This post is a continuation of Painful Signs, a series of posts on the Iliad. The full list of posts is here. New posts will be added on various books, with an emphasis on new projects and highlighting scholarship in general.

Do we really know why or how we make decisions? Do we want steak for dinner because of its social and cultural value or because of the evolutionary advantage of high protein diets or because of our body’s need for iron or because we just like the taste? (Ask a Homeric hero that one: they won’t share fish or vegetables with the gods!)

However we pose the question, it ultimately becomes one of determinism vs. free will and any honest discussion of the pair will likely determine that’s it’s complicated, to say the least. The distinction between the two may be a false binary and even asking the questions itself may in fact be a particular concern of a culture steeped in individualism and garnished with heroic narratives of individual (men) making the world safe and glorious through their own effort.

Homeric epic is far from disinterested in similar questions, but as Hayden Pelliccia (2011) has warned, our willingness to read such questions into Homer may be as much (if not more) a product of our culture than epic’s. But both the Iliad and the Odyssey frame their actions with statements about the relationship between human suffering and divine choice. The Iliad—perhaps problematically— announces that its events are all part of “Zeus’ will being fulfilled”. But the Odyssey changes this up just enough to be interesting: Near the beginning of the epic as he looks down on the mortal Aigisthos, who, despite divine advice to the contrary, has shacked up with Klytemnestra and helped murder Agamemnon, Zeus opines (Od. 1.32-34):

“Mortals! They are always blaming the gods and saying that evil comes from us when they themselves suffer pain beyond their lot because of their own recklessness.”

ὢ πόποι, οἷον δή νυ θεοὺς βροτοὶ αἰτιόωνται.
ἐξ ἡμέων γάρ φασι κάκ’ ἔμμεναι• οἱ δὲ καὶ αὐτοὶ
σφῇσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὑπὲρ μόρον ἄλγε’ ἔχουσιν

As I argue in my book on the Odyssey, I think this is a programmatic statement for the epic, inviting audiences to think about to what extent mortal decisions do impact their fate. And I don’t think this is all negative: if we can make our lives worse through our foolishness, certainly the opposite should be true, that we can ameliorate our fates through prudence. But the most important aspect of this is that the opening frame of the epic invites the audience to consider just how much human beings are partners in their fate.

In the Odyssey, I believe that the story of Telemachus is in part set up to show how mortals should work alongside gods, providing something of an ideal situation where humans work with divine sponsorship and inspiration, but choose to act on their own, attaining what psychologists have called a “sense of agency”. As many know, a sense of agency—alongside belonging—can be essential to mental health. But, to make matters more confusing, this may also be tied to cultural assumptions. (And, I use “sense of agency” to weasel my way out of worrying about free will.)

I also think that we tend to overestimate the importance of divine influence in the Iliad, in part because of that nod to “Zeus’ Plan” in the proem. Human decision-making runs parallel to and sometimes alters divine will. Even Zeus’ cosmic plan to rid the earth of the race of heroes is distorted by human decisions.  No god inspires Agamemnon to refuse the ransom of the priest Chryses in book 1. Achilles acts according to his own feelings and thoughts when he asks Zeus to punish the Achaeans for slighting his honor.  He makes the decision to allow Patroklos to fight. It is with such a fateful decision that he condemns his best friend to die. Zeus has plotted, in accordance with Achilles’s initial will, we should remember; Achilles nevertheless is free to decide on his own course of action. Patroklos’ death hits even harder because Achilles asked for it.

Classic debates from the 20th century about Homeric poetry from the secondary through the post-graduate level involve some variation on the relationship between fate and free will. When it comes to heroic behavior and divine intervention, this can get a bit involved: there are situations that seem somewhat clear (as when Athena pulls Achilles back by the hair in book 1 to keep him from drawing his sword and killing Agamemnon) and those that are less clear (in the same book, the narrative assertion that Hera inspired Achilles to call the assembly is not supported by any other evidence). 

Evaluating these situations can be difficult for the audience external to the poem because we have nearly synoptic knowledge on what is going on. At times, we see the gods directly intervening and telling characters to do this and then the humans eventually realize they have been duped (see Athena as Deiphobos with Hektor in book 22); while in others, there are levels of obfuscation as when Zeus sends a ‘false’ dream to Agamemnon that promises him the Achaeans will be victorious on the following day, to which Agamemnon responds by ‘testing’ his army (in book 2).

Distinguishing between what the narrator reveals to us, what is revealed to internal audiences (including Homeric mortals), and what is held back helps us see that there is a lot of complexity in how and why decisions are made. Human beings are not without some agency: While everything in the Iliad may be part of Zeus’ plan, no divinity seems to cause Agamemnon to reject Chryses’ ransom and insult Achilles in book 1, even though he seems to make some claim to that effect in book 19; nor does any god inspire Achilles to ask Zeus to honor him by making the Achaeans suffer.

