BMCR 2009.05.36: Malta on Marks, Zeus in the Odyssey

J. Marks, Zeus in the Odyssey.  Washington, D.C.:  Center for Hellenic
Studies, 2008.  Pp. vii, 175.  ISBN 9780674028128.  $16.95 (pb).

Reviewed by Andre/ Malta, University of S. Paulo, Brazil
([email protected])
Word count:  2033 words
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This book is the result of an attempt to read the Odyssey
simultaneously as a literary artifact and a political instrument. Its
author, Jim Marks, tries to show that Zeus, in the hands of the singer,
is the character responsible for giving narrative unity to the poem and
establishing a Panhellenic version of the story to the detriment of
"epichoric" (local) traditions. That kind of approach, though
innovative and stimulating, is questionable, as I will try to
demonstrate, because it downplays aspects of the poem that are central
to its understanding.

The book is divided in two parts. In the first one (chapters 1-3), the
author discusses Zeus's role in the structure of the Odyssey, paying
attention to what he calls the "three major narrative choices" (p. 7)
in Odysseus's story: (1) the return through the "enchanted" world (and
not through the "real world"); (2) the triumph over the suitors by
means of deception (and not as the leader of an invading force); and
(3) the killing of the suitors resulting in a solution provided by a
deus ex machina (excluding a political closure). Marks argues that
these choices define the Panhellenic Odyssey against other competing
narratives and give coherence to the version we have of the story.

In Chapter 1, "Oresteia and Odyssey", Marks argues that Zeus's
narrative of events concerning Aigisthos, Agamemnon and Orestes in Book
1 announces the direction that the poem will take. Viewing the god's
opening speech as a polemical casting of the tale, not only with
theological or moral implications, but above all with narrative ones,
he proposes that the very distinctiveness contained in this speech
"raises the specter of other versions" (p. 18). Marks deals very
attentively with character equivalencies (Agamemnon/Odysseus,
Klytaimnestre/Penelope, Orestes/Telemachos, Aigisthos/suitors) and
calls attention to the fact that the Homeric approach to the story
omits the theme of the cycle of vengeance that the avenger brings upon
himself, as we see in Aeschylos's  trilogy Oresteia. He concludes that
the Odyssey shows traces of the process of negotiation with a larger
tradition -- in which we could find for instance an unfaithful Penelope
and the god Hermes as her seducer -- and that this process contributes
to deepen characterization and establish a unitarian narrative course
in contrast with non-Homeric contexts.

In Chapter 2, "Ogygie to Ithake", Marks shows how in the divine council
that opens Book 5 and resumes the first one in Book 1 Athene's plan of
promoting Odysseus's nostos is now presented as a plan of Zeus, who
thus takes control of the narrative; at the same time (Marks notes)
Poseidon, the hero's antagonist, unintentionally contributes to the
fulfillment of that plan by keeping his hostility. Both gods then
operate in a subordinate and limited way, under the broad perspective
of Zeus: Athene did not work with the possibility of a shipwreck during
the return of her prote/ge/ and Poseidon did not expect that this
shipwreck would take Odysseus to the people responsible for his safe
homecoming. Marks also explains that the almost total absence of Zeus
(and other gods alike) from the Apologoi (Books 8-12) is a consequence
of Odysseus's  limitations as a (mortal) narrator, and claims that the
fact that his adventures did not take place in the "real" world
insulated them from conflicting epichoric traditions. Despite that, the
author examines three variant readings at Odyssey 13.158, and suggests
that one of them, by which the Phaiakes' city should not be covered by
a mountain, is representative of a possible narrative "switch" that
regulated, during each performance, the interface between Homeric and
epichoric versions.

In Chapter 3, "The end(s) of the Odyssey", Marks demonstrates that Book
24 is perfectly integrated to the rest of the poem, because Zeus's
over-reaching noos resolves the narrative in a way that is consistent
with the preceding themes. Marks views the figure of Zeus in the
epilogue of the Odyssey as the one charged with the role of
establishing a boundary against non-Homeric traditions, specifically
those in which the suitors' families seek vengeance and drive Odysseus
into exile.

In the second part of the book, Chapter 4, "After the Odyssey", deals
with epichoric and "real world" narrative options for the resolution of
the conflict with the suitors. These alternatives lead to themes like
Odysseus's exile, children he begot other than Telemachos and the
hero's death; although the Odyssey rejects theses approaches, Marks
claims that they are preserved, for the sake of pleasing local
audiences, in "false" -- from the perspective within the poem -- tales
(such as the Cretan ones) and allusions to discarded possibilities
(such as Teiresias's  ambiguous account of Odysseus's  death in Book
11). In Chapter 5, "Nestor's Nostoi", Marks argues that in the
nostos-narrative in Book 3 Nestor operates like a selective singer,
conceiving the Trojan War in terms of performable sections, and that
his deployment of divine characters (e.g. subordinating Athene's
motivation to Zeus's) is thematically equivalent to the one in the main
narrative. Finally, in Chapter 6, "Divine Plan and Narrative Plan",
Marks proposes that Zeus was the "natural figure with which to identify
an over-arching [narrative] plan" in the poem; in other words, this god
provided the arrangement of events requested by oral
composition-in-performance, for he embodies a "skeleton for the poem's
overall thematic coherence and unity" (p. 136). At the same time, Marks
argues that, since Zeus as a god was "less central" to rituals and
myths of individual communities, he was a natural choice for
Panhellenic authority.

