688. The Odyssey: Return of the King (Part 2)

How did the second half of Odysseus’ long journey home to Ithaca play out? What does the epic’s account of the Olympian gods indicate about Ancient Greek religion? And, how did Odysseus finally make it home to Penelope and her suitors? Join Tom and Dominic as they reach the dramatic conclusion of Homer’s Odyssey, and the story of Odysseus’ dreadful return… *The Rest Is History LIVE: The Ultimate Victorian Adventure* The maddest expedition in history and it’s NEVER been heard before on the show: join Tom Holland & Dominic Sandbrook LIVE at the Southbank as they tell the bonkers story of Queen Victoria ordering one of history’s most daring assignments ever. ⁠⁠Tickets available for Friday 4th September⁠⁠, the Saturday show is SOLD OUT. _______ Lloyds. 250 years on and still backing the nation's aspirations. _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Video Editors: Jack Meek, Harry Swan + Adam Thornton Social Producer: Harry Balden Producers: Tabby Syrett & Aaliyah Akude Senior Producer: Callum Hill Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:11Speaker 00

  Let us now speed Hermes, the guide, the slayer of Argos, toward Oggigia Island, so that he can speedily announce your steadfast decision to the nymph of the beautiful braids, that Odysseus, whose mind stands fast, shall make his journey home. For my part, I will embark for Ithaca, there to breathe purpose into his son, that I might instill a man's courage within his heart, and to make him call an assembly of the long-haired Ithacans and tell all the suitors to go. Those men who never leave off slaughtering throngs of his sheep and his lumbering twisty-horned cattle. To Sparta I shall send him, and to Santi Pylos too, to learn whatever he can of his dear

• 0:56Speaker 00

  father's journey home, and to help him as well to earn a noble renown among men. So that was Dame Edna Reveridge, playing the goddess Athena, and Athena is talking to her father Zeus, king of the gods, and this is in the first of the 24 books that constitute Homer's great epic, The Odyssey. And as we were saying in our first episode, there is something very Australian about the expedition of Odysseus and his men across the Aegean, barbecuing on the beach, drinking unnecessarily, behaving badly, and basically comporting themselves like Australians on the beaches of the Dardanelles. And so we felt that Australian voices, Russell Crowe in the last episode, a cross between

• 1:40Speaker 00

  Kylie Minogue and Dame Edna in this one, were the most appropriate.

• 1:43Speaker 01

  I was imagining Kylie, I have to say.

• 1:45Speaker 00

  Right, it turned into Dame Edna.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  If I shut my eyes, I could imagine Kylie, and then I'd open my eyes and see you, and it would all go.

• 1:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, nice. That's a lot, I mean, a lot of people's fantasy, actually. Anyway, the translation there is by Daniel Mendelson, who's on our bonus episode for Rest is History Club members, talking about The Odyssey. Of course, we're doing this series because the film by Christopher Nolan is out this week, it goes on general release on the 17th. And Tom, I know you've gone online, haven't you, to book your tickets, because you don't want to miss out, is that right?

• 2:16Speaker 01

  Actually, I went to the preview.

• 2:18Speaker 00

  Okay, that's just showing off, isn't it? It's just showing off. It's the, it's the sort of boastful behaviour that you would expect of a Greek hero, I guess.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a key in behaviour, and I will regret it when I end up in the underworld. This episode is brought to you by the Lloyds 5K House Deposit, and this is something that was last seen in 1996.

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  1996 average first-time buyer deposits are based on ONS data. Subject to status, your home may be repossessed if you don't keep up repayments, and conditions apply. This episode is supported by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Now, history's biggest leaps started as hard questions that people didn't want asked.

• 3:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's a classic example of that at the end of the 15th century, and the hard question in particular was, what is out there beyond the Atlantic Ocean to the west? And as you will know, the man who found the answer to that question was the explorer Christopher Columbus, and he realises, or rather, everybody else realises, that there is a vast continent out there, and it is of course the Americas. So, you know, Anthropic knows the importance of questions, and it's why Anthropic is founded on one hard question above all: how can we ensure that the AI revolution really goes well for ordinary people?

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• 5:25Speaker 00

  So recap to remind people where we are in the story. In the first episode, we heard how Odysseus, the wiliest, the smartest of all the Greek heroes, fought for 10 years in the Trojan War, he was the maestro behind the Trojan Horse, that he tries to get home with his men, and he is blown fatally off course. And Tom, remind us of all his adventures and what happened.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  So, loads of mad adventures, one-eyed giants, beautiful sorceresses, he goes to the underworld, meets the ghost of his mother, and various of his fallen comrades, and he ends up losing all his fleet. He had 12 ships, they end up completely destroyed, and all his men, he is the only survivor of the entire expedition. And he has been washed up on the mysterious island of Oggigia, ruled by a nymph, the Lady Calypso, that radiant goddess, and on Oggigia he has been kept essentially as Calypso's sex slave for seven long years, and every night he would spend with the nymph,

• 6:28Speaker 01

  doing as she commanded, and every day he would weep for Penelope, his beloved wife, his soulmate. And Oggigia is described by Homer as being the omphalos of the sea, the navel of the sea, a place so remote that Plutarch, who was writing in the second century AD, so centuries after Homer wrote it, would place it five days' sail west of Britain. So that would make it, what, Newfoundland, I guess, or?

• 7:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, somewhere on the way to Canada, anyway.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I think Plutarch is wrong, because in truth, Oggigia is a place that transcends geography, and in fact, time, because its meaning in Greek, oggigios, it means primal, before the dawn of time. So essentially, Odysseus has passed into a strange dimension where the conventional rules that govern mortals no longer apply, and he has vanished from the world of humans. And Calypso actually means in Greek, she who fails, she who conceals, so it's same root as apocalypse, which means unveiling. So Odysseus can't escape partly because she won't let him go, but also, I think, because

• 7:47Speaker 01

  it is impossible for him to get out of this kind of strange dimension that she controls and coordinates. But the reason also why Odysseus can't escape, and people who listened to our first episode may recall this, is because Odysseus very foolishly has offended Poseidon, who is the god of the sea, and he'd done this by blinding his son, the one-eyed giant Polyphemus. And so Poseidon, he doesn't necessarily want Odysseus dead, he's perfectly happy to leave him on this kind of island prison with Calypso as the governor, and as far as Poseidon is concerned, he can just stay there and rot and never get back home.

