Gods vs. Goddesses In The Iliad, the gods and goddesses have completely different roles. The females are usually the ones in the battle fighting, while the male gods are putting courage into hearts, but that isn’t to say that is all that they do. This is a completely different role than the mortals have. While the men are out in battle, the women are knitting and cooking. The women are also described so that it seems like they are property and not humans, and that they don’t have any feeling. Where the female gods act and are treated as if they are equal, if not ranked higher. In The Battle on the Plain (pg. 41), Zeus calls a meeting, telling all of the gods that they are not to help the Greeks or the Trojans, but Athena, who is Zeus favorite daughter, says that her and the other gods pity the Greeks, feeling that they will be destroyed by the Trojans. So Zeus allows the gods and …show more content…
goddesses to give the Greeks and Trojans advice, but not to get actually involved. The gods and goddesses take that as more of a suggestion, and that if Zeus doesn’t see it, then it will be okay. Zeus, awhile after the meeting, he put it into the heart of Sarpēdon the Lycian that he might win great glory for himself, but in the end Zeus gave the glory to Hector. In The Rousing of Achilles (pg. 93), Zeus also sends Iris to Achilles with a message, which tells Achilles that Patroclus’s body is about to be taken. Even though Zeus is the leader of the gods and goddesses, he doesn’t fight like the leader of the mortal armies do. He is definitely like a female mortal, but the female mortals are still at home preparing for their loved ones return, but he is just watching like it is a big football game. Athena, who is on the Greek side, is always actually fighting in the battles. How the Oath Was Broken was her first action in the battle. In The Quarrel Ended (pg. 100), she saw that Achilles was fasting, and Zeus said, “Do you not care for your dear Achilles? See how the other Greeks eat and drink, but he sits fasting.” So she flew down from heaven and put food into his chest so that his strength would not fail because of hunger. Achilles did not know she did that, he just felt stronger. She also helped Achilles by tricking Hector in The Slaying of Hector (pg. 110). She takes shape of Deϊphobus, and tells Hector that Achilles comes after him, but when they fight, Achilles throws a spear at Hector and Hector avoids it, but Athena picks up the spear and gave it back to Achilles. Even after her Zeus, her father, had that meeting, she still gets involved. She doesn’t just give advice. It might arrogance, but also shows that she has a passion for the Greeks, and will stop at nothing for them. Especially since she doesn’t listen to her own father. Apollo was on the Trojans side. Even though he is, he works with Athena in How Hector and Ajax Fought (pg. 36). He and Athena decide to join together to stop Hector and Ajax fight. He thinks that since Athena liked Ajax and he liked Hector, they would make them stop fighting. That shows that he had more of an fairness side to him than the other gods. It is especially surprising that Athena agrees, even though they are sending him to go fight the strongest of the Greeks, and that the Greek might die, and Hector is guaranteed not to die. Ares is the god of war and sided with the Trojans.
In Concerning Other Valiant Deeds, (pg. 24) he took Ænēas back to the battle, and he himself went with Hector in the shape of a man. Diomed saw this, and they were all scared, but with Ares on Hector's side, he was more fierce than ever and drove back the Greeks. This is when Athena helps Diomed by putting her weight on the his spear he had just thrown at Ares. Ares is more like a male mortal than the other gods, but still stays more to the back. That was the only time he intervened and changed the plot. Poseidon, who is on the Greek side, does more background work. He never fights in the battles, but helps the warriors. In The Battle at the Ships, (pg. 78) he touches Ajax the Greater and Ajax the Lesser with his staff and fills them with fresh courage and gave them new strength to their hands and feet. This convinced them to fight, even though he didn’t actually fight. He never is in the battle, and is only putting courage in hearts. He is not anything like a male mortal, but I wouldn’t say he does the exact role of a female
mortal. In conclusion, the goddesses do a lot more of the battle than the gods, especially Athena. The gods still help by giving the warriors new courage, or the weak warriors new strength, but the goddesses are the ones out there leaning on spears and giving them back to the “opponent”. The male gods are more like the women in the story, and the female the men. They all have a role, though. If there were no women at home cooking welcome home meals, or knitting blankets for winter, then they would all die. If there were no warriors and the Greeks had to come to Troy, they would be over run, even the gods and goddesses wouldn’t be able to stop that. There needs to be both, and the gods seem to have that worked out, just like the mortals. Emily Bross
Hector, acting on Helenus’ advice, told the Trojan women to make offerings to Athena, hoping she’d pity them and thus stop Diomedes from massacring any more of his soldiers.
