Powerful Women In Homer's The Odyssey

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Imagine this, you are a powerful women living in ancient Greece, immediately you are viewed as sneaky, because you are a dominant and controlling leader. In the Odyssey, by Homer, written in 800 bc, Odysseus is retelling the story of his journey after the battle of Troy. While on his journey, Odysseus and his men have various encounters with powerful goddesses and monsters. In the Odyssey, the characters believe that all women are evil, which reflects the belief of the ancient Greeks that most women cannot be trusted.
As a result of women being untrustworthy, most men in the Odyssey and ancient Greece believed that women and goddesses alike, were pure evil, and should never be trusted. In the Odyssey, by Homer, Odysseus and his men travel …show more content…

After Odysseus’ continued his journey from Aeaea, he arrived on the same island, once again. Circe is there to tell Odysseus about the rest of his journey home to Ithaca, and the challenges he must face. Circe explains how Odysseus has three routes that he can take to get home, option one is to go through the Rovers, option two is to pass by Skylla, and the last, Charybdis. Ultimately, Odysseus chooses the second option, to pass by Skylla, an evil, woman monster with multiple heads. Once Odysseus has had Circe explain the Rovers to him [Odysseus], she [Circe] begins to explain with immense detail the characteristics of Skylla. “Her body from the waist down, is holed up inside the cavern, but she [Skylla] holds her heads poked out [...] peering all over the cliffside looking for dolphins or dogfish or anything bigger, [...] never can sailors boast aloud that their ship has passed her without any loss of men, for with each of her heads she snatches one man away and carries him off from the dark-prowed vessel (Homer 187). Homer characterizes Skylla, an evil, women monster, by portraying her to have six heads that will unexpectedly snatch up the sailors while their ship sails by. In the end, the way Skylla sneakily snatches up me while they sail by, proves the belief of women in the Odyssey, and in ancient Greece that women are