The Odyssey Fate and Divine Intervention Quotes

On that note,
grabbing an oxhoof out of a basket where it lay,
with a brawny hand he flung it straight at the king –
but Odysseus ducked his head a little, dodging the blow,
and seething just as the oxhoof hit the solid wall
he clenched his teeth in a wry sardonic grin.
Telemachus dressed Ctesippus down at once:
"Ctesippus, you can thank your lucky stars
you missed our guest – he ducked your blow, by god!
Else I would have planted my sharp spear in your bowels –
your father would have been busy with your funeral,
not your wedding here. Enough."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 20, lines 333-344. There is further divine intervention here, as Athena inspires the suitor Ctesippus to mock and hurl an ox hoof at the disguised Odysseus. She is intent on increasing Odysseus’ anger to the level that he will rise up and kill Penelope’s suitors who have taken over his palace. The brave Telemachus warns Ctesippus that he is fortunate he didn’t hit Odysseus, or Ctesippus would have wound up on the end of Telemachus’ sharp spear.

So he vowed
and Athena set off uncontrollable laughter in the suitors,
crazed them out of their minds – mad, hysterical laughter
seemed to break from the jaws of strangers, not their own,
and the meat they were eating oozed red with blood –
tears flooded their eyes, hearts possessed by grief.

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 20, lines 384-389. When Telemachus refuses the suitors’ request that he persuade his mother to marry again, Athena makes the suitors laugh hysterically at the prince’s words. In doing so, Athena gives Odysseus further reason to seek revenge. The killing of the suitors is also foreshadowed here, as their meat oozes blood, their eyes flood with tears and their hearts fill with grief.

"Oh I can see it now –
the disaster closing on you all! There’s no escaping it,
no way out – not for a single one of you suitors,
wild reckless fools, plotting outrage here,
the halls of Odysseus, great and strong as a god!"

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 20, lines 410-414. As the suitors mock and laugh at Theoclymenus’ warning, the seer speaks up about the disastrous and inescapable future fated for them. His prophecy foreshadows the suitors’ deaths. In a simile he compares Odysseus’ strength to that of a god.

The goddess Athena with her blazing eyes
inspired Penelope, Icarius’ daughter, wary, poised,
to set the bow and the gleaming iron axes out
before her suitors waiting in Odysseus’ hall –
to test their skill and bring their slaughter on.

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 21, lines 1-5. The contest of the bow and axes is an example of Penelope’s cunning nature and intelligence. She will be the wife of the person who wins. But she knows that only a man like Odysseus can string his own bow and pull off this feat. In this passage we learn that Athena inspires Penelope to set the bow and gleaming axes before the waiting suitors, another example of divine intervention.

Now stripping back his rags Odysseus master of craft and battle
vaulted onto the great threshold, gripping his bow and quiver
bristling arrows, and poured his flashing shafts before him,
loose at his feet, and thundered out to all the suitors:
"Look – your crucial test is finished, now, at last!
But another target’s left that no one’s hit before –
we’ll see if I can hit it – Apollo give me glory!"

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 22, lines 1-7. Odysseus reveals himself to the suitors and begins his revenge in these opening opening lines of Book 22. Seizing his great bow and quiver of arrows, he prays to archery god Apollo to give him glory in his battle.

"If you,
you’re truly Odysseus of Ithaca, home at last,
you’re right to accuse these men of what they’ve done –
so much reckless outrage here in your palace,
so much on your lands. But here he lies,
quite dead, and he incited it all – Antinous –
look, the man who drove us all to crime!
Not that he needed marriage, craved it so;
he’d bigger game in mind – though Zeus barred his way –
he’d lord it over Ithaca’s handsome country, king himself,
once he’d lain in wait for your son and cut him down!
But now he’s received the death that he deserved.
So spare your own people! Later we’ll recoup
your costs with a tax laid down upon the land,
covering all we ate and drank inside your halls,
and each of us here will pay full measure too –
twenty oxen in value, bronze and gold we’ll give
until we melt your heart. Before we’ve settled,
who on earth could blame you for your rage?"

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 22, lines 45-63. Eurymachus pleads with Odysseus to end the revenge killings of the suitors, since ringleader Antinous has been killed. Passing the buck, he places the entire responsibilty for the suitors’ outrages on Antinous. He reveals that Antinous had ambitions to be king after he ambushed and killed Telemachus, but he was stopped by Zeus. An offer of compensation from the suitors to Odysseus is made by Eurymachus, who cynically adds that extra taxes will be levied on the people to pay for this.

And now as the ranks squared off, breathing fury –
four at the sill confronting a larger, stronger force
arrayed inside the hall – now Zeus’s daughter Athena,
taking the build and voice of Mentor, swept in
and Odysseus, thrilled to see her, cried out,
"Rescue us, Mentor, now it’s life or death!
Remember your old comrade – all the service
I offered you! We were boys together!"

