Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook on Odysseus's Monsters, Greek Colonisation Anxieties, and the Slaughter of the Suitors

Dominic Sandbrook

This is the story of the Odyssey, and perhaps some of the history that may lie behind the Odyssey. It is Homer's great epic, telling the story of how Odysseus, one of the heroes of the Trojan War, tries to get back home, but finds his voyage blocked by drug-takers, one-eyed giants, witches, ghosts, all kinds of adventures. And we look at how he makes one fatal mistake which ends up destroying everybody on his voyage except for himself.

> '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 the peoples whose cities he saw and whose ways of thinking he learned. Many the toils he suffered at sea, 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. 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 Mendelsohn. And there was only one person capable of reading that for us, and we're very grateful to the tremendous classical actor Russell Crowe for reading those words. The reason Russell agreed to do that for us is because the Odyssey is one 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 seventh century BC — and of course the Bible, as an absolute building block of the culture we are now so familiar with. Tom. So, the Odyssey has given us so many other stories, hasn't it? 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 — perhaps derived from the Odyssey.

Tom Holland

I guess the central core idea is a pretty obvious one when you think about it, which is about a man far from home trying to get back to his wife, to his son, to his homeland. And in Greek, he has this kind of desperate yearning for a nostos, they called it — this return home. And on this journey, along the way, he meets with monsters and 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 these kind of dizzyingly subjective experiences. So it is — people have suggested that everything Odysseus tells us in the Odyssey may not actually be true. We don't know, and that is kind of part of the fascination. On one level it's a very simple story, a man trying to get back home, and on the other it's kind of brilliantly sophisticated and meta.

Dominic Sandbrook

You made it sound like Inception or something — the Christopher Nolan film where Leonardo DiCaprio is trying to get back home to his kids. 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 where 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. 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, from the trailers and stuff, right?

Tom Holland

From the trailers. So, massive sense of anticipation, but it's not the only reason for doing the Odyssey on The Rest Is History, because to be honest, it's a story I've been wanting to do since we began the podcast. And I want to look a little bit at the context — how did it come to be composed? Is anything in the story true? To what degree might it be based on fact? What mirror might it hold up to the reality of the ancient Mediterranean, whether that's the time Odysseus is supposed to have lived, or the time when Homer is composing it? But also to tell the story itself, because it's the story that first got me obsessed with Greek mythology, and therefore with ancient history, and therefore with history more generally. So you could say 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.

Dominic Sandbrook

There are tens of people wiping away tears at this already. All right, so we're going to get into the story, aren't we? We're going to try to solve some of the mysteries 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 felt you could improve on Homer, because you felt Homer had made a mistake by not beginning at the beginning and proceeding chronologically. But you're going to take a different approach — proceed very methodically, without his haphazard approach. Am I right?

Tom Holland

Well, I like to think that if Homer were doing it as a podcast, he would do it as I'm doing it. 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's an aspect 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 draw on sources outside the Iliad and the Odyssey to clarify aspects of the plot that his original listeners would have taken for granted. So let's begin right at the beginning.

Dominic Sandbrook

And so 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 Dardanelles — if people remember the Dardanelles from the 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?

Tom Holland

No, he calls them the Achaeans. I think throughout these episodes we will be calling the Greeks the Achaeans — that's the word Homer uses. And the Achaeans and the Trojans have been fighting on the plain of Troy. 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. The Trojans are fighting to keep her, and they've been doing this, as we say, for ten years, and it looks an absolute deadlock. But then — and I'm going to quote here a bard who features in the Odyssey — he describes how the sons of the Achaeans laid the city waste after pouring out of the horse. And the horse, of course, is the Trojan horse — the most successful ruse, I would guess, in the whole history of warfare. Certainly the most famous.

Dominic Sandbrook

So famous that it inspired a disastrous project in the Gallipoli invasion, didn't it? They got a ship and ran it aground, and it was an absolute disaster.

Tom Holland

Yeah. Ran it up onto the beach, and then everyone shot them. 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. This is a guy called Odysseus. 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 Achaean heroes at Troy, the other Greek heroes who were kings of famous golden cities like Mycenae or Sparta, Odysseus is very much a 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 kingdom. He's a brilliant warrior, famous for 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, very inventive, devious — a dab hand with a trick, with a lie. And as such, he's the particular favourite of the goddess Athena, the great warrior goddess who is simultaneously the goddess of warfare but also of the domestic sciences and everything that contributes to civilisation. She values intelligence for its own sake. Over the course of the Trojan War, she's always keeping an eye on him, occasionally appearing to him, and she says to him, addressing 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 him. And among those, I would rank Athena — I think there's a kind of love affair there between the mortal and the goddess.

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

Yes — who Odysseus had raised as a puppy.

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

So Penelope is obviously more important to the plot than Argos the dog. Penelope is the cousin of Helen. And Odysseus, unlike everyone else who had gone completely mad for Helen, had always had eyes only for Penelope. This is because Penelope is basically very like him — she is very clever, very strong-minded, absolutely suited to him. She's a model of what Homer calls homophrosyne, which means a kind of likemindedness, a 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 on the expedition. This isn't in Homer, but people in ancient Greece listening to the Odyssey would have known that Odysseus's devotion to Penelope was such that he tried to pull this trick to get out of going to war. He's the only hero of whom such a thing is recorded. So what had he done? When the Greek ambassadors, summoning him to join the expedition and go to Troy with them, 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 most of the Greek ambassadors are persuaded by it, but one of the ambassadors is not fooled. He looks around and sees that Telemachus's nurse is standing nearby with the baby Telemachus in her arms. So this ambassador goes over, 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 and kill it, and not have to go to Troy, or swerve and reveal he's not actually mad. So he opts to swerve, and not kill his baby son. And he's rumbled. So he duly has to leave for Troy. He sets sail at the head of a fleet of twelve ships — Homer, in the Iliad, describes their prows flashing crimson. And he's there for ten years. He fights heroically, comes up with the ruse of the Trojan horse, Troy falls, Odysseus takes lots of loot. He's ready to go back home, him and his twelve ships.

Dominic Sandbrook

And so off they sail, right? But the journey home is not quite as simple as the journey there, is it?

Tom Holland

That is putting it mildly.

Dominic Sandbrook

Right. And this is partly because they keep getting distracted, and they're distracted right from the very start.

Tom Holland

So they set off, the winds blow them west from Troy. They're going along the northern coastline of the Aegean, and they arrive at a place called Ismaros. And there, instead of putting ashore for supplies, shaking hands with the harbour master, exchanging pleasantries with the burghers of the town, Odysseus, by some standards, behaves very poorly.

Dominic Sandbrook

Well, he has something of the Viking about him, I think it's fair to say.

Tom Holland

So, here is Odysseus talking about what he did at Ismaros: '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 I am aware of mentions what happens to these women that Odysseus and his men have dragged off into slavery. Do they die on the voyage? Are they sold? We just don't know.

Dominic Sandbrook

Nothing good.

Tom Holland

Nothing good. I think one man in Ismaros is spared, and this is a guy called Maron, who is a priest of the god Apollo. His family is spared as well. And Maron, to show his gratitude, gives Odysseus seven bars of gold, a silver mixing bowl, and twelve amphorae of wine. And this wine is described as being sweet and undiluted, a drink for the gods — 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 nineteen portions of water, and that anyone who drinks it neat is obviously the most monstrous barbarian. So that's just something for listeners to bear in mind. And Odysseus is pleased with all this — he's ready to head off. But this is a theme that will recur throughout the Odyssey and indeed these episodes: his men, when he says, 'Right, let's crack on,' have got stuck into the wine, and they're also having a barbecue — hence the Russell Crowe voice at the beginning, because there's something very Australian about Odysseus's crew. Wherever they stop, they have barbecues and start grilling meat on the beach. And that's a terrible thing to do, because it enables the locals who've been beaten off to rally and return to the attack with much larger numbers of men. 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 seventy 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, round the southernmost tip of Greece, the southernmost tip of the Peloponnese, Cape Malea. And now all Odysseus has to do is steer around the cape, head northwards, go around 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 calm down, they've got no idea where they are. On the tenth day, they see land and they moor there. Odysseus sends a couple of scouts up the beach, inland, to try to work out where they are. And then he sits and waits for them to return, but they don't come back. So finally he thinks, well, I'd better go and work out what's going on here. He leaves the ship, follows their footsteps up the beach, goes inland, and finds them — half asleep, all blissed out, a spaced look on their faces, smiling happily. He tries to rouse them, tells them, 'Come on, we've got to get cracking.' They don't want to move. Finally he uses force, physically drags them, and they start to sob. They just want to stay there and chillax, have fun, be mellow, not go roaring off around the world. They can't be bothered to go home — they don't want to. They're enjoying themselves too much where they are. And Odysseus realises where they are: they have come to the land of the Lotus-Eaters. 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.' Odysseus is aware that if all his crew get out and start munching on the lotus, they will never return home. So he orders his fleet to leave immediately, because they can't risk losing the will for the nostos, the will for the return home.

