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The Women In Homer's The Odyssey

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The women in The Odyssey were in many influential and powerful roles in the story, including being protectors, such as Athena. Athena protected Athena and a sea nymph were the only reason that “Odysseus [with the help of Athena and the sea nymph] arrives, broken and battered, on the island of Scheria” (754). Athena along with the Sea nymph protected Odysseus so he could survive Poseidon 's wrath. Poseidon raised a storm to attempt to murder Odysseus as he leaves Calypso. Also, majority of the Olympians, including Athena, took pity upon Odysseus, with the exception of Poseidon. Athena was a representative of sorts for Odysseus among the gods. Athena in Olympus “begs[ed] her father/, Zeus, to allow Odysseus to return safely to his home in ithaca” (20/21). Athena wanted nothing but for Odysseus to get home to Ithica safely. Also, …show more content…

Circe is a perfect example of being deceptive. Odysseus’s men walked in on Cerce and she got them drunk. Circe “flew after them/ with her long stick and shut them in a pigsty—/ bodies, voices, heads, and bristle*, ad swinish now, though minds were still unchanged. So, squealing, in they went. And Circe tossed them/ acorns, mast, and cornel berries—fodder for hogs who rut and slumber on the earth,” (1040-1045). Circe drugged Odysseus’s men and turned them into swine. Odysseus’s men found Circe weaving a loom of ambrosia, while singing in a deep, beautiful note. Circe then seduced them into eating a meal of cheese and barley she made for them. She then got them drunk on a mixture of amber honey, Pramnian wine and, presumably, a pinch of lotus that makes “them lose/ desire or thought of our dear fatherland” (1037/1038). Cerce expertly deceived Odysseus’s men into getting drunk so she could turn them into pigs. Overall, Circe was a deceptive witch who tricked Odysseus’s men into her

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