The Ancients - Odyssey | Cyclops, Circe and Calypso

Episode Date: July 12, 2026

What if the world’s most famous homecoming was really a nightmare of monsters, gods, and one very stubborn king trying to get back to Ithaca?In our new series Tristan Hughes and classicist Dr. Emily Hauser dive into Homer’s Odyssey, an epic of shipwrecks, sorcery, giants and divine meddling, where Odysseus is never quite sure whether the next shore will save him or destroy him.They trace his journey from the ruins of Troy to Calypso’s island, the Phaeacians, Circe, the Cyclops, and even the Underworld, asking what kind of hero Odysseus really is, and why his story has lasted for more than 2,500 years.Ahead of the release of Christopher Nolan's new epic film, get across the story and all the key characters and plot lines, including rich historical context.MOREThe IliadListen on AppleListen on SpotifyHomerListen on AppleListen on SpotifyWe're going on *TOUR* to Australia and New Zealand! - grab your tickets here.The Ancients is now on YouTube! Watch here: @TheAncientsPodcastPresented by Tristan Hughes. Edited by Natasha Hughes. The producer is Joseph Knight. Video producer is McKenna Fernandez. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic SoundsThe Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week PLUS early access ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Tudorburg Forest? What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? Or what made Alexander truly great? With a subscription to History Hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand-new release every single week covering everything from the ancient world to World War II.

Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe. Ten years after the fall of Troy, a king is still missing. His name is Odysseus, war hero, liar, survivor, and the man at the heart of one of the most influential stories ever told. Now, Homer's Odyssey is an epic poem over two and a half thousand years old, charting a heart-pounding journey filled with storm-tossed ships, with shape-shifting monsters, witchcraft, and a hero forever at the mercy of the gods' winds. I'm your host, Tristan Hughes, and today we're getting to know Homer and his leading man,

Odysseus, King of Ithaca. Guiding us through these treacherous waters is the classicist and storyteller Emily Hauser. We'll meet our cunning king, explore how Homer shapes him on the page, and follow him from the ruins of Troy through perilous seas and fateful encounters as he attempts to reach home. This is a Bronze Age world of warlord kings and an interconnected Mediterranean A story of survival and shipwreck Odysseus rides the waves between glory and disaster Never quite sure whether the next shore will save him

Or destroy him Welcome to the ancients Emily, it is great to have you on the show Thank you so much for having me It's a joy to be here And this is the first time a first time ever that we are recording an episode in our brand new ancient studio. You are our first guest here with a lovely bookshelf.

I've been admiring it. I have to say, I really love it. I feel like I've just kind of slotted straight in at home. Well, exactly. And this is the first of many. It's a new, new era for ancients. And what a topic to kick it all off. You've got to start with the Odyssey.

You've got to start with the Odyssey. I mean, first off, to summarise and to get people invested straight away, what is the Odyssey? Who is Odysseus? And why should we care about it today? Alongside the fact that we have this epic movie just around the corner all about it. Yeah, three short questions. But yeah, absolutely. So what is the Odyssey? Well, it's an epic poem. And what we mean by that is it's a long verse poem. It's written in hexameter. That's a particular type of metre that pertains to epic. So these are kind of all the definitions that will tell us something about the genre. And that's what it's kind of made up of, as it were. And then what it's doing is it's telling the story of Odysseus, its central hero,

and it's telling the tale of his voyage home. So we've got a long epic poem. It's being kind of sung probably in oral poetry. And it's telling the tale of a hero. And why it matters today after, you know, 2,000 years, more than 2,500 to 700 to 7, maybe even 3,000 years since it was first composed. and it still has so much meaning today. Yeah, I mean, it's easy to sort of say,

well, I've given you a definition that makes it sound like it's a kind of rather antiquated type of poem and it's about one hero, like, why should we care about this? I think there are a couple of different ways, really, of going into it. The first is that it's just a jolly good story. It really is just an amazing kind of story of adventure, of kind of heartbreak, loss and longing, kind of one man's discovery of himself and his journey home,

but also perhaps more deeply than, that. It's a story that has been taken for millennia to kind of mean something to people and people have read it in different ways. They've responded to it. So yes, Christopher Nolan is responding to it. But at the same time, he is kind of the end of just many different people who have had this poem as part their lives. And for me, that's a really good reason to keep reading it. And the person who we always go back to with the story of the Odyssey, who's seen almost as this author figure, but I appreciate it's much more complicated than that. I mean, who is this figure? of Homer. We had to get into the Homer question. Sorry. It's a difficult question. Yeah. No, no,

it has to be done. So I mentioned right at the beginning that we're looking at sung poetry here. So you might be thinking, well, what does that mean? When we're talking about the Odyssey, you've got a translation of the Odyssey over there. Oh, you got one right here. Or you got one right next to you, exactly. And that's a text, that's written. So what happened there? Well, initially, these were sung poems that would have been what we call composed in performance. So you would have had Bards, experts in this kind of poetry, who would have been singing and piecing together these poems every single time they sang for an audience. Now, those got passed down over hundreds of years and eventually somewhere probably between the 8th and the 6th centuries

BCE, those poems were written down. And that became what we now call, at least an early version of the Odyssey. Now, in the ancient world, that was ascribed to the poet Homer. So they thought that Homer was the poet of this particular version of the Odyssey. I think what we're seeing now is that actually is a lot more complicated than that. And we're seeing a poem that is the end product of centuries and centuries of what we call transmission. So that's handing down over the years between different bards. And instead of just talking about one homer, we're probably going to talk about a lot of homers, a lot of bars, a lot of different poets who were contributing to this epic. But this is what I find so interesting, this idea that for hundreds of years before,

this figure of Homer or maybe figures and so on and so forth, wrote down what we have as the Iliad and the Odyssey today, that you can go back into what we consider that the late Bronze Age, centuries before, which actually might be the origin point for when these stories were told. And then thinking just how different those stories could well have been back then. It's so exciting. And I actually love this because you think of archaeology

and you think of archaeology like it's digging up stones in the ground, but actually you can do an archaeology of these poems as well. And that's really amazing. So you can think about, okay, well, yes, what we've got is looking at kind of that eighth to sixth centuries BCE. But behind them, standing behind them, there are centuries of all tradition that, yes, as you say, go back to the late Bronze Age. So one of my favourite sort of clues, sort of almost fingerprints that we can find within the poems of the fact that they do look back to a late Bronze Age world. And by the way, when I say late Bronze Age, I'm talking about kind of the period from about 1700 to 1200 BCE. But those kinds of origins, we can see a fingerprint in the poems because there are some words that the poet uses that actually aren't words that they would have been using at the time when they were written down.

So one great one is the example of what Agamemnon gets called. So Agamemnon, Lord Men, King of Mycini, exactly, Miscini, rich in gold. And he gets called in the Homeric poems Anax Andron. That means Lord of Men. But that word Anax would initially have actually been pronounced Wannax. and that comes up in the writing the linear B tablets of the late Bronze Age. And that's a word that they were not using at the time that these poems were written down. So it's almost like a sort of like archaeological fragment that's been left behind in the poem.

