Homer - The Odyssey - Episode 1 - Greek Gods, Greek Heroes And One of The Oldest Epic Poems Of All Time!

 

Hi, I’m Christy Shriver and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us. 

 

And I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  This week we embark on a seafaring adventure across the seas and through time to the ancient world of the Greeks to meet  someone who some have said is the greatest poet to have ever lived- Homer- and his second epic- The Odyssey.   

 

To be honest, I think I agree with that assessment. 

 

  That’s high praise. How does one get to that level? 

 

I know.  It really is.  I guess, one way of looking at it may be attrition- how many poets do we still read from 3000 years ago.  That’s not a large club.   We certainly don’t have anyone in the English language canon that is competitive, but it’s more than Homer basically invented the coming of age novel with the Telemachaie; he invented the flawed hero, as I choose to understand Odysseus.  In many ways, his epics, although they are poems, are pre-runners to modern day novels.   They are pre-cursors to fantasy.  Heck, even the success of the Marvel movies to me suggest a thinly veiled nod to Homer.  What is Superman or Wonder Woman if not demi-gods? 

 

Well, if I may weigh in, although I don’t feel even remotely qualified to suggest someone is the greatest poet to have ever lived, but what impresses me the most is the level of psychological and archetypal insights into the nature of man that crosses through culture.  Of course, I’ve heard of a lot of the characters and several of the stories, but I was impressed by how relatable Odysseus is.  And although so many of his adventures at sea are fantastical- they feel like hyperbolic expressions of what I go through- For example, what is Scylla and Charybdis if not being caught between a rock and a hard place?  Another thing that fascinates me is the order he wrote them in- at least the order as we think them- the first one, The Iliad, and then some years later, as an older man, The Odyssey.  That’s also psychologically interesting- The Iliad has its version of a hero- Achilles is idealistic, proud in large and obvious way, self-righteous, vindictive even.   

 

 

 It’s young man’s idea of heroism versus The Odyssey and its version of heroism- a much more nuanced.  He also gets revenge, but it’s slow and not very reactionary- he plots, he lies, he bides his time- things we learn by life beating the hound out of us.   

 

I think that is well said.  Studying Homer for me is also very intimidating historically.  There is so much history and culture- beyond just the language differences just between my world and Homer’s- 2600 years- give or take.  The language is different.  The culture is different. The geography and the religion are literally worlds and worlds away, and I’m not very confident I can understand the context.  And if that weren’t scary enough, when you realize that Homer may have been describing events that may have preceded him by perhaps another 400- 1000 years or so, depending on who you believe- I just get lost in the math.  I might as well be saying, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”.   It’s foreign and mysterious.  Lizzy asked me today as I was sitting on my computer reading some research on the Mycenaens what book I was working on and I said, “Research for ‘Homer’s The Odyssey’” – to which she replied, “Sounds boring.”  And Lizzy listens to our podcasts!!  But on the screen of my computer were broken pieces of pottery and archeological data, not super-man and wonderwoman. 

 

Ha!  Well, if you can’t guilt-trip your family members into listening to you, even if you are boring, what hope do you have?  But, I totally understand where she’s coming from, over the years, I’ve taught a lot of history from US to Europe to World, and the Ancient World, and I love it.  I will admit, though, even though a lot can be fascinating with the ancients, there’s no doubt the farther back in time you go, it can be very difficult to conceptualize.  It is also a lot more guesswork.  Ancient Greece feels far away because it IS far away, and often we don’t know what we’re looking at when we see it. I hate to keep coming back to the arrogance of the present, but we really have to guard against looking at ancient peoples as primitive thinkers just because their technologies were not advanced.  I mean, honestly, which of us could survive one week on an island?  I think Survivor has proven that that’s not happening. 

 

Ha!  Those people always lose so much weight! Survivor also proves that the most cunning and deceptive you are- Odysseus style, the more likely you are to survive, but getting back to the historical side of it.  Did the Trojan war really happen?  And if it did, what was it?   

