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

let us now speed hermes the guide the slayer of argos toward ogigia 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 sandy pylos too to learn whatever he can of his dear father's journey home and to help him as well to earn a noble renown among men so that was dame edna reveridge uh 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 uh 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 uh a cross between kylie minogue and dame edna and this one were the most appropriate i was imagining kylie i have to say right i became it turned into dame edna if i shut my eyes i could imagine kylie and then i'd open my eyes and see you and it would all go yeah nice that's a lot i mean a lot of people's fantasy actually anyway um the translation there is by daniel mendelsohn 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 actually i went to the preview okay that's just showing off isn't it it's just it's just showing off it's just showing off it's the uh it's the sort of boastful behavior that you would expect of a of a greek hero i guess yeah it's a key in behavior and i will regret it when i end up in the underworld this episode is brought to you by the lloyd's 5k house deposit and this is something that was last seen in 1996 yeah so the 1990s looks now like a lost golden age of prosperity and positivity doesn't it think of the sort of the advent of the blair administration in 1997 all the enthusiasm and excitement that surrounded that the economic growth of the time the technological developments the sort of sense of a an endless golden summer where everybody's listening to blur and oasis and looking forward to buying their first houses and that of course takes us to mortgages now the good news is that in a nod to the 1990s lloyd's are offering 5k deposit mortgages to first-time buyers so search 5k first-time buyer 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 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 barbarism invasions there's also talk of a disease which people call roman fever which i believe we know now as malaria for thousands of years humanity was defenseless against it but thankfully we live in a time of incredible ingenuity and american scientists and partners around the world are fighting back with support from the gates foundation yes so they are creating a new generation of bed nets that kill up to 90 percent of mosquitoes that leads to a 50 percent drop in malaria saving lives and protecting vulnerable communities the gates foundation partners of human potential search gates foundation.org mosquito to learn more 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 yeah there's a classic example of that at the end of the video and i'm going to show you how to do that in just a moment so let's get started 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 realizes or rather everybody else realizes that there is a vast continent out there and it is of course the americas so you're 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 so they asked over a hundred thousand people and what came back wasn't just fear there was hope as well people wanted to know will cancer ever be cured can kids have a better future it turns out that there is hope in hard questions ask yours at claude.ai slash rest is history and keep thinking 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 then 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 so loads of mad adventures one-eyed giants beautiful sorceresses he goes to the uh the underworld meets the ghost of his mother and various of his fallen comrades um 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 agigia uh ruled by a nymph the lady calypso that radiant goddess and on agigia he has been kept essentially as um calypso's sex slave for seven long years and every night he would um spend with the nymph doing as she commanded um and every day he would weep for penelope his beloved wife his soulmate and agigia 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 a.d 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 yeah i mean somewhere on the way to canada anyway yeah but i think plutarch is wrong because in truth agigia is a place that transcends geography and in fact time uh because it's meaning in greek agigios it means primal before the dawn of time so essentially odysseus has passed into a strange dimension where the 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 fails and calypso actually means she who fails and calypso who who conceals so it's um same root as um apocalypse which means an unveiling um so odysseus can't escape partly because she won't let him go but also i think because 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 listen to our first episode may recall this is because odysseus very foolishly has offended poseidon who is the god of the sea and he has 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 but odysseus has a powerful protector of his own doesn't he and this is the person who we heard uh 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 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 fortunately however as the odyssey opens poseidon is in um 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 um 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 um 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 by kylie stroke dame edna athena has a two-pronged strategy so the first is to get zeus to send hermes the messenger of the gods to a gigia 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 so this is the moment actually where the odyssey begins right where the where the where the story that we encounter in the book starts with athena yes going to see is it going to see telemachus that's the bit that it kicks off with is that right 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 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 in other words if i'm not back by this point you should assume that i am dead and people know this and so odysseus's hall is now crowded with suitors who are slaughtering odysseus's um cattle and sheep and insulting his household penelope she wants to hold out you know she she's 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 a again a kind of very famous wheeze it's a kind of it it matches the trojan horse her husband's great wheeze and what she had done was she said to them i will marry one of you um 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 right and so the suit is this shroud is taking a long time taking about five years but in the end the scheme is betrayed by one of penelope's um 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 of warfare and wiliness and all of that um 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 she disguises herself doesn't she as an old friend of odysseus with the excellent name of mentor yes she's literally his mentor yeah and when mentor arrives telemachus is um very courteous he's very generous but telemachus is extremely embarrassed there's basically this massive kind of it's basically like a stag