Did you know that the ancient world's greatest monster killer? Well, he was also a man who left death and destruction all around him wherever he went. From the snake-filled crib at Thebes to the impossible labours that took him across the ancient Greek world, Heracles, or Hercules, if you prefer the Roman version, well, he's one of the most extraordinary figures in myth, a hero whose life was as thrilling as it was brutal. I'm Tristan Hughes, and I'm thrilled to be bringing Heracles' story to Australia this August on the Ancient's Live Tour.

I am going to be joined by the brilliant Alistair Blanchard, professor of classics and ancient history, and together we're going to dig into the myths, the geography, and the archaeology, behind the labours, from the Nemean lion and the Hydra to Troy and the tragic end of Greece's greatest hero. Now, tickets are on sale. We are coming to Sydney on the third, Brisbane on the fourth, Perth on the sixth, and finishing in Melbourne on the 9th of August. It's going to be epic. Tickets are selling fast, so book yours now so you don't miss out at fane.com.com.a.u. I cannot wait

to see you there. This style of literature from over two and a half thousand years ago, you know, this epic, these epic poems focused on these large than live kind of warrior figures, these heroes. Why was this this hero literature, these hero stories, why were they so popular in ancient Greece? Well, it's not just a question of popularity because what we're looking at here are epics that are in some sense preserving the memory of the past. So if you think about what's happening over the kind of hundreds of years that these oral stories are being handed down, at that point, after the end of the late Bronze Age, around 1,200 BCE, we get a massive civilisation collapse of that late Bronze Age. The Bronze Age collapse, exactly. And writing disappears. So all you have left at that point are the songs that tell the glory stories of the days that have gone and the men that went before you, the generations of kings to understand who you want. So for the Greeks, this was very much a project of understanding themselves and their history. And there's one little anecdote that I really love, which is that apparently the Greeks believed that if all of the Greeks who'd been returning from the Trojan War had died on their way home, then they actually, as a civilization, would have become extinct.

So it's really like a founding event for them. So yes, you're thinking about heroes, but this isn't quite the same as kind of thinking about the Marvel superheroes. Because these are heroes who help you to understand who you are in the world. They're also heroes you're probably going to be worshipping through hero cult. So you're really interacting with engaging with these heroes. But are they also, are figures like Odysseus, are they people that the Greeks, the people listening to these stories, they would think, I want to try and be like them. Are they trying, like our idea of a hero today is someone like you look up to, but at the same time,

like I quite like to be like them almost. I think a hero is actually quite different for the ancient Greek. Yeah, and it's really interesting to kind of plumb that difference. So the word is the same. So the ancient Greek word for heroes, heroes, it's where we get hero from. But there are kind of two things I think we can pull out from that. One is that a hero really means someone who is between the time when the gods walked the earth and the time when it was just a kind of impoverished time of mortals battling each other out.

So the heroes are demigods. They're sort of, you know, think of Achilles, who's the same. son of Thetis, a goddess, or Helen, who was the daughter of Zeus, we've got these sort of large and than life figures, and that is what a hero is. They're from an earlier time period that stretch back to the gods. But the other thing I mentioned is hero cult. So they are also people who, when they die, you are going to go and worship to ask them to maybe kind of intercede with you or to kind of give you a little bit of a kind of closer stepping point into the gods. So I'm not sure that you're ever thinking you're going to be like them. They are from a time that has gone,

but they can help you and there are people that you can call on in time. And they're not faultless at the same time as we're going to explore. There are lots of people who suffer ruin at the hands of heroes like this figure of Odysseus around them. Indeed. So that's the other thing is that heroes, and that's not really kind of implicit in the word, that's what we see from their action. Heroes are people who are actually deeply destructive to their communities.

And I feel like this is something that we kind of as modern readers when we see the word hero, we don't think about. But if you think about someone like Odysseus, When he gets home at the end of the Odyssey, he ends up killing pretty much everyone who is in his palace, all of the men, certainly. If you think of someone like Achilles who starts off the Iliad, he begins the Iliad by deciding to retreat from the war in order that his fellow Greeks get killed. So he gets glory. In fact, Achilles' name, there's one kind of version of the etymology of his name that actually means grief to the people. So a hero is like deeply destructive.

So the period in which this is all set, in the last episode we explored kind of the Bronze Age world in which the Trojan War is set and getting more understanding the kernels of truth behind these stories. And so we think of it as the late Bronze Age world, but the ancient Greeks, as you're saying, this age of heroes, when they were still contact between gods and men. But this is a time when we should be imagining Greece as not one country divided up between states, palaces, kings as well. But at the same time, the world in which it's part of, it's interconnected with other great powers, that's the late Bronze Age world we should be thinking of with stories like The Odyssey and Odysseus. Absolutely. So if we're thinking about looking at late Bronze Age history and obviously we've got to make the qualification here that we're not seeing kind of any easy continuity between, okay, like, well, the Odyssey is definitely depicting the late Bronze Age. What we're saying instead is that probably the late Bronze Age is one layer in a historical. memory that is kind of making up the Odyssey. But yes, what we're looking at when we're looking at the Bronze Age or indeed periods of history later is that we are not seeing a kind of unified

country that is called Greece, that call themselves Greeks. Instead, you've got what we call city states where you've got a kind of citadel, a kind of sitting at the heart of a larger kind of element of land. And the kind of famous ones in the late Bronze Age are, and this, we have this from kind of archaeology, from the evidence of different citadels. We've got Mycini, which is a big one on the Peloponnese. We've got Pylos on the southwest Peloponnese. We've got tyrants. So we've got these kinds of locations.

And what's really interesting is that many of those actually match up with the places that are some of the cool locations in Homer. And Odysseus, he is from this place called Ithaca. Now, where are we talking with Ithaca? So Ithaca is so difficult because, you know, I mentioned that we've got these lovely matchups like Mycini, which is an incredibly wealthy citadel. It's got lots and lots of gold in the archaeology. What does Homer say? He says it's a wealthy citadel, rich in gold.

So it's very easy to make kind of easy connections there. With somewhere like Ithaca, it reminds us, I think, to be a lot more careful. And the reason I say that, you might be thinking, well, hang on a minute, there is an island called Ithaca. Why is this not a problem? There is a modern island, Ithaki. The problem that we have with that is that in Homer, Homer actually gives a really detailed description of Odysseus's island of Ithaca.

He says that it lies low down to the sea. It is a group of four islands, the Ionian Islands, and that of those group of islands, it's furthest to the west. And the issue is that modern Ithaki is none of those. So we've got only three islands. It's actually mountainous and it's not the furthest to the west. So in terms of kind of where we're putting Odysseus, it throws a bit of a spanner in the works.

But we won't delve much into the archaeology, but do we get a sense at all that this island of Ithaca, wherever it was somewhere in those Western islands, a prominent player at the time that the Odyssey is set? Or is this very much an outlying power? It's more of an outlying power, I would say, because we get a couple of different sort of signs towards that. One is in fact what Odysseus and also his son Telemachus say about their island.

