Dominic Sandbrook

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, many the toils he suffered at t 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 who was capable of reading that for us. And we're very grateful to the tremendous classical actor Russell Crowe for reading those words. And the reason that Russell agreed to do that for us is because the Odyssey is one of the great foundational moments, the foundational products in all Western culture and civilization. It ranks alongside Homer's other great poem, the Iliad, composed in the 8th or the 7th century BC and of course the Bible, as an absolute beast building block of the culture that we now are so familiar with. TOM so the Odyssey has given us so many other stories, hasn't it?

Tom Holland

You've said that it's kind of foundational work of Western culture, but it's in all kinds of ways a foundational work of Western literature and possibly beyond that, because there are theories that perhaps the Sinbad Cycle, the story of Sinbad the sailor in the Arabian Nights, that perhaps that derived from the Odyssey, because I guess the central core idea is a pretty obvious one when you think about it, which is about a man far from home trying to get back to his wife, to his son, to his homeland. This episode is brought to you by the Lloyds 5k house deposit. And this is something that was last seen in 1996.

Dominic Sandbrook

Yeah, so the 1990s looks now like a lost golden age of prosperity and positivity, doesn't it? Think of the sort of the advent of the Blair administration in 1997, all the enthusiasm and it excitement that surrounded that, the economic growth of the time, the technological developments, the sort of sense of a. An endless golden summer where everybody's listening to Blur an oasis and looking forward to buying their first houses. And that of course, takes us to mortgages. Now the good news is that in a nod to the 1990s, Lloyds are offering 5k deposit mortgages to first time buyers. So search 5k first time buyer 1996

Tom Holland

average first time buyer deposits are based on ONS data. Subject to status. Your home may be repossessed if you don't keep up. Repayments and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by TikTok. Believe it or not, history isn't just in textbooks.

Dominic Sandbrook

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Tom Holland

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

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

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

Dominic Sandbrook

from the trailers and stuff, right from the trailers.

Tom Holland

And so we will be having a bonus with Daniel Mendelsohn to talk about that, and that will be out later this week. So massive sense of anticipation. But it's not the only reason, I think, for doing the Odyssey on the rest is history, because, to be honest, it's a story that I've been wanting to do since we began the podcast, and I want to look at perhaps a little bit at the context. So how did it come to be composed? Is anything in the story true? Is, you know, is it. To what degree might it be based on fact? What mirror might it hold up to the reality of, of the ancient Mediterranean, whether that's the time that Odysseus is supposed to have lived or the time when Homer is composing it, but also to tell the story itself, because it is the story that first got me obsessed with Greek mythology and therefore with ancient history and therefore with history more generally. And so you could say that the Odyssey was the starting point for my own personal Odyssey, which has brought me to this point. Dominic, sitting here recording this episode with

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

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

Dominic Sandbrook

So let's begin right at the beginning. And for people who don't know the Odyssey, we pick up in the final moments of the Trojan War. So Troy, the great city, the greatest city in Asia, supposedly on the banks of the Hellespont or the Dardanelles. So if you people remember the Dardanelles around 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. So I think throughout this, these two episodes, we will be calling the Greeks the Achaeans. That is the word that Homer uses. And the Achaeans and the Trojans have been fighting on the plain of Troy. And the Achaeans are there to seize back the kidnapped Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, who has been stolen by Paris, the prince of Troy. And the Trojans are fighting to keep her. And they've been doing this, as we say, for 10 years. And it looks an absolute deadlock. But then, and I'm going to quote here, a bard who features in the Odyssey, and he describes how the sons of Achaea laid the city waste after pouring out of the horse. And the horse, of course, is the Trojan horse. The most successful wheeze in the whole of mythology, I would guess, in the whole history of warfare. Certainly the most famous. So famous that it inspired a disastrous project in the Gallipoli invasions, didn't it? They got some ship and ran it on and it was absolute disaster.

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

However, the original Trojan horse is not a disaster. It's an absolutely crunching success. And the person who thinks it up is the man who gives his name to the Odyssey. And this is a guy called Odysseus, and he is the son of Laertes and he's the king of a very small, poor island off the west coast of Greece called Ithaca. So relative to the other Achaean heroes at Troy, the other Greek heroes who were kings of famous Greek golden cities like Mycenae or Sparta, Odysseus is very much a kind of second division king. However, he is one of the standout stars of the Trojan War. And this is because he has qualities that enable him to transcend the poverty of his kingdom. So he's a brilliant warrior. He's famous for his courage, for his prowess on the battlefield, but he's also brilliant, by far the smartest of the warriors on both sides in the Trojan War. He's very clever, he's very inventive, he's devious, he's a dab hand with a trick, with a lie. And as such, he is the particular favorite of the goddess Athena, the great warrior goddess, who is simultaneously the goddess of warfare, but also the kind of the domestic sciences and everything that kind of contributes to civilization. And so she values intelligence for its own sake. And over the Trojan War, she's always keeping an eye on him and occasionally appearing to him. And she says to him, she addresses him directly, you are by far the best of all mortal men for schemes, for your way with words. While I, more than all other gods, have a name for cunning and shrewdness. And in the Odyssey there are a number of women who fall in love with Odysseus or who are in love with Odysseus. And among those I would rank Athena. I think you know that there is a kind of love affair there between the mortal and the goddess.