• 8:26Speaker 00

  But Odysseus has a powerful protector of his own, doesn't he? And this is the person who we heard, voiced by Dame Edna, at the beginning of the episode. So this is another Olympian, and this is Athena, and she likes Odysseus because she sees him as like-minded, because they're both very wise and clever.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Yes, I think she sees something of herself in Odysseus, and so during the Trojan War, she had spoken to him, she'd occasionally appeared to him. Over the course of his adventures, she has not appeared to him or spoken to him, because she doesn't want to offend Poseidon.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Fortunately, however, as the Odyssey opens, Poseidon is in the land of the Ethiopians, who are not to be identified with the people who live in what today we call Ethiopia. Their name means people with burned faces, so people on the edges of the world where the sun is at its brightest. They're blessed, they're noble, they're the kind of people that God would like to spend time having a holiday with. And so Poseidon is away from Olympus, and so this gives Athena her chance. And as we heard in that passage with which we opened, voiced by Kylie Dame Edna, Athena has a two-pronged strategy.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  So the first is to get Zeus to send Hermes, the messenger of the gods, to Aegyia to order Calypso to set Odysseus free. And secondly, Athena herself will go to Ithaca, Odysseus's home island, and there visit Telemachus, Odysseus's son, and basically kind of encourage him to man up, to stop being so wet.

• 10:11Speaker 00

  So this is the moment, actually, where the Odyssey begins, right? Where the story that we encounter in the book starts with Athena going to see, is it going to see Telemachus? That's the bit that it kicks off with, is that right?

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Yes. Important for listeners to understand who've not read the book, that the epic does not begin with the fall of Troy, it doesn't begin with Odysseus embarking on his adventures. So not, basically, as we did it in the previous episode. It begins with this moment, with Athena going down to see Telemachus. And 10 years have passed since the fall of Troy, so 20 years since Odysseus had left Ithaca. And people may remember that when he'd left Ithaca, Telemachus was just a baby, but now he is a young man. But to be fair to Telemachus, I mean, he is facing a very challenging situation, because Odysseus, before he'd left for Troy, had told Penelope, and I quote, "Once you see our son starting to grow out his beard, marry whomever you wish."

• 11:10Speaker 01

  In other words, if I'm not back by this point, you should assume that I'm dead. And people know this, and so Odysseus's hall is now crowded with suitors who are slaughtering Odysseus's cattle and sheep and insulting his household. Penelope, she wants to hold out, you know, she's hopeful that Odysseus will come back. You know, she knows her husband, she's confident he'll come back. And so she doesn't want to marry any of these suitors. And so for years, she's been keeping them at bay with, again, a kind of very famous wheeze, it's a kind of, it matches the Trojan horse, her husband's great wheeze.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  And what she had done was she'd said to them, "I will marry one of you once I have completed weaving a shroud for Laertes, the father of Odysseus." And so she sat at her loom, weaving at it all day, and then at night secretly, she would steal down and unpick everything she had done in the day.

• 12:08Speaker 00

  Right.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  And so the suitors, this shroud is taking a long time, it's taken about five years. But in the end, the scheme is betrayed by one of Penelope's servant girls, one of her maids, and so the scheme is rumbled. But at this point, Penelope is still holding out, you know, she doesn't want to give in. And Telemachus also is kind of backing her, but he's just a young man, you know, he hasn't had his father around, he's not kind of trained in the ways of warfare and wileness and all of that. He's very, very young and inexperienced. And so this is why Athena has decided to visit him, to offer him the kind of advice and encouragement that he hasn't been getting from his father, because his father is absent.

• 12:51Speaker 00

  She disguises herself, doesn't she, as an old friend of Odysseus, with the excellent name of Mentor?

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Yes, she's literally his mentor.

• 12:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, and when Mentor arrives, Telemachus is very courteous, he's very generous, but Telemachus is extremely embarrassed that there's basically this massive kind of, it's basically like a stag party that's got...

• 13:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're all wearing plastic breasts and kind of covering each other with shaving foam, naked.

• 13:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's basically, uh, Wetherspoons at Luton Airport, you know, 8 o'clock in the morning, people absolutely off their faces already, like, there's a lot, there's all kinds of bants.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  So it's miserable for poor Telemachus. So Athena cheers him up, first of all, by saying, "Actually, I think, you know, I think it's okay, I think your dad is alive, and I think he's going to be coming back home soon." And she then says, "You should stand up for yourself, you should show your independence, and you could do this in a couple of ways. So you could summon an assembly of all the people of Ithaca and publicly make a stand in front of them against the suitors. And then when you've done that, you could go and visit some of Odysseus's old mates, some of, you know, some of his comrades from the Trojan War, and find out what they know." And then, to quote Homer, "So saying Athena went off, she of the bright owl eyes, just

• 14:03Speaker 01

  as a bird will fly off in a flash, and into his heart she put fierceness and strength." And this fierceness and strength, as we've been saying, is something that hadn't previously been evident in Telemachus. And so the suitors, he holds this public assembly for the Ithians, as Athena had advised, and the suitors go there and they shout it down. But they are startled that Telemachus has had the initiative and the gumption to call it, and a little bit worried about this sudden display of kind of character and independence. And even Penelope is surprised by the way in which her son is suddenly showing a kind of assertiveness.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  So that's a marker that he's laid down for the suitors. And then he heads off for the mainland, and he, again, he does it without telling them what he's doing, he slips away unnoticed. And he heads off to the mainland of Greece, to the Peloponnese, and there he's going to visit two of his father's old comrades in arms. And the first of these is a guy called Nestor, who is the king of Pelos on the west coast of the Peloponnese, and he had been the oldest warrior who'd fought at Troy, fabulously ancient and doddery and long white beard and all of that. And unfortunately, Nestor has no idea where Odysseus is, so he's not much use. But he, you know, he says, it's like he's vanished off the face of the earth, I've heard

• 15:31Speaker 01

  no rumours about him whatsoever. But he kind of cheers Telemachus up by telling him war stories. You know, Nestor's an old man, and so the joke is that this is all he ever does, is tell stories about the good old days. But these are stories that feature Odysseus being an absolute legend, I mean, literally. And he tells stories about how brave Odysseus had been, how clever, and how close he had been to Athena. So Telemachus had seen Mentor turn into a bird and flash off, so it's, you know, the cogs in his brain are starting to work, thinking maybe Athena is on the scene. And certainly, the effect of Nestor and his conversation is to make Telemachus feel proud to be the son of such a man, and make him want to be kind of worthy of such a father.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  And so from Pelos, Telemachus then heads inland to Sparta, where the king is Menelaus, and he is the husband of Helen, whose abduction had led to the entire war. And Helen, when she comes in to join Menelaus and Telemachus in the great feasting hall, she immediately recognizes him as Odysseus's son, because Helen is the daughter of Zeus, she has a kind of witchy quality, she has kind of supernatural powers. And Helen sits with Telemachus, and she tells him a story about Odysseus, how back in the days of the Trojan War, he had infiltrated Troy disguised as an old beggar, and that

