Hermes, Odysseus, and Catalogues of Goddesses in the Odyssey

Abstract

The three major adventures of Odysseus with powerful women (Calypso, Circe, and Arete) during the ten-year trip back to Ithaca exhibit a common structural feature: a deity plays a key-role in every single one of these encounters.1 Hermes and Athena, Odysseus’ divine patrons, who represent complementary aspects of his main character trait, cunning intelligence,2 are called into action every time the hero is about to approach a realm strongly marked by the female or seeks to get away from it. In particular, Hermes pops up twice to set things straight with Calypso (Odyssey 5) and Circe (Odyssey 10), whereas Athena marks the first part of the Phaeacian events (Odyssey 6–7). In this paper, I concentrate on the epiphanies of Hermes in order to examine how they operate in each case against the backdrop of the narrative tradition to which they adhere, what kind of narrative purposes they serve, and on what grounds we are to perceive Hermes’ presence and intervention within these episodes. Several scholars analyse the way in which the Calypso and Circe episodes interact,3 but none of them utterly comments on the fact that Hermes works as mediating figure holding these two episodes together. It is my aim to highlight an intrinsic aspect of this intermeshing in order to cast light on the multi-layered connections of Hermes with female divinities as well as on the repercussions divine figures bear whenever they are instrumentalised within the narrative. To that end, I argue that the generic framing of the Calypso and Circe episodes is most significant for conceptualising Hermes’ role in shaping the plot of the Odyssey. In my attempt to pin down the methodological grounds on which my analysis hinges, I point out the dynamic character narrative has for providing an idea of how Hermes is represented in the Odyssey. Therefore, I elaborate on the formative influence the ‹narrative/genre› cluster exerts on the stylisation of discourse concerning ‹gods in epic› in this particular text by providing musings on the way ‹genre›, in its capacity as a descriptive and functional unit of the formalities of narrative, determines epic discourse on the representation of gender and the extent of divine involvement in this area. At this point let me clarify that my concern with ‹epic› is a traditional one that adopts a strictly historical viewpoint within archaic Greek culture. Accordingly, with ‹epic› I mean the two main traditions of epic narrative, male centred heroic poetry as this is represented in the Homeric epics, and female centred catalogue poetry as this is reflected in the Hes-