And they talk about it as being quite rocky, not very fertile, only good for goats, that kind of thing. So that's sort of their own testimony. It's not like somewhere where Mycini has this epithet, an adjective, which calls it rich in gold. We're not getting that. The other thing is in terms of the number of ships that it sends to Troy. And we're seeing, you know, Agamemnon, the kind of wealthy overlord of the Greeks. He is sending a lot of ships.

Odysseus is not kind of matching the same. So we're not looking at one of the principal powers in Homer's world. Let's introduce Odysseus now. his character before we explore his story in The Odyssey, because there's a lot of information about him before the events of the epic, you know, his namesake epic. Should we start with his origins first of all and his background? Do we know much about that?

Well, we do. We know about his parents. So, for instance, we know his father is called Laertes because we meet him in The Odyssey. He's at the end, he's sort of cracking up a little bit because his son is taking a while to get back home. We know about his mum and to Claire, who also has issues with grief,

because her son doesn't come home and we meet her in the Odyssey and the Underworld. So we've got a bit of his backstory there. We know that he grew up on Ithaca and in fact we even know the name of his enslaved nurse, Euryclair, because she is the one who we're told brought him up. She has an important role to play, which we'll find out later. And we also know that he got into quite a serious hunting accident when he was a boy in that he was out hunting a boar and he had a run in with a boar and he got a massive scar down his leg, which obviously is quite handy if you're trying to identify a hero who's been travelling for 20 years and comes back home. But that's kind of quite a significant part of his youth.

We then get to kind of the fact of, you know, into the Trojan War. He is sort of one of the suitors for Helen. So, you know, this is the first time. For Helen or Helen of Sparta, exactly. We're starting Helen of Sparta. So Helen of Sparta, most beautiful woman in the world. We've mentioned she's the daughter of Zeus. and she essentially kind of goes on the marriage market,

or at least her father puts her on, and makes a stipulation that there is going to be a kind of contest for her hands at all of the suitors flock to Helen. And in fact, it's Odysseus who has the idea that Helen should be the one to choose her own suitor. Does he expect that she's going to choose him? He doesn't. He expects that he's going to get a reward from Helen's father.

So this is Odysseus through and through. He's very cany, cany operator, exactly. And so he knows that if he suggests this very clever solution, he's going to get a reward. And his reward is the hand of Penelope, who is Helen's cousin. So that's another key figure in the story, Penelope, his wife. Exactly. And so how do we get to Odysseus then being involved in the Trojan War? What are the key events that we should think of primarily with Odysseus when it gets to that time when Helen of Sparta becomes Helen of Troy?

Well, exactly. And that's at the point, right, where Paris has come to Sparta, Paris, the Prince of Troy. he has basically been given Helen at his prize by Aphrodite, the goddess of love. And Odysseus then kind of is, as all of the Greeks are, in a bit of a pickle, because Menelaus, Helen's husband, who has been wronged, whose wife has been stolen from him by this Trojan prince, goes to Agamemnon, Lord of all of the Greeks, Agamemnon his brother, and he says, I need to get my wife back. And Agamemnon immediately says he's going to round up all of the Greeks.

Well, Odysseus quite clearly doesn't want to go. And this is quite interesting because many of the other Greeks are sort of quite happy to get on with the business, get themselves a little bit of glory. But not Odysseus. And what he does is he pretends to be mad. So he pretends that he can sort of try and get a way out of the conscription essentially. But this kind of trickster called Palamedes, who is every bit as tricky as Odysseus, realizes that he might be kind of pulling one over his eyes. And so he takes his baby, his baby son at that point, Telemachus. Penelope and Odysseus's son and he puts the baby's son in front of the plow,

where Odysseus is pretending that he's kind of gone crazy. He's ploughing sand, isn't he or something like that? Exactly. He's this kind of loony farmer. And Palamedes puts the baby in front of the plow. And of course, Odysseus steers his plow around the baby. And so Palamedes has proven that Odysseus is not mad and he can go to Troy. And is his hesitancy? Is there also, because I feel this is important for the story of the Odyssey itself,

is there a prophecy that if he goes to Troy, he's not going to be able to return to Ithaca for some time? There isn't, no. So there's no sense of him kind of knowing that this is going to be a long voyage home. So when he goes to Troy, I don't think anyone expects that it's going to be a 10-year war. And then, you know, similarly, I don't think anyone expects he's going to take 10 years to get back home again. So no, this is just the start of a long and sort of winding voyage. He does get other prophecies later in the story about where he's going next. but not right now. And should we briefly then mention also,

what are the key highlights of Odysseus during the Trojan War itself? The episodes where he is cunning, isn't it, more than anything, really takes centre stage? Yeah, I mean, it's easy to think of Odysseus as only the hero of the Odyssey because that's got his name stamped right out there on the front. But actually, he has quite a lot to do in the Iliad. Now, we've been talking about the Iliad and mentioning this name, but for those who aren't familiar, that is the other epic poem as scribes. to Homer in antiquity, the epic of the Trojan War, although it actually only tells quite a

small bit of the Trojan War. And what we're looking at in terms of these kind of epics that I mentioned, these songs that tell the stories of the Trojan War, there are actually a lot of other ones as well. So, yes, we've got the Iliad and we've got Odysseus in the Iliad. And what he does there is, it's not all cunning, actually, interestingly. He's quite, kind of, he's mentioned as being quite stocky, quite kind of strong. He does plenty of fighting of his own. Butch Odysseus. You know, absolutely. He does a little bit of a spy reconnaissance mission in a one book of the Iliad, goes out and kills a few Trojans at night. But then, of course, famously, and this is outside the Iliad, this is in another one of those epics, he is the one who comes up with the idea of the Trojan horse. The Trojan horse, okay, right.

And that is really where his kind of cunning comes into play, this idea that, you could get this massive build, a massive wooden horse, fill it with Greeks, pretend that you had left at all of the Greeks, their ships creep over the horizon, hide behind one of the eyes. islands. The Trojans think that this is an offering to the gods. They drag it into the city and then all of the Greeks leap out and they manage to raise Troy to the ground. So that is Odysseus' idea. And he's one of the masterminds there for behind the fall of Troy. And in other tragedies instead, after Achilles' death, there's the fight for his armour and Odysseus wins Achilles' armour as well. There is. And it's a really tragic episode because basically the Greeks start squabbling over who gets this great honour to have Achilles armour. It's also some of it made by the gods. So it's also incredibly kind of costly and precious armour. But the main kind of

ones who are kind of putting themselves forwards are Odysseus and Ajax, who is another Greek hero. And when Ajax loses, he just absolutely cannot deal with this kind of insult to his honour. And he actually ends up committing suicide really tragically. So Odysseus is very much embroiled in all of the kind of politics of the Trojan War and the Greek camp. And these stories, therefore, we have of Odysseus before the Odyssey, kind of setting him up for the Odyssey, it's made very hear then that he's a major character in the story. And yes, he's not a king on the same level as Menelaus or Agamemnon. We should still view him as a king with men as well that have followed him to fight in the Trojan War. Absolutely. We should see him as a king. We should see him as a warrior.