• 16:54Speaker 01

  he had disguised himself so effectively that he'd had himself lashed across his back like a slave, so that when he came into Troy, people could see these marks, and it would have seemed impossible to the Trojans to think that this could actually have been a great hero. And Helen boasts to Telemachus, "I alone saw through his disguise." And of course, she could have betrayed him, but she chooses not to, and she says, "For by then my heart had long since been bent on going back home." And Menelaus then tells a story also about Odysseus, how they've built the Trojan horse, and the Greek heroes, the Achaean heroes, have hidden themselves inside the great belly of the horse, and then Helen had come down to them and started calling out in the voices

• 17:39Speaker 01

  of their wives. So again, this is the kind of the witchy quality of Helen, and it's undermining her claim, actually, that she was now on the Greek side.

• 17:47Speaker 00

  I was about to say, she's playing both sides.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, she is playing both sides.

• 17:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  And the men inside the horse, they hear that what seems to be their wives, they're so homesick, they're so longing for their wives, that lots of them want to kind of call out and reply. But Odysseus knows what's going on, he keeps very silent, he keeps them motionless, he puts his hand over the mouths of those who look as if they're about to call out. And these two stories, the story firstly told by Helen, then by Menelaus, again, they're illustrating the qualities of Odysseus, how intelligent he is, how bold, how daring, and also how self-disciplined he is. But the most crucial thing that Menelaus tells Telemachus is that he does actually

• 18:31Speaker 01

  have news of Odysseus. And this is because he had ended up on his journey back from Troy in Egypt. And there he had captured the old man of the sea, he's called Proteus, who is a kind of shepherd of seals, has all kinds of weird supernatural powers, able to change his shape. So that's where the word protean comes from. But Menelaus had captured him and held him despite all this shape shifting, and finally had got Proteus to reveal to him all kinds of things. And among the things that Proteus had revealed is the fact that Odysseus is alive. And to quote what Proteus had told Menelaus, "I saw Odysseus on an island, his eyes brimming over with tears in the halls of the nymph Calypso, who is

• 19:14Speaker 01

  holding him there by compulsion. He is not able to return to the land of his fathers." So now Telemachus knows he is alive.

• 19:23Speaker 00

  So that's where we left Odysseus last time. And we left on the cliffhanger, is he ever going to escape from the arms of Calypso? And I'm happy to say that the answer is yes. And this is down to Athena, isn't it? Because basically, we said that she does two things. She goes to see Telemachus, but she also goes to see Zeus.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Yes, her father. And Athena is Zeus's favourite daughter. Poseidon is absent. And so Athena is basically kind of sassing around Olympus, trying to sort things out for Odysseus, and hassling her father. And finally, Zeus gives in to her and sends Hermes, the messenger of the gods, down from the summit of Olympus, all the way to the island of Aegyria, this navel of the sea. And when Hermes arrives there, he tells Calypso, "You've got to let Odysseus go." And she, Calypso has a massive strop about it. And Hermes says, "Do not provoke Zeus to anger." You know, "Do not make him angry." And so very reluctantly, Calypso

• 20:22Speaker 01

  permits Odysseus to build a boat, and she gives him provisions, and says, "Okay, you can go." But before he goes, she makes him a great offer. And she offers him the gift of immortality, if he will stay with her. And listeners may remember that in the previous episode, we talked about how Odysseus had met with Achilles, the great hero, who is now just a kind of a shadow in the underworld. And Achilles had basically said, you know, "Life is so much better than death, that you should embrace any opportunity you can to perpetuate it." So this is a massive, massive offer. But Odysseus turns it down.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  And it's one of the great eulogies in ancient literature to the joys and the comforts of marital love. It has to be said, there aren't actually that many. And it begins, it doesn't sound like a eulogy to his wife, it has to be said, but it kind of pivots. So she, Odysseus says to Calypso, "Look at my wise Penelope. She falls far short of you, your beauty, your stature. But she is mortal, after all. She's not a goddess, so you'd expect that. You, you never age or die. Nevertheless, I long, I pine all my days to travel home and see the dawn of my return." So he would rather live with Penelope and die than live with Calypso and live forever. And it's a kind of moving moment, I think.

• 21:46Speaker 00

  Not many wives would welcome that tribute to themselves, that begins with them saying, "She falls far short of you." Anyway, Odysseus sets off from Aegyria. And, well, these things always end up going one way, don't they? But actually, at first, it's a bit like Titanic. Everyone talks about the bit where it went wrong, but no one talks about the first couple of days. So in this case, the first 17 days of the voyage are a triumph. But then on the 18th day of the voyage, Poseidon is on his way back from the land of the Ethiopians. And he sees Odysseus below him, doesn't he? So Poseidon is in the sky.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's just this tiny little dot. But he's a god. I mean, of course, he can recognise him. He's furious about it. And so he strikes the sea with his trident, churns it up, pulverises Odysseus's raft, all the gifts that he's been given by Calypso, all his provisions, even his clothes, he loses them all. So he's now kind of naked, literally naked, in the salty, boiling sea, almost drowns. There's an island ahead, he's almost smashed onto the rocks by the waves. And in fact, had it not been for Athena, who personally intervenes to save him, he would have been killed. But as it is, with the assistance

• 22:59Speaker 01

  of the goddess, he is able to crawl himself up onto a sandy beach. And he totters up into a nearby wood. And there's kind of leaves scattered around everywhere. So he hides himself under the leaves and understandably collapses, falls completely asleep, and sleeps for who knows how long. But then abruptly, he is woken by the sound of a ball splashing into a pond, and the sound of girls shouting and giggling. And obviously, when you've been through a series of adventures that involve giants devouring your men, or spearing you in harbours, or whatever, I mean, these are, these are the kind of things that you

• 23:42Speaker 01

  want to hear. He's still dreading the worst, because he's

• 23:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  gone through so many terrible experiences. But he thinks, oh, well, maybe, you know, they're just girls, maybe it's all right. And also, he's desperately hungry, he's desperately thirsty. And so he picks up a kind of a branch with leaves on, a bit like Adam in the Garden of Eden, he uses it to conceal his nakedness. And he steps out and emerges from the wood. And in a clearing, it's the most domestic scene imaginable. It is a group of girls doing the laundry. And they look round and see, see, see what seems to be this awful kind of briny pervert, stark naked, who stepped out from the woods, like a kind of flasher.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  And they understandably scream and run away. But one of the girls does stay, and bravely stands her ground. And Odysseus addresses her from a distance, he doesn't want to frighten her. And he talks to her with absolutely perfectly pitched flattery. So he compares her to Artemis, the daughter of mighty Zeus. And he narrates his ordeals, and then he appeals to her for help. And finally, and I love this moment, he's, and I think it's clearly betraying his own longing for Penelope, he's, you know, he's, he's seeing this girl, and he's, he's thinking of his own family. And he wishes her a happy marriage. And he says, "For there's nothing as powerful, or as great, as when a husband and wife, united by oneness

• 25:10Speaker 01

  of mind in their thinking, keep their home together, a great bane to their enemies, a blessing to their friends, and their renown is on everyone's lips." And Sadie and I had that at our wedding.

