odyssey

In odyssey 13.221-226 Athene disguises herself as a young boy in order to speak with odysseus, who has recently returned to ithaka.What is the significance of this disguise in light of the rest of the odyssey and in light of the disguises that the gods take on throughout the odyssey? Analyze three other examples of gods /goddesses taking on disguises before interacting with mortals and trace the development of this theme through the epic. How are the disguises appropriate to the specific situations? Your paper should engage in a close reading of the examples you choose and your argument should be based on specific words and/or short phrases from the text.

Odyssey

Heraclitus said the “character is fate for humans.” * Take Odysseus or Telemachos from the Odyssey to illustrate this fragment. Write no more than 600 words. Make sure to cite texts and events from your reading thus far, viz., the first 18 scrolls.

*A note from our edition of the fragments: 120. Man’s character is his fate. [In Greek this is only a three word sentence, Heraclitus’s most famous: Ethos anthropoi daimon. Daimon is at the root of the English ‘demon’ but has no pejorative connotation in Greek. A daimon is a magical or divine spirit, a kind of guardian angel–and thus a fate. Anthropoi means ‘of humans’. This brings us back to ‘ethos’, which survives in the same form in English. Ethos–related to ethics–means, in English, the spirit of a place or time. But in ancient Greek it meant character or customs, usually of a person or family.]

Odyssey

Heraclitus said the “character is fate for humans.” * Take Odysseus or Telemachos from the Odyssey to illustrate this fragment. Write no more than 600 words. Make sure to cite texts and events from your reading thus far, viz., the first 18 scrolls.

*A note from our edition of the fragments: 120. Man’s character is his fate. [In Greek this is only a three word sentence, Heraclitus’s most famous: Ethos anthropoi daimon. Daimon is at the root of the English ‘demon’ but has no pejorative connotation in Greek. A daimon is a magical or divine spirit, a kind of guardian angel–and thus a fate. Anthropoi means ‘of humans’. This brings us back to ‘ethos’, which survives in the same form in English. Ethos–related to ethics–means, in English, the spirit of a place or time. But in ancient Greek it meant character or customs, usually of a person or family.]