Daily Archives: October 30, 2013

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I love the Greek gods

In the Odyssey, Ulysses is taken captive by the goddess Calypso who desires to make him immortal. This is after they have sacked the city of Priam and annoyed Neptune who wrecked their ship and killed apart of his men, the rest having been killed by the sun god after they slaughtered his livestock and others still swallowed by the sea at Sirens. He rescinds the offer and begs for his freedom to go back to his wife Penelope, daughter of Icarius, and his son Telemachus.

Minerva, the goddess, appeals on his behalf to the gods for his freedom. Mercury is sent to Calypso with the message that she is to free him and while at it to give him a raft, no ship and sailors so he can be on his way home.

Neptune has scores to settle with Ulysses who had made his son blind, a son who ate a number of his [Ulysses’] comrades when they landed in his cave.

When Ulysses finally gets home, together with his son, the swineherd and one other manservant, they plot a revenge mission to kill a bunch of losers… suitors, who in the period of his absence have been killing his livestock and drinking his wine in an attempt to seduce his wife. The gods, through Minerva, help him in sending all the suitors, the servants who helped them and even the women they slept with to Hades.

The story ends with Minerva brokering a peace agreement between the men of Ithaca some of whose sons were killed in Ulysses’s house and Ulysses.

If only the Judeo- Christian- Muslim god was this interactive, things would be different, don’t you agree.

I loved the book.