Talk:Gods in The Odyssey

Translation Differences

Some of the explanations given, such as Odysseus not believing Polyphemus to be a son of Poseidon, may be present in some translations of the Odyssey but not in others. This raises a difficult question over what to include in these explanations that I don't really have an answer for- other than general vagueness or just choosing one translation and giving a preface that all evidence is from that version. 129.7.0.131 (talk) 05:01, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Proposed merge with List of Homeric characters

Someone tagged this article for potential merger with List of Homeric characters, but neglected to start a discussion on the topic (why?). I can see the reasoning behind the proposed merger, and also that this article needs some work in terms of proper inline citations to The Odyssey and ideally a few secondary sources. However, it's already a topic of some bulk, and in fact is already somewhat more substantial than the article it's proposed for merging into. The "List of Homeric characters" strikes me as a bit skimpy, but with lots of room for expansion. There will necessarily be some overlap with this article, but that doesn't make merger necessary; due to the number of entries there, the descriptions would need to be much shorter than those in this article, and in fact there could easily be other articles split off from that list for more elaboration, as this one is. So I would have to say that I oppose the proposed merger. P Aculeius (talk) 12:03, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

I was the one who tagged it for merger, for two main reasons. The first reason is that the article as it stands provides no justification for its own existence. There is nothing special about these "Odyssean gods" merely because they are gods who happen to appear in the Odyssey. There's no particular scholarly analysis into this specific group that, for instance, compares their portrayal in the poem to the portrayal of Greek gods in other sources, or compares their portrayal to the portrayal of humans in the same poem. They aren't a defined collective within the poem itself (many other gods exist in the setting that coincidentally don't appear, but do in other sources like the Iliad). The article doesn't present a topic, but rather summarises 10 topics that happen to share a defining characteristic.

The second reason is that the information presented here is largely inappropriate for an article of this type. It's mostly disjointed plot summary that is already documented more appropriately in each character's own page. You're right that there's more text here than in the proposed merge destination, but I think that would be less stark if the information here was pruned to what would be appropriate for a list article of this type.

For these main reasons, I support the proposed merger. -- Supermorff (talk) 10:14, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

The justification for its existence would seem to be that it's a discrete subgroup amongst a much larger group of significant personages in The Odyssey, and appears too substantial to squeeze back into that list, both now when it's by far the most-developed part, and if in future the rest is also developed to a similar degree. That's all the justification that articles need for splitting; not that there be "something special" about it (what constitutes "something special" seems hopelessly vague and necessarily subjective; that personages are gods means that the group is discrete by virtue of a defining characteristic or function, such as "Trojans in The Iliad "). It is of no relevance that "other gods exist that don't appear in The Odyssey "; that doesn't make the grouping of those that do invalid!

I don't see describing the function or actions performed by or with each god as a "disjointed plot summary". Any list of characters in a literary work necessarily describes these things, and while only a small proportion of works would typically require extensive discussion of individual characters in an encyclopedic manner, The Odyssey would tend to be near the top of the list.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "already documented in each character's own page". There do not seem to be individual pages about "Athena in The Odyssey ", "Poseidon in The Odyssey ", etc. If you are referring to the main articles about the gods themselves, then details about their appearance in The Odyssey may well appear, but are equally certain to be lost amidst a sea of other information (especially with Poseidon), which again argues in favour of having this article, which only concerns the specific topic of the gods appearing in The Odyssey, and doesn't require readers to search each god's separate article (ten are named here) for mentions of The Odyssey, and simply hope that the discussion there is as extensive as this article allows—in the case of Calypso or Circe, that's likely to be the case, but it's obviously not going to be for Hermes or Zeus. This article is useful to readers because it gathers the relevant information in one place, and allows for as much detail as necessary, since it does not have to cover all of the other topics relating to each god.

Your last argument seems to be, "this article contains too much material to merge into the proposed target, therefore we should prune it until it fits". That seems wholly illogical to me; the purpose of splitting articles is to allow for more extensive development than is possible or practical as part of a larger article. Once this has been done, removing that material in order to make merging back into a parent article seems counterproductive. The potential for splitting off the discussion of each god in this list and merging it into existing articles about each individual god would only make sense if their roles were all relatively minor; but since Odysseus' interaction with the gods is a major aspect of The Odyssey, they are by definition not minor, and it does the reader a disservice to make the information harder to obtain by distributing it amongst ten other articles, most of which contain a great deal of material irrelevant to The Odyssey, and for that reason do not have room for an extensive discussion of The Odyssey, as appears here.

