THE LIMITS OF DIVINE POWER

Nevertheless, in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, Homer sharply chal­lenges this conventional piety by repeatedly juxtaposing the pious reliance on and trust in the gods with their fundamentally unreliable and untrustworthy nature.

Nothing is of so little account, of all the things that breathe and creep upon the earth, that the earth nourishes, as a human being. For he declares that he will never suffer evil in the future, while gods provide him with virtue and his knees may spring up. But when the blessed gods accomplish wretched things, he then also bears them, against his will, with a spirit that has endured. For such is the mind of humans who go upon the earth, on each day, as the Father of Gods and Men, leads it.... Therefore, no man must ever be altogether without righteousness, but in silence he should accept the gifts of the gods, when they give them. (Odyssey 18.130-141)

In this account, the power of “the gods,” led by Zeus “the Father of Gods and Men,” is cohesive and complete. As Telemachus says to Odysseus of Zeus and his daughter Athena: “These are indeed noble defenders you speak of, even though they sit high up in the clouds, for they hold sway over both other men and the immortal gods” (16.263-265). The human characters, such as Odysseus, of course know that there are many gods. Nevertheless, they overwhelmingly speak of “the gods” and always pray to “the gods” on the apparent assumption that the gods are united under Zeus, who “rules all mortals and immortals” (Iliad 12.241-242).^[84] Accordingly, the overwhelming majority of prayers in both the Iliad (36 of 40) and the Odyssey (39 of 48) are to Zeus and to his children, especially Athena and Apollo.

Homer, however, offers the stunning revelation in his poems that the gods are divided, that they quarrel with one another, even and especially with Father Zeus. In his very first words in the Iliad, Zeus refers to his conflict with Hera. When Thetis prays to “Father Zeus,” on behalf of her son, to punish the Achaians by aiding the Trojans, Zeus replies:

Destructive are these deeds, when you cast me into hateful enmity with Hera, because they will provoke her reproachful words upon me. Even in the same way as before, she quarrels with me among the immortal gods, and she declares that I aid the Trojans in battle. But you now, go away, lest Hera notice something. Nevertheless, these things will be my concern, so that I will accomplish them. (1.517-523)

The strife between Zeus and Hera involves almost all the gods (see 20.4-10), a number of whom - especially Athena and Poseidon - side with Hera against Troy and, in Books XX-XXI, engage in open warfare with the gods who side with Troy (20.1-75, 21.328-433, 21.470-513). This strife continues throughout the Iliad, up through Book XXIV, when Hera, Athena, and Poseidon insist, contrary to Zeus and the other gods, that Achilles be allowed to continue to desecrate the corpse of Hector (24.22-76). This strife preoccupies the Father of Gods and Men through­out the poem, for well over half of Zeus’s 38 speeches in the Iliad refer to his conflict with Hera (17)^[88] - including his first 6 in the poem - or with her allies among the gods (7).^[89] Homer reveals in the Odyssey as well a quarrel between Poseidon, who opposes the homecoming of Odysseus, and Zeus and Athena, who (now) favor it.^[90]

The primary lesson of Homer’s account of the strife among the gods is not that the world is fundamentally unstable or chaotic.

Aidoneus, lord below and of the ones below, was afraid, and being afraid, he leapt from his throne and shouted, lest above him, Poseidon who shakes the earth, might break open the earth and his home become manifest to mortals and immortals, terrifying and dank, before which even the gods would shudder. Such, then, was the crash that arose from the strife of the gods as they hurled themselves against one another. (Iliad 20.25, 20.61-66)

This remarkable passage seems to raise the possibility of a clash between all-powerful gods, the highest beings in the world, that plunges the world into utter chaos. Yet Hades’ fear here of such chaos proves unjustified. Now that, at this point in the poem, Zeus is once again supporting the Achaians against the Trojans, his most powerful adversaries in the Iliad - Hera, Athena, and Poseidon - are satisfied and do not offer any challenge to his rule. As Homer makes clear, the clash of the gods here takes place in accordance with Zeus’s will (20.1-32; see also 21.470-513). More gen­erally, throughout both the Iliad and the Odyssey, Zeus always seems to maintain his predominance over the gods, notwithstanding the many challenges to his rule. Hera, Athena, and Poseidon doggedly oppose Zeus’s assistance to the Trojans, and Poseidon opposes the homecoming of Odysseus (as Athena apparently did as well).^[91] Through her cunning, her deception of Aphrodite and her bribery of the god Sleep, Hera actu­ally succeeds in deceiving Zeus and in thwarting his will to aid the Trojans, but only for a time.^[92] And Homer reports, through the mouth of Achilles, that, according to Thetis, the gods as a whole, led by Hera, Poseidon, and Athena, once almost inflicted “destruction [Aotyov]” on Zeus but were thwarted by Thetis herself (1.396-406; see 1.503-504).

