Theodicy in The Odyssey
“My child, why do you ask and question me in these matters?
For was not this your own intention, as you have counseled it,
how Odysseus should make his way back, and punish those others?
Do as you will; but I will tell you how it is proper.
Now that noble Odysseus has punished the suitors, let them
make their oaths of faith and friendship, and let him be king
always; and let us make them forget the death of their brothers
and sons, and let them be friends with each other, as in the time past,
and let them have prosperity and peace in abundance.” -Odyssey, 24.478-486
These words are spoken by Zeus to Athena at the end of The Odyssey. Odysseus, having reunited with his family and killed all the suitors who threw his home into disarray, now faces a final challenge: the aggrieved residents of Ithaka and Kephellonia, who, as Bertie Wooster might put it, have a distinct antipathy for discovering that their sons have been humiliated by an old beggar and festooned with arrows. Led by Eupeithes the father of Antinoos, the suitors’ ringleader, the rival nobles of Ithaka have converged on Odysseus’ house to dispense some Mediterranean frontier justice to the prodigal king.
But, as we read above, this is not to be. Now that Odysseus has come home at long last and put his house in order, Athena wishes for the story to be over, and seeks Zeus’ counsel as to how best bring that about. His strategy is blunt: make the Ithakans forget about it. Erase the deaths of their children from their minds and force them all to be friends under Odysseus’ rule. The above quote is taken from Richmond Lattimore’s translation of The Odyssey, which we use at my school, but I’m quite partial to Peter Green’s more managerial version, in which Zeus says, “… as to the killing of their sons and brothers, let us enforce a forgetting of it.”
That the gods possess the ability to manipulate the memories of humans is possible to conject from the many other things they do in the story, but its reservation for this moment feels especially capricious. To quote Rhodey in Iron Man 2, “You couldn’t have led with that?” Certainly, the intemperance and pettiness of the gods in Homer and Greek myth is well trod ground by this point, and so I don’t wish to take you down that road again. Instead, I want to pair this moment with a comment from one of my students about the story that took me by great surprise, and by extension, revived the wisdom of St. Basil the Great, who encouraged the reading of Homer and pagan poetry to prepare young hearts for the wisdom of the Scriptures.
My seventh graders and I finished our reading of The Odyssey two weeks ago. In our “exit interview” for the poem I asked the students what they thought they would remember most from the story, and one girl said the following: “I am going to remember all the times Zeus put people to the test.”
If you know the story well, that comment might make you tilt your head in confusion. Zeus doesn’t appear very often in The Odyssey. He’s far less involved in it than The Iliad, and when he does appear, he’s safely ensconced on Mount Olympus. In fact, there’s no scene in which he interacts with anyone other than Athena, Poseidon, and Hermes. What did my student mean by “putting people to the test?”
It goes back to one of the central themes of The Odyssey, which we discussed often while reading: hospitality. Hospitality is, for the Achaians, one of the supreme virtues, for at any moment, a guest might appear on their doorstep, and while that guest might look like a vagabond, he might secretly be Zeus or one of the other Olympians in disguise. This is “the test of Zeus,” and the characters allude to it often, most notably when Odysseus has returned to Ithaka in disguise as a beggar and is struck by a footstool thrown by Antinoos:
“So he spoke, but all the rest were wildly indignant, and this is the way one of these haughty young men would speak to him: ‘Antinoos, you did badly to hit the unhappy vagabond: a curse on you, if he turns out to be some god from heaven. For the gods do take on all sorts of transformations, appearing as strangers from elsewhere, and thus they range at large through the cities, watching to see which men keep the laws, and which are violent’.” -Odyssey, 17.481-488
Earlier in the story, Alkinoos (no relation to Antinoos), the king of the Phaiakians, commands that Odysseus be sent back to Ithaka with all of his lost plunder from Troy restored and then some, fearing a reputation as an ungenerous king above everything else. Likewise, the early portions of the poem that focus on Telemachus place a key emphasis on his rights and duties as the man of Odysseus’ house. He calls an assembly of the Ithakans in part because he does not want to appear to be a bad host even as the suitors abuse his hospitality.
All of these moments are informed by the custom of the gods visiting mortals in disguise, and for convenience’s sake I will refer to them collectively as “the test of Zeus” going forward. Hospitality and philoxenia, love of strangers, is a pillar of the Achaian worldview.
Of course, I am immensely proud of my student for how perceptive she was to see this throughout the story and read it into the motivations of the characters (also because she gave me something to write about this week). In one sense, all of Homer’s work is about norms and propriety, and identifying what those norms are and how they inform the culture and actions of the characters is part of reading the story. The Venn Diagram of where those norms overlap with our own some 3,000 years later helps us understand our history and what needs and questions mankind has struggled with as a whole creature. I think these norms, such as the test of Zeus, also foreshadow a particular theological concept: theodicy.
