687. The Odyssey: Hero of the Trojan Horse (Part 1)

How does The Odyssey, one of the greatest stories of all time, unfold? What historical events may it be based on? And, where might Odysseus, the hero of Homer’s epic, have faced his various trials in real life? Join Tom and Dominic as they unravel the legendary story of Homer’s Odyssey, and its historical precedents. _______ Lloyds. 250 years on and still backing the nation's aspirations. _______ *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. https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/the-rest-is-history-the-ultimate-victorian-adventure/ Join The Rest Is History Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to every series and live show tickets, a members-only newsletter, discounted books from the show, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at the⁠⁠restishistory.com⁠ To read our new newsletter, sign up at: ⁠therestishistory.com/newsletters⁠ Advertise with us: ⁠[email protected] _______ 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

• 0:12Speaker 00

  Tell me the tale of a man, Muse, who had so many roundabout ways to wander, driven off course after sacking Troy's hallowed cape. Many of the peoples whose cities he saw and whose ways of thinking he learned. Many of the toils he suffered at tea, anguish in his heart as he struggled to safeguard his life and the homecoming of his companions. But he did not save his companions even so, though he longed to, for their heedlessness destroyed them, theirs and nobody else's, fools that they were, like children who devoured the sun god Hyperion's cattle. And so he took from them the day of their homecoming.

• 0:57Speaker 00

  Goddess, start where you will. Daughter of Zeus, share the tale with us too. So that was the opening of Homer's great epic, The Odyssey, brilliantly translated by a friend of the show, Daniel Mendelson. And there was only one person who was capable of reading that for us, and we're very grateful to the tremendous classical actor Russell Crowe for reading those words. And the reason that Russell agreed to do that for us is because The Odyssey is one

• 1:34Speaker 00

  of the great foundational moments, the foundational products in all Western culture and civilisation. It ranks alongside Homer's other great poem, the Iliad, composed in the eighth or the seventh century B.C. And of course, the Bible as an absolute building block of the culture that we now are so familiar with, Tom. So The Odyssey has given us so many other stories, hasn't it?

• 2:03Speaker 01

  You've said that it's a kind of foundational work of Western culture, but it's in all kinds of ways, a foundational work of Western literature. And possibly beyond that, because there are theories that perhaps the Sinbad cycle, the story of Sinbad the sailor in The Arabian Nights, that perhaps that derived from The Odyssey. Because I guess the central core idea is a pretty obvious one when you think about it, which is about a man afar from home, trying to get back to his wife, to his son, to his homeland.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by the Lloyds 5K House Deposit, and this is something that was last seen in 1996.

• 2:49Speaker 00

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• 3:42Speaker 01

  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.

• 3:54Speaker 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 Anthropic knows the importance of questions, and it's why Anthropic is founded on one hard question above all. How can we ensure for the AI revolution really goes well for ordinary people?

• 4:24Speaker 01

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• 4:39Speaker 00

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• 4:47Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by the Gates Foundation. We have touched on the fall of the Roman Empire a few times on this show, haven't we? But what our listeners may not know is that among the causes that historians talk about, it's not just barbarian invasions, there's also talk of a disease which people call Roman fever, which I believe we know now as malaria.

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• 5:49Speaker 01

  And in Greek, he has this kind of desperate yearning for a nostos, they called it, you know, this return back home. And on this journey, along the way, he meets with monsters and he meets with menacing alien environments, and he has brushes with powers beyond the limits of mortal understanding. And on top of that, there are strange distortions of time and space. You have multiple narratives and you have these kind of dizzyingly subjective experiences. So it is, I mean, you know, people have suggested that everything that Odysseus tells us in The Odyssey may actually not be true. I mean, we don't know, and that is kind of part of the fascination.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  It's, it's, it's in one level, a very simple story, a man trying to get back home, and on the other, it's, it's kind of brilliantly sophisticated and meta.

• 6:40Speaker 00

  You made it sound like Inception or something. You know, the Christopher Nolan film where Leonardo DiCaprio is trying to get back home to his kind of, to his kids. And, and actually, that's not a coincidence, because playing with time, a central character who's trying to return to something, meeting with monsters, flashbacks, flash forwards, a sort of dizzying whirl of events, and you're never quite sure exactly where you are, those are very Christopher Nolan obsessions. And Christopher Nolan, by an extraordinary coincidence, has made a film of The Odyssey that is coming out later this week, Tom, on the 17th of July.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  There's been a lot of conversation about The Odyssey recently, quite a few controversies already thrown up before people have even seen the film.

• 7:24Speaker 00

  From the trailers and stuff, right?

• 7:26Speaker 01

  From the trailers. And so we will be having a bonus with Daniel Mendelson to talk about that, and that will be out later this week. So massive sense of anticipation, but it's not the only reason, I think, for doing The Odyssey on The Rest is History, because to be honest, it's a story that I've been wanting to do since we began the podcast. And I want to look at perhaps a little bit at the context. So how did it come to be composed? Is anything in the story true? Is, you know, is it, to what degree might it be based on fact? What mirror might it hold up to the reality of, of the ancient Mediterranean, whether that's the time that Odysseus is supposed to have lived or the time when Homer is composing it?

• 8:06Speaker 01

  But also to tell the story itself, because it is the story that first got me obsessed with Greek mythology and therefore with ancient history and therefore with history more generally. And so you could say that The Odyssey was the starting point for my own personal Odyssey, which has brought me to this point, Dominic, sitting here, recording this episode with you.

• 8:30Speaker 00

  There are tens of people wiping away tears at this already. All right, so we're going to get into the story, and we're going to try to solve some of the mysteries of the, of The Odyssey. Now, one difference between you and Homer, I remember you saying to me when we were talking about this, is that you, is that you felt you could improve on Homer, because you felt that Homer had made a mistake by not beginning at the beginning and proceeding chronologically. But you, you're going to take a this different approach, so you're going to proceed very methodically without his haphazard approach. Am I right?

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Well, I like to think that if, that if Homer were doing it as a podcast, he would do it as I'm doing. I mean, if I were writing an epic poem, of course, it would be completely different. But this is a podcast. So unlike Homer, we are going to begin at the beginning, and we're going to proceed through the story chronologically, which Homer does not do. And I suspect that that's a kind of aspect of the, of the epic that Christopher Nolan will be interested in, but we will see. And to tell this story, we won't just be drawing on Homer, we will occasionally be drawing on sources outside the Iliad and The Odyssey to clarify aspects of the plot that his original listeners would have taken for granted.

• 9:40Speaker 00

  So let's begin right at the beginning. And for people who don't know The Odyssey, we pick up in the final moments of the Trojan War. So Troy, the great city, the greatest city in Asia supposedly, on the banks of the Hellespont or the Dardanelle. So if you, people remember the Dardanelle from our Gallipoli episode, Troy has been reduced to a smoking ruin. And the people that have done this, Tom, are the Greeks, but Homer doesn't call them the Greeks, does he?

