Hollywood’s Odyssey: The Historians' Verdict

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0:32Did you know that the ancient world's greatest monster killer? Well, he was also a man who left death and destruction all around him wherever he went. From the snake-filled crib at Thebes, to the impossible labours that took him across the ancient Greek world. Heracles, or Hercules if you prefer the Roman version. Well, he's one of the most extraordinary figures in myth. A hero whose life was as thrilling as it was brutal. I'm Tristan Hughes and I'm thrilled to be bringing Heracles' story to Australia this August

1:06on The Ancients Live Tour. I'm going to be joined by the brilliant Alistair Blanchard, Professor of Classics and Ancient History. And together we're going to dig into the myths, the geography, and the archaeology behind the labours. From the Nemean Lion and the Hydra to Troy and the tragic end of Greece's greatest hero. Now, tickets are on sale. We are coming to Sydney on the 3rd, Brisbane on the 4th, Perth on the 6th, and finishing in Melbourne on the 9th of August. It's going to be epic.

1:37Tickets are selling fast, so book yours now so you don't miss out at fane.com.au. I cannot wait to see you there. Ellie's Eden was created from the same belief that started as your standard. Families should have access to good food and healthy living. Named after the founder's granddaughter, Ellie's Eden reflects commitment to strong, healthy plant starts grown with care in Oregon. These are carefully selected varieties chosen for gardeners who value quality, vitality, and dependable growth. From trusted seeds to thriving plant starts, Ellie's Eden helps you plant with confidence

2:12and grow something meaningful. Explore Ellie's Eden at azurestandard.com.

2:20The Odyssey. For nearly 3,000 years, Homer and his epic poem have inspired countless artists, authors, and filmmakers. And now, one of cinema's biggest directors, Christopher Nolan, has taken on the epic homecoming story of Odysseus, reimagining it for modern-day audiences on the silver screen. I'm Tristan Hughes, this is The Ancients, and I'm once again joined by acclaimed classicist Dr. Emily Hauser. Over the last two weeks, we've unpacked the story of Homer's

2:50Odyssey, but now we are turning to Nolan's Odyssey. We're going to be exploring everything from his portrayal of the Greek gods to Agamemnon's striking Batman-esque armour, asking what the film gets right, where it takes creative licence, and whether it's worthy to be known as the best adaptation of Greek myth ever made. It's safe to say there are spoilers ahead, so if you're trying to avoid them, look away now. Otherwise, let's get into it.

3:29Emily, it is great to have you back on the show. It's wonderful to be back. It's been some time since we last chatted. I mean, last time we chatted, we hadn't seen Christopher Nolan's Odyssey. Now we have. Yeah, last time we were on the edge of our seats. Well, yeah, it's been quite the few weeks. And to attend the premiere as well on Leicester Square, that was quite a surreal experience. It was absolutely surreal. I have been saying to friends, you know, you always kind of go to see a Christopher Nolan movie, but to go and see a Christopher Nolan movie with Christopher Nolan, it's pretty cool. And they had the Trojan horse set up in Leicester Square and it was very cool and glitzy. But now

4:02it's out and everyone is going to see it. And the reviews are already coming in thick and fast from all corners. Should we get some overarching thoughts? First of all, what did you think? When you left that theatre in Leicester Square, what were your overall thoughts? First of all, well, it was a kind of combination. And I suppose there's that split personality that I have because I was going there as an audience member, as someone who's familiar with these big epic cinematic movies that Nolan makes. And so coming out, there was this feel of having had an experience,

4:33having had a kind of emotion thrumming through me, those action scenes, that kind of viscerality, the dynamism of it. That was definitely still kind of resonating with me on coming out. But I think already this was happening while I was watching it. There was also that kind of clicking in my mind of kind of like, oh, OK, this is what's happening. These choices have been made. And I think I was starting to get into that, right, I can understand that actually in generating this version of the Odyssey, here are all of the other things that have been left out. And here is kind of what we're left with. And I was starting to kind of reason that through.

5:05Because this is interesting, because our two kind of different angles on this is, of course, you've studied the texts so much, the classical texts in the Greek and in the ancient Greek as well. And I've kind of more approached it from very recently looking at the Bronze Age world that is loosely based on that there are kernels of truth. So when I was watching it, you know, when there were those rogue mentions of kind of a Bronze Age world, which will no doubt delve into that got that piqued my interest more. Whereas when you're seeing it, you know, you are you're very much analysing the story and seeing basically, as you say, when Nolan was taking it, his his

5:40adaption, his adaptation of the Odyssey. Exactly. And that's the thing is every reworking of the Odyssey or indeed any text is going to be doing its own thing. And that's really what, as a scholar, part of what my work is, is looking at how people, writers, authors, dramatists, they take an old text and they make it into something new. The question is, what have they made of it? And I think that was kind of what was clicking away. So I suppose that's what we're going to be talking about today. Absolutely. I mean, first of all, for me, I must admit, you know, in Gladiator,

6:11when it's like, are you entertained? Are you entertained? I was very much entertained by watching the movie. And it's like, you know, some three hours long and but it didn't feel like I was sitting there for three hours. I mean, it was very much kind of from scene to scene. And although it was very Nolan in how you're jumping around from from different place to different place, one, one time you're in Ithaca, then you're in Sparta, then you're with Odysseus on Calypso's Island, then you've got a flashback of the Trojan War, then you're back to Ithaca when Odysseus before he's gone for the Trojan War, then you're hearing about Mycenae. And yet,