In all I can see no advantage to the reader from cutting out most of the contents here, and merging it into the general list of characters in The Odyssey, or expecting readers to search individual articles about each god for material relating to The Odyssey, when it can be conveniently collected here. This article needs work, particularly more citations to both primary (The Odyssey) and secondary sources, but that is normal editing. It probably has considerable potential for expansion, given the amount of material written about The Odyssey from the classical period to modern times. There is no good reason to limit character descriptions here or in the parent article to a brief or arbitrary length, and if properly developed the parent article could become quite extensive even with this, or perhaps other sections, split out. That is the purpose of splitting articles; to allow for more extensive discussion. The purpose of merging articles is not to preclude more extensive discussion! P Aculeius (talk) 15:18, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

I've been thinking about this. You've convinced me in one main respect, which is to view this page not as a collection of information about these specific gods (as I'd been thinking of it), but a page of information relating to the Odyssey as a work (that just happens to be about characters/gods appearing in that work). Having reframed the position in my head on that basis, I have come to a different view about what makes sense as the overall structure of these pages.

If it's useful to have information about characters in the Odyssey, then there should be a section on the page Odyssey called something like "Characters" (currently there isn't one). This section would presumably be small and link out to a page called something like "Characters in the Odyssey" (or even "Characters in the works of Homer" based on the existing List of Homeric characters). If the section on gods is big enough to be split out, it should be called "Gods in the Odyssey" rather than "Odyssean gods" (a term which I find misleading and confusing). The pages then take on a clearer nesting structure, with more information and detail as you move into the more specific topics.

Of these changes, moving this page from "Odyssean gods" to "Gods in the Odyssey" is the easiest and quickest to accomplish. -- Supermorff (talk) 10:02, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

On the title: no strong opinion as to "Gods in The Odyssey" as opposed to "Odyssean gods". Since nobody else has participated in this discussion, it's unlikely that anyone will object immediately, so you could be bold and move this to that title. But you will need to use the {{italic title}} template, and the specific parameters for placing "The Odyssey" (don't forget to capitalize "the"; that's considered part of the title in English) in italics, but not "Gods in". If you have trouble with this, I can have a go at it.

Not sure about "Characters" as a subsection of "The Odyssey", as that wasn't the subject of this discussion, and I haven't looked at it, but it's a logical topic of discussion there. As you surmise, it could be a summary linking to the existing "List of Homeric characters" instead of separate lists for The Iliad and The Odyssey, from which this article and perhaps other lists can be split out based on size and level of detail, with a shorter summary on the main page and longer, more detailed discussion here. P Aculeius (talk) 15:40, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

I've moved the page to "Gods in The Odyssey", as there has been no opposition to the change here for a few months, and a Google Books search [1] [2] seems to indicates that the phrase "gods in The Odyssey" occurs much more frequently than "Odyssean gods". It also seems to me that some readers may not immediately understand quite what "Odyssean gods" are, whereas I think "Gods in The Odyssey" is fairly clear. – Michael Aurel (talk) 01:19, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't think the article needs to be merged, as it represents a distinct encyclopedic topic from the proposed target, which is a list article. I'm inclined to agree with Supermorff that the article should be viewed more as covering an aspect of The Odyssey, rather than a specific (and somewhat arbitrary) group of gods, though I don't necessarily think that this means we need to have the sort of "nested logic" they've suggested, starting with a "Characters" section in The Odyssey's page. I think the existence of books [3] [4] on the subject of "gods and men in The Odyssey" is enough to warrant some kind of article on this topic; whether the subject of the article should be "Gods in The Odyssey" or "Characters in The Odyssey" (or perhaps "Gods in Homeric works") would probably be best decided by whoever chooses to rewrite the article, and is familiar with how reliable sources treat the matter. – Michael Aurel (talk) 02:58, 20 October 2024 (UTC)