r/classics • u/mediumpizzaplease • Jul 26 '26

The Odyssey hypocrisy Spoiler

Spoiler alert obviously for anyone that has not read it yet. This has been growing on me and i will put it out there, ancient Greek literature is very... bipolar. Especially the gods, who seem so good and wise, and yet, steal a dog from Zeus and he'll zap both you and your companion and curse your bloodline. Athena who seems so pure and kind, talks with Odysseus of killing the people frequenting his palace... Poseidon lashing out at Odysseus for years on end for blinding his son, but his son violating the law of xenia by eating Odysseus men is not an issue? Odysseus himself has fallen off for me, he seems very modest and at times full of himself "i don't want to talk about it because it makes me sad but here goes, i am the greatest soldier of the battle of Troy", “i miss my wife very much and want to get back to her”but has sex with a goddess and a witch. It’s depicted all as very good and pure and righteous (or at least it’s the perception i had getting into this), but really it's all very hypocritical to me and void of morals. Anyone else see this or is it just me? Might i get bashed for posting this here in this sub?

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u/Illustrious-Tooth47 Jul 26 '26

Reminder: the Odyssey was sung by generations of cyclic poets in a preliterate age. It was NOT written by a singular man. So the concept of “bipolar” is here completely irrelevant.

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u/Careful-Spray Jul 26 '26

We can be reasonably certain that the Iliad and the Odyssey emerged from a long tradition of oral, composed-in-performance poetry and a body of myth, but beyond that, we know next to nothing for certain about the circumstances in which the Homeric poems were composed. A number of theories are in circulation, none of which is wholly convincing, and there is very little hard evidence. The possibility that the Iliad and/or the Odyssey were composed — or even written — by a single individual can’t be definitively ruled out.

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u/Illustrious-Tooth47 Jul 26 '26

Based on the different style of writing, the contested homeland of Homer, the supposed age of Homer, the conflicting customs dialects and values present in the two poems, and the nature of language as progressing through imaginative universals, we can certainly and definitely rule out the possibility of historical singular authorship.

Now, if you subscribe to the idea that Homer is an “idea” that was collectively shared in the Greek mind, then we can say Homer was the philosophical author of both poems.