Dominic Sandbrook

So let's just stop the story right there and ask what this is all about. What do people think the land of the Lotus-Eaters refers to? Is there something in — I don't know — Bronze Age history that would be the genesis of this idea?

Tom Holland

It's a question the Greeks themselves asked. Herodotus, the first historian, 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 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. There are other theories I was looking up for this episode. Apparently there's a small tree called the Ziziphus 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. It's more likely, surely, that this is a literary symbol — that it's basically about losing yourself and losing sight of your goal. 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 the best way to highlight that is to show the alternative: what that would mean. Essentially it just means chilling out and doing nothing, which might have its appeal, but ultimately it's seen as a danger. So when Odysseus pushes off from the land of the Lotus-Eaters, the reader or listener can feel confident that this is a man utterly committed to getting back home — which is very important, because all kinds of obstacles, as we will see, are waiting for him on his journey back.

Dominic Sandbrook

Let's get to the next obstacle, which is the most famous obstacle of all. So they set off, don't they, and reach another bit of land — a little island, as far as they can tell inhabited only by wild goats. They have another barbecue, inevitably, another barbie. And they see that there's a larger island nearby, and on this island they can see smoke rising into the sky. That's an interesting, exciting, tantalising sign. And Odysseus goes off on his own, am I right, to find out what's on this island?

Tom Holland

He can see it's smoke, but there's no sign of agriculture, which is a puzzle, because they would assume that a settlement of people would be tilling fields, but there's no sign of that. So he's a little bit nervous about this, not sure what it might portend. He sets sail in a single ship, leaving the other eleven ships hidden off the smaller island, crosses over to the main island, and they land and walk along the beach and see a cave. The entrance to this cave is walled off with a kind of stone wall. So he thinks, well, this is obviously a sign of habitation. He decides to investigate, and takes his twelve bravest men with him, and also takes with him a goatskin filled with that delicious, very strong wine that had been given to him by Maron, the priest of Apollo. They go up to the cave and call out, and there's no answer, so they decide to wander in and investigate. They find it's empty except for lambs and kids in pens, and racks and racks of cheeses. So clearly someone is living here. Odysseus decides to wait for the owner of the cave to return, and they build a fire and grill some cheese — like a kind of Mediterranean hiking holiday. Again, this 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. 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, driving flocks of sheep and goats ahead of him. He enters the cave, and as he enters he blocks out the light. As the eyes of the Achaeans adjust, they look up into his face and see that he has only a single eye. So this is a Cyclops, and it's a Cyclops by the name of Polyphemus. 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. Then he looks around with his single eye and spots Odysseus and his men cowering at the back of the cave, and demands to know who they are.

Dominic Sandbrook

And 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 and never seen before?

Tom Holland

I think the general vibe is that he's not good news. He's enormous, fierce-looking, he's got a single eye. I don't think this is the kind of person you probably want to run into when you've been grilling his cheese. Odysseus is hopeful that perhaps he could get this guy on his side. So he conquers his fear, steps forward, and introduces himself — as an Achaean, but he doesn't give any more detail. And when Polyphemus asks Odysseus, well, where is your ship, Odysseus lies and says they've lost it in a storm. He loves a fib — he doesn't want to give away too much, because he's clearly nervous about whether Polyphemus is the kind of person in whose cave you want to be stuck. And when Polyphemus learns their ship has been sunk, he reaches for two of Odysseus's men, smashes out their brains on the floor, devours them, and falls asleep, stretched out among his flocks.

Dominic Sandbrook

So there, your answer: he's not good news. He's not the kind of person you want to be stuck in a cave with. 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?

Tom Holland

Exactly. So they have no choice but to pass this completely miserable night. And in due course, as Homer puts it, morning dawn touches the sky with her rosy fingertips. Polyphemus wakes up, and for breakfast has two more of Odysseus's men — smashes them again against the wall, devours them. Then he moves the boulder, drives out his flocks, and seals the cave up again with the boulder. So again, Odysseus and his men are stuck there. What are they going to do now? It seems an impossible situation. But Odysseus, fortunately, is blindingly smart. He looks around and realises there's a possible way out, because Polyphemus has got a club — an enormous club, the size of the trunk of an enormous tree, the length and scale of the mast of a ship. Odysseus gets his men to whittle this club down to a very sharp point, and when they've done that, they conceal it under sheepskins. When Polyphemus returns that evening, he devours two more men. Odysseus steps forward and offers Polyphemus a cup of Maron's delicious, and did I mention very strong, wine.

Dominic Sandbrook

They brought the wine with them. Crucial.

Tom Holland

And Polyphemus is clearly a barbarian, because he does not water it down — he guzzles it down neat. And when Odysseus offers him another two cups, he guzzles those down too. Once he's had three cups of wine, he asks Odysseus for his name. Odysseus does not give his real name — instead he says, 'My name is Nobody,' which in Greek is Outis, meaning no one.

Dominic Sandbrook

Oh, so clever.

Tom Holland

And Polyphemus says, 'Well, as a thank you for the wine, here is what I'm going to do — I will eat you last.' A great giant laugh. He then falls asleep, and as he falls asleep, he belches and vomits up wine and bits of hand and bits of flesh, and it all spews out onto the floor of the cave. Polyphemus rolls over, vomits up a bit more, and then he's flat out, snoring, and the cave echoes to the sound. This is the chance Odysseus has been waiting for. 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, then clamber up the body of the sleeping Cyclops, aim it over his single eye, point resting on the lid. Odysseus gives the signal, and it's driven deep into the eye of the Cyclops. 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.' Understandably, Polyphemus screams and howls, pulls the spike out of his eye, hurls it against the side of the cave, and starts bellowing for help. The other Cyclopes, his neighbours, hear his cries and come down and ask him what has happened. 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, 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. A very, very powerful god indeed.

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

Absolutely. So, brilliant for Odysseus — he's come up with the spike in the eye, and also the whole calling-himself-nobody trick, which means the other Cyclopes think nothing's the matter with Polyphemus. But they're still not out of danger, because what Polyphemus does now is push back the boulder, because he's got to let his flocks of sheep and goats go out. As they start milling out through the cave entrance, he feels each one to make sure Odysseus and his men aren't trying to creep out hidden among the flocks. But again, Odysseus is equal to the challenge: he ties each of his men underneath the belly of a sheep, and they all manage to get out, and Polyphemus doesn't realise they're tied under the bellies of the sheep. And Odysseus himself — there's one giant ram, and he hugs onto the fleece of this ram, and the ram trots out, and Polyphemus strokes the ram and realises it's his beloved ram, and feels it's walking slowly because of the weight, but thinks the ram is walking slowly out of grief for its blinded master. So, very sad. Anyway, Odysseus and his men manage to get out of the cave, cut themselves free from the sheep, drive the entire flock down towards their ship, load the sheep onto the boat so they can roast them later and have another barbecue, and pull out to sea. But Odysseus is a warrior, and he wants the person he's defeated to know who has vanquished him. So he taunts the blinded Cyclops from his ship as it's pulling out. And Polyphemus is so furious that he gropes for the top of a mountain, pulls the summit off, and hurls the rock in the direction of Odysseus. It lands just in front of Odysseus's ship, and there's a great tsunami that washes the ship back towards the shore, and it looks like they're going to be shipwrecked. So Odysseus takes a pole, like a punt, to push the ship back out to sea. He and his men row frantically, and then again he cannot help himself — he stands on the rear of the ship and yells taunts at Polyphemus again, and fatally reveals his true identity. He announces himself as Odysseus, sacker of cities, the son of Laertes, who holds his home in Ithaca. When Polyphemus hears this, he gives a great groan, raises his arms, and prays to Poseidon, the god of the sea, his divine father: 'Hear me, Poseidon, earth-shaker, you of the deep blue mane. Grant that Odysseus, sacker 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 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.' That bodes very ill for Odysseus. If Poseidon hears his son's prayer, then Odysseus's prospects of getting back to Ithaca with all his men are hanging in the balance. And we'll find out what happens next after the break.

Tom Holland

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.

Dominic Sandbrook

Now, to the original listeners of this story — because people would have heard it rather than read it, I think — would they have seen these adventures as the stuff of fairy tales and fantasy, or did they think these things really happened?