 

That’s a great question.  For years and years, even centuries- the greatest minds said no.  If Troy existed, we would know it.  And just for context, in case you are unfamiliar with the story, the story goes that there was a woman, today we call her Helen of Troy, but she wasn’t Trojan, she was Greek, and she ran away with a young lover- named Paris- to a city called Troy across the ocean.  Her sister’s husband, King Agamemnon, launched 1000 ships and all the Greek kings and heroes to get her back for her husband Menelaus.   The war to get Helen back took ten years before the Greeks were finally able to penetrate the wall, theoretically using a gigantic horse and a gimmick devised by Odysseus.  The story goes that Odysseus and a few others hid inside this gigantic horse.  Everyone else hid and pretended to return to Greece.  They left the horse there claiming that it was a gift to the god, Poseidon.  The Trojans brought the horse inside the gate, Odesseus came out, unlocked the gate and the Greeks sacked the city.    For forever, no one thought this place even existed with any real certainty.  We couldn’t find it.   Until an outrageous and bombastic but exceedingly wealthy amateur self-proclaimed archeologist by the name of Heinrich Schliemann set out to find it in the 1860s and actually did.   

 

Outrageous and bombastic sounds kind of like code for a schmuck? 

 

Well, he did have a few personal issues as well as professional ones.  For one thing, he wasn’t trained in archeology, so he just went around blasting everything he saw – to the point that- Historian Kenneth Harl has said that Schliemann’s excavations did to Troy what the Greeks couldn’t do, destroy and level the city walls to the ground. 

 

Oh no, that’s terrible.    

 

Well, it really is and he destroyed a lot of history.  He wanted so badly to get to the jewels belonging to Helen of Troy that he actually blasted through the actual walls of the city.  But, that being said, there is something to the fact, that he actually found the walls of the city and was something no one had done before him.  He found tons of gold and all kinds of very important things- he claimed his loot belonged to people like King Priam and Agamemnon including a very important solid gold.  One of the most famous is still called The Mask of Agamennon.  This, of course, has mostly been debunked by actual archeologists who know how to properly date archeological finds, but that being said, he found stuff that is real and validated many of the events referenced by Homer, albeit in myth form.   And if you ever  have the opportunity to visit Athens, you can see the mask of Agamennon in the National Archeological Museum.  Anyway, The best historical sources we have suggest that the Trojan war actually happened and took place around 1183 BC.  Not everyone is willing to say it lasted ten years or that was fought on the scale the Homer describes with thousands of ships, but we now believe it did happen. 

 

Well, we are less likely to believe it was sparked by petty gods and goddesses and fought by demi-gods fathered by goddesses who dip their children in magical rivers that make them mostly immortal.  But I will say, I wish they would find a mask of Helen.  I would love to see what the uncontested most beautiful woman in human history, daughter of Zeus.   

 

True, Christy, there is so much I don’t know about all the myths of the gods and goddesses, and before I started researching for this podcast seris, honestly, I thought the story of the Illiad was the story of the Greeks sacking Troy.  I have to admit I got my information from the movie Brad Pitt made called Troy.  There are so many gods and goddesses and furies and nymphs and creatures and shapeshifters.  It’s overwhelming.   

 

True, the Illiad ends with the death and funeral of the Trojan hero, Hector,  and his father very sadly begging for his body and returning it home- not the sack of Troy.  In other words, the Greeks haven’t won.  That’s a story you get from other places.  The Odyssey references the Trojan horse when Telemachus goes to visit his father’s old war buddies, but there is not a Homeric version of the Brad Pitt movie.  I was disappointed to find that out myself.  

 

Speaking of things that have proven disappointing about Homer, One of those things is that we don’t know him or even if there IS a him.    I know this is controversial and not universally accepted, but I will say from the get-go, that I am of the persuasion that Homer was an actual person who actually composed both pieces.  Although I’m sure there was a collection of traditional myths, like we saw with the Iroquois confederacy that were passed down orally from generation to generation, I believe that there was a man named Homer who drew from the myths kind of like Shakespeare did in our English tradition from popular stories he knew people recognized, and he composed his own pieces- one being the Iliad- where he doesn’t retell the entire story of the war, but focuses on one hero and one aspect of it- and the other being the Odyssey- where he again focuses on one person.  Obviously I’m not an archeologist or a university professor with a degree in classical studies and I’m not prepared or qualified to argue with anyone who is.  But, I’ve read enough from those who are to convince me of that. 

 

Do we know anything about Homer at all, assuming as you do, that he existed? 