...o all guests saved Odysseus and helped him return home to his wife, son, and kingdom. Even though people from many different kingdoms and islands took Odysseus in their home and showed him great kindness on his return home, the individual who helped him most was the goddess Athena. In many occasions Athena assisted Odysseus. One such example is when Odysseus was fighting of the suitors and they threw spears at him. "Re-forming, the suitors threw again with all their strength, but Athena turned their shots, or all but two (p 566)." Another instance which Athena aided Odysseus was when she disguised him as a beggar on his arrival to his homeland. "Would even you have guessed that I am Pallas Athena, daughter of Zeus, I that am always with you in times of trial, a shield to you in battle (p 444)." "Your goddess-guardian to the end in all your trials (p 539)."
In the Epic of Gilgamesh, gender plays a very significant role. While women were not the most powerful gods nor the strongest or wisest of humans, they still had tremendous influence. Though the main characters of the story, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, are male, women did not play a necessarily minor role. With all the women that play a role in the Epic of Gilgamesh, gender is a topic worthy of discussion.
Women have given birth to new generations for centuries and have the common stereotype of being caring and gentle. But in the creation myth, women were given to man as a punishment. In the book of collected Greek tales, " Mythology Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes", by Edith Hamilton, women take up important roles that shape each story. Although women are usually characterized as being helpful and motherly, Greek mythology, on the other hand, portrays them to cause distress, fear, and anxiety to numerous men. Women’s actions are shown to be influenced with jealousy and vengeance which gives them an evil nature.
It is clear that Homer divides the gods into the created abstract gods, and the existent Olympian gods. The function of one group of gods differs from that of the other. Whereas the abstract gods are present in the Iliad in order to explain the natural forces that are attributed to them, the Olympian gods are characters that represent and explain a whole lot more. Rather than explain only the natural forces attributed to them, these gods also explain the unnatural and more magical occurrences of the war. The Olympian gods are not anthropomorphized concepts that the other gods and warriors can take advantage of. Instead, the Olympians are anthropomorphized beings who are capable of doing much more than the forces attributed to them and whose emotions often affect these actions.
The goddesses such as Hera, Thetis and Athene are strong, powerful, and elegant. Aside from powerful, in Iliad the goddess Hera represents a nurturing and motherly side, and Homer writes, “I have come down to stay your anger but will you obey me? from the sky; and the goddess of the white arms Hera sent me, who loves both of you equally in her heart and cares for you” (7). In the Odyssey we have the two goddesses, Calypso and Circe whom Odysseus has extended affairs with and they are beautiful and embraced sexuality. Calypso had an egocentric and dominative character because she wanted Odysseus as her immortal husband (Bauschatz, 22). Women gods in the Odyssey and Iliad are elegant, strong, and wise while mortal women are property and subordinate as written in Hesiod’s Works and
The gods in power, like Zeus, exhibit bias, dishonor, betrayal, deception, and many other humanly characteristics. One memorable scene is when Zeus and Poseidon are in conflict with each other over the Achaens versus the Trojans. Zeus controls the battle by “lifting the famous runner Achilles’ glory higher,” (Homer 13: 404). Zeus plays both sides in this scene, acting like a double agent which is dishonorable. Zeus’s bias is prevalent throughout the poem; specifically, he is “bent on wiping out the Argives, down to the last man,” (Homer 12: 81-82). Just like mortals such as Agamemnon and Achilles view each other with suspicion and intolerance, the gods experience identical emotions of wariness, anger, and irritation. This human-like behavior is not restricted to Zeus. Later in the text, Hera lies to Aphrodite to use her powers to manipulate her own husband Zeus. If one looks at Hera as a heavenly entity, her reaction may not make sense, but when it is viewed as a manifestation of human emotion, it become almost reasonable. Her scheming response to Zeus’s meddling with the war is spurred by her support for the Trojans. Hera’s manipulation and Aphrodite’s ego don’t stand alone as examples of this divine humanity. These instances suggest that the deities are being presented in this unique way to help explain behavior of the humans in The
In considering the relationship between the meanings of myths and their representation of women, we learned that the major role in shaping the narratives was played by men. Myths reveal to us the experiences of women living in the patriarchal society and we gain the symbol value accorded to women and we come to realize what the term "Woman" meant to the ancient Greek man. Reading through the various stories on Goddesses and queens, monsters and more. Princesses, we learn that there are three major levels of women in Greek mythology. The first level is composed of the divine beings known as the goddesses.