6:43I think it kind of worked. Am I saying this from as someone who knows the complexity of the Odyssey and that story and the fact that it's not a linear narrative? Or am I speaking for the for the wider public, that actually, his narrative was easy to follow? And I'm not sure I know the answer to that yet. It's difficult, isn't it? Because I think that as someone who is familiar with the Odyssey, you come there and you're expecting that kind of nesting of stories, those parallel timelines. So we've got in the Odyssey, we've got these kind of three parallel timelines

7:16between what's happening to Odysseus, his, you know, he starts off on Calypso's Island, and he's trying to get back to Ithaca. We've got what's happening to Telemachus, he's journeying to look for Odysseus. And we've got what's happening on Ithaca, and that's Penelope with the suitors. And the poet manages to kind of thread those really well. Now, I think actually, the way that Nolan's cinema was working to incorporate those flashbacks, those parallel narratives actually worked so well as an Odyssey and analogue. And that said, I wonder if an

7:47audience member who's not kind of expecting that, as you say, would be like, okay, well, we're on Calypso's Island. Why are we on Calypso's Island when Telemachus is off in Pilos and Penelope's in Sparta, Penelope's in Ithaca, excuse me. So it just felt like maybe that could be disjointed for an audience member. But I think for me, it worked really well. Did you know that the ancient world's greatest monster killer? Well, he was also a man who left death and destruction all around him wherever he went. From the snake-filled crib at Thebes to the

8:18impossible labours that took him across the ancient Greek world. Heracles, or Hercules if you prefer the Roman version. Well, he's one of the most extraordinary figures in myth. A hero whose life was as thrilling as it was brutal. I'm Tristan Hughes, and I'm thrilled to be bringing Heracles's story to Australia this August on The Ancients' live tour. I'm going to be joined by the brilliant Alistair Blanchard, Professor of Classics and Ancient History, and together we're going to dig into the myths,

8:50the geography, and the archaeology behind the labours. From the Nemean Lion and the Hydra to Troy and the tragic end of Greece's greatest hero. Now, tickets are on sale. We are coming to Sydney on the 3rd, Brisbane on the 4th, Perth on the 6th, and finishing in Melbourne on the 9th of August. It's going to be epic. Tickets are selling fast, so book yours now so you don't miss out at fane.com.au. I cannot wait to see you there. It also felt very much in that, you know, they very

9:22much had to pick which characters they were going to feature, because you could easily fall into the trap of adding too many of these big names and over-complicating the story. The one I think of, for instance, is Achilles, or something like that, or getting Achilles into the story. Or there are certain episodes of The Odyssey that Nolan does omit, but I think I can understand that, because then it just goes into, it gets too much. And yet, kind of reinforcing that point, the inclusion of Agamemnon, which I think we'll delve more into, you know, as someone who's a bit of a side character, and yet

9:55in how he's portrayed as this larger-than-life figure, and then you hear from time to time, little bit of insights into what happens to him and his fate. I felt that was probably the extent that Nolan could get away with, with adding kind of an extra figure to the story, to those three main plot points, but it worked, I think. Well, absolutely. And again, that's very Odyssean. And I suppose I'm not here to just be like, well, this is accurate to The Odyssey, and therefore that's good. But I think what's worth pointing out is that that incorporation of Agamemnon as a parallel story is very much a

10:28feature of The Odyssey. And I think that it works in Nolan just as much as it works in The Odyssey. And the reason is that essentially Agamemnon is a parallel Greek. He is going on his own return back from Troy. However, when he gets back to Greece, his wife Clytemnestra has been unfaithful, and she ends up murdering him. And so through The Odyssey, we get these reminders that Odysseus has to watch out, that his fate is not like Agamemnon's. And that's exactly what I think is happening here as well,

10:58is that Agamemnon there is this kind of shadow in the background, where you're sort of thinking, well, is the same thing going to happen to Odysseus, or is Penelope going to be? And that's how Agamemnon's story works in it, in the fact that it's applying it to Odysseus and his homecoming. It's a warning. And what I also found interesting, shall we talk about the gods first of all? There's only one deity that's shown on screen in Nolan's Odyssey, which is Athena, played by Zendaya. And, you know, the rest, they talk about, you know, Poseidon and the sea and Zeus and the castle of the sun god Helios,

11:29but they're never shown. And I also quite like that once again, because otherwise you could get too many characters, too much of mixing gods and goddesses with the heroes themselves and actually focusing on the humans. I really enjoyed that aspect. Yeah. So let me start with maybe what the Odyssey does. I can lay out kind of how that's similar or not to the Odyssey, and then we can think about what that does for Nolan. Because in the Odyssey, I think that's actually fairly close to what we see gods doing in the Odyssey. We're not seeing what we see in the Iliad, for example, where we've got massive councils of the gods, where we go up

12:02onto Olympus, we see Hera, we see Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Ares, you know, all of the main gods. We hear a story about the gods in the Odyssey, but we're not kind of going up to the gods as much as we do in the Iliad. The Odyssey actually begins with Zeus outlining the folly of mortals and how mortals are all responsible for their own mistakes. And then Athena is the one who becomes the driving force of the Odyssey, who really is an externalisation of Odysseus's inner cunning, his ability to create a stratagem, because of course, she's the goddess of kind of craft and wisdom. So I think

