Answer:
Even if the gods have not regarded Odysseus' plight
for some years, they do remember his sacrifices,
eventually. As the epic unfolds, we read how Odysseus is
helped by Athena and Zeus, despite Poseidon's return.
Telemachus has his own adventures and is kept safe from the
asassination plot of the suitors. Odysseus is disguised
and aided by gods and men until he kills the suitors in his
home and regains the rule of Ithaca.
In fact, this appears, at first, to be a much more
consistent theology and a simpler theodicy than that
presented in the Iliad. In the former epic the gods
sometimes helped those who were faithful in sacrifice and
sometimes did not. In the Odyssey, at first glance, it is
the god-fearing family of Odysseus, Telemachus, Penelope
and faithful slaves who are heard by the gods while all
those who break the rules are punished. Examples of such
people are given in Book I. Aegisthus is a case that Zeus
brings up for discussion.53 The suitors too deserve
punishment. Even Odysseus' companions are blamed, in the
proem, for their own destruction, the reason they did not
reach home as Odysseus did.54
Odysseus does not carry the epithet pius that Aeneas
will when Vergil writes. But as far as the main outline of
the action in this epic is concerned, Odysseus is as
faithful toward the gods as any man, and the gods care for
him as much as they care for anyone.
Explanation:
