What are the gods doing?

In 7^th hour today I talked briefly about loaded dice. In Rome, the story goes, dice were almost always clearly misshapen or loaded. The Romans, however, didn’t care, because they thought that the outcome of each role was decided by a god, not by the shape and weight distribution of the dice.

I did some research on this story tonight and it turns out that I was most likely wrong, since I only found one article that mentioned this Roman faith in Fortune. And I know that Rome and Greece exist in vastly different time periods and are different cultures, though they have very similar religions. But regardless, I think that the anecdote is a great analogy for how the gods act in the Odyssey.

The gods are loading the dice of almost every major scene that Odysseus or Telemachus appear in. Most of Odysseus’s good standing seems to come from the gods, and conversely, the gods are also the ones who forced him to suffer so much. To a modern reader, the idea that some of Odysseus’s decisions might not be made by him, or that all his circumstances are engineered, makes the story ring hollow. In a couple recent readings, I started to think of Odysseus derisively as a “pawn,” being manipulated by the gods and not really in control of his own actions. I think that it would be clear to ancient Romans, as well, that Odysseus’s appearance, knowledge, and some of his smarts and behavior are due to Athena’s influence in particular.

But Odysseus is clearly supposed to be a hero! He’s not written as a fraud or an antihero riddled with flaws. He’s there to be admired. When a Greek audience listened to the same stories, how did they think about the gods’ interventions?

We are about to enter the Twilight Zone a world in which people believe that the petty, sometimes foolish, yet powerful gods have control of the whole world: both the environment in its entirety and the thoughts in people’s heads (to some extent). To start with, Odysseus was chosen by the gods. He was chosen because he’s a good person at heart, and maybe (though I have not read the Illiad) because he harbored some innate heroic spirit, though this spirit could be placed there by the gods. Chicken and egg scenarios abound. Regardless, the gods handpicked him to be special. Then, because they’d selected him, the gods put him through inevitable suffering. This way his bad leadership regarding yelling at the Cyclops and gradually sacrificing all his men (and not telling them about it) were all part of the gods’ plan. The bad luck, for him, wasn’t just environmental (Poseidon raises a storm) but also internal (a god makes him brash, boastful, or lazy). Or people might rationalize that the gods are causing his subordinates to act treacherously. Regardless, Odysseus is stripped of some of his individuality and responsibility with this reading.

Maybe Odysseus’s faults are partially the work of gods. In that case, so are some of his brilliant ideas. Instead of this planting of thoughts being some kind of evil favoritism on the part of the gods, the fact that the gods inspire Odysseus just means that they’ve taken a liking to him, and because they’ve taken a liking to him, we should look to his example, even if it’s just a model that the gods have created. And, in the metaphor of the loaded dice, ancient Greeks wouldn’t be mad because he received divine inspiration, or think of it as cheating. Instead, they’d see that the gods willed it that way, and though they might be upset about things that the gods made to happen, it gave them a reason for things. Odysseus is a hero appointed by the gods, and so even though our modern 2019 goggles might not want to give him full credit for his actions, Greece could still have looked up to him as an example.