party that's got yeah they're all wearing plastic breasts and kind of covering each other with shaving foam naked yeah it's basically uh weather spoons at luton airport yes eight o'clock in the morning people are absolutely off their faces already like there's a lot there's all kinds of bants 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 as a bird will fly off in a flash and into his heart she put fierceness and strength and this fierceness and strength is the only thing that's going to make him happy and that's what i'm going to do with this as we've been saying is something that hadn't previously been evident in telemachus and so the suitors um he holds this public assembly for the ithcans as 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 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 so that's a marker that he's laid down for the suitors and then he 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 he heads off to the mainland of greece to the peloponnese and there he's going to visit um two of his father's old comrades in arms and the first of these is a guy called nestor who is the king of peloponnese and he's going to visit um two of his father's old comrades in arms and the first of these is a guy called nestor who is the king of 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 um but he you know he says it's it's like he's vanished off the face of the earth i've heard no rumors 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 mental turn into a bird and flash off so it's you know 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 and so from pilos 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 um 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 she has kind of supernatural powers and helen sits on the throne and she's like oh my god i'm so happy to be here 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 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 eyes a man who was 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 the 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 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 i was about to say she's playing both sides yeah she is playing both sides yeah 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 men inside the horse they hear that what seems to be their wives 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 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 hall of the nymph calypso who is holding him there by compulsion he is not able to return to the land of his fathers so now telemachus knows he is alive 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 yes and her father and Athena is Zeus's favorite 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 Aegigia, this navel of the sea. And when Hermes arrives there, he tells Calypso, you've got to let Odysseus go. And Calypso has a massive strop about it. And Hermes says, do not provoke Zeus to anger. Do not make him angry. And so very reluctantly, Calypso 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. 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 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, you would rather live with Penelope and die than live with Calypso and live forever. And it's a kind of moving moment, I think. There's not many wives who would welcome that tribute to themselves that begins with them saying, she falls far short of you. Anyway, Odysseus sets off from Aegigia 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 couple of days of 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. 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' 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 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 the kind of things that you want to hear. He's still dreading the worst because he's gone through so many terrible experiences. But he thinks, oh, well, maybe 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 what seems to be this awful kind of briny pervert, stark naked, who stepped out from the woods like a kind of flasher. 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 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, and I think it's clearly betraying his own longing for Penelope. He's seeing this girl and 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 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. Which we had in a church. But important to emphasize, 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. And as it turns out, Odysseus' 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 priest, but a mortal princess. So the name of this princess is Nausicaa. She's the daughter, we're told, of Alcinous the Great-Hearted. And in his hands lie the power and might of the Phaeacians. And who are these people? So the Phaeacians, to the degree that the Odyssey offers one, is a kind of a vision of an ideal society. So Nausicaa's parents, the king and queen of the Phaeacians, Alcinous the king, they are wise and generous. They have no idea who Odysseus is, but they greet him with great kindness and hospitality. So 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 labor-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, kind of that's free thinking. They can think faster than any human being. And these ships can travel at a completely miraculous speed and kind of travel the length of the Mediterranean. Self-sailing ships. Self-sailing ships. Yeah. So again, it's this familiar thing that we were talking about in the element of an island, but then also there are points of similarity with actual islands that exist in the Mediterranean. 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 Kukaira, which is now Corfu. And we did a bonus with Alex Preston about this for club members, this princess who's doing the laundry and playing with 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 kind of postmodern moments in the Odyssey, there is a bard at Alcinous' 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 at Troy. And Odysseus to hear them. It's noticed. And so Alcinous 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. 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. Flashbacks and things like that. Yes. And I guess particularly one like Christopher Nolan, who loves all these kind of games with time and so on. So Odysseus tells his story and at the end, everyone is silent, held absolutely spellbound all through the shadowy palace. And Alcinous, the king, is so moved that he says, well, we've got to get you back to your home. We've 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 Odysseus boards it and he curls up and he falls asleep and the ship speeds across the seas. Miraculous power. The morning star rises and as the morning star rises, this ship reaches Ithaca at last and the fighting 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 at last. But he is at home at last. 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. This episode is brought to you by Mint Mobile. Right now, all of Mint's plans are $15 per month, even unlimited. Go to mintmobile.com slash history. Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 months. Plan required, $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Includes up to 20 gigabytes of hotspot. Capable device required. Availability, speed and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com. The king is the lord. From Focus Features and the acclaimed director of Jason Bourne. The king says work harder, you work harder. Starring Andrew Garfield. In a land of kings, one man will defy an empire. There will be no peace until we are free. And ignite a revolution. 10,000 rebels converge on London. Based on the true story behind the legend of Robin Hood. We rule ourselves now. The Uprising. Rated R. Under $17.99 without parent. Only in theaters September 10th. Discovered at Dolby Cinema. The Uprising. Rated R. This episode is brought to you by Autotrader. Now, if car shopping feels like a massive faff, buying your car online at Autotrader makes it way easier. Really. So you can shop loads and loads of cars online. You can compare prices. You can check the financing and trade-in options. And of course, you can do it from wherever you are. You start online, go to the dealer for your test drive and finish wherever works for you. Your information. Your data stays with you. So there is no starting over. Plus, you are working with local dealers and there are real people there to help. So buy your car online on Autotrader. Really. Hear me, daughter of Zeus, whose shield is thunder. Standing by me always in every combat mission. No manoeuvre of mine slips by you. Now again, give me your best support, Athena, comrade. So that was Odysseus talking to Athena. Now, that's actually not from the Odyssey. It's from the Iliad as translated by Robert Fagles. So it perfectly illustrates how close the two of them had been in the Trojan War, how they've 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, that communication had 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. But remember, at this point, he doesn't know where he is. So just 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 Nestor and Menelaos on the mainland of Greece. He is now sailing back from mainland Greece. And the plan of the suitors, now that they've rumbled where he's gone, is to ambush and 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. And so he fears the worst. He thinks, oh, no, this is another terrible trick. Poseidon is still kind of intervening to make. I live hell. And so he trudges mournfully, we're told, along the shore of the endlessly clamouring 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. He invokes the cunning in his heart and tells this absolute kind of cock and bull story about how he's actually a fugitive from Crete. 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 materialises 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' tricks. She thinks it's great. 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. Yes. And so she turns him into this kind of hideous old beggar. And then when she's done that, she says, go to the hut of the local swineherd, Eumaeus, who Odysseus remembers from 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 Penelope. And meanwhile, Athena tells Odysseus, I am going to go and I'm going to escort Telemachus safely back so that the suitors can go. And all of this is what duly comes to pass. So Odysseus, he's disguised as a beggar. He goes to Eumaeus' hut. Eumaeus treats him with great hospitality, with great generosity. He's just a humble swineherd. But 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' memory. He remains completely loyal to him. 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 has this kind of great story saying 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 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 BC than to the, you know, to the Bronze Age. So it's like the register has kind of slipped. Yes, slightly. Yeah. And it may be that that's the whole point, you know, that this is a lie. 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. 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. 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 favorite moments in the whole story 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 around his noble father wailed as the tears poured down and at the end of the day he was a man of his word and he was a man of his word and he was a man of his desperate longing for weeping welled up in both of them 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 skeptical 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 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 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 a 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 so the excitement mounts are approaching the end game now the climax of the odyssey we'll start the very next morning Tom take us into the story 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 meeting with his father they leave him alone you know they they kind of eye him warily but they attack him and so Telemachus is able to go to Penelope to talk with his mother and to tell her what he has learned 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 Theocliminus who is a wandering seer that he has brought back with him from Sparta so it's a very interesting story and I think it's a very interesting story it's the kind of thing you bring back from your Greek holiday you'd pick up a wandering seer I think say look what I've got and um Theocliminus also has amazing news and Theocliminus 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 and he is sowing seeds of evil for all the suitors but Penelope doesn't believe him thinks that this cannot be true she has 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 beggars 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 keeps gives him a kick and not realizing as he does so 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 reckon 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 um by hand as a puppy before he left for troy and as he walks past in his disguise as a beggar nobody else recognizing him argos does recognize 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 the dog he saw the dog he saw the dog he saw the dog he saw odysseus after 20 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 yeah so now in his beggar's garb odysseus after 20 years away goes into his palace and uh melantius the goat herd from melantius now and his who's got teamed up with his 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 yeah you know a tramp or whatever yeah they they've got no time for him and also they've got no time for penalty either neither of them uh loyal to penelope in the slightest yeah a dish is disguised as a beggar is led into the hall and one of the suitors a guy called antinous robert patterson i think in the um christopher dolan film um he throws a footstool at odysseus uh and then he and to be fair to the other suitors they do think that this is poor behavior they think you know you really shouldn't just throw stools at beggars