In brief, theodicy (Greek: theo (god) + dike (justice)) is a term used to identify an explanation for God’s all-encompassing goodness in the midst of undeniable evil. How can God be good when He allows wicked things to happen? Theodicy is a person’s attempt to answer this question, most famously from fathers like St. Iraneus and St. Augustine to Enlightenment thinkers like Gottfried Leibniz.
The discussion around theodicy as it concerns the Christian God is often wrapped up in certain open questions, such as the nature of Heaven and the afterlife, the purpose of suffering, and the vagaries between moral evil and natural evil. It is, frankly, a subject I am inadequate to discuss here, but in these two moments- 1) the test of Zeus, and 2) his advice to Athena to “make [the Ithakans] forget” -I saw Homer having a kind of “theodic” moment, furnishing imperfect answers for a pair of human needs, which would later be answered by Christ. This is where St. Basil gets involved.
St. Basil the Great was an advocate for so-called “profane learning;” that is, not occult or diabolical study, as we might think of when we see the word “profane,” but rather, worldly study, what appears outside of the church, “in which truth appears as in a mirror.” In his famous “Address to Young Men on the Right Use of Greek Literature” he argues that reading the pagan folklore and poems can serve as a sort of training program by which young Christians can practice discernment, learning how to take the good and leave the bad. At Omnia we refer to this as “perceiving the Logos.”
Theodicy demands transcendent goodness. We’re all familiar with the old adage “even a broken clock is right twice a day,” but when you read the epics, you start to see that there is undeniable awareness of and desire for transcendent goodness throughout their pages. It’s in Achilles sheathing his sword when ordered by Athena; it’s in Priam reconciling with Achilles after Hector’s death; it’s in Odysseus leaving Kalypso despite her promise of immortality; it’s in Diomedes affirming his retirement to Turnus; it’s in… basically everything Aeneas does. If every Christian were even a tenth as pious as Aeneas is there wouldn’t be any nations left to evangelize.
The epics are full of moments where the great heroes step away from their desires because they know it’s the right thing to do. They are called upward to something greater outside of themselves, and when the gods aren’t being terrible, they serve the function of issuing that call. St. Basil invites us to recognize these moments and affirm their goodness because they inform the habit of striving for virtue, which for him, is the ultimate purpose of reading anything. A student who is schooled and grounded in the incomplete but effective wisdom of the pagans can go on to read and apply Scripture correctly in their lives. St. Basil says that profane learning “should ornament the mind, as foliage graces the fruit-bearing tree.” We know that hospitality is good because we ought to see Christ in everyone we meet. We can see that the Greeks knew this too, even if it was because they were afraid of Zeus. The truth in the mirror, with proper guidance, eventually leads to the Truth itself.
Thus, the test of Zeus is a kind of theodicy at scale, in which Homer shows how the gods inspire a transcendent good in society at large. Hospitality is necessary for a culture to be virtuous, and though the beliefs that inspire it are wrong and misguided- you should be hospitable because it is good, not for fear of being cursed by some fickle deity -they are sufficient to put the culture on the virtuous path. After all, the Greeks took to Christ somewhat intensely after they were finally introduced.
So, what of Zeus’s suggestion to “make them forget?” I believe Homer is portraying another, more intimate and personal theodicy necessary for a virtuous people: forgiveness. The Ithakans’ desire for revenge is a tacit admission that the gods are not responsible for every problem. Men’s hearts are driven by passion and demand restraint as much as the gods’ hearts do; so, when no man is present to undo the cycle of vengeance, Homer makes the judgement that the gods should summarily stop it by fiat.
To be sure, Homer’s solution is crude and raises further questions about the goodness of the Olympian gods, but the likeness of the truth is there in the mirror. It simply would not do for the Ithakans to destroy themselves in a cycle of revenge, and since they cannot manage this for themselves, having a higher power intervene and force that goodness is appropriate. Homer’s keen understanding of human nature and its inadequacies points him toward this conclusion.
Does this absolve the gods of their peccadilloes? Of course not. Even Athena ordains barbarous things for characters who show themselves to be worthy of forgiveness, such as Amphimedon, who is kind to Odysseus when he is in disguise. But the concept of one, true, overriding Creator who is all good would largely remain a frustrating mystery to the Greeks until St. Paul’s entrance into the Areopagus. I won’t blame Homer for simply using what he has at his disposal.
The Odyssey is, ultimately, a story about homecoming and restoration. It’s about the re-establishment of harmony and order in one man’s life. Odysseus inspires us because of his perseverance, Penelope does the same with her devotion, but even as capable and dogged as they are, they must still contend with the divine and are not ultimately guaranteed their peace without its say so. Theo dike indeed. Let us give thanks that Christ was incarnate on this earth to show us the true destination of our own odyssey: deliverance from evil and eternal union with Him.
May our Lord illuminate the righteous path He has laid before each of us and compel us to walk it dutifully and with joy.