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 22, 212-219. Odysseus battles the suitors with his son Telemachus, swineherd Eumaeus and cowherd Philoetius, but they are heavily outnumbered. When Athena appears disguised as Mentor, a relieved and delighted Odysseus pleads for help and begs to be rescued.

"Where’s it gone, Odysseus – your power, your fighting heart?
The great soldier who fought for famous white-armed Helen,
battling Trojans nine long years – nonstop, no mercy,
mowing their armies down in grueling battle –
you who seized the broad streets of Troy
with your fine strategic stroke! How can you –
now you’ve returned to your own house, your own wealth –
bewail the loss of your combat strength in a war with suitors?"

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 22, lines 236-243. Athena, who remains protector and guardian towards Odysseus’ family throughout The Odyssey, is often regarded as a symbol of female empowerment. Here she reacts angrily to Odysseus’ cry for help from Mentor (Athena disguised), as his morale suffers in the fight against the superior force of suitors. She both taunts and inspires Odysseus, so that he finds the courage that he had when he fought the Trojans all those years ago, and uses it now to defeat the suitors.

Rousing words –
but she gave no all-out turning of the tide, not yet,
she kept on testing Odysseus and his gallant son,
putting their force and fighting heart to proof.
For all the world like a swallow in their sight
she flew on high to perch
on the great hall’s central roofbeam black with smoke.

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 22, lines 246-252. At a crucial moment during the slaughter of the suitors, Athena tests Odysseus and his son. Rather than directly fighting their battle and ensuring outright victory, she encourages them to summon up the strength and will to win themselves. At this point she wants them to fight with their own power and prove that their heart is in it. She flies up in the form of a swallow to perch on the central roofbeam of the hall.

At his command,
concentrating their shots, all six hurled as one
but Athena sent the whole salvo wide of the mark –
one of them hit the jamb of the great hall’s doors,
another the massive door itself, and the heavy bronze point
of a third ashen javelin crashed against the wall.

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 22, lines 267-272. Fighting for their lives, the suitors led by Agelaus fire all their long spears at once at Odysseus and his comrades. Goddess Athena comes to the rescue and deflects their spears. Without her intervention, Odysseus and his men may very well have been killed.

And now Athena, looming out of the rafters high above them,
brandished her man-destroying shield of thunder, terrifying
the suitors out of their minds, and down the hall they panicked –
wild, like herds stampeding, driven mad as the darting gadfly
strikes in the late spring when the long days come round.

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 22, lines 311-315. After protecting Odysseus by deflecting spears and arrows, Athena now wields her shield of thunder high above the suitors. She sends them into a panic down the hall. In an epic simile, the terrified and fleeing suitors are compared to herds stampeding after being driven demented by biting flies. Athena, by joining by Odysseus and Telemachus’ side as Mentor, has turned the tide of the battle in their favor.

"Rejoice in your heart,
old woman – peace! No cries of triumph now.
It’s unholy to glory over the bodies of the dead
These men the doom of the gods has brought low,
and their own indecent acts. They’d no regard
for any man on earth – good or bad –
who chanced to come their way. And so, thanks
to their reckless work, they met this shameful fate."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 22, lines 435-442. When Eurycleia finds Odysseus in the midst of the suitors’ bodies in the hall, she is about to let out a triumphant cry. Stopping her, Odysseus says to rejoice quietly in her heart. While he feels it unholy to cheer over the bodies of the dead, he believes that the suitors’ deaths was divine justice. Having led reckless and indecent lives, they were fated to meet a shameful end.

Athena crowned the man with beauty, head to foot,
made him taller to all eyes, his build more massive,
yes, and down from his brow the great goddess
ran his curls like thick hyacinth clusters
full of blooms. As a master craftsman washes
gold over beaten silver – a man the god of fire
and Queen Athena trained in every fine technique –
and finishes off his latest effort, handsome work…
so she lavished splendor over his head and shoulders now.
He stepped from his bath, glistening like a god.

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 23, lines 174-183. While a maid bathes Odysseus, Athena removes his beggar disguise and transforms him back to his handsome self. An epic simile compares the goddess to a skilled craftsman working with precious metals and pouring gold over beaten silver to make something beautiful even more so. Odysseus is left shining "like a god."

"Odysseus – don’t flare up at me now, not you,
always the most understanding man alive!
The gods, it was the gods who sent us sorrow –
they grudged us both a life in each other’s arms
from the heady zest of youth to the stoop of old age.
But don’t fault me, angry with me now because I failed,
at the first glimpse, to greet you, hold you, so…
In my heart of hearts I always cringed with fear
some fraud might come, beguile me with his talk;
the world is full of the sort."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 23, lines 235-244. This passage highlights the theme of fate, as Penelope asks her husband not to be angry for testing him to determine if he really was Odysseus. She says that the gods fated them with a life of separation and sorrow and she always feared that a deceiver would come along and charm her with words.

