Cave Odyssey

From Homeric Hymn to Homer’s Odyssey, the cave is one of the special environment landscape and features that is frequently portrayed in ancient Greek mythology, not only because of its distinctive and bleak outward appearance compared to other landscapes such as forests and gardens, but also its god-haunted characteristics in Greek mythology. Different from the vast expanse of mountains or fields, cave’s small and narrow traits is always epitomized in Greek mythology. Cave, in Hellenic mythology, is a place portrayed to represent divinity which is neither utilized nor domesticated by the mortals, but at the same time, the cave also represents the isolation and imprisonment, which prevent exploration and transcendence. Different from the

In Hymn to Hermes, for example, the shadowy cave serves as cradle where child Hermes to grow up and protect him from other gods’ insult. Different behaviours of Hermes are dependent on whether Hermes is inside the cave with his mother or not. For example, when he escapes back from Apollo, “Hermes [comes] to his cradle in haste, and wrapped his swaddling clothes about his shoulders, like an infant child” (The Homeric Hymns. To Hermes. 150). On the contrary, outside the cave, for instance, Hermes uses his excelling skills on crafting and quick-witted intelligence to make the first lyre from a tortoise and to steal sheep from Apollo. Nevertheless, Hermes regards this protection to be shameful and disgraceful as he says “it is better to be forever in the gods’ intimate circle, […], than to sit in this dark cave” (The Homeric Hymns. To Hermes. 170). His words show his ambition to be a powerful god and his disgust with the dark cave they currently lived in and one can see how the over protection from the cave limit Hermes’s transcendence to be a true God. It is outside the cave that his intelligence has the chance to be shined and presented. Even though the fact that both Zeus and Hermes is raised from the cave underscores the divinity and deity of the cave in Greek mythology, the isolation from outside world, which is emphasized by its shadowy and narrow landscape, the cave also serves as a prison