• 25:21Speaker 00

  Oh, nice.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Which we had in a church. But important to emphasise, this is very much not a Christian ideal of marriage. This is an ideal of marriage in a world in which it is households rather than individuals who are being joined. And so to be a bane of one's enemies, a blessing to one's friends, this is a dream that's particularly suited to royal couples, because obviously, the whole health of a city, of a kingdom, can depend on it.

• 25:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  And as it turns out, Odysseus's words are perfectly suited to the young girl that he has addressed them to. Because the girl that he is addressing is not an ogress, not a witch, not a ghost, but a mortal princess.

• 26:12Speaker 00

  So the name of this princess is Nausicaä. She's the daughter, we're told, of Alcinos, the Great Hearted. And in his hands lie the power and might of the Phaeacians. And who are these people?

• 26:24Speaker 01

  So the Phaeacians, to the degree that the Odyssey offers one, is a kind of a vision of an ideal society. So Nausicaä's parents, the king and queen of the Phaeacians, Alcinos, the king, they are wise and generous. They have no idea who Odysseus is, but they greet him with great kindness and hospitality. So that this kind of this great quality of xenia, which is so important to the Greeks, welcoming strangers with hospitality. They have kind of perfect microclimate. So their fruit, their vines, their vegetables are always in season. There's no winter. And they have kind of incredible 1950s, science fiction

• 27:09Speaker 01

  style labour saving devices. So kind of robotic guard dogs made of gold and silver. And they have ships powered by what sounds a little like AI.

• 27:21Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  Kind of this free thinking. They can think faster than than any human being. And these ships can travel at a completely miraculous speed, and kind of travel the length of the Mediterranean.

• 27:31Speaker 00

  Self sailing ships.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  Self sailing ships, yeah. So again, it's this familiar thing that we were talking about in the first episode, that you have the fantastical element of an island. But then also, there are points of similarity with actual islands that exist in the Mediterranean.

• 27:46Speaker 00

  Right.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  And so to Homer's original audience, the location and the description of the kind of physical geography of Phaeacia made it seem like it was the island of Cucira, which is now Corfu. And we did a bonus with Alex Preston about this, for club members who can listen to that. And as we've said, Nausicaä, you know, this, this princess who's doing the laundry and playing, you know, the ball with her friends and stuff. I mean, this is a world away from the island of Calypso, or Circe, or whatever. And most amazingly of all, and it's one of the great, the great kind of postmodern moments in the Odyssey,

• 28:26Speaker 01

  there is a bard at Alcinos's court, who seems like Homer himself. So Homer traditionally is said to be blind, and this guy is blind. And it may well be that that description is what gives rise to the legend that Homer was blind. And he's inspired by the muses, as Homer was thought to be. And he reduces grown men to tears with the power and the pathos of his epic singing. And this blind poet sings to the court at Phaeacia. And among the men at this court, of course, is Odysseus himself. And the bard is singing about the Trojan War, and about the feats of arms that Odysseus himself had performed

• 29:06Speaker 01

  at Troy. And Odysseus weeps to hear them. You know, it's noticed. And so, you know, Alcinos says, "Stranger, why do you weep?" And Odysseus finally reveals who he is. And it is this which prompts him to tell the story of his adventures. So the lotus eaters, and the cyclops, and everything. So this is the narrative that we told in episode one. So it's brilliantly, brilliantly meta.

• 29:29Speaker 00

  You were saying that it's kind of postmodern book. And of course, there's loads of stories within stories, aren't there, in the Odyssey? That's how it works. So you can see what would appeal to a filmmaker.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:36Speaker 00

  You know, flashbacks and things like that.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  Yes. And particularly, I guess particularly one like Christopher Nolan, who loves all these kind of games with with time and so on. And so Odysseus, you know, he tells his story and at the end, everyone is silent, held absolutely spellbound all through the shadowy palace. And Alcinous is the king is so moved that he says, well, we've got to get you back to your home, got to get you back to Ithaca. And so at last, 20 years have gone by, but now Odysseus is ready to go home and Alcinous loads one of these kind of free sailing AI powered ships with all kinds of gifts and

• 30:18Speaker 01

  Odysseus boards it and he curls up and he falls asleep and the ship speeds across the seas. Miraculous power. The morning star rises.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  And as the morning star rises, this ship reaches Ithaca at last and the Phaeon crew lift the still sleeping Odysseus out of the ship and they place him and all the gifts that Alcinous had given him on a beach under an olive tree. And then we're told they themselves went back speeding homewards. And so it is in the most unglamorous, the most kind of anticlimactic manner possible that Odysseus returns to Ithaca. And as had been foretold, he has done so not on his own ship, but on someone else's ship. And he has arrived there alone, but he is at home at last.

• 31:17Speaker 00

  But is this the end of his troubles? Spoiler alert, it is not. His troubles are only just beginning and we'll find out why after the break.

• 31:27Speaker 00

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• 33:40Speaker 00

  Hear me, daughter of Zeus, whose shield is thunder. Standing by me always in every combat mission. No maneuver of mine slips by you. Now again, give me your best support, Athena, comrade.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  So that was Odysseus talking to Athena. Now, that's actually not from the Odyssey. It's from the Iliad, as translated by Robert Fagels. So perfectly illustrates how close the two of them had been in the Trojan War, how they'd been secretly communicating with each other. She'd spoken to him, for example, in that passage that we were just quoting, she speaks to him through the kind of cry of a heron. But here's the twist, then during the voyage, for the 10 years of the voyage, that communication basically died. She kept silent because she didn't want to offend her fellow Olympian Poseidon. But now at last, Tom, Athena is back. She absolutely is. And, you know, to have her on the scene for Odysseus is obviously brilliant news.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  But remember, at this point, he doesn't know where he is. So just to, to give people a reminder of where we are at the story. Odysseus's wife, Penelope, is in his palace. There are 108 suitors by this point, all kind of competing for her hand in marriage. And they are all of them kind of insolent, violent, and in fact murderous. And I say murderous because people may remember that Telemachus had gone off on his voyage to see Nesta and Menelaus on the mainland of Greece. He is now sailing back from mainland Greece to Ithaca. And the plan of the suitors, now that they've rumbled where he's gone, is to ambush and

• 35:25Speaker 01

  kill him at sea before he can reach Ithaca. So that's bad news for Telemachus. Meanwhile, Odysseus, as we described at the end of the previous half, he has been left asleep beneath an olive tree on Ithaca. And when he wakes up, he, you know, you said, he has no idea where he is.