12:37there are lots of reasons why that is looking back to the Odyssey. However, I think what I would say in the way that Nolan does it is that it's made quite clear, not only that Athena is the only goddess there, but she is very specifically tied to Odysseus's psyche. And I think the effect of that, so just to give an example, we've got moments where Odysseus is walking along the shore and he'll be wrestling with some inner demon. And that's the point where Athena comes to him and she starts speaking with him. But she then always sort of vanishes in Nolan. And there's this sense of,

13:09was she even there at all? There is more of this sense of the unknowability of the god. And is she really real or is she just Odysseus's imagining? Because you've got the eyes of Athena, right? And it's not just Odysseus, it's Telemachus who says that as well. And you're actually wondering, is this Athena or not? I think they do it with the beggar at the beginning and it's actually not clear. Well, this is the thing that's so interesting because in the Odyssey, there is a mentor for Telemachus, whose name is Mentor, which is where we get that word from. But that is Athena in a human

13:40form, a male human form. And when she leaves, she will often leave in the form of a bird and everyone will look up and will be like, oh, look, that was Athena. And they will realise that a god has been visiting them in human form. Here, Telemachus comments and he says, oh, you've got the eyes of Athena, but that is never confirmed. So the question is, is it all within the minds of men? Or is it something that, yes, that is Athena, but only Telemachus can see? I think, isn't it the character of Mentor who was actually killed in the ambush of the suitors

14:11near the end? So it's almost proving, actually, he was just a loyal ally of you, Telemachus. He wasn't actually a god in disguise. Exactly. And so I think there is an inching towards the assumption that in fact, Athena is a figment of Odysseus's imagination. I think the clinching point to that is when Odysseus is having a kind of traumatic flashback. We'll talk about these, I'm sure. But he has a moment where he's remembering the fall of Troy and he sees a woman being taken by the Greeks at the foot of a statue.

14:42Now, that seems to be quite an obvious reference to the rape of Cassandra, which we talked about in another of our episodes, actually, where Cassandra and, you know, she's the prophet, the priestess of Troy, and she's raped by the Greeks. And that is a decisive turning moment in the fall of Troy. Now, Odysseus remembers that in Nolan's movie, but she is played by Zendaya. So she looks like Athena. Now, that cannot be Athena. But what's happening is clearly the representation of women in Odysseus's mind has taken on the form of Athena and has taken on the form of Cassandra.

15:14Right. That's interesting. But when I saw that part of the movie near the end, I think we might as well start with Odysseus's portrayal. I thought he was seeing the statue and he was seeing his men go up to that statue of the goddess Athena and decapitating the statue. But he was portraying, he was visualising that, like that, that statue as a human being, as Athena herself. And it was actually almost as if they were decapitating the statue. I didn't think when I watched it, first of all, that it was a representation of Cassandra in the movie, but it may well have been.

15:47Well, I think that's the beauty, isn't it? That we can sort of talk about this and think about that. So you're absolutely right. That is the lair that, you know, we see the decapitation of the statue of Athena. However, in the myth, Cassandra is raped at the foot of Athena's statue. So I think what we've got is we've got two lairs. We've got the goddess being assaulted and we've got the women being assaulted and those emerging in Odysseus's memory as the figure of Athena. And because in the Odyssey, it's not there at Poseidon's mercy straight away. I mean, Athena is angry with Odysseus and his crew at the beginning when they leave Troy. And she causes the initial

16:21troubles that Odysseus and the rest of the heroes have leaving Troy, right? Yeah. Well, exactly. She's not angry specifically with Odysseus in the myth. She's angry with the Greeks generally and particularly a man known as the Lesser Ajax, who is the one who has initiated this rape on Cassandra in her temple, which she sees as a kind of sullying of her pure temple. So yes, that's what she brings that big storm down on the Greeks. And that's what initiates the problems with the returns in the myth. And it's only then later, once Odysseus gets to

16:52the cave of the Cyclops, that actually the real problem with Poseidon begins, which I think we've got so much to say about how the movie treats that. I mean, absolutely. I mean, I'll let you decide. Shall we start with the Cyclops or shall we start with Odysseus's portrayal? I wonder if we should start with the Cyclops because it's so pivotal in how Odysseus is portrayed. I think we can do them together. Well, let's do the Cyclops then, because first off, like in regards to one of the epic episodes of the Nolan movie, I think the scenery is amazing, quite frankly, kind of, especially when they

17:22follow that lone sheep up to the cave. The creation, the portrayal of the Cyclops is haunting. I've had one friend who's come to me, so I'm going to have nightmares, you know, for weeks because of that portrayal of the Cyclops. But what did you think of the whole scene? Or shall we set the scene first of all, shall we remind ourselves about what happens with Odysseus and the Cyclops? Absolutely. So let's give the context of the myth and as we hear it in Homer. Essentially, in Homer, Odysseus and his men come to this beautiful lush island that is kind of riddled

17:54with goats and sheep. And there are clearly farmers, shepherds, goat herds there. They come to this abandoned cave. They think that's the cave of one of the local shepherds. This person has been making cheeses. They come in, they help themselves to the cheese. And then who should come back, but not a kind of peace-loving shepherd, but a monstrous cyclops with one eye who comes into the cave, realises that Odysseus and his men are there, and then ends up eating several of them. Odysseus, however, being a kind of cunning trickster, manages to get his way out of this

18:28in several different stratagems. So there are kind of several layers to this. The first layer is that they have a conversation. And when the cyclops asks, as you always do of someone who has come into your house, you know, who are you? Where do you come from? Odysseus says, my name is Nobody. And the second layer of the trick is then that he has brought wine with him. And so he offers wine, and that's a kind of very typical guest gift. He gets the cyclops drunk. And then when he's drunk and asleep, he then drives a stake into his eye. And then the third is that they need to get out of