You know, he is not just the Odysseus of the Odyssey, who is the man who is trying to get home. That is what that particular epic poem is doing. That's what it's about. But when you put him in the Iliad, when you put him in a war epic, and you put him in a war epic, and you put him in a Trojan war, he is going to fight and he's going to be a warrior and a king, just like all of the other Greeks. So how do we think, how should we think of Odysseus then? Now we get to the beginning of the Odyssey. From all the other sources that survive, that give us more information about Odysseus'

role before he leaves Troy. Do we have an idea very much of the context in which he is leaving Troy? Is it very much after, is it a traumatic experience? Or was he feeling very good about himself before all of his successes and his cunning and so on. We don't have evidence from the literature about how he's feeling, but we know what's happening and what is happening is pretty dire. So when Troy has been burned to the ground, one of the key features of that burning is that the women of the Trojans all get enslaved and captured by the Greeks, and they are particularly keen to enslave women who are high status.

So they all get portioned out and Odysseus gets given Hecuba, who is the queen of Troy. So he gets an incredibly high status enslaved captive woman. So there is a huge tragedy there and that's something that later writers are really interested in. At the same time, what is happening in the kind of captor of Troy is deeply unsalitory. And one of these kinds of like moments where it just really shifts towards the dark side is when we get another Ajax. Now this isn't the same Ajax we talked about earlier. Helpfully, we call him the lesser Ajax just to differentiate him. But he ends up horribly raping Cassandra and he rapes her as she's clinging to the statue of Athena

and it's a horrible kind of moment but it's really a step too far for the Greeks and Athena who has always been a patron goddess of the Greeks is both kind of outraged by this but also deeply insulted because of what's happened to her shrine, her temple and so she lays a curse on the Greeks and this curse, this huge storm is that they are not going to get home or if they do

there's going to be real trouble And this is the beginning of the troubles that Odysseus encounters. This is the beginning and we're going to explore that next. Right, so let's get into the Odyssey itself. And I find it fascinating, but it kind of harkens back to what you were saying there. The first way that Odysseus is described right at the beginning is as polytropos. What do we mean by that? I mean, we could spend an entire episode on this one word.

Let's not. Let's not. Let's not. Let's not. Let's not. But it's fascinating. So let's start with the basics of what it is. It's an adjective or what we would call an epithet. Now, these epithets are basically words that are attributed to particular characters, particular words, nouns. So you get them kind of often put together. So you get like rosy finger, dawn is a really famous one.

Wine Dark Sea. And here we've got polythropos odysios. So we've got Odysseus and here is his epithet polythropos. Now what does that mean? What's it telling us about him that he is getting. this tag as it were. It's kind of made up of two different parts. Polly means much or many. Tropos means turning or turned. So he is the man who makes many turns, but he is also the man who is much turned. And what I love about that is it suggests he's someone who's cunning. He can

make things happen for himself. He can make turns. He can make voyages. But he's also someone who is the object of the wrath of the gods, someone who is turned about on his. his way home. So we start the opening of the Odyssey with this man who already is kind of resisting definition. He is both someone who makes things happen, but also things happen to him. Gosh, that's interesting. That adds more complex to you to his characters straight away. And you would then expect that the Odyssey will begin well at Troy. You know, he's going to start his journey home and then it all goes horribly wrong. That's not quite the case though, is it? This is a non-linear narrative. It really is. And it can be sort of quite confusing. You, a little bit like a different.

you're getting sort of tossed and turned about in the narrative. But that's part of kind of, I think, what makes it such an exciting adventure to go on, because you are sort of joining Odysseus as he tries to wend his way home. So, yeah, we start the Odyssey, in fact, very close to the end of his travels, where he is being kept on the island of Calypso, at least that's what he says, that he's being kept prisoner, her island called Ogidja. And he's trapped there for seven years. And Athena storms onto Mount Olympus and says to Zeus,

it's time that we let Odysseus go. Will you not take pity on him? And Zeus ultimately relents and he says, okay, I will send Hermes the messenger of the gods. And Hermes wings his way towards Odysseus's island. And that's kind of the point where we get into the story where, okay, Odysseus is going to be set free from the place where he has spent most of his time on his return

and maybe he's going to start getting home. And we do have to mention the prequel before this as well because otherwise people will say, well, what about those first four books in their four books? Or actually, you don't really talk about Odysseus at all. You focus on his home on Ithaca and the troubles of his son, Telemachus, as well. So should we briefly mention what this is as well? I feel this important that we do.

Well, what's interesting is that, and this is incredibly kind of advanced narrative making, because we've got two narratives happening at the same time. As Athena decides, hey, she set Odysseus's release in motion, Hermes is flying down from Mount Olympus. At the same time, Athena then leaves, and she goes to Ithaca. And she lands on Ithaca, disguised as a man, and she meets Telemachus, the son of Penelope and Odysseus. Now, by now he is a teenager.

He's been waiting for his dad the whole way through the Trojan War, and then you've got the 10 years also of the return, or nearly 10 years at this point. So, you know, he's coming close to kind of being a man. And we get the first few books of the Odyssey while Hermes is on his way to go and get Odysseus. Right. It's just like in real time, kind of thing.

In real time. At the same time, we get Telemachus's story, and we get Telemachus, going on his own little sort of mini voyage. And I kind of love this because he really wants to be like his father. So instead of doing an Odyssey, he's Telemachus, so he does a Telemic. And he goes to Sparta and he goes to Pilos. And he goes basically to the big kings of times trying get information about where his father is.

But I always think he's really clever that because it does that. It introduces you to the fates of the other big figures that you would have heard from the Trojan War. So you hear in that story the bad fate of Agamemnon when he's murdered by either his wife or his her lover, Augustus when he gets back to Mycini. Helen of Sparta. Yeah, she's Sparta again now. Also, Helen of Egypt, though, right, as well. That's another story to go down that we won't today.

She's had a bit of a detour on the way home. Exactly. And then Minolaus and Nestor, wise sage old Nestor, liking his sacrifices on the beaches and his chariots and all that. So you get all the, it's like almost like a backstory. Like those first four books as well as Telemachus is doing his thing. By the way, this is what happened to the other figures before we get to the main man, Odysseus himself. It is. It's a backstory, but what it's also doing is it's also pegging itself

into all of those other epics that would have been told about these figures. So I mentioned that there were all of these other songs and poems circulating. And these were called the returns, the Nostoi in Greek. And so basically you would have had a return epic of Menelaus, you know, the king of Sparta. You'd have had a return epic of Nesta. And we get these kind of in miniature as Telemachus goes round. He's almost collecting little epic tales of all of all. of the Greeks and how they returned home. Gosh, okay. Well, let's go. We also mention the other big theme,

and you touched on it already, the likes of Athena, Hermes, Zeus, and so on. The massive role that the gods will also play in this epic, in the return, in the homecoming of Odysseus. Absolutely. I mean, you can't talk about the Odyssey without talking about the gods. And I think it's really important to remember we start with a council

of the gods, you know, trying to get Odysseus at home. So they are part and parcel of the return. I mean, we have them popping up in so many different ways. For the Odyssey, probably the main one is Athena. She is the daughter of Zeus, goddess of war and wisdom. And she really takes it upon herself to be kind of the proactive, protector, guider of Odysseus and making sure that he gets home. And he really has quite a kind of intimate relationship with her,

where they have conversations back and forth, a really kind of strong sense of these being two quite similar characters, you know, goddess of wisdom and he's quite a cunning chap. And so they really can kind of see that and sympathise with each other. But you also get other gods and also kind of lesser gods as well coming in like the nymph, Calypso or Circe, who is the daughter of Helios, the sun god. So all kinds of other gods as well. Well, on the ancients, we're going to very much keep true to the original order of the Odyssey.