 

Not really- to be honest.  Most traditions claim that he was blind, although I can’t find any real compelling reason for that belief except there’s a blind poet named Demodacus in the Odyssey that sings at the court of the Phaeacian king- which I wouldn’t think means anything at all, except that the ancients themselves took it for something- so if they believed it, maybe it was so.  Oh, This is interesting, there is one tradition that believes Homer was a woman- based in large part to the prominence Homer gives women in the text- that’s my favorite theory, but a minority view for sure.  No ancient scholars were making that claim.  Tradition, and by tradition, we’re talking about a couple thousand of years- so that’s a long time for a tradition to develop- but traditional views consider him to have been  a male bard, or what today we call a professional singer/songwriter.  No one really knows where he’s from.  Although, at least seven different places claim him; the most convincing arguments, at least for me, suggest he came from islands that are actually closer to Turkey then mainland Greece- more specifically the island Chios which is in the Aegean sea but close to Smyrna, modern day Izmir.  But maybe he came from Ios or Cyme.    

 

 If you are not all that well acquainted with the geography of the Mediterranean Sea or the Aegean ocean, I’ll try to create a mini-map in your mind’s eye.  Think of the big Mediterranean sea being a like a giant lake, and mainland Greece jets kind of halfway between Turkey and Italy with all of these scattered islands everywhere that go with it.  So, the part of the water that is between Greece and Turkey we call the Aegean Sea.  I don’t want to oversimplify to people who know their maps, but, I’ve learned over the last couple of years, it’s harder for those of us who use GPS  all the time to see the world in terms of maps, the way we old-schoolers used to have to do all the time- no disrespect. I definitely love my GPS over a paper map- but there’s the trade-off.   I guess a good linked-in question might be, do we need maps anymore?   

 

Anyway, Ancient Troy or modern day Hissarlik is on the north side of this inlet.  If you go down about 120 towards the Mediterranean you run into Chios and Smyrna.  Both of these places are about 158 miles across the ocean from Athens.  So, today, by modern standards they don’t take long to get from one to the other, but obviously if you make the gods make, like Odysseus did, it can take up to 10 years.  But, Garry, beyond the geography of Greece being so different from other parts of the world because it’s so based around a culture of the sea, I have trouble understanding the different periods- the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, all that stuff.  Can you give us a two minute crash course? 

 

Sure, well we usually call what you’re talking about this age of the early Greek glory years where they built the big palaces with the gigantic walls with the gods and heroes that were larger than life- the Mycenaean civilization- and the dates for that, generally speaking, are between 1650-1200 BC.  We really don’t think of the Myceans as having a writing system like we think of today-  they likely had some ways of using script perhaps to mark things for business, but the culture and stories were passed down by an oral tradition.  The most important city-states, at least this is what we think today, were some of the ones we see in the Odyssey for example Mycenae was home to the legendary King Agamemnon and Pylos was the home of King Nestor.  All of these city states worshiped the same gods and spoke the same language, but politically, they had different kings.  Kings had to be strong.  Piracy was a way of life and not even considered immoral.  We think today that these people were highly aggressive and warlike amongst themselves as well as against outsiders.  They also made their armor out of Bronze- hence the Bronze Age.  So, back to the Iliad, Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, was the queen of Sparta.  If we referring back to your little mental map- Sparta, Mycenae and Pylos are on the other side of mainland Greece- the side closer to Italy.  The ruins from those cities show big walls and lots of wealth. Sparta is about 300 or so miles across the sea, pass the mainland and into the Aegean Ocean.  This would have been the warpath to Troy but honestly, we really don’t know what happened and that is not even just about this particular war.  We don’t know for sure what happened to any of these towns.  What we do know is something devastasted all of these beautiful city states.  They were burned to the ground and whatever happened caused this area to fall into a period called the Dark Age- because we know nothing about it.  Almost the only thing we really know is that during the Dark Age, there was a transition from Bronze weapons to the much stronger Iron ones.   

The big changes and the big cultural movement that shaped the world- at least the Western world- like we think of today comes out of the next period- the one following the Dark Age. We call this one the Archaic period which we consider to be from 800-500BC.  This era as well as the next are where we get things we’re familiar with like the Olympics, the new sophisticated writing system- the Greek alphabet- democracy- like we associate with Athens.  And to make things even more confusing, the big Greek guys that we think of- like Plato and Aristotle and the “Golden Age” do not coincide with Homer- they come much later.  So, it’s a lot of history- for us on the American continent who are mostly immigrants from other parts of the world- be it Europe, Africa or Asia, it’s more than we can really even conceptualize- our entire nation as we understand it as a nation is less than 250 years old.  If we add what we know of the Indigenous people like the Iroquois confederacy into our timeline -we still fall short by thousands of years- Dekcadeakoah wasn’t born til 1200 AD, at least that’s our best guess.  So- there’s your historical context in the two minute nutshell.  Does that work? 

