The Gods And Goddesses In Homer's The Odyssey

The Odyssey, one of Homer’s most famous poems, shows how influential the actions of the gods and goddesses were on the mortals. The gods and goddesses are such an important aspect within the Odyssey because all of the power they hold and use over the mortals. Athena, the goddess of wisdom and battle, has a very deceptive yet helpful and caring personality, but hides herself in disguises in order to protect her identity from the humans. Throughout the poem, she uses different disguises in her interactions with the characters to achieve a specific goal for each situation. Specifically, she encounters
Telemachus, Nausicca, Odysseus, and Penelope, assisting them in each in a different way.

To keep her identity hidden, she shows up to situations in different disguises. By doing this, she can assist the mortals without them knowing she is a goddess and constantly asking her for things due to her high power. The first encounter she has is in the …show more content…
At this point all the suitors absolutely despised him, so there was no way he could go back without getting attacked. Once again, Athena comes to the rescue with her disguises but this time, for this situation she disguises Odysseus instead of herself. Athena disguises Odysseus as a common beggar, this way no one would suspect him for who he truly was. As the beggar he was able to gain access to weaponry and information about the suitors while being welcomed into the estate as an outsider the entire time. Throughout the story we can see that Athena has a bit of a soft spot for Odysseus, due to all the times she has helped him or done specific things to favor him. In this example of her disguises we see the helpful and caring side of her personality rather tan the devious, manipulative side that we have seen in the past examples. By disguising Odysseus as a beggar, this gets him one step closer to being home and defeating the