• 35:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:42Speaker 01

  And so he, he fears the worst. He thinks, oh no, this is another terrible trick. Poseidon is still kind of intervening to make my life hell. And so he trudges mournfully, we're told, along the shore of the endlessly clamoring sea, kind of wondering, where am I? And then ahead of him, he sees a very handsome young shepherd lad. And so he hails the shepherd lad and says, where am I? And the shepherd boy answers, sir, you are in Ithaca. So you would think at this news that Odysseus would, you know, kind of explode with joy. But he's Odysseus, he doesn't. He disguises, you know, his delight and instead invokes the cunning in his heart and tells this absolute kind of cock and bull story about how he's, how he's actually a fugitive from Crete.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  I mean, it's kind of making things up just for the joy of making things up. The shepherd boy kind of listens to this story and then starts laughing. It's not a shepherd's boy's laugh, it's a woman's laugh. And she starts stroking him with her hand and materializes before him as this beautiful, towering woman. And it is of course Athena. And she says to him, a man would have to be crafty, a sly old fox to outdo all your tricks. She loves it. She can't get enough of Odysseus's tricks. She thinks it's great.

• 37:01Speaker 00

  So she basically explains to Odysseus the situation. This is what's going on with all the suitors and this is how you're going to deal with it. And she has a plan, doesn't she? So she's basically going to disguise him. She's going to turn him into a beggar so that you will look vile in the eyes of all the suitors and your wife, as well as your child.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  Yes. And so she, she turns him into this kind of hideous old beggar. And then when she's done that, she says, go to the heart of the local swine herd, Eumaeus, who Odysseus remembers from, you know, when he was in Ithaca 20 years before. And this is a man who is still loyal to Odysseus and to his house, so Telemachus and, and Penelope. And meanwhile, Athena tells Odysseus, I am going to go and I'm going to escort Telemachus safely back so that the suitors' plan to murder him is foiled. And all of this is, is what duly comes to pass. So Odysseus, he's disguised as a beggar. He goes to Eumaeus's hut. Eumaeus treats him with great hospitality, with great generosity.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  He's just a humble swine herd, but you know, again, he's kind of model of xenia of kind of hospitality. It soon becomes clear to Odysseus that Eumaeus is utterly devoted to Odysseus's memory. He, he remains completely loyal to him. But, but despite this, Odysseus is Odysseus, so he doesn't reveal himself. Again, he comes up with some mad story, says he's a Cretan. And there's a bit of a joke here, I think, because in antiquity, the Cretans were always viewed as notorious liars. So Odysseus is kind of signaling that it's a lie. And he, he has this kind of great story, saying that he'd served as a mercenary in Egypt and then he'd had a run in with Phoenician slave traders. And I think the thing that's interesting about this is that it clearly reflects the

• 38:46Speaker 01

  world in which Homer is writing this epic down, rather than the age in which Odysseus is meant to have missed. Because going to serve in Egypt as a mercenary or having run ins with Phoenician slavers, this is much more appropriate to the eighth or seventh centuries B.C. than to the, you know, to the Bronze Age.

• 39:03Speaker 00

  So it's like the register has kind of slipped.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  Yes, slightly.

• 39:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  And, and it may be that that's the whole point, you know, that this is a lie.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  You know, again, this is kind of quite postmodern, that Odysseus is telling a lie, Homer is telling a lie, there's a kind of, you know, hall of mirrors there.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  Odysseus also having come up with this kind of, again, this cock and bull story to Eumaeus, he tells Eumaeus, I have news of your master, your missing master, Odysseus. He is on his way home. But Eumaeus, who's believed everything else that Odysseus has told him, all of which is a lie, this one thing which is the truth, Eumaeus does not believe it. And he tells Odysseus, the storm winds have snatched all his renown away. So Eumaeus basically thinks he is at the bottom of the sea. He is drowned and dead.

• 39:54Speaker 00

  Now, Telemachus has gone away and the suitors are waiting to ambush him. But Athena saves him, doesn't she, and brings him back safe and sound to Ithaca. He goes straight to Eumaeus, to Eumaeus's hut. But Eumaeus is out. And now comes one of your favourite moments in the whole story.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  It's one of the great, great moments in Homer, because now is the meeting between the father and the son. So Athena, you know, she's disguised Odysseus as a beggar, all that goes. She restores him to his full stature and nobility, gives him a kind of little touch of stardust, so he looks even better than normal. And at first, Telemachus just cannot believe that this father, who, you know, he doesn't remember at all. He'd just been a baby when Odysseus left. He can't believe that Odysseus is back. But then, to quote Homer, "He twined round his noble father, wailed as the tears poured down, and a desperate longing for weeping welled up in both of them."

• 40:52Speaker 01

  And so, father and son, they embrace lots of sobbing. But, you know, there's a time when the sobbing has to stop, because there is a lot of suitor killing to be done. And this is now absolutely Odysseus's purpose. And at first, when he tells Telemachus this, Telemachus is very sceptical, because remember, there are 108 suitors, and there's only the two of them. But Odysseus says, "Look, I'm a hero. I've killed a lot of people. And also, we have Athena on our side. And on top of that, I am the cleverest man in the world, and I have a cunning plan. So here is my plan. I am going to infiltrate the palace in my brilliant disguise as a beggar.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Your role, Telemachus, when the moment comes, is to remove all the weapons that are hanging in the hall, and which the suitors might otherwise be able to use. You've got to remove them and conceal them. And what you should do is to leave just two swords, two spears, two shields, and that will be for our use. And then, if we are armed, the suitors aren't, we should be able to deal with them. I am confident of our ability to pull this off."