• 10:10Speaker 01

  No, he calls them the Achaeans. So I think throughout this, these two episodes, we will be calling the Greeks the Achaeans. That is the word that, that Homer uses. And the Achaeans and the Trojans have been fighting on the plain of Troy. And the Achaeans are there to seize back the kidnapped Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, who has been stolen by Paris, the prince of Troy. And the Trojans are fighting to keep her. And they've been doing this, as we say, for for for 10 years, and it looks an absolute deadlock. But then, and I'm going to quote here, a bard who features in the Odyssey, and he describes how the sons of Achyia laid the city waste after pouring out of the horse.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  And the horse, of course, is the Trojan horse, the most successful wheeze in the whole of mythology, I would guess, in the whole history of warfare, certainly the most famous. So famous that it inspired a disastrous project in the Gallipoli invasions, didn't it? They got some ship and ran it on, and it was absolute disaster.

• 11:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, ran it up onto the beach and then everyone shot them.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  However, the original Trojan horse is not a disaster. It's an absolutely crunching success. And the person who thinks it up is the man who gives his name to the Odyssey. And this is a guy called Odysseus, and he is the son of Laertes. And he's the king of a very small, poor island off the west coast of Greece called Ithaca. So relative to the other Achian heroes at Troy, the other Greek heroes, who were kings of famous, golden cities like Mycenae or Sparta, Odysseus is very much a kind of second division king. However, he is one of the standout stars of the Trojan War. And this is because he has qualities that enable him to transcend the poverty of his

• 12:01Speaker 01

  kingdom. So he's a brilliant warrior, he's famous for his his courage, for his prowess on the battlefield, but he's also by far the smartest of the warriors on both sides in the Trojan War. He's very clever, he's very inventive, he's devious, he's a dab hand with a trick with a lie. And as such, he is the particular favourite of the goddess Athena, the great warrior goddess, who is simultaneously the goddess of warfare, but also the kind of the domestic sciences and everything that kind of contributes to civilisation. And so she values intelligence for its own sake. And over the course of the Trojan War, she's always keeping an eye on him and occasionally

• 12:46Speaker 01

  appearing to him. And she says to him, she addresses him directly, "You are by far the best of all mortal men for schemes, for your way with words, while I, more than all other gods, have a name for cunning and shrewdness." And in the Odyssey, there are a number of women who fall in love with Odysseus or who are in love with Odysseus. And among those, I would rank Athena. I think, you know, that there is a kind of love affair there between the mortal and the goddess.

• 13:14Speaker 00

  But this business about women falling in love with him is in the future, isn't it? You're you're doing Christopher Nolan, you're flashing forward. Because, in fact, Odysseus, at this point, you know, Troy is a smoking ruin, he has only one object in mind, and that is simply to get home as quickly as possible to his wife Panelope and his son Telemachus. So his son, he hasn't seen since he was a baby, basically, or a toddler. And he's also got a dog that he's very keen on, and the dog is called Argos.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Yes, who Odysseus had raised him as a puppy.

• 13:46Speaker 00

  Right. So talk to me about Panelope. What's Panelope like?

• 13:49Speaker 01

  So Panelope is obviously more important to the plot than Argos, the dog. So Panelope is the cousin of Helen. And Odysseus, unlike everyone else, he'd gone completely mad for Helen. Odysseus had always had eyes only for Panelope. And this is because Panelope is basically very like him. She is very clever, she's very strong minded, she's absolutely suited to him. So she's a model of what Homer calls homo fructine, which means kind of like mindedness. You you have a kind of similar sensibility. And Odysseus was so in love with her that prior to the departure of the Greeks for Troy, he had actually tried to get out of having to go to the expedition.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  This is not in Homer, but people in ancient Greece, listening to the Odyssey, would have known that Odysseus's devotion to Panelope was such that he tried to pull this trick and get out of going to the war. And he's the only hero of whom such a thing is recorded. So what had he done? When the Greek ambassadors, you know, summoning him to come to join the expedition and go to Troy with them, had arrived in Ithaca, he said, "Oh, I can't come, I'm mad." And they said, "Well, in what way are you mad?" And he said, "Well, look at me, here I am, I've yoked a horse and an ox, and I'm ploughing a beach with salt. Clearly, I'm absolutely mad." And so most of the Greek ambassadors are persuaded by this, but one of the ambassadors is not.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  And he looks around and he sees that Telemachus's nurse is standing nearby with the baby Telemachus in her arms. And so this ambassador goes over and snatches the baby and places it in front of the horse and ox as Odysseus is driving them along the beach. And what's Odysseus going to do? He has the choice, he can either drive across the little baby, kill it, but not have to go to Troy, or swerve and reveal that he's not actually mad. And so he opts to swerve and not kill his baby son. And he's rumbled, and so he duly has to leave for Troy. And he sets sail at the head of a fleet of 12 ships, and Homer in the Iliad describes their prowls flashing crimson. And he's there for the 10 years, he fights heroically, he comes up with the wheeze of

• 15:56Speaker 01

  the Trojan horse, Troy falls, Odysseus takes lots of loot, he's ready to go back home, him and his 12 ships, and so off they sail.

• 16:07Speaker 00

  Right, but the journey home is not quite as simple as the journey there, is it?

• 16:11Speaker 01

  That is putting it mildly.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  Right. And this is partly because they keep getting distracted, and they're distracted right from the very start. So they set off, the winds blow them west from Troy, they're going along the northern kind of coastline of the Aegean, and they arrive at a place called Ismarus. And there, instead of sort of putting ashore for supplies, shaking hands with the harbour master, exchanging pleasantries with the burgers of the town, Odysseus, by some standards, behaves very poorly.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Well, he he has something of the Viking about him, I think it's fair to say. So here is Odysseus talking about what he did at Ismarus. "I laid waste the city and killed the men after dragging their wives from the city with a great deal of booty as well." And it's fair to say that neither Homer nor any ancient source of which I am aware mentions what happens to these women that Odysseus and his men have kind of dragged off into slavery. I mean, you know, do they die on the voyage? What, I mean, what, are they sold? I mean, we we just don't know.

• 17:10Speaker 00

  Nothing good.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Nothing good, I think. One man in Ismarus is spared, and this is a guy called Maron, who is a priest of the god Apollo, and his family is spared as well. And Maron, to show his gratitude for this, gives Odysseus seven bars of gold, a silver mixing bowl, and 12 amphorae of wine. And that these, this wine is described as being sweet and undiluted, a drink for the gods. And we mentioned this in our episode on the history of wine. It's a kind of ancient Greek premier grand cru. It is incredibly strong. And Maron suggests to Odysseus that one portion of this wine should be mixed with 19 portions

• 17:53Speaker 01

  of water, and that anyone who drinks it neat is obviously the most monstrous barbarian. So that is just something for listeners to bear in mind.