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

Who Odysseus had raised him 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. So Penelope is the cousin of Helen and Odysseus. Unlike everyone else who'd gone completely mad for Helen, Odysseus had always had eyes only for Penelope. And this is because Penelope is basically very like him. She is very clever, she's very strong minded, she's absolutely suited to him. So she's a model of what Homer calls homophrosine, which means kind of like mindedness. You, you have a kind of similar sensibility. And Odysseus was so in love with her that prior to the departure of the Greeks for Troy, he had actually tried to get out of having to go to the expedition. This is not in Homer, but people listen. 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 and get out of going to the war. And he's the only hero of whom such a thing is recorded. So what had he done when the Greek ambassadors, you know, summoning him to come to. To join the expedition and go to Troy with them, had arrived in Ithaca, he said, oh, I can't come, I'm mad. And they said, well, in what way are you mad? And he said, well, look at me, here I am, I've yoked a horse and an ox and I'm ploughing a beach with salt. Clearly, I'm absolutely mad. And so most of the Greek ambassadors are persuaded by this, but one of them isn't. And the nurse of Telemachus is standing nearby and has the little baby Telemachus in her arms. But one of the ambassadors is not fooled by this. And he looks around and he sees that Telemachus nurse is standing nearby with the baby Telemachus in her arms. And so this ambassador goes over and snatches the baby and places it in front of the horse and ox as Odysseus is driving them along the beach. And what's Odysseus going to do? He has the choice. He can either drive across the little baby, kill it, but not have to go to Troy, or swerve and reveal that he's not actually mad. And so he opts to swerve and not kill his baby son. And he's rumbled. And so he duly has to leave for Troy. And he sets sail at the head of a fleet of 12 ships. And Homer in the Iliad describes their prows flashing crimson. And he's there for the 10 years. He fights heroically. He comes up with the weeds of the Trojan horse, Troy falls. Odysseus takes lots of loot. He's ready to go back home, him and his 12 ships. And so off they sail, right?

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

That is putting it mildly, right?

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

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

Dominic Sandbrook

Nothing good, Nothing good.

Tom Holland

I think one man in Ismarus is spared, and this is a guy called Maron who is a priest of the God Apollo and his family is spared as well. And Maron, to show his gratitude for this, gives Odysseus seven bars of gold, a silver mixing bowl and 12amphorae of wine. And that these, this wine is described as being sweet and undiluted, a drink for the gods. And we mentioned this in our episode on the History of Wine. It's a kind of ancient Greek premier grand cru. It is incredibly strong. And Maron suggests to Odysseus that one portion of this wine should be mixed with the 19 portions of water and that anyone who drinks it neat is obviously the most monstrous barbarian. So that is just something for listeners to bear in mind.

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

It is because it enables the locals who've been beaten off to kind of rally and return to the attack with much larger numbers of men. And so Odysseus and his men find themselves horribly outnumbered. They form a shield wall, but as the sun sets on the scene of battle, they're forced to retreat onto their ships. And they managed to escape essentially by the skin of their teeth. And over 70 of his men are left dead. So already the expedition is starting to leech manpower. However, they get away, they sail southwards across The Aegean. They round the southernmost tip of Greece and the southernmost tip of the Peloponnese Cape Malia. And now all Odysseus has to do is kind of steer around the cape, head northwards, go around the kind of the edge of the Peloponnese, and there is Ithaca waiting for him. But disaster. Because as they round the cape, a violent storm blows up. Terrible winds blow them and blow them and blow them. They rage for nine days and nights and when the nine dates and nights of wind finally calms down, they got no idea where they are. And on the 10th day they see land and they moor there. And Odysseus sends a couple of scouts to go up the beach, head inland and try and work out where they are. And then he sits there and he waits for them to return, but they don't come back. And so finally he thinks, well, I better go and work out what's going on here. And so he leaves the ship, follows their footsteps, he can track them up the beach, goes inland and he finds them and they are kind of, they're half asleep, they're all blissed out, they've got a kind of spaced look on their faces, smiling happily. And he tries to kind of rouse them, tells them, come on, we've got to get cracking. And they don't want to move. And finally he uses force, he kind of physically drags them and they start to sob. They just want to stay there and chillax and, you know, have fun and be mellow and not go kind of roaring off around the world. They can't be asked to go home, they don't want to. They're enjoying themselves too much where they are. And Odysseus realizes where they are. They have come to the land of the lotus eaters. And Homer explains what this means. Now, whichever of them ate the honey sweet fruit of the lotus no longer had any desire to send word of themselves or return. And so Odysseus is aware that, you know, if all his crew get out and start munching on the lotus, they will never return home. And so he orders his fleet to leave immediately because they can't risk losing that, you know, the will for the nostos, the will for the return home.

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

I mean, it's a question that the Greeks themselves asked. So Herodotus, the first historian, he worked out that the land of the lotus eaters must have been on the North African coast because the winds had been blowing Odysseus in that direction. So this is just kind of due south of Sicily. Victorian scholars thought that probably it was opium. And I think this probably says more about the Victorians than it does about Homer because it was a great age for. For opium dens. But it's a very kind of popular idea. There are other theories which I was kind of looking up for this episode. Apparently there's a small tree called the zizifus 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. The flora of North Africa.

