine on an island, racked with grief

In the nymph Calypso’s house—she holds him there by force.

He has no way to voyage home to his own native land.”  (B.5, 12-19)

 

This is a reasonably accurate picture—although as we know, there are certainly a few Ithacans with vivid memories of their king—and confirms to us that he is in a state of bondage.  This is a sorry set of affairs for a hero.  Being caught up by a woman of magical properties is an undoubtedly shameful thing, as we can tell from the underwhelming portraits of both Paris and Menelaus.  Odysseus is no stranger to supernatural femmes fatales, having himself evaded the clutches of both the monstrous sirens and the sorceress Circe.  However, we know that his year with Circe became a mutual affair only because of his ability to withstand her spells, an accomplishment made possible by Hermes’ lucky intervention, and he only leaves Circe’s arms at the insistence of his impatient crew.  Death by the sirens he avoids explicitly because of Circe’s knowing advice.  (Even then, he exempts himself from the protections he gives the crew in order to enjoy their seductive voices.) 

            So the trick is simply to have a trick, to spring one safely from the female trap as soon as fulfillment has been had.  This is Odysseus’ tactic in just about everything, tempting fate until the point of near-disaster, and then relying on wit to deliver him.  With Calypso he has run aground.  It takes the persistence of Athena, the determination of Zeus, and the official presence of Hermes to put him again in motion.  Calypso berates the hapless messenger for his trouble:

“So now at last, you gods, you train your spite on me

for keeping a mortal man beside me.  The man I saved,

riding astride his keel-board, all alone, when Zeus

with one hurl of a white-hot bolt had crushed

his racing warship down the wine-dark sea…

…And I welcomed him warmly, cherished him, even vowed

to make the man immortal, ageless, all his days...” (B.5, 143-151)

 

Calypso seems genuinely amazed that a hero would be discontent with eternity on an isolated rock, kept company by a lone nymph in an echoing cave.  We can see that even Hermes is anxious to return to cheerier society. 

            The doomed unions she recounts are simply different examples of how ill-advised it is to yank a mortal from his natural setting[1].  To be taken out of society is to be dehumanized.  This might be acceptable if the human were to truly become a god and join the ranks of immortal society, but in this situation he is inevitably a kept lover, to be forever pressed against a glowing bosom.  This is frank emasculation, and not to be tolerated—certainly not by a hero.  It represents a total loss of identity, as the hero is one who exists as the greatest exemplar of a man in society. No man, and no society—no hero.

            Before we continue with the departure of Odysseus, Athena’s second plea to Zeus is also worthy of another look.  She describes Odysseus’ plight rather accurately—her description is echoed and embellished by our first actual glimpse of the man himself:

 

“The queenly nymph sought out the great Odysseus—

the commands of Zeus still ringing in her ears—

and found him there on the headland, sitting, still,

weeping, his eyes never dry, his sweet life flowing away

with the tears he wept for his foiled journey home,

since the nymph no longer pleased …

all his days he’d sit on the rocks and beaches,

wrenching his heart with sobs and groans and anguish,

gazing out over the barren sea through blinding tears.”  (B.5, 165-175)

 

This narrative description hammers home the depths of his isolation, and the melancholy that befalls him when his desire for new experience and interest falters in the face of exhaustion and long absence from home.  The nymph no longer pleases.  Athena is not satisfied with this portrait alone, and goes on to add:

“And now his dear son…they plot to kill the boy

on his way back home.  Yes, he has sailed off

for news of his father, to holy Pylos first,

then out to the sunny hills of Lacedaemon.”  (B.5, 20-23)

 

This little bit of overbearing results in a rebuke from Zeus:

“My child,” Zeus who marshals the thunderheads replied,

“what nonsense you let slip through your teeth.  Come now,

wasn’t the plan your own?  You conceived it yourself:

Odysseus shall return and pay the traitors back.

Telemachus?  Sail him home with all your skill—

The power is yours, no doubt—

Home to his native country all unharmed

While the suitors limp to port, defeated, baffled men.”  (B.5, 24-31)

 

Immediately after this verbal cuffing, however, he turns to Hermes and announces the following “fixed decree”:

“Odysseus journeys home—the exile must return.

But not in the convoy of the gods or mortal men.

No, on a lashed, makeshift raft and wrung with pains,

On the twentieth day he will make his landfall, fertile Scheria,

The land of Phaeacians, close kin to the gods themselves,

Who with all their hearts will prize him like a god

And send him off in a ship to his own beloved land,

Giving him bronze and hoards of gold and robes—

More plunder than he could ever have won from Troy

If Odysseus had returned intact with his fair share.