19:00the cave because the cyclops keeps rolling a stone in front of the door to the cave. So they cling underneath the sheep. And as the cyclops lets the sheep out in the morning, he feels the backs of the sheep. By now he's blind, so he can't see. And the men are clinging underneath. And so that's how Odysseus and his men escape. Now, the next bit is really the kind of most important bit in the Odyssey, because it's at that point that Odysseus looks like he has managed to trick his way out of this almost impossible situation. He's shown his smarts. He's shown how clever he is. The cyclops wails to

19:33his brothers and he says, brothers, nobody has blinded me, you know. So obviously Odysseus has really got away with this. However, he then gets on his ship and he turns around and he is incapable of not taking the glory for this deed. And he shouts back, I want you to know that the person who has done this to you is Odysseus, son of Laertes from Ithaca. This is the overconfidence. This is the arrogance. This is, as we mentioned in a previous episode, this is the hubris that damns his crew, quite frankly. Indeed. And that is such an important moment because that is the point, because he's given

20:08the cyclops his name. The cyclops can now curse him. And the cyclops, of course, is the son of Poseidon. So wrong person to give your name for a curse. What's really interesting about what Nolan has done here is, yes, you're right, the visual imagery is very striking. The focus, as I felt throughout the fantasy travels, is on generating monsters that will kind of haunt the imagination. Is that really what the Odyssean cyclops is doing? No, he's not. What he's doing is he's setting up a way for Odysseus to prove how clever and cunning he is. The Odysseus in Nolan's

20:44Odyssey does not come up with calling himself nobody. He helps his men to do the steak into the eye, yes, but he doesn't get him drunk first. So there's no trickery. And then when he leaves, he doesn't turn around and he doesn't shout back his name. The fundamental thing for me, I think, was that the cyclops also isn't enabled to speak. They are sort of surprised when he's suddenly muttering at some point. He's gutturally muttering Poseidon. And I couldn't hear them muttering. I couldn't quite understand what he was saying. They were saying

21:16he was saying Poseidon or something like that, weren't they? Yeah. They interpreted it for us, essentially, which is also interesting, isn't it? Because it was sort of making this monster sound sort of other and barbaric, not speaking in a way that we can understand. In the Odyssey, the cyclops speaks perfectly to Odysseus. They have a very kind of civilised, cultured conversation. In fact, that's the problem because Odysseus has actually been a very bad guest. He's come in, he's eaten all of the cyclops' food. The cyclops has asked him who he is. He's given him the wrong name. So all of these, in fact, in the Odyssey are presenting

21:47the cyclops as not a monster, but in fact, potentially more civilised than Odysseus. And what's happened here is we've gone back to sort of the stereotypes where we've got this kind of grotesque monster who can't speak, who is kind of this formless shape. And then we've got Odysseus who also does not converse with him and does not give his name and therefore, crucially, does not cause the downfall of the return, which he does in the Odyssey. And it's interesting how Nolan approaches it because you mentioned in kind of one of those

22:20parts early on is Odysseus's men entering the cave and then eating the cheese. And you do see that in the movie. And so you don't see them bringing in wine. And then almost kind of that monstrous aspect of the cyclops again, how they do it with the lighting, the kind of the cyclops disappears almost in the cave. And then this hand comes down and picks two up and eats them. And you can hear the kind of the crunching of the human bones as they're devouring it. And he said that kind of that monstrous aspect. And rather than that conversation part, as you say, which is a key part of the text. So he doesn't go for the story of I am nobody, then later the hubris being him

22:56saying, I'm Odysseus. Instead, it's him almost trying to, well, deliberately trying to annoy the cyclops by saying, I'm just going to shoot an arrow in his face or in his body, which is men just like, dude, why the hell have you done this? And so yeah, it's interesting, rather than going for the conversation, rather than going for the speech, it's just Odysseus deciding I'm going to shoot an arrow in him and see what how how angry I can make this monster. Exactly, which is such a different thing. And one wonders whether, you know, that is Nolan saying,

23:28well, do you know what cinema is a different medium? And therefore I'm going to make instead of my Odysseus, who reviles the cyclops in words, I'm going to make him revile him with an arrow and physical action. However, that has an automatic consequence for how Odysseus's character then is built, because then his character is not one of cunning and hubris. It's one of force against the cyclops. And then again, a force and perhaps a slightly, as you say, stupid decision, rather than one that is of overweening arrogance. So it's a very different, perhaps more mental depiction of the hero. And

24:03importantly, I think what the function of that is, is to make him less culpable for the fact that in fact, he is the one who then brings down the curse that destroys them all. There was a lot of attempt to kind of excuse Odysseus as the leader of his men. And I think that's the beginning of it. And then we get to the Lastrigonians, this race of giants, which you will almost certainly have seen visual depictions of before you even go to watch the Odyssey, because it's the image that is shown on many, many posters for the Odyssey at this very moment. And first of all, once again, like the

24:38cyclops, how they're portrayed, how they're dressed, the kind of the medieval plaitish slash futuristic armour that they wear. It is meant just to once again give that horrific alien, alien almost kind of portrayal, right? I find it really interesting that they're on so many of the posters, because there's obviously, they have a visual appeal. That's clearly why they're there. In Homer, there isn't really that much of a visuality to the Lastrigonians. In fact, they're quite an easy episode to skate over.

