Odysseus’ Voyage home would not have been possible without the assistance and support of the goddess Athena. Throughout Homer’s Odyssey, she plays an integral role in guiding the epic hero home and bringing him to victory in his final battle to be with his family. While she and Odysseus share many traits, such as cleverness, guile, and prowess in war, in Book XVIII we see her acting to manipulate the situation at hand more than at any other moment in the story. The reason for this is that she alone knows the outcome of the impending battle against the suitors, and what it will take for Odysseus to triumph.
Introduced to the reader on the very first page of the epic sage, the goddess and daughter of Zeus, is referred to as wise, “grey-eyed Athena” (Homer 4). She often takes on disguises, such as that of Mentor (another character known for his wisdom) or a small child. When she does appear in her divine form, she is described as wearing golden sandals which have the power to “carry her with swift winds” to distant places, and carrying a “bronze-tipped battle lance” with which she was capable of devastating men in battle (6). Often, she seems to appear as nothing at all, invisible to mortals, as she is throughout the action of Book VIII.
In addition to being a fierce warrior, Athena was a trickster, much like the king of Ithaca, and she often transformed his appearance to assist in his plots. Upon returning to his home island, it was she who transformed him into a beggar, not just in clothing, but giving his hair, skin and eyes an aged look (270). She could manipulate people’s behaviors, as she does many times in Book XVIII alone, putting them to sleep (367) or making them decide to stay a while longer (366). The goddess also has immense control over Odysseus’ emotions. She imbues him with strength and courage (14) and can just as easily incite him to anger (373), but most importantly, she knows Odysseus well, and she knows how to manipulate his situation once he returns home to ensure his victory against the suitors.
As Book XVIII opens, Odysseus has returned to his estate in Ithaca in the disguise of a beggar and has revealed himself to his son Telemachus. Of the characters central to Book XVIII, only these two mortals, and the goddess Athena, are aware of his return and the battle that will soon be launched against the invaders of his home. However, it is only Athena who knows the outcome of this attack. Thus, she begins initiating a plan that will prepare both Odysseus and the suitors for the conflict to come. The goddess manipulates the events of the day in order to make the suitors at ease around the beggar, and eventually drink themselves to sleep so that Telemachus and his father can begin preparations for the attack. She also causes emotions to swell in Odysseus—love for Penelope, and pride in the face of slander—that she believes will help him to defeat his enemies.
In her first act in Book XVIII, Athena grants strength to Odysseus’ now-feeble limbs in order to assist him in a fight against another beggar named Isus (363). At first, this sequence of events seems like a non-sequitur. The beggar arrives, challenges Odysseus, and the men tussle. But after the action has passed, we see the advantage of Odysseus’ victory against him. The suitors are pleased with him for having “rid this island of that guzzling vagabond” (356). They wish him great fortune and set themselves at ease in his presence. This is important to the plan that Athena, Odysseus, and Telemachus have concocted because it reduces the risk that any of the suitors will question the identity of the beggar, allowing him to move about freely making preparations.
However, not all of the suitors are satisfied. Amphinomus seems to be having second thoughts about remaining in the hall with the other men, “his mind forseeing bitter trials,” and turns to leave (366). Athena does not allow this, for his destiny has already been sealed. Again, she alone knows the outcome of Odysseus’ journey home, and that certain events are simply fated to be. In this case, she prevents Amphinomus from leaving because “it was Telemachuswho would attack and kill [him]” (366). As is often true in Greek legends, man cannot escape his own destiny, and so the reluctant guest returns to his seat without any visible indication of his interaction with the goddess.
Athena next employs a device to distract the suitors. Her intentions here are not clear to the reader until the beginning of Book XIX, when Odysseus and Telemachus use the suitors’ slumber as a cover to gather their weapons and armor (379-380), but it is made clear that this is a strategic move on Athena’s part. She compels Penelope to appear before her suitors, even though the faithful wife proclaims “I hate them so,” and accuses them of having “have sordid minds” (367). The goddess then goes a step further and, placing Penelope in a state of sleep, transforms her, giving her “immortals’ beauty, that she might amaze the suitors” (368).