So his destiny ordains.  He shall see his loved ones,

Reach his high-roofed house, his native land at last.”  (B.5, 35-46)

 

This is excellent news for Athena—her father has formalized her own desires.  But does this rob Athena of her part in the plan in the Odyssey?  It would leave her responsible for the doings of Penelope and Telemachus, and she can still claim ample credit for the simple groundwork of pushing Odysseus about, but the core direction of it would seem to no longer be hers.  The scenario in which Athena is little more than her father’s clever underling seems much more likely in light of this proclamation—it was all Zeus’ idea.

              Here we return to the original problem with Athena’s identity.  As we’ve already noted, Athena is her father’s idea, literally springing from his head.  If Zeus’ is the hand pulling the thread, Athena bears good resemblance to the needle, responsible for the real shape of the resulting pattern.  Does this eliminate her agency?  An understanding of how the ancient Hellenes conceived of the relationship between will and execution, or between idea and expression, would be useful, but would, by dearth of useful evidence, suffer from quite a load of inference and speculation.  It would be unfair to try to extrapolate their notions from those of a later thinker like Plato.   

            What is clear is that Zeus wields the ultimate power of decision; his decree is a guarantee of general outcome.  It is not, however, a guarantee of exact events.  Zeus expects Odysseus to make his landfall still clinging to his raft—instead Poseidon upsets it, and Odysseus arrives on Phaeacia with no more than Ino’s magic scarf to convey him.              Furthermore, Zeus’ will is not predetermined, as we can see from Athena’s healthy pestering.  In general he is well acquainted with his ultimate desires, but how and when those desires will see enactment bears more in common to a coin toss than a stone tablet.  He knows that Odysseus will have to be brought home eventually, but it is Athena who drives him to form a specific agenda, and Athena who crafts that agenda to fit the specific circumstances of time, place, and character.  The plan is, indeed, her own, because it is planning which forms general will into specific action.  When Athena brings up the plight of Telemachus, she has not somehow ditzily forgotten her role in Telemachus’ current position:  she’s forcing Zeus to reassert her own role in the proceedings, and at the same time exert his own clout where her authority might be thought suspect.  Hermes is an official messenger.  Athena is her own agent. 

            This distraction set aside, we can go back to poor Odysseus, who by now has received news of his release.  His response is visceral:  “Long-enduring Odysseus shuddered at that / and broke out in a sharp flight of protest.” (B.5, 190-1)  Calypso responds with an airy amusement that seems more than a little forced—“Ah, what a wicked man you are, and never at a loss. / What a thing to imagine, what a thing to say!” (B.5, 202-3)  However, before providing him with materials for escape, she makes one final attempt, making vague mention of the pains before him and concluding with a bold-faced dig at Penelope:

“ ‘Hardly right, is it,

for mortal woman to rival immortal goddess?

How, in build?  In beauty?’

                                                ‘Ah great goddess,’

worldly Odysseus answered, ‘don’t be angry with me,

please.  All that you say is true, how well I know.

Look at my wise Penelope.  She falls far short of you,

Your beauty, your stature.  She is mortal after all

And you, you never age or die…

Nevertheless I long—I pine, all my days—

To travel home and see the dawn of my return.’”  (B.5, 234-243)

 

We can tell from these two interactions—both his demanding an oath and his diplomatic response—that he is not all sobs and desolation, but retains at least a slender portion of his natural dodginess.  What’s evident is a weary familiarity with the caprice of the powerful, and the ineffectiveness of his gifts against it.  Odysseus in the mortal world was a great captain, persuader, conceiver, and fighter—now the only power he wields against Calypso is her own.  He can only bind her when she voluntarily consents to an oath, and this only because of Olympian influence.  All he can do otherwise is observe and be acted upon by this great beauteous tyrant. Calypso, as self-absorbed as always, fails to surmise that perhaps Penelope’s great appeal lies in the simple nouns of mortality, her ability to be wife and mother as well as queenly and lustrous.  A mortal woman will act on Odysseus, but only as one element of a larger landscape, where he has the tools necessary to cultivate an individual existence.  Calypso is a landscape unto herself, and a selfish one.  Even their lovemaking is an exercise in nothing but her own enjoyment. 