In The Iliad the actions of the gods culminate into the beginning of the end for Troy. Hector is slain with the help of Minerva. Achilles is properly prodded into fighting through the death of Patroclus, who for all intents and purposes is handed over if not slain at the hand of Apollo himself. Any god with anything to say to the contrary has their hands tied by fate. With Troy's hero Hector fallen the city is all but lost.
Including both Homer’s works, the Odyssey and Iliad, he echoes his cultures conception of women as being either helpers of men or hindrances or restraints to them, however essentially insubstantial in their own right. Yet the only exceptions to this rule are immortals such as Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite, who function by a different set of guidelines because they are goddesses. For instance, they are allowed to have more independence then flesh- and-blood women because they are already symbols of some random abstract virtue or perhaps a principle, or beauty, and therefore they instantly have their own role to fill. As we know Iliad and Odyssey are poems relating adventures surrounding the Trojan War where both poems women are common and important in Greek culture. In fact women are included in a plethora of roles however it seems to be a testament to the importance of women in the Greek culture of that time.
In the classic poem The Iliad there are a wide arrange of women portrayed. It has women from the strongest to the weakest. For a poem that is centered in male dominate time, women take center stage in the poem. The women captured in the course of the war were considered rewards. Other women of good birthrights were considered valuable. They were worth more to the families. Then there were Goddess whose help sometimes just made things worse.
n Homer’s The Iliad, although Zeus may seem impartial in his involvement in the Trojan War, he covertly favors the Trojans. Gods play fundamental roles in the war, and almost all have defined positions, except for Zeus. Zeus is the almighty “god of all gods”, but his position is supposed to be unbiased and just to both sides. During the wedding of Thetis and Peleus, there was an ongoing dispute concerning the most beautiful goddess between Hera, Aphrodite and Athena. They then asked Zeus to pick the winner; he declined telling the Trojan Paris to give a golden apple to the most beautiful goddess. Paris picked Aphrodite; she told him that he could have the most beautiful woman in the world. He picked Helen, the wife of the Spartan King Menelaus.
The poem “Iliad,” by Homer, is known for its violence between men during a war, but under that violence, is the different type of women who play a significant role in the poem (Homer 189). This poem’s narrative seems to show a male dominated world between the Greek commanders. This male dominated world cannot happen on its own, thus the different background roles of women are needed in order to make sense of all this rage. As the University of Michigan article How Do Women Make Their Way Into This Cycle states, “They are seen as the objects of both lust and domesticity, yet they are also used to excuse war, cause conflict, and display the power of men” (www.umich.edu). The focus in this poem steers towards the rage between the men, but this rage most of the time is inspired and initiated by a woman. The women of Iliad play a significant role in the poem such as war prizes, male hero partners, and women gods.
One does not need to go into deep, critical analysis to see that women are portrayed as very weak and servile in the Iliad. We have seen them being humiliated by their husbands, brothers, and even owners. They are often charged with tasks others would find demeaning if left to someone else. The chauvinism is everywhere and it is very clear that the role of women in the Iliad was that of a woman who needs a man to take care of her and keep her lying, twisted heart in check.
The role of Artemis, however, seems minimal when compared to that of her twin brother, Apollo. Apollo was constantly intervening in the mortal war in favor of Troy. Responsible for sending the plague to the Greek camps, Apollo was the first divine entity to appear in The Iliad. Aphrodite, who was chosen by Paris as the fairest, obviously sided with the Trojans, as well. Although she played a fairly minor role during the course of battle, she did successfully convince Ares, the god of war, to help the Trojans.