You should watch this before you watch the Movie

[00:00:00]Somewhere off the coast of a nowhere island, a man who's just pulled off one of the greatest escapes in human history decides to ruin his own life. He is safe, his men are alive, his enemy is blind and trapped behind a boulder. All he has to do is shut up and sail away.

[00:00:14]Instead, he turns around, cups his hands, and screams his own name across the water. That single decision is going to cost him 10 years, every man under his command, and a solid chunk of his own soul. This is the story of Odysseus, and if you only know him as the clever guy with a wooden horse, buckle up because we're going all the way back.

[00:00:33]Because it turns out this man's entire personality was basically pre-installed at birth by his family tree, and honestly, once you meet the grandfather, nothing that happens later will surprise you. Let's start with the family tree because it explains everything that follows. Anticlea, his mother, was engaged to a respectable king named Laertes, but several ancient sources claim that shortly before the wedding, she'd already crossed paths with a man named Sisyphus. Yes, that Sisyphus, the trickster currently spending eternity pushing a boulder up a hill in the underworld for outsmarting death itself twice.

[00:01:05]Homer's own version keeps things clean and just names Laertes as the father, full stop. We're leaning into the messier tradition tonight because it fits the pattern a little too well to ignore. But it's worth knowing it's one version among several, not the settled record. Then there's the grandfather, Autolycus, son of the god Hermes, patron of thieves and liars. By reputation, the greatest con artist in the ancient world, a man who could allegedly steal your own livestock and hand it back to you looking like someone else's. When it came time to name the baby, grandpa picked Odysseus, which roughly translates to the one who causes pain.

[00:01:38]Basically, looking at a newborn and getting ahead of the inevitable. As a teenager, visiting that same grandfather, Odysseus gets gored in the leg on a boar hunt and keeps the scar for life. Hang on to that detail. It does some very heavy lifting about 20 years from now. Back home on unglamorous, rocky little Ithaca, he grows up under Laertes, excelling at exactly two things: archery and talking his way out of trouble. He wins Penelope's hand not by competing in her father's contest but by brokering a political deal behind the scenes. The same binding oath that later drags every man in Greece including him into the Trojan War. He and Penelope have a son, Telemachus, and for a few good years the smartest man in Greece just gets to be a dad. Naturally, this man grows up to be extremely good at lying, extremely good at getting what he wants, and extremely bad at knowing when to stop. Case in point, the draft dodge heard round the ancient world. When the Greek [music] kings come calling to collect on an old political oath demanding Odysseus join the war against Troy, he does not want to go. Understandable. So, he fakes insanity hitching an ox and a donkey to the [music] same plow, which is not how plowing works, and sowing his fields with salt instead of seeds, which is not how farming works either. Hoping everyone will just conclude the king has lost it and move along. It almost works until Palamedes, the guy sent to recruit him, tests the theory by placing Odysseus's actual infant son directly in the plow's path. Odysseus swerves. Turns out insanity does not swerve to protect a baby. Now, he has to go to Troy with an actual grudge against Palamedes [music] that, fun fact, he absolutely does not let go of later. Filed under things this man remembers forever and eventually gets revenge for. Now, once he's actually at Troy, here's the thing about Odysseus that the entire rest of this story [music] hinges on. He is not the strongest Greek in the camp. That title belongs to Ajax, a man built like a shipping container with a grudge.

[00:03:17]Odysseus is something rarer and honestly scarier. [music] The Greeks had a specific word for it, metis, cunning intelligence. Not just solving problems but rigging the entire board so the problem solves itself. 10 years of siege and nobody can crack the city walls.

[00:03:32]Then Odysseus shows up with an idea so simple it's almost insulting. Build a giant wooden horse, hide soldiers inside it, and convince an entire civilization to wield their own destruction through their front gate as a trophy. It works.

[00:03:45]Troy, a city that survived a full decade of war, falls in one night because one man understood that people don't defend against ideas the way they defend against armies. So, by the time the war ends, Odysseus has a reputation and a well-earned one. He's the guy who wins with his brain. This is a great note to end a story. Except the story isn't over. It's about to begin. And it begins with the exact same trait that won him the war very nearly getting him killed over and over again for the next 10 years. Odysseus and his crew land on an island and because apparently nobody in this family reads a warning label, [music] wander into a cave full of unattended cheese and livestock that obviously belongs to somebody. That somebody is Polyphemus, a one-eyed son of Poseidon who comes home, rolls a boulder the size of a small apartment building across the entrance, and starts eating Odysseus's men two at a time.

