Greece’s Greatest Heroic Epics: The Iliad & Odyssey

[00:00:00]Everyone in that film is wearing their own boxes. [laughter] >> That's niche knowledge.

[00:00:06]>> Um, what other stuff they got knocking about? Gargoyles.

[00:00:10]>> I mean, that's pretty close, actually.

[00:00:12]>> Not bad.

[00:00:12]>> Yeah. He also encounters a witch >> called Cersei, and she turns his men into pigs.

[00:00:17]>> Inconvenient, >> but delicious.

[00:00:19]>> Yeah.

[00:00:24]>> Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the radio for comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name's Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author, and broadcaster. And today, we're sharpening our swords, stashing our spears, and sailing the wine dark sea back to ancient Greece to learn all about the epic poems known as the Iliad and Odyssey. And to help us on this valiant voyage, we are joined by two heroic companions in History Corner.

[00:00:49]She's senior lecturer in classics and ancient history at the University of Exat, an expert on women in antiquity, Homer and the modern reception of classical texts. You might have read her incredible new book Mythica, a new history of Homer's world through the women written out of it is Dr. Emily Hower. Welcome Emily.

[00:01:06]>> Thank you for having me.

[00:01:07]>> Pleasure to have you in. And in comedy corner, he's a multi-talented actor, comedian, and broadcaster. You'll recognize him from hosting TV's The Great British Sewing Bee or starring in the award-winning sitcoms Ghosts, Statlet's Flats, and Man Like Moine. Or maybe you've delighted in watching him succeed and fail on Taskmaster. Maybe you've seen his live tour show, Cool Story, Bro, but you'll definitely remember him from our episode on the Viking Explorer, Leif Ericson. It's the very cool Kyle Smith Boer. Welcome back.

[00:01:33]>> Thank you very much for having me again.

[00:01:35]I didn't think I was allowed back.

[00:01:37]>> Oh, of course you're allowed back.

[00:01:38]>> Turns out you can do it again.

[00:01:39][laughter] You can say anything and get invited back. All right.

[00:01:42]>> You were great last time. You had a lot of fun. We We rummaged in the Viking age. We did exploration a thousand years ago.

[00:01:48]>> Today, we are taking you even further back.

[00:01:50]>> What do you know about ancient Greece?

[00:01:51]The Iliad, the Odyssey, any bells?

[00:01:54]>> I'm going to say Medusa.

[00:01:58]>> Is that Is that anywhere near?

[00:02:00]>> Um, a little [laughter] bit a little bit off. Uh, we we'll get you back on track.

[00:02:04]>> Thank you.

[00:02:05]>> Right culture.

[00:02:06]>> Yeah, right culture.

[00:02:07]>> Right language. Great. Um, yeah, these are these are these are epic poems.

[00:02:12]So, what do you know?

[00:02:18]So, this is the So, what do you know?

[00:02:19]This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener or viewer, hello, what you might know about today's subject. The ancient Greek geeks among you will certainly have read the Iliad and Odyssey, maybe as retold by the marvelous Steven Fry, or perhaps in the wonderful translation by Emily Wilson.

[00:02:34]That's my favorite translation. And even if you haven't read the classic classics, the story of the Trojan War is still everywhere in our pop culture.

[00:02:41]There are films, of course. There's 2004's Troy, starring Hansen Brad Pitt, and of course now the Christopher Nolan film, The Odyssey. No comment on the helmets. I'm not getting involved. Plus, of course, you've got the Percy Jackson series. There's Maline Miller's Song of Achilles, Margaret Atwood's feminist retelling of the Penelopead, I think, which is the pronunciation. Am I right?

[00:02:58]>> Yeah, Penelopead.

[00:02:59]>> Good. Thank you. And there's even an anime series inspired by the Odyssey.

[00:03:03]So, the plots are familiar to us even when we don't realize it. But when were these stories first written? And by whom? And is written the right verb? And what do they reveal about Greek culture?

[00:03:13]And how many people are you allowed to slaughter and still be considered a hero? Let's find out. Right, Dr. Emily, for those who've never heard the words the Iliad or Odyssey, which maybe incorporates Kyle, I'm not sure. Simply put, what are they?

[00:03:28]>> Right. Well, what we're looking at are epic poems that are coming from ancient Greece, and they're part of a cycle of poems, which we know as the epic cycle that are basically telling the story of the legend of the Trojan War. So, this is a legend that is kind of springing up around a city called Troy in modern sort of northwest Turkey. a massive war happening there about 10-year war a siege basically that the Greeks enact because Paris the prince of Troy abducted or let's put it in quotation marks abducted uh Helen of Sparta uh already problematically married to Menaaus uh the Greeks get a bit peeved by that and they come and try and get her back and this initiates a huge cycle of poems now of those we've got two that remain that's the Iliad and the Odyssey the Iliad telling a story of a couple of short weeks in the final year of the war and the Odyssey telling the story of one man's voyage back home.

[00:04:24]>> Do you know how long these poems are? Do you know how long for example the Iliad is?

[00:04:28]>> I'm guessing. I mean, how do we even measure length?

[00:04:29]>> Let's go in. In lines lines. How many lines? You know, >> I want to say I'm getting the feeling of 600.

[00:04:38]>> That's a fairly long poem. Uh Emily, it's a bit longer than that, isn't it?

[00:04:41]>> It's just a bit longer. I'm afraid the Iliad is about 15, 700 lines. Yeah.

[00:04:47]There's a reason. There's a reason you haven't read it.

[00:04:49]>> Yeah. [laughter] >> And the Odyssey is about 12,100.

[00:04:53]Yeah. Yeah. Nice slim, simple. Yeah.

[00:04:55]>> Kyle, you are a storyteller because cool story bro, you get stories, you know, from the audience, right?

[00:05:01]>> Yeah.

[00:05:01]>> What makes a story epic?

[00:05:02]>> I mean, we've got to start with a beginning, middle, and end. That's those are the that's a golden rule.

[00:05:07]>> Sure.

[00:05:08]>> Um, and then for me personally, I want some jeopardy.

[00:05:12]>> Okay.

[00:05:13]>> Yeah. [laughter] Maybe some danger, a revelation. I need some characters. I need detail.

[00:05:20]>> This is good.

[00:05:21]>> That's that's what I like.

[00:05:22]>> Okay.

[00:05:23]>> Yeah.

[00:05:24]>> What is epic poetry?

[00:05:25]>> It's not going to be our definition of epic, but I like it very much. And in fact, that beginning, middle, and end, I don't know if you know that, but Aristotle, the theorist of narrative, was the one who said that's what all good narrative has to have. So, you're you're in the footsteps of Aristotle.

[00:05:38]Um, but no, so for epic, it's I think you can think about the way that we use epic nowadays. When we say something's epic, we mean it's kind of massive. It's huge. It's bigger than life. And that's what an epic poem is. So we talked about how long they are, you know, thousands of lines. So epic is kind of defined by its length. And later ancient poets actually talk about Homer and they say like Homer is like the sea and we are just like little rivers that are running from it. So epic is really big. It's also uh telling about big themes. So it's telling about heroes and gods and monsters and sort of voyages that are sort of bigger than anything that you've experienced before. Um, and then the last thing which is something that I think we wouldn't normally kind of put under epic in modern terms is the meter.

[00:06:20]Now that's hexameter and that's basically the rhythm that you're using in the poem. So basically because these were oral poems initially which is why I loved hearing you talk about your storytelling. These were done aloud and so you'd have a rhythm that would kind of like bring everything together and that's this this hex heximemetrical rhythm uh which basically breaks the line into six feet.

[00:06:40]>> Right. So like um amic pentameter.

[00:06:43]>> That's exactly right. That's another meter. Um so amic pentameter is quite natural to English. So that one will will be dum dum dum dum dum. It's something you hear a lot in Shakespeare.

[00:06:52]Hexameter is the meter of epic.

[00:06:56]>> You named the author Homer.

[00:06:59]>> People at home might be going, "Yes, I've heard of Homer. Have you heard of Homer?"

[00:07:02]>> Yeah.

[00:07:03]>> Not the Simpsons character.

[00:07:04]>> Yeah. I don't know. I can't remember why.

[00:07:06]>> Okay. All right. But I I have heard of Homer's somethings.

[00:07:11]>> Maybe the Iliad and Odyssey. Maybe.

[00:07:13]Yeah. Yeah, >> I think so.

[00:07:14]>> Are we happy saying Homer wrote the Odyssey? Because I mean within there there are sort of several questions. A Homer real guy. B wrote. Is that the right verb? First of all, wrote probably the wrong one because >> freestyle.