• 18:02Speaker 00

  And Odysseus, you know, he's pleased with all this, he's ready to head off. But again, this is a theme that will recur throughout the Odyssey and indeed these episodes. His men, when he says, like, right, let's crack on, they've got stuck into the wine, and they're also having a barbecue. Hence the Russell Crowe voice for the beginning, because there's something very Australian about about Odysseus's crew. I mean, basically, wherever they stop, they have barbecues and start grilling meat on the beach. And that's a terrible thing to do.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  It is, because it enables the locals who've been beaten off to to kind of rally and return to the attack with much larger numbers of men. And so Odysseus and his men find themselves horribly outnumbered, they form a shield wall. But as the sun sets on the scene of battle, they're forced to retreat onto their ships, and they manage to escape essentially by the skin of their teeth. And over 70 of his men are left dead. So already, the expedition is starting to leech manpower. However, they get away, they sail southwards across the Aegean, they round the southernmost tip of Greece, and the southernmost tip of the Peloponnese, Cape Malia. And now all Odysseus has to do is kind of steer around the Cape, head northwards, go

• 19:15Speaker 01

  around the kind of the edge of the Peloponnese, and there is Ithaca waiting for him. But disaster, because as they round the Cape, a violent storm blows up, terrible winds blow them and blow them and blow them. They rage for nine days and nights, and when the nine days and nights of wind finally calms down, they've got no idea where they are. And on the 10th day, they see land, and they moor there, and Odysseus sends a couple of scouts to, you know, go up the beach, head inland, and try and work out where they are. And then he sits there and he waits for them to return, but they don't come back.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  And so finally, he thinks, well, I'd better go and work out what's going on here. And so he leaves the ship, follows their footsteps, you know, he can trek them up the beach, goes inland, and he finds them, and they are kind of, they're half asleep, they're all blissed out, they've got a kind of spaced look on their faces, smiling happily. And he tries to kind of rouse them, tells them, "Come on, we've got to get cracking." And they don't want to move. And finally, he uses force, he kind of physically drags them, and they start to sob, they just want to stay there and chillax and, you know, have fun and be mellow and not go kind of roaring off around the world. They can't be asked to go home, they don't want to, they're enjoying themselves too much where they are. And Odysseus realises where they are.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  They have come to the land of the lotus eaters. And Homer explains what this means. "Now whichever of them ate the honey sweet fruit of the lotus, no longer had any desire to send word of themselves or return." And so Odysseus is aware that, you know, if all his crew get out and start munching on the lotus, they will never return home. And so he orders his fleet to leave immediately, because they can't risk losing that, you know, the will for the nostos, the will for the return home.

• 21:11Speaker 00

  So let's just stop the story right there and ask what this is all about. So what do people think the the land of the lotus eaters refers to? Is there something in, I don't know, Bronze Age history or something, that would, that it, that is the genesis of this idea?

• 21:28Speaker 01

  I mean, it's a question that the Greeks themselves asked. So Herodotus, the the first historian, he

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Worked out that the land of the lotus eaters must have been on the North African coast because the winds had been blowing Odysseus in that direction. So this is just kind of due south of Sicily. Victorian scholars thought that probably it was opium. And I think this probably says more about the Victorians than it does about Homer, because it was a great age for opium dens. But it's a very kind of popular idea. There are other theories, which I was kind of looking up for this episode. Apparently, there's a small tree called the Zizipus lotus. But the problem with that is it's not narcotic. And there is apparently a blue lotus, which does have psychotropic properties. So maybe it's that. I don't know. I'm not a specialist in the flora of North Africa.

• 22:20Speaker 00

  It's more likely surely that this is a literary symbol, the lotus eating, no? That it's basically about losing yourself and losing sight of your goal.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  I mean, I think it's important for the whole structure of the poem that you have to completely believe in Odysseus's desperation to get back home and that his men share in that desperation. And so in a way, the best way to kind of highlight that is to show the alternative, what that would mean. And essentially, it just means kind of chilling out and doing nothing, which might have its appeal. But ultimately, it's seen as a danger. And so when Odysseus pushes off from the land of the lotus eaters, the reader or the listener can feel confident that this is a man utterly committed to getting back home. And this is very important because all kinds of obstacles, as we will see, are going to be waiting for him on his journey back.

• 23:13Speaker 00

  Well, let's get to the next obstacle, which is the most famous obstacle of all. So they set off, don't they? They reach another bit of land. So this is a little island. As far as they can tell, the island is inhabited only by wild goats. They have another barbecue inevitably.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  Another barbie.

• 23:30Speaker 00

  And they see that there's a larger island nearby. And on this island, they can see smoke rising into the sky. So that's an interesting and exciting and tantalising sign. And Odysseus, he goes off on his own. Am I right to find out what's on this island?

• 23:46Speaker 01

  There's smoke, but there's no sign of agriculture, which is a puzzle because they would assume that a kind of a settlement people would be telling fields, but there's no sign of that. And so Odysseus is a little bit nervous about this, not sure what that might portend. And so he sets sail in a single ship. So he leaves the other 11 ships kind of hidden off the smaller island. He goes off, he crosses over to the main island. They land and they walk along the beach and they see a cave. And the entrance to this cave is kind of, it's walled off with kind of stone wall. So he thinks, well, this is obviously signs of habitation. And so he decides to investigate and he takes his 12 bravest men with him.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  And he also takes with him a goat skin filled with that delicious, very strong wine that had been given to him by Maron, the priest of Apollo. And they go up to the cave and they call out and there's no answer. And so they decide to kind of wander in and investigate. And they find that it's empty except for lambs and for kids who are in pens. And there are racks and racks of cheeses. So clearly there is someone living here. And Odysseus decides to wait for the owner of the cave to return. And they build a fire and they grill some cheese. And it's like a kind of, I suppose, a kind of Mediterranean hiking holiday or something like that.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Again, it's this kind of Aussie style obsession with having barbecues at inappropriate moments. They're laid out having this barbecue and outside the sun is setting. And towards dusk, the earth starts to shake. So it's a little bit like the scene in Jurassic Park when the glass of water on the jeep starts to shake. And it's not a tyrannosaur that appears, but a monstrous giant human figure. And he is driving flocks of sheep and goats ahead of him. And he enters the cave and as he enters the cave, he blocks out the light. As the eyes of the Achaeans adjust, they look up into his face and they see that he has only a single eye.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  So this is a cyclops and it's a cyclops by the name of Polyphemus. And Polyphemus is of immense size and therefore strength. And he picks up a giant boulder and uses it to seal the entrance. It would be completely impossible for Odysseus and his men to move it. And then he looks around with his single eye and he spots Odysseus and his men cowering at the back of the cave. And he demands to know who they are.

• 26:24Speaker 00

  And just to be, just to check, do they know what he is? Do they have a sense of him? Or is he something they've never heard of or never seen before?

• 26:32Speaker 01

  I think the general vibe is that he's not good news.

• 26:34Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  He's enormous, he's fierce looking, he's got a single eye. I don't think that this is the kind of person that you probably want to run into when you've been grilling his cheese. But he's hopeful that perhaps he could get this guy on his side. And so he conquers his fear and he steps forward and he introduces himself. He introduces himself as an Achian, but he doesn't really give any more detail. And when Polyphemus asks Odysseus, you know, well, where is your ship? Odysseus lies and says that they've lost it in a storm. He loves a fib. He doesn't want to give away too much because he is clearly nervous about whether Polyphemus is the kind of person you want, within whose cave you want to be stuck. And when Polyphemus learns that their ship has been sunk,

• 27:19Speaker 01

  he reaches for two of Odysseus's men, smashes out their brains on the floor, devours them, falls asleep, stretched out among his flocks. So there, Dominic, is your answer. He's not good news. He's not the kind of person you want to be stuck in a cave with.

