The Women In Homer's The Odyssey

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,

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