Odysseus, king of Ithaca and hero of the Trojan War, must endure all manner of supernatural dangers in his effort to return home. Meanwhile, Odysseus’ wife and son contend with a band of greedy suitors who have imposed themselves and are wasting the household’s wealth.
Odysseus has been gone for nearly 20 years. First, he sailed off to the Trojan War. But when the war was won, he didn’t return with the rest of the Greeks.
Penelope doesn’t know if her husband is alive or dead, and in the meantime, suitors seeking her hand have imposed themselves upon Odysseus’ house, consuming its wealth, abusing servants and disrespecting Odysseus’ heir, Telemachus. Penelope weeps for her lost husband and still hopes for his safe return—though she knows there is little hope to cling to.
But Odysseus is alive. All these years, he’s been trying to return home to Ithaca, to his family. He’s had to contend with all sorts of supernatural challenges, including spiteful gods, terrible monsters, storms, shipwrecks and more. Currently, he’s being held captive by the sea goddess Calypso, who wishes to make Odysseus her husband. But despite her beauty and the offer of immortality, Odysseus still longs for home.
Finally, his prayers are answered: Athena, goddess of wisdom and warfare, has convinced capricious Zeus, ruler of the gods, to let Odysseus return home.
Still, plenty of challenges await Odysseus and his family upon his return home.
None.
The Odyssey is a Greek epic poem originally composed sometime around 725-675 B.C. As such, the story is steeped in Greek mythology and polytheistic beliefs of the time.
The Greek gods who take up residence on Mount Olympus are a regular presence here. Athena plays the biggest role as she aids Odysseus in his quest. But there are plenty of mentions of other Greek deities, including Zeus, Poseidon, Hermes, Apollo, Aphrodite and Ares. Objects occurring in nature, such as the sun, are often deified.
Moreover, we see the gods use their divine powers to directly affect the world: Poseidon conjures violent storms, Zeus hurls thunderbolts, and Athena alters her appearance and the appearances of others.
At one point, Odysseus journeys to the underworld. He summons the spirits of the dead through a blood sacrifice and speaks to those who have died.
Characters frequently seek the gods’ favor through sacrifices, sometimes by pouring out libations or by the ritualistic killing of animals. Very little is done without mention of the gods, attributing their influence to both good and ill fortunes. People and gods swear binding oaths to each other.
We read about some mythological creatures, such as the Cyclops. Some people engage in sorcery and witchcraft.
Though the gods possess great power in The Odyssey, they share all the faults of the humans who worship them. Many are petulant. Some are vengeful. Others are deceitful, greedy or filled with lust.
Odysseus desires to return to Ithaca, not for the power he will reclaim as the island’s king, but to reunite with his family. Penelope and Telemachus, Odysseus’ wife and son, are just as eager to have him home.
The story places a huge focus on the virtue of hospitality. Characters who are generous hosts to their guests are seen as honorable, while dismissive or violent hosts are marked as ignoble.
The suitors of Penelope saddle themselves with particular dishonor: They occupy Odysseus’ house, feasting, drinking and wasting the absent king’s property. What’s more, these unwelcome guests fail to be generous to others.
Odysseus meets many authority figures throughout his travels, including kings, queens and gods.
The Odyssey contains bursts of intense violence. Characters are hacked to death, shot with arrows, devoured by monstrous creatures or drowned in an unforgiving sea. Some deaths are accompanied by graphic descriptions: The encounter with the Cyclops, for instance, describes soldiers getting ripped “limb from limb,” with the one-eyed monster devouring “flesh, entrails and marrow bones.”
When Odysseus returns home, he murders Penelope’s suitors, and we read descriptions of beheadings and gushing blood. After the suitors are dead, the slave girls who betrayed Odysseus’ household are also killed; we’re told Telemachus hangs them in such a way to “make their death an agony.” A traitor is mutilated.