• 42:04Speaker 00

  So the excitement mounts, we're approaching the end game now, the climax of the odyssey. We'll start the very next morning, Tom, take us into the story.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  Okay. The suitors have come back from their failed attempt to ambush Telemachus. Athena had managed to trick and fool them. And so, now they've come back to Odysseus's palace, and people may be wondering, well, you know, why don't they just kill Telemachus in Odysseus's halls? Well, the reason for that is that they don't want to risk the anger of the gods, or indeed, the people of Ithaca, by publicly murdering Odysseus's son. And so that means that when Telemachus comes back from Eumaeus's hut, after to meeting with his father, they leave him alone. You know, they, they kind of eye him warily, but they don't attack him. And so, Telemachus is able to go to Penelope, to talk with his mother,

• 42:54Speaker 01

  and to tell her what he has learnt in Sparta, that Odysseus is alive. He does not tell her that Odysseus is back, and that he has seen his father. So proving himself a slight chip off the old block there. He also introduces her to a guy called Theoclemenus, who is a wandering seer that he has brought back with him from Sparta. So it's the kind of thing you'd bring back from your Greek holiday. You'd pick up a wandering seer, I think, say, "Look what I've got." And Theoclemenus also has amazing news. And Theoclemenus says to Penelope, "Odysseus, even now, back in the land of his father's, already settled or on the move, learning of these wicked deeds, is here.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  And he is sowing seeds of evil for all the suitors." But Penelope doesn't believe him, thinks that this cannot be true. She's been told so many lies over the years, she just can't bring herself to believe this news. But of course, it is true, because all the while, in his beggar's disguise, Odysseus is approaching the gates of his palace. And on the way, he has a run-in with his old goat herd, a guy called Melantius. And Melantius is, is very much not like Eumaeus. Melantius feels no loyalty to Odysseus, shows no courtesy to strangers. And so, when he sees this old beggar, he gives him a kick,

• 44:24Speaker 01

  and not realising, as he does so, that of course, he's kicking his own master. So that is something for Odysseus to bear in mind, the fact that his goat herd has kicked him. Will he wreak an awful vengeance? Well, time will tell. And now, he comes up to the gates of his palace. And as he approaches them, he sees on the side of the road, lying on a dung heap, riddled with flies, an old scabby dog. And this dog is Argos, his beloved hunting dog, the dog that he had raised by hand as a puppy, before he left for Troy. And as he walks past in his disguise as a beggar, nobody else recognising him,

• 45:03Speaker 01

  Argos does recognise him, raises his head, pricks up his ears, wags his tail. And then, quote Homer, "His fate, black death, took him in its grip. The moment he saw Odysseus, after twenty years had passed." So the single most tragic moment in the Greek history of relationships between pet owners and their pets. Very sad moment indeed, very famous.

• 45:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. So now, in his beggar's garb, Odysseus, after twenty years away, goes into his palace. And Melantius, the goat herd, mad from Melantius now, and who's got teamed up with the sister Melantho, who is a concubine of one of the suitors, they mock him, don't they? Because they just think he's a beggar, he's just a, you know, a tramp or whatever.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, they, they've got no time for him. And also, they've got no time for Penelope either, neither of them loyal to Penelope in the slightest.

• 46:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, is led into the hall. And one of the suitors, a guy called Antinous, Robert Pattinson, I think, in the Christopher Nolan film, and he throws a footstool at Odysseus. And to be fair to the other suitors, they do think that this is poor behaviour. They think, you know, you really shouldn't just throw stools at beggars. That, that will bring bad luck, the gods will be angry. And so, they, they make sure to give the old beggar some, some bread and meat, and to, to kind of welcome him. And so, the beggar is kind of sat at the side of the hall, the disguised Odysseus. And Penelope comes down, and she notices him. And she thinks, "Oh, he has the look of someone who, who might have wandered in far lands. Maybe he has news of my husband."

• 46:50Speaker 01

  And so, that evening, she summons him for a private conversation. She doesn't recognise him, but there's something about him that makes Penelope kind of confess to him all her grief, all her longing for her husband, and all her dread that she simply won't be able to keep these suitors at bay for much longer. And the disguised Odysseus replies to this by saying, "Well, I have news of your missing husband. I've seen him." And he, he gives a description of Odysseus, it is so convincing, that Penelope is persuaded that he's telling the truth. And, and she starts weeping, the thought that, that perhaps Odysseus, her husband, really is out there.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  And the beggar says, "You are right to have hope. Trust me, Odysseus is on his way." And Penelope is so happy about this, that she says, "Look, you, you, you know, you're covered in scabs and dirt. Let's have you washed." And so, she summons an elderly attendant in the palace, Euryclea, who had once been the nurse of Odysseus, so had knew Odysseus very well and intimately. And Penelope orders Euryclea to wash the feet of this old beggar. And Euryclea does so, and she sees that there is a scar on the thigh of this beggar. And she recognises it, because this was a scar that Odysseus had got as a young man,

• 48:17Speaker 01

  when he'd been out hunting boar with his grandfather. And Euryclea, because she had often washed Odysseus, of course, she now recognises it. And she says to him, "Truly, you are Odysseus, dear child." And Odysseus said, "Be silent, do not reveal who I am." Puts his hand over her mouth, almost throttles her with his desperation not to have his secret betrayed. And so, Euryclea keeps the secret. And he then goes back to his conversation with Penelope. And Penelope says, "Look, I've, I've got a plan, best way that I can think of to keep the suitors at bay. What I'm going to do, the next day, I am going to go down to them. And Odysseus, my missing husband, he has this great bow, which only he had ever been able to string.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  And I'm going to tell the suitors, whichever of you can string the bow, and then shoot an arrow through twelve double-headed axes lined up in a row in the hall." This was a favourite party trick of Odysseus's. "If one of you can do that, then you will become my husband." And Odysseus hears this plan, and he says, "Yeah, that is brilliant. That is a tremendous plan." Because of course, it completely dovetails with what he wants to do. And I think there is an ambiguity in Homer. There is the possibility that maybe Penelope has recognised him.

• 49:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  But she is a woman of tricks, like he is. They're kind of starting to play this game, where they're each telling tall stories to the other, not quite revealing. I mean, it's not absolutely stated, but I think part of the fascination of this scene is that that is clearly a possibility. The two of them now retire to bed. So Penelope, we're told, cried for her dear husband Odysseus, until sweet sleep was poured onto her eyelids by Athena of the bright owl eyes. Meanwhile, Odysseus has gone down, he's lying in the hall, and he can hear... Various slave girls in the household slipping out to have sex with the suitors who've taken them as concubines. And he's furious about this. He's anxious about how he's going

• 50:18Speaker 01

  to deal with the suitors. You know, is he taking on too much? And so he can't sleep. But then Athena appears to him, reassures him. And as she had granted Penelope the gift of sleep, so Athena grants Odysseus the gift of sleep. And both husband and wife get the rest they're going to need for what is going to be a very, very momentous day.