[00:07:27]>> So well basically yes. So that's this is where they started. So these poems started in an oral song culture where people would be or you'd have bards who would be really specializing in this kind of um topic and they would be reciting what we call composing and performance. So they would be up there a little bit like you described kind of on the stage in the festival whatever it was and they would be putting these sort of building blocks together. Now eventually over the centuries those stories get handed down and at some point they start becoming kind of performed and they become fixed a little bit more for performance because at that point they're being recited. Uh we then get a moment where in about the mid6th century BCE we've got a tyrant in Athens called Pyistrus who's really interested in kind of scripting and fixing these texts. And at that point that's where they really start to become like fixed written texts. So it's like a gradual process of them being written down and fixed into what we now know as the Iliad and Odyssey today.

[00:08:24]>> Maybe 200 years between the composition and the actual writing.

[00:08:28]>> I'd say even more really.

[00:08:29]>> So the roots of the oral epic go back to the 14th century BCE or earlier. And the writing is probably around the 8th to the 6th centuries BC that that happened.

[00:08:39]So we've got hundreds of years of tradition and then hundreds of years of writing.

[00:08:43]>> That's amazing. Okay. Uh did Homer exist? question mark.

[00:08:48]>> The ancient Greeks definitely believed that Homer existed. Um I don't know if we want to take their word for it because they also believe that the gods and goddesses existed and that Zeus swallowed his wife. So, you know, maybe we're not going to take them too literally. Um but with Homer, um they thought that there was this kind of one poet who wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey. For us today, I think we're thinking more of this as a tradition of multiple different itinerant bards who were really experts in their area. Um, so when I like to think about it, I like to think about instead of saying sort of the poet or he, I like to think of it as a collective tradition and say they the poets, you know, this is a communal tradition.

[00:09:25]>> So Homer is meant to be blind, right?

[00:09:26]He's meant to be the blind poet, Homer, >> and he's meant to be the >> the Greeks believed he's the sole creator of these two poems.

[00:09:34]>> Yeah.

[00:09:34]>> Um, >> wait, so what's he writing about then?

[00:09:36]It's not stuff he's seen.

[00:09:38]Well, this is kind of the point because if you're blind, then you're kind of attuned to the power of a story and also to the influence of the muses who were the goddesses of song who were inspiring the bard. So this idea of kind of him being blind is very much him turning in and listening to the power of the word.

[00:09:54]>> Wow.

[00:09:54]>> Yeah. And I mean the opening line is sing to me o muses, right? It's it starts by it's a song.

[00:10:00]>> Yeah. Well, in both of the epics they start like that way. So we've got sing to me muse in the Iliad and then in the Odyssey we've got Tell Me Muse. So both of them very oral spoken and that's gesturing to the fact that they were originally sung accompanied by a liar and you've got this muse who is the goddess of song or one of nine goddesses of song and is imagine to kind of inhabit the bard and relay to him all of the knowledge that he doesn't have.

[00:10:23]>> It's funny that it's sing initially and then they're like actually just tell me [laughter] >> maybe this person doesn't have a great voice you know >> let's downgrade him.

[00:10:31]>> Yeah. 15,000 lines or something like and then we went over here. [laughter] Yeah.

[00:10:35]Right. Um Kyle, do you know what the um ancient Greek word for a poet was?

[00:10:40]>> Yes. Imagine. Um >> be amazing if you just break out some classical Greek now.

[00:10:45]>> Ancient Greek word for a poet.

[00:10:46]>> Yeah. For a traveling poet. For a person sort of on the road, stops in, tells a story, gets a free meal.

[00:10:52]>> You get a free meal for a for telling a story.

[00:10:54]>> Yeah.

[00:10:54]>> Yeah. And you're not getting paid for your shows.

[00:10:56]>> Hang [laughter] on a minute.

[00:10:57]>> I really hope you've got a meal for him now, Greg. After this >> sandwiches outside, if you want is what they get depended on how good the story is.

[00:11:03]>> I think that might be fair. Absolutely true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you've got an incentive to make sure that your songs are really sharp.

[00:11:09]>> Yeah.

[00:11:10]>> I've been making stuff up, [laughter] though.

[00:11:12]>> That's fine.

[00:11:12]>> That's the point. That's what they want.

[00:11:14]They want a good story.

[00:11:14]>> You just say, "The muses told you."

[00:11:15]>> Wow.

[00:11:16]>> Yeah. So, the Greek that >> the Greek word, what I mean, raps.

[00:11:19]Rapso.

[00:11:20]>> Yeah. So, well, we got several different words, but rapso is is the word that is happening about the time where we've got these people who are performing kind of scripts of the versions of the text. um rabidos in ancient Greek and that means song stitcher which is really fun. So what they're doing is they're basically sewing together different kind of parts of versions of the song. So you've got sort of like maybe you know this part which is about the anger of Achilles and then you've got this little episode that's about like a spy mission and we're going to stitch those together and we're going to make those into a longer song.

[00:11:49]>> Oh nice. So it's not Bohemian Rapsidity it's a Fenian rap city. [laughter] It's >> fab. Okay. I mean Alexander the Great had a copy of Ilad didn't he? That was his favorite book.

[00:11:57]>> He did. So this was given to him by uh his tutor Aristotle, the guy who we were talking about earlier. Um you know uh and he yeah he kept the copy of the Iliad under his pillow. So sweet.

[00:12:07]>> Yeah. Very very inspired by Homer.

[00:12:09]>> That's cool. It >> is cute isn't it? So the Iliad Odyssey as we know them are recited first composed perhaps collectively. Perhaps it's a sort of tradition of composition.

[00:12:19]Perhaps there is one great blind genius Homer. Maybe not. We don't know. But they also tell of events that happened way before ancient Greece as we know it.

[00:12:28]the Bronze Age, the the world of of Msini and of the great heroes.

[00:12:33]>> Yeah, that's right. So, what we're looking at here is we're not going to be thinking about kind of epic as history as kind of a straightforward document of what happened in the past. But what they do do because of that process of handing down over generations is that they are kind of encoding memory in some ways. So this process of song is really the idea of kind of passing down a memory. And one part of those memories that they're passing down is of this Trojan War. Now the events of the Trojan War probably took place if they kind of really happened around the late 13th early 12th century B.C.E. So we're looking about 1200 BC, late Bronze Age, as you mentioned. And there have been attempts to kind of prove that this was true and real. My favorite example of this is the discovery of the real city of Troy.

[00:13:18]There is a real city. That is amazing.

[00:13:20]The guy who found it, Hinrich Schlean, was absolutely obsessed with Homer. Made up this kind of story later in life that he'd wanted to do this since he was a child. Absolutely wasn't true. Um, but anyway, he got to Troy and he was in such a hurry to get to the area that he thought was the layer of Homer's Troy.

[00:13:36]Uh, that instead of waiting and digging down through the layers, as you would if you were an archaeologist, he just used dynamite. [laughter] >> Yeah. Sometimes it's quicker though, is it?

[00:13:46]Sometimes you just got to get to it. Do >> you know what? That would be fine if he got the right lair, but he miscalculated by a thousand years. And so he blew through all [laughter] of the lair that he wanted and ended up about a thousand years too far in the past.

[00:14:02]>> I mean, >> when was this?

[00:14:03]>> So, this is the late 19th century. So, you know, we're at the right at the beginning of archaeology. This this guy's really not an archaeologist.

[00:14:09]>> He's a German businessman.

[00:14:10]>> He's a German businessman with a plan.

[00:14:12]Just fancy.

[00:14:13]>> He's been using it in his meetings.

[00:14:14]like, well, it works in the meetings, [laughter] so it must it must work here.

[00:14:18]>> I mean, can you imagine that episode of Time Team just Tony Robinson just dynamiting things. I found a Roman. Oh, it's on fire. Sorry. Um, it's just amazing. So, Troy is a real city. It's not called Troy because we call it the Iliad. So, it's called >> Ilon. Ilia, [laughter] >> whatever endings you like. Well, actually, yeah, Homer gives it a couple of different names. We've got Troya, which is where we get our Troy from, but we've also got Ilios and Ilon, and that's where we got the Iliad from.

[00:14:46]What's really interesting about though is that we have documents from around that time that talk about a city in that area called Willa. And we think that that word Ilios would initially have been pronounced Willios.

[00:14:59]>> Oh.

[00:14:59]>> And so probably that Willa is actually our Troy.

[00:15:03]>> Willad. It should be the Willad. Yeah.

[00:15:05]It doesn't have quite the same.

[00:15:06]>> That sounds rude. Sorry. The reason that's interesting to me is because my middle name is Troy.

[00:15:10]>> Really?

[00:15:12]>> Wow.

[00:15:12]>> But I would hate if my middle name was Willad. [laughter] >> I'd be really annoyed if it was.

[00:15:19]>> We didn't even know you name. I mean, that's perfect booking for us. Yeah, >> we've got we've got an actual Trojan here.