[00:04:33]Here's where Odysseus does something genuinely brilliant. He gets the giant drunk on wine and when Polyphemus asks his name, Odysseus tells him it's Nobody. Grandpa Autolycus, somewhere in the underworld, sheds a single proud tear. Once the giant passes out, Odysseus and his men drive a sharpened stake into his one eye. Polyphemus wakes up screaming and when the other Cyclopses outside ask what's wrong, he screams back that nobody is hurting him.

[00:04:56]Nobody's hurting you? Yes, nobody. Then why are you screaming? Because nobody is hurting me. Okay, well, if nobody's hurting you, that's kind of a you problem. And they walk off. It is genuinely one of the great comedic fake outs in ancient literature and also the reason his own men are still alive. He straps them to the bellies of the giant's own sheep. So, when blind [music] Polyphemus feels along the backs of his flock checking for stowaways, all he finds is wool. This man should have walked away a legend and absolutely nothing else. As the ships pull off, safe, free, clean getaway fully achieved, Odysseus stands up and shouts across the water that it wasn't nobody who blinded the Cyclops. It was Odysseus, [music] son of Laertes, king of Ithaca. Remember the name. His own crew is reportedly begging [music] him to sit down. You can practically hear it. Captain, please, we are so close to just being fine. And he does it anyway, because getting away with it was never [music] enough. He needed the credit. He needed his name attached to the legend, consequences pending. Polyphemus, blind, furious, [music] and now holding exactly the information he needs, prays to his father for revenge. His father is Poseidon, god of the sea, the one [music] deity on the planet whose entire job description is making sure a sailor never sees home again. A lot of what goes wrong for the [music] next decade traces back to this exact moment. Though to be fair, Homer's universe was never going to let this be purely psychological. [music] The gods have their own politics, their own grudges, their own reasons for making his [music] life hell that have nothing to do with him personally. Later on, the wind god Aeolus takes pity on Odysseus and hands him a literal gift-wrapped shortcut home, [music] capturing every dangerous wind on Earth inside a leather bag, so only a gentle breeze carries the ship straight to Ithaca. Home is visible. They can see it. 10 years of war and wandering, and Ithaca's [music] right there. Odysseus, exhausted, finally lets himself sleep.

[00:06:46]And his crew, who've spent this entire voyage watching their captain hoard secrets like it's an Olympic event, take one look at the mysterious bag he's been guarding like a dragon and assume it's treasure he's hiding from them. So, they open it. Every hurricane-force wind on the planet explodes out at once and blows the fleet straight back to where they started. Ithaca vanishes over the horizon again. This time, because the crew didn't trust their captain enough to ask what was in the bag, and the captain never trusted them enough to tell them. That's not bad luck. Bad luck is a storm you didn't see coming. This is a leadership failure with a body count, and Odysseus built it himself, one secret at a time. Grandpa Autolycus would call that a rookie mistake, [music] by the way. Never let them see what's in the bag, sure, but also, maybe communicate with your team occasionally.

[00:07:30]They wash up next at what looks like the safest harbor they've seen in months.

[00:07:34]Tall cliffs, calm water, perfect shelter. 11 of the 12 ships sail all the way in, because it looks that good.

[00:07:41]Odysseus, still a little paranoid after the whole wind bag debacle, keeps his own ship anchored outside tied to the rocks. For once, his trust issues save his life. Turns out the harbor belongs to the Lastrygonians, a tribe of cannibal giants who take one look at the fleet trapped in the bay and start hurling boulders down from the cliffs like it's an Olympic event nobody signed up for. Ships get smashed to splinters.

[00:08:02]Men get speared like fish in a barrel that happens to be an entire ocean bay.

[00:08:06]It is bluntly a massacre and there is nothing clever about it. No trick would have saved them. No secret would have caused it. This is just the one disaster in the whole story that isn't about his ego and it costs him 11 of his 12 ships in about the time it takes to read this sentence. Odysseus cuts his own ship free and gets out, barely. Of the fleet that left Troy, one ship is left. One.