• 50:42Speaker 00

  All right. So the fateful day has dawned at last. This is the day when there's going to be this contest with the bow and the axe for the hand of Penelope. The suitors are in great form. They're feasting, they're fighting with each other, they're throwing bones at the beggar, who is of course Odysseus.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:03Speaker 00

  But Odysseus and Telemachus are getting ready for what they know will be a decisive moment. So Telemachus has taken the weapons out of the hall, hasn't he? And they have Eumaeus on hand, who's the one guy that they can trust. There's also another cowherd, I think. Is that right?

• 51:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. So Eumaeus is the, is the, the, the pig herd, the swine herd. And this guy is the, the cowherd Philotius. He's also loyal. And so Odysseus hasn't yet revealed who he is to either of these guys, but he knows that he can trust them. So they're on hand. And then we've got the, the wandering seer, who Telemachus had brought back from his holiday to Sparta with him. And he pops up, and the suitors are all having a great time. And then he tells them what's coming. Blood is scattered all over the walls and the beautiful rafters. The entry is filled with ghosts, the courtyard filled with them too, which isn't at all the kind of thing that you want.

• 51:55Speaker 00

  No.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  If you're having a great time. So the hour arrives. Penelope enters the hall, and she is holding the great bow and quiver of Odysseus. And behind her, a train of her women, holding the 12 axes made of bronze and iron. And Penelope announces to the suitors her decision, that whoever can string the bow and shoot an arrow through the axe heads will become her husband. And Telemachus then sets the, the axes in a line along the hall. And the suitors all step forward in turn to try and string the bow, all 180 of them.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  And not one of them has the strength to string the bow. Meanwhile, as the suitors are doing this, Odysseus has taken Eumaeus, the loyal swine herd, and Philotius, the loyal cowherd, outside. And at last now, he reveals his true identity. And they think this is brilliant. You know, they fall to their knees, absolutely delighted, sobbing with joy. And he gives them specific tasks. Eumaeus is to bring him the bow when the time comes. And Philotius is to lock the gates of the hall, so that no one can escape or summon help. Inside the hall, the suitors have all been trying to string this massive bow and, and failing.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  And so Odysseus goes back inside the hall, and he makes a suggestion. He says, well, why don't we have a go tomorrow? At dawn, the god will grant victory to whomsoever he wishes. And in the meanwhile, he says, why are we waiting? Because you're all obviously now at a bit of a loose end. Why don't I have a try?

• 53:36Speaker 00

  You'll find it entertaining, watching me, a stooped old beggar having a go. Where's the harm?

• 53:44Speaker 01

  And at this, the suitors explode in indignation. And Antinous, who, you know, the guy who'd chucked the stool at him right at the beginning, so the most boorish of all the suitors, he rounds on, on, on Odysseus disguised as the beggar with insults. But first Penelope, and then Telemachus. Tell Antinous, show some manners. You are in our hall. And Telemachus tells Penelope, go to your rooms. So again, you know, he's, he's definitely manned up, I think it's fair to say. And then he gives a secret nod to Eumaeus. This is the signal to, you know, we're, we're about to go. And so Eumaeus, as he'd been instructed to do, goes over, picks up the bow, and gives it to Odysseus. And Odysseus tests the bow.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  He scans it. Homer says that he almost caresses it. And then abruptly, to the absolute stupefaction of the watching suitors, he strings it. And he plucks the string to test its pitch. And as he does so, we're told, Zeus sends a flash of lightning from the clear blue sky overhead. And then Odysseus takes an arrow, and he knocks it, and he draws, and he lets fly. And the arrow passes through all 12 of the axe heads. Yes, the bronze weighted shaft sailed straight through them. And at this point, Telemachus reaches for his sword and

• 55:10Speaker 01

  spear, and Odysseus strips off his rags, and he aims an arrow at Antinous, the worst behaved of all the suitors, and he lets fly. And Antinous, who is obliviously lifting a great golden goblet to his lips as all this is happening, is struck directly in the throat, and blood spurts out in a great jet. It's a very cinematic description from Homer. And at the spectacle of this is complete pandemonium. And the suitors all think that the beggar must have done it by accident. I mean, surely this is the only explanation. But no, because now comes the moment when Odysseus announces himself to the hall. You

• 55:51Speaker 01

  dogs, you never imagined that I would make my way home from the country of the Trojans. Look how you've wasted my house, how you forced yourselves upon the slave women in bed, how while I was still alive, but out of sight, you courted my wife. And the slaughter begins, and it is terrible, and it is total.

• 56:14Speaker 00

  But there is a chance for the suitors, isn't there? Because you'd mentioned earlier, this goat herd Melanthius, who had identified himself as an absolute villain by kicking Odysseus when he was on his way in. And this bloke actually slips out of the hall and starts to bring them weapons and armour, doesn't he?

• 56:30Speaker 01

  He does. But fortunately for Odysseus, he's rumbled by Eumaeus and Philotius. And they truss him up, and they lift him up to the roof beams, and they leave him hanging there. And this portends nothing good for Melanthius. And meanwhile, the slaughter is continuing in the hall, and Athena has turned up for the fun. And she's not there to, to help Odysseus, but basically to goad him on and tell him to kill even faster. And she materializes first as mentor. So this old friend of Odysseus's, which was the form that she'd appeared to, to Telemachus at the beginning of this episode. And then she turns into a swallow, and she perches on the, the, the great smoke blackened roof beam of the hall. And this is something that she loves doing. She loves taking on the form

• 57:15Speaker 01

  of a bird, and particularly when there are spectacles of bloodshed. So in the Iliad, she had disguised herself as a vulture. And there are descriptions of her kind of shivering with delight at the spectacle of, of blood being spilled. And spectacles of blood being spilled is absolutely what she gets now in the hall of Odysseus. So tremendous violence, tremendous slaughter. All the suitors end up dead. And the metaphor that Homer uses is that of fish being dragged onto a beach in nets and speared. And there's an echo there of, of what had happened to Odysseus's men in the harbour of the Lestragonians, where the Lestragonians had gone and speared all his men. So the suitors are wiped out.

• 57:59Speaker 01

  But they are not the only victims of Odysseus's terrible vengeance. Because he, when the slaughter is done, he demands to know of Euryclea, his old nurse, which of the servant girls have been sleeping with the suitors? And Euryclea replies, well, there were 12 of them. So it's a bit like post Vichy France. You know, they are female collaborators, horizontales.