[00:15:24]>> Yeah.

[00:15:25]>> Um, >> my dad wanted to call me Troy Smith and my mom was like, "Don't be stupid."

[00:15:29][laughter] >> Um, that's amazing.

[00:15:31]>> Just cuz she was like, "That's too boring."

[00:15:32]>> Yeah. Well, you should all the Troy Smith.

[00:15:34]>> Yeah. Count yourself lucky.

[00:15:36]And of course in the Simpsons there is Troy Mccclure and Homer. So we got Troy and Homer in the Simpsons which is a nice little jokes. There are several layers of of Troy which may have been the the classic himic one but earthquakes destroyed it, fires destroyed it, war, and then a German came along and dynamited it. So we're not quite sure which layers.

[00:15:53]>> He left some bits behind. So you know when we're looking at those layers, there's enough we can do to work out that there was a city there that was destroyed around 1190 1180 BC.

[00:16:01]>> He did find treasure. He did.

[00:16:03]>> He did find proper gold and lovely shiny treasure.

[00:16:05]>> See, he's got something. He's on to something. [laughter] You just got to start blowing stuff up, man.

[00:16:09]>> I mean, the line between an archaeologist is looking quite fragile here.

[00:16:13]>> For for the listeners and viewers, please do not go around blowing up treasure. It's just not Archaeologist be very sad if you do that. Um, yeah, he got his wife to to model the treasure.

[00:16:22]It was called King Pry's treasure.

[00:16:24]>> Well, he called it King Pam's treasure.

[00:16:26]So, so he just found this treasure in this lair that he was convinced was Homer's Troy, even though he was a thousand years too far in the past, found this kind of beautiful cache of golden jewels and things, smuggled it out of Troy, illegally took it off to Athens, dressed up his wife in it, called it the jewels of Helen of Troy, and basically sent it out to all of the newspapers in the world. At this point, facts really are just kind of, you know, peripheral to the overall project.

[00:16:51]>> Yeah. And then what where does it go?

[00:16:54]Oh, it's got a really interesting story.

[00:16:56]So, basically, it goes on tour. It's exhibited. It goes on tour.

[00:16:59]>> Yeah, it does. I [laughter] know. It's exhibited in the >> I wonder if it got more um audience in fair than I did. [laughter] >> Well, I don't know about that. But then it comes back and it's in Berlin and he puts it up in an exhibition where he says he wants it to be exhibited for all time. This is his kind of attempt to memorialize his name. And then after the war, it ends up getting uh appropriated, should we say, by Soviet troops and disappears off to Russia.

[00:17:21]>> Well, we don't know where it is. Well, we do because some Russian journalists worked incredibly hard to find it and they found it only a couple of decades ago.

[00:17:28]>> Wow.

[00:17:29]>> Oh, so where's it now?

[00:17:30]>> So now it's now in a museum in Russia.

[00:17:32]>> Oh.

[00:17:33]>> So is Troy our only evidence for an actual real Trojan War? You know, the city of Troy, Ilon, Ilios, Willios, whatever we're calling it. Do we have any other historical or archaeological evidence that this Bronze Age war did occur?

[00:17:45]>> Well, I mentioned the sources that tell us about this town, the city called Woosa. So, those are coming from sources that are from the Hittite civilization.

[00:17:54]I don't know if you've heard of them, but they are in this amazing late Bronze Age civilization in Anatolia. And uh they have extensive archival records and they talk about multiple different wars that happen around this city. Um in fact, in one of them, you've got a power who's getting involved that are called the Akiawans in the record. And now, we think that it may be that those are the same as the people who Homer calls aans.

[00:18:19]That's his word for the Greeks. So, is it possible that the Akans or in Greek Aoy are the same as the Ayawans? I think it's probable at least.

[00:18:27]>> Seems plausible, doesn't it? I'm going to say yes. Fantastic. It's official.

[00:18:33]>> It's got it's got the stamp. But, you know, this idea of this this city that's been engaged in war multiple different times in the late Bronze Age that um has had involvement from powers of kind of the AINS somewhere in the Aian. You know, could that be the pattern for the Greeks coming to a city like Troy?

[00:18:50]>> That's the idea.

[00:18:51]>> And setting it on fire.

[00:18:52]>> And setting it on fire when they leave.

[00:18:54]>> Let's turn to the poems themselves.

[00:18:55]We'll start with the Iliad, which effectively is Troy Story. That's what we should call it. Um Kyle, what do you know about Achilles? Have you ever heard of Achilles? Have you seen the Brad Pitt movie?

[00:19:04]>> I think I have seen the movie and what I remember is Jim Howit talking about it on set of ghosts and saying that everyone in that film is wearing their own boxes. [laughter] >> That's niche knowledge. Um when cuz when you think about the when you watch these films and you get lost in it, you're like, "Oh my gosh, it's amazing." And like the amount of people and this must have been so fun to so epic to to film and you think like they're all they're all in their own pants. [laughter] >> I'm never going to watch it the same way again.

[00:19:39]>> Whose pants do you want them to be in?

[00:19:40]Like >> Well, no, they're like they're not in like costume pants. They've got their own They've probably got their own like the the pants they came in with.

[00:19:48][laughter] They're just wearing their tighty whies.

[00:19:50]>> Yeah.

[00:19:50]>> Yeah.

[00:19:51]>> Um, so think about that. [laughter] That's my answer to that.

[00:19:56]>> Um, yeah. Achilles makes me think of the heel.

[00:20:00]>> Yeah.

[00:20:01]>> And something to do with trainers.

[00:20:04]>> Okay.

[00:20:05]>> Is there something? Is there like an animation where there's like someone makes a Ailles trainers?

[00:20:11]>> Oh, interesting. I don't know that one.

[00:20:13]I feel like it's in Hercules. The Disney >> I think. I was going to say you're thinking of the sandals I think that they make in Hercules. I think I am.

[00:20:19]Yeah.

[00:20:19]>> Yeah. Yeah. Um, so the heel. Okay. We have We have to address the heel.

[00:20:23]>> We do.

[00:20:23]>> The Achilles heel. The most famous thing about him.

[00:20:25]>> Yeah.

[00:20:26]>> It's not in the Iliad.

[00:20:27]>> It's not in the Odyssey.

[00:20:28]>> It's not in that those 15,000 lines.

[00:20:31][laughter] >> How come the heel comes later? Who adds the heel?

[00:20:35]>> Yeah. Well, it's a much later tradition actually, the heel. So, the story of the heel is that his mother, Thetus, who's a goddess, um, is desperate to make him immortal. And so, she takes him to the river sticks and she dips him in the sticks. But because she's holding him by the heel, the heel doesn't kind of get dipped in this immortal water. And that's why he's invulnerable there. In the Iliad, that's absolutely not the case. He's it's made quite clear that he can bleed and like, you know, [clears throat] die like any other man.

[00:21:01]The Iliad is only telling sort of a small portion of his story that's really organized around one particular like episode of his rage. It doesn't tell the story of how he gets killed. And that's something that comes in a lot later and actually becomes really popular as a visual motif later in Christian arts because of course the idea of baptism and baptism water and the idea of Achilles being dipped in the water.

[00:21:23]>> That's interesting.

[00:21:24]>> The plot of the Iliad is it's not easy to summarize. Is there a simple way of summarizing it, Emily? Is there a sort of too long didn't read one minute take?

[00:21:32]>> Yeah, absolutely. So essentially with the Trojan War, we start with the Judgment of Paris, which is a moment where three goddesses are squabbbling over an golden apple that's been inscribed with the words for the most beautiful. They all want it. Um they decide that a mortal has to judge between them and so they go down to Paris, the prince of Troy. Uh he decides Aphrodite is the winner, not least because she bribes him with Helen, who conveniently already married to Menaaus, king of Sparta. Paris goes and takes Helen, brings her back to Troy. Menaaus, her husband, is outraged. He goes, "Yeah." As as kind of as you would be, uh, goes to his brother, Agamemnon, who is the king of all of the Greeks, and they band together, all of the Greeks.

[00:22:15]They head off to Troy on this massive expedition, 10 years of fighting around Troy. Ultimately, then, um, Adysius, the kind of the trickster, has the idea of the Trojan horse. The Trojan horse gets dragged into Troy. The Greeks jump out, they burn the city down, and then they go home. But that's not in the IAD either. The truth I mean the horse isn't in the Iliad. I mean all the bits best bits that we know aren't even in the story.

[00:22:36]>> They're missing some stuff in there.

[00:22:37]Yeah.

[00:22:38]>> Make it longer. That's what I've always said. [laughter] >> Okay. Where does the Trojan horse come from? That's in the Odyssey, right?

