• Reduce the story of Iliad to one sentence: "Achilles god mad and the consequences were a mess for the Achaeans and the Trojans." or maybe "Achilles was mad and pulled out of the army until his friend was killed, whereupon he reentered the fray and killed Hector and abused his body, but eventually he relented and gave the body back to Hector's father, Priam."
  
• Would the gods merit a mention? Probably not.
• the epics probably got their current form by the 8th or 9th century BCE, but it was not until Thucydides' Peloponnesian War history that it occurred to a Greek to tell a long story that did not involve gods.
• query: do the gods play a role in Aesop?
• So what are these gods and how are they different from 'ordinary' Greek gods?
  
• The epics themselves announce early on that the gods are central:
• 'the plan of Zeus was accomplished'
• 'he took away the day of their return'
• 'which god caused them to quarrel?'
• In all of those sentences and in so many events, the gods play a causal role in the epics
• Most all the causal happenings have some role for the divine
• Of course, it is distributed among many divine actors:  the more impersonal concept of 'divinely ordained fate' does exist in the epic world, but it is different from the particular causal role that each divine intervention plays.
• Note that the mostly omniscient narrator has some sort of privileged access to know these things about gods
• it seems 'the muse' gives the narrator access
• but that just 'kicks the can down the road' and makes me ask: how does the muse know?
• the nature of the narrator's knowledge is impressively specific: it is not just 'some god must have made him do it' or 'the gods, who cause everything, made this happen.'
  
• Interestingly, when Odysseus tells his stories, he too has a seemingly 'omniscient' knowledge of divine roles:
• In book 12 when Odysseus' men eat Helios' cattle, the cattleguard Lampetie tells Helios, who complains to Zeus who smites their ship.
• So how does Odysseus know this?
• at 12.374-90, it seems the poet realized that it was a problem for Odysseus to know these things, and so he has Odysseus say that he learned it later from Calypso, who learned it from Hermes!
  
• Of course, if you believe these things actually happened, that's a perfectly reasonable explanation, right?
• Where are the gods?
• Where they live:
  
• On Olympus, right?
• Yes, and no: it is said quite generally that the gods have homes there (Iliad 1.18 etc.)
• It seems that Zeus rules in Dodona! which sort of implies that is his place (16.233)
• But Thetis has to travel to Olympus from her home
• and Poseidon is said to live under the sea too.
• Maybe they all have a home on Olympus and some of them have homes elsewhere?
• Where they go:
• Zeus doesn't go down to the battlefield, but he does go to Mt. Ida to get a good view of the battle (he also has an altar there (Iliad 8.47)
• how do they go?
• sometimes by chariot!
• sometimes they just swoop down like birds
• sometimes they go 'as fast as thought' (e.g. Iliad 15. 79f.)
  
• to Ethiopia: they are off there for a few days in the Iliad, and out of contact for that time
• wow, a god out of contact: what happens to non-Ethiopian prayers and sacrifices while they are there?
• that brings up a point: prayers are made all over the place to all manner of gods
• nowhere is it said 'but the god was not home and they had to leave a message'
• so the gods are either omni-present or simply not constrained at all by existing in any particular space
  
• prayers are obviously conceived of as working by being able to communicate with gods: to work, the gods have to be everywhere at once, at least potentially: omni-presence has a sort of conceptual toehold in this world, but it is not explicitly stated that any god is omni-present.
  
• Which gods?
• The usual suspects: Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Athena, Aries, ...
• and some lesser gods: Iris, etc.
  
• But wait, where is Hades? or Persephone? or Demeter? or Dionysios?
• they don't get much, if any, mention in Homer! and even the ones which do get mentioned have no role in the action.
• An explanation may be that Hades and Persephone were pretty much confined to the underworld mythologically, and Demeter and Dionysios were benefactors of all humans and so 'non-partisan', whereas the gods in Homer are more closely associated with particular places on earth and so they were partisan. Not sure I buy that as a sufficient reason for why they have so little role, but I have nothing better to offer, not that there is a right answer.
  
• Some rarely mentioned gods include Enyo (a female war god), Pasithea (offered by Hera to Hypnos/Sleep as a wife), Charis, ...(Hephaestus' wife? at 18.382-3)
  
• And which gods? bis
• It is a known feature of the gods in Greek religious practice that there was 'Zeus at Dodona' and 'Zeus at Ammon,' or 'Apollo at Delphi' and 'Apollo at Delphi'
  
• in other words, there could be several Zeuses, as many as there were temples of Zeus, and several Apollos, one for each temple
• gods like that are not one person like you and I are one person: we are spatiotemporally continuous and limited to one person
• these gods were not, at least in religious practice
• Homer is sort of aware of this maybe: Achilles addresses Zeus as someone 'who lives far away and rules over Dodona' (16.233)
• but in Homer, the gods are people!
• Sure, they have favorite places, places where they are worshipped, but they are clearly not conceived of the same way as the gods of particular temples discussed above were.
• divine attention spans
• Take Zeus:
• he is distracted away from Troy by Thracians at Iliad 13.3-6
• but then he is really distracted by Hera (Iliad 14.159f.)
• Homeric gods don't pay attention to everything all at once: they need to focus
• If prayer works, it must rely on the idea that gods pay attention and can multi-task massively
• and there is no hint that prayer does not work that way, in spite of the occasional 'he prayed, but it was not going to happen that way'
• so behind the idea of prayer, there is the idea that a god is everywhere
  