Yet Homer’s revelation of the strife between the gods clearly indicates that the power of the gods, even the power of Zeus, the greatest of gods, is limited. To be sure, Zeus himself seems to claim for himself an unlimited power on a number of occasions, and on a number of occasions other gods echo this claim, suggesting that Zeus is invincible because he is all powerful.^[97] Zeus’s clearest statement is to an assembly of all the gods, at the beginning of Book VIII:

Heed me, all gods and all goddesses, so that I may speak the things that the spirit in my breast commands. Let no female god, then, nor male one attempt to cut through my word, but let all together praise it, so that I may accomplish these deeds most quickly. And anyone I myself notice going apart from the gods, wishing either to assist the Trojans or the Danaans, will go to Olympus having been beaten beyond what is orderly. Or, having taken him, I will hurl him into misty Tartarus, far away, where the deepest recess beneath the earth is, where there are gates of iron and a threshold of bronze, as far beneath Hades as heaven is away from earth. You will then know how I am mightiest of all gods. (8.5-17)

And he continues:

Come, then, make the attempt, gods, so that you may all know. Hang a golden cord down from the heaven and all gods and all goddesses lay hold of it. Even then you would not drag Zeus, highest one of counsels, out of heaven to the ground, not if you should weary yourselves many times. But when even I myself, with wise forethought, should wish to drag you, I would drag you with both the earth itself and the sea itself. Then I would bind the cord around the peak of Olympus, but all things would in turn come to be in mid air.

Zeus here claims to be virtually omnipotent, for he claims to have it within his power to command not only all gods and humans, but “both the earth itself and the sea itself” and hence, it would seem, the entire world. And yet Homer never presents Zeus wielding such power over the other gods or the earth or the sea. Instead we see Zeus repeatedly defied by Hera, Poseidon, and Athena; eluded by Poseidon; and utterly deceived by Hera, with the aid of Sleep, who is, according to Hera, “lord both of all gods and all humans.”^[98] Moreover, Sleep, whom Homer calls “the brother of Death,” reveals that when he defied Zeus once before, he would have suffered his wrath, “if Night, subduer of gods and men, had not saved me; I, fleeing him, arrived to her, and he desisted, even being angry. For he shrank in awe before her, lest he be displeasing to swift Night in his action” (14.231, 14.259-261). Both Sleep and Night, then, clearly limit the power of Zeus, as the Father of Gods and Men himself implicitly acknowledges by his actions of succumbing to the power of the one and recoiling from opposing the power of the other.^[99]

Most importantly, Homer informs us through the report of Achilles that the gods, led by Hera, Poseidon, and Athena, did succeed in binding Zeus with the apparent intention of inflicting a “disgraceful destruction” on him and that Zeus was saved by the intervention of Thetis “alone” (1.396-406; see also 18.394-408). In this way, Homer suggests that these four gods, at least, are powerful enough to limit the power of Zeus (see also 15.212-217). And Zeus tacitly but clearly confirms this suggestion by repeatedly accommodating Hera, Poseidon, and Athena over the course of both the Iliad and the Odyssey, and also by accommodating Thetis. For the simple fact that Zeus must accommodate these gods, repeatedly, as we see in the cases of Hera and Poseidon and even Athena and Thetis, indicates that he cannot simply impose his will on them.

Act in whatever way you wish. Let not this quarrel hereafter come to be between you and me strife for the both of us.... And indeed I grant it to you willingly, but with an unwilling spirit; for of the cities beneath the sun and the starry heaven in which humans who live upon the earth dwell, sacred Ilion is honored surpassingly by me. (Iliad 4.37-47)

Zeus accommodates Poseidon’s hatred of Odysseus - and also apparently Athena’s own wrath at all the Achaians, including Odysseus - by delaying Odysseus’s homecoming for ten long years, even though Zeus declares, “How then would I forget divine Odysseus, who surpasses mortals in his mind, and surpasses them in his sacrifices to the immortal gods, who hold the wide heaven” (Odyssey 1.65-67, 1.68-75, 1.326-327, 5.97-115; see also Iliad 7.442-463). And Zeus accommodates Thetis’s desire that her son be honored by the Achaians, albeit with hesitation and even fear since by doing so he stirs up a quarrel with Hera (1.500-523; see also 24.103-119).