It can be seen, even from this brief outline, that the second section
of the book is built as a conceptual justification for the reading of
the Odyssey that informs the first part, where all those ideas (the
existence of parallel versions and the elaboration of the narrative
through the character of Zeus) were already being dealt with. The
author's movement towards clarity is perceptible, as if he were
accompanying the readers through the construction of his method. As a
matter of fact, clarity of exposition is one of the great qualities of
this work: not only does the "Introduction" offer a neat presentation
of the main purposes of the book and a summary of each chapter; Marks
also gives helpful conclusions for every section, resuming his initial
considerations and systematizing his results.

The first part, however, seemed to me more interesting, because Marks
explores persistent problems concerning the interpretation of the poem.
He proves to be an attentive reader, and the answers he advances for
the role of the Oresteia-paradigm, the relations between Zeus and
Athene/Poseidon, the repetition of lines, and the suppression of the
vendetta theme, which links the epilogue of the Odyssey to its prologue
(where there is no mention of the persecution of Orestes), are some of
the precious contributions he makes to the study of Homeric poetry, in
a style that is both simple and sharp.

The unitarian approach is a sensible one and Marks lucidly focuses on
the coherence of the Odyssey. What I personally find problematic is his
interpretation of the process, namely that Zeus is deployed as a
narrative "tool" in order to elaborate this unity and, through the
choices he is credited with in the narrative, to "de-authorize" and
marginalize other traditions. It is clear to the Homerist that Marks is
in debt to Gregory Nagy's hypothesis that the Homeric and Hesiodic
poems represent the "mainstream" of Greek poetry, competing with other
local versions of the same stories. In his chapter on "Hesiod and the
Poetics of Panhellenism" (Greek Mythology and Poetics, 1990, pp.
36-82), Nagy viewed the contrast between true and false words that the
Muses claim to enunciate in the Theogony (vv. 26-28) in terms of
competition between Panhellenic and epichoric traditions. Marks extends
this approach to the Odyssey, and does it by exploring precisely the
figure of Zeus as the key factor for this Panhellenic movement and
applying it to an overall interpretation of the poem.

This approach, however fascinating, is not without significant
difficulties, and regrettably Marks seems less aware of them than he
should be. First of all, we know hardly anything of the relations
between the Homeric poems and the rest of the epic poetry that was
produced in Archaic Greece. It is true that the same myth could be
elaborated with much freedom, both in the context of the same genre and
from genre to genre, as lyric fragments and dramatic poetry show us
unequivocally. All these versions coexisted, and it is also true that
the most powerful and complex ones tended to overshadow the feeblest,
and consequently acquire an "authoritative" status. That is the
furthest we can go. The plausible conclusion we can draw is that there
was a rich exchange between these traditions and possibly innumerable
connections. A clear picture of the political use of those stories is
out of our reach.

In the specific case of the Odyssey and its relation with the myths
concerning Odysseus, his return and his revenge, we face a nebulous
situation. In the "Introduction" Marks acknowledges "the incomplete
nature of the evidence for Homeric multiforms and for non-Homeric
traditions", but still he hopes "to demonstrate that the available
evidence is sufficient to support the case that many of the Odyssey's
narrative choices are informed at least in part by the need to engage
with competing myths" (pp. 5-6). Such "available evidence" is rather
cursorily presented in the book as "relatively late sources" (p. 11) or
accounts that "post-date the Odyssey" (p. 89). For all his efforts,
Marks cannot give the promised evidence to his reader and has to admit,
eventually, that "such interpretations are naturally incapable of proof
due to the dearth of ancient Greek testimony" (p.132). At this stage
the reader wonders to what extent the proposed reading is arbitrary.

Moreover, Marks's attempt to explain the structural role played by Zeus
(and his plan, boule) in terms of the function of oral tradition, as if
he were the personification and instrument of the control the singer
had over his composition-in-performance, faces one serious limitation,
in that it reduces the development of the narrative to the action of a
single character. We cannot deny that Zeus, as the supreme god, plays a
fundamental role in Homeric poetry, to the point that he may sometimes
be assimilated to fate itself, but the interactions between gods (Zeus
included) and heroes are complex, with human decisions forcing the gods
to act this or that way. It seems to me that it is more reasonable to
think of Zeus not simply (or mainly) as a decisive literary or poetic
device, but as a character among others, affecting them and being
affected by them, and to ascribe his preeminence to religious and moral
causes, to which, however, Marks assigns a "subordinate" role (p. 21).
Zeus's  absence from the most part of the Apologoi can be explained in
plausible narrative terms (the limitation of human perspective), but
one should perhaps go beyond that and wonder about Odysseus's
relationship with the god, who refuses his sacrifice offerings in Book
9 (vv. 551-555). Can this lack of divine interference (or favor) be
explained on moral grounds -- a god's dissatisfaction with a hubristic
hero?

Finally, if Marks is right in minimizing the differences between the
Iliad and the Odyssey, stating in his "Preface" that the two poems "can
be seen as more closely akin on a structural level than is generally
appreciated" (p. vi), should that lead us to a search for a Panhellenic
instrumental Zeus in Achilles' story and, consequently, for alluded
epichoric traditions in the Iliadic narrative? And how should we
explain, for instance, the role of Zeus in Book 2, where he deceives
Agamemnon and where that same deception, with the trial of the troops,
opens the possibility of an abandonment of the siege not allowed by
fate (v. 155)?

As a conclusion, it must be said that, on the one hand, Marks's work
offers many penetrating readings of the Odyssey and contributes to call
our attention to the structural unity of the poem; but, on the other,
that his approach seems to be less telling when overwhelmed by a theory
that is problematic and lacks enough evidence to support it.