At a broader thematic level, then, Homeric heroes make important choices. Within the action of the epic and its interwoven plot, however, there are moments in which the gods seem more in control than others.  Where Homeric characters seem ignorant of that fact, we see what scholars have called “double motivation” (or determination, or causality), following Albin Lesky. These moments offer interesting insights into Homeric views on human psychology, on theology, and on the limits of human knowledge about their own actions and motivations. On one level, we can see how human characters in the Iliad can use divine action as an excuse or explanation for their own behavior, without any clear reason for doing so. On another level, Homeric epic leaves ample room for reading different deterministic world views into the epic narrative.

In his 2023 Homer’s Iliad and the Problem of Force, Charles Stocking enters into this conversation through a prolonged analysis of expressions for force, especially the doublet damazo/damnemi (“to subdue, kill, etc.”). Stocking argues that the concept “co-agency” is a better way of thinking about double determination because it is “underscored by the conceptual conditions for the production of epic poetry itself and the close link between poet and Zeus” (184). Stocking provides and intricate and persuasive argument that their is a hierarchy in the use and execution of force that pairs gods with mortals, men with women, etc., positioning a stronger party to help along the action of the weaker. He suggests that “the concept of co-agency” sidesteps [the issues of determinism and free will] by focusing the discussion not on the psychological cause of action but simply on how characters view themselves as sites of co-participation in action” (185).

In essence, Stocking is arguing that our modern understanding of ancient metaphysics and epistemology has prevented us from understanding the cultural beliefs represented in Homer, concluding that we should “rethink the Homeric person, not simply as a failed self-conscious individual but as an intersubjective dividual, one constituted by human-divine symbiosis” (221). For people following along with my reading of Stocking’s book, he has used a re-reading of Weil’s analysis of force alongside a critique of Snell’s progressive argument for the development of human consciousness to posit an entirely different picture of human/divine action.

I’ll confess to liking the argument, but wondering as I often do, where performance and audiences come in. Another—not necessarily exclusive—approach is that the epics function dialogically—they invite audiences to think about the relationship between divine will and human action and as a result produce narratives that mix and match different views on the problem. The result does seem to accord with Stocking’s argument, but in a slightly more complicated way. Homer’s heroes are engaged in navigating a world where they make some choices, have some made for them, and then twist the situation in turn by claiming choice or force depending on its rhetorical convenience.

A short bibliography on Homeric decision making and ‘double motivation’

n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know.

Allan, William. “Divine Justice and Cosmic Order in Early Greek Epic.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 126 (2006): 1–35. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30033397.

Finkelberg, Margalit (1995) “Patterns of Human Error in Homer.” JHS 115: 15-28. 

Gaskin, Richard. “Do Homeric Heroes Make Real Decisions?” The Classical Quarterly 40, no. 1 (1990): 1–15. http://www.jstor.org/stable/639307.

Lesky, Albin (1961) Gottliche und Menschliche Motivation im Homerischen Epos. Winter, Universitätsverlag: Heidelberg

Pelliccia, Hayden. 2011. “Double Motivation.” Homer Encyclopedia V. 1. ed. M. Finkelberg. 218-2190

Polinskaya, Irene. “Conception of the divine in Greek polytheism.” In A Local History of Greek Polytheism: Gods, People, and the Land of Aigina, 800-400 BCE, vol. 178. Religions in the Graeco-Roman World. Brill, 2013: 71-85.

Andrew Porter. “Human Fault and ‘[Harmful] Delusion’ (Ἄτη) in Homer.” Phoenix 71, no. 1/2 (2017): 1–20. https://doi.org/10.7834/phoenix.71.1-2.0001.

Särman, Sanja. “Double motivation, gods and psychic organs in the Iliad.” American Journal of Philology 146, no. 2, 2025: 243-271.

Scodel, Ruth. “Homeric Attribution of Outcomes and Divine Causation.” Syllecta Classica 29 (2018): 1-27. https://doi.org/10.1353/syl.2018.0001.

Segal, Charles. 1994. Singers, Heroes and Gods in the “Odyssey.” Ithaca.

Sharples, R. W. “‘But Why Has My Spirit Spoken with Me Thus?’: Homeric Decision-Making.” Greece & Rome 30, no. 1 (1983): 1–7. http://www.jstor.org/stable/642739.

Teffeteller, Annette. “Homeric Excuses.” The Classical Quarterly 53, no. 1 (2003): 15–31. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3556479.

Tor, Shaul. “Hesiodic epistemology.” In Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Epistemology: A Study of Hesiod, Xenophanes and Parmenides. Cambridge Classical Studies. Cambridge University Press, 2017: 61-103.