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

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

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

There's smoke, but there's no sign of agriculture, which is a puzzle because they would assume that a kind of a settlement, people would be tilling fields. But there's no sign of that. And so Odysseus, a little bit, little bit nervous about this, not sure what that might portend. And so he set sail in a single ship. So he leaves the other 11 ships kind of hidden off the smaller island. He goes off, he crosses over to the main island, they land and they walk along the beach and they see a cave. And the entrance to this cave is kind of, it's, it's walled off with, with kind of stone wall. So he thinks, well, this is obviously signs of habitation. And so he, he decides to investigate. And he takes his 12 bravest men with him. And he 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. And they go up to the cave and they call out and there's no answer. And so they decide to kind of wander in and investigate. And they find that it's empty except for lambs and for kids who are in pens. And there are racks and racks of cheeses. So clearly there is someone living here. And Odysseus decides to wait for the owner of the cave to return and they build a fire and they grill some cheese. And it's like a kind of, I suppose a kind of Mediterranean hiking holiday or something like that. Again, it's this kind of Aussie style obsession with having barbecues. At inappropriate moments, they're laid out, having this barbecue and outside the sun is setting and towards dusk the earth starts to shake. So it's a little bit like the scene in Jurassic park when the glass of water on the Jeep starts to shake. And it's not a tyrannosaur that appears, but a monstrous giant human figure. And he is driving flocks of sheep and goats ahead of him. And he enters the cave and as he enters the cave, he blocks out the light. As the eyes of the Achaeans adjust, they look up into his face and they see that he has only a single eye. So this is a Cyclops. And it's a Cyclops by the name of Polyphemus. And Polyphemus is of immense size and therefore strength. And he picks up a giant boulder and uses it to seal the entrance. It would be completely impossible for the, for Odysseus and his men to move it. And then he looks around with his single eye and he spots Odysseus and his men cowering at the back of the cave. And he demands to know who they

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

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

Dominic Sandbrook

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.

Tom Holland

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

Dominic Sandbrook

They brought the wine with them crucial.

Tom Holland

Polyphemus is clearly a barbarian because he does not water it down, instead he guzzles it down neat. And then when Odysseus comes forward and offers him another two cups of this wine, he guzzles that down as well. And once he's had these three cups of wine, he asks Odysseus for his name. And Odysseus does not give his real name. Instead he says, my name is Utis, which means in Greek, no one so clever. And Polyphemus says, well, you know, as a thank you for the wine, here is what I'm going to do. I will eat you last, great giant. LAUGH he then falls asleep. And as he falls asleep, he kind of belches and vomits up wine and bits of hand and bits of flesh and it all spews out onto the floor of the cave. And Polyphemus kind of rolls over, vomits up a bit more and then he's flat out and he's snoring and the cave echoes to the sound of the snores. And this is the chance that Odysseus has been waiting for. So he and his men, remember, have got this club which they've sharpened into a spike, and they he eat this giant spike in the fire and then they clamber up the body of the sleeping cyclops and they aim it over his single eye point rests on the lid. Odysseus gives the signal and then it's driven deep into the eye of the Cyclops. And to quote Homer, his eyelids and his brows were blistered all round by the blast as the eyeball burned, its roots crackling in the fire. And understandably, Polyphemus screams and howls. He pulls the spike out of his eye and hurls it against the side of the cave and starts bellowing for help. And there are other Cyclops, you know, his neighbours, and they hear his cries and they come down and they ask him what has happened. And again, to quote Homer, from inside the cave, mighty Polyphemus made his reply. Friends, no one is killing me. And so his friends answer, well, if no one is killing you if no one has harmed you. And it's clearly then just a malady sent by Zeus, you must pray to your divine father for relief. And Polyphemus divine father is Poseidon, the God of the sea. So a very, very powerful God indeed.

