10.261-301

πῇ δὴ αὖτ᾽, ὦ δύστηνε, δι᾽ ἄκριας ἔρχεαι οἶος,

χώρου ἄιδρις ἐών; ἕταροι δέ τοι οἵδ᾽ ἐνὶ Κίρκης

ἔρχαται ὥς τε σύες πυκινοὺς κευθμῶνας ἔχοντες.

ἦ τοὺς λυσόμενος δεῦρ᾽ ἔρχεαι; οὐδέ σέ φημι

αὐτὸν νοστήσειν, μενέεις δὲ σύ γ᾽, ἔνθα περ ἄλλοι.

Unhappy man, where are you going through these hills, alone,

ignorant of the land? Your companions are trapped here

in Circe’s place, shaped like pigs in their closed pens.

Do you come here to free them? I do not think

you will return home but must stay here with the others.

Odyssey 10.281–285

We might wonder how Odysseus knows the young man is Hermes, since nowhere in the encounter that follows do we see the god reveal himself. Nor does the hero seem surprised that this young man seems to know everything about him and his ill-fated crew. The encounter would make sense if we heard it from an omniscient third-person narrator, and we perhaps we are witnessing the imperfect join between our poem and a previous version of the story, where the poet recounts the story directly. Such minor

inconsistencies were leapt upon by scholars in the nineteenth century, as evidence that the Homeric epics as we now have them are a clumsy patchwork of earlier independent narratives. This approach has been largely obviated by the later work of Milman Parry and other scholars in the early twentieth century on the oral tradition out of which the Iliad and Odyssey seem to have come down to us, a process that envisioned poems emerging over time as oral poets created their stories by improvisation, drawing on a rich repository of earlier narratives.

Encounters with disguised deities can be fraught with danger in early Greek poetry, especially if the immortal chooses to shed the disguise and reassume divine form. The sudden revelation of divinity can be a charged moment, when we witness the infinite power of the god and its devastating effect on mortals, especially in tragic stories like the Iliad, where the fact of human mortality is a primary focus of the narrative. The Odyssey has a different emphasis, so the divide between mortal and immortal existence is not as prominent in the articulation of the poem’s meaning. Gods function there primarily as forces that help or hinder the hero as he struggles toward the restoration of order. Helpful disguised gods are a staple of Odysseus’s journey, but up until now the deity underneath has always been Athena. In Book One she arrives in Ithaka as Mentes the Taphian, in Book Two as Telemachus, in Books Two and Three as Mentor, a friend of Odysseus, in Book Seven as a young girl at the well who guides the hero toward town. Athena does shed her disguise once, as she departs from Pylos after guiding Telemachus, but the moment prompts no fear in the onlookers, only wonder (Od. 3.171–173).

Though Hermes does offer Odysseus crucial protection against the witch, his sudden appearance does not startle the hero, who listens to the young man’s instructions and sets briskly off again without comment. If he has any inkling that this stranger is a god, he does not show it. Hermes’s intervention in in Book Twenty-Four of the Iliad offers an illuminating parallel. Priam has set off on his own perilous journey through the dark, to ransom Hector’s body from Achilles. The old man and his herald are making their way across the plain of Troy at night, when a stranger suddenly materializes out of the dark:

οἳ δ᾽ ἐπεὶ οὖν μέγα σῆμα παρὲξ Ἴλοιο ἔλασσαν,

στῆσαν ἄρ᾽ ἡμιόνους τε καὶ ἵππους ὄφρα πίοιεν

ἐν ποταμῷ: δὴ γὰρ καὶ ἐπὶ κνέφας ἤλυθε γαῖαν.

τὸν δ᾽ ἐξ ἀγχιμόλοιο ἰδὼν ἐφράσσατο κῆρυξ

Ἑρμείαν, ποτὶ δὲ Πρίαμον φάτο φώνησέν τε:

φράζεο Δαρδανίδη: φραδέος νόου ἔργα τέτυκται.

ἄνδρ᾽ ὁρόω, τάχα δ᾽ ἄμμε διαρραίσεσθαι ὀΐω.