• 58:24Speaker 00

  That's exactly the, the analogy I thought of. And, and they, their fate is horrible, isn't it?

• 58:29Speaker 01

  Yes. So they are told to carry out the corpses of the suitors, among them their dead lovers. And then to clean the hall, the tables, the benches. Meanwhile, Telemachus has strung a ship's cable from a pillar to a beam. And from this cable, the maids are hanged. And to quote Homer, horrible description, just as when some thrushes with slender wings or some doves go crashing into a snare. And we're told that as they are throttled, the girls' feet twitch. And then Homer says, but not for very long.

• 59:05Speaker 00

  I wonder if Tom Holland's going to be doing this in the film? Because he's Telemachus, isn't he?

• 59:10Speaker 01

  I mean, it's genuinely interesting to see whether the slaughter of the servant girls is included. Can't imagine Matt Damon doing it, but who knows? It'll always be interesting to see whether Melanthius features as a character in the Nolan film, because he is given a particularly horrible punishment. So his nose and ears are sliced off, his genitals are cut off and fed to dogs, and his hands and feet are amputated. And Homer does not specify whether he dies of this mutilations, or whether he's just left to eke out a hideous living as a beggar.

• 59:45Speaker 00

  Yeah. What would one prefer? I don't know.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  There is a lot of brutality.

• 59:50Speaker 01

  In this world. But Eurydice, I mean, she thinks it's all brilliant. She couldn't be happier. The spectacle of all this slaughter and bloodshed and castration. And in fact, she's almost laughing for joy as she rushes up to tell her mistress Penelope what has been going on. But Penelope still can't quite believe it. Or does she? Is she still playing games? And she comes downstairs and she gazes at Odysseus. And Homer says that she is torn by uncertainty. Sometimes as she stared at him, she seemed to see his face. But sometimes she failed to recognise him dressed in vile rags. And Telemachus can't believe this. How can his mother possibly doubt that she is gazing at her

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  husband, Telemachus's father? But Penelope says, Look, if he truly is Odysseus, we will know each other in our own ways. For we, you know, we have signs, we have secrets that are known only to the two of us. And Odysseus smiles at this. And again, I think there's this sense that they're playing the kind of games that perhaps they played before he left for Troy. And so he says, Run me a bath. And Penelope obeys, and a bath is run for him. And then when he steps out from the bath, we're told that Athena poured great beauty upon his head. But Penelope, she's still, she's still not

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  welcoming him back as her husband. And Odysseus says, Your heart is made of iron. You are the hardest of women. But Penelope says, I don't care. I'm not going to be taken for a fool. And she says to Eurydice, Go and move the bed out of our bridal chamber, the chamber that Odysseus, my husband, built with his own hands. And when Odysseus hears this, he explodes. And he says, What do you mean? This bed can't be moved? Because when I made it myself, I fashioned one of the

• 1:01:51Speaker 01

  four boasts out of a living olive tree. And I had then built the bedchamber around this living olive tree, around this bed that I've made out of it, adorning it with inlays of gold and silver and ivory. So in other words, the only way that the bed could be moved is if someone had cut the living trunk of the tree. And this is something known only to Odysseus, only to Penelope. And so when he says this, at last, Penelope's knees give way, and her heart as well. And she embraces him, and she kisses him, and she is struck in her joy by the last of the poem's great similes.

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  And it reverses what had happened, because now it is Penelope who is being compared to the sailor lost at sea. She, Homer says, is like a shipwreck sailor crusted in brine, who at last treads on dry land after escaping from disaster. And the great moment of husband and wife being joined together after all these adventures, all these many, many years of absence, at last it arrives, and they retire to bed, and Athena holds back the coming of the dawn, so that they can enjoy the ultimate reunion. And the amazing thing is, again, it's another kind of postmodern, kind of

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  meta aspect of the poem, that they have time, because Athena has pushed the dawn back, for the pair of them to catch up on what the other has been doing. And so Odysseus basically tells the story of his adventures. So they, essentially what we covered in episode one. And Penelope tells Odysseus what she's been up to. So basically, the outline of this episode. So in other words, the first people to narrate the action, the story of the Odyssey are Odysseus and Penelope themselves.

• 1:03:47Speaker 00

  And the first people to hear it.

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  And the first people to hear it. Although obviously not the last.

• 1:03:52Speaker 00

  So the appeal of the Odyssey, Tom, what do you think it boils down to? Because it's obviously the product of a very specific time and place. And yet it's proved so enduring and so influential on Western literary culture more generally.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  I think it's exactly that fusion. I think it's the fact that it has gods, it features, you know, famous monsters. Now, speaking for myself, I loved that as a child. That was the quality that I loved. But also, to be honest, you know, I loved the violence of it, and the murderous quality of Odysseus, as well as the cunning aspect of him.

• 1:04:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:25Speaker 01

  People, I think, enjoy that in stories.

• 1:04:27Speaker 00

  There's a savagery to it that's often lost in children's versions, I think, the cruelty.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  But also, I think the basic plot of it is so adaptable. It can be retold in so many ways, and it has been retold in lots of ways. I mean, there are elements of it in Virgil's poem, The Aeneid, that in turn influences Dante, who describes Odysseus after he has returned to Ithaca, he ends up bored, and he sets sail for his last great voyage to the ends of the world. And that is then reworked by Tennyson in the 19th century in his great poem, Ulysses. And I think it's a perfect way to end this, because it describes a hero who will never come to rest, who will

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  always be embarking on fresh adventures. And you can see that now with the Christopher Nolan film. There was the Ralph Fiennes film as well, which describes his homecoming. And that is just one of a kind of endless number of reworkings that continue to be made in film, in fiction, in poetry. So let's end it with Tennyson's Ulysses, Odysseus, saying how he is going to leave on one last final voyage. Though much is taken, much abides, and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are. One equal temper of

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will, to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

• 1:06:06Speaker 00

  Well, thank you, Tennyson. And thank you, Tom, for what's been an epic journey, an Odyssey, dare I say.

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  Literally so.

• 1:06:13Speaker 00

  Through this most influential of all great stories. So next week, we will be somewhere very different. We'll be in late 1880s, Fanderciek Vienna, for the murder-suicide mystery of Mjolnir. And Rest is History Club members can get both of those episodes on Monday. You won't have to wait. And by the way, we are running our summer sale. So if you want to join the Rest is History Club, this is the moment. For a limited time only, you can get 20% off an annual membership using the code SUMMER26. And that offer is valid until August 31. So on that bombshell, thank you very much, Tom. Thank you, everybody, and goodbye.

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  Goodbye.

• 1:07:06Speaker 03

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