The most important lesson that Homer imparts through his revelation of these limits to the power of Zeus is that there is an order beyond the power of all the gods, even the greatest of gods. Homer clarifies the significance of this lesson in the Odyssey, in a passage in which the term “nature” (φuσις) first appears in extant Greek literature (10.303).^[100] In Odysseus’s narration of his wanderings after the end of the Trojan War to the Phaiacians, he recounts that on the isle of Aiaia, when he is on his way to confront the goddess Circe who - as he has been told by one of his men - has annihilated half of his surviving men, the god Hermes suddenly appears and reveals to him the “nature” of a drug that will render powerless the dangerous magic of the goddess (10.203-306). Through this seemingly small example of a drug contained within a plant that can overcome the power of a superhuman being, Hermes reveals that there is a fixed order in the world - a natural order - that is beyond the power of the gods and that limits the power of the gods.

Homer never uses the term “nature” again in his poem,^[101] but he points more broadly to the existence of an all-encompassing natural order through the character of Oceanus. Oceanus is, on the surface of both poems, a god, a river god, like the god Odysseus prays to for assistance in the Odyssey (5.438-453) and like the god Achilles battles with in the Iliad (21.136-382). Moreover, Achilles specifically claims that Zeus is more powerful than all rivers, including Oceanus: “For neither mighty Acheloos bears himself as his equal, nor does the great strength of deep­flowing Oceanus, from whom even all rivers and all the sea, and all springs and all deep wells flow. But even he is afraid of the lightning of great Zeus and the terrible thunderbolt, when from the heaven it crashes” (21.194-199). Yet, there are a number of reasons for doubting Achilles' claim here that Oceanus is subordinate to Zeus. First of all, even within the very account Achilles gives, it is difficult to see why Oceanus - whom Achilles acknowledges to be more than a river god, and even more than an ordinary god, but rather the source of all water throughout the world - should fear Zeus because he wields a thunderbolt. Indeed, when Homer describes how Zeus, along with Poseidon and Apollo, long after the Trojan War, destroyed the walls of the Achaian camp, he explains that they did so entirely through water - Zeus by rain, Poseidon by the waves of the sea, and Apollo by a flooding of the rivers - and hence entirely through that which comes from Oceanus (12.8-33). In this way, Homer suggests that Zeus's own power is at least in part dependent on Oceanus. What is more, all the human beings in Homer's poems, including even Achilles - who has heard that his mother saved Zeus from destruction, but who is also proud to be a descendant of Zeus - tend to overestimate the power of Zeus and to believe that Father Zeus is invincibly powerful - that “he can do anything” - contrary to what Homer's account reveals.^[102]

Most importantly, Homer, especially in the Iliad, sets Oceanus apart from the other gods in a number of ways and indicates that he is more powerful - and represents something more powerful - than all the gods, including Zeus.^[103] According to Hephaestus's testimony, Oceanus has the power to defy all the gods, including Zeus, for Oceanus shielded Hephaestus for nine years from all the gods, except Oceanus's own daughter Eurynome and Thetis, and also from humans (18.394-405). In Homer's account, Oceanus is also the only god mentioned by name who disobeys, with evident impunity, the summons of Zeus to an assem­bly of the gods - “Zeus ordered Themis to call the gods to an assembly.... She then went everywhere and ordered them to the house of Zeus. There was no one of the rivers who was absent, apart from Oceanus” (20.4-7).^[104] But beyond being a god who is powerful and independent, Oceanus also seems to represent something more than a god, as Achilles' claim that Oceanus is the source of all water in the world indicates. For Hera claims, twice, that Oceanus is that from which the gods themselves came - “the origin of the gods [θεων yενεσιν]" (14.201, 14.302). This formulation by Hera is noteworthy because, even though she goes on to identify Tethys as the wife of Oceanus, she does not claim that the two of them are the parents of the gods. Nor does Hera make any effort to trace the genealogy of, for example, Zeus, the Father of Gods and Men, back to Oceanus as a grandfather or great-grandfather. By speaking of Oceanus as constituting, by himself, the origin of the gods, she seems to speak of Oceanus, not as a god, but as an underlying substance, or even as the principal substance of the world, apparently water. Aristotle in his Metaphysics was to identify the thesis that water was the primary cause of all things with the philosopher Thales and to suggest that Thales learned this thesis from Homer (Metaphysics 983b20-984a4). Indeed, in Homer, the god Sleep goes so far as to speak of “the streams of the river Oceanus, who is indeed the origin of all things [yενεσις παντεσσι τετυκται]" (14.245-246). Oceanus, then, by this account of Hera and Sleep, is not only more powerful than the other gods but more fundamental than the other gods, since he is the source of all the gods and indeed of “all things" that exist. This account suggests that Oceanus is more than a god and more than a river or perhaps more even than water itself; Oceanus is the all-encompassing natural order.

