a very loose collection of thoughts because i haven't slept in more than fifty hours, but one element that always gets to me about the homeric epics and a lot of greek mythology overall is the tragic emotional divide between gods and humans. it's like there's a constant insurmountable gap of perception there, most of all in regards to mortality, between the deathless and the bound-to-die: of course the gods are aware that all mortals will eventually die, but they seem on the whole unable to truly understand and sympathize with just how brief mortal lives are or how massively the gods' involvement (and entitlement) can derail and shorten those lifespans.
that tragedy hangs over the entirety of the iliad to me. it's exemplified in how, when achilles is going mad with grief over patroclus, zeus empathizes with and wants to comfort achilles' immortal horses instead. countless human lives have been and will be lost or ruined from this god-driven war, but the perspective zeus understands and feels an emotional connection to is that of animals that can't die. sure the gods mourn their mortal offspring (like sarpedon) when they fall, but the grief comes across as very brief and possessive, like the loss of a favourite doll. (of course, they can just make more demigods later. they have all the time in the world after all)
(thetis is obviously the big outlier here, which might be part of why i've always been obsessed with her. i'd say thetis' preoccupation with her son's finite lifespan is downright extreme among the gods. there are other immortals who can sympathize with her grief, like hephaestus, but not empathize. she is an oddity among them.)
to me it's central to the odyssey too. especially, as elizabeth vandiver points out (as i carefully set my "days since fawning over vandiver" counter to zero) in book 13. odysseus, as gently as he can, tells athena that there were years of his long journey he felt completely abandoned by her and he was weighed down by doubts if he'd ever see his home again, and she pretty much brushes him aside letting him know she never worried because she knew he'd get home eventually. eventually. vandiver makes a point here that 10 extra years to athena can't possibly mean what 10 extra years mean to odysseus. he has missed out on seeing his son growing up, he's longed for his wife and parents and home for a significant chunk of his life. it's a very brief exchange but a tragic moment to me. he tries to explain and she's simply unable to understand the weight of it, and dismisses it with a single line.
but that divide makes sense to me. the gods have eternity to do whatever they want. we know they fear imprisonment and servitude and discomfort and humiliation (all of which makes sense of zeus' sympathy for the immortal horses) -- essentially temporary things to them. not anything as definite and final as death. they can't choose to know what it is to fear death, or how the finite nature of human lives impacts just about everything homeric human character do (kleos anyone?). there's just no bridging that gap.
