The Blood of Olympus

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2014

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Themes

The Makings of a Good Leader

The Heroes of Olympus is especially concerned with the question of what makes a good leader. Central to this question are the underlying qualities that define virtue in the Greek and Roman sense. The Greek world, which was independent communities in constant competition, placed a high value on aristeia—being the best at what one does. The expansionist empire of Rome celebrated pietas—doing one’s duty to the state, the gods, and one’s family.

These values can seem more different than they are. Ultimately, to practice one’s excellence at the highest level (aristeia) is to fulfill one’s responsibility—or one’s duty—to the gods, the city, and one’s family, as Riordan shows through the characters’ personal growth processes and their journey to understand each other. Fulfilling one’s duty by practicing one’s excellence, in turn, leaves room for many types of excellence to not only coexist but also collaborate.

In The Heroes of Olympus, the quests reveal that different situations require different forms of leadership. What matters, ultimately, is thinking as a unit, focusing on the goal at hand, and protecting one another, to the best of one’s abilities. In some instances, Annabeth’s logic is necessary; in others, Piper’s instincts lead to the best outcome. At times, fighting the way to victory is possible. At other times, Piper’s power of persuasion and Jason’s gift for diplomacy win the day. When they’re in Sparta and face the statue of Ares, which is intended to prompt the proper reverence for the cost of war, submitting to one’s fears and confronting one’s emotions is the proper course. Percy’s refusal to leave anyone behind, his desire to always be on the front line, can be a strength but also a liability. The fight against Gaea calls for a particular skillset—the ability to take the fight to the sky. Likewise, Jason doesn’t want to relinquish control and leave Leo behind, but he must let Leo make his sacrifice in order to destroy Gaea. In South Carolina, Reyna’s ability to organize and launch a coordinated assault is useless without soldiers to command, but Leo’s ability to summon spirits provides the legion she needs to hold back Bryce’s spartoi. Across each stage of the quest throughout The Blood of Olympus, Riordan suggests that aristeia and pietas are complementary virtues that can produce competent leaders capable of working together to achieve great outcomes.

Self-Acceptance and Healing

Each of the demigods throughout The Heroes of Olympus series and The Blood of Olympus undergoes a growth process by confronting personal doubts and past traumas and learning to embrace who they are and where they belong. For all of the demigods, this includes coming to terms with the gifts and responsibilities associated with their divine parents. These gifts and responsibilities have common and unique elements that can be both oppositional and complementary to those of other demigods. For Piper, this requires learning to recognize the transformative value of her powers of persuasion via both Aphrodite’s gift of charmspeak and her Cherokee grandfather’s prophecy about her voice. Her growth, which has been unfolding throughout the series, culminates in The Blood of Olympus when she overcomes the giant Mimas, convincing Asclepius to brew the physician’s cure for the demigods, charming Kekrops into leading them safely to the Acropolis, and putting Gaea back to sleep. By the novel’s end, Piper has embraced the power of her mother on her own terms.

Part of Nico’s journey throughout the series has been to overcome his feeling of isolation. He has felt at odds with his peers, feeling that they regard his gift with fear and revulsion. While it may have been grounded in some truth, Nico’s perception overrode all else, such that all he could see was others’ alleged fear, and he stopped believing that he could connect with his peers. On the quest with Reyna, he connects with the Roman praetor, who has her own traumatic past, but not until he returns to Camp Half-Blood and experiences Will’s steady interest and attention does he begins to imagine a place for himself among the other demigods. While Leo doesn’t experience Nico’s ambivalence about his father’s power, he does know what it’s like to feel alone. The only demigod on the quest to Athens who is without a romantic partner, Leo tends to retreat to the engine of his ship and to connect with machines. Embracing his facility with machines—rather than using them as an escape—ultimately enables him to save his friends and fulfill his promise to Calypso.

Jason and Reyna both struggle with the pressures of leadership, although in different ways. Jason feels ill-suited to the Roman approach. Although he’s a son of Jupiter, his sister, Thalia, is a daughter of Zeus, and Jason’s time in the Greek camp feels right for him. Although he feels tremendous responsibility to care for his friends, that concern ultimately finds a new expression in his decision to dedicate himself to building shrines at both camps. For him, leadership is establishing proper honors for all the gods in a way that promotes positive relationships between gods and demigods as well as among the gods themselves. During the brief time that Reyna and Jason served as co-praetors, Reyna envisioned herself pairing up with him romantically as well. His rejection of that life in favor of the Greek one left Reyna feeling alone in her experience, which carrying the secret of her father's death perhaps amplified. Although all isn’t resolved in the end, she finds healing by connecting with Nico, who understands what it’s like to feel alone, and by embracing her responsibility as best she can—and discovering that is enough.

Reconciling With and Understanding Others

The ancient Greek world during the archaic and classical periods was never centralized under a single administrative body as the Roman Empire was. It was a collection of hundreds of independent city-states, each with its own traditions and institutions. These city-states were united, at least theoretically, by two things: a common language and a common religion (worship of the Olympian pantheon). Even these, however, were loosely common. City-states spoke their own dialects and worshipped different gods under the Olympian umbrella. Athena was especially important in Athens, while Argos was dedicated to Hera, Corinth to Poseidon, and Sparta to Ares. While city-states had their own festivals to honor the gods of their cities, their citizens also came together at major religious festivals open only to Greek speakers.

For a period before, during, and after these festivals, military conflicts were suspended to allow participants to travel safely to and from the events, at which competitions were held in several categories. Although official truces weren’t always respected, the festivals promoted diplomatic relations among city-states and a Greek cultural consciousness, a sense of shared identity in which Greek people came together to compete—and competed to come together. The agon, meaning competition or struggle, enabled them to measure themselves against each other under the sanction and in the service of the gods. This ritualized competition interacted with the worship of mythical heroes, whose struggles provided the basis for religious rituals. Persephone’s abduction by Hades and Demeter’s recovery of her daughter, for example, were the foundation myth of the Eleusinian Mysteries, believed to be the most important mystery cult in the ancient world.

The demigods’ quests, in the series and the novel, mirror not only the quests of mythological heroes but also the underlying purpose of festival competitions in the ancient Greek world. The demigods come together in honor of the gods. Their different gifts can cause them to become competitive with one another, but ultimately, the goal is for the demigods to connect with each other—to recognize what they share in common beyond their apparent differences. This extends to relations between Greeks and Romans as well as to relations among the Greeks themselves. Annabeth must believe that Piper’s intuition can be as powerful as Annabeth’s logic; Jason and Percy must believe that Leo’s command of machines is as valuable as their command of the skies and sea, respectively; and Reyna must believe that Nico’s ability to control spirits and summon zombies can save the day, as it does when they’re in South Carolina. Being forced into close proximity and needing to rely on each other for their survival teaches the demigods that they all have something to contribute, different but equally necessary. In the process of reconciling with each other, Greek to Roman, they enable the gods’ Greek and Roman aspects to heal and recover their stability.

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By Rick Riordan

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