Episode 1: The Odyssey - Where It All Began

Welcome to the Talking Leaves podcast. I'm your host, Ms. Kyra, and in this mini series, we're going to be talking about Homer's The Odyssey. In this first episode, we're going to talk about where it all began. If looking at Odysseus' journey chronologically, we start right after the Greeks, and therefore Odysseus' victory at Troy. In fact, Odysseus played a fundamental role in the victory at Troy. But first, let's talk about why the Greeks and Odysseus and his Ithican men were at war with Troy at all. The History Channel has a great video on this, called "Drawn History, the Trojan War." So definitely check out that two-minute video if you'd like some visuals. But if you'd just like to listen to it here, then here's the story. A long, long, long time ago, as the myth goes, there was a wedding. Yes, a wedding, a joyous occasion. A mortal king and a sea nymph were saying, "I do." And they invited all the gods and goddesses. Except, except they didn't invite the goddess of discord, the goddess of disagreement, named Eris. Because who wants that at their wedding? The answer is no one. Except maybe the Kardashians. When Eris heard about this epic party, she decided she'd show up anyways. Clearly, her invitation was forgotten. She was a goddess after all. When she showed up, the party was in full swing. Everyone dancing, having a great time. But she was turned away at the door. Nonetheless, she decided to leave a gift. A golden apple with simply a note attached. And the note said, "To the fairest." So what she did was drop this really beautiful gold gift into the middle of a party filled with all the goddesses. With a note that said, "To the most beautiful." No name, nothing else. As expected, with all the goddesses in attendance, there was bound to be a fight. Especially between the big three. Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. They fought over the apple. Each claiming it was intended for them. Unable to agree who the apple was for, they sought Zeus's counsel. But Zeus knew this for the trap that it was. And told the goddesses to seek the counsel of a man renowned, a man well known for his judgment. Paris of Troy. Merely a mortal man, the goddesses knew they could manipulate him to their favor. Hera offered to make him king over all of Europe. Athena offered him glory, wisdom, and skill in battle. And Aphrodite, the goddess of love, offered him the most beautiful woman in the world. What do you think the man chose? That's right, the most beautiful woman in the world. A mortal, single man. What else is he going to choose? Come on, Athena and Hera. So, as promised, Aphrodite told Paris how to get the most beautiful woman, Helen of Sparta. However, there was a slight issue with this. Helen was already married. She was decidedly unavailable. And there was nothing more important for women in this time period, in this culture, than total faithfulness to their husbands. This didn't matter to Paris. Oh no, he was promised this woman. It isn't really clear how Helen felt about any of this. But Paris kidnapped her, or helped her escape. We don't know. And took her back to Troy. Needless to say, Helen's husband, Menelaus, upon his return home, was incredibly unhappy to find his most beautiful wife missing. He heard what had happened, and he called on his big brother, Agamemnon, to help him get his wife back. Just imagine him stomping his foot like a toddler during the middle of a tantrum. An important piece of information is that Agamemnon is not just a regular older brother who's going to help his younger brother get something back from the bully. Oh no. Agamemnon is the king of other kings in Greece. So when he says he'll help his little brother, he's going to pull all of his friends with him, and all those he rules over. And so Agamemnon answered his brother's plea, and forces kings and all of their able-bodied men from Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Rhodes, and just about everywhere else, including Odysseus' island of Ithaca, to come from Greece and sail in a huge fleet of ships across the wine-dark sea to begin the Trojan War. That is the story of what started the Trojan War. But let's talk a little bit about why it lasted for so long. Agamemnon called all men from all nations in Greece to war, which, in his estimation, would only last a few weeks. Clearly, though, he was overestimating his ability and forgetting about the prophecy the Trojan Wall protecting the city would never fall. It wouldn't be a Greek epic without the mortal man angering a god or two, which never ends well. Instead of a few weeks, the war lasted 10 years. Note, never anger a god, but since there were so many and the gods were so petty, it was fairly impossible to avoid doing, which makes for some really great myth. If you want to hear another story that is pretty spectacular, but which also angered the gods and made this war last much longer than it should have, hang around at the end of the episode for a bonus story about Achilles during the Trojan War. Back to