ἀλλ᾽ ἄγε δὴ φεύγωμεν ἐφ᾽ ἵππων, ἤ μιν ἔπειτα

γούνων ἁψάμενοι λιτανεύσομεν αἴ κ᾽ ἐλεήσῃ.’

ὣς φάτο, σὺν δὲ γέροντι νόος χύτο, δείδιε δ᾽ αἰνῶς,

ὀρθαὶ δὲ τρίχες ἔσταν ἐνὶ γναμπτοῖσι μέλεσσι,

στῆ δὲ ταφών: αὐτὸς δ᾽ ἐριούνιος ἐγγύθεν ἐλθὼν

χεῖρα γέροντος ἑλὼν ἐξείρετο καὶ προσέειπε:

‘πῇ πάτερ ὧδ᾽ ἵππους τε καὶ ἡμιόνους ἰθύνεις

νύκτα δι᾽ ἀμβροσίην, ὅτε θ᾽ εὕδουσι βροτοὶ ἄλλοι;

οὐδὲ σύ γ᾽ ἔδεισας μένεα πνείοντας Ἀχαιούς,

οἵ τοι δυσμενέες καὶ ἀνάρσιοι ἐγγὺς ἔασι;

τῶν εἴ τίς σε ἴδοιτο θοὴν διὰ νύκτα μέλαιναν

τοσσάδ᾽ ὀνείατ᾽ ἄγοντα, τίς ἂν δή τοι νόος εἴη;

οὔτ᾽ αὐτὸς νέος ἐσσί, γέρων δέ τοι οὗτος ὀπηδεῖ,

ἄνδρ᾽ ἀπαμύνασθαι, ὅτε τις πρότερος χαλεπήνῃ.

ἀλλ᾽ ἐγὼ οὐδέν σε ῥέξω κακά, καὶ δέ κεν ἄλλον

σεῦ ἀπαλεξήσαιμι: φίλῳ δέ σε πατρὶ ἐΐσκω.

The two of them drove out past the tomb of Ilos,

and stopped their mules and horses to water them

in the river, for dusk had by now fallen over the land.

The herald caught sight of Hermes, who came toward them

from close by. He spoke up and addressed Priam:

“ Take thought, son of Dardanos, for this work needs a careful mind.

I see a man who I think will soon tear us to pieces.

Come, let us flee on our horses, or if not, then

grasp his knees and beg him to pity us.”

So he spoke, and the old man was confused and dreadfully afraid;

his hair rose straight up on his twisted body

and he stood amazed. But the helpful god came near him,

taking his hand, and spoke to him, asking a question:

“My father, where are you driving your horses and mules

through the immortal night while other mortals sleep?

Are you not afraid of the Achaeans who breathe fury,

who are your enemies and who are nearby?

If one of them should see you in the swift dark night

bringing so many treasures, what plan would you have?

You are not young and your companion is too old to

fight off a man when he comes to harm you.

But I will do you no harm, and would ward off

any man who would, for I liken you to a beloved father.”

Iliad 24.349–371

The difference in tone between the two passages is instructive. Here the sudden appearance of a stranger sparks fear in both elderly travelers and the disguised god responds with reassuring kindness, taking the old man’s hand, and defusing tension by casting Priam in the role of surrogate father. In the warm exchange that follows, Hermes supplies a believable mortal persona for himself: he is a comrade of Achilles, a Myrmidon, the seventh son of Polyktor, who will escort the two travelers safely to Achilles’ hut. Priam responds gratefully, sure that “some god is holding his hand over me” (374), by sending such an escort. In contrast to this expansive tableau, the meeting of Hermes and Odysseus is stripped down to the essentials, with no backstory for the young man that would explain him appearing out of nowhere and no response of any kind from Odysseus. The entire episode is transactional, the moly and instructions delivered with no bond established between Odysseus and the young man. Homer declines to develop the emotional potential in this scene because he has other reasons for inserting it here, as we will see in the next passage.

Further Reading

Clay, J. 1983. The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey, 133-185. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Edwards, M.W. 1987. Homer: Poet of the Iliad. 1987, 15-54; 71-77. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press.