So we've mentioned that telemiki. And you've already highlighted how the start of Odysseus' story is not, at the Trojan War, it's actually several years later when he's on this island and being held there by this figure of Calypso. Let's introduce Calypso. Who is this figure? So Calypso's great. Her name means the concealer in Greek. It comes from Calutin, which means to hide or conceal. So already we're getting this sense that she's sort of hiding Odysseus away on her island. He is there for seven years. We find that out as Hermes flies down onto the island of a Gidja and demands that she let Odysseus go. And Calypso makes this extraordinary request where she says, essentially, I want him to stay

with me and I would make him immortal. If I could, if he would stay, I'd make him immortal. So, you know, a real sense that Calypso wants Odysseus to stay behind. But we see Odysseus on the shore of her island, weeping, thinking back to Ithago, thinking of Penelope. So he really kind of does want to go home. And eventually she exceeds to Hermes' request and she gives him what he needs, which is he needs the tools to make a raft and he needs a sail and clothes to get on his voyage. Right. So this isn't kind of a sneak away escape. This is Calypso gives in because the gods have said, it's enough. It's been seven years now. You can't keep him any longer.

Yeah. Well, exactly. And there's almost a sense of kind of the right divine order of things being upended. You know, a goddess does not live with a mortal is kind of what Hermes is saying. fact Calypso speaks back and she says, well, actually there's plenty of examples I can give you. So she's quite sassy about her response. But the sense is, no, the hierarchy has spoken, Zeus has spoken, and Calypso kind of has no choice but to let Adidasio's go. And do you think because the story of Odysseus proper in The Odyssey starts there, that we're meant to have that kind of that mist, that's lack of clarity as to the many trials and tribulations he'd suffered up to that point. And then you're kind of, you're left knowing that that will be revealed in time, how he got to Calypso's Island. Like it's deliberately, it starts at Calypso's Island and leaves that what happened before shrouded in a mystery to be revealed at a later time. Yeah, I mean, what's difficult is you're thinking probably about where the audiences are coming to this from.

And probably audiences who are dealing with this and listening to this story, they kind of already know where it's going. And that gives a flexibility to the storytelling because it means, you know, you've already started. the epic. So the epic begins with what we call a proem, which is essentially the opening few lines that kind of set out the stakes and the narrative and where it's going. And that sort of covers all of the trials and tribulations that he went through, all the cities he sacked, the men he lost as he was trying to get them, their voyage home. So we kind of know that that's happened, but we don't know the details. And it's a beautiful moment of sort of like, well, you've got to wait. And when do you have to wait until you've got to wait until Odysseus tells the story himself. And we're getting there, aren't we?

So the story is he's allowed to build a raft and does he escape? He does, yeah. So he gets off Calypso's island. He has another massive storm. Obviously storms on the Mediterranean very much a feature of Odysseus' journey. And he gets washed up on another island, which is the island of the Fyatians. The Fyatians. Okay, I've heard of the Phoecians.

Never heard of the Fyatians. Yes. So very confusingly, their island in Homer is called Scherrier. So it doesn't have anything to do. So I like to call it the island of the Theatians just to kind of, you know, keep ourselves on the same page. But yes, so he washes up on this island completely naked. He's lost his raft.

He's got nothing. And as he washes up on the shore, who should happen to be there at that moment? But the princess of the Featians, Nausica. Nowzaka. Okay, I've heard the word Nausicaa before. Yes. And so what happens next?

So Nausica, a kind of beautiful moment, has basically kind of been sent out with her dowry clothes. And she essentially has been packing up all of these beautiful clothes that she is going to take with her when she gets married. And she's just kind of had this intimation

from Athena that it might be a good idea to take these to the shore and wash them in case she gets married anytime soon. And she meets a naked man on the beach. And now Sikar, of course, is very much taken by this and starts thinking, well, potentially,

this is my man. This is my man. Odysseus, it must be said, does nothing to dispel that. And he very much kind of plays on that. He says, you know, whoever manages to get you and kind of manages to marry you will be very lucky indeed. So there's definitely an element of kind of courtship going on here. In any case, Nousaka offers him clothes. She has clothes with her. That's lucky. And she leads him back to the city of the Feations. And there he has to supplicate.

That means throw himself at the mercy of the queen whose name is Areti. Exploring kind of the kernels of truth behind these stories, I sometimes love looking on a map. where people like to think that these islands were in the ancient Mediterranean. Do we have any idea where they place the island of Calypso and then the island of the Fyacians? So Odyssey hunting has been a favourite sport of Homeric scholars. And in fact, many kind of amateurs alike over the centuries. So lots of people have kind of engaged in trying to find these different locations.

You find all kinds of different examples given. So for Calypso, sometimes you get Malta, for instance, as one of the islands that's put forward for the island of the the Fyatians, Corfu, which is obviously just north of where we've got the modern day Ionian islands. He's not far away by that point.

It's not that far away. And in fact, you know, this is his last stop before he gets back to Ithaca. To me, I feel like that kind of games maybe slightly reduces the sense that we are still in fantasy land, you know? And this is when he comes

to the palace of the king, whose name is Alkinuas, this palace is surrounded by an orchard with fruit that never dies, you know? it's fruiting all through the year, that idea that we are in some kind of mystical paradise that does not exist in the real world. I think we want to kind of make sure that we remember

that this is very much a kind of other land that he then gets drawn back into the real world of humans. No, it's very true and to highlight that. But I mean, I do, and I will ask those questions again and again, because at the same time, the real kind of longevity of those stories that they have for actual real ancient populations who lived in those areas that become associated with key parts

So let's say the Odyssey would up with the sirens later and so on, that they believed that they lived in that kind of area of the world. And then it becomes a part of their identity as well. I love that part of the story. It absolutely does. And I think you're right. And that kind of goes back to what I said at the beginning, that this is a poem that people have lived with. And I really love that, that it's something that has become a part of people. So yes, if we're talking about the Odyssey itself and we're talking about what it's doing for the narrative, maybe we can sit in fantasy.

But if we can think about what it's meant to people, then absolutely, let's do that. So the island of the Fyatians, wherever it is, princess expecting to be married, finds naked man on beach, gives naked man clothes, naked man seems to be a bit of courtship there as well, Odysseus. And then she takes him to, as you do with every naked man who washes up on the beach, takes him straight away to her mum, to the queen. Absolutely, to her parents. And her mom says, why is he wearing something that I've woven? because obviously she has woven the tunic that he's wearing. So yes, but no, that's what Odysseus needs. He needs a ship home.

And in order to get that, he has to ask this kind of biggest favour from the queen of the feations, who we're told is the one who really kind of makes all of the decisions in the land, which is really interesting. And he asks for hospitality. This is a key theme that runs throughout the Odyssey, this theme of Xenia hospitality. the fact that if you have nothing, you can throw yourself on someone's mercy and you can ask them for something.