• the narrator knows what the gods are paying attention to
• How? It's just a fact that the narrator does. No explanation given or needed.
• gods pay attention to their favorites
• they give gifts, advice, and supernatural help here and there
• or they don't, as Zeus does not with Sarpedon
  
• how to interact with a god?
• prayers, sacrifice, consult an oracle, have a dream
• let's call these 'religious' or 'ordinary' ways to interact with gods
• even have a vision, an epiphany, where the god appears to you
• also 'religious' and also somewhat 'ordinary'
  
• have sex with one
• have one as your parent
• have a conversation with one as an equal
• ...
  
• wait, those later ones are decidedly not ordinary things in later Greek times, or depicted as 'religious' experiences in Homer
  
• why not 'religious'? because in 'religious' encounters with a god, one is conscious of being in the presence of divinity and also that it is a decidely unusual experience: one approaches the experience with 'reverence,' or 'piety': cf. when Demeter blazes up in glory in the Hymn to Demeter: a divine revelation/epiphany in the fully 'religious experience' sense is just so very different from when Athena appears to Achilles or Odysseus: they treat the god as another person, an ally, a confidante: more powerful, sure, but not overwhelming or absolute.
  
• one good idea is that the heroes of epic belonged to another age, and the gods interacted with those heroes differently because they were greater than the people of the narrator's time (when people could no longer lift large rocks, for instance).
• Longinus, a much later author, in On the Sublime says "Homer made his gods human and his humans gods": in the epic world, humans were simply closer to the gods and more nearly equals
• it's a border-time between when there were only gods and the times of the narrator's world, when there are humans who are not heroes.
  
• encounters with gods
• Homer knows of the 'ordinary' things, like prayer, sacrifice, and oracles
• Hector makes a lot of sacrifices and prayers and that is why Zeus is inclined to favor him
• In addition to oracles, which do not move around, Homer has mobile seers, like Calchas, who is mobile
• he is incredibly convenient for Homer's plot
• but also, he is not unusual: it seems there were priests/seers who interpreted divine signs later on too
• dreams and visions were common ways for people to get some message from a god in later times, and they happen in Homer too
• but in addition, Homer has divine appearances, either as themselves or in the guise of some mortal
• these encounters with gods say a lot about the narrator
• how should we imagine that the narrator knows that it was Athena, or what Odysseus and Athena said to each other, or so many other human-divine interactions?
• these things are of crucial importance to the plot: for example how could Odysseus have avoided Circe's poison if not for Hermes?
• what does their narrative convenience tell us?
• in a way nothing, but in a way, maybe that these things are inventions of the bards?
• they certainly are not 'normal' ways that historical Greeks thought they could interact with gods
• it would be interesting to compare this with the Bible's stories about god's specific interactions with humans
• sometimes gods intervene without making their presence known (although the narrator knows)
• this is not terribly different from the idea that 'a god made her do it'
• what is different is that the god has personal motivations: it is not just a manifestation of an impersonal force when Hera encourages Agamemnon (8.218) or Apollo kicks down the battlements (15.361): it's a personal partisan thing
• sex with a god
• don't try this at home
• it's not the norm (most heroes have human parents and even grandparents)
• but it's not unusual (some have divine parents or grandparents)
• it is not treated as unusual or remarkable: it's just a fact that has some consequences for Achilles
• it is a great source of why gods favor one side or the other
  
• gods can compete with each other in the human arena
• it's always a problem that needs a permanent solution when gods conflict with each other
• the titans are confined somewhere for vying with Zeus
• Hephaestus got thrown off Olympus and is now lame for trying to defend Hera
• etc.
• but the gods can use humans as chess pieces to compete with one another
• and when it gets out of hand, they can get things back into perspective (Iliad 1.573f., 21.462f.)
• the gods have contempt and/or pity for humans
• clearly born of their superiority

• So most of the above applies to the Iliad and the Odyssey, but are there differences between the gods in Iliad and Odyssey
• Yes: there are fewer gods in Odyssey
• Zeus, Athena and Poseidon are the main gods who play a role through the whole thing
• Ares and Aphrodite and Hephaestus play a role in Demodocus the bard's song
• Hermes and a few others make somewhat a few appearances.
• Circe and Calypso and others are arguably divine, but they are highly localized in a way that Iliad's gods are not.
• Odysseus had Athena's favor in Iliad already (10.245 and 23.782) (wasn't there something about them being estranged because of something Odysseus did? I can't remember it right now).
• Poseidon's grudge against Odysseus, motivated by what Odysseus did to that darling Cyclops is pretty much in keeping with Iliadic gods: an affront and a will to vengeance.
• The gods are not as scandalous (Ares and Aphrodite aside)
• Whereas the gods of Iliad seem less somber and serious than the humans, Athena is said to like Odysseus because he is like her, intelligent and cunning.
• Although Iliad does say that Zeus will punish wrongdoing, the idea that the gods are there to punish human wrongdoing is more present in the Odyssey: more present, but not differently, and it's not like it's absent from Iliad.
• see 1.32-43: humans are punished for their folly
• in the second half of Odyssey, the gods agree that Odysseus should get home and prevail: he is in the right, and the suitors are in the wrong. They are restoring the good and punishing the bad, at least in this intance, which is the central plot of Odyssey

So what are these gods? and did the Greeks believe in them?

