Two odd scenes at the pivotal moment in The Odyssey

Two notes about the pivotal section of The Odyssey, that is, the chapters in which Odysseus completes narrating the tale of his 20-year journey to his hosts, the Phaeacians, and they prepare to transport him back to Ithaca: First, O finiahes his tale, bringing the narrative right up to the present point, his release from Calypso's enchantment and shipwreck and recovery by the sailing experts, the Phaeacians: the kind of the Ph's is so moved by Odysseus' tale that he literally orders each of the noblemen gathered in his hall for the banquet to make some lavish and totaly superfluous gift to O - golden tripods and cauldrons or something like that, like a bride receiving say 20 Cuisnarts - ever hear of a gift registry? - and you can just imagine the noblemen thinking Oh, great, another thing we've got to spring for - but wait, the king takes the sting out of this and says he'll make sure they all get paid back for this expense by raising a tax on the people. Great, terrific way to run a government, let alone a democracy, if it even was such a thing. I guess you could say the gifts to O are not only a tribute but a form of foeign aid, buying his allegiance and loyalty in case there's a future Mediterranean war, not so different from the "investments" we make in 3rd-world countries today. Anyway, they tansport him home to Ithaca - he sleeps the whole way, real first-class travel - and a bit of a hint that he's not so far from home after all - and they leave him with his stupid cauldrons on the shore. A very touching scene ensues when he wakes but does not recognize his homeland - an experience everyone knows, I think - things look similar but oddly misplaced on return after long absence and it's hard to recognize even familiar places, and faces. Athena comes in to guide him, however, and she gives him the "disguise" of making him look much older: aging his hair, clothes, musculature. One would expect that O would in fact truly be much older and not recognizable - after 20 years of war and hard travels. But there's something touching in how Homer has to "dress up" his hero: rather than say he's aged and looks like a 70-year-old man, he has the aging be a god-given disguise. We're all only mortals, but the Greeks cannot face up to the mortality of their heroes, for some reason, so since they can't be gods, they can be ageless - and the sign of aging can be explained away as just a disguise.