And that's exactly what the feations do. So Areiti immediately gets lovely gifts for him, make sure that he has a bath. They give him a feast. They have a bard, play songs for him. They give him games and athletics. And at that point, they also then send him home on a brilliant ship that actually can, you know, go by itself.

It doesn't even need oars. So, you know, they are the paradigmatic good hosts. And so the king is there as well But he seems to almost be second fiddle Compared to the Queen he is there as well We're told that he is less important in making this decision But he absolutely is the one who is initiating the feast The Games and is very much a part of it

But no Nausica both Nausicaa and Athena Are very clear that Aretti is the one who has the power here Interesting and so this is clearly the last episode Before Odysseus returns home They're the people who see Allow him to make that last journey To his homeland And so, as we've been hinting at, this is the perfect setting when he's being treated by the royal family.

If I'm thinking of the Bronze Age world, maybe in a palace-like building, gathered around the central half after a lovely feast, a lovely food. And is that the setting when you have Odysseus? He reveals his story. Yeah, well, absolutely. And he doesn't actually mean to reveal his story. But it's actually quite interesting. I mean, he is the master of disguise, right? So he doesn't necessarily kind of want to give away who he is.

And actually, in terms of the rules of Xenia of hospitality, you don't actually have to reveal your name. Your host doesn't need to ask your name. But what happens is I mentioned a bard, and the bard sings a song and a tale of Troy, and he talks about a quarrel between Achilles and Odysseus. And Odysseus hears this, and he weeps, and he weeps like a woman whose city has been captured.

And so we're now thinking back to all of those Trojan women who we encountered on the shores of Troy who were being captured by the Greeks. And he feels their grief. So Odysseus is hearing a bard telling the story that was already being told of him whilst he'd been away. Yeah, yeah. He hears his own story being told.

And it moves him to tears. And at that point, the king, Alkenoos, asks Odysseus, why are you weeping and what is your name? And that's when Odysseus then says, I am Odysseus, I come from Ithaca, and he gives the story of his travels. And that is what we're going to explore next. So Odysseus has revealed his identity at this time. And this is when we get the real meat of the story. This is when he now, we start to hear all the trials and tribulations that he's faced since the Trojan War.

This is when we start to actually get the narrative itself, can we say. Yeah. And it's interesting because this is something that. that most people I think who haven't read the Odyssey don't realize, they think the Odyssey will be the story of Odysseus' wanderings and we'll start sort of in Troy and we'll go through. But in fact, we have to wait eight books. It's not until the ninth book out of 24 books of the Odyssey

that we start getting actually the story of what happened after Odysseus left Troy. And when we say a book, we mean, these are hundreds of lines of text, aren't they? Yeah. I mean, that's later. So basically what happened is, as the poems were written down, later scholars then decided, okay, we're going to cut a book here, a book there. But at the same time, yes, hundreds of lines of poetry that we're looking at before we start getting Odysseus giving his story. And it's kind of miraculous because we're actually not just

hearing this from a poet. We're purportedly hearing this from Odysseus, from his own lips. And so it's really kind of exciting as a storytelling moment that Odysseus basically becomes his own bard. It's a storyteller within a story, you know, kind of thing, which is lovely. Yeah. Okay, so how does it all begin? So we have Odysseus leaving Troy. He does a couple of raids on his way down. Because he's not alone at this point.

He's not. At that point, he's got all of his ships, all of his men. If you remember back to the proem of the Odyssey, it's talking about him trying to get a return home for his men. So it's not just him here. It's also him trying to kind of get all of his men home. We've also got HECuba. I was going to say, do they actually mention HECUBA in the Odyssey? Not in the Odyssey.

No. but we've got a later tradition where Hecuba actually dives off the boat and turns into a dog. This is in perhaps to no one's surprise Greek tragedy where things can get a little bit spicy. But, you know, Hecuba isn't mentioned here, but that's part of his return. In any case, we've got a couple of raids. He does some sort of typical Homeric swashbuckling where he burns down a city, kills men, enslaves women, takes some booty, some wine, and then he carries on on his voyage. I mean, quite frankly, in the kind of the Bronze Age world, well, the kernels of truth in Bronze Age world, that seems quite relatable to what we have from the text of what Mycenaeans probably did.

So that feels more relatable, more historical. Yeah, at that point, we're still in the real world. Yeah. But then. But then what happens? We enter into the world of fantasy and the world of reality. And we go through a couple of different stops, basically, that Odysseus does on his way. We have the lotus eat, where Odysseus and his men eat the flower of the lotus.

that induces forgetfulness. Now, obviously, that is probably the most dangerous thing you can do on your way home. Yes, how do we sail again? Yeah. How do we get home, yes. Exactly. So Odysseus has to be the one to make sure that he's sort of bringing his men back into line and getting them back onto their ships.

And that's one of the adventures they have. We've got some giants. We've got the Lysdragonians who kind of severely kind of worry the crew and pose a difficulty for them because they throw massive rocks and boulders down at the ships. And then we get some of the more famous episodes. So we get, for instance, the Cyclops. Yes. So Listergonese, I didn't really know about the Listergonese at all.

But they are giants, but they are different to the Cyclops. These are two different episodes. Absolutely. They are completely different. So the Listergonians are kind of a civilization, a dwelling of giants in themselves. The Cyclopies, they live on their own island. And they are kind of differentiated by having this one eye. They are sons of Poseidon.

and they all kind of lived there together and heard their sheep on this kind of rather idyllic-sounding island, to be honest. And so Cyclopees is the plural and Cyclops is the singular. Excuse this. The Cyclops is. Because so many people say Cyclops is bad. If you want to get nerdy. Cycliopee is.

I know. Yes, Cyclopee is plural of cyclops. Three in total? So yes, we've got multiple brothers. I mean, I think it's three in the later myths. I don't know if Homer actually specifies whether it's three or not. But the one that we're concerned with is called polyphemus. Let's delve into the myth of the Cyclops and Polyphemus then, and Odysseus is running with them.

So what happens? How does he and his men, how do they end up on the island of Polyphemus, the Cyclops? Yeah. Well, they're on their way trying to get back home. They see a beautiful island that looks very lush and verdant and, you know, they need somewhere to sleep. So they run their boats up onto the shore and they go up and explore Odysseus, an inveterate explorer. and they find a cave that is full of lovely, yummy cheeses. And so they go in and they help themselves to the cheese.

Now, we were talking about Senea earlier, and we were talking about good hospitality. This is a very bad act of being a guest because you have not waited for your host to come home. You've eaten his food. You haven't kind of asked for permission. So Odysseus and his men already doing something quite transgressive. The Cyclops, Polyphemus, then comes back.

to find this group of men in his cave, having consumed some of his cheeses. And he then ends up doing something, which is also not very good hosting, which is that he eats some of Odysseus's men. So we've got kind of transgressions of Xenia on both side. There are real problems here. Odysseus then has to work out how to get out of the cave. He comes up with this very cunning idea of a steak, which he heats up in the fire and drives through the Cyclops' eyes.