• First off, although Kearns tries to answer, I want to say that any question that begins "Did the Greeks believe..." or "What did the Greeks think about ..." is problematic:
• Which Greeks should we ask?
• Can they disagree?
• In the end, the answer should always be 'We know that writer X said ....' or 'we have many sources that seem to be reporting common beliefs and say ....'
• it's problematic to speak for all the Greeks at any given time or over time, just as it is problematic to speak about any group, whether that be national or racial or religious or sexuality-based: it's always more nuanced than that, and we need to be aware of that.
• Still, I'll report Kearns' ideas about whether the 'Greeks' believed in these gods, because they are interesting and worthwhile ideas:
• First off, Kearns says, all talk about divine things and divinities is metaphorical
• it likens things we do not and cannot know in ordinary ways to things we do know in ordinary ways.
• an instance: if we call the divine 'father' or 'mother' that might say more about how we conceive of fatherhood or motherhood than anything
• But what of the quarrels among the gods?
• They seem to be largely for entertainment purposes
• The idea, unspoken by Kearns, seems to be that one does not believe in things that are there purely for entertainment
  
• What of the partisanship? The notion that gods favor this or that human for this or that thing that the human is not responsible for (their birth, for instance):
  
• Perhaps this is a comment on 'the chanciness of human affairs': we are subject to the whims or much larger forces
• so it would be a metaphor: the chanciness of human affairs = the gods tilting the scales based on personal ad hoc tastes/biases.
  
• But if so, the gods are part of the metaphor, not the thing being illustrated by the metaphor, so it doesn't work as a comment on belief in gods
• I think that Kearns moves too quickly here: there are people who firmly believe that gods are capricious and whimsical and partisan, that it is not a metaphor but rather the cause of all the many slings and arrows of chance/luck that we have to deal with.
  
• Next, Kearns suggests that the epics might be allegories
• the Greeks did allegorize Homer: gods could be physical forces or they could be moralized
• but doing that comes at the expense of the narrative and the poetry: if they are really allegories, then the literary details are irrelevant to the real message
• in fact, the poems themselves present the literary at the expense of a consistent picture of divinity
• the poems make the gods more human
• these poems are about human beings, and the gods are made to serve that purpose narratively
• yes, they resemble the gods of more clearly religious texts, but insofar as they are more human, they do not do so.
• it is fairly safe to say the people of the times believed in the gods of the more clearly religious texts/practices
  
• If we focus on the humans and how the gods relate to humans, the epics are tales of heroic and tragic humanity
• If we focus on the gods, the results are intriguing and entertaining, but more problematic than not.
• problematic because it leads to quandaries about what a god is, what they do, where they are, how we should interact with them: they don't make sense, in other words.
• So it seems to me (Bailly) that the overall conclusion must be that to believe in these stories about the personal roles of the gods in the epics, one has to make choices:
• bury one's head in the sand: admit that they don't make sense when it becomes obvious that they don't make sense, but avoid the problem caused by that: just ignore it.
• for instance: neither does it make sense to believe that killing is wrong, that animals I eat are killed, and that it is ok to eat them: and yet many people hold those three beliefs and do not bother to reconcile them: they tolerate the dissonance: I am not sure, but I may be in that situation vis-a-vis eating meat.
• another way to deal with it is to say that it's 'mythological logic' or perhaps 'symbolic' of an underlying truth about the world, and applying logical logic to it is like using a mechanic's skills to write a novel or the knowledge of a nuclear physicist to cooking or a painter's skill to mathematics: they are separate spheres with only tenuous connections
  
• discount the personal side of the gods wherever we need to: the stories are overall true, but they are also there for entertainment or for children or also for the story, and because of that, we can dismiss any facet of the stories that we want: we should accept the beliefs about the gods that do make sense and discount the rest.
  
• insist that it all makes sense, there is no problem here, and believe in the gods of Homer and all the religious rituals in Homer and all the other things in the culture about gods
• logic cannot apply here, because of the many problems raised above: the usual answer to this is that puny human logic can't understand divinity and any problem apparently caused by 'logic' is the human's problem. Have faith.
• Bailly comment: since we all must have faith in something, no matter what we believe, this is not meant to be a 'wrong' option. All of the above options have their plusses and minuses and I would bet a pint of Ben and Jerry's that we could find 'ancient Greeks' who believed some version of each of them, if we could find any Ancient Greeks to talk to.