[00:22:43]>> Well, it's mentioned in the Odyssey, but the story of the Trojan horse actually comes in one of these lost epics. The judgment of Paris, like the seizure of Helen, uh the Trojan horse, the sacking of Troy. Those are all in other epics that we've lost. So all we've got is the Iliad which really just tells the story of like Achilles small episode in the war. Doesn't tell how he got in. It doesn't tell about his death. And then we've got the Odyssey which tells the story of just one of the Greeks of many who were coming home after Troy.

[00:23:12]>> It is quite Marvel universe if there were only two films left in the Marvel universe and you had to figure out what would happen by just watching Ant-Man and the other.

[00:23:19]>> Yeah, exactly.

[00:23:20]>> So it's not that the Iliad and the Odyssey were the two most important poems. It's just they're the only two we have. Well, for the Greeks, they thought that they were the best. So, that's why they were attributed to Homer. They thought he was the best poet. So, you know, that's why they preserved them as opposed to the others who were, you know, just by second secondass poets according to >> um the Iliad is sometimes subtitled as the wroth or the rage of Achilles, >> right?

[00:23:42]>> What's he so angry about, Kyle?

[00:23:44]>> Well, they didn't have Wi-Fi then, [laughter] >> so probably that, >> right? He just can't get a connection.

[00:23:51]>> Yeah.

[00:23:51]>> Yeah. cuz I couldn't get a connection yesterday and I was in I was in Taco Road, >> right?

[00:23:56]>> So imagine I was angry but you know >> in 2000 years people will be singing of that wroth. That wroth will be sung [laughter] >> the Kylead. Yeah.

[00:24:05]>> Yeah. Don't mind it. I don't mind that at all.

[00:24:08]>> But you didn't set fire to a city.

[00:24:10]>> No, I have I left my dynamite at home, [laughter] >> but now I remembered. I've just been reminded to take it with me everywhere I go.

[00:24:17]>> Yeah. [laughter] >> Yeah. I'm going to say it's not the Wi-Fi. Emily, no. But why is Achilles so angry and wrothful and and pouty?

[00:24:27]>> Well, it's anger that is the subject of the Iliad. So, the very first word of the epic is anger or wroth. So, sing to me, goddess of the wroth of Achilles is how it starts. And he is angry because Agamemnon, the king of the Greeks, uh we're in the 10th year of the war.

[00:24:42]They've been fighting a lot. And during that process, >> year of the war, I know it in lads.

[00:24:47]>> They're all exhausted. So, 10 years have gone have gone by. They they are exhausted and they in that process have taken a lot of cities that they've raised to the ground. They've taken a lot of women captive as slaves and one of those women has to get returned. Her father has come and has a bit of an issue with his daughter being enslaved and so he comes asks for her back.

[00:25:07]Agamemnon has to give her up and so he in response seizes one of Achilles enslaved women. Her name is Bruce and Achilles gets really peeved by this. He withdraws from the war. And when he does that, he begs Zeus, the king of the gods, to make sure that as many of the Greeks die as possible so that they all know how great he is and that they really miss him.

[00:25:29]>> Wow.

[00:25:30]>> Not much of a team player, is he?

[00:25:31]>> Ego. Big ego.

[00:25:32]>> Big ego. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:25:34]>> Yeah. I mean, he he's giving sort of strong footballer energy. It's very Cristiano Ronaldo. It's it's very like me [laughter] and only me.

[00:25:40]>> Um, so yeah. So he he's enslaved a woman and then the woman has been sort of liberated and he's angry and so he just sort of soaks in his tent and and sort of goes, "You took my slave.

[00:25:48]>> Yeah, you took my slave and I don't I'm not going to fight then."

[00:25:50]>> Well, absolutely. And you know, she hasn't even been liberated cuz she's been just been turned over to another Greek. So, you know, it's it's absolutely but he does and he has kind of the biggest sulk in history. Uh ends up causing the death of many many different Greeks. Um, after that, um, his what we're going to call him, companion, lover, friend, Patrick, uh, the epic's not really clear about their relationship, but it's clear that they very, very much care about each other.

[00:26:13]They are absolutely a deep, deep relationship between them, and he goes out into the battle cuz he gets really upset by seeing all of his companions dying. So, Achilles lets Patrick go to war. Of course, Patrick tragically gets killed by Hector >> wearing his armor, right? Patrick wears Achilles's armor.

[00:26:30]>> Yeah, he's dressed up as Achilles. I mean, you know, this sense of them being kind of two halves of the same person, really, really strong. He uh dies in Achilles armor. Uh that gets taken by Hector, the prince of Troy, who kills Patrick. And in that, Achilles revenge just absolutely gets stoked.

[00:26:45]>> Does he think that he's killed Achilles?

[00:26:46]>> Yeah, he does initially trick you.

[00:26:49]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:49]>> Yeah. And then they take the helmet off and they're like, "Oh, no, it's not Brad Pitt."

[00:26:52]>> Yeah. [laughter] >> Okay. And so we now get the rage of Achilles, which is where he's like, "Vengeance mission. He's going to kill Hector."

[00:26:59]>> Yeah. That's exactly what happens. He gets back into battle gear. He his mom gets him divine armor. He gets all dressed up and he absolutely wipes out the battlefield. He fights with the gods. Um and eventually he ends up killing Hector, the one who killed Patrick. And he doesn't stop there.

[00:27:15]Hector begged him for a burial. And instead, what does he do? He ties him to the back of his chariot and he rolls him in the dirt and drags him around uh the tomb of Patrick.

[00:27:26]>> This guy's human, man.

[00:27:27]>> Yeah, he's he's pretty angry.

[00:27:28]>> He's really angry, isn't he? So eventually the gods have to say Achilles, this is enough. You know, this is too much.

[00:27:34]>> Like an intervention, isn't it?

[00:27:35]>> Yeah, exactly. Well, his mom comes down.

[00:27:37]Um she's, as I mentioned, a goddess. So she comes down, gives him the message, and just says, you know, Achilles, you've got to relax. You got to just eat and drink, have some sex, and you know, just basically take a chill pill and stop doing this.

[00:27:49]>> That's what moms are for, you know. You [laughter] know.

[00:27:51]>> Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

[00:27:53]>> Um and the poem finishes not with the kind of conquest of Troy, it finishes with a funeral. It does. Yeah. It ends with the funeral of Hector. Yeah.

[00:28:01]>> And it's actually a very beautiful scene because Achilles hands over the body that he has desecrated to to the, you know, to the father.

[00:28:08]>> What's left of it?

[00:28:08]>> What's left of Hector to Pam, the king of of Troy. And there is a funeral. And there is this sort of very moving moment of grief where both men acknowledge each other's pain.

[00:28:18]>> It's incredible. Well, we've been focusing on this this rage that does consume the epic, but we get to the end and in fact, the gods have been very careful to preserve Hector's corpse.

[00:28:27]actually, you know, he's being kind of kept for his relatives, for his family.

[00:28:30]>> That's nice of them.

[00:28:31]>> It's No, it's really good. And we get to them the end of the poem and we get to a moment where in fact Achilles suddenly has this kind of uh nighttime scene with Pry, the king of Troy, who comes steals out of the city, comes to Achilles tent, and he has this incredible scene where he kneels on the ground and he kisses that hands of Achilles, the man who killed his son, and he says, you know, I am doing this because I would like to have my son's body back to bury. and they engage in this amazing kind of scene of of kindness, of friendship.

[00:29:00]They share bread together. Um, and at that point then, uh, Pry goes home with his son's body.

[00:29:05]>> And that's the end of the poem.

[00:29:06]>> That is the end of the poem. They >> body doesn't get conquered. The war doesn't end.

[00:29:10]>> No. No.

[00:29:11]>> So, hang on. It took them 15,000 lines to get to that.

[00:29:14]>> Yeah. What we've done in about 10 minutes. That's >> I reckon I could have done that a little bit quicker. [laughter] >> Achilles is a hero, right? In the ancient Greek world, he's a hero. Just to sort of sum up what he's done, Kyle, um, he abducts a woman. He salts when he loses her. He lets his fellow Greeks die. In fact, he asks his fellow Greeks to die. He gets his boyfriend accidentally killed, then seeks murderous vengeance and desecrates the corpse. It's not the classic hero story we're familiar with in our Hollywood movies.

[00:29:41]>> Yeah, it's pretty extreme.

[00:29:44]>> Yeah, he's not John Mlan, is it? It's not Die Hard.

[00:29:46]>> No, but I mean, Batman was a bit naughty. [laughter] He's just beating up people for the fun of it.

[00:29:53]>> It's sort of interesting. The word hero doesn't feel appropriate by our morals.

[00:29:57]So, what is a Greek hero? Is it different?

[00:30:00]>> Well, what's interesting is that the word is the same. So, the ancient Greek word that Homer uses for hero is heros.

