Fate And The Odyssey: Homer'S Tragic Vision

Greco-Roman paganism, embodied in the works of Homer and other epic poets, has an inherently tragic vision of humanity’s place in the Cosmos. Unlike the Christian and Enlightenment tradition, which holds that mankind has free will and is master of its own fate, the Greek tragic vision holds that human life is governed by “necessity and man’s encounter with it shall rob him of his eyes”. The individual and even the gods are not complete master’s of their own destiny but must abide by the dictates of Fate. Not even the gods can defy Fate in the Homeric universe. When Zeus, the King of the gods, wishes to spare his son, Sarpedon from death, Hera intervenes, reminding him “Majesty, son of Kronos, what sort of thing have you spoken? Do you wish to bring back a man who is mortal…doomed by his destiny” ? Even Zeus cannot defy Fate, he, like a mortal, must mourn for his son. That being said, human beings are not entirely helpless in the Greco-Roman tradition, as Zeus states in the opening of the Odyssey “My word, how mortals take the gods to task! All their afflictions come from us, we hear. And what of their own failings? Greed and folly double the suffering in the lot of man”. This paper argues that the destiny of Odysseus and humanity, in general, is determined in part by Fate and the will of the Gods, and individual choice.

The centrality of Fate in human affairs is established at the beginning of The Odyssey. The poem opens with these lines “Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story”. With this opening, Homer acknowledges the influence of both fate and gods in human affairs. He conceives of his art, not as a product of his imagination and intellect but views himself as a merely a mediator between the Divine and the Human. Homer in creating his art channels the voice of the Muse, who speaks through him. The opening line of The Odyssey sets the tone of Homer’s text that human destiny is governed by a combination of Fate and individual initiative. The drama of the piece re-enforces this perception humanity does not have complete control over its Fortune. Odysseus and his men are victims of fate, and of their Hubris, which causes them to defy the gods.

Odysseus is Fated to be the sole survivor of his band of comrades returning home from the Trojan war. Their misfortune is partly due to the wrath of the gods, and consequences of ill thought out choices. Odysseus suffers because he has incurred the wrath of Poseidon who bears him “an old grudge since he poked out the eye of Polyphemus”. During their voyage home, Odysseus and his crew land on the Island of Polyphemus, son of Poseidon, a cyclops. They are captured by Polyphemus, who plans to eat them. To escape, Odysseus tricks Polyphemus, lulling him into a sense of security, then blinding him when he is a drunken sleep. While Odysseus was compelled to wound Polyphemus to survive, his real failing was his pride. Polyphemus did not know Odysseus’s identity, but Odysseus, motivated by Hubris, cannot resist taunting Polyphemus, proclaiming “if ever mortal man inquire how you put to shame and blinded, tell him, Odysseus, raider of cities, took your eye”.

Odysseus’s misfortune is thus a product of Divine Will and Fate, and his Hubris. This sequence of events reveals a fundamental truth about the Greek conception of Fate. Fate is partly a product of Divine Will, but also a product of the nature of the Fated individual. Odysseus is man famous for his intellect, in which he takes great pride. This pride is part of his nature. Thus his fate is shaped by his personality, and essence as much as by the will of the gods. A similar dynamic is at play when Odysseus’s men seal their doom by incurring the wrath of Helios, the sun god. While Fate has decreed their demise, Odysseus’s crew seal their Fate due to defying Odysseus’s orders not to eat the cattle of Helios, the sun god. Odysseus’s men disobey his command to avoid starvation, proclaiming “all deaths are hateful to us, mortal wretches, but famine is the most pitiful”. Thus the Odysseus’s crew’s fate to die is as much a product of their nature and their choices as it is the will of Poseidon or Helios. Because of crew’s decision to eat the sacred cattle of Helios, Zeus agrees to “throw down one white-hot bolt, and make splinters of their ship”. What Homer describes if Fate is thus a product of both individual decision and personality and factors beyond human control. Odysseus’s men perish to the last man because of their Fate. Odysseus is the sole survivor of the Ithakans who fought in the Trojan war. He barely makes it home and reclaims his throne and family.

The Odyssey concludes with souls of the men who attempted to steal Odyssey’s kingship and wife descending into Hades. There they encounter Agamemnon, leader of the Achaean forces in the Trojan war, and Achilles, the most renowned warrior of the conflict. Achilles says to Agamemnon “you met that doom which no man avoids. It should have found you in your day of victory”. Instead, Agamemnon’s fate is to be slain by his wife and her lover. Agamemnon, the victor of the Trojan war, dies a shameful death. Agamemnon’s response reveals something about the Epic response to the often arbitrary and cruel nature of Fate. Agamemnon responds by praising Achilles’s valor while stoically accepting his Fate. While Fate can be harsh, the answer is to bear it as best one can, and to preserve one’s dignity in the face of tragedy.

The attitude towards Fate and Free-will is best summed up by the goddess Athena, who counsels Telemachus that “Reason and heart will give you words, Telemakhos; and a spirit of counsel others”. In other words, the course of a person’s life is determined by their Fate and by their choices. Fate, as demonstrated through the text, is a combination of Divine will, and a product of a person’s nature, their personality. Odysseus’s misfortune is a result of both the will of the gods and his actions. Poseidon and Helios decide that Odysseus will return to Ithaca only after a twenty-year voyage during which all his crew will perish. But Odysseus’s incurrence of the Divine wrath is a product of his Hubristic actions. These actions are, in turn, a product of who he is as a person. Thus Fate is a combination of Divine Will, an individual’s choices which are shaped by personality, and luck.