interjected, forcing Troy’s hand and allowing Odysseus’s men victory.
By enforcing her laws of wisdom versus fighting, Athena interjects once again, this time allowing herself to be shown. Prior to this encounter, Odysseus , our great hero, finally finds his way to his home of Ithica. After battling for ten years with Poseidon, and learning lessons unbenouced to him by Athena, he awakens on his shores.
Consumed with flooding emotions, he finds himself face to face with his young son Telemachus, who has himself returned from his long journey. Telemachus telling the tale of the suitors, deeply enrages his father. However; it is also in this place that she places upon Odysseus’s shoulders a guise of a beggar, reminding him to “bide his time” per say.
It is here that the fabled Athena shows herself:
“Son of Laertes, sprung from Zeus, Odysseus of many devices, take thought how you may put forth your hands on the shameless suitors, who now for three years have been lording it in your living rooms, wooing your godlike wife, and offering suitors' gifts. (Homer Bk 13) .”
Adjacent to her archetype of protector, we once again visit the archetypical role of strategist. Athena clearly expresses in the story that the suitors indeed deserve the wrath of young Telemachus and his father , the rightful king of Ithica.
“It is true that the young men with their black ship are lying in wait for him to kill him before he reaches his country; but I think this will not happen, but that sooner the earth will cover some one of those suitors, who now are eating away your substance.” (Homer 13.425-428).
Reaching even farther into the depths of Athena’s psyche, we discover that she has honed a plot so devious that, it indefinitely will spark the suitors curiosity that it will allow Odysseus, to spring from the guise of “the old man” form he has been given, taking back with vengeance his throne, punishing those who sought to destroy what is his.
Athena takes on the most impactful ingenuity in this case, which allows such power (of wrath ,vengeance and fighting) to be useful, or allows those she favors protection from such power (Cook). On the latter, she allows Odysseus a bit of a voyeuristic quality, allowing him to survey the men who have infested his kingdom like vermin, before rightful squashing this issue. Likewise, she also allows this protection, for Odysseus is our “righteous character”, once who has been taught through lessons, and suffering the values of life. The suitors, take on a venomous quality to them, it is here that Athena harnesses her power, and directly ventilates it through the calculated plans of son and father. It is upon these suitors her wrath inevitably will go unchallenged.
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