• 27:34Speaker 00

  He's blocked them in the cave with a boulder, which is crucial. So they can't just kill him because they wouldn't be able to move the boulder, right?

• 27:41Speaker 01

  Exactly so. So they have no choice but to pass this completely miserable night. And in due course, as Homer puts it, morning-born dawn touches the sky with her rosy fingertips. Polyphemus wakes up and for breakfast, he has two more of Odysseus's men. You know, he smashes them again on the kind of the side of the wall and devours them. And then he moves the boulder, drives out his flocks and then seals the cave up again with the boulder. So again, you know, Odysseus and his men are stuck there. So, you know, what are they going to do now? This is, seems an impossible situation. But Odysseus, fortunately, you know, he is blindingly smart. And so he looks around and he realises that there is a possible way out.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Because Polyphemus has got a club and this club is enormous. It's kind of like the size of the trunk of an enormous tree, the length and scale of the mast of a ship. So Odysseus gets his men to whittle this club down to a very, very sharp point. And then when they've done that, they conceal it under kind of sheepskins or whatever. And when Polyphemus returns that evening, he devours two more men. Odysseus steps forward and he offers Polyphemus a cup of Maron's delicious, and did I mention it's very strong, wine?

• 28:58Speaker 00

  They brought the wine with them. Crucial.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  And Polyphemus is clearly a barbarian because he does not water it down. Instead, he guzzles it down neat. And then when Odysseus comes forward and offers him another two cups of this wine, he guzzles that down as well. And once he's had these three cups of wine, he asks Odysseus for his name. And Odysseus does not give his real name. Instead, he says, my name is Utis, which means in Greek, no one.

• 29:24Speaker 00

  Oh, so clever.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  And Polyphemus says, well, you know, as a thank you for the wine, here is what I'm going to do. I will eat you last.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Great giant laugh. He then falls asleep. And as he falls asleep, he kind of belches and vomits up wine and bits of hand and bits of flesh. And it all spews out onto the floor of the cave. And Polyphemus kind of rolls over, vomits up a bit more. And then he's flat out and he's snoring and the cave echoes to the sound of the snores. And this is the chance that Odysseus has been waiting for. So he and his men, remember, have got this club, which they've sharpened into a spike. And they heat this giant spike in the fire. And then they clamber up the body of the sleeping cyclops and they aim it over his single eye.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Point rests on the lid. Odysseus gives the signal and then it's driven deep into the eye of the cyclops. And to quote Homer, his eyelids and his brows were blistered all round by the blast as the eyeball burned, its roots crackling in the fire. And understandably, Polyphemus screams and howls. He pulls the spike out of his eye and hurls it against the side of the cave and starts bellowing for help. And there are other cyclops, you know, his neighbours, and they hear his cries. And they come down and they ask him what has happened. And again, to quote Homer, from inside the cave, mighty Polyphemus made his reply, friends, no one is killing me. And so his friends answer, well, if no one is killing you, if no one has harmed you,

• 31:04Speaker 01

  and it's clearly then just a malady sent by Zeus, you must pray to your divine father for relief. And Polyphemus's divine father is Poseidon, the god of the sea. So a very, very powerful god indeed.

• 31:18Speaker 00

  Not good news if you want to get home by sea, right? I mean, to have Poseidon against you.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So brilliant for Odysseus. He's come up with the, you know, with the spike in the eye wheeze. And also the whole, you know, calling himself nobody means that the other cyclops think that nothing's the matter with Polyphemus. But they're still not how- Danger because what Polyphemus does now is to push back the the boulder because he's got to let his flocks of sheep and goats go out. And as they kind of start milling out through the cave entrance, he feels each one to make sure that Odysseus and his men aren't trying to kind of creep out hidden among the flocks. But again, Odysseus is equal to this challenge. So what he does is he ties each of his men underneath the belly of of a sheep. And they all kind of managed to get out and Polyphemus doesn't

• 32:06Speaker 01

  realise that they're kind of tied under the bellies of the sheep. And then he himself, there's one giant ram, and he hugs on to the fleece of this giant ram and the ram trots out. And Polyphemus, he strokes the ram and realises that this is, you know, his beloved ram and feels that it's walking slowly because of the weight, but he thinks that the ram is walking slowly out of grief for his blinded master. So, very sad. Anyway, Odysseus and his men managed therefore to get out of the cave, cut themselves free from from the sheep. They drive the entire flock of sheep down towards their ship. They load the the sheep onto the boat so that, you know, they can kind of roast them later

• 32:47Speaker 01

  and have another barbecue. And then they pull out to sea. But Odysseus is a warrior, and he wants the person he's defeated to know who has vanquished him. And so he taunts the blinded cyclops from his ship as it's pulling out. And Polyphemus is so furious that he kind of gropes for the top of a mountain and pulls the summit off and hurls the rock in the direction of Odysseus. And it lands just in front of Odysseus's ship. And there's a great tsunami, and it washes Odysseus's ship back towards the shore. And it looks like they're going to be shipwrecked on it. So Odysseus takes a pole and it's kind of like a punt, you know, trying to kind of push it off the the side of the

• 33:28Speaker 01

  river. So he pushes their ship back out to sea. He and his men row frantically. And then again, he cannot help himself. And he stands on the rear of the ship, and he yells taunts at Polyphemus again, and fatally reveals his true identity. He announces himself as Odysseus Saka of cities, the son of Laertes, who holds his home in Ithaca. And when Polyphemus hears this, he gives a great groan. And he raises his arms, and he prays to Poseidon, the god of the sea, his divine father. Hear me, Poseidon, earth shaker, you of the deep

• 34:09Speaker 01

  blue main, grant that Odysseus Saka of cities may never reach his home, that son of Laertes, who holds his home in Ithaca. But if his fate is to see his loved ones once more and make it back home to his strong built palace, and to the land of his fathers, then let him come late and hapless, after losing all his comrades, on a ship that is not his own. And may he find trouble at home.

• 34:38Speaker 00

  That bodes very ill for Odysseus if Poseidon hears his son's prayer. And if Poseidon does hear that prayer, of course, then Odysseus's prospects of getting back to Ithaca with all of his men are hanging in the balance. And we'll find out what happens next after the break.

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• 36:57Speaker 00

  Welcome back to The Rest Is History. So our hero, Odysseus, has been swept by gales and storms, far from the familiar waters of Greece and the Aegean. And he has ended up in a very mysterious and murky dimension, a place where people are off their faces on narcotic lotuses, where one eyed monstrous giants are dashing people's brains out and having them for breakfast. Now, to the original listeners of this story, because people would have listened to it, that have heard it rather than read it, I think, would they have seen these adventures? I mean, is this the stuff of fairy tales and fantasy? Or did they think these things really happened?