[00:08:27]They land next on the island of the sorceress Circe who turns Odysseus' men into actual pigs the moment they walk through her door. Odysseus, protected by a magic herb from the god Hermes, coincidentally the same god whose bloodline gave him a grandfather full of tricks, resists her magic, forces her to reverse the spell and then, having just watched this woman turn his crew into livestock, stays on her island for an entire year. His men, presumably still processing recent memories of having hooves, eventually have to remind him that Ithaca exists. Before Circe will actually let him go home, she tells him there's a small detour required. Small, in this case, meaning the land of the dead. Odysseus sails to the edge of the world, digs a trench [music] and pours in an offering of blood to summon ghosts, which is either the most metal thing anyone in the story does or a genuinely upsetting way to be handed directions. He gets both. The blind prophet Tiresias shows up first, confirms the gods are still not done with him and drops the one warning that matters most, leave the sun god's cattle alone, no matter what. Then the ghosts start piling in. His own mother, who died of grief waiting for him, close enough to see and impossible to touch.

[00:09:29]Agamemnon, murdered by his own wife the moment he got home, who gives him a piece of advice with a very specific edge to it, trust no one completely, not even the wife you think you know. And maybe don't announce who you are the second you walk through the door.

[00:09:41]Considering what Odysseus is about to do with a disguise a couple of chapters from now, that particular ghost's advice lands a little too well. Every sailor knows the rule about the Sirens. Their song lure ships onto the rocks and you die. The correct move is to simply not listen. Odysseus knows this rule, too, and [music] decides it doesn't apply to him. He has his men plug their ears with wax. Textbook plan, [music] flawless execution. But not his own ears. He wants to hear it. So, he has himself tied to the mast, orders his crew not to untie him no matter what he says or does, and sails past the Sirens fully conscious, screaming to be let free while the most beautiful and lethal sound in the world plays directly into his ears. He survives, allegedly the only man in mythology to hear the Sirens and live. Notice what that actually is, though. It isn't caution. It's the exact same hunger for the story that got him ambushed by Poseidon in the first place, just [music] wearing a smarter disguise.

[00:10:34]He needs to be the exception. He needs to be the one they'll talk about at parties for the next 3,000 years. Next comes a strait [music] guarded on one side by Scylla, a six-headed monster who will eat six of your sailors, guaranteed, and on the other by Charybdis, a whirlpool that eats your entire ship if you get too close.

[00:10:49]Odysseus does the grim math [music] and steers towards Scylla, deliberately sacrificing six men to save everyone else. He [music] does not tell them. He watches silently as the monster snatches six screaming men into the air and lets it happen without a word of warning.

[00:11:02]Efficient. Strategically sound. Also, the second time in the story his silence has directly gotten his own men killed.

[00:11:09]They wash up next on an island belonging to the sun god Helios. And by this point, Odysseus has heard the same warning from two separate sources. Circe told him, Tiresias in the underworld told him again, leave the cattle alone.

[00:11:21]He passes the warning to his men and makes them swear an oath on [music] it.

[00:11:24]Then, the winds pin them down on that island for weeks. The food runs out and hungry men do what hungry men have always done.

[00:11:31]>> [music] >> They slaughter the sacred cattle and eat. Notice the pattern? It's the windbag all over again. Give this crew a secret or rule without buying their actual trust and they'll break it the first chance they get. Helios [music] complains to Zeus, Zeus obliges, and the next storm splits Odysseus's last ship in half. Every remaining man drowned.

[00:11:49]Every single one. Odysseus alone survives, clinging to wreckage with nothing left of the fleet that once left Troy at his back. Eventually, Odysseus washes up, alone now, having lost every ship and every man who once sailed under him on the island of the nymph Calypso.

[00:12:03][music] She keeps him there for 7 years, offering him immortality and eternal youth if he'll just stay. He says no. He wants to go home to a mortal wife who is, at this point, aging in real time without him. Framed as loyalty, [music] and maybe it is. Also, the first time in this entire story he turns down [music] glory for something quieter. Worth noticing, cuz it's about to be the last time. The gods finally intervene, and Odysseus makes it to Ithaca 20 years after leaving for Troy. And what does the son of a maybe con artist and the grandson of the greatest liar in Greece do the moment he's standing on his own soil?

[00:12:36]>> [music] >> He lies, obviously. Some habits are hereditary. Disguised as a beggar, Odysseus walks into his own home and does not tell his wife, his son, or his aging father who he is. He watches his own family grieve him up close, in disguise, gathering information, testing loyalty, running the long con on the people who loved him most. It's here that the old boar scar finally cashes in its 20-year setup. His childhood nurse, washing the disguised beggar's feet, feels the scar on his leg and instantly knows exactly who she's looking at.

[00:13:06]Checkhov's leg won't, ladies and gentlemen.

[00:13:08]His own dog, Argos, recognizes him, too.

[00:13:10]Wags his tail one last time and dies.