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

Absolutely. So brilliant. From Odysseus, he's come up with the, you know, with the spike in the eye wheeze and also the whole, you know, calling himself nobody means that the other Cyclops think that nothing's the matter with Polyphemus. But they're still not out of danger because what Polyphemus does now is to push back the boulder because he's got to let his flocks of sheep and goats go out. And as they kind of start milling out through the cave entrance, he feels each one to make sure that Odysseus and his men aren't trying to kind of creep out hidden among the flocks. But again, Odysseus is equal to this challenge. So what he does is he ties each of his men underneath the belly of a sheep and they all kind of manage to get out and. And Polyphemus doesn't realize that they're kind of tied under the bellies of the sheep. And then he himself, there's one giant ram, and he hugs onto the fleece of this giant ram and the ram trots out. And Polyphemus, he strokes the ram and realizes that this is, you know, his beloved ram and feels that it's walking slowly because of the weight, but he thinks that the ram is walking slowly out of grief for his blinded master. So very sad. Anyway, Odysseus and his men managed therefore, to get out of the cave, cut themselves free from. From the sheep. They drive the entire flock of sheep down towards their ship. They load the. The sheep onto the boat so that, you know, they can kind of roast them later and have another barbecue, and then they pull out to sea. But Odysseus is a warrior and he wants the person he's defeated to know who has vanquished him. And so he taunts the blinded Cyclops from his ship as it's pulling out. And Polyphemus is so furious that he kind of gropes for the top of a mountain and pulls the summit off and hurls the rock in the direction of Odysseus. And it lands just in front of Odysseus's ship. And there's a great Tsunami. And it washes Odysseus ship back towards the shore and it looks like they're going to be shipwrecked on it. So Odysseus takes a pole and it's kind of like a punt, you know, trying to kind of of push it off the side of the river. So he pushes their ship back out to sea. He and his men row frantically and then again, he cannot help himself. And he stands on the rear of the ship and he yells taunts at Polyphemus again and fatally reveals his true identity. He announces himself as Odysseus, sacker of cities, the son of Laertes, who holds his hand home in Ithaca. And when Polyphemus hears this, he gives a great groan and he raises his arms and he prays to Poseidon, the God of the sea, his divine father. Hear me, Poseidon, earth shaker, you of the deep 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, strong built palace and to the land of his fathers, then let him come late and hapless after losing all his comrades on a ship that is not his own. And may he find trouble at home

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Michael and Hannah (Goal Hangers)

Hey, this is Michael and Hannah from Goal Hangers. The rest is science. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research uk. What if your immune system could learn to recognize cancer cells?

Tom Holland

That's immunotherapy. One type is CAR T cell therapy.

Michael and Hannah (Goal Hangers)

T cells are your body's watchmen. And doctors can now extract these and reprogram them to spot cancer CAR T cells. They've started showing this real promise in treating cancers of the blood like leukemia, because unlike most cancers, blood cancer cells they flo. And that makes it easier for CAR T cells to seek them out and destroy them. And now Cancer Research UK funded scientists are designing CAR T cells that can tackle solid tumors too, making them tougher

Tom Holland

so they can survive a more crowded

Michael and Hannah (Goal Hangers)

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Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

I mean, on one level, obviously it is fantasy, but there was a sense that these islands could be located in the geography of the Mediterranean Sea. So we've heard that Herodotus, the first great historian, he located the land of the lotus eaters in North Africa. And there was a tradition as well among the Greeks that the cave of Polyphemus had lain beneath Mount Etna in Sicily, and and Aetna, of course, is a volcano. So there is this sense of fire hidden in the mountain. And the story was that the the Cyclops used these fires of Etna to forge the thunderbolts that they then gave to Zeus, and that Polyphemus is one of these Cyclops that were working on the thunderbolts There is a brilliant theory about why one eyed giants might have been identified with Sicily. So there's a wonderful book by a palaeontologist called Adrian Mayer who's written about what the ancients thought ancient fossils were. And she suggested that there were dwarf elephants on Sicily. So they'd gone extinct long before ancient Greek times, but their skulls might 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. I mean there's no proof for it, but it's a kind of, it's a wonderful idea.

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

I think that the story of these monsters lurking on strange islands, that these are anxieties that are bred of the age in which the Odyssey is being being written down. And it's an age when Greek colonists are starting to settle Sicily and the western reaches of the Mediterranean. And I think that Polyphemus is a kind of nightmarish vision of a barbarian who does not live by the rules of life that the Greeks associate with civilization. So that's why Homer specifies that he drinks his wine, why neat. It's why he specifies that there's no agriculture. These are people who by the standards of the Greek colonists are backward and savage and kind of frightening for that reason. So clearly, as you say, I mean Polyphemus is a figure of fantasy, one of the most memorable figures in the whole history of fantasy. But he is clearly, I think, bringing to life the anxieties of adventurers who are, are sailing into strange seas and settling lands that are often very hostile. So there is a brilliant book on this by a scholar called Carol Doughty, the Raft of Odysseus. And to quote from that, embedded within a familiar mythic story pattern of a time and people long ago are details and themes that belong to the contemporary world of its audience. And that's kind of what you would expect. And it reminds me a bit of the way in which in the 1960s in Star Trek, if you watch it now, it's Captain Kirk going around, you know, strange planets and all of that. But so many of those episodes are plainly about anxieties and complex that are manifest in 1960s America. And you would think that probably, you know, Mutatis Mutandis. The same is true of what's going on in the Odyssey, that this is fantastical, but it is also kind of drawing on all kinds of anxieties that reflect the character of the age in Greece.