 

Well of course, so- to summarize even more Homer, a man who comes this Archaic period 8th century BC,  was writing about people who claimed lived during the Mycenaean civilization a full 400 before his life time- so if we want to give Odysseus, the man, an age- he’s like 3000 plus years old-  Like I said before- for me it is basically “A long time ago in an galaxy far far away”...and yet…it’s not… I want to start out by reading the first page of Fagle’s translation- and then let’s jump into the story itself- because for me-and I mean to disrespect to history- you know I love history- but I think you will agree with me- that it’s not the history of this story that has kept it around for 3000 years.  It’s not the religion; it’s not the culture.  Homer writes the story of our lives- all of our lives- and we keep coming back to it generation after generation for that reason.   

 

Read page 77 

 

Okay- Christy- I think there’s one more thing I think we need to clarify- there are so many translations.  Does it matter? 

 

Well, I think the answer to that is the same if you ask that question about translations of the Bible- whichever you like personally-- which I may add- if you want to compare when Odysseus lived with Biblical characters, Moses arguably lived about 200 years before Odysseus-my best guess from my looking at the most respected timelines for each of these guys – but I stand to be corrected -if you have an article that parallels the two histories, I’d love to see it- email it over.  The more important point- and in some sense this is true for any text- but it is especially true for ancient texts- it’s not the nuance of the language that matters really at all.  It’s the essence of the ideas of the stories- the universal truths.  Most of the millions who read these stories every year can’t read the original Greek. And although those that can really talk about the beauty of  all that- that part is lost on us.   It’s not the translation that is going to make or break the story.  The Rouse translation, which, by the way, is the one we used when I taught this text to freshmen in Wynne Arkansas, was the first one I knew and the only one I knew for a really long time.  I really like it because I know it.  But, the knock on it is that it’s prose and the Odyssey was not written in prose.  It’s by far one of the lesser respected ones today. A lot of people today prefer Robert Fagle’s translation because his book is really easy to read but he tries to make it sound like poetry.  

 

Well, for the record, I am using Rouse’s translation. I picked up Fagles, but I ended up preferring Rouse’s because I wanted to read the story in prose instead of verse, for me that’s easier.  But just so I know, Christy, assuming we were Greek and could understand this as it was originally composed what would it be like. 

 

Good question- not that anyone knows for sure- but the general understanding is that it was written in meter- dactylic hexameter to be exact.  DAH -duh-duh- One accented syllable with two unaccented syllables in a row and then each line would have six of these.  Now, this is just me, but I really compare these ancient bards to modern day rap artists.  The Bards that would go around singing these stories- would improvise- but would use the beat to kind of keep them on course- obviously it didn’t sound like rap, but it’s the same skill that we see rap artists do when they improvise and you wonder- how can they think of all those rhymes?  Well, the trick is to already have little phrases in your mind that you know will make your lines work.  In the case of the Greek bards, they would have these epithets, or phrases they would use to describe the names of different gods- these lines that keep repeating throughout- would help them keep up with the demands of the meter.  So what does that mean- that means when you hear them say, as we will “Bright-eyed Athena”- he’s adding syllables to make the meter work.  If that makes sense.   

 

So, the descriptions don’t necessarily mean that her eyes are the most important thing about her- it’s just to make the music work? 

 

 That’s it exactly.  The thinking is we aren’t supposed to read too much into those kinds of things.  Also, the bards themselves used a very specialized vocabulary which was a mixture of different Greek dialects in order to make it all work.   This is a tangent, but it’s kind of interesting, there was a classical linguist named Milman Parry who really wanted to figure out how in the world Homer could memorize so many lines.  You know the Odyssey has over 12,000 lines.  Well, Parry, by studying modern day illiterate singer/songwriters in Bosnia.  He came to believe that Homer didn’t memorize anything- he had these patterns, these phrases and names of the gods that he knew rhymed well and fit the pattern and he would just tell the story and improvise the language for every different audience- he’d end the lines with the phrases and patterns that rhymed.  Maybe like professional comedians who do comedy improv in “Who’s line is it anyway?”  So, in my mind, a Greek bard is something between a cross between a rap artist and modern day improv comedian.  