25:12In a lot of ways, they replicate the cyclops in being giants, in being eaters of humans, and in throwing massive boulders at the ships. All of those things the cyclops does as well in the Odyssey. What Nolan has done clearly is to kind of really lean into that, okay, I want my monsters to be as monstrous as possible, as strange, as alien, as you say, and then has really kind of let his imagination go to town with them. And I think it really speaks to the fact that this is a movie that

25:43wants to entertain, that wants to generate action. You know, there is a huge threat to these, you know, you get that feeling in the movie, that you are constantly having Odysseus and his men beaching their ships, going inland, engaging with some monster, and then running back. And I had this sort of sense almost of deja vu when we were watching the Lastrigonians. Oh my gosh, it's happened again. I think that's what Nolan is going for, this endless array of terrors ahead of them. But also, I think what you're seeing is that kind of, I think there's a lot of focus on the crew themselves, isn't there? And how they're slowly getting really, oh, what's the word? They are not

26:21liking Odysseus's leadership, right? They are very much laying the blame at his feet. And they're the ones who think that actually Odysseus is angering the gods from going back to the Cyclops. And it's really, disillusioned is the word. They gain more and more disillusioned. And with the Lastrigonians thing, I think I watched that. And then you see the kind of, what is quite frankly, a slaughter. And that's when most of his ships are destroyed and he only has one ship left after they leave that part of the story. That I noticed in that kind of the bloodshed and the brutality of the

26:52Lastrigonians attacking, I think there's only one Lastrigonian who is killed by one of Odysseus's crew. And I think it's by Odysseus himself. The rest, it is just Odysseus's crew are getting killed left, right and center. So I think there's a real emphasis there on, at that moment in the story, you know, Odysseus being, growing anger towards Odysseus amongst his comrades, which I don't know is shown so much in the Odyssey itself. No, not at all. And I think it is a really interesting interpretation because I think you

27:23can think about it from the men's perspective and think what on earth is happening here. So in the Odyssey, with the episode of the Lastrigonians, Odysseus moars his own ship off from the harbour and all of the others put their ships up in the harbour. And that's why they all get destroyed. Whereas he's the guy, again, it's this sort of cunning, this ability to foresee what's going to happen. And that's why he and his crew, that one ship get away. So I think Nolan is definitely pointing something out here. I think what's interesting is that,

27:54and as that mutiny was sort of progressing and the men's sense of that growing disillusionment, I found that really interesting. However, Odysseus' response in Nolan is instead to say, oh, yes, I'm really sorry. I'm going to learn. I repent. And he spends so much time doing that instead of what we see in the Odyssey, where we have a much more complicated hero who essentially, you know, you'll have these, like after the Lystragonians or after the Cyclops, you'll have these one-liners in Homer where it says, and this is Odysseus telling the tale at this point, he says,

28:27and then we sailed away and we were happy because we'd survived, but we were sad for the comrades that we'd lost. And that's the kind of Homeric summation. Now here we're going deep into the psychology of the crew, yes, but also of the leader. Yes. And I mean, you get the climax that almost in the next scene, which is where you actually have a mutiny described. And we'll explore that right after this. Ellie's Eden was created from the same belief that started as your standard. Families should

29:04have access to good food and healthy living. Named after the founder's granddaughter, Ellie's Eden reflects commitment to strong, healthy plant starts grown with care in Oregon. These are carefully selected varieties chosen for gardeners who value quality, vitality, and dependable growth. From trusted seeds to thriving plant starts, Ellie's Eden helps you plant with confidence and grow something meaningful. Explore Ellie's Eden at azurestandard.com. In a world where swords were sharp and hygiene was

29:34actually probably better than you think it is. Two fearless historians, me, Matt Lewis, and me, Dr. Eleanor Janaga, dive headfirst into the mud, blood, and very strange customs of the Middle Ages. So for plagues, crusades, and Viking raids, and plenty of other things that don't rhyme, subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. But of course, the next big place is Circe's Island. And this does play a big part in Nolan's story. And as mentioned before the break, following on for the Lystrigonians, you see the disillusionment of his crew come to a head and this

30:27repentive portrayal of Odysseus in the fact that there is a mutiny when they reach dry land. Yeah. And this is something that we're not seeing in the Homeric Odyssey. So this is absolutely a Nolan introduction. Here, we've got this mutiny in Nolan on the shores of Circe's Island, where they essentially have lost confidence in Odysseus's leadership. And they all decide that they are going to be the ones to go up to Circe's palace. Now, in the Odyssey, it's Odysseus who decides cautiously to send a party because he's not quite sure what's going on. So very much a kind of different leadership here.

31:01However, of course, in Nolan's version, that does Odysseus very well because the troops, the comrades who have mutinied now go up to Circe's palace and they are the ones who get turned into pigs. So we end up with the same end result. It's just a different reason for that party going up by themselves. And the portrayal of Circe, first off, it looks like somewhere like St. Kilda, some part of the highlands and, you know, in this kind of pebble bay and then climbing up this slope. And then what very much from the Odyssey, seeing all these strange animals going up to Circe's hut.

31:34But the portrayal of Circe itself, it's, dare I say, it is, it is almost to a sense an old hag in a hut on her own. And then the transformation into pigs themselves. I've still got that picture in my mind. The kind of the, how Circe, and I've forgotten the name, the actress's name. Samantha Morton. How Samantha Morton does it where she kind of puts her hands and moulds their faces into the pigs and you can almost see the bone structure changing.