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

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

Dominic Sandbrook

Oh, yeah, of course, it was clearly

Tom Holland

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

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

There you go. You're following in the footsteps of Odysseus. And Aeolus, unlike Polyphemus, is a very civilized man and he's obedient to the Greek laws of what they called Xenia, which is hospitality towards foreigners. If you meet a foreigner, there's kind of mutual exchange of gifts. The contrast with Polyphemus is very obvious and deliberate, I think. And Aeolus hosts Odysseus and his men for an entire month in his kind of magnificent palace with its great bronze walls and all of that. And then he places all the contrary winds, the winds that would prevent Odysseus from getting back to Ithaca in a massive great bag. And he gives this bag to Odysseus to keep in his hold. So you can imagine the bag kind of bulging and moving with all these winds trying to get out, so that the west wind will blow him back home. And Iola says, you'll be absolutely fine with this. It's just, you know, just bear in mind the one thing, whatever you do, do not open that bag. And just to reiterate, whatever you do, do not open that bag. And so Odysseus, to make absolutely sure that the winds do not escape from the bag, for nine days and nights, he doesn't sleep. He sits there, kind of keeping his eye on the bag. And finally, they are so close to Ithaca that Odysseus can see smoke rising from hearth on the island. He is so nearly there, you know, he's been awake all this time, and so fatally, he dozes off very Briefly. And his men, seeing him asleep, you know, they're aware that he's been watching this bag. And so they start muttering among themselves and say, well, what's in the bag? I mean, what's, you know, why is he so anxious about it? Clearly, it must be full of treasure and he's keeping it for himself and he's not sharing it with us, and it's not fair. So let's open up the bag and share the treasure out among ourselves before. Before we arrive in Ithaca. And they pull on the rope, they undo the bag, the winds come screaming and howling out of the bag. Massive great storms. Odysseus is blown all the way back to the island of Aeolus, and when he goes up to Aeolus and says, what has happened?

Dominic Sandbrook

Have you got any more winds?

Tom Holland

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

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. This fantastic harbour.

Tom Holland

It's a perfect harbour.

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

Yeah, because he can see it's a perfect harbour, but that also makes it a perfect trap. And Odysseus is very sensible not to have just gone ploughing in, because this turns out to be 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 that surround this perfect harbour. And again, to quote Homer from the cliffs, they kept hurling down boulders, any one of which a man would be hard pressed to lift. And the ships, you know, they're trapped inside this harbour and they are rapidly reduced to matchwood. And the Laestrygonians then wade out into the sea.

Michael and Hannah (Goal Hangers)

Sea.

Tom Holland

And they spear Odysseus's men like their fish, like their tuna. And only Odysseus and his now solitary ship escaped the slaughter. So people will remember that curse that Polyphemus had laid on Odysseus, that he would return without his men. Well, 11 of those ships have gone.

Dominic Sandbrook

And again, is there a. Is there a real life equivalent to this? So you were talking about the Aeolian Islands and the lotus eaters, you know, know, explanations for the lotus eaters. What do historians think about the Laestrygonians?

Tom Holland

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

Tom Holland

Yeah, again, to kind of pursue the science fiction parallel. This is, you know, you're going through a wormhole or experiencing a singularity. You're going into a different dimension where the rules of what are normal are suspended. However, it's not immediately obvious to Odysseus that this is what has happened. So they've made their escape from the Laestrygonians. They keep sailing as the wind blows them, and they arrive at another island, they moor off it, and at first everything seems completely normal. Odysseus goes on a scouting mission. He runs into a stag. He kills it, he brings it back. They all have another barbecue 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. And lots of cast to see which one of them, which of these two groups will go and explore and which will stay and look after the ship. And the lot falls on Eurylochus to go inland and to try and scout out who or what might be on this island. So Eurylochus and his. His scouting party head inland. And in due course, they come to a beautiful palace with spreading lawns and gardens. And there are wolves and lions in this garden. And so, understandably, Eurylochus men draw their swords. They, you know, they're nervous of these predators, but the lions and wolves seem weirdly tame. And they fawn on Eurylochus and his men like that, you know, domestic dogs. And while they're wondering about this and thinking, what on earth's going on here, from inside the palace, they hear the beautiful voice of a woman. And she's singing and she's clearly working on a loom, and they call out to her, and this woman comes to them and she opens these great gleaming doors and she invites them in. And she is fabulously gorgeous, beautifully dressed. I mean, clearly a queen. And so all Eurylochus men, except for Eurylochus himself, they walk inside. Eurylochus, who has clearly been chosen by Odysseus because he has a quality of suspicion and intelligence that Odysseus identifies, fights with. He stays outside. He doesn't trust this woman, thinks there's something a little bit sinister about her. And he's not wrong, because the woman seats Eurylochus's men down on couches, and then she brings them food. Cheese and barley and tawny honey, together with Pramnian wine. And this food and this drink, we're told, are mixed with sinister drugs. And Eurylochus's men eat and drink their fill. And then once they have gorged themselves, the woman walks around the dining area and she taps them with a wand. And immediately they start turning into pigs. Their heads, their grunts, their bristles, their bodies, although their minds were as sound as they'd always been. So they are humans trapped in the bodies of a pig. And Eurylochus has watched all of this, and he manages to get away. And he runs back to Odysseus, reports it to Odysseus, and from this point on, the story becomes even stranger. So Odysseus is determined to redeem his men from the spell. You know, aside from anything else, he needs them. He won't be able to kind of row the ship without them. So he sets off to confront this woman who is patently a sorceress. And on his way, he meets, for the first time in the course of his wanderings, a bona fide Olympian, one of the top 12 gods on Mount Olympus. And this is Hermes, the messenger of the gods. So has clearly been sent by someone we presume Athena to help him out. And Hermes gives Odysseus an awesome drug of his own. And this is a black rooted herb with a white flower called the moly. And armed with the moly. And it's unclear exactly what the molyne might be based on, but anyway, it's very powerful, has great magic. Odysseus proves immune to the sorceress's spells. And this is despite the fact that we discover this sorceress is herself a goddess. She is a daughter of the sun and her name is Circe of the beautiful braids. And at sword point Odysseus forces Circe to submit and Circe submits and then invites Odysseus to bed. And Odysseus says, no way, unless you could bear to swear a great oath to me, goddess, not to plot any more evil that is meant to do me harm. And 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 now and much taller to look upon. So that's all worked out well.