 

HA!  Well, there’s some creative analogies, but I get it.  Honestly, the idea of improvising makes it cooler than if Homer just wrote a piece of writing and then just read/chanted/sang the same thing over and over again.  As a musician, it reminds me of what Jazz musicians do or even bands in general.  You know, and this is really going to sound nerdy, but every once in a while, I have some buddies that I’ve known from years ago- we all went to the same church at one time- but many have moved out of Memphis- but we get together about once a year and do something like this. We’ll go to a friend’s house with our instruments, bring up some good ole’ rock and roll music that we like and just improvise.  We all know the songs, but the specific variations, solos- that sort of thing- will be just be stuff that we make up. 

 

Parry thought a Homer show was exactly that- every time he performed The Odyssey it was totally new.  But again, this is all total speculation- no one knows.  It’s just too long ago.  So- having said that, back to the question you asked, for most of our purposes none of this stuff really matters- the translation doesn’t matter, that Homer may or may not even have been a person, or a male or a person with vision who wrote with letters at all- or that the text itself may not even have been a fixed text or a story with improvised performances- all of those things- all though interesting- are really not the reason we love these stories and teach them in the ninth grade- at least around here.  It’s this Homeric universe- this fantastical story- this hyperbolic creation  that has magnified the human experience.  Homer gave us a  new way to conceptualize our world- and a way to feel about the events- both controllable and uncontrollable that plague our lives.  Every once in a while, someone shows up in the world that can produce such a space.  In some ways we could say that Tolkien did this with Middle Earth, that JK Rowling did it, that CS Lewis did it, even George Lucas did it- each of those artists conceptualize entirely new and different universes- and when we spend time in their work- whatever medium we use- can inhabit that universe.  We can understand our world better through their world- it’s fantasy.  So, Homer was the first that we know of to do this at the scale in which he did.  This is not to say that there are not legends and stories that predate him- there most certainly are- but they don’t exist, that I know of, in this full length single unit form- not like what we have with Homer.  But yet, there is more to it than even that, although that is quite a feat. 

 

Homer defined reality for a large number of people for centuries- maybe even still- and I’m not sure those other writers that I just listed out can say that.  The Greeks for hundreds of years, were able to ground their reality on the backs of the principles, morals, the world view that was laid out in his work- The Illiad and The Odyssey.  It helped people answer basic questions like- how do I conduct myself in the world.     

 

Let’s look at those first lines again and go through them- 

 

“Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy.” 

 

Christy, is Homer telling us his entire story in the first lines. 

 

Yes- of course he is- first of all, I do want to point out that Homer does not take credit for his story.  He is going to say it was given to him from a Muse.  That’s interesting and really Jungian- so, I’ll let you speak to that since that’s your cup of tea- 

 

Ha!  Well, he’s basically saying, it’s not that he made up the story- but he found the story or the story found him-the Muse is the originator- the idea being that the story existed before him in some larger context- that there is something here greater than he is.    And of course, all religious traditions speak to this reality, but since you referenced Jung, so does psychology.  There is something greater… and that is his starting point. 

 

Exactly, and then he brings up why we love Odysseus- he was a man of twist and turns.  You know James Joyce who wrote that incredibly complicated masterpiece Ulysses was asked why he wrote his masterpiece about Odysseus- Ulysses is the Roman way to say Odysseus- and he famously responded that he was the only complete man in literature.  Odysseus, as we are going to see is a different kind of hero.  In the Iliad which is the book that came first, the Achilles is a demi-god. He’s perfect.  He is totally beautiful, totally powerful, totally honest- that is something he took pride in. He never had to lie, he never had to back down- he was bigger and stronger and could overpower anyone.  That’s not Odysseus- he was amazing- for sure.  But he wasn’t the absolute biggest- he had to rely on lies- he sacked cities but he also got sacked himself- he had twist and turns- and for two reasons- on the one hand, the gods had agendas that had nothing to do with him that affected his world, but also he, himself,  made choices that steered him way off course.   