32:07That sent chills down my spine in that portrayal of Circe and her magic and how she did it. Yes, absolutely. They really lent in there to the kind of witch imagery, which, you know, you've got the raven in the cage there and you've got, as you say, this kind of lone older woman. And I think that was an interesting choice. In Homer, of course, Circe is an ageless, immortal goddess. And she's not, in fact, described as a witch. She's described as someone who has a lot of knowledge about plants.

32:41So it is her ability to draw on the power of herbs and plants. Many drugged Circe. Many drugged Circe. That's the one. Exactly. So it's fascinating to see this more witchy version of Circe. On the other hand, as you say, that transformation, the physicality of that transformation, I really felt that she was almost being connected to a potter because she was sort of moulding the clay of their flesh into pigs. And I think there was something really sort of drawing and dynamic about the way that she did that.

33:15I also think what I liked about Circe's portrayal was that it was really the only time that we had any discussion, really, of the possibility of sexual assault, the possibility of violence that this male crew would enact on a lone female. Now, she talks about their hunger. So we get the connection between their physical hunger and then them turning into pigs. But also there is a deeper hunger than that. And she's very frightened when they first come in.

33:47And I think my first feeling when I saw that was that this looks to me like this is a response to Madeleine Miller's Circe novel, where Circe transforms the men into pigs in Madeleine Miller's version because she is aware that she is a woman on her own. And this is what she does to protect herself. Now, I find that fascinating because then we've got not just the Odyssey being responded to, but we've actually got one of these modern Greek myth reimaginings also kind of making its way into the tapestry. And what do you think? Because I remember when we chatted about this in the past, you mentioned how in the Odyssey,

34:22when Odysseus foils Circe's plan almost, you know, he then stays on the island for a year and they have a sexual relationship. This, in Nolan, there's none of that at all. There's very much clear that that's not the case. What did you think of that? I mean, I can understand it. It's kind of, it's in that wider portrayal of how Nolan wants to portray Odysseus and kind of putting aside the more infamous parts of his story.

34:52But I'm keen to think what you, I'm keen to hear what you thought of it. Yeah, well, absolutely. It's a sort of flattening, I think, of the complexity of Odysseus' character and the kind of multiple mistakes he makes in the Odyssey. And he's allowed to make those mistakes, right? So we've talked about the mistake with the Cyclops. This is another one where he stays with Circe. I mean, mistake, I'm going to put that in quotation marks. But, you know, if we're believing the narrative that he wants to get back to Ithaca and to Penelope, he ends up staying with Circe for a whole year, having sexual relations with her.

35:23And it is his men who have to remind him that now would be a good time to get going. You know, otherwise, one wonders how long would he have stayed there? And that, again, really importantly, is his decision in the Odyssey. So here we've got an Odysseus in Nolan who is very much being, obstacles are being thrown in his way. He is outsmarting them. And then he just very quickly moves on. And the only time where he actually sort of gets trapped or waylaid is when he spends time with Calypso in this version. But again, we're told it wasn't his fault.

35:56And Calypso is such an interesting figure in Nolan because she appears right at the beginning. And then interspersed throughout. And there's almost she is the key, the mechanism through which Odysseus is remembering his story, is remembering his crew. And once again, the crew come back to the front and form to, well, right front and centre, you know, with Odysseus and his remembering of everything else. It's not just the traumatic events of the Trojan War. It's not just the monsters. It's remembering the many faces of his crewmen, quite frankly, isn't it? Absolutely.

36:26And there is this sense of a deep trauma here that he doesn't want to. He's sort of shielding in his psyche. He's shielding himself from remembering those crew members because he can't deal with their loss. You've got that really strong sense. Yes, Calypso in Nolan is a vehicle for memory, but she's also a vehicle for forgetfulness. And I think that's really important because in the Odyssey, one of the very first episodes that they encounter on their adventures are the Lotus Eaters, where they come ashore and there is this amazing lotus blossom and you eat it and you completely forget everything around you.

37:02You forget what you needed to do. And it's Odysseus there who drags his men back and takes them back to the ships. Now, we don't get that in Nolan, but instead we get Calypso as a kind of purveyor of the Lotus who is deliberately drugging Odysseus. And there is a kind of ambivalence about whether she's drugging him because she wants him to forget Penelope and stay with her or because she's trying to help him because he cannot deal with all of his trauma. I think probably what Nolan's suggesting is it's a bit of both. And to me, that's quite troubling as a kind of frame to the narrative, because, again, instead of Odysseus being on her island for seven years, as he is in the narrative of the Odyssey, because for whatever reason, he doesn't have a ship, he can't get home or whatever.

37:46Now it is quite explicitly Calypso who has made him forget Penelope. We have this moment where he suddenly remembers her. And at the moment that he remembers, he just jumps up and he decides he's going now is the time to head home in Nolan. So it's very much sort of the blame is put at Calypso's door for why he takes so long to get home. That's interesting. So in the original Odyssey story, there is no feeding of the Lotus to Odysseus by Calypso. That is a completely different episode in the story. Absolutely, completely different. What we do hear about Calypso is that she wants Odysseus to be her husband.