Tom Holland

On one level, obviously, it's fantasy, but there was a sense that these islands could be located in the geography of the Mediterranean Sea. We've heard that Herodotus, the first great historian, located the land of the Lotus-Eaters in North Africa, and there was a tradition among the Greeks that the cave of Polyphemus lay beneath Mount Etna in Sicily — and Etna, of course, is a volcano. So there's this sense of fire hidden in the mountain. And the story was that the Cyclopes used the fires of Etna to forge the thunderbolts they then gave to Zeus, and Polyphemus is one of these Cyclopes who were working on the thunderbolts. There's a brilliant theory about why one-eyed giants might have been identified with Sicily. There's a wonderful book by a scholar called Adrienne Mayor, who's written about what the ancients thought ancient fossils were, and she suggests there were dwarf elephants on Sicily — long extinct by ancient Greek times, but their skulls might have been discovered. And because 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. There's no proof for it, but it's a wonderful idea.

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

I think the story of these monsters lurking on strange islands — these are anxieties 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. I think 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. That's why Homer specifies that he drinks his wine neat, why he specifies there's no agriculture. These are people who, by the standards of the Greek colonists, are backward and savage, and frightening for that reason. So, as you say, Polyphemus is clearly a figure of fantasy — one of the most memorable figures in the whole history of fantasy — but he is, I think, bringing to life the anxieties of adventurers sailing into strange seas and settling lands that are often very hostile. There's a brilliant book on this by a scholar called Carol Dougherty, The Raft of Odysseus. To quote from it: 'Embedded within a familiar mythic story pattern of a time and people long ago are details and themes that belong to the contemporary world of its audience.' Which is kind of what you'd expect. It reminds me a bit of the way that in the 1960s, in Star Trek, if you watch it now, it's Captain Kirk going around strange planets, but so many of those episodes are plainly about anxieties and complexes manifest in 1960s America. I think, mutatis mutandis, the same is true of what's going on in the Odyssey — that this is fantastical, but it's also drawing on all kinds of anxieties reflecting the character of ancient Greece.

Dominic Sandbrook

So let's take the next adventure they have. This is the island of King Aeolus — and he is what, the god of the winds?

Tom Holland

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

Dominic Sandbrook

Oh, yeah, of course — it was clearly a very, very strong tradition as to where Aeolus had actually been. I've been to the Aeolians — they're very nice. Lovely.

Tom Holland

There you go, following in the footsteps of Odysseus. Aeolus, unlike Polyphemus, is a very civilised man, obedient to the Greek law of what they call xenia, hospitality towards foreigners — if you meet a foreigner, this mutual exchange of gifts. The contrast with Polyphemus is very obvious and deliberate, I think. Aeolus hosts Odysseus and his men for an entire month in his magnificent palace with its great bronze walls, and then he places all the contrary winds — the winds that would prevent Odysseus getting back to Ithaca — in a massive great bag, and gives this bag to Odysseus to keep in his hold. 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 home. And Aeolus says, 'You'll be absolutely fine with this — 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. So, to make absolutely sure the winds don't escape, Odysseus, for nine days and nights, does not sleep — he sits there watching the bag. Finally they are so close to Ithaca that Odysseus can see smoke rising from hearth fires on the island. He's so nearly there. He's been awake all this time, and so, fatally, he dozes off very briefly, and his men, seeing him asleep, start muttering among themselves: 'What's in the bag? Why is he so anxious about it? Clearly it must be full of treasure, and he's keeping it for himself, not sharing it with us, and it's not fair — let's open up the bag and share the treasure out among ourselves before we arrive in Ithaca.' They pull on the rope, undo the bag, and the winds come screaming and howling out of it. Massive great storms. Odysseus is blown all the way back to the island of Aeolus. And when he goes up to Aeolus and says what has happened —

Dominic Sandbrook

Have you got any more winds?

Tom Holland

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

Dominic Sandbrook

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, a perfect harbour, high cliffs, headlands encircling it. Eleven of the ships go in, and Odysseus's ship stays outside. And this is Odysseus being smart again — Tom, what happens next?

Tom Holland

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 Laestrygonians, who again are giant cannibals, and there are thousands of them, and they all mass on the cliffs surrounding this perfect harbour. Again, to quote Homer: 'From the cliffs they kept hurling down boulders, any one of which a man would be hard-pressed to lift.' The ships, trapped inside this harbour, are rapidly reduced to matchwood, and the Laestrygonians wade out into the sea and spear Odysseus's men like fish, like tuna. Only Odysseus and his now solitary ship escape the slaughter. So people will remember that curse Polyphemus had laid on Odysseus, that he would return without his men. Well, eleven of those ships have gone.

Dominic Sandbrook

Again, is there a real-life equivalent to this? We were talking about the Aeolian Islands and the Lotus-Eaters — what do historians think about the Laestrygonians?

Tom Holland

The Greeks identified it again with Sicily, and this is a period when they're starting to settle Sicily. Again, I think the story speaks of anxieties about murderous natives, and there's a specific twist here, which is: with your ships, you see a perfect spot for a colony — but it might be 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, which are coterminous with Homer's composition of the Odyssey, are probably feeding into stories like that.

Dominic Sandbrook

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 — much more like going into some fantasy dreamscape.

Tom Holland

Yeah — again, to pursue the science-fiction parallel, this is like going through a wormhole, or experiencing a singularity — going into a different dimension where the rules of what is normal are suspended. However, it's not immediately obvious to Odysseus that this is what has happened. They've made their escape from the Laestrygonians, keep sailing as the wind blows them, and arrive at another island. They moor off it, and at first everything seems completely normal. Odysseus goes on a scouting mission, runs into a stag, kills it, brings it back, they all have another barbecue. 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 Eurylochus. Lots are cast to see which group will go and explore and which will stay and look after the ship, and the lot falls on Eurylochus to go inland and scout out who or what might be on this island. Eurylochus 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. Understandably, Eurylochus's men draw their swords, nervous of these predators — but the lions and wolves seem weirdly tame, fawning on Eurylochus and his men like domestic dogs. While they're wondering what on earth's going on, from inside the palace they hear the beautiful voice of a woman, singing, clearly working on a loom. They call out to her, and this woman comes to them, opens these great gleaming doors, and invites them in. She is fabulously gorgeous, beautifully dressed — clearly a queen. So all Eurylochus's men, except for Eurylochus himself, walk inside. Eurylochus, who's clearly been chosen by Odysseus because he has a quality of suspicion and intelligence that Odysseus identifies with, stays outside — he doesn't trust this woman, thinks there's something a little sinister about her. And he's not wrong, because the woman seats Eurylochus's men down on couches and brings them food — cheese and barley and honey, together with Pramnian wine. And this food and drink, we're told, are mixed with sinister drugs. Eurylochus's men eat and drink their fill, and once they've gorged themselves, the woman walks around the dining area and 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 pigs. Eurylochus has watched all this, manages to get away, runs back to Odysseus, and reports it. And from this point the story becomes even stranger. Odysseus is determined to redeem his men from the spell — aside from anything else, he needs them, he won't be able to row the ship without them. So he sets off to confront this woman, who is patently a sorceress. On his way, he meets for the first time in the course of his wanderings a bona fide Olympian, one of the top twelve gods of Mount Olympus — Hermes, the messenger of the gods, clearly sent by someone, we presume Athena, to help him out. Hermes gives Odysseus a drug of his own — a black-rooted herb with a white flower called moly. It's unclear exactly what the moly might be based on, but it has great magic, and armed with it, Odysseus proves immune to the sorceress's spells — despite the fact that we discover this sorceress is herself a goddess. She is a daughter of the sun, and her name is Circe of the beautiful braids. At swordpoint, Odysseus forces Circe to submit, and she does, and then invites Odysseus to bed. 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.' Circe 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, and much taller to look upon. So that's all worked out well.

Dominic Sandbrook

But then the twist — you might expect Odysseus to rush off, 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 fathers is still waiting for you, Ithaca — come on, let's crack on and leave.' What is going on here, do you think? Is this an allegory for sexual desire? Is it female wiles? What's all this about?

Tom Holland

It clearly complicates the notion of Odysseus as a man driven by an absolute focus on getting back to Ithaca and his beloved wife Penelope. His sexual relationship with Circe is a complete non-issue to Homer — it's expected that a man, no matter how devoted to his wife, will obviously sleep around. 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 him having a great time and failing to notice, and then before you know it a year's gone by. I think there's a kind of quality of the shaman about Circe — a sense that she has conducted Odysseus and his men into a dimension of mystery and magic where time moves at a different pace. What she's offering Odysseus, I think, is akin to an initiation. The year passes pretty much in the blink of an eye. And when Odysseus goes to her and says, 'Look, I really want to carry on,' Circe doesn't object, but says, 'Before you do this, you must go even further beyond my island, to the dwelling place of Hades and dread Persephone.' Hades and Persephone are the king and queen of the dead, who rule the underworld. Circe is sending Odysseus to the land of Hades, because here, amid mist and cloud that shrouds the farthest boundaries of ocean, he can consult with someone who will tell him the best way to get back home — the great prophet Teiresias. And we have already met him in an episode of The Rest Is History, the one we did on Oedipus. He's died, and is now in the underworld. There is something of the superhero franchise here, isn't there — characters who are the star of one film reappearing as a bit part in another.