This stratagem has two outcomes, both of which fulfill Athena’s goals in preparing both sides for the conflict to come. The first is that when complimented on her beauty, Penelope begins a long lamentation, stating that her beauty and grace left her on the same day her husband did (369). She then chides her audience for being improper suitors, growing fat off of the goods of her estate and not their own. This is overheard by Odysseus and it makes him proud to see his wife “beguiling them with suasive words” (370). This is the first time we see Penelope outwardly express her frustration with the suitors. Even though she is not aware of Odysseus’ presence, Athena emboldens her to demand respect for the lord who, unbeknownst to Penelope and the suitors, is standing among them.
The second effect of this device of Athena’s is that the suitors have been fully distracted from the fear of any dangers. Now that their poor behaviors have been called into attention, “each man sent out a herald to fetch his gifts” to the household of Odysseus (371), which not only replenishes the supplies they’d been draining for so long, but prompts the suitors to drink and revel into the night. But before they drift peacefully off to sleep, leaving an opening for Telemachus and Odysseus to act, the goddess has one last trick up her sleeve: to enrage Odysseus even further towards the suitors in order to prepare his heart for battle against them.
Athena casts over the suitors a jovial mood, prompting one of the men to mock the beggar in disguise “with jeering words that made the suitors laugh” (373). Odysseus loses his temper, prompting his opponent to launch a chair at him, and the scene’s second fistfight is prevented only by the calm and wise words of Telemachus (374-75). Out of all of Athena’s tricks throughout Book XVIII, this one seems the most contradictory to her plan. She knows Odysseus well, and that he can be rash when angered. This move threatens to blow the beggar’s cover before the final confrontation can take place. However, Odysseus’ reaction also reveals to us his lack of confidence, for he has shown himself to be calm and fearless in battle, but only when he has a plan. Athena’s decision to leave his victory a secret for now creates a vulnerability in the brave warrior that is rarely seen throughout the book.
Nonetheless, once the skirmish between Odysseus the beggar and the suitors has been resolved, drinking commences. The suitors sleep for the night, and as Book XIX opens, Odysseus and Telemachus are ready to spring into action with their final preparations for their attack on the suitors. The intruders sleep totally unaware of Odysseus’ presence—as does Penelope—and Odysseus’ heart has been filled with longing, rage, and pain according to Athena’s design. Throughout Book XVIII, she has acted as a player to a chessboard, moving pawns and kings in accordance to a strategy known only to her. Her manipulations have been successful, and the plot of the epic now moves rapidly towards the bloody final scene.
Deception and obfuscation are major themes throughout the Odyssey, and we see these characteristics present in human as well as divine characters. Odysseus, known best for his scheme to invade Troy by hiding himself and his army in a monumental wooden horse, and Penelope, who deceived her suitors for years by undoing her own progress on her husband’s burial shroud, are in a way, mortal parallels of one another. They succeed at tricking others by taking advantage of information they have access to that their opponents don’t. Similarly, Athena is an immortal parallel to Odysseus in this regard. However, while she works her deceptions in favor of or in partnership with Odysseus throughout most of the epic, in Book XVIII she is also seen to work against him, making him the object of her trickery. This is necessary at this point in the story because, as noted above, she has access to information that Odysseus cannot yet know.
Though Odysseus is the main character of Homer’s Odyssey, it is the goddess Athena who propels the action of the epic, knowing all the while what the outcome of this chain of events will be; her knowledge of Telemachus’ fate to slay Amphinomus, for example, is a clue to this knowledge. Athena is the one who prompts Odysseus to return home in Book I (6), and guides him through several strategies to ensure that he is successful. Once home, she ensures his safety through disguise and the manipulations addressed above, making a surprise attack possible. And finally, it is she who, in Book XXI, plants the idea in Penelope’s mind to hold the famous bow-stringing competition which would reveal Odysseus to his wife and her suitors, just before unleashing a wave of destruction on that band of intruders.
Work Cited
Homer. The Odyssey of Homer. Ed. Allen Mandelbaum. New York, New York: Bantam Classics, 2003.