Dominic Sandbrook

But then the, the twist. You might expect Odysseus to, to rush off, you know, but he doesn't. He stays for a year. He and his crew stay with Circe for a year, don't they? And actually Odysseus seems to be enjoying this so much that it's his men who come to him and, 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 is waiting for you, Ithaca. And come on, let's crack on and leave. And what is going on here, do you think? So is this an allegory for sexual desire? Is it female wiles? What's all this about?

Tom Holland

It clearly complicates the notion of Odysseus as a man driven by a kind of, you know, an absolute focus on getting back to Ithaca and to his beloved wife Penelope. And just, you know, people will obviously to be wondering about this. Odysseus is meant to be devoted to his wife. His sexual relationship with Circe is a complete non issue to Homer. It's expected that a man, no matter how much he may be devoted to his wife, will obviously sleep around him. It's an absolute given. I think there is a kind of eeriness to this episode though obviously it's not naturalistic because it's a woman who's turning people into pigs. But I don't think we should understand the passage of time here as simply being, you know, he's having a great time, he fails to notice what's going on. And then before you know it, a year's gone by. I think that there's a kind of quality of the shaman about Circe, the sense that she has conducted Odysseus and his men into a dimension of mystery and magic where time moves at a different pace. And so what she's offering Odysseus, I think, is a kind of akin to an initiation. And the year passes pretty much in the blink of an eye. And when Odysseus goes through and says, look, I really want to carry on gone, Circe doesn't object to this. But she says, before you do this, you must go even further beyond my island to the dwelling place of Hades and dread Persephone. And Hades and Persephone are the king and queen of the dead. They rule the underworld. And Circe is sending Odysseus onto the land of Hades. Because here in the land of the dead, you've got mist, you've got cloud, it shrouds the farthest boundaries of ocean. If he gets to the land of the dead, he can consult with someone who will be able to tell him the best way to get back home. And this is the great prophet Teresias. And we have already met him in an episode of the Rest Is History, the episode that we did on Oedipus, and he's died and he's now in the underworld. And I think there is something, it's a kind of something of the superhero franchise. Isn't there here that characters who are the star of one film kind of reappear as a bit of a bit part in another?

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. Anyway, Odysseus and co, they go off to the land of Hades, and this is something that nobody's ever done before. They're the first ship ever to sail. Sail to. I mean, who knew that you could sail there? This was a surprise to me.

Tom Holland

This is why you need Cersei to tell you such things, right? No one had ever thought to do it before. And also Cersei has. Has told him what to do when he lands on the land of the dead, how to get the ghosts to talk to him, because there is a complication. Once you are a ghost, your ability to speak fades very rapidly until you have drunk blood. And so Circe has said, take a load of sheep, dig a trench. Then when you've dug the trench, slit the throats of the sheep. 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 Tarasius has drunk. And this is what Odysseus does. Tiresias drinks the blood and then is able to talk. And he gives Odysseus all kinds of brilliant travel tips. So he says, this is the crucial thing you have to bear in mind. You may find yourself landing on an island called Thrinacia. And this island is sacred to Helios, the sun God Hyperion. This is the God mentioned in the opening that you read, Dominic. If you find yourself on this island, no matter what you do, do not kill and barbecue the cattle. You have the vibe of people who love nothing more than a barbecue. He's absolutely kind of, you know, he's, he's, he's put his finger on them.

Dominic Sandbrook

Yeah, Australians don't have a barbecue.

Tom Holland

You just don't do it, because if you do, everything will go wrong. And Tiresias tells Odysseus the details of what will go wrong. You will get back home late and hapless after losing all your comrades on a ship that is not your own. And of course, that is echoing the curse that Polyphemus had laid on Odysseus earlier. And Taurasius goes on and says that if you and your men kill this cattle, you will find your halls when you get back home filled with braggarts, pestering and courting your wife. So just, you know, just don't go there. So Taurasius, you know, he's drunk his fill and then he gives this advice and then he kind of flits away in a kind of spectral manner. And then all the other shades start to feed on the blood and I think, you know, incredibly sinister scene. And then Odysseus talks to some of them and among them is his mother, who had died while he was away in Troy. You know, he hadn't realized that she was dead. And three times he tries to embrace her and three times she just kind of melts in, in his arms like a shadow or a dream. He meets Agamemnon, the king of men, the commander of the Achaeans at Troy. He's been murdered by his wife Clytemnestra. And so he tells Odysseus the story of that. And then, very famously, Odysseus meets the great hero of the Iliad, the greatest of all the Achaean warriors, Achilles, the man who at the end of the Iliad had killed Hector, the greatest of the Trojan warriors. And Achilles had been on offered the choice, when he was very young, of a life short but full of glory, or a long life but living in obscurity. And Achilles tells Odysseus, I made a terrible mistake. I went for the short life full of glory, but I would far rather live off the earth as the serf of another man, some man with a pitiful portion who barely ekes out a living, than rule here as the lord of all those who are dead and gone.