[00:30:05]It's where we get hero from, but it means something completely different.

[00:30:09]Um, so there's a definition of the hero that I really like, which is basically it is someone who is striving for immortality and will do anything to get that. and ultimately, ironically, proves that they can't do it and dies trying.

[00:30:24]>> Oh, wow.

[00:30:24]>> Wow. Live fast or die trying.

[00:30:26]>> Yeah. And that that's exactly what they're doing. And they're they're really they're living so fast that they actually end up bringing ruin to everyone around them. So, an ancient Greek hero, if you're looking at the Iliad and the Odyssey, is actually someone who can actually destroy his community in a lot of ways. But they're doing that because that is what they need to be remembered into the future.

[00:30:45]What they want above all is glory. The word is cleos in Greek and it means people talking about you. So the more extreme things you do, the more people are going to talk about you.

[00:30:55]>> Yeah. Okay. Despite his rage issues, Achilles, you know, does show compassion as we say and we get this funeral, this reconciliation, which is is kind of amazing. That's the Iliad. That is the story of the Iliad. It's the story of Achilles, his rage, and I suppose his his sort of brief moment of humanity at the end. Yeah. End of story.

[00:31:11]>> Yeah.

[00:31:12]>> And then we're on to the sequel poem, The Odyssey. M.

[00:31:16]>> And this is named after another great hero of the of the Trojan War.

[00:31:19]>> So, is this continuing where we left off?

[00:31:21]>> Well, it's not cuz in the meantime, they've already had the the sack of Troy. We've had the wooden horse being taken in. We've had Troy burning. We've had all of the captives parcled out.

[00:31:30]We've got everyone on the boats. We've had a bit of a problem with Athena who gets very angry with the Greeks. And then they all start getting sent home.

[00:31:37]So, with the Odyssey, we're just seeing that point where Adysius is now on his way home.

[00:31:41]>> So, I don't have to have read the first one. [laughter] Do you know what the the Odyssey actually gives you a bit of a recap? I think you'll be all right.

[00:31:48]>> It actually has flashback scenes, doesn't it? Which is feels so modern.

[00:31:51]Okay, so let's talk about the Odyssey.

[00:31:54]This is Adysius. He is one of the kind of great warriors who's gone out in this Greek mission to reclaim Helen of Troy.

[00:32:01]He's renowned for his intelligence and he's trying to get home to his wife and it just takes forever.

[00:32:06]>> Yeah. 20 years in total. That's how long Penelopey had to wait.

[00:32:09]>> Gosh, she must have been so bored. Well, she had a lot of weaving to keep her occupied.

[00:32:16]>> So much weaving, >> which sounds really exciting.

[00:32:17]>> And unweaving, of course.

[00:32:18]>> And unweaving. Exactly. But yeah, 10 years in the war, 10 years coming home.

[00:32:22]So, she's had a long wait. Yeah.

[00:32:24]>> Well, and then we've also got his son Tmicus, who was a baby when he left, and by the time he comes back is just about to become a man. So, he's also been waiting for his father to come home for that amount of time.

[00:32:33]>> That's Tom Holland in the movie.

[00:32:36]So we we get this story of a of one man's attempt to just get home after his he's already been out to war for 10 years and it's it starts >> where's he coming from? Western Turkey.

[00:32:45]So it's it's not that far.

[00:32:46]>> No, it's not that far to well to the Ionian islands. So that's around the other side of Greece. So he needs to go like across the Aian kind of around the southern Pelpine and then up towards the Ionian island.

[00:32:57]>> So it's a it's a trip.

[00:32:58]>> It's a trip but it's not going to be more than a couple of weeks. Yeah, I was going to say like a month at sea, maybe, you know, stop off, have a barbecue, but like it's >> but he goes into kind of major fantasy land. And when we start the Odyssey, we basically start with him on the island of a nymph called Calypso where he has been for seven years.

[00:33:16]>> Um, and that's the kind of initiating >> doing that. What are you doing over there?

[00:33:19]>> Point on the island. Yeah, >> on the island. I think I once went to Gwick instead of Heathro [laughter] and then when you realize you're like, "Oh my gosh, that's so far away."

[00:33:30][laughter] So I understand maybe like four years.

[00:33:35]>> You've experienced your own odyssey.

[00:33:36]>> Yeah. [laughter] >> But the rest, come on.

[00:33:39]>> Emily, what do we mean by nymph?

[00:33:41]>> Well, the Greek word for nymph is nymph, which means both a sort of minor goddess. It could also actually mean a bride, which tells you the way that they're thinking about these sort of nubile young women who are potentially sort of lingering on islands around the Mediterranean and waiting [laughter] to catch a man off guard and take him off his path.

[00:34:01]>> Right. Calypso is a sort of gorgeous eternal goddess, right?

[00:34:04]>> Yeah. She promises to make him immortal as well. Yeah.

[00:34:07]>> And she fancies him and she's like, "Look, we'll be lovers. Uh I'm more beautiful than all the the mortal women, so just stay here and we'll just have sex." and eat fruit.

[00:34:16]>> Yeah.

[00:34:16]>> Uh and he's like maybe for seven years he sort of like doesn't leave >> proaricating >> situationship.

[00:34:23]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [laughter] Absolutely.

[00:34:25]>> I get it for seven years. I get it.

[00:34:27]>> Yeah. I've got to get home to my wife, you know. Really? This time I will.

[00:34:30]>> This time I will. So he's stuck on hot nymph island. Let's talk about the rest of the plot of of the Odyssey which is incredibly complicated. So tell us some of the plots. I mean we can't do all of it. Just some standout. Well, what we've got going on basically are kind of three different levels at the same time. We've got Adysius starting out on Calypso's island and he still needs to get home.

[00:34:50]So, he's got the rest of his voyage to do. We've got the suitors in Ithaca who are basically 108 men. They really want to marry Penelopey and they have basically sat themselves down in the palace at Ithaca and just don't want to leave and they are determined to make that happen. We've then also got the teenage son Tmicus who goes on his own mini odyssey. And I kind of like this because he basically wants to be like his dad. So instead of Adysius doing an odyssey, he's Tmicus. So he does a Tmky >> and he goes on a like mini daddy trip to try and find his father. Um goes to a couple of Greek palaces and then ultimately comes back. So we've got all of those sort of three things happening at the same time. Adysius, of course, like when he is on his way back, we also get him uh stopping off at um a place called the Island of the Fiats, and he gives the story of his adventures of all of the things that happened to him before he got to Calypso's island. So, not only are we getting those things happening in forward progression, but we're also getting a flashback to what happened to him at Troy.

[00:35:46]>> And he has all sorts of issues. Do you know any of the kind of uh magical creatures that stop him?

[00:35:52]>> Um I've heard nymph already.

[00:35:54]>> Yeah. So, I'm guessing it's not one of those. What other stuff they got knocking about? Gargoyles.

[00:36:00]>> I mean, that's pretty close, actually.

[00:36:02]>> Not bad.

[00:36:03]>> Yeah.

[00:36:04]>> Have you heard of sirens?

[00:36:05]>> Yes.

[00:36:06]>> Yeah. Yeah, I have. The ones that sing to the sailors?

[00:36:09]>> That's right.

[00:36:10]>> And then they get there and they eat their heads or whatever they do. Well, they do.

[00:36:14]>> No, they don't. They don't. They just enjoy wrecking them on on the on the rocks.

[00:36:18]>> You sure they don't eat their heads?

[00:36:19]>> Yeah, I'm pretty sure that they don't.

[00:36:22]Um they I mean Homer describes them as being like bird women. So they've got sort of the heads of women but then they've got the kind of wings and talons of birds.

[00:36:29]>> I'm see now I've been to London Zoo [laughter] >> at feeding time for the vultures and they are eating heads.

[00:36:37]>> Yeah.

[00:36:37]>> They they got f when I when I was in drama school we had to do like animal studies >> and I chose a vulture and then they this was disgusting. They threw rabbits into the vulturing not live ones, dead ones.

[00:36:50]But you watch the vultures eat the rabbits and they stand on them and then just like rip their heads off and then get their beak inside the body. Nasty.

[00:37:00]>> That [laughter] >> it's nasty stuff. Now you're telling me that sirens have got bird bodies. It's making me more inclined to think that they're eating the heads.

[00:37:07]>> So it's going to be very [laughter] difficult for you to change.

[00:37:09]>> It's a hot take. It's a hot take.

[00:37:10]>> Fair enough. Um there's also there's also a cyclops.

[00:37:14]>> Oh, one eye.

[00:37:15]>> One eye. Big old cyclops. Sure. Who's who's the son of Poseidon, god of the sea?

[00:37:19]>> Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of a big problem.