Dominic Sandbrook

Yeah. This is the Circe Cinematic Universe, actually. Have you read Madeline Miller's novel about Circe?

Tom Holland

Yes.

Dominic Sandbrook

Brilliant, isn't it? It gives you the whole episode from her perspective.

Tom Holland

Anyway, Odysseus and co. go off to the land of Hades, and this is something nobody has ever done before — they're the first ship ever to sail there. Who knew you could sail there? This was a surprise to me.

Dominic Sandbrook

This is why you need Circe to tell you such things, right?

Tom Holland

No one had ever thought to do it before. And 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. So Circe has said, 'Take a load of sheep, dig a trench, then, once 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 Teiresias has drunk.' This is what Odysseus does. Teiresias drinks the blood and is able to talk, and gives Odysseus all kinds of travel tips. He says, 'This is the crucial thing you have to bear in mind: you may find yourself landing on an island called Thrinacia. This island is sacred to Helios, the sun god, Hyperion' — this is the god mentioned in the opening you read, Dominic. 'If you find yourself on this island, no matter what you do, do not kill and barbecue the cattle.'

Dominic Sandbrook

You have the vibe of people who love nothing more than a barbecue — he's really put his finger on them.

Tom Holland

Yeah — Australians, don't have a barbecue, just don't do it. Because if you do, everything will go wrong. And Teiresias 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' — echoing the curse Polyphemus had laid on Odysseus earlier. Teiresias goes on to say that if his men kill the cattle, Odysseus will find his halls, when he gets back home, filled with braggarts pestering and courting his wife. So, just, don't go there. Teiresias, having drunk his fill, gives this advice, and then flits away in a spectral manner, and all the other shades start to feed on the blood — an incredibly sinister scene. Odysseus talks to some of them, and among them is his mother, who had died while he was away in Troy — he hadn't realised she was dead. Three times he tries to embrace her, and three times she just melts in his arms like a shadow or a dream. He meets Agamemnon, king of men, commander of the Achaeans at Troy, who's been murdered by his wife Clytemnestra, and tells Odysseus that story. And then, very famously, Odysseus meets the great hero of the Iliad, the greatest of all the Achaean warriors, Achilles, the man who at the end of the Iliad had killed Hector, the greatest of the Trojan warriors. Achilles had been offered the choice, when he was very young, of a life short but full of glory, or a long life but lived in obscurity. 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 eats out a living, than rule here as lord of all those who are dead and gone.' To me, that is the single most interesting moment of the entire Odyssey, because it undermines the cult of the hero, the emphasis on glory and martial vigour and writing your name in letters that will never fade. Homer is implying there's an argument for saying — it's a bit like in the Madeline Miller book, this is what Telemachus says — that it's better to be obscure, that it's actually better to have a nice quiet life where no one even knows you exist, than to be a great hero wreathed in glory that all passes and is meaningless.

Dominic Sandbrook

Yes, I think that's absolutely what it's saying.

Tom Holland

But also, what Achilles is saying, essentially, is that the greatest of all gifts is immortality — you never want to die. If you're ever offered the gift of immortality, you want to embrace it with open arms. That's essentially what he's saying, and it's something that will impact on a decision Odysseus has to make in due course, but we'll come to that.

Dominic Sandbrook

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?

Tom Holland

I think 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 gibbering shadow who has to drink blood even to speak. There's nothing there. And so it makes the blaze of life all the more glorious. It's an amazing moment in the poem, and in the broadest sweep of ancient Greek culture. So, Odysseus has got what he came for — this advice from Teiresias — and now he goes back to Circe, who feasts them. After the meal, she says to Odysseus, 'Okay, just go — as soon as dawn appears, set sail.' And she advises him on how to negotiate the various dangers awaiting him on the next stage of his voyage.

Tom Holland

She says, 'You are going to be passing the island of the Sirens.' These are carnivorous creatures, heads of women, bodies of birds, with irresistibly beautiful voices — that's what the word siren means. They sit on this island perched amid a great pile of bones. Circe has a suggestion: 'All your men should put wax in 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, and you will want them to set you free — tell them on no account to set you free.' 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, who guard the passage between two cliffs, and you have to sail between them. In one of these cliffs — 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. Scylla makes a noise like a little newborn puppy — very, very sweet. However, Scylla has six necks, enormously long, and on top of each neck is a head, a harrowing sight, each with three rows of teeth. Not good news — a bit like the alien in the Sigourney Weaver film. From the other cliff sprouts a huge wild fig tree, and beneath that, in the depths of the waters, lurks Charybdis, the second monster. Every day, Charybdis sucks the water down, and then thrice each day vomits it up, thrice gulps it back down, creating a monstrous whirlpool. Any ship caught in the whirlpool is doomed — dragged round and round, down and down, into the jaws of Charybdis, and everyone on that ship eaten. So Circe's advice is: steer clear of the whirlpool, stick close to Scylla's rock — as Circe says, it is better by far to mourn six men from your ship than to mourn all of them together. And as for the cattle of the sun, which Teiresias 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's men for barbecues, and says, don't let them have the temptation. So Odysseus has this advice from Circe, follows it to the letter, 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 snaking necks of Scylla, which descend from her cave and grab them and pull them up into her cave and devour them, but they manage to avoid the whirlpool of Charybdis. And that's the main thing.

Tom Holland

Then they sail on and see the island of the sun, and Odysseus says, 'Okay, we're not stopping here, no way.'

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

Yeah. Odysseus's men, when he says, 'Look, we're not stopping here,' all complain — 'Oh god, we're shattered, 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, just don't go there. We will stop for a single afternoon and then continue on our way.' 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, preventing them from leaving the island. So they're stuck there, really hungry, their supplies running out, and Odysseus can see his men starting to eye up the cattle, thinking how nice chunks of this cattle would be on a spit, in a lovely kebab. In desperation, he thinks, well, 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 — he leaves his men behind and heads off to the summit of the mountain 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 mountaintop, and as before, with the winds of Aeolus in the bag, so now, fatefully, he falls asleep. 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, looks down, sees the smoke rising. He goes, 'Ah, no.' And he runs down, and for six days his men make a feast. 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.

Dominic Sandbrook

It's like a vegan's fantasy, isn't it?

Tom Holland

Yeah. And it's not surprising, because it is, I think, hard to overemphasise the scale of the insult that's been done to the sun god — these are clearly solar cattle, and notions of solar cattle seem to have been very widespread in the myths of the ancient Indo-Europeans. The Greeks are Indo-Europeans; you get it in Hindu mythology and Irish mythology — from India to Ireland, in other words — and their theft, in all these stories, no matter where they're told, always represents a massive insult to the cosmic order. So it is in the Odyssey: Helios, the sun god, complains to Zeus, and Zeus stills the storms — a very sinister calm — which allows Odysseus and his men to set sail. Then, all at once, once the ship is out at sea, Zeus thundered and hurled his lightning at the ship, and the mast snaps, and as it falls it brains 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's men are tossed into the great boiling swell of the sea, looking just like cormorants, bobbing about on the waves around the black hulk of the ship. The god snatched their homecoming from them. Only one man survives the shipwreck — Odysseus himself. Somehow he manages to fashion a raft out of all the wreckage, the flotsam and jetsam. But even now, even with his raft, he's still not safe, because the wind changes and blows him back the way he had come, towards Scylla and Charybdis. And of course he can't steer, so the whirlpool is swirling downwards, Charybdis sucking the water down deep into her jaws, and Odysseus's raft gets caught up in the spinning and whirling of the waters. As it's going down, Odysseus leaps up from the raft and clings onto that giant fig tree, which Homer had told us was leaning over the whirlpool, and manages to hold on until the raft is spat back up by Charybdis, and he drops down from the branch, down beside the timbers, and, sitting on top of them, as he later describes it: 'I used my hands to paddle away.' For nine days and nine nights he drifts, the only man left alive out of what had originally been a fleet of twelve ships. And the loss of those men in Homer's poem is very deeply felt, because the Odyssey, throughout the account of its hero's voyages — and obviously the focus is very much on the hero — is nevertheless unusual for the emphasis it places on the minor characters. You 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.

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

Yeah. So Scylla was identified with the Strait of Messina, between Sicily and Italy, where you have whirlpools and riptides, and it was generally dreaded by ancient sailors. And Thrinacia, the island of the cattle, means 'three headlands' — Sicily has three headlands, so again it was identified with Sicily, and Sicily was the main focus for Greek colonisation in this period. So it's perhaps not surprising that it generated all these myths. But now, with the loss of his men and his ship, Odysseus, I think, is drifting back from the shipping lanes that Greek sailors might recognise, back into a dimension beyond the mortal — back through 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 — this is Odysseus narrating at this point — 'on the ninth or the tenth, I was brought by the gods to the island of Ogygia, home of Calypso, she of the beautiful braids, dread goddess who speaks like a mortal. She welcomed and cared for me.'