            Athena has a great of work to do, then, to reaccustom this nervous and disempowered man to the world of human scale, where things will respond to his touch.  The swiftness of his departure is encouraging—he doesn’t sleep for paddling.  However, as Odysseus wearily recognizes, things never come to him so easily, and Poseidon makes an inopportune return.  Under the wild force of the breakers, Odysseus bemoans one last time his lack of a social death—“A hero’s funeral then, my glory spread by comrades—now what a wretched death I’m doomed to die!” (B.5, 344-5) before being submerged in the unfeeling sea.  Here comes a lovely point of transition, though:  the appearance of the goddess Ino, “a mortal woman once with human voice.”  For the first time since Troy, a god acts with pure intention to help Odysseus.  Since his next destination represents his first return to human society since leaving the Cicones, the fact that his first rescuer is one with the human quality of kindness seems significant.  High gods can be benevolent, generous, favorable, and all the rest when properly coaxed, but kindness is a sympathetic act—“there, but for the grace of God, go I”—and expects no return favor.  “Ah poor man,” is not the cry of Athena or Zeus, but a concerned citizen.

            Odysseus is so trained towards suspicion that he cannot quite accept the help:

“…battle-weary Odysseus weighed two courses,

deeply torn, proving his fighting spirit:  ‘Oh no—

I fear another immortal weaves a snare to trap me,

Urging me to abandon ship!  I won’t.  Not yet.”  (B.5, 391-4)

 

His flinchy reasoning is made moot by a thundering wave, and he is forced into simultaneously discarding Calypso’s heavy gifts and trusting in the earnestness of Ino’s.  When Poseidon threatens to overwhelm even this element of mercy, Athena finally steps in, carving the breakers with the winds and drifting him towards Phaeacia on softer tides.  Facing with the jagged rocks of shore, she inspires his timely grab at a promontory reef and leads him to a quiet inlet.  Here he openly asks an immortal, the local river god, for mercy:

“ ‘Hear me, lord, whoever you are,

I’ve come to you, the answer to all my prayers—

rescue me from the sea, the Sea-lord’s curse!

Even immortal gods will show a man respect,

whatever wanderer seeks their help—like me—

I throw myself on your mercy, on your current now—

I have suffered greatly.  Pity me, lord,

Your suppliant cries for help!’”  (B.5, 490-7, emphasis mine)

 

This is a wonderful leap of faith for a man who mere days ago was demanding an oath when offered help.  By holding off Poseidon, Athena allows Ino’s gift to be its most effective, and by directing him to the inlet she brings him directly to the threshold of another quiet benefactor.  He has been twice openly blessed, and presumably this prepares him to act in steadfast and trusting conjunction with Athena in the days ahead.  Odysseus’ first remedial lesson is in how to receive help from the gods—as a grateful supplicant, not a cagey prisoner.  Nausicaa will later comment that

“it’s Olympian Zeus himself who hands our fortunes out,

to each of us in turn, to the good and bad,

however Zeus prefers…

He gave you pain, it seems.  You simply have to bear it.”  (B.6, 206-9)

 

This is not fatalism or even stoicism, it’s good sense when it comes to the gods:  don’t take the bad fortune personally, but give thanks for the good. 

            Who’s responsible for this initial seed of suspicion towards the gods, though?  Calypso is certainly more than enough to drive a man to bitterness, but Calypso couldn’t have had such free reign over Odysseus if he had not been so completely abandoned by Olympus.  The precedent was set not by her, but by Athena.  The Odyssey contains several references to the “wrath of Athena” after the end of the Trojan War, which caused the dispersal of the Achaean ships in the first place.  Nestor gives the clearest description of this falling-out:

“But then, once we’d sacked King Priam’s craggy city,

Zeus contrived in his heart a fatal homeward run

For all the Achaeans who were fools, at least,

Dishonest, too, so many met a disastrous end,

Thanks to the lethal rage

Of the mighty Father’s daughter[2].  Eyes afire,

Athena set them feuding, Atreus’ two sons…

[Agamemnon] meant to detain us there and offer victims,

anything to appease Athena’s dreadful wrath—

poor fool, he never dreamed Athena would not comply.

The minds of everlasting gods don’t change so quickly.” (B.3, 146-163)

 

The reasons for Athena’s wrath become more clear during her discussion with Odysseus on his return to Ithaca.  For the moment we’ll be satisfied with the knowledge that Athena was the first god to fall short with Odysseus, and that it was a pattern soon to be much repeated.  In this harsh final leg of his journey, she seems determined to begin making amends; on her own part, and the part of all the gods.