[00:37:21]>> That's a real issue, right? Isn't it?

[00:37:23]>> Yeah. Well, because one of the reasons this is a problem, >> he's a nepoyclops.

[00:37:25]>> He [laughter] is. Exactly. Well, cuz he really wants his father to kind of get on his side when Adysius basically is a really really bad guest and not only eats the Cyclops food without asking him. But he also uh pierces him in the eye with a steak to blind him.

[00:37:39]>> Oh, come on. He's only got one.

[00:37:40]>> Yeah, I know. Um but then he does this great trick as well where, you know, he's a disser. He's very clever. So, he tells the Cyclops that his name is Nobody. So the Cyclops then calls out to his brothers and he says, "Guys, guys, nobody's blinded me." Which, you know, >> why are you telling me that?

[00:37:55]>> Yeah, I know. They're like, "Right, thanks. Back back to my shephering or whatever I was doing." Then Adysius, this he has this fatal kind of moment of what the Greeks would have called hubris, which is this kind of excessive pride. And he's managed to escape. He's got out by climbing underneath the sheep that the Cyclops has. So, he's clung under them and got out of the cave. Uh they get onto their ship and then he turns back and he says, "I want you to know that the person who did this to you was Adysius." Now that's really bad because then the Cyclops knows exactly who to pray to his dad, Poseidon, and to ask him to curse him. And that is the reason why Adysius ends up taking so long to get home.

[00:38:28]>> Yeah. Of all the gods, you don't want to curse you. God of the Sea when you're on a boat, mate.

[00:38:32]>> Yeah.

[00:38:33]>> Um he also encounters a witch >> called Cersei, >> and she turns his men into pigs.

[00:38:40]>> Inconvenient. Yeah, [laughter] but delicious.

[00:38:43]>> You know what I will say though is that after she transforms them into pigs, she transforms them back and when they transform back, they are younger and better looking than they were before.

[00:38:52]>> I don't want to eat bacon anymore.

[00:38:54]>> Yeah. And vegetarian. Yeah.

[00:38:56]>> Watch out. Is this the future of skincare?

[00:38:58]>> Well, there you go. Exactly. Just, you know, a little bit of kind of pig and then back to yourself and then you're 10 years younger.

[00:39:03]>> Would you would you do pig for a bit?

[00:39:04]>> How long?

[00:39:05]>> Okay.

[00:39:06]>> It's not very long. Okay.

[00:39:07]>> No, it's just enough for Adicius and her to have a chat and a drink.

[00:39:10]>> Yeah. you your version of not very long based on how long this is.

[00:39:14]>> I mean, he does end up staying with her and sleeping with her for a year. So, >> he's not very faithful really. A man trying to get back to his wife.

[00:39:20]>> They've got a very different version of one night stand.

[00:39:22]>> Yes, they have. Uh there's also the the sun god Helios. He gets in the way.

[00:39:26]>> Is that a guy that runs easy yet?

[00:39:29][laughter] >> No.

[00:39:31]>> A different guy who is the god of the sun who has some really nice cows.

[00:39:36]>> The best cows. Sacred cows.

[00:39:38]>> Sacred cows. And he really doesn't want those cows to be killed. And of course, what do Adysius's men do? They kill them and they eat them >> cuz they're really hungry.

[00:39:46]>> In their defense, they're really hungry and they don't eat pork anymore.

[00:39:48]>> No. And they don't want to eat the fish.

[00:39:50]They don't want to eat fish. Yeah. They just they don't really like it. They don't fancy it.

[00:39:53]>> Poseidon's been messing about.

[00:39:55]>> Yeah. Maybe.

[00:39:56]>> Basically, Helios gets really annoyed, asks Zeus to kind of have a go. And so Zeus strikes them with a lightning bolt.

[00:40:02]And then Adysius is the only one left.

[00:40:05]>> Yeah.

[00:40:05]>> Oh.

[00:40:06]>> So he's this sort of great captain. He's this great warrior. He's this great hero, but he gets all of his men killed.

[00:40:11]>> Yeah.

[00:40:11]>> Every single one of them.

[00:40:12]>> Yeah.

[00:40:12]>> And [clears throat] he only survives because he's so smart and he's he's the guy who came up with the Trojan horse.

[00:40:16]He's the kind of genius strategist, right? He does get home eventually >> and Penelopey, his wife, >> I have even forgot where I lived by then. [laughter] >> Yeah. He gets back.

[00:40:25]>> He gets back to Ithaca and Penelope doesn't recognize him.

[00:40:28]>> Yeah.

[00:40:28]>> Because he goes in disguise.

[00:40:30]>> Yeah. Well, this is the question. Does she doesn't she recognize him? So when he rocks up on Ithaca after 20 years, um Athena, the goddess, uh who is basically his patron goddess because she is the goddess of cunning and wisdom and that's exactly who he is. She meets him on the shore and she turns him into an old beggar to disguise him because obviously what he's got to do is he's got to make sure he's got all of his allies around him before he tries to get back into the house at Ithaca. He's come after 20 years. Nobody knows who he is. But yeah, so he kind of comes up to the palace disguised as a beggar and they have these really great moments of conversation between Penelope and Adysius the beggar where Penelopey says things like oh beggar your hands look so similar to my husband's hands. Um or you know >> Yeah, exactly. Whoops.

[00:41:14]>> You know, there are these moments where it's like near Mrs. or maybe did she didn't she recognize him?

[00:41:18]>> Yeah, >> he does effectively get rid of the 108 suitors.

[00:41:22]>> Yeah.

[00:41:22]>> Penelopey sort of she sort of sets a contest right with the bow. So, this is another one of these convenient things that happens is that Adysius, the beggar, happens to be in the palace and on that day, she decides that actually she's going to give up on Adysius and she's going to set a contest for her hand in marriage.

[00:41:37]>> To be fair to her, she waited for ages.

[00:41:39]>> She did. Yeah. It just is very convenient that it happened at the point that he's there. Um, she [clears throat] sets up this contest and says, "Whoever can string Odysius's old bow and can shoot an arrow through uh the axes is going to be able to be her new husband."

[00:41:53]Right? Of course, all of the suitors try, they fail. Adysius steps up and it's in this kind of amazing cinematic moment, he takes the bow, he strings it, he kind of turns back into himself and then he kind of shoots and the arrow and then slaughter follows and he basically just kills all of the men.

[00:42:10]>> He kills 108 men. He locks the doors, makes sure they have no weapons.

[00:42:15]>> Be tired.

[00:42:15]>> Yeah, I know.

[00:42:16]>> Relax, man. [laughter] >> You just You haven't seen your wife for ages. Just go do some smooching.

[00:42:21]>> Yeah.

[00:42:21]>> Killing everyone. These heroes are quite uptight.

[00:42:24]>> But they stole his stuff. They stole his stuff. They've been on his land. They've been stealing his stuff. They've been trying to >> trying to kiss his wife. Let it go.

[00:42:30]>> Okay. You know, >> well, he also does something worse, which is, well, I don't know if it's worse, but it's equally bad, which is that basically he kind of inculcates his teenage son, Tmicus, into this kind of slaughter.

[00:42:38]>> I don't know this word.

[00:42:39]>> Oh, inculcate.

[00:42:41]>> Basically, he kind of brings him into the world of being a kind of uh what what a hero is essentially in that time.

[00:42:47]He needs to teach him how to do that.

[00:42:49]And in doing that, he basically says, "You've got to take the 12 enslaved women in my house who I think I just remember.

[00:42:56]>> You're going to write it down." Oh, amazing. [laughter] >> I love that. That's going to be your only note for today.

[00:43:01]>> Yeah. Start making notes 50 minutes in.

[00:43:02]Great. [laughter] >> This is clearly the only clever thing I've said today.

[00:43:06]>> I forgot there's a test at the end.

[00:43:08][laughter] >> Um, so basically he makes him hang uh 12 of the enslaved women who Odysius has decided were not faithful to him. And so Tmicus has to kind of string them up in the courtyard only, I might add, after they have cleaned up the bodies of the suitors. So it's incredibly grim.

[00:43:24]>> Yeah. Adysius is meant to be the hero and in some ways he's a very different hero to Achilles because his brain's not born.

[00:43:30]>> Yeah.

[00:43:30]>> And he's he's meant to be kind of more loyal. He's, you know, he's trying to get home to his wife. It's nostalgia.

[00:43:34]It's nost, right? The pain of home.

[00:43:36]>> Yeah.

[00:43:37]>> But in some ways, he's equally violent.

[00:43:39]He gets all his men killed. He cheats on his wife and then accuses others of being unfaithful. He's quite hypocritical.

[00:43:45]>> Yeah. Well, and then we also end with this not only this kind of mass slaughter, but then all of the families of the suitors come in and are enraged that he's just come home and killed everyone.