 

Odysseus is a hero- for sure-   he definitely gets all the women- haha- if you want to look at it that way- but he’s the kind of hero- we as mere mortals might aspire to be.  His life didn’t turn out the way he wanted it, but he still wins at life- and actually he gets to make choices that allow him to live the kind of life he ultimately figures out he wants for himself. 

 

Exactly- and Homer shows us how to make that happen.  In this Homeric universe that is safely far away- full of monsters and goddesses and magic- we can test drive some of the things we’d like to do if we could.  In this magical place we see consequences for things like running your mouth when maybe you shouldn’t. But we can get some good ideas at how to get back when we’re being exploited- ways that are smarter than just running our mouth.   Maybe by watching Odysseus we can get ideas about how to correct the course of our personal odyssey, we can figure out success that looks like for ourselves in our mundane realities. At least, that’s the idea. 

 

And yet, Christy, it is magical and otherworldly with characters we don’t know.  I’ll just be honest, as a person who doesn’t know a lot about mythology, am I going to get confused the farther into this I read?  So far, so good, but I’ll admit I haven’t finished the whole thing yet. 

 

Again, back to Homer’s brilliance- the answer is NO.  Homer is going to build a pantheon of gods that is manageable and knowable.  And this is brilliant.  Just like other polytheistic faiths there are hundreds of gods in the Greek pantheon- but how do you wrap your brain around 600 or so? Homer is going to reduce it to a few- the Olympians.  He’s going to create a hierarchy we can understand and he’s going to personalize the gods so that we can know them.  As we read the story, we meet them little by little.  We learn who they are, what they value, how they operate- and of course- how we appease them and stay out of trouble. First and foremost- we meet Zeus- he’s the chief, the god of the sky- protector and father of all the other gods and humans.   

 

We’re also going to learn an important principle, that will explain a lot about life- both to us and the ancients- there are things that are in the hands of the gods, but there are also things that are in our control.  We can control what we can control but then there are times we can strive hard and still meet disaster.  Sometimes, we have offended the gods; sometimes they just like us- sometimes we are just victims of happenstance.   

 

Yes- exactly- and how do we account for that?  Let’s keep reading… 

 

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So, we met Zeus- he’s the god of the sky- now we get to meet Poseidon- he’s the god of the sea- he’s Zeus’ brother, but he is way more unpredictable and volatile- hence the behavior of the sea.  The big three are Zeus, Poseidon and Hades- God of the Sky, God of the Sea and God of the underworld.  We meet all three in the Odyssey- and in some sense, this brings order to a universe.   

 

There are powers out there- things we can’t see but that determine our fate- but are also arbiters of justice.  There is also a spiritual battlefield- spirits- invisible forces, however you want to understand the world- energy forces larger than our own humanity can see through our natural senses- there is a story that is larger than our story, but we play a part.   Sometimes we are just a speck in humanity, but other times we are not invisible, even to these larger forces. 

 

Of course, as we think through this, although, not many of us adopt Greek mythology as our spiritual worldview, there is a lot there, that most of the world still accepts as truth- even if you’re a monotheist. 

 

Exactly- those are the major big boys- but there are a few others that we’re going to meet.  We meet Hermes pretty quickly and we quickly understand his role in the role- he is a messenger.  He’s Zeus’ son, but not with his wife, Hera.  Zeus is always getting in trouble with his wife because he has fidelity issues.  But Hermes, as we will quickly learn is in charge of messages.     

 

After we meet the men, we will slowly meet some of the important women of Olympus.  The first one here is probably my favorite goddess- Athena, she might be everyone’s favorite goddess. She’s a virgin, not controlled by a man, ha- but a goddess of both wisdom and war.  She’s awesome. 

 

I don’t know that she’s everybodies- Aphrodite has fans.   

 

Yeah- you’re right- but she’s a trouble-maker.  Aphrodite makes you like fall madly in love with someone you know is no good for you- or be sexually compelled to do behave improperly. 

 

Some would say that’s low impulse control.   

 

Yes- but those would not be the ancient Greeks.  They would say it’s Aphrodite’s fault- you are listening to her- that was Helen of Troy’s problem.  But back to Athena 

 

Athena seems she likes Odysseus.   