• 37:37Speaker 01

  I mean, on one level, obviously, it is fantasy. But there was a sense that these islands could be located in the geography of the Mediterranean Sea. So we've heard that Herodotus, the first great historian, he located the land of the Lotus Eaters in North Africa. And there was a tradition as well, among the Greeks, that the cave of Polyphemus had lain beneath Mount Etna in Sicily. And Etna, of course, is a volcano. So there's this sense of of fire hidden in the mountain. And the story was that the

• 38:14Speaker 01

  cyclops used these fires of Etna to forge the thunderbolts that they then gave to Zeus. And that Polyphemus is one of these cyclops that were working on the thunderbolts. There is a brilliant theory about why one eyed giants might have been identified with Sicily. So there's a wonderful book by a paleontologist called Adrian Mayer, who's written about, you know, what what the ancients thought ancient fossils were. And she suggested that there were dwarf elephants on Sicily. So they'd gone extinct long before ancient Greek times. But their skulls might might have been discovered. And because you have, you

• 38:55Speaker 01

  know, you have the trunk, the nasal cavity, if you look at the skull of an elephant, it does look a little bit like a kind of single eye. I mean, there's no proof for it, but it's a kind of, it's a wonderful idea.

• 39:05Speaker 00

  Is this not trying too hard to find a sort of banal, mundane explanation for what's clearly a fantastical story? I mean, to me, it would seem like this isn't inspired by skulls of like elephants. This is inspired by the fear of the unknown, the fear of the monstrous, all of that kind of stuff.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  I think that the story of these monsters lurking on strange islands, that these are anxieties that are bred of the age in which the Odyssey is being written down. And it's an age when Greek colonists are starting to settle Sicily and the western reaches of the Mediterranean. And I think that Polyphemus is a kind of nightmarish vision of a barbarian who does not live by the rules of life that the Greeks associate with civilisation. So that's why Homer specifies that he drinks his wine neat. It's why he specifies that there's no agriculture. These are people who, by the standards of the Greek colonists,

• 40:06Speaker 01

  are backward and savage and kind of frightening for that reason. So clearly, as you say, I mean, Polyphemus is a figure of fantasy, one of the most memorable figures in the whole history of fantasy. But he is clearly, I think, bringing to life the anxieties of adventurers who are sailing into strange seas and unsettling lands that are often very hostile. So there is a brilliant book on this by a scholar called Carol Doughty, The Raft of Odysseus. And to quote from that, embedded within a familiar mythic story pattern of a time and people long ago, are details and themes that belong to the contemporary

• 40:47Speaker 01

  world of its audience. And that's kind of what you would expect. And it reminds me a bit of the way in which in the 1960s, in Star Trek, if you watch it now, it's Captain Kirk going around, you know, strange planets and all of that. But so many of those episodes are plainly about anxieties and complex that are manifest in 1960s America. And you would think that probably, you know, Muttatis Mutandes, the same is true of what's going on in the Odyssey, that this is fantastical, but it is also kind of drawing on all kinds of anxieties that reflect the character of the age in Greece.

• 41:25Speaker 00

  So let's take the next adventure they have. So this is the island of King Aeolus. And he is what? He's the god of the winds?

• 41:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's the god of the winds. And on one level, as with the cyclops, he's plainly a fantastical figure, because his island is, it floats, and it has ramparts made of unbreakable bronze. And yet, at the same time, the Greeks were so confident where his island was was anchored, that to this day, we call the archipelago of islands, the Aeolian Islands.

• 41:56Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, of course.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  There was clearly a very, very strong tradition as to where Aeolus had actually been.

• 42:00Speaker 00

  I've been to the Aeolian Islands. They're very nice. Lovely.

• 42:03Speaker 01

  There you go. You're following in the footsteps of Odysseus. And Aeolus, unlike Polyphemus, is a very civilised man. And he he's obedient to the Greek laws of what they call xenia, which is hospitality towards foreigners. If you meet a foreigner, the kind of mutual exchange of gifts. The contrast with Polyphemus is very obvious and deliberate, I think. And Aeolus hosts Odysseus and his men for an entire month in his magnificent palace with its great bronze walls and all of that. And then he places all the contrary winds, the winds that would prevent Odysseus from getting back to Ithaca, in a massive great bag. And he gives this bag to Odysseus to keep in his hold.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  So you can imagine the bag bulging and moving with all these winds trying to get out so that the west wind will blow him back home. And Aeolus says, you'll be absolutely fine with this. It's just, you know, just bear in mind the one thing, whatever you do, do not open that bag. And just to reiterate, whatever you do, do not open that bag. And so Odysseus, to make absolutely sure that the winds do not escape from the bag, for nine days and nights, he doesn't sleep. He sits there, keeping his eye on the bag. And finally, they are so close to Ithaca that Odysseus can see smoke rising from hearth fires on the island.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  He is so nearly there. He's been awake all this time, and so fatally he dozes off very briefly. And his men, seeing him asleep, they're aware that he's been watching this bag. And so they start muttering among themselves and say, well, what's in the bag? I mean, what's, why is he so anxious about it? Clearly, it must be full of treasure, and he's keeping it for himself, and he's not sharing it with us, and it's not fair. So let's open up the bag and share the treasure out among ourselves before we arrive in Ithaca. And they pull on the rope, they undo the bag, the winds come screaming and howling out of the bag, massive great storms. Odysseus is blown all the way back to the island of Aeolus.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  And when he goes up to Aeolus and says what has happened.

• 44:12Speaker 00

  Have you got any more winds?

• 44:13Speaker 01

  Well, basically, he says, will you put them in the bag again? And Aeolus says, no, get out, for it's clear that you've come here as one hated by the gods. And again, you could see how, if you're venturing, say, into the western Mediterranean from Greece, a knowledge of the winds is going to be really important. You know, getting information from local sources would be a requirement for anyone who wants to make a successful voyage. So again, I think you can see how that might feed into a story like this.

• 44:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, completely. So things have gone wrong for them. And for the next six days, they have to row, don't they? Six days and nights. And they arrive in this fantastic harbour.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  It's a perfect harbour.

• 44:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, high cliffs, headlands encircling it. And 11 of the ships go in, and Odysseus's ship stays outside. And this is Odysseus being smart again, because, Tom, what happens next?

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, because he can see it's a perfect harbour, but that also makes it a perfect trap. And Odysseus is very sensible not to have just gone ploughing in, because this turns out to be the land of a people called the Lestragonians, who, again, are giant cannibals. And there are thousands of them. And they all mass on the cliffs that surround this perfect harbour. And again, to quote Homer, from the cliffs, they kept hurling down boulders, any one of which a man would be hard pressed to lift. And the ships, they're trapped inside this harbour, and they are rapidly reduced to matchwood. And the Lestragonians then wade out into the sea, and they spear Odysseus's men like they're fish, like they're tuna.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  And only Odysseus and his now solitary ship escape the slaughter. So people will remember that curse that Polyphemus had laid on Odysseus, that he would return without his men. Well, 11 of those ships have gone.

• 46:09Speaker 00

  And again, is there a real life equivalent to this? So you were talking about the Aeolian islands and the lotus eaters, the explanation of the lotus eaters. What do historians think about the Lestragonians?

• 46:22Speaker 01

  The Greeks identified it again with Sicily, and this is a period where they're starting to settle Sicily. And again, I think the story speaks of anxieties about murderous natives. And I think there's the specific twist here, which is with your ships, you see a perfect spot for a colony. I mean, it might be a perfect spot, but that might make it all the more dangerous, because perfect spots would presumably already be settled, and there would be people who would not welcome your arrival. So again, I think you can see how these stories of colonisation and settlement that are terminus with Homer's composition of the Odyssey, that this is probably what's going on, probably feeding into stories like that.