[00:43:54]>> 108 families like, "Have you seen my son?" Uh, yeah. Um, yeah, sorry.

[00:43:59]>> Exactly. Awkward. And by the way, I'm Adysius and welcome home.

[00:44:02]>> Sure.

[00:44:03]>> Yeah. Um, so, you know, we have this really kind of problematic ending, but yeah. So, he is in many ways like Achilles. I said, you know, a hero. We could see a hero as a destroyer of communities. And yeah, he's lost all of his companions that he took to Troy.

[00:44:15]He's now come back and he's killed everybody. Um, on the other hand, compared to someone like Achilles, he is, as you said, much more kind of shrewd, much more cunning, much more clever. And that's what he's known for.

[00:44:25]He has loads of epithets, which are basically adjectives through the epic that describe him as like really cunning. Polymers is one of them. Really cunning, really clever. Of course, he's got Penelope who is equally clever, equally cunning, and she kind of matches him in his wits. So, there is a different dynamic going on there.

[00:44:41]>> Yeah. She spent this whole time weaving to slow down the suitors from marrying her. And then every night she unweaved everything that she weaved that day.

[00:44:47]>> So for 20 years they've been sitting there going, "Are you done weaving yet?"

[00:44:50]And she's like, "No, I'm sorry. It just it's taken really long.

[00:44:53]>> I'll do it. Give it to [laughter] me.

[00:44:54]I'll do it. I don't even know how to weave. I'll finish it."

[00:44:56]>> Pretty smart. [clears throat] And also is very clever. And the kind of parallels between Achilles and Adysius.

[00:45:01]I mean, they meet these two former friends. They meet again.

[00:45:05]>> You want to do something fun. You want sort of like bowling, maybe flight club.

[00:45:10][laughter] >> You want an activity based thing.

[00:45:12]>> Okay. So, at the darts.

[00:45:14]>> Yeah, >> something like that.

[00:45:16]>> Well, I don't know how the dance feels to you, but they they meet in the underworld. Does that feel dartsy?

[00:45:21]>> It doesn't feel as um interactive.

[00:45:26]>> Okay. [laughter] Yeah. No, they they meet in the underworld and Achilles says, "I made the wrong choice."

[00:45:32]>> Yeah. It's an amazing moment of kind of flashback and interacting with the Iliad. So, we talked about Achilles and Iliad who is sort of, you know, he ends up all out for this choice of he's going to burn out and just, you know, kill everyone around him because he wants people to remember him. Well, in the Odyssey, Adysius gets to talk to the spirits of the underworld. And Achilles comes up and Adysius says, "Oh, look, you know, you're king of all of the shades, you know, well done you." And Achilles says, "I would rather be the lowest laborer on the planet than the king of all of the dead."

[00:46:03]>> He regrets it.

[00:46:04]>> Well said. Yeah. But it's an amazing thing of like well if Adysius gets that message from Achilles then he has more knowledge than someone like Achilles did because he knows actually what is the right choice is to get back home. So it then becomes even more urgent that he does need to get back home and try and have that long life version.

[00:46:19]>> This guy's going everywhere.

[00:46:20]>> Yeah.

[00:46:21]>> We should talk about the women in these stories. You know your your wonderful book Mythica is about the women sort of written out of the story and we've mentioned some women. Penelopey of course the goddesses. How does this story work in terms of gender politics?

[00:46:32]M well obviously we've talked a lot about how this is a story that is about the glory of men and that's really kind of what the economy of ancient epic is.

[00:46:40]In fact another definition I could have given you earlier when we talked about what is epic is it is the stories of men. It actually calls itself that uh in Greek that's clea andron that means the stories of the glories of men. So um women just really aren't part of that economy. In fact what they are doing to that is that they are either helping men to do what they need to do. So think of Penelopey who helps Adysius to basically get reinstated as the king of Ithaca or they are obstacles to what the men need to do and that's like Calypso and Cersei who are basically holding up and again I'm putting that in quotation marks.

[00:47:13]Adysius on his way back home. Um so there's not that much space for them within the epics. At the same time there are women who kind of maybe just try and get their voices heard. Helen is a really great one.

[00:47:24]>> Yeah. We haven't talked about Helen.

[00:47:25]>> No. I mean, in traditional storytelling, she elopes with Paris, like she runs away with him. It's like, woo, let's get married and run away together. But in this in the way you told it, it made it sound like she didn't have a choice and Paris sort of grabbed her.

[00:47:38]>> Well, she kind of tells different versions of the story, which is really interesting. So, sometimes she talks about herself being unwilling and that she didn't want to go. At other times, she blames herself and she says, you know, I was the reason that the Trojan War happened and I feel awful about it.

[00:47:52]In fact, when Tmicus does his mini Tmcky and he goes on his trip, he goes to Sparta and he sees Helen and Menaaus.

[00:48:00]Like now we're after the Trojan War.

[00:48:02]Helen's got back home to be with Menaaus, her first husband again, really awkwardly playing sort of happy families telling stories to each other about the Trojan War.

[00:48:11]>> Darling, do you remember that time?

[00:48:12]Remember that time when the war, you know, my face and everything? Oh, >> yeah. Exactly. It's really, really uh funny. But she actually gives them drugs to try and make them forget what happened. Which I kind of think, you know, if you're Greece's biggest home wrecker, that's [laughter] that's what you're going to do. You're going to drugg your audience.

[00:48:26]>> You got to try everything really.

[00:48:28]>> Yeah.

[00:48:28]>> So, it's interesting. So, Helen, maybe the agency there is is tricky, but the the women in this story are sometimes obstacles. They're sometimes seducers.

[00:48:35]They're sometimes goddesses, but Athena is the sort of one true friend of Adysius. At least >> she is. And in fact, she's the one who really kind of motivates the plot of the Odyssey. In a lot of ways, it's the beginning of the Odyssey is her storming onto Olympus and saying to Zeus, you need to get Adysius off the island of Calypso. So, she's the one who kind of sets the narrative going. Um, and then at the very end when we've got the families, the suitors back on Ithaca who are kind of rising up and are really annoyed at what Adysius has done. It's her who calms everyone down. So, she's really kind of the one who's like taking Adysius's narrative in check and making sure everything happens right.

[00:49:08]>> So, there we go. We just did 27,000 words of poetry in about an [laughter] hour.

[00:49:14]So you can condense it. See?

[00:49:16]>> Yeah. The sort of edited highlights.

[00:49:18]It's I mean the they're extraordinary stories and poems. I mean is there anything that stood out to you? Anything that surprised you?

[00:49:24]>> Yeah, a lot. [laughter] >> Loads of it. Um mainly the dynamite. Um I think bring back dynamite. You don't hear about dynamite anymore.

[00:49:32]>> No.

[00:49:33]>> It's so vintage.

[00:49:34]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:49:35]>> Yeah.

[00:49:35]>> There must there must still be uses for it.

[00:49:38]>> I mean Yeah. Maybe not an archaeological site. Let's say no to dynamite. But maybe less so in in science and archology. But you know, but as a storyteller yourself, is there something is there anything in these stories that you sort of heard and went, "Oh, that's interesting. I wouldn't have done that."

[00:49:52]Or, >> you know, >> I wouldn't have done most of it. I will say that.

[00:49:56]>> But as a storyteller, I mean, in terms of the narrative, you know, the the structure of it, the flashbacks, the kind of three stories spinning simultaneously.

[00:50:02]>> Well, I mean, it's a lot like what we do when we're improvising. M we do call backs and you have like flashbacks or you have like 2 years later someone might shout from the side of the stage >> things like that but I can't believe how long this stuff took.

[00:50:16]>> Is that true? Are there years like our years?

[00:50:19]>> We're talking about myth here, right?

[00:50:20]Like is any of this true? Like I think you know one thing that people have talked about is for instance the Trojan War being 10 years. In some cultures the idea of kind of 10 years is something that you would use for endless. So it's also just a kind of way of demarcating like a really really big and long warge but also 20 years away for Adysius and he gets back and actually he's still kind of a young man right cuz he left when he was like 21 two probably >> you again get this kind of youthfulness so maybe he's got the Athena glow up >> so >> because yes he didn't have his pig >> no he didn't have his pig transformation he gets his moment >> he must sting though [laughter] after 10 years of trying to get home.

[00:50:59]Yeah. I mean, he had some baths on the way back. He got bathed by various of his friends.

[00:51:03]>> I bet he's wearing his own underpants.

[00:51:04]>> Definitely.

[00:51:06]>> At [laughter] one point he wasn't. At one point he washed up naked on the shore. So, yeah. Yeah. He got new clothes.

[00:51:11]>> All right. Well, it's been quite the ride. Um, so, uh, Mark's out of How many How many stars would you give The Iliad an Odyssey now?

