What Is the Proper Relationship Between the Gods and Humans According to Homer?

Homer

What is the proper relationship between the Gods and Humans according Homer?

"These are not poems about Gods, but about human beings. These human beings inhabit a world of which the gods are an unquestioned part."[footnoteRef:1] For Homer, the gods are indispensible parts of literary structure and narrative form. It impossible to imagine a Homeric world without gods. From a purely cosmological standpoint, the gods add structure, meaning, and order to a universe that might otherwise prove to be too chaotic to sustain life. From a literary standpoint, the gods add a moral dimension as well as key characters -- often antagonists but always catalysts. It therefore becomes the central function of the storyteller to elucidate the relationship between the gods and humans. The roles that gods play in Homeric epics are multifaceted. They are advisors on the one hand, and saboteurs on the other. Gods intervene and assist human beings, as Athena does for Odysseus in The Odyssey. They also cause human beings strife and suffering, as Poseidon does. This shows that gods certainly have dominion over the human realm, as they can interfere with human events beyond the control of human beings. They can affect weather and other natural events. What the gods cannot necessarily do, though, is force a human being to act a certain way. The extent of the gods' power over human beings is that they can create events and watch the human beings react to that event. The gods can then judge human beings' reactions from a critical moral standpoint. Given the complex relationship between gods and human beings, it becomes clear that the proper relationship between the gods and humans for Homer is one of mutual respect. [1: Emily Kearns. "The Gods in the Homeric Epics." Chapter 5 in The Cambridge Companion to Homer, ed. Robert Louis Fowler, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 71.]

The proper relationship between the gods and human beings according to Homer begins with the fact that the gods have power over the natural world, which humans do not. Human beings must respect the gods for this, if for no other reason. This function of the gods as controlling the physical universe is especially evident in Homer's Odyssey, which hinges on the relationships between Odysseus and several gods but especially Athena. It is Poseidon who serves as a godly foil for Odysseus, blowing his ship off-course right at the start of the narrative, thus offering Homer a story to tell. After all, Odysseus would have made it home twenty years sooner had Poseidon not interfered with the weather at sea. Homer has nothing but respect for the gods, and especially for Athena, with whom he shares a special bond.