The more she spoke, the more a deep desire for tears
welled up inside his breast – he wept as he held the wife
he loved, the soul of loyalty, in his arms at last.
Joy, warm as the joy that shipwrecked sailors feel
when they catch sight of land – Poseidon has struck
their well-rigged ship on the open sea with gale winds
and crushing walls of waves, and only a few escape, swimming,
struggling out of the frothing surf to reach the shore,
their bodies crusted with salt but buoyed up with joy
as they plant their feet on solid ground again,
spared a deadly fate. So joyous now to her
the sight of her husband, vivid in her gaze,
that her white arms, embracing his neck
would never for a moment let him go.

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 23, lines 259-272. There are tears of happiness as Odysseus and Penelope, the very "soul of loyalty," hold each other like they will never let go. The joy of Odysseus’ homecoming and reunion with his wife is compared in a Homeric simile to that of a sailor shipwrecked by Poseidon who manages to swim safely to shore.

"If only you had died your death in the full flush
of the glory you had mastered – died on Trojan soil!
Then all united Achaea would have raised your tomb
and you’d have won your son great fame for years to come.
Not so. You were fated to die a wretched death."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 24, lines 32-36. Achilles expresses the glorification of heroic combat when he says this to Agamemnon in the underworld. He tells Agamemnon that if only he had died while fighting in Troy, he would have had a much more glorious death. Instead fate marked him out for a "wretched death." This is a reference to King Agamemnon’s murder by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus after he returned from the Trojan war.

"Hear me, men of Ithaca. Not without the hand
of the deathless gods did Odysseus do these things!
Myself, I saw an immortal fighting at his side –
like Mentor to the life. I saw the same god,
now in front of Odysseus, spurring him on,
now stampeding the suitors through the hall,
crazed with fear, and down they went in droves."
Terror gripped them all, their faces ashen white.

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 24, lines 490-497. Odysseus’ herald Medon addresses the angry families and supporters of the dead suitors. He tells them that he saw a god fighting on the side of Odysseus – it was actually goddess Athena. The crowd stands frozen in terror when they hear this.

"Do as your heart desires –
but let me tell you how it should be done.
Now that royal Odysseus has taken his revenge,
let both sides seal their pacts that he shall reign for life,
and let us purge their memories of the bloody slaughter
of their brothers and their sons. Let them be friends,
devoted as in the old days. Let peace and wealth
come cresting through the land.

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 24, lines 531-538. Zeus agrees with Athena after she pleads that there should be pacts of peace between the two sides in the war between Odysseus and the suitors. Since Odysseus has taken his revenge, Zeus says that there should be an end to the bloody slaughter.

Odysseus and his gallant son charged straight at the front lines,
slashing away with swords, with two-edged spears and now
they would have killed them all, cut them off from home
if Athena, daughter of storming Zeus, had not cried out
in a piercing voice that stopped all fighters cold,
"Hold back, you men of Ithaca, back from brutal war!
Break off – shed no more blood – make peace at once!"

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 24, lines 579-585. As Odysseus and his son Telemachus attack the families of the suitors who want to avenge their deaths, Athena intervenes to stop the slaughter. She asks the two sides to hold back and make peace. The strong goddess, who embodies female power in a patriarchal ancient Greece, manages to stop a second war.

loosing a savage cry, the long-enduring great Odysseus,
gathering all his force, swooped like a soaring eagle
just as the son of Cronus hurled a reeking bolt
that fell at her feet, the mighty Father’s daughter,
and blazing-eyed Athena wheeled on Odysseus, crying,
"Royal son of Laertes, Odysseus, master of exploits,
hold back now! Call a halt to the great leveler, War –
don’t court the rage of Zeus who rules the world."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 24, lines 590-597. Odysseus swoops on the Ithacans who flee in panic after Athena’s order for a halt to the bloodshed. A metaphor compares Odysseus to an eagle. Just then we have a final omen from Zeus as he hurls down a thunderbolt which drops at Athena’s feet. The goddess intervenes to rein in Odysseus. Deciding that there has been enough war, she commands Odysseus to end the killing. She warns him not to invoke the wrath of Zeus by pursuing a second war against the suitor’s families. Woman power has the final word on the fighting in Ithaca.

So she commanded. He obeyed her, glad at heart.
And Athena handed down her pacts of peace
between both sides for all the years to come –
the daughter of Zeus whose shield is storm and thunder,
yes, but the goddess still kept Mentor’s build and voice.

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 24, lines 598-602. The final lines of the epic poem tell how at the command of the powerful goddess of wisdom, the fighting stops. Athena, in her last appearance in The Odyssey, takes on the form of Mentor and brings peace to the warring sides in Itacha.
Close