Tom Holland

So it's slightly Circe-like, but the difference here is that whereas he stayed with Circe voluntarily, Calypso will not let him leave.

Dominic Sandbrook

That's right, isn't it? He's staying here almost against his will — day after day, month after month, year after year, weeping, thinking about Penelope, about his son Telemachus, about Ithaca, his home. And the greatest punishment of all — every night he has to go to bed with Calypso. What a terrible ordeal this must have been.

Tom Holland

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.

Dominic Sandbrook

Oh, no — what a terrible fate that is. So, will he ever escape, Tom? And if so, how will he do it? And what will happen when he gets back to Ithaca?

Dominic Sandbrook

'Let us now send Hermes, the guide, the slayer of Argus, toward Ogygian 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 instil 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 playing the goddess Athena, Athena talking to her father Zeus, king of the gods. This is in the first of the twenty-four books that constitute Homer's great epic, the Odyssey. And as we were saying in our first episode, there is something very Australian about the expedition of Odysseus and his men across the Aegean — barbecuing on the beach, drinking unnecessarily, behaving badly, basically comporting themselves like Australians on the beaches of the Dardanelles. So we felt that Australian voices — Russell Crowe last episode, and a cross between Kylie Minogue and Dame Edna this one — were the most appropriate.

Tom Holland

I was imagining Kylie, I have to say.

Dominic Sandbrook

Brilliant. I became — it turned into Dame Edna.

Tom Holland

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

Dominic Sandbrook

Nice. That's a lot of people's fantasy, actually. Anyway, the translation there is by Daniel Mendelsohn, who's on our bonus episode 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 to book your tickets, haven't you, because you don't want to miss out. Is that right?

Tom Holland

Actually, I went to the preview.

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

Yeah, it's Achaean behaviour. And I will regret it when I end up in the underworld.

Dominic Sandbrook

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 ten years in the Trojan War — he was the maestro behind the Trojan horse. Then he tries to get home with his men, and is blown fatally off course. Tom, remind us of all his adventures and what happened.

Tom Holland

So, loads of mad adventures — one-eyed giants, beautiful sorceresses. He goes to the underworld, meets the ghost of his mother and various of his fallen comrades. And he ends up losing all his fleet — he had twelve 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 Ogygia, ruled by a nymph, the Lady Calypso, that radiant goddess. On Ogygia he has been kept, essentially, as Calypso's sex slave for seven long years. Every night he would spend with the nymph, doing as she commanded, and every day he would weep for Penelope, his beloved wife, his soulmate. Ogygia is described by Homer as being the omphalos of the sea, the navel of the sea — a place so remote that Plutarch, writing in the second century AD, centuries after Homer, would place it five days' sail west of Britain.

Dominic Sandbrook

So that would make it what, Newfoundland, I guess, or —

Tom Holland

Yeah, somewhere on the way to Canada, anyway. But I think Plutarch is wrong, because in truth Ogygia is a place that transcends geography, and in fact time, because its meaning in Greek — ōgygios — means primal, before the dawn of time. So, essentially, Odysseus has passed into a strange dimension where the conventional rules that govern mortals no longer apply, and he has vanished from the world of humans. And Calypso actually means, in Greek, 'she who veils, she who conceals' — the same root as apocalypse, which means an unveiling. So Odysseus can't escape, partly because she won't let him go, but also, I think, because it's impossible for him to get out of this strange dimension that she controls and coordinates. But the reason also why Odysseus can't escape — and people who listened to our first episode may recall this — is because Odysseus has very foolishly offended Poseidon, the god of the sea, by blinding his son, the one-eyed giant Polyphemus. Poseidon doesn't necessarily want to finish him off — he's perfectly happy to leave him on this island prison with Calypso as governor. 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 — the person voiced by Dame Edna at the beginning of the episode. This is another Olympian: Athena. She likes Odysseus because she sees him as like-minded — they're both very wise and clever.

Dominic Sandbrook

Yes.

Tom Holland

I think she sees something of herself in Odysseus. During the Trojan War she had spoken to him, occasionally appeared to him. Over the course of his adventures she has not appeared or spoken to him, because she doesn't want to offend Poseidon. Fortunately, however, as the Odyssey opens, Poseidon is in the land of the Ethiopians — not to be identified with the people who live in what today we call Ethiopia; their name means 'people with burned faces', people on the edges of the world where the sun is at its brightest.

Dominic Sandbrook

They're blessed, they're noble — the kind of people a god would like to spend time having a holiday with.

Tom Holland

And so Poseidon is away from Olympus, and this gives Athena her chance. As we heard in the passage we opened with, voiced by Kylie, or rather Dame Edna, Athena has a two-pronged strategy. The first is to get Zeus to send Hermes, the messenger of the gods, to Ogygia to order Calypso to set Odysseus free. Secondly, Athena herself will go to Ithaca, Odysseus's home island, and there visit Telemachus, Odysseus's son, and encourage him to man up, to stop being so wet.

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

Yes. It's important for listeners who haven't read the book to understand that the epic does not begin with the fall of Troy. It doesn't begin with Odysseus embarking on his adventures — not as we did it in the previous episode. It begins with this moment, Athena going down to see Telemachus. Ten years have passed since the fall of Troy — so twenty years since Odysseus had left Ithaca. People may remember that when he'd left, Telemachus was just a baby, but now he's a young man. But to be fair to Telemachus, he's facing a very challenging situation, because Odysseus, before he'd left for Troy, had told Penelope: '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, assume I'm dead. And people know this. So Odysseus's hall is now crowded with suitors, slaughtering Odysseus's cattle and sheep and insulting his household. Penelope wants to hold out — she's hopeful Odysseus will come back, she knows her husband, she's confident he'll come back — so she doesn't want to marry any of these suitors. For years she's been keeping them at bay with a famous ruse of her own — it matches her husband's great wheeze, the Trojan horse. What she'd done was tell them, 'I will marry one of you once I have completed weaving a shroud for Laertes, the father of Odysseus.' So she sat at her loom weaving it all day, and then at night secretly stole down and unpicked everything she had done during the day.

Dominic Sandbrook

And so the suitors think this shroud is taking a long time — it's taking about five years. But in the end the scheme is betrayed by one of Penelope's servant girls, one of her maids.

Tom Holland

So the scheme is rumbled. But at this point Penelope is still holding out — she doesn't want to give in. And Telemachus is also backing her, but he's just a young man — he hasn't had his father around, he's not trained in the ways of warfare and wiliness and all of that. He's very young and inexperienced. This is why Athena has decided to visit him, to offer him the advice and encouragement he hasn't been getting from his absent father. She disguises herself, doesn't she, as an old friend of Odysseus with the excellent name of Mentor.

Dominic Sandbrook

Yes — she's literally his mentor.

Tom Holland

And when Mentor arrives, Telemachus is very courteous, very generous, but extremely embarrassed that there's basically this massive — it's basically like a stag party that's got —

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

Yeah, it's basically Wetherspoons at Luton airport at eight in the morning — people absolutely off their faces already, all kinds of bands. So it's miserable for Telemachus. Athena cheers him up, first of all, by saying, actually, I think your dad is alive, and I think he's going to be coming back home soon. And she then says he should stand up for himself, show his independence, and could do this in a couple of ways: summon an assembly of all the people of Ithaca and publicly make a stand against the suitors in front of them, and then go and visit some of Odysseus's old comrades from the Trojan War and find out what they know. 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, as we've been saying, hadn't previously been evident in Telemachus. So he holds this public assembly for the Ithacans, as Athena had advised. The suitors go there and shout it down, but they're startled that Telemachus has had the initiative and gumption to call it, and a little worried by this sudden display of character and independence. Even Penelope is surprised by the assertiveness her son is suddenly showing. So that's a marker he's laid down for the suitors. Then he heads off for the mainland — again, without telling them what he's doing, he slips away unnoticed — to the mainland of Greece, to the Peloponnese, to visit two of his father's old comrades in arms.