Agamemnon. Because of Agamemnon's misplaced and misguided pride and his stupidity in angering the goddess Artemis, the war went on and on. And after 10 years of the Achaeans, aka the Greeks, trying to enter the city of Troy, our boy Odysseus came up with a plan, a tricky, conniving, genius plan. You probably know it, the Trojan Horse. Making it seem as though they had retreated, or at least as though the Greeks were not going to attack, they left a giant statue of a horse. Remember Poseidon's symbols and powers? Well, Poseidon favored Troy, so this was a gift, supposedly, to Troy forwithstanding this decade-long war. Without questioning the timing, or why, suddenly, overnight, there was a giant wooden statue horse in front of their walls. The Trojans brought the statue into their city, inside their infallible and unbreakable walls. And then they partied all night, and after hours of celebration, the Trojans all slept. The Grecians, the Achaeans, as they're called, led by Odysseus, crept out from inside the belly of this horse statue, and let their army in the gates. Mayhem, death, looting, and other unsavory wartime activities ensued. And after the Greeks celebrated their victory, we now come to the point when the Odyssey begins. Odysseus sets his sights on sailing home, a journey which, again, should only take a few weeks. Remember Agamemnon's over confidence and angering of the gods? Yes, although Odysseus suffers the same fate. In this part of the episode, I'm going to talk to you about the Odyssey itself, particularly some important features you need to understand and know about before you read it. First, the structure. The Odyssey is what is known as an epic poem. Don't let the word poem frighten you, it's still a story. But at this time period, in this culture, storytelling was an art form. You were a good storyteller, and you were therefore gifted by the gods, by the muses who inspired you. As such, it was an elevated profession, an elevated calling, it was crafted intentionally, it was not ordinary everyday language, it was language of the gods. It was an epic, an epic poem. The story of a hero which features the gods, and poetry was the only way to go. Now let's talk about who tells the story, the narrator. Normally, in a story that we read, there's a consistent narrator, but because the Odyssey is cobbled together several hundred years after it supposedly took place, and even several hundred years after it was initially told as part of the oral storytelling tradition, it's a mixture of a lot of different versions of the story put together into a cohesive whole. So, sometimes there's different narrators. In some parts Odysseus himself is the narrator, in other times it seems like a third person omniscient narrator who knows everything that's going on, and yet in other times it's a third person limited, it's a third person narrator who's from the outside looking in, but really focusing on one character in particular. It follows because this is a story cobbled together from many different versions from different storytellers, ultimately accredited to Homer himself. It follows then that the narrator would change to suit the preference of each storyteller, or to suit the needs of that particular scene. Next, I'm going to talk to you about the way this story was told, the oral tradition of storytelling. At the time when this story takes place, in looking at historians' ideas on the date, the Trojan War supposedly took place around 1100 BCE at the end of the Bronze Age, which is there for when the Odyssey happened, and at that point stories were not written down. They told stories, they didn't read or write them. As such, the story of Odysseus was not written down until a few hundred years later, like 500 years later. There is some debate among scholars about who Homer was, if he was a real dude, or if he was one dude, or instead a group of dudes. Regardless, when we talk about this story, we're going to talk about Homer as the author. The story is made up of several chapters, which are actually called books, and it covers 42 days of Odysseus's 10-year journey. The question then becomes, why tell such a long story? The Odyssey is 24 chapters, or books, long. This would take forever to tell this. Well, remember, metal was barely invented. It's the end of the Bronze Age. There aren't books, let alone TVs, or phones, or internet, or anything else. There aren't movies, there's plays, but those are special events that maybe happen only a few times a year. Instead, storytelling was their form of entertainment, their form of community building, and of teaching important cultural values. These stories, all stories, have purpose. For many cultures, including the Greeks, the purpose of stories was to transmit or to share values, to indoctrinate or bring people into the values of that culture. So when reading Odysseus's story, it's important to consider what values Homer shares about his culture and about his time period. Now, let's talk about the order of the story. Most of the time when we think of books, they're largely told in