• 47:03Speaker 00

  Okay, so we've had a few stories that seem quite obviously to reflect anxieties about the Greek age of colonisation. But the next adventure is much stranger, isn't it? And this is much more like a sort of going into some fantasy dreamscape or something.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, again, to kind of pursue the science fiction parallel, this is, you're going through a wormhole, experiencing a singularity. You're going into a different dimension where the rules of what are normal are suspended. However, it's not immediately obvious to Odysseus that this is what has happened. So they've made their escape from the Lestragonians. They keep sailing as the wind blows them, and they arrive at another island, they moor off it. And at first, everything seems completely normal. Odysseus goes on a scouting mission. He runs into a stag, he kills it, he brings it back, they all have another barbecue.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  The next day, Odysseus wants to go deeper into the hinterland of the island, so he divides his men into two groups, one led by him, one led by a particularly brave crew member called Eurilychus. And lots of cast to see which one of them, which of these two groups will go and explore, and which will stay and look after the ship. And the lot falls on Eurilychus to go inland and to try and scout out who or what might be on this island. So Eurilychus and his scouting party head inland. And in due course, they come to a beautiful palace with spreading lawns and gardens. And there are wolves and lions in this garden, and so understandably, Eurilychus's men draw their swords, they're nervous of these predators.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  But the lions and wolves seem weirdly tame, and they fawn on Eurilychus and his men like their domestic dogs. And while they're wondering about this and thinking, what on earth's going on here? From inside the palace, they hear the beautiful voice of a woman, and she's singing. And she's clearly working on a loom. And they call out to her, and this woman comes to them, and she opens these great gleaming doors, and she invites them in. And she is fabulously gorgeous, beautifully dressed, I mean, clearly a queen. So all Eurilychus's men, except for Eurilychus himself, they walk inside.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  Eurilychus, who's clearly been chosen by Odysseus because he has a quality of suspicion and intelligence that Odysseus identifies with, he stays outside. He doesn't trust this woman, thinks of something a little bit sinister about her. And he's not wrong, because the woman seats Eurilychus's men down on couches, and then she brings them food, cheese and barley and tawny honey, together with pramian wine. And this food and this drink, we're told, are mixed with sinister drugs. And Eurilychus's men eat and drink their fill. And then, once they have gorged themselves, the woman walks around the dining area, and

• 50:14Speaker 01

  she taps them with a wand, and immediately, they start turning into pigs. Their heads, their grunts, their bristles, their bodies, although their minds were as sound as they'd always been. So they are humans trapped in the bodies of a pig. And Eurilychus has watched all of this, and he manages to get away, and he runs back to Odysseus, reports it to Odysseus, and from this point on, the story becomes even stranger. So Odysseus is determined to redeem his men from the spell. Aside from anything else, he needs them. He won't be able to raid the ship without them. So he sets off to confront this woman, who is patently a sorceress. And on his way, he meets, for the first time in the course of his wanderings, a bona fide

• 50:58Speaker 01

  Olympian, one of the top 12 gods on Mount Olympus. And this is Hermes, the messenger of the gods, so has clearly been sent by someone, we presume Athena, to help him out. And Hermes gives Odysseus an awesome drug of his own. And this is a black-rooted herb with a white flower called the moly. And armed with the moly, and it's unclear exactly what the moly might be based on, but anyway, it's very powerful, has great magic. Odysseus proves immune to the sorceress's spells. And this is despite the fact that, we discover, this sorceress is herself a goddess. She is a daughter of the sun, and her name is Cersei of the beautiful braids.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  And at swordpoint, Odysseus forces Cersei to submit, and Cersei submits and then invites Odysseus to bed. And Odysseus says, no way, unless you could bear to swear a great oath to me, goddess, not to plot any more evil that is meant to do me harm. And Cersei swears the oath, and then Odysseus goes to bed with her. She then restores his men to human form, younger than before, far more handsome now, and much taller to look upon. So that's all worked out well.

• 52:16Speaker 00

  But then the twist, you might expect Odysseus to rush off, you know, but he doesn't. He stays for a year. He and his crew stay with Circe for a year, don't they? And actually, Odysseus seems to be enjoying this so much that it's his men who come to him and say, have you forgotten about going home? We were meant to be going home. Your house with its high-built roof and the land of your father's is still, is waiting for you, Ithaca. And come on, let's crack on and leave. And what is going on here, do you think? So is this an allegory for sexual desire? Is it female wiles? What's, what's all this about?

• 52:56Speaker 01

  It clearly complicates the notion of Odysseus as a man driven by a kind of, you know, an absolute focus on getting back to Ithaca and to his beloved wife, Penelope. And just, you know, people will obviously be wondering about this. Odysseus is meant to be devoted to his wife. His sexual relationship with Circe is a complete non-issue to Homer. It's expected that a man, no matter how much he may be devoted to his wife, will obviously sleep around him. It's an absolute given. I think there is a kind of eeriness to this episode, though. Obviously, it's not naturalistic because it's a woman who's turning people into pigs. But I don't think we should understand the passage of time here as simply being, you know, he's having a great time. He fails to notice what's going on. And then before you know it, a year's gone by.

• 53:41Speaker 01

  I think that there's a kind of quality of the shaman about Circe, the sense that she has conducted Odysseus and his men into a dimension of mystery and magic where time moves at a different pace. And so what she's offering Odysseus, I think, is a kind of akin to an initiation. And the year passes pretty much in the blink of an eye. And when Odysseus goes through and says, I really want to carry on, Circe doesn't object to this, but she says, before you do this, you must go even further beyond my island to the dwelling place of Hades and Dread Persephone. And Hades and Persephone are the king and

• 54:22Speaker 01

  queen of the dead. They rule the underworld. And Circe is sending Odysseus on to the land of Hades. Because here, in the land of the dead, you've got mist, you've got cloud, it shrouds the farthest boundaries of ocean. If he gets to the land of the dead, he can consult with someone who will be able to tell him the best way to get back home. And this is the great prophet, Tercias. And we have already met him in an episode of The Rest Is History, the episode that we did on Oedipus. And he's died and he's now in the underworld. And I think there is something, it's a kind of something of the superhero

• 55:05Speaker 01

  franchise, isn't there, here? That characters who are the star of one film kind of reappear as a bit of a bit part in another?

• 55:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is the Circe cinematic universe. Actually, have you read Madeleine Miller's novel about Circe?

• 55:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 55:20Speaker 00

  Brilliant, isn't it? It gives you the whole episode from her perspective. Anyway, Odysseus and Co, they go off to the land of Hades. And this is something that nobody's ever done before. They're the first ship ever to sail to. I mean, who knew that you could sail there? This was a surprise to me.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  This is why you need Circe to tell you such things.

• 55:37Speaker 00

  Right.

