The Odyssey Female Power Quotes

"Where’s it gone, Odysseus – your power, your fighting heart?
The great soldier who fought for famous white-armed Helen,
battling Trojans nine long years – nonstop, no mercy,
mowing their armies down in grueling battle –
you who seized the broad streets of Troy
with your fine strategic stroke! How can you –
now you’ve returned to your own house, your own wealth –
bewail the loss of your combat strength in a war with suitors?"

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 22, lines 236-243. Athena, who remains protector and guardian towards Odysseus’ family throughout The Odyssey, is often regarded as a symbol of female empowerment. Here she reacts angrily to Odysseus’ cry for help from Mentor (Athena disguised), as his morale suffers in the fight against the superior force of suitors. She both taunts and inspires Odysseus, so that he finds the courage that he had when he fought the Trojans all those years ago, and uses it now to defeat the suitors.

At his command,
concentrating their shots, all six hurled as one
but Athena sent the whole salvo wide of the mark –
one of them hit the jamb of the great hall’s doors,
another the massive door itself, and the heavy bronze point
of a third ashen javelin crashed against the wall.

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 22, lines 267-272. Fighting for their lives, the suitors led by Agelaus fire all their long spears at once at Odysseus and his comrades. Goddess Athena comes to the rescue and deflects their spears. Without her intervention, Odysseus and his men may very well have been killed.

And now Athena, looming out of the rafters high above them,
brandished her man-destroying shield of thunder, terrifying
the suitors out of their minds, and down the hall they panicked –
wild, like herds stampeding, driven mad as the darting gadfly
strikes in the late spring when the long days come round.

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 22, lines 311-315. After protecting Odysseus by deflecting spears and arrows, Athena now wields her shield of thunder high above the suitors. She sends them into a panic down the hall. In an epic simile, the terrified and fleeing suitors are compared to herds stampeding after being driven demented by biting flies. Athena, by joining by Odysseus and Telemachus’ side as Mentor, has turned the tide of the battle in their favor.

"Woman – your words, they cut me to the core!
Who could move my bed? Impossible task,
even for some skilled craftsman – unless a god
came down in person, quick to lend a hand,
lifted it out with ease and moved it elsewhere.
Not a man on earth, not even at peak strength,
would find it easy to prise it up and shift it, no,
a great sign, a hallmark lies in its construction."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 23, lines 205-212. Odysseus ignites with fury when Penelope tests him by asking Eurycleia to move their marriage bed, knowing that it cannot be moved. Odysseus erupts that it is impossible due to its construction, adding that it would take a god to do that. Even after Odysseus has slaughtered the suitors and sheds the beggar disguise, Penelope still hesitates to recognize him as her husband. Showing her power, she cleverly devices a test that only he could pass.

"The fame of her great virtue will never die.
The immortal gods will lift a song for all mankind,
a glorious song in praise of self-possessed Penelope."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 24, lines 216-218. Speaking about Penelope in the underworld, Agamemnon’s ghost has high praise for the faithfulness of the wife of Odysseus. This is after Agamemnon hears about Penelope’s resistence of the suitors and her cunning in frustrating them by weaving a shroud for Laertes and nightly unraveling it. To the loyal Penelope, who chose to wait twenty years for the return of Odysseus and could have taken up with a suitor, Homer attributes the highest honors. She is seen as embodying the ideal wife, the paragon of marital fidelity, a model of self-restraint. Penelope is one of the main heroes of Homer’s epic poem.

"A far cry from the daughter of Tyndareus, Clytemnestra –
what outrage she committed, killing the man she married once! –
yes, and the song men sing of her will ring with loathing.
She brands with a foul name the breed of womankind,
even the honest ones to come!"

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 24, lines 219-223. Agamemnon’s ghost contrasts the honorable character of Penelope to that of Clytemnestra, who murdered her husband Agamemnon after he returned from the Trojan War. Clytemnestra’s name will always be loathed and is a stain on womanhood, he says. No honor or glory for Agamemnon’s wife!

Odysseus and his gallant son charged straight at the front lines,
slashing away with swords, with two-edged spears and now
they would have killed them all, cut them off from home
if Athena, daughter of storming Zeus, had not cried out
in a piercing voice that stopped all fighters cold,
"Hold back, you men of Ithaca, back from brutal war!
Break off – shed no more blood – make peace at once!"

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 24, lines 579-585. As Odysseus and his son Telemachus attack the families of the suitors who want to avenge their deaths, Athena intervenes to stop the slaughter. She asks the two sides to hold back and make peace. The strong goddess, who embodies female power in a patriarchal ancient Greece, manages to stop a second war.

loosing a savage cry, the long-enduring great Odysseus,
gathering all his force, swooped like a soaring eagle
just as the son of Cronus hurled a reeking bolt
that fell at her feet, the mighty Father’s daughter,
and blazing-eyed Athena wheeled on Odysseus, crying,
"Royal son of Laertes, Odysseus, master of exploits,
hold back now! Call a halt to the great leveler, War –
don’t court the rage of Zeus who rules the world."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 24, lines 590-597. Odysseus swoops on the Ithacans who flee in panic after Athena’s order for a halt to the bloodshed. A metaphor compares Odysseus to an eagle. Just then we have a final omen from Zeus as he hurls down a thunderbolt which drops at Athena’s feet. The goddess intervenes to rein in Odysseus. Deciding that there has been enough war, she commands Odysseus to end the killing. She warns him not to invoke the wrath of Zeus by pursuing a second war against the suitor’s families. Woman power has the final word on the fighting in Ithaca.

So she commanded. He obeyed her, glad at heart.
And Athena handed down her pacts of peace
between both sides for all the years to come –
the daughter of Zeus whose shield is storm and thunder,
yes, but the goddess still kept Mentor’s build and voice.

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 24, lines 598-602. The final lines of the epic poem tell how at the command of the powerful goddess of wisdom, the fighting stops. Athena, in her last appearance in The Odyssey, takes on the form of Mentor and brings peace to the warring sides in Itacha.
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