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

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

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

I think that it is one of the things that shadows the Greek devotion to competition, to heroism, to courage, to glory, is the fact that there is no equivalent of the. The Christian or Muslim heaven for all but the very greatest, that death is a shadowy, dull existence where you're a kind of a gibbering shadow who has to drink blood even to speak. I mean, it's, you know, there's nothing there. And so it makes the blaze of life all the more kind of glorious. So anyway, as you say, I mean, it is an amazing, amazing moment in the poem and in the kind of broader sweep of. Of ancient Greek culture. So Odysseus has. Has got what he came for. He's got this advice from Tarasius. And so now he goes back to the lady Circe, who feasts them. And then after the meal, she says to Odysseus, okay, just go. As soon as dawn appears, set sail. And she then advises him on how he should negotiate the various dangers that will be awaiting him on the next stage of his voyage. And she says, you are going to be passing the island of the Square Sirens. And these are carnivorous creatures. Heads of women, bodies of birds. They have irresistibly beautiful voices. So that's what the word siren means. And they sit on this island, perched amid a great pile of bones. And Cersei has a suggestion. She says 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 master and you will hear the song you will want. Order them to set you free. Tell them on no account to set you free. And that way you. You can hear the song of the Sirens and live to tell the tale. And then after that, you will pass two terrible monsters, Scylla and Charybdis. And these guard the passage between two cliffs, and you have to sail between them. And in one of these cliffs, and this is a cliff which reaches all the way up to wide heaven and is ringed by a cloud of dark blue. There is a kettle cave. And inside this cave lurks the monster Scylla. And Scylla makes a noise like a little newborn puppy. So it's so very, very sweet. However, Scylla has six necks, enormously long, and on top of each of the necks is a head, harrowing sight, each with three rows of teeth. So, not good news. A bit like the alien in the Scorny Weaver film. And from the other cliff sprouts a huge wild fig tree. And beneath that, in the depths of the waters, lurks Charybdis. This is the second monster. And every day, Charybdis sucks the water down. And then thrice each day she vomits it up. Thrice she gulps it back down. And this creates a monstrous whirlpool. And any ship that gets caught in the whirlpool is doomed. It will be dragged round and round, down and down into the jaws of Cryptis, and everyone on that ship will be eaten. And so Cersei's advice is, steer clear of the whirlpool, stick close to Scylla's rock, for as Circe says, it is better by far to mourn. Six of the men from your ship than to mourn all of them together. And as for the cattle of the sun, which Tiresias had been majoring on, Circe says, look, just don't land there. It's too dangerous. She's obviously sussed out the enthusiasm of Odysseus men for barbecues and says, just, you know, they let them have the temptation. So Odysseus has got this advice from Cersei. He follows it to the letter. He does indeed become the only man to have heard the siren sing and live to tell the tale. He does lose six men to the six snaking necks of Scylla that kind of descend from her cave and grabs them and kind of pulls them up into her cave and devours them. But they manage to avoid the whirlpool of Charybdis, and that's the main thing. And they sail on and they see the island of the sun. And Odysseus says, okay, we're not stopping

Dominic Sandbrook

here, no way, because this is the bit, remember, Tiresias, you'd better to avoid it. Do not touch them. Of course, we all, as soon as Teresa said that, surely we all knew what was going to happen.

Tom Holland

Yeah, Odysseus men, when he says, look, we're not stopping here, they all complain. They say, look, oh, God, we're shattered. You know, we really need a break. It looks really nice. Please, come on. So very reluctantly, Odysseus says, okay, but guys, whatever you do, don't touch the cattle. You know, just don't, don't, don't go there. We will stop there for a single afternoon and then we will continue on our way. Way. So they land. And then unfortunately, the moment they land, there is a massive great storm and it blows for a month. And it is clearly of divine origin. It is preventing them from leaving the island. And so they're stuck there and they're really, really hungry. Their supplies are running out. And Odysseus can see his men starting to eye up the cattle and thinking how nice, you know, chunks of this cattle would be if it were on a spit, you know, in a lovely kebab. And so in desperation, he. He thinks, well, listen, clearly there is a God here who's angry. I need to get up onto the top of the. The mountain at the center of this island and raise a prayer there. So that's what he does, and he leaves his men behind and he heads off to the. The summit of the mountain on the top in the middle of the island to raise prayers to the gods and presumably, before he goes, he does remind them, guys, don't eat the cattle. Don't eat the cattle. Did I mention don't eat the cattle? He reaches the mountaintop as before, with the winds of Aeolus in the bag. So now, fatefully, he falls asleep. So there's something of the Lafayette about Odysseus falling asleep at crucial moments. And as he sleeps, his men obviously do what they've been told not to do. They kill and roast the sacred cattle. And the smell of kebabs drifts into the nostrils of Odysseus. He wakes up, he looks down, he sees the smoke rising. He goes, ah, no. And he runs down. And for six days his men make a feast. The wind, you know, they can't leave because of the winds, but it is very obvious that nothing good is going to come of this barbecue because the skins of the slain cattle keep moving around and the meat on the kebab sticks keeps lowing.