[00:13:13]His wife does not get that privilege for a while yet. Deception isn't a tool for this man anymore. It's the family trait.

[00:13:20]And then comes the ending. The one that the epic frames as justice. For years, over a hundred suitors have occupied Odysseus's home, eating his food, courting his wife, and treating his son like furniture. A genuine wrong that deserves consequences. Penelope sets [music] up an archery contest, an impossible shot only her true husband could make. And the disguised beggar steps up and makes it. Then, the mask comes off. What follows is not a duel.

[00:13:47]The doors are barred, so no one can run.

[00:13:49][music] Odysseus, with his son and two loyal servants, methodically slaughters every suitor in the hall. Homer doesn't soften it. The floor runs with blood.

[00:13:57]Bodies pile up as fish are dragged onto [music] a beach to die in the sun. When it's over, Odysseus has the household maids who slept with the suitors hanged as well. In a scene that the poem lingers on with genuinely uncomfortable detail. This is the same man who once outsmarted a giant using nothing but a fake name and a plan involving sheep.

[00:14:14]The very first thing he does with his power fully restored is lock a room and empty it. Now, to be fair to the text, Homer's audience would likely have called this justice. [music] The suitors were oathbreakers, abusers of hospitality, men who'd spent years trying to steal another [music] man's wife and kingdom. Within the poem's own moral world, this isn't excess, it's the natural and expected end of the story. A modern audience watching [music] the same scene might call it something much harder to sit with. Even the reunion afterward comes with [music] one last test. Penelope, still not fully convinced this ragged stranger is really her husband, orders their marriage bed moved out of the bedroom. A bed Odysseus [music] built himself around a living olive tree rooted straight into the floor, meaning it cannot be moved without destroying it. He objects immediately, without thinking, [music] because he built the thing and knows exactly why that request is impossible.

[00:15:01]It's the one moment [music] in the entire story where the truth slips out of him faster than a lie would have.

[00:15:07]That's how she finally knows it's him.

[00:15:09]So, here's the shape of the whole thing.

[00:15:10]If you zoom all the way out, past the boar scar, past the wooden horse, past every clever escape, Odysseus was quite literally bred for this, at least in the version of the myth we're following tonight. A possible trickster god for a father, the greatest thief in Greece for a grandfather, and a name that translates to trouble before he'd even opened his eyes. Homer frames the ending as justice restored, [music] a rightful king reclaiming his house. But read through a modern lens, stripped of the poem's own certainty that the hero is always right, the ending starts to look like something else. He starts this story defeating a monster with nothing but his [music] mind. Read this way, he ends it becoming something that looks disturbingly close to one, just wearing a human face instead of a single eye.

[00:15:50]Polyphemus was dangerous because he had strength and zero restraint. By the final chapter, Odysseus is dangerous because he has brilliance and zero restraint. And somehow that version gets to go home, sit on a throne, and get called a hero for it. So much of this story carries the same fingerprint, and it was stitched into him before he could even walk. The Cyclops' rage caused by an unnecessary boast, the scattered winds caused by secrecy his own crew didn't trust, Scylla's [music] ambush caused by silence he chose not to break.

[00:16:18]Not everything that happens to him is his own doing, plenty of it is just the gods being the gods, but the pattern is there often enough that it's hard to unsee. Even the ending, the one Homer writes as triumphant justice, can just as easily read as the final proof that the family trait never really lets go of you. Maybe that's the actual ending of the Odyssey that doesn't make it onto the movie poster. Not a story about getting home, a 3,000-year-old warning about what happens when the cleverest person in the room was raised by the best liars in the business, and never once stopped to ask whether he should do something, only ever whether he could.

[00:16:50]And the terrifying part is how familiar that shape still is. Every generation produces its own Odysseus, brilliant enough to outthink any obstacle in front of them, and just convinced enough of their own exception to walk straight into disasters nobody else would be dumb enough to cause. Homer just happened to write the family history down [music] first. So, who do you think is the Odysseus of our generation? And Christopher Nolan's version of this story is hitting theaters in the next few days with Matt Damon playing our guy. It will be interesting to see whether the movie leans into the hero side of him or the monster. Either way, you'll know exactly which lines to watch for. If you like to watch these kinds of videos, do me a favor. [music] Hit the like button. It actually helps this channel more than you think, and I really want to clear my student debt.

[00:17:29]Share it with the one friend who's going to see this movie and has no idea what he is walking into, and subscribe because we're not done digging through the family history of Greek mythology's heroes. Have a great day, and I'll see you in the next video.