Tom Holland

The first of these is a guy called Nestor, king of Pylos on the west coast of the Peloponnese, the oldest warrior who'd fought at Troy — fabulously ancient and doddery, long white beard and all of that. Unfortunately, Nestor has no idea where Odysseus is, so he's not much use — it's like he's vanished off the face of the earth, no rumours about him whatsoever. But he cheers Telemachus up by telling him war stories — Nestor's an old man, and the joke is that this is all he ever does, tell stories about the good old days. But these are stories that feature Odysseus being an absolute legend — how brave he had been, how clever, how close he had been to Athena. So Telemachus had seen Mentor turn into a bird and fly off, and the cogs in his brain are starting to turn — 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 want to be worthy of such a father. From Pylos, Telemachus then heads inland to Sparta, where the king is Menelaus, husband of Helen, whose abduction had led to the entire war. When Helen comes in to join Menelaus and Telemachus in the great feasting hall, she immediately recognises him as Odysseus's son, because Helen is the daughter of Zeus — she has a kind of witchy quality, a kind of supernatural power. Helen sits with Telemachus and tells him a story about Odysseus — how, back in the days of the Trojan War, he had infiltrated Troy disguised as an old beggar, disguised so effectively that he'd had himself lashed across the back like a slave, so that people could see these marks, and it would have seemed impossible to the Trojans that this could actually have been a great hero. Helen boasts to Telemachus, 'I alone saw through his disguise.' Of course she could have betrayed him, but chooses not to — she says, 'For by then my heart had long since been bent on going back home.' Menelaus then tells a story too — about how they'd built the Trojan horse, and the Achaean heroes had 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.

Dominic Sandbrook

So again, this is the witchy quality of Helen, undermining her claim that she was now on the Greek side — I was about to say she's playing both sides.

Tom Holland

Yeah, she is playing both sides. And the men inside the horse hear what seems to be their wives — they're so homesick, so longing for their wives, that lots of them want to call out and reply. But Odysseus knows what's going on — he keeps very silent, keeps them motionless, puts his hand over the mouths of those who look as if they're about to call out. These two stories, first told by Helen, then Menelaus, illustrate the qualities of Odysseus — how intelligent he is, how bold, how daring, and also how self-disciplined. But the most crucial thing Menelaus tells Telemachus is that he does actually have news of Odysseus — because on his own journey back from Troy, Menelaus had ended up in Egypt, and there had captured the old man of the sea, Proteus, a kind of shepherd of seals, with all kinds of weird supernatural powers, able to change his shape — that's where the word protean comes from. Menelaus had captured him and held him despite all the shape-shifting, and finally got Proteus to reveal all kinds of things — among them, that Odysseus is alive. To quote what Proteus had told Menelaus: 'I saw Odysseus on an island, his eyes brimming over with tears, in the halls of the nymph Calypso, who is holding him there by compulsion. He is not able to return to the land of his fathers.' So now Telemachus knows he's alive.

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

Yes, her father. Athena is Zeus's favourite daughter. Poseidon is absent, and Athena is basically going round Olympus trying to sort things out for Odysseus, hassling her father. 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 Ogygia, this navel of the sea. When Hermes arrives, he tells Calypso, 'You've got to let Odysseus go.' Calypso has a massive strop about it, and Hermes says, 'Do not provoke Zeus to anger.' So, very reluctantly, Calypso permits Odysseus to build a boat, gives him provisions, and says, okay, you can go. But before he goes she makes him a great offer — the gift of immortality, if he will stay with her. Listeners may remember that in the previous episode we talked about how Odysseus had met Achilles, the great hero, now just a shadow in the underworld, who had said life is so much better than death, that you should embrace any opportunity to perpetuate it. So this is a massive offer. But Odysseus turns it down, in one of the great eulogies in ancient literature to the joys and comforts of marital love — it has to be said there aren't actually that many. It doesn't sound like a eulogy to his wife, it has to be said, but it kind of pivots. 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 never age or die. Nevertheless, I long, I pine, in all my days, to travel home and see the dawn of my return.' So he would rather live with Penelope and die than live with Calypso and live forever. It's a kind of moving moment, I think.

Dominic Sandbrook

There aren't 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 Ogygia, and well, these things always end up going one way, don't they? But actually, at first, it's a bit like the Titanic — everyone talks about the bit where it went wrong, but no one talks about the first couple of days. In this case, the first seventeen days of the voyage are a triumph. But then, on the eighteenth day, Poseidon is on his way back from the land of the Ethiopians, and he sees Odysseus below him, doesn't he — Poseidon is up in the sky.

Tom Holland

Yeah, and it's just this tiny little dot, but he's a god, of course he can recognise him. He's furious about it, and strikes the sea with his trident, churns it up, pulverises Odysseus's raft, all the gifts he's been given by Calypso, all his provisions, even his clothes — he loses them all. He's now 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, with the assistance of the goddess, he's able to crawl himself up onto a sandy beach, and totters up into a nearby wood, where there are leaves scattered everywhere, and 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 involving giants devouring your men, or spearing you in harbours, or whatever — these are the kind of things you want to hear. He's still dreading the worst, because he's gone through so many terrible experiences, but he thinks, well, maybe they're just girls, maybe it's all right. And he's desperately hungry, desperately thirsty. So he picks up a branch with leaves on — a bit like Adam in the Garden of Eden — and uses it to conceal his nakedness, and steps out from the wood. And in a clearing, it's the most domestic scene imaginable — a group of girls doing the laundry — and they look around and see what seems to be this awful, briny, naked figure who's stepped out from the woods like a flasher, and understandably scream and run away. But one of the girls does stay and bravely stands her ground, and Odysseus addresses her from a distance — he doesn't want to frighten her — with absolutely perfectly pitched flattery. He compares her to Artemis, daughter of mighty Zeus, narrates his ordeals, and then appeals to her for help. And finally — and I love this moment, I think it's clearly betraying his own longing for Penelope — he's seeing this girl and thinking of his own family, and he wishes her a happy marriage. 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.'

Dominic Sandbrook

Sadie and I had that at our wedding.

Tom Holland

Oh, nice.

Dominic Sandbrook

Which we had in a church.

Tom Holland

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

Dominic Sandbrook

Yeah.

Tom Holland

And as it turns out, Odysseus's words are perfectly suited to the young girl he has addressed them to, because the girl is not an ogress, not a witch, not a ghost, but a mortal princess — Nausicaa, daughter, we're told, of Alcinous the greathearted, in whose 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, are a kind of vision of an ideal society. Nausicaa's parents, the king and queen of the Phaeacians, Alcinous and his queen, are wise and generous. They have no idea who Odysseus is, but greet him with great kindness and hospitality — that great quality of xenia, so important to the Greeks, welcoming strangers with hospitality. They have a kind of perfect microclimate — their fruit, vines, vegetables always in season, no winter — and they have kind of incredible 1950s-science-fiction-style labour-saving devices, robotic guard dogs made of gold and silver, and ships powered by what sounds a little like AI —

Dominic Sandbrook

Wow.

Tom Holland

— kind of freethinking, able to think faster than any human being. And these ships can travel at a completely miraculous speed — the length of the Mediterranean. Self-sailing ships.

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

And so, to Homer's original audience, the location and description of the physical geography of Phaeacia made it seem like it was the island of Kerkyra, which is now Corfu. We did a bonus with Alex Preston about this for club members. And as we've said, Nausicaa — this princess doing the laundry, playing ball with her friends — this is a world away from the island of Calypso or Circe. And most amazingly of all, one of the great postmodern moments in the Odyssey, there is a bard at Alcinous's court who seems like Homer himself. Homer, traditionally, is said to have been blind, and this bard is blind — it may well be that this description is what gives rise to the legend that Homer was blind. He's inspired by the Muses, as Homer was thought to be, and reduces grown men to tears with the power and pathos of his epic singing. This blind poet sings to the court of Phaeacia, and among the men at this court, of course, is Odysseus himself. The bard is singing about the Trojan War, and about the feats of arms Odysseus himself had performed at Troy, and Odysseus weeps to hear them. It's noticed — Alcinous says, 'Stranger, why do you weep?' And Odysseus finally reveals who he is. And it's this that prompts him to tell the story of his adventures — the Lotus-Eaters, the Cyclops, everything — the narrative we told in episode one. It's brilliantly, brilliantly meta.

Dominic Sandbrook

You were saying it's a kind of postmodern book — and of course there's loads of stories within stories in the Odyssey, that's how it works. So you can see what would appeal to a filmmaker — flashbacks and things like that.

Tom Holland

Yes, and particularly one like Christopher Nolan, who loves all these games with time. He tells his story, and at the end everyone is silent, held absolutely spellbound throughout 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.' So, at last, twenty years have gone by, but now Odysseus is ready to go home. Alcinous loads one of these free-sailing, AI-powered ships with all kinds of gifts, Odysseus boards it, curls up, falls asleep, and the ship speeds across the seas. Miraculous power. The morning star rises, and as it rises, the ship reaches Ithaca at last. The Phaeacian crew lift the still-sleeping Odysseus out of the ship, and place him and all the gifts Alcinous had given him on a beach under an olive tree, and, we're told, they themselves went back speeding homewards. So it is in the most unglamorous, the most 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, and he has arrived there alone. But he is at home at last. Is this the end of his troubles? Spoiler alert: it is not. His troubles are only just beginning. We'll find out why after the break.