um that that will bring bad luck uh 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 uh the disguised odysseus and penelope comes down and she notices him and she thinks he has the look of someone who who my husband and so that evening she summons him for a private conversation she doesn't recognize 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 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 eurycleia who had once been the nurse of odysseus so had knew odysseus very well and intimately penelope orders eurycleia to wash the feet of this old beggar and eurycleia does so and she sees that there is a scar on the thigh of this beggar and she recognizes it because this was a haunting bore with his grandfather and eurycleia because she had often washed odysseus of course she now recognizes 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 eurycleia 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 and i'm going to keep the suitors at bay and i'm going 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 and i'm going to tell the suitors whichever of you can string the bow and then shoot an arrow through 12 double-headed axes lined up in a row in the hall this was a favorite party trick of odysseus's if one of you can do that then you will become my husband and odysseus 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 recognized him yeah 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 it's a good idea to do that i think part of the fascination of the scene is that that is clearly a possibility the two of them 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 to deal with the suitors. 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. 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. 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? Yeah. So Eumaeus is the pig herd, the swine herd. And this guy is 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 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 spattered all over the walls and the beautiful, the entry is filled with ghosts, the courtyard filled with them too, which isn't at all the kind of thing that you want 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 axes in a line along the hall. And the suitors all step forward in turn to try and string the bow, all 108 of them. 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 swineherd, 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 been trying to string this massive bow. And, 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, while we're waiting, because you're all obviously now at a bit of a loose end, why don't I have a try? You'll find it entertaining watching me, a stooped old beggar having a go. Where's the harm? And at this, the suitors explode in indignation and 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 the 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. 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 his pitch. Ash 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 spear and Odysseus strips off his rags and he aims an arrow at Antinous, the worst behaved of all the suitors. And he's like, I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill you. 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, there's 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 whole. You 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. But there is a chance for the suitors, as 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? 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 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 help Odysseus, but basically to goad him on and tell him to kill even faster. And she materialises first as mentor. So this old friend of Odysseus', which was the form that she'd appeared to Telemachus at the beginning of this episode. And then she turns into a swallow and she perches on the great smoke-blackened roof beam of the hall. And this is something that she loves doing. She loves taking on the form of a bird. 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 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 what had happened to Odysseus' men in the harbour of the Lestrigonians, where the Lestrigonians had gone and speared all his men. So the suitors are wiped out, but they are not the only victims of Odysseus' terrible vengeance. Because when the slaughter is done, he demands to know of Eurycleia, his old nurse, which of the servant girls have been sleeping with the suitors. And Eurycleia replies, well, there were 12 of them. So it's a bit like post-Vichy France. You know, they are female collaborators, horizontal. That's exactly the analogy I thought of. And their fate is horrible, isn't it? 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 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. I wonder if Tom Holland's going to be doing this in the film, because he's Telemachus, isn't he? I mean, it's genuinely interesting to see whether the slaughter of the servant girls is included. I can't imagine Matt 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. Yeah. What would one prefer? I don't know. There is a lot of brutality in this world. But Eurycleia, I mean, she thinks it's a 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 recognize him dressed in vile rags and Telemachus can't believe this how can his mother possibly doubt that she is gazing at her 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 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 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 Eurycleia 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 the bed and I made it myself and I made it myself one of the four boasts out of a living olive tree and I had then built the bed chamber 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 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 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 shipwrecked 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 post-modern kind of 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 and the first people to hear it and the first people to hear it well they were both obviously not the last. 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. I think it's exactly that fusion I think it's the fact that it has gods it features you know famous monsters you know I speaking for myself I I love that as a child that was the quality that I loved but also to be honest you know I love the violence of it and the the murderous quality of Odysseus as well as the the the cunning aspect of him yeah people I think enjoy that in stories there's a savagery to it that's often lost in children's versions I think the cruelty 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 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 set 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 always be embarking on fresh adventures and you can see that now with the Christopher Nolan film. 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 always be embarking on fresh adventures and you can see that now with the Christopher Nolan film.