Similarities Between Odyssey And Hesiod

Two great writers of the ancient world, Homer and Hesiod, wrote works that defined reasoning, cultural norms, and religious beliefs. Two of these works Homer’s Odyssey and Hesiod’s Works and Days feature different approaches with interaction between the gods and men. They also seem to have a different view on the morality of the gods that differentiates from their own personal morality. Xenophanes, one of the first ancient philosophers, disagrees with Homer and Hesiod, pertaining to the way they view the gods. Common sensual treatment of other people was not how the gods seemed to treat each other. Xenophanes emphasized that it did not make sense to be looking up imagined beings that were not living lives by the same moral code that the average person was living themselves. Xenophanes is right about Homer and Hesiod being wrong about the gods because if the people saw the gods as being able to be immoral for the people to then be moral life would not make sense.

In the Odyssey, Homer’s main storyline consists of Odysseus’s grueling journey home, but there is also another plot which

Now. Therefore, may neither I myself be righteous among men’ nor my son—for then it is a bad thing to be righteous—if indeed the unrighteous shall have the greater right. But I think that all-wise Zeus will not yet bring that to pass” (Hesiod 5). Hesiod says here that Zues is infallible and in most aspects of life Hesiod said that one must gain Zues’s favor. If Zues is most powerful of all the gods, and Homer shows how the gods are outside of a set moral norm of what humans did in every day, one could start to question, what is the purpose of gaining favor from supposedly immortal beings who do not have a moral standard? Xenophanes believes this to be