Yeah, this is the brutal part, isn't it? It's really, really brutal. And there's a horrible simile. basically comparing what he does when he puts the stake in the eye to a drill going in and sort of, you know, it's just, it's a really, really very kind of traumatic moment. But the cyclops is blinded

and then Odysseus essentially manages to trick his way out by hiding underneath the sheep. And as the cyclops' sheep go out into pasture, he and his men cling underneath and they go out through the door. And isn't there this, I don't know if this is the latest story, but I always remember it in that the cyclops, he opens the door to his cave and he feels the sheep.

He does. Yeah. The tops of the sheep and doesn't feel the men who are clinging to the undersides of the sheep as they go out. That's exactly it. So this is the source of Odysseus' cunning because the Cyclops is blind and he feels the tops, but he doesn't feel the men beneath. So Odysseus escapes the cave of his men. Hasn't escape the island yet, though, because there's still a bit more to the story, isn't there? It sounds like it's all good, right? It sounds like he's got out of the island.

He's defeated the monster. Perhaps he hasn't been the best guest, but that can all be lost. A few men as well, so it's not completely brilliant. Not great leadership. But then he's out on the ocean in his boat and he cannot resist having one last vaunt, one last boast. Now, what he did when he was with the Cyclops was that he tricked him by saying when Cyclops asked his name. We've seen that between guest and host when Alkinuas asked for Odysseus his name. The Cyclops also asked for his name.

He says, my name is no one. And so, of course, when the Cyclops gets blinded, he then shouts out to his brothers, no one has blinded me. Very, very clever trick. And then they're like, well, great, thanks for telling us on with our life. So very, very clever of Odysseus. However, he cannot resist having his name told. And so he turns around in the ship and he shouts back to the Cyclops that he should know that the person who tricked him was Odysseus, son of Laertes. And do you think that you mentioned much earlier about the word hero and

how this figure can also bring around a lot around a lot of devastation to those around him. Yeah. That act in particular, his men probably didn't know at the time. They probably thought, ha ha, yeah, you tell him, you tell him Odysseus what you've just done. No idea that he's just doomed us all, hasn't he? He has. And exactly, we talked about Odysseus and heroes being destructive to their communities. I mentioned the men that he kills when he gets back to Ithaca, but he also loses all

of his men. You know, every single man he went from Ithaca with him to Troy gets lost apart from Odysseus. So this is not really what I think we would call a heroic homecoming that we're going to see. And you're absolutely right. It's that moment of pride, what the Greeks called hubris, which is where you've got this excessive pride

that kind of leads almost to punishment by the gods. And of course that's exactly what happens because then the Cyclops has the key piece of information that he needs, which is the name in order to curse Odysseus. And how does he curse Odysseus? Yeah, well, he goes straight to his father, Poseidon. It's good if you've got a daddy god. And he asks Poseidon to curse Odysseus in his voyage back home.

And because he can name him, then Poseidon immediately knows who he's looking for. And that is then the reason why Odysseus has all of these awful wanderings. And lots of storms, I'm guessing as well. Plenty of storms, plenty of trouble. Yeah, Poseidon knows how to stirrupacy. No, I know there are lots of, as we use the words, T&D, lots of trials and tribulations that follow. I like us to get to Circe as another kind of big episode.

But are there key episodes that we need to highlight before we get to Circe between the Cyclops and her island? I think the main one is Circe. The next one kind of in the voyage, in terms of those big hitters in terms of who really matters for Odysseus's voyage home. So how do they arrive on this island?

Set the scene before we introduce this figure of Circe who they meet there. It's a very similar situation to the island of the Cyclopees. And I think at this point Odysseus and his men must be starting to feel that there's a sort of haunting similarity to these dangerous islands that they keep rocking up on. But yes, they come up to shore and a party of them decide, well, first they go hunting and they shoot a stag and that's all well and good. But then a party of them

decide to explore a little bit further into the island. And they go up, they wander up into the island and they come across this beautiful palace in the middle of nowhere in the island. And it's got sort of wolves and lions prowling around the door, already kind of rather strange. They hear a woman singing inside and they hear the clicking and the clacking of a loom. And as they go in, they are welcomed by this beautiful goddess, Circe. She takes them in. She gives them kind of food and drink. And as they kind of consume this, they then get turned into pigs.

So once they eat something, that's the secret formula. Exactly. That's the secret formula. She does have a wand that she kind of strikes them with, like a switch almost, and they kind of go trotting off into the pig's eyes. However, one man stayed behind, he saw all of this and he runs back to Odysseus and reports. You mentioned a wand there. Yes. The classic association with Circe is that she's a witch. Yeah.

Is that accurate? Is that fair to say? Well, look, she turns men into pigs. Yes, that's quite a big indicator. It's quite witchy. And certainly later generations. later, kind of readers of Homer thought that she was a witch. I think what's really interesting is that, in fact, in Homer, she's never called a witch.

The word that is used for her is an adjective. It's polu pharmacos. Now, there's polu again, which we heard. Yes, much. Much, exactly. And pharmacos is where we get pharmacy from is the word for drug. And a drug, just like in English, it can be good or it can be bad. And so she's someone who knows a lot about good drugs and bad drugs.

Any drugs, Searcy. Exactly. Exactly. And I think that changes things because that's not really a witch. That's someone who knows how to take herbs and use them to do what she wants to do with them. And just as she can turn the men into pigs later when she transforms them back, she uses a kind of ointment. So she's again using her drugs. And when they turn back into men, they're actually much younger and better looking than they were before.

Which, you know, I've signed me up. I want to know where to buy that one from. Absolutely. But Searcy, I think, you know, she could do good things. as well. And so we've got to complicate that a bit. And so halfway through the story with that one person who isn't turned into an animal who goes back to Odysseus to say, hey, there's something weird happening up there. What follows from there? How does Odysseus decide to try and tackle this new threat, this new issue? Yeah. I mean, I think there would be two ways to go with there.

There would be like, you know, let's get the hell out of here or, you know, go and save the men. Odysseus is perhaps more on the, I'm really curious and want to know what's happened kind of spectrum. So he heads in and he decides he wants to kind of find out. Now, you know, everyone is saying, don't go. This is too dangerous. But he heads off. On his way, he is visited by Hermes, the messenger god who we saw earlier coming to Calypso's island delivering the message from Zeus. Now Hermes here has come to help Odysseus and he has essentially come to also warn him that Circe has this knowledge of herbs.

and he gives him a herb in return. And this is a herb called, in the Greek, Moli. We're not entirely sure what it was. We think it might be some kind of early sort of wild garlic type thing. So it's meant to have black roots and a white flower. And he's told to consume this and this will protect him from Searcy's drugs. And so is it the case that he then happily, well, confident that he's got this protection, goes to Searcy's home, Cersie welcomes him in

and then he starts eating tries to tap him on the shoulder with the wand that's the idea of God and they're like, it's not working It's not working. Exactly. No, he's very confident because he knows that he's got this help from the gods and then at that point yeah she's sort of okay well he hasn't turned into a pig

she then recalls a prediction that has been made to her that Odysseus will come and so this has been prophesied and she kind of recognises he draws his sword as Hermes has told him to you kind of rushes at her And she sort of says, no need for that, you know, let's go to bed. And he says, well, not before you've turned my men back into men from pigs. So she does that.

