Gods and Monsters in Homer’s Odyssey

Written by

Gitanjali Roy

Fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

History

The gods are ubiquitous in Greek mythology, causing chaos as well as restoring order in human lives. In Homer’s Odyssey divine intervention powers Odysseus’s picaresque adventures, variously enabling and impeding his progress home to Ithaca after the Trojan War. Monsters, too, abound, stretching a voyage that ought to have taken some weeks into a 10-year ordeal. The supernatural forces that Odysseus encounters transform a travelogue into a tale of human endurance, presenting a world where...