Hephaestus supports this suggestion by the place he assigns to Oceanus in the shield he forges for Achilles. For on the shield he crafts Hephaestus represents the whole world, indeed the whole cosmos:^[105]

On it he fashioned the earth, and on it the heaven, and the sea, and the tireless sun, and the moon being full, and all the constellations with which the heaven is surrounded, the Pleiades and the Hyades and the strength of Orion and the Bear, which they also call by the name of the Wagon, who revolves around in the same place, and looks at Orion, which alone is without a share of the wash of Oceanus. (18.483-489)^[106]

Then, after explaining in detail the two cities - one at peace and one at war - and other dwelling places that Hephaestus makes on the shield, Homer concludes: “He placed on it the great strength of Oceanus, along the outermost rim of the intricately made shield” (18.606-607; see 18.478-480). Hephaestus here presents Oceanus as encompassing all things, not only the earth, but also the heaven, and hence the entire cosmos. Indeed, Oceanus almost entirely eclipses the very gods in Hephaestus’s vision of the world as represented on the shield. For Hephaestus does not depict gods in heaven or in the sea, he does not identify the sun or the moon as gods, he does not place any gods in the city at peace at all, and he does not place Zeus anywhere at all in the world as portrayed on the shield. Hephaestus places only two gods in the world of the shield, Athena and Ares, whom he depicts as leading out the men of the city at war against their enemy (18.516-518). These two gods who appear in Hephaestus’s vision of the world do so only in a part of the earthly, human world; in contrast, Oceanus encompasses the whole of heaven and earth, the whole cosmos.

In his own account of Oceanus in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, Homer presents Oceanus as, in some ways, even more all-encompassing than Hephaestus presents him. For not only does Homer present Oceanus as that from where the sun rises and that to where the sun sets - as well as all the stars except Orion¹⁰⁷ - and hence as encircling the entire earth;¹⁰⁸ he also presents Oceanus as the river where Hades, the house of the dead, resides as well as where (according to the Elder of the Sea) the Elysian Field may be found - the place for those extremely few mortals (possibly only Menelaus and Helen) who never die and enjoy an apparently con­tented existence.¹⁰⁹ Homer presents Oceanus, then, as encompassing all living things and all mortals that have died - the here and now and the hereafter, life and afterlife.

By presenting Oceanus as more than a god, as a being who is independ­ent of the gods, who is the source of all water throughout the earth in all its forms, who is the origin of the gods and indeed of all things, and who encompasses the whole cosmos - in the heavens and on earth, among the living and among the dead - Homer indicates that Oceanus represents a

“nowhere in Greek literature do we find a more profound meditation on nature, art, society, and their interrelations than in The Shield of Achilles'” (1992, 35).

¹⁰⁷ Odyssey 5.269-275; see also Iliad 5.4-6.

¹⁰⁸ Iliad 7.422, 8.485, 18.399, 19.1; Odyssey 19.434, 23.244, 23.347; see also 22.197.

¹⁰⁹ Odyssey 24.11; see also 10.508, 10.511, 11.13, 11.21,11.158,11.639,12.ι, 20.61-65. being of singular importance: the natural order to which the gods them­selves are subordinate. To be sure, Homer presents gods who are quite clearly above nature in certain specific, and dramatic, ways: They can fly through the air,^[107] transport the living and dead bodies of humans through the air,^[108] adopt the appearance of other beings,^[109] change the appearance of human beings,^[110] confuse humans,^[111] and guide and deflect their arrows and spears.^[112] But while the gods are in certain ways above nature, they are limited by nature in two crucial ways: It seems that, generally speaking, they cannot alter the mortal nature of human beings and, more clearly, their own character is defined, fixed, and therefore limited by their own immortal nature.