There is talk of rape, perpetrated by both gods and men. People pillage and raid surrounding towns, killing the men and making slaves of the women and children.
Characters frequently drink wine. (Though to be fair, this was in an age when wine was safer to drink than plain water.) Plenty of characters get drunk on wine.
The witch Circe uses drugs to abet her sorcery. Helen of Troy mixes drugs with wine to help drinkers forget their troubles.
“D–n” is uttered a few times.
While sexual content is not explicit in The Odyssey—oftentimes, the act is described in the biblical sense or stated as matter of fact—there still is quite a lot of it found here.
Much importance is placed on Penelope’s fidelity to her husband, though Odysseus isn’t held to that same standard. While Odysseus desires to return to his wife, that doesn’t stop him from having sexual relations with a few goddesses—and possibly a few slave women from towns he raids. While some of these sexual encounters are presented as necessary actions, others are obviously of Odysseus’ free will. For example, Odysseus has sex with Calypso after she finally agrees to let him return home to Penelope.
We are told of an affair between the god Ares and the goddess Aphrodite—and how the pair were caught in bed together by Aphrodite’s husband, Hephaestus. Zeus and Poseidon are said to have had sex with several human woman (one instance is translated as rape), resulting in demigod children who became legendary heroes, like Heracles. We hear of other love affairs between deities and humans.
Some of the slave girls in Odysseus’ household sleep with Penelope’s suitors, which is sometimes translated as rape.
Penelope’s fidelity is often contrasted with the betrayal of Clytemnestra, who was seduced and murdered her own husband, Agamemnon.
Someone says that “sex sways all women’s minds.”
A man has sex with his wife. Odysseus appears naked before a group of women. (He lost his clothes in a shipwreck.) Men and women admire one another’s physical attributes.
What are the differences between the God of the Bible and the gods of the Greek pantheon?
The Odyssey rightly views Penelope’s fidelity to her husband as admirable: Why do you think it’s important for both husband and wife to remain faithful to each other?
How does the disturbing violence portrayed in The Odyssey differ from the violence that you might read about in the Bible, such as the Book of Judges?
Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey has been stirring up a fair bit of controversy in recent months, as it served as one of the inspirations for director Christopher Nolan’s upcoming epic blockbuster.
While Wilson’s translation has been accused of having a feminist lean, there’s only so much that can be changed in a translation before you’re telling a different story. If you were worried this translation might include Penelope taking up a sword and sailing across the sea to save her husband herself, that doesn’t happen here. Wilson sticks to Homer’s tale, approaching her translation with two particular aims.
First, Wilson wanted to make the story an easy read, replacing ornate or archaic-sounding language in favor of a more flowing, common tongue. It’s a subjective choice, but as a reader, I appreciated it.
Second, she wants us to have greater empathy for the people who populate the fringes of The Odyssey. Wilson wants us to give more thought to the slaves, especially the slave women, who undergirded Greek society at the time. Her translation takes a softer view of the women who betrayed Odysseus and Penelope, seeing them less as accomplices and more as people who may not have had much choice in their circumstances.
Depending on how closely you’d like The Odyssey to adhere to more classical translations, that could be a stumbling block, but as Christians, we can certainly appreciate a greater care being placed on the lowest members of society.
Of course, ultimately, The Odyssey’s problems are not in its translation, but in the content that it has contained since its earliest days. Bloody violence (including rape), adultery and pagan spirituality fill the story. Slavery is a grim reality here as well. And Odysseus is far from what we would consider a noble hero today. He’s both a king and a pirate, a charming guest and an unscrupulous liar, a family man and a merciless killer. A complicated man, indeed.
The Odyssey may be considered a classic, but it’s far from a problem-free read.
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Bret loves a good story—be it a movie, show, or video game—and enjoys geeking out about things like plot and story structure. He has a blast reading and writing fiction and has penned several short stories and screenplays. He and his wife love to kayak the many beautiful Colorado lakes with their dog.