 

She DOES!!  And that’s how Odysseus wins.  Someone is watching over him and he is sensitive to her leading.  Athena is the goddess of wisdom, and Odysseus is attuned to this sense of wisdom in the universe.  She speaks to him, guides him, and most importantly, Athena enables Odysseus to always keep his cool. Odysseus, we will see, with a few exceptions, is led by wisdom- not by lust,  not by uncontrollable rage- by god-given wisdom.  Seeing people as being visited by outside forces that inspire them one way or the other is not a bad way of understanding why people are the way they are- even if you don’t believe in gods and goddesses- which for the record, I don’t personally, but this is my understanding of the ancient Greek worldview.  In the Homeric Universe, men and women are led by one god or goddess for the most part- not by a variety of different ones.  We mentioned that Helen of Troy is attune to Aphrodite, the goddess of sexual love- that’s who’s giving her direction.  But Odysseus is attuned and sensitive to Athena.  Athena takes credit not for Odysseus’ strength, although he is strong, not for his ability with a bow and arrow, which we’ll see he’s pretty good at that too, but she takes credit for his wisdom.  The Odyssey is a story of this collaboration- there are things that we can’t control, but there are things we can, and if we control the things we can, the universe, a goddess or someone outside of ourselves can and will intervene on our behalf with grace and kindness.  It’s a way to organize our thinking about how the universe works- a very old way of thinking about how the universe works.  

 

Let’s quote Zeus here- again from the Fagles translation- as he explains the responsibility of humans- at this point in the story- Poseidon is out of town, so to speak- he’s off in Ethiopia receiving offerings by the hundreds.  And with him away, Athena will make her play to save Odysseus’ life, but we also see this philosophy of the Greeks explained here in the beginning of how and why things work out the way they do. 

 

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But now let me read what Athena says back to her father= here she demonstrates the role the gods play in the destinies of man 

 

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And so we have our narrative hook.  The gods will intervene in the destinies of men.  Calypso has been holding Odysseus hostage.  Hermes is being sent with a message from the gods forcing Calypso to release Odysseus.  At the same time this is happening,  Athena will visit Telemachus’ Odysseus’ son back in their hometown, Ithaca.  Telemachus was a newborn when Odysseus’ left.  He is now 20 years old.  For ten years Odysseus fought in Troy.  Then after angering Poseidon, he spent the next ten years wandering lost at sea.  Telemachus has been left to be raised by his mother and a man named Mentor (guess where got that word).  Anyway, there is trouble in Ithaca which we’ll find out about next episode, but more importantly than that, it is time for Telemachus to take his own journey and go out into the world on his own.   

 

 

The Odyssey can easily be divided into three parts- the first four books are about Telemachus’ journey to visit all of his father’s war buddies.  The second part is Odysseus wandering around the magical seas, and the third is what he finds when he gets back to Ithaca, how he finds his beautiful and faithful wife and what he sees in his palace estate.  The first part, which we’ll tackle. Next episode is about the coming of age from a boy to a man. After that we’ll look at what all these seas trials are all about and then finally, we’ll discuss some ideas about the famous finale in our finale. 

 

Well, it sounds like we have a plan.  You know, the Iliad is a pretty straight forward narrative- a linear timeline and a kind of tragic ending.  The Odyssey is written in circles.  It’s winding with endless setbacks but it has a happy ending.   

 

I think that’s exactly the right way to look at it.  They are both charming and enduring books but for different reasons, my book club recently just finished reading the latest take on the Iliad.  Madeline Miller wrote a novel called The Song of Achilles from the perspective of Patroclus that we read and really liked, but it was sad too.   If we ever analyze the Iliad, we’ll get into the appeal of that book- it certainly is there- but if we just look at what’s appealing the Odyssey – I think the ending is definitely a factor- many of us know what it’s like to offend the gods, experience the wrath of Poseidon, maybe even the lures of Aphrodite or Circe – we’ve also likely been jilted by suitors or friend-enemies- as we call them nowadays- we can live vicariously through this steady under pressure goddess led hero- and maybe be inspired to face down our monsters- maybe we can even do a little listening for Athena and learn to bide our time and wreck havoc on our foes if we need to.  But mostly, we all want that heart-warming reunion after a long absence with our loved-ones and own home- we want to rest in the prophecy that old Greek prophet Tiresias gave Odysseus during his visit to the underworld- that when our time comes death will steal upon us a gentle painless death, far from the seas it comes to take you down, borne down with the years in ripe old age with all your people there in blessed peace around you.”   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

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