chronological order. What happens first, second, third, fourth, all the way till the end. But this is not how the Odyssey works. Instead, we're dropped into the story in media res, in the middle of things. Or actually, toward the end of Odysseus's 10-year voyage home. Even though it's book one, it didn't happen first. If we were to look at the story chronologically, the order would be books nine through 12, books one through four, books five through eight, and then the rest, books 13 through 24. So why isn't it told in this order? Well, there's a few reasons scholars share about this. If we were to read the story chronologically, we would actually have to read multiple stories and multiple books simultaneously. Because this story focuses not only on what Odysseus is experiencing, but what is happening at his home on Ithaca with his wife Penelope and a son Telemachus. In some places, there's a parallel plot structure, what's happening to Odysseus, and what's happening to Penelope and/or Telemachus. To simplify this, it's not told in chronological order. And ultimately, it makes the story more interesting because we start with Odysseus, nearly home, but not quite there yet. And then we get to see all that he has experienced and all that he has survived. It allows readers to hear from Odysseus himself as a narrator with some hope. At this point, when we hear from Odysseus himself, he is among civilized people and has survived untold horrors and monsters. We are primed and ready for the danger, while also knowing our hero is relatively safe. We've come to the end of our episode. For the most part, you're ready to start reading the Odyssey, get ready for a wild journey filled with monsters, gods and goddesses, and a genius yet stupid hero. In the next episode, which will be a short one, I will talk about Odysseus and his journey to becoming king of Ithaca, a husband, a father, and then a leader of a ragtag army of Ithican farmers called to the Trojan War. Don't forget to stick around for the bonus story, Achilles versus Hector, a prince of Troy. The Smackdown. In the last year of the Trojan War, Achilles, who was fighting for the Greeks, who was drafted by Agamemnon because, as we know, he's a demigod and his mom, the goddess, dipped him into the river Styx by his ankle. He is safeguarded and protected everywhere except for that one spot where she held him by his ankle. And so, he's a great warrior who makes sure that the Greeks don't lose. But he gets angry at Agamemnon and it's a little bit sad, but the Greeks kept slaves. And Agamemnon would not respect that Achilles didn't want to share his slaves. So Achilles decided he wouldn't fight. He was done. How dare Agamemnon cross him? He decided he wouldn't help out anymore. But as days went by when Achilles refused to leave his tent, his best friend, and some argue his boyfriend, Patroclus, took on Achilles' armor and went out onto the battlefield as if he were Achilles. And he challenged the leader of Troy, the next king of Troy, Hector, to battle. And Hector, with the help of Apollo, killed Achilles' best friend. Angered and outraged that somebody would dare do this, Achilles stepped back onto the battlefield and challenged Hector, who, at this point when the story is told by Homer and his previous work, the Iliad, is by all accounts a great man, a loving husband and a father and the main defender of Troy, a good guy that you vote for, whether or not you like the Trojans or Achilles had no mercy. He did not care that Hector thought it was him. Hector had killed his best friend and so Achilles took him down. But just killing Hector wasn't enough for Achilles. Oh no, he decided that he needed to continue his revenge. And he took Hector's body and strapped it to the back of his chariot. And he rode his chariot back and forth in front of the Trojan wall, showing off his victory to Hector's family, to his people, and not just one time, but continually for days. And if you've ever read anything remotely Grecian before at all, such as the tragic plays Antigone or Oedipus Rax, then you perhaps know the importance for the Greeks of burying their people. If their people are not buried, they cannot cross into the underworld, they cannot reach the afterlife, they become listless spirits without a place. And so by dragging Hector's body back and forth in front of the Trojan wall for days on end, not only did he insult the Trojan people and therefore the god Apollo, but he also denied the Trojan people their most sacred right, the right to burial and peace in the afterlife. Like a twisted circus show, Achilles was relentless. And as such, he angered the gods and caused more gods to rally behind Troy, making the war last longer than it should. And ultimately, if you know anything about Achilles, he dies through a chance and actually god gifted shot through his ankle his only weakness. Special thanks to the sources used in compiling information and stories for this podcast, Odyssey, the podcast, thoughtco.com, ancient history, encyclopedia, and of course, the Odyssey itself by Homer.