Tom Holland

'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. It's a sign of the closeness, I guess, between Athena and Odysseus — they've been in secret communication with each other, these two masters of the dark arts of wile and wisdom.

Dominic Sandbrook

Athena has spoken to Odysseus in different ways through the stories. In that passage, she's actually speaking to Odysseus in the voice, the cry, of a heron. But for the length of his voyage, for the ten years of his voyage, Athena has been very quiet.

Tom Holland

And the reason is that she didn't want to offend her fellow Olympian, Poseidon. But now, at last, Athena is back.

Dominic Sandbrook

She absolutely is. And 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 remind people where we are in the story — Odysseus's wife Penelope is in his palace, there are 108 suitors by this point, all competing for her hand in marriage, and they are all 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 Menelaus on the mainland of Greece, and he's now sailing back from mainland Greece to Ithaca. The plan of the suitors, now 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, has been left asleep beneath an olive tree on Ithaca. And when he wakes up, he has no idea where he is.

Tom Holland

Yeah, and he fears the worst — thinks, oh no, this is another terrible trick, Poseidon is still intervening to make my life hell. He trudges mournfully, we're told, along the shore of the endlessly clamouring sea, wondering where he is. Then, ahead of him, he sees a very handsome young shepherd lad, hails him, and says, where am I? And the shepherd boy answers, 'Sir, you are in Ithaca.' You would think, at this news, Odysseus would explode with joy. But he's Odysseus — he doesn't. He disguises his delight, and instead invokes the cunning in his heart, and tells this absolute cock-and-bull story about how he's actually a fugitive from Crete — kind of making things up just for the joy of making things up. And the shepherd boy listens to this story, and then starts laughing — and it's not a shepherd boy's laugh, it's a woman's laugh — and 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's tricks, thinks it's great. She explains to Odysseus the situation — this is what's going on with all the suitors, and here's how you're going to deal with it. She has a plan: she's going to disguise him, turn him into a beggar, so he'll look vile in the eyes of all the suitors, and his wife, and his child.

Dominic Sandbrook

Yes.

Tom Holland

And so she turns him into this hideous old beggar. Then she says, go to the hut of the local swineherd, whom Odysseus remembers from twenty years before in Ithaca — a man still loyal to Odysseus and his house. And meanwhile, Athena tells Odysseus, I am going to escort Telemachus safely back, so the suitors' plan to murder him is foiled. And all of this duly comes to pass. Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, goes to Eumaeus's hut. Eumaeus treats him with great hospitality, great generosity — he's just a humble swineherd, but again, a model of xenia, of hospitality. It soon becomes clear to Odysseus that Eumaeus is utterly devoted to Odysseus's memory, remains completely loyal to him. But despite this, Odysseus is Odysseus — he doesn't reveal himself, 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 signalling that it's a lie. He has this great story that he'd served as a mercenary in Egypt, then had a run-in with Phoenician slave traders. 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 lived, because serving in Egypt as a mercenary, or having run-ins with Phoenician slavers, is much more appropriate to the eighth or seventh centuries BC than to the Bronze Age — the register has kind of slipped.

Dominic Sandbrook

Yes, slightly.

Tom Holland

Yeah. And it may be that that's the whole point — that this is a lie, again quite postmodern, that Odysseus is telling a lie, Homer is telling a lie, there's a kind of hall of mirrors there. Odysseus, having come up with this cock-and-bull story, also tells Eumaeus, 'I have news of your missing master, Odysseus — he is on his way home.' But Eumaeus, who's believed everything else Odysseus has told him, all of which is a lie, does not believe this one thing, which is the truth. He tells Odysseus, 'The storm winds have snatched all his renown away' — basically thinks he's at the bottom of the sea, drowned and dead.

Dominic Sandbrook

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's hut, but Odysseus is out. And now comes one of your favourite moments in the whole story — the meeting between father and son.

Tom Holland

So Athena — she's disguised Odysseus as a beggar, all that goes, she restores him to his full stature and nobility, gives him a little touch of stardust so he looks even better than normal. At first Telemachus just cannot believe that this father, whom he doesn't remember at all — he'd just been a baby when Odysseus left — is back. But then, to quote Homer, 'He twined round his noble father, wailed as the tears poured down, and a desperate longing for weeping welled up in both of them.' So father and son embrace, lots of sobbing, but 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. At first, when he tells Telemachus the plan, Telemachus is very sceptical, because remember, there are 108 suitors and there's only the two of them. But Odysseus says, look, I'm a hero, I've killed a lot of people, and also we have Athena on our side, and on top of that I am the cleverest man in the world, and I have a cunning plan. 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 hanging in the hall, which the suitors might otherwise be able to use — remove them and conceal them. What you should do is leave just two swords, two spears, two shields, for our use. Then, if we are armed and the suitors aren't, we should be able to deal with them. I am confident of our ability to pull this off.

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

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. People may be wondering, well, why don't they just kill Telemachus in Odysseus's halls? The reason 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. So when Telemachus comes back from Eumaeus's hut, having met his father, they leave him alone — they eye him warily, but don't attack him. So Telemachus is able to go to Penelope, to talk with his mother, and tell her what he has learned in Sparta — that Odysseus is alive. He does not tell her that Odysseus is back, that he has seen his father — proving himself a slight chip off the old block there. He also introduces her to a guy called Theoclymenus, a wandering seer he has brought back with him from Sparta — the kind of thing you bring back from your Greek holiday, a wandering seer, look what I've got. And Theoclymenus also has amazing news. He says to Penelope, 'Odysseus, even now back in the land of his fathers, 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 it can't be true, she's been told so many lies over the years, she just can't bring herself to believe this news. But of course it is true, because all the while, in his beggar's disguise, Odysseus is approaching the gates of his palace. On the way he has a run-in with his old goatherd, a guy called Melanthius, who feels no loyalty to Odysseus, shows no courtesy to strangers, and when he sees this old beggar gives him a kick, not realising he's kicking his own master. So that's something for Odysseus to bear in mind — that his goatherd has kicked him. Will he reckon awful vengeance? Well, time will tell. Now he comes up to the gates of his palace, and as he approaches, 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 he had raised by hand as a puppy before he left for Troy. As he walks past in his disguise as a beggar, nobody else recognising him, Argos does recognise him — raises his head, pricks up his ears, wags his tail, and then, to quote Homer, 'His fate, black death, took him in its grip, the moment he saw Odysseus after twenty years had passed.' So the single most tragic moment in the Greek history of relationships between pet owners and their pets. Very sad moment indeed. Very famous.

Dominic Sandbrook

Yeah. So now, in his beggar's garb, Odysseus, after twenty years away, goes into his palace, and Melanthius, the goatherd, now teamed up with his sister Melantho, who is a concubine of one of the suitors, mock him, don't they, because they just think he's a beggar.

Tom Holland

Yeah, they've got no time for him, and they've got no time for Penelope either — neither of them loyal to Penelope in the slightest. Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, is led into the hall, and one of the suitors, a guy called Antinous — Robert Pattinson, I think, in the Christopher Nolan film — throws a footstool at Odysseus. To be fair to the other suitors, they do think this is poor behaviour — you really shouldn't just throw stools at beggars, that will bring bad luck, the gods will be angry — so they make sure to give the old beggar some bread and meat, to welcome him. So the beggar is sat at the side of the hall, the disguised Odysseus, and Penelope comes down and notices him, thinks he has the look of someone who might have wandered in far lands — maybe he has news of my husband. So that evening she summons him for a private conversation. She doesn't recognise him, but there's something about him that makes Penelope confess to him all her grief, all her longing for her husband, all her dread that she simply won't be able to keep these suitors at bay for much longer. The disguised Odysseus replies by saying, well, I have news of your missing husband, I've seen him, and gives a description of Odysseus so convincing that Penelope is persuaded he's telling the truth, and starts weeping — the thought that perhaps Odysseus, her husband, really is out there. The beggar says, 'You are right to have hope — trust me, Odysseus is on his way.' Penelope is so happy about this that she says, look, you're covered in scabs and dirt, let's have you washed. She summons an elderly attendant in the palace, Eurycleia, who had once been the nurse of Odysseus — knew him very well and intimately. Penelope orders Eurycleia to wash the feet of this old beggar. Eurycleia does so, and sees there is a scar on the thigh of this beggar, and recognises it — this was a scar Odysseus had got as a young man, out hunting boar with his grandfather — and because she had often washed Odysseus, she now recognises it. She says to him, 'Truly, you are Odysseus, dear child.' And Odysseus says, '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. Eurycleia keeps the secret, and he goes back to his conversation with Penelope. Penelope says, look, I've got a plan — the best way I can think of to keep the suitors at bay. What I'm going to do the next day is go down to them, and I'm going to tell the suitors: whichever of you can string the bow of Odysseus, my missing husband — which only he had ever been able to string — and then shoot an arrow through twelve double-headed axes lined up in a row in the hall — this was a favourite party trick of Odysseus's — if one of you can do that, then you will become my husband. And Odysseus hears this plan and says, yeah, that is brilliant, that is a tremendous plan, because of course it completely dovetails with what he wants to do. And I think there is an ambiguity in Homer — there is the possibility that maybe Penelope has recognised him.