38:20That's what we're told, that she wishes that he would stay with her. He also doesn't have a ship because he got very badly shipwrecked onto her island with a huge storm before he washed up alone, all of his crew gone. So those are his problems. Those are his obstacles. But in the Odyssey, the poet and the narrator Odysseus both have strong reasons for saying that Calypso kept him captive because, of course, they are relaying whether that is to the people that they want to give a ship. You know, Odysseus is asking, please give me a ship home. He's not going to say, I just dallied for seven years with a nymph.

38:53Then he's saying the story to Penelope. He's not going to say that that was his fault. So I think we've got to interrogate that more deeply. And I think what this version does is it doesn't interrogate that. It just makes Calypso the captor of Odysseus. He can't get away because he's drugged. And as soon as the drugs stop, that's when he goes home. And also her story for the retelling for Odysseus remembering those previous episodes that are then shown in the Odyssey. That is also put on Calypso's island from actually an event that happens a bit later, isn't it?

39:25It was with the Phaeacians that we've mentioned in our chat before. And then there's the princess Nausicaa and the queen. I've forgotten her name. What's the name? Ariti. And they're not in the Odyssey movie. And once again, I understand why. Because otherwise you'd be introducing them as well. And it's a few more extra characters. Instead, that part of the story is also melded into Calypso to kind of oversimplify the wrong word. But I guess to streamline the narrative, to not include too many episodes and then kind of focus in on the episodes that you've got.

39:57And narratively, as you say, that makes sense. Because what we've got is in this theme that Nolan introduces of forgetting and remembering again. We've got Odysseus processing the stories of his past and he tells those stories to Calypso. Now that is quite a close analogue to what happens in the Odyssey when he visits the Phaeacians. Right after this. Right after, exactly. That is the moment where he then narrates all of the travels that happened to him. So actually you can see why that works. I think as a Homerist, when you're looking at this, I think the reason that that seems a loss is that Nausicaa and Ariti are both two very powerful, unusually powerful and important female figures.

40:36They are also the key to Odysseus getting home. So yes, we might have Calypso, who Odysseus might see as the obstacle. But Nausicaa and Ariti are the positive ones, the helpers, the ones who give Odysseus what he needs. And it's interesting that we get the obstacle left in and we get the helpers taken out. It's interesting when I think about it, because I always think about these kind of these epic stories from ancient history, whether it's mythical stories like the Odyssey or let's say the story of Alexander the Great, that if it wasn't a movie of three hours long, if it was something like a seven part series, you know, like each episode is an hour long or an hour and a half long, where you have more leeway to introduce more characters and give them more space.

41:18Then I think, yeah, you have to do it that way with Nausicaa and Ariti and highlight their key importance in the Odyssey as being the people who give Odysseus the ship and to make that last journey home. But yes, it's just the restraints of the type of film that is to make to making that sacrifice. Perhaps that's true. Although I think one would say that I don't think you're ever going to be looking, or at least I would hope that an intelligent audience of Homer would never be looking for a complete replication of Homer in a movie, because that's not doing something new or interesting creatively.

41:53So we're not asking for a complete redo. But I think the point is, when you decide to lose someone like Nausicaa and Ariti, because of the constraints, not only of the three hours, which, you know, is pretty long, but also because of the constraints of the narrative you are trying to tell, that tells us something about the narrative you are telling. It tells us about what you're choosing to keep in and what you're choosing to take out. And I think for me, it was the fact that women in the Odyssey are very much seen as either aiders or as obstacles. And it's really interesting to have the aiders out and the obstacles in. There is a choice there that has been made. That is the narrative that Nolan has curated. And that's interesting.

42:32Well, shall we kind of keep on that theme and explore two other key women in Nolan's Odyssey? And this is back on Ithaca. And first and foremost, the prominent character of Penelope, Odysseus's wife, played by Anne Hathaway. But the other key figure, and you mentioned that you really like to talk about this before we started, and I completely agree, is the servant girl of Melantho. And can you first of all explain who Melantho is and her association, her relationship with Penelope and the house of Odysseus? Absolutely. So we mentioned we've got in the Odyssey and Homer's Odyssey, we've got these different strands.

And when we're back home on Ithaca, the problem that we're dealing with there are the suitors who have come in from islands around and who want to marry Penelope. And the issue Penelope is having is she has to keep them at bay. Now Penelope is there. She's got a small crowd around her. She's got the nurse Eurycleia. She's got the swineherd Eumaeus. She's got her son Telemachus.

43:27The loyal three, the loyal band, exactly. And then we've got her enslaved women. And of those enslaved women, only one of them is given a name in Homer's Odyssey, and that is Melantho. She is the only one who when Odysseus comes back to the island disguised as a beggar, she speaks up against him and she vilifies him. And she says, you know, you're a dirty beggar, you need to get out kind of thing. So she's clearly villainized in that version of it. Then we get to the point where Odysseus comes back, he kills all of the suitors, and he then wants to basically regain control over those enslaved women like Melantho, who not only spoke out against him, but who he says actually had sexual relations with the suitors.

44:10Now, interestingly, at one point, he says that that was assault and that was not consensual when he's talking to the suitors. However, after the suitors have died, he then pivots and he tells his son Telemachus that he needs to hang these 12 enslaved women who consorted with the suitors. So there's a real sense of Odysseus when it suits him, he says to the suitors, you have basically been violating my property. However, when the suitors are out of the way, he makes them mop up the bodies of the suitors, and then they will get strung up in the courtyard by Telemachus.