• 55:37Speaker 01

  No one had ever thought to do it before. And also Circe has told him what to do when he lands on the land of the dead, how to get the ghosts to talk to him. Because there is a complication. Once you are a ghost, your ability to speak fades very rapidly until you have drunk blood. And so Circe has said, take a load of sheep, dig a trench, then when you've dug the trench, slit the throats of the sheep and fill the trench with blood, the ghosts will be drawn by it like vampires. And you have to keep the dead at bay until Tercius has drunk. And this is what Odysseus does. Tercius drinks the blood and then is able to talk. And he gives Odysseus all kinds of brilliant travel tips. So he

• 56:18Speaker 01

  says, this is the crucial thing you have to bear in mind. You may find yourself landing on an island called Threnacia. And this island is sacred to Helios, the sun god, Hyperion. This is the god mentioned in the opening that you read, Dominic. If you find yourself on this island, no matter what you do, do not kill and barbecue the cattle. You have the vibe of people who love nothing more than a barbecue. He's absolutely kind of, you know, he's, he's, he's put his finger on them.

• 56:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, Australians.

• 56:51Speaker 01

  Don't have a barbecue. Just don't do it. Because if you do, everything will go wrong. And Tercius tells Odysseus the details of what will go wrong. You will get back home late and hapless after losing all your comrades on a ship that is not your own. And of course, that is echoing the curse that Polyphemus had laid on Odysseus earlier. And Tercius goes on and says that if you and your men kill this cattle, you will find your halls when you get back home filled with braggots pestering and courting your wife. So just, you know, just don't go there. So Tercius, you know, he's drunk his fill. And then he gives this advice. And then he kind of flits away in a kind of spectral

• 57:32Speaker 01

  manner. And then all the other shades start to feed on the blood. And I think, you know, incredibly sinister scene. And then Odysseus talks to some of them. And among them is his mother, who had died while he was away in Troy. You know, he hadn't realised that she was dead. And three times, he tries to embrace her. And three times, she just kind of melts in his arms, like a shadow or a dream. He meets Agamemnon, the king of men, the commander of the Achaeans at Troy. He's been murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra. And so he tells Odysseus the story of that. And then very famously, Odysseus meets the great hero of the Iliad, the greatest of all the Achian warriors, Achilles, the man

• 58:14Speaker 01

  who, at the end of the Iliad, had killed Hector, the greatest of the Trojan warriors. And Achilles had been offered the choice, when he was very young, of a life short but full of glory, or a long life but living in obscurity. And Achilles tells Odysseus, I made a terrible mistake. I went for the short life full of glory, but I would far rather live off the earth as the serf of another man, some man with a pitiful portion who barely ekes out a living, than rule here as the lord of all those who are dead and gone.

• 58:47Speaker 00

  So to me, that is the single most interesting moment of the entire Odyssey. Because it undermines the cult of the hero and the sort of the emphasis on glory and martial vigour and writing your name in neon letters that will never fade and all of that kind of thing. And basically, Homer is implying that there is an argument for saying, it's a bit like in the Madeleine Miller book, Circe, this is what Telemachus says, it's better to be obscure. It's actually better to have a nice, quiet life and no one knows you even exist than to be a great hero and, you know, to be wreathed in glory and stuff. That is all, that all passes and it's meaningless.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  Yes, that I think that's absolutely what's saying. But also, what Achilles is saying essentially is, the greatest of all gifts is immortality. You know, you never want to die. If you ever get offered the gift of immortality, you want to embrace it with open arms. I mean, that is essentially what he's saying. And that is something that will impact on a decision that Odysseus has to make in due course, but we will come to that.

• 59:46Speaker 00

  But do you think Homer genuinely means it, that his listeners should have a think about their cult of glory and all of that? Or not?

• 59:54Speaker 01

  I think that it is one of the things that shadows the Greek devotion to competition, to heroism, to courage, to glory, is the fact that there is no equivalent of the Christian or Muslim heaven for all but the very greatest. That death is a shadowy, dull existence, where you're a kind of a gibbering shadow, who has to drink blood even to speak. I mean, it's, you know, there's, there's nothing there. And so it makes the blaze of life all the more kind of glorious. So anyway, as you say, I mean, it is an amazing, amazing moment in the poem and in the kind of broader sweep of ancient Greek culture. So Odysseus has

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  got what he came for. He's got this advice from Tercius. And so now he goes back to the lady Circe, who feasts them. And then after the meal, she says to Odysseus, okay, just go. As soon as dawn appears, set sail. And she then advises him on how he should negotiate the various dangers that will be awaiting him on the next stage of his voyage. And she says, you are going to be passing the island of the sirens. And these are carnivorous creatures, heads of women, bodies of birds. They have irresistibly beautiful voices. So that's what the word siren means. And they sit on this island, perched amid a great pile of bones. And Circe has a suggestion. She says, all your men should put wax in

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  their ears so they can't hear it. And you, if you want to hear the song of the sirens, get your men to tie you to the mast, and you will hear the song. You will order them to set you free. Tell them on no account to set you free. And that way, you can hear the song of the sirens and live to tell the tale. And then after that, you will pass two terrible monsters, Scylla and Charybdis. And these guard the passage between two cliffs. And you have to sail between them. And in one of these cliffs, and this is a cliff which reaches all the way up to wide heaven and is ringed by a cloud of dark blue, there is a cave. And inside this cave lurks the monster Scylla. And Scylla makes a noise like a little newborn puppy. So it's

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  So very, very sweet. However, Scylla has six necks enormously long and on top of each of the necks is a head harrowing sight, each with three rows of teeth. So not good news, a bit like the alien in the Scorny Weaver film. And from the other cliff sprouts a huge wild fig tree and beneath that, in the depths of the waters lurks Corybdis. This is the second monster and every day Corybdis sucks the water down and then thrice each day she vomits it up, thrice she gulps it back down and this creates a monstrous whirlpool. And any ship that gets caught in the whirlpool is doomed. It will be dragged round and round, down and down into the jaws of Corybdis and everyone on that ship will be eaten. And

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  so Circe's advice is steer clear of the whirlpool, stick close to Scylla's rock, for as Circe says, it is better by far to mourn six of the men from your ship than to mourn all of them together. And as for the cattle of the sun, which Tiresias had been majoring on, Circe says, look, just don't land there. It's too dangerous. She's obviously sussed out the enthusiasm of Odysseus' men for barbecues and says, just, you know, don't let them have the temptation. So Odysseus has got this advice from Circe. He follows it to the letter. He does indeed become the only man to have heard the sirens sing and lived to tell the tale. He does lose six men to the six sneaking necks of Scylla that kind of descend from her cave and grabs them and kind of pulls them up into her cave and

• 1:03:30Speaker 01

  devours them. But they managed to avoid the whirlpool of Corybdis and that's the main thing. And they sail on and they see the island of the sun. And Odysseus says, okay, we're not stopping here. No way.

• 1:03:41Speaker 00

  Because this is the bit, remember, Tiresias, you're better to avoid it. Do not touch them. Of course, we all, as soon as Tiresias said that, surely we all knew what was going to happen.