Dominic Sandbrook

Yeah.

Tom Holland

But she is a woman of tricks, like he is — they're starting to play this game where they're each telling tall stories to the other, not quite revealing. It's not absolutely stated, but I think part of the fascination of this scene is that that's clearly a possibility. The two of them now retire to bed. 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, lying in the hall, and can hear various slave girls in the household slipping out to have sex with the suitors who've taken them as concubines. He's furious about this, anxious about how he's going to deal with the suitors — is he taking on too much? 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. Both husband and wife get the rest they're going to need for what is going to be a very, very momentous day.

Dominic Sandbrook

All right, so the fateful day has dawned at last — the day of the contest with the bow and the axes for the hand of Penelope. The suitors are in great form, feasting, fighting with each other, 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. Telemachus has taken the weapons out of the hall, hasn't he, and they have Eumaeus on hand, the one guy they can trust — there's also another cowherd, I think, is that right?

Tom Holland

Yeah, that's the cowherd, Philoetius, also loyal. Odysseus hasn't yet revealed who he is to either of these guys, but he knows he can trust them, so they're on hand. And then we've got the wandering seer whom Telemachus had brought back from his holiday to Sparta — he pops up, and while the suitors are all having a great time, he tells them what's coming: 'Blood is spattered all over the walls and the beautiful rafters, the entry is filled with ghosts, the courtyard filled with them too' — which isn't at all the kind of thing you want if you're having a great time. So the hour arrives, Penelope enters the hall, holding the great bow and quiver of Odysseus, and behind her a train of her women holding the twelve axes made of bronze and iron. Penelope announces to the suitors her decision: whoever can string the bow and shoot an arrow through the axe-heads will become her husband. Telemachus sets the axes in a line along the hall, and the suitors all step forward in turn to try to string the bow, all 108 of them, and not one of them has the strength to string it. Meanwhile, as the suitors are doing this, Odysseus has taken Eumaeus, the loyal swineherd, and Philoetius, the loyal cowherd, outside, and at last reveals his true identity. They think this is brilliant — they fall to their knees, absolutely delighted, sobbing with joy. He gives them specific tasks: Eumaeus is to bring him the bow when the time comes, and Philoetius is to lock the gates of the hall, so no one can escape or summon help. Inside the hall, the suitors have all been trying to string this massive bow, and failing. Odysseus goes back inside and makes a suggestion: why don't we have a go tomorrow at dawn, the god will grant victory to whomever he wishes. And in the meanwhile, he says, while we're waiting, since you're all obviously 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? At this the suitors explode in indignation, and Antinous — the guy who'd chucked the stool at him right at the beginning, the most boorish of all the suitors — rounds on Odysseus with insults. But first Penelope, then Telemachus, tell Antinous to show some manners, you are in our hall. And Telemachus tells Penelope to go to her rooms — so again, he's definitely manned up, I think it's fair to say. Then he gives a secret nod, the signal that they're about to go, and, as instructed, goes over, picks up the bow, and gives it to Odysseus. Odysseus tests the bow, scans it — Homer says he almost caresses it — and then, abruptly, to the absolute stupefaction of the watching suitors, he strings it, plucks the string to test the pitch, and as he does, we're told, Zeus sends a flash of lightning from the clear blue sky overhead. Odysseus takes an arrow, knocks it, draws, and lets fly, and the arrow passes through all twelve of the axe-heads — 'the bronze-weighted shaft sailed straight through them.' At this point Telemachus reaches for his sword and spear. Odysseus strips off his rags, aims an arrow at Antinous, the worst-behaved of all the suitors, and lets fly. Antinous, 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 — a very cinematic description from Homer. At the spectacle of this, there's complete pandemonium, and the suitors all think the beggar must have done it by accident — surely this is the only explanation. But no — because now comes the moment when Odysseus announces himself to the hall: '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.

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

He does. But fortunately for us, he's rumbled by Eumaeus and Philoetius, who truss him up, lift him up to the roof beams, and leave him hanging there — which portends nothing good for Melanthius. Meanwhile, the slaughter is continuing in the hall, and Athena has turned up for the fun — not to help Odysseus, but basically to goad him on and tell him to kill even faster. She materialises first as Mentor, the old friend of Odysseus, the form she'd appeared in to Telemachus at the beginning of this episode, and then turns into a swallow and perches on the great smoke-blackened roof beam of the hall — something she loves doing, taking on the form of a bird, particularly when there are spectacles of bloodshed. In the Iliad she had disguised herself as a vulture, and there are descriptions of her shivering with delight at the spectacle of blood being spilled — and that's absolutely what she gets now in the hall of Odysseus. Tremendous violence, tremendous slaughter — all the suitors end up dead. The metaphor Homer uses is that of fish being dragged onto a beach in nets and speared — an echo of what had happened to Odysseus's men in the harbour of the Laestrygonians, who had gone and speared all his men. So the suitors are wiped out, but they are not the only victims of Odysseus's 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. Eurycleia replies, well, there were twelve of them.

Dominic Sandbrook

It's a bit like post-Vichy France — they are the female collaborators, the horizontal collaborators.

Tom Holland

That's exactly the analogy I thought of. And their fate is horrible, isn't it? They are told to carry out the corpses of the suitors, among them their dead lovers, and then to clean the hall, the tables, the benches. Meanwhile, Telemachus has strung a ship's cable from a pillar to a beam, and from this cable the maids are hanged. To quote Homer, a 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.'

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

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

Dominic Sandbrook

Yeah, what would one prefer? I don't know.

Tom Holland

There is a lot of brutality in this world. But Eurycleia — she thinks it's all brilliant, couldn't be happier, the spectacle of all this slaughter and bloodshed and castration, and 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? She comes downstairs and gazes at Odysseus, and Homer says she is torn by uncertainty — sometimes, as she stared at him, she seemed to see his face, but sometimes failed to recognise him, dressed in vile rags. Telemachus can't believe this — how can his mother possibly doubt she is gazing at her husband, his father? But Penelope says, look, if he truly is Odysseus, we will know each other in our own ways — we have signs, we have secrets known only to the two of us. Odysseus smiles at this — again, there's this sense that they're playing the kind of games they perhaps played before he left for Troy. He says, 'Run me a bath.' Penelope obeys, and a bath is run for him, and when he steps out we're told Athena poured great beauty upon his head. But Penelope is still not welcoming him back as her husband. 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.' When Odysseus hears this, he explodes: 'What do you mean? This bed can't be moved — because when I made it myself, I fashioned one of the four bedposts out of a living olive tree, and I built the bed chamber around this living olive tree, around this bed I made out of it, adorning it with inlays of gold and silver and ivory.' In other words, the only way 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. So when he says this, at last Penelope's knees give way, and her heart as well, and she embraces him and kisses him, 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 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 disaster.

Dominic Sandbrook

Nice.

Tom Holland

And the great moment of husband and wife being joined together, after all these adventures, all these many years of absence, at last arrives, and they retire to bed. Athena holds back the coming of the dawn, so they can enjoy the ultimate reunion. And the amazing thing — again, another postmodern aspect of the poem — is 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. Odysseus tells the story of his adventures — essentially what we covered in episode one — and Penelope tells Odysseus what she's been up to, essentially 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.

Dominic Sandbrook

And the first people to hear it.

Tom Holland

And the first people to hear it, although obviously not the last.

Dominic Sandbrook

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.

Tom Holland

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

Dominic Sandbrook

Yeah, people enjoy that in stories.

Tom Holland

There's a savagery to it that's often lost in children's versions — a cruelty. But also, I think the basic plot of it is so adaptable — it can be retold in so many ways, and has been retold in lots of ways. There are elements of it in Virgil's poem the Aeneid, which in turn influences Dante, who describes Odysseus, after he has returned to Ithaca, ending up bored and setting sail for his last great voyage to the ends of the world — and that is reworked by Tennyson in the nineteenth 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 — there was the Ralph Fiennes film as well, which describes his homecoming — and that is just one of an endless number of reworkings that continue to be made in film, in fiction, in poetry. So let's end it with Tennyson's Ulysses, Odysseus saying how he is going to leave on one last final voyage.

> 'Though much is taken, much abides. And though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are — one equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.'

Dominic Sandbrook

Well, thank you, Tennyson, and thank you, Tom, for what's been an epic journey — an odyssey, dare I say —

Tom Holland

Literally.

Dominic Sandbrook

— through this most influential of all great stories.