[00:51:17]>> Oh, I loved it. I'm into it.

[00:51:19]>> And I really want to see this film now.

[00:51:20]>> Good.

[00:51:21]>> I wasn't bothered before.

[00:51:22]>> Brilliant. And now you are.

[00:51:23]>> Can I give it a four and a half?

[00:51:24]>> I'll take it.

[00:51:25]>> I'd like Yeah, I'd love to do that.

[00:51:27]>> I think Homer would be pleased with that. I think so.

[00:51:28]>> I'm really interested about the Achilles heel thing. I didn't know that.

[00:51:31][clears throat] That was about getting dipped in by his >> heel. And it's probably more of a Roman later thing. Is it?

[00:51:36]>> Well, it's definitely the first time it comes up is a lot lot later than than in Homer. So, yeah.

[00:51:42]>> The nuance window.

[00:51:47]>> Time now for the nuance window. This is where Kyle and I sit and snack on figs and olives and try not to turn into pigs while Dr. Emily whips out a liar and sings to us. Oh, wonderful muse. uh something that we need to know about the Iliad and the Odyssey. So, my stopwatch is ready. Here it is. Uh you have two minutes. Take it away, Dr. Emily.

[00:52:06]>> Why do we tell stories? What does the story have to do to survive nearly 3,000 years? I can't speak to 3,000 years of experience. But each time I come back to the Iliad and Odyssey in my lifetime, they mean different things to me, and each time it is a journey. As a teenager, the Odyssey to me was about Adysius's son trying to become himself between a mother he doesn't understand and a father he doesn't know. At university, burning the candle at both ends, the Iliad was about Achilles burning out in a blaze of glory. And more recently, as a young mother, I have come to see that same epic through the eyes of his mother, Thetus, the grief of losing a child too soon, the determination to do what she can for him because he matters more than anything.

[00:52:47]Literature gives you what you are looking for. And literature like the Iliad and Odyssey that have been read across many hundreds of lifetimes contain the lives and the thoughts, the hopes and the dreams, the paths taken by all the people before you who have read them. We mentioned Alexander the Great, who kept a copy of the Iliad beneath his pillow. And when he lived with Achilles, what he got from him was war, global conquest, and glory, and a young death that burns the world with it. It is a pattern of destruction and a story that so many of us see around us today. But this is not the only story the poems hold. These are stories that were born in change that from their oral origins were told again and again in different ways according to who was speaking and who was listening. And in this there is another Iliad and Odyssey. I see a story of reconciliation of community. A tale of warning against losing touch with the earth and the people around us. As I see it, the Iliad ends with a scene of human hope and heart that shows even the most resolute and destructive warrior Achilles in the dark in his hut on the beach with his hands kissed by the father of the man he killed. And they cry together for the families they have lost. They break bread together and Achilles offers to Pryam kindness handing back Hector's body for the humanity of burial. So let us cry together. Let us go on that journey and hang in the balance at the end and see that these poems that have lasted several thousand years remind us that it's not easy but you can. We can move past war and destruction. We can care for those around us. We can see through the eyes of others. And in so doing, we can read these poems as a journey towards humanity, towards heart, towards hope.

[00:54:25]>> Beautiful. Thank you so much.

[00:54:26]>> Makes me feel like I should have that at the end of my show. [laughter] >> Everyone comes out going, "Yeah, yeah, that's what that's exactly how I feel.

[00:54:33]>> I'm available." Oh, [laughter] great.

[00:54:35]Want to come to Swindon? Um, >> so what do you know now?

[00:54:45]>> Well, it's time now for the So, what do you know now? So, uh, Kyle, we've done a lot of talking. We've summarized 27,000 lines of poetry.

[00:54:52]>> Easy.

[00:54:52]>> Uh, yeah. Do you feel confident? You didn't make many notes.

[00:54:56]>> No, I didn't. I [laughter] sort of forgot that the book was there. It kind of blended into the table a little You were, you know, prioritizing the oral poetry.

[00:55:03]>> Yes, exactly. I was taking it in.

[00:55:05]>> Yeah.

[00:55:06]>> Is it still in there?

[00:55:07]>> We'll see. We'll see. 10 questions for you. Okay. Here we go.

[00:55:11]>> Question one. Which blind poet has traditionally been credited as the author of the Iliad and Odyssey?

[00:55:16]>> Homer.

[00:55:17]>> Very good. Question two. How were the Iliad and Odyssey first communicated?

[00:55:23]>> Song.

[00:55:23]>> They were they were sung. Sung live.

[00:55:25]Question three. What tool did Schlean use to excavate at Troy?

[00:55:29]>> Dynamite. Yes, I think he used shovels too, but he did use dynamite, which is not tremendously helpful. Question four.

[00:55:36]What event supposedly caused the Trojan War? Is a certain woman involved?

[00:55:42]His eyes are rolling around his face.

[00:55:44]Hopefully, they won't fall out.

[00:55:45]>> What event caused the Trojan War?

[00:55:47]>> Who running off or or being or being perhaps taken?

[00:55:51]>> Oh, cuz um what's his name? Had a slave and then Bingy Bob took the slave off.

[00:55:58]>> That's a different one. That's the start of the Iliad. I was thinking here of Helen and Troy. But that is good enough.

[00:56:02]>> Give him half a point. I'm giving you half a point. Half a point cuz you were memoring weren't you? So I'll give you half of that. Question five. What does Cleos mean in ancient Greek?

[00:56:11]>> It's what Achilles really really wanted.

[00:56:13][laughter] >> It's not in your notes.

[00:56:16]>> Story.

[00:56:17]>> No, it means glory. He wanted glory and fame.

[00:56:20]>> You can't you can give me half of rhyming. [laughter] >> Story rhymes. Fine. I'm giving him half for glory. Okay. Fine. Okay. Question six. Why do Achilles and Egamemnon fall out in the Iliad? Actually, you've already said this one.

[00:56:33]>> Because he took his slave off him.

[00:56:35]>> Very good. Clear question.

[00:56:37]>> I'm taking my sleeve.

[00:56:38]>> Question seven. What is the name of Adysius's faithful wife who waits 20 years for him?

[00:56:43]>> Penelopey.

[00:56:43]>> Very good. Question eight. Name one obstacle of many obstacles that Adysius faces on his 10-year commute home. He had told Cyclops who blinded him and then Cyclops said, "Dad, [laughter] >> very good.

[00:56:57]>> That that boy blinded me." And then he did some stuff to the sea.

[00:57:00]>> He did. That's very good. Question nine.

[00:57:02]What famous trick did Adysius design to get inside the walls of Troy?

[00:57:06]>> They hid in a horse.

[00:57:07]>> They did. The Trojan horse.

[00:57:09]>> Yes.

[00:57:10]>> Uh, question 10. I think this is for eight and a half out of 10. I've lost count to be honest.

[00:57:14]>> Yeah, let's say nine.

[00:57:15]>> Uh, okay. Let's say nine out of 10.

[00:57:16][laughter] This for nine out of 10 maybe. What regret does Achilles share with Adysius when they meet him in the underworld?

[00:57:24]>> Living too fast and dying too young.

[00:57:26]>> That's right. He wanted a boring life as a farmer. I'm giving you nine out of 10.

[00:57:29]>> Yes, sir.

[00:57:30]>> I think that's pretty good.

[00:57:31]>> That's excellent. I'm very pleased.

[00:57:33]>> Let's see if you can get a bonus point.

[00:57:34]What was the Greek name for a wandering poet who got their free meals for a good story? Do you remember? Ah, >> think famous queen song.

[00:57:42]>> Rapsod.

[00:57:43]>> Very good. I'm giving you 10 out of 11.

[00:57:46]>> Yes. [laughter] >> Nice one. I'm really happy with that actually.

[00:57:49]>> Well, thank you so much Kyle. Thank you so much Emily listener and if you want um more from Kyle obviously check out our Le Ericson episode which you know more wanderings more voyages uh in the Viking world and for more epic historical poetry we've got episodes on King Arthur and of course the Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh which is also very funny and surprising. And if you're here watching us on YouTube be sure to subscribe to be notified for future episodes. So click that little subscribe button and I just like to say a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner. We had the incredible Dr. Emily Hower from the University of Exat. Thank you, Emily.

[00:58:21]>> Thank you so much. It's been so much fun.

[00:58:22]>> It's been a pleasure. And in Comedy Corner, we had the brilliant Kyle Smith Bino. Thank you, Kyle.

[00:58:27]>> Thank you.

[00:58:27]>> And to you lovely listener, join me next time as we ask the historical muses to sing us another song about the past. But for now, I'm off home. Hopefully, it won't take 10 years. But you know what?

[00:58:36]British trains, it maybe will. Bye.