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

Like, yeah, and it's not surprising because it is, is, I think, hard to over emphasize the scale of the insult that has been done to the sun God, because these are clearly solar cattle. And notions of solar cattle seem to have been very widespread in the myths of the ancient Indo Europeans. So the Greeks are Indo Europeans, the. You get it in Hindu mythology and Irish mythology, from India to Irish island, in other words, and their theft in all these stories, no matter where they're told, it always represents a kind of massive insult to the cosmic order. And so it is in the Odyssey, Helios, the sun God, complains to Zeus. Zeus stills the storms, so there's a very sinister calm. And this allows Odysseus and his men to set sail. And then all at once, once the ship is out at sea, Zeus thundered and hurled his lightning at the ship.

Dominic Sandbrook

Ship.

Tom Holland

And the mast of the ship 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 sulfur. And all of Odysseus's men are tossed into the kind of the great boiling royal of the sea. Looking just like cormorants. They bobbed about on the waves. All around the black hulled ship, the God Snow snatched their homecoming from them. But only one man survives the shipwreck, and this is Odysseus himself. Somehow he manages to fashion a raft out of all the wreckage, all the flotsam and jetsam but even now, even though he's got his raft, he's still not safe because the wind changes and blows him back the way he had come towards Scylla and Charybdis. And of course he can't steer. So the whirlpool is swirling downwards, Charybdis is sucking the water down deep into her jaws. And Odysseus raft gets caught up in the kind of the spinning and the whirling of the. Of. Of the waters as it's going down, Odysseus leaps up from the raft and he clings onto that giant fig tree. Remember which Homer had told us was leaning over the whirlpool and he manages to hold onto it until the raft is spat back up by Charybdis. And he. He drops down from the branch that he's been holding onto, down beside the timbers and sitting on top of them, as he later describes it, I used my hands to paddle away. And for nine days and nine nights he drifts. And he is the only man left alive out of what had originally been a fleet of 12 ships. 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. Nevertheless, it is unusual for the emphasis that it places on the minor characters. You kind of come to know them. We haven't really been talking about them much because we haven't had the time. But when you're reading the poem, you feel for them, you mark their fates, even if they are idiots with their enthusiasm for barbecues.

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

Yeah. So Scylla and Crybdis was identified with the Straits of Messina between Sicily and Italy, where you have whirlpools and riptides, and it was generally dreaded by ancient sailors. And Thraenatia, the island of the cattle, means three headlands. Sicily has three headlands. So again, it was identified with Sicily. And Sicily was the kind of main focus for Greek colonisation in this period. So it's perhaps not surprising that it generated all these kind of. All these myths. But now, with the loss of his men and his ship, Odysseus, I think, is drifting back from the kind of the shipping lanes that Greek sailors might recognize, back into a dimension beyond the mortal, back through the kind of the Homeric equivalent of a wormhole. And it's. It's telling, I think, that Homer does not describe in detail what happens next. All he really reports is that after nine days of drifting on the open seas. And this is Odysseus narrating at this point, on the 9th of the 10th, I was brought by the gods to the island of A Gigia, home of Calypso, she of the beautiful Braids, dread goddess who speaks like a mortal. She welcomed and cared for me.

Dominic Sandbrook

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

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, so. Wow. Will he ever escape, Tom? And if so, how will he do it? And what will happen when he gets back to Ithaca? If only there was some way I could find out the answers to all these questions. Cause I know you have amazing stories yet to tell us.

Tom Holland

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

Dominic Sandbrook

I mean, literally epic. Yeah.

Tom Holland

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

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

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

Dominic Sandbrook

with Daniel Mendelssohn, the Great translator of the Odyssey.

Tom Holland

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

Dominic Sandbrook

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

Tom Holland

Bye bye.

Michael and Hannah (Goal Hangers)

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Tom Holland

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Dominic Sandbrook

Hi everybody, it's Dominic here from the Rest Is History. I just wanted to let you all know that on our sister podcast, the Book Club, we have just released an episode digging deep into George R.R. martin's A game of Thrones, the first book in his Song of Ice and Fire sequence. We go deep into the history behind Game of Thrones. So we go into the wars of the Roses, Hadrian's Wall. We talk about the influence of J.R.R. tolkien and comparisons with the Lord of the Rings. But Tabby, we also talk, don't we, about George R.R. martin's apparent stagnation and whether he's actually ever going to finish the books, we

Tom Holland

investigate why it is that he has battled to finish them at all and whether he will ever be able to. But if you want to hear lots more about the history behind some of the greatest novels of all time, fear not. Coming up on the book club, we have the Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi Delampertusa, which is all about Italian unification. We talk about Circe, where we delve into a particular part, part of the Odyssey. And then after that, we are doing the 39 steps, which, Dominic, you chose and you love.

Dominic Sandbrook

Please join us at the book club. It's loads of fun and you will never find a better way to spend your life. Bye. Bye.

Michael and Hannah (Goal Hangers)

Bye.