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. Odysseus' men, when he says, look, we're not stopping here, they all complain. They say, look, oh God, we're shattered. You know, we really need a break. It looks really nice. Please, come on. So very reluctantly, Odysseus says, okay, but guys, whatever you do, don't touch the cattle. You know, just don't go there. We will stop there for a single afternoon and then we will continue on our way. So they land. And then, unfortunately, the moment they land, there is a massive great storm and it blows for a month and it is clearly of divine origin. It is preventing them from leaving the island. And so they're stuck there and they're really, really hungry. Their supplies are running out. And Odysseus

• 1:04:33Speaker 01

  can see his men starting to eye up the cattle and thinking how nice, you know, chunks of this cattle would be if it were on a spit, you know, in a lovely kebab. And so in desperation, he thinks, well, listen, clearly there is a god here who's angry. I need to get up onto the top of the mountain at the centre of this island and raise a prayer there. So that's what he does. And he leaves his men behind and he heads off to the summit of the mountain on the top, in the middle of the island to raise prayers to the gods. And presumably before he goes, he does remind them, guys, don't eat the cattle. Don't eat the cattle. Did I mention, don't eat the cattle? He reaches the mountain top as before with the winds of Aeolus in the bag. So now faithfully he falls asleep. So there's something

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  of the Lafayette about Odysseus falling asleep at crucial moments. And as he sleeps, his men obviously do what they've been told not to do. They kill and roast the sacred cattle and the smell of kebabs drifts into the nostrils of Odysseus. He wakes up, he looks down, he sees the smokes rising, he goes, ah, no. And he runs down and for six days, his men make a feast. The wind, you know, they can't leave because of the winds. But it is very obvious that nothing good is going to come of this barbecue because the skins of the slain cattle keep moving around and the meat on the kebab sticks keeps lowing.

• 1:05:58Speaker 00

  That's like a vegan's fantasy, isn't it? Like?

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's not surprising because it is, I think, hard to overemphasise the scale of the insult that has been done to the sun god because these are clearly solar cattle. And notions of solar cattle seem to have been very widespread in the myths of the ancient Indo Europeans. So the Greeks are Indo Europeans. The, you get it in Hindi mythology and Irish mythology, from India to Ireland, in other words. And their theft in all these stories, no matter where they're told, it always represents a kind of massive insult to the cosmic order. And so it is in the Odyssey. Helios, the sun god complains

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  to Zeus. Zeus stills the storms. So there's a very sinister calm. And this allows Odysseus and his men to set sail. And then all at once, once the ship is out at sea, Zeus thundered and hurled his lightning at the ship. And the mast of the ship snaps and as it falls, it branes the helmsman and knocks him into the sea. So they now have no one to steer them. The ship spins round and round. The decking blazes with smoke like sulphur and all of Odysseus' men are tossed into the kind of the great boiling royal of the sea, looking just like cormorants. They bobbed about on the waves all around the black hulled

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  ship. The god snatched their homecoming from them. But only one man survives the shipwreck and this is Odysseus himself. Somehow he manages to fashion a raft out of all the wreckage, all the flotsam and jetsam. But even now, even though he's got his raft, he's still not safe because the wind changes and blows him back the way he had come towards Scylla and Corybdis. And of course, he can't steer. So the whirlpool is swirling downwards. Corybdis is sucking the water down deep into her jaws and Odysseus' raft gets caught up in the kind of the spinning and the whirling of the waters. As it's going down, Odysseus

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  leaps up from the raft and he clings on to that giant fig tree, remember, which Homer had told us was leaning over the whirlpool. And he manages to hold on to it until the raft is spat back up by Corybdis. And he drops down from the branch that he's been holding on to, down beside the timbers and sitting on top of them, as he later describes it, "I used my hands to paddle away." And for nine days and nine nights, he drifts and he is the only man left alive out of what had originally been a fleet of 12 ships.

• 1:08:45Speaker 01

  And the loss of those men in Homer's poem is very deeply felt because the Odyssey throughout the account of its heroes' voyages, and obviously the focus is very much on the hero. Nevertheless, it is unusual for the emphasis that it places on the minor characters. You kind of come to know them. We haven't really been talking about them much because we haven't had the time. But when you're reading the poem, you feel for them. You mark their fates, even if they are idiots with their enthusiasm for barbecues.

• 1:09:14Speaker 00

  I mean, they've only got themselves to blame, to be honest. And again, Scylla and Corybdis, all of this stuff, you can see how this reflects the anxieties of an agent of exploration and sea travel. The whirlpool, the cliffs, all of that.

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. So Scylla and Corybdis was identified with the Straits of Messina between Sicily and Italy, where you have whirlpools and riptides and it was generally dreaded by ancient sailors. And through nature, the island of the cattle means three headlands. Sicily has three headlands. So again, it was identified with Sicily. And Sicily was the kind of main focus for Greek colonisation in this period. So it's perhaps not surprising that it generated all these kind of, all these myths. But now with the loss of his men and his ship, Odysseus, I think, is drifting back from the kind of the shipping lanes

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  that Greek sailors might recognise, back into a dimension beyond the mortal, back through the kind of the Homeric equivalent of a wormhole. And it's telling, I think, that Homer does not describe in detail what happens next. All he really reports is that after nine days of drifting on the open seas, and this is Odysseus narrating at this point, "on the ninth of the 10th, I was brought by the gods to the island of Agigia, home of Calypso, she of the beautiful braids, dread goddess who speaks like a mortal. She welcomed and cared for me."

• 1:10:45Speaker 00

  So it's slightly Circe-like, but the difference here is that whereas he stayed with Circe voluntarily, Calypso will not let him leave. That's right, isn't it? He's staying here almost against his will, day after day, month after month, year after year. He is, you know, weeping. He's thinking about Penelope. He's thinking about his son Telemachus, about Ithaca, his home. And the, you know, the greatest punishment of all. Every night he has to go to bed with Calypso. What a terrible ordeal this must have been.

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  Yes. To quote Homer, compelled by the goddess to do so, he unwilling, she all too willing. So basically, Dominic, he's become a beautiful goddess's sex slave to a terrible fate.

• 1:11:28Speaker 00

  Oh, no. What a terrible fate that is. So, wow. Will he ever escape, Tom? And if so, how will he do it? And what will happen when he gets back to Ithaca? If only there was some way I could find out the answers to all these questions because I know you have amazing stories yet to tell us.

• 1:11:45Speaker 01

  I do. And brilliantly, Dominic, there is a way you can find out. You can listen to the second episode of this literally epic.

• 1:11:53Speaker 00

  I mean, literally epic, yeah.

• 1:11:55Speaker 01

  And if you would like to get early access and you're not already a member of The Rest is History Club, then you can join our own intrepid band of barbecuing mariners at therestishistory.com.

• 1:12:07Speaker 00

  And the amazing news, Tom, on top of that is that we're actually running a summer sale at the moment. So for a limited time only, you can get 20% off annual membership if you use the code SUMMER26. And that code is valid until the 31st of August. So do, it's what Odysseus would have wanted, certainly what Homer, a great fan of storytelling, would have wanted. Go online, use this code, get your discounted membership and listen to that next episode right away.

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  And of course, also, Dominic, they'll be able to listen to the bonus episode with Daniel Mendelsohn.

• 1:12:40Speaker 00

  The great translator of the Odyssey.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  Great translator of the Odyssey. So it's just insane value all round, isn't it?

• 1:12:44Speaker 00

  I think too many benefits actually now. This is too good. We're giving stuff away and it's madness. Right. On that bombshell, we'll see you next time to find out what happens to our hero, Odysseus. Bye bye.

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  Bye bye.

• 1:12:56Speaker 00

  Bye.

• 1:13:06Speaker 03

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