And then they go to bed. And he stays on her island for a year having sex and having lots of nice food. Right. Okay. All of a sudden, the desire to get back to Penelope as quickly as possible is not quite there in the story. And in fact, he actually, it's really interesting because we talked about the lotus eaters, the danger of forgetting. Well, here he does forget. And here it's actually his men who remind him.

at the end of a year, remember about getting back home, Odysseus? But his men have been there as well, have they? They've just been there. Yeah, they've been there as well. Yeah, but it's them who remind him. It's not Odysseus. Interesting. So that's a whole year on Circe's Island.

So she's a big part of the narrative. Is it a couple of books or? Well, she's a really big part of the narrative because she's the one who gives him the instructions about where he needs to go next. Right. So actually he goes on from her. He does his next bit and then he comes back to her again. So it's a really important, she's a really important kind of

motivated for this. And so where does she tell him, if it's not like Calypso, not seven years, but she agrees that Odysseus has got to go. Aditi's men say, come on, we've got to go now. Where do they go next? What's the next big episode? Well, his next thing that he's got to do, and this is what Searcy sets him up for, is the underworld. This, I think this is the final big episode we'll cover in this episode. Yeah. Yes, let's explore this, going to the underworld. Well, and Circe is a really appropriate one to point him towards the underworld, because she is a goddess who is, as we've seen, implicated in kind of herbal magic. She's a goddess who is implicated in sex and she's also a kind of goddess of death. And she points him towards the land of the dead.

And she says, if you want to get back home to Ithaca, you need to go and you need to commune with the spirits of the dead, above all, Tyresias, who is a blind prophet, who is the one who knows more than anyone else and he will be able to tell you how to get back home. And how does one do this? Yeah, it's pretty specific. And Circe is the one who knows. instructions. So luckily for Odysseus, she knows the way. So she tells him kind of where to sail. She tells him what to do basically to get to the banks of the River Acheron. The river Acheron, okay. The place that you've been to recently as well. I have been to it and you know, I have to say very, very beautiful. But you know, in the ancient

myth there were nine different rivers feeding into the underworld or in the underworld. And the Acheron was one of the rivers that actually was in kind of the world of the mortals and then kind of, you know, dipped its way through towards into the underworld. So it's a sort of portal, a place where death and life meet. So go to the banks of the Acheron, draw up your ships there, and on the shore he needs to do a very specific ritual where he needs to kind of dig a pit, he needs to slaughter some animals and he needs to put them with their heads down into the pit so that the blood trickles down into the ground. Now, of course, this is what spirits of the underworld want, because the spirits of the underworld are completely lifeless. They have no form.

They have no substance. They don't even have any voice. They just kind of squeak away. So what they want is to be able to drink blood and get some of that kind of vital energy back into them. And so he's got to get that blood in there. He's got to summon the spirits of the underworld. He's got to ward them all off until Tyresias comes.

And when Tyresias drinks the blood, then he can speak to him and Odysseus will know his way home. So this is Odysseus doing kind of like vampiric necromancy. It's necromancy. Yeah, it is. It's absolutely necromancy. And it's a really kind of interesting moment where Odysseus also gets to meet not just the figures of his own past,

but also the figures of the Trojan War past. So we're also looking back to the Iliad. You know, we talked about those return stories that are kind of encapsulated in the early books of the Odyssey. Well, here we have the stories of the Trojans, sorry, the Greeks who died in the Trojan War and what happened to them after Troy. So is Agamemnon one of them, that he sees? Exactly.

We've got kind of the big trio. We've got Agamon. We've got Ajax, who is obviously very annoyed about what. happened with the armour of Achilles and he doesn't talk to Odysseus at all. He just sults and talks off in the opposite direction. And then we've got Achilles. So we've got the sort of triad. And then Tyrese, so you can have that crescendo of big heroes. Well, we start with Tyresias. Sorry, okay, you do actually start with Tyresius. Yeah, absolutely. So we've got Tyresias. And actually, there were a couple before Tarisias, which is interesting. One of them is basically one of

Odysseus's shipmates. He managed to get himself a bit drunk when he was on Circe's island, fell off a roof, didn't get buried properly and wants to ask Odysseus for burial. But then Tauracus comes in and he's really kind of the reason that we're there. And Toreseus, very oddly, doesn't really, I think, you know, the reader, the audience listening to Homer, we're expecting kind of a roadmap, right? This is how you get back to Ithaca from here. And instead what he does is he basically tells him what is happening on Ithaca. He gives him information and he tells him what is going to happen in the future to him.

So typical profit. He kind of just goes completely off-peast and it's all very kind of vague. But it's really important because this is the time where Odysseus finds out what is happening in his halls at home in Ithaca, the suitors who were basically laying siege to his wife, his wife kind of holding out, Penelope waiting for him to return. And he also finds out that when he gets back to Ithaca, he's actually going to have another voyage again. Yes, because we mentioned, we actually haven't really talked about the suitors at all because we're going to cover that in the next episode. Yeah. But highlights, can you mention now kind of what these suitors have been?

been doing. So what is this information that is revealed to Odysseus about what is happening in his palace, you know, to his servants, to his wife, what's been going on? What gives him the motivation to try and get home then after that? Well, this is the big problem that Odysseus is dealing with. And it's essentially, we've been talking about these kinds of different stories that are bubbling away at the same time. And we saw Telemachus go off on his own little journey. But as he was going off on his journey, we had a glimpse into what was happening at Ithaca. And while Odysseus was spending his 10 years in the Trojan War, his 10 years of his voyage home, at the same time, Penelope has been basically sole queen of Ithaca. She's had a son who is too young to rule,

and all of the surrounding kings, both from Ithaca and from the surrounding islands, have come and have basically kind of sat in the palace, have consumed all of their food, their drink, have been kind of behaving extremely badly, probably also kind of raping the enslaved women within the household, and all of them demanding that Penelope. Penelope is going to make one of them her husband. So she's really been holding out for a long time. Now, for Odysseus, this is a massive threat to him, because it's not just a threat to his kind of claim to Penelope.

It's also a threat to his claim for the kingship of Ithaca. So he has to get home pronto to make sure that he's going to get back into that kingship. And that is, I mean, that's the motivation. That's almost his revelation at this moment at the Akron with Tyresias, which lays, well, sets the foundations. for that next, should we say, is it half of the Odyssey still to come? And it's not a coincidence that is happening almost exactly halfway through. So we're in book 11 at this point and there's 24 books.

So we are about halfway through and we are going to kind of switch around through that halfway. And Odysseus is catalyzed from someone who is kind of wandering aimlessly to someone who has been told by a prophet, this is what is happening and this is where you need to go. So we've got everything from serpents to sirens to whirlpools to the great homecoming itself. still to happen. This is the midway interval in the story of the Odyssey. And it's going to be the interval in our chat today. Emily, this has been so much fun so far. And it just goes to me to say thank you so much for coming on the show. I'll see you shortly for part two. It's been great. Let's continue the Odyssey.