44:40And it's this sense of, I am the master, I have come home, I need to regain control of my property, and they were not loyal to me. So it's a really chilling moment in the Odyssey. And it is a scene that really highlights for us, not only how Odysseus is envisioning his leadership and his return to kingship of Ithaca, but also how he is bringing Telemachus into the fold by forcing him to that act of violence. And in the movie, as you see though, it's very much portrayed as if it's Penelope. And it is the fact that Melantho has betrayed Penelope's trust, that she has decided to side of Antinous being Antinous' agent.

45:21And then you see when you get to the slaughter of the suitors, that it is Penelope's character when Melantho tries to seek refuge from what's happening. When Anne Hathaway's just like, you've chosen your side, you've chosen your fate, you've chosen where you're going to lie down, where you're going to sleep, now you've got to sleep there, kind of thing, isn't it? Exactly. So instead of becoming what we see in Homer, where we've got Melantho, perhaps, yes, she's slightly painted in this negative light, but then there is this awareness of the fact that in fact, maybe she didn't have that much choice.

45:53Instead, in Nolan, what we're seeing is a quite sexualized Melantho, someone who is definitely kind of making her own choices to side with Antinous, who is passing information to him, we see her secretly whispering to him. And then as you say, instead of Telemachus and Odysseus being the executives of the enslaved women when they get hanged, it actually is Penelope who is made to make that decision. Now that completely changes, I think, that sense of these women as the victims of Odysseus' return.

46:23And it also makes it, as you say, much more about that relationship with Penelope, the betrayal of Penelope. And it essentially makes Melantho, along with Antinous, the chief suitor, the ones who are really to blame for what's happening in Ithaca. Well, let's keep on that homecoming part now, because in the Odyssey, it is absolutely brutal. No mercy, no weapons of the suitors. It is a slaughter by Odysseus of all of those who had been abusing the hospitality, had been abusing his food and wine, the servants and so on in his palace for so many years.

46:57Because in Nolan's Odyssey, and I guess this is more aligning with trying to make Odysseus better than he actually is, have better quality traits, the suitors are not shown completely defenceless. There's a big part of that narrative where you have one of the suitors goes up to the armory above and then there's this long fight between him and Telemachus and he's throwing down spears after spears and shields and dropping them down below. And so you see some of the suitors getting some weapons to try and fight Odysseus.

47:30And once again, it's almost this act of, yes, making it less of a slaughter and more of a fight. Which is fascinating, right? That attempt to kind of make it more palatable. Because yes, exactly, in Homer's version, we've got this, in fact, Odysseus orders all of the arms, the weapons to be taken out of the hall. He orders Eurycleia to the nurse to lock all of the doors. So the suitors are locked into the courtyard in the centre of the palace. And then he, of course, with the contest of the bow, which is what he uses to demonstrate himself to Penelope, he then has a weapon and he can basically just slaughter all of the suitors.

48:06And here, as you say, like there is this, in fact, it's the goat herd, Melanthius, who's the one who goes up, who in Homer is the one who does side with the suitors, but gets very, very brutally sort of hanged and then sort of mutilated by Odysseus afterwards. We don't get any of that here. But he's, in Nolan's version, he escapes and he manages to give them the weapon. So I think the question is, you know, can a modern audience not deal with the kind of lack of palatability of an Odysseus who is just slaughtering, you know, tens of men in front of him?

48:38Leave a bad taste in the mouth of a modern audience if it was just kind of slaughter, slaughter, slaughter, no resistance, no resistance. And that bigging up of Odysseus's character as a more modern hero, right? As someone who cares about his men and who cares then, one would assume, about the men of Ithaca and the surrounding islands. That's what Nolan is trying to create. And so we can't have an Odysseus who is just slaughtering defenceless men in Nolan's version. And it also shows that he doesn't slaughter everyone, does he? Because at the end, there's a bit, sorry, I'm doing all the spoilers, but we're presuming people are saying, you know, there's kind of the bowing down and that's the end.

49:09And then he goes on his pilgrimage in honour of his men right at the end, which is also a bit different to how it ends in the Odyssey, right? That was such a surprise to me, honestly. And I feel like I'm very, always very attuned to endings. I feel like endings tell us so much. We've been talking about how when you change a narrative, what you're doing is you're changing the arc, you're changing the kernel. But the end tells you a lot about where that journey is going. And in the Odyssey, the end of the Odyssey, one would very easily assume from kind of when you read the Odyssey in popular tales that it is the reunion of Penelope and Odysseus.

49:42It actually isn't. We go past that in Homer's Odyssey and we go to a burgeoning, erupting civil war where all of the families of Ithaca rise up and say, you know, not only did you not bring our sons home from the Trojan War, but also you've just slaughtered all of the noblemen. And it is about to start. You know, you've got Odysseus, you've got Telemachus, you've got his father Laertes, they are all getting ready for battle. And it is Athena who comes down and basically just says, no, this is enough. And there is a pause. And that is where Homer's Odyssey ends.

50:12It's so different from in Nolan's Odyssey where it is this, as you say, pilgrimage of forgiveness to the men that he has lost. And it's this happy family voyage with Penelope and Telemachus, you know, not the three men lining up for battle. This is a voyage towards almost a sort of second honeymoon. Second honeymoon to end Nolan's Odyssey. Does it very much feel, I mean, it does to me then, that one of the big drives of Nolan's Odyssey is to portray Odysseus, is to create Odysseus's character as a more modern hero compared to the more destructive ancient Greek hero that he is in the original text.

50:51Exactly. It's a sort of great man movie. And the hero, as we discussed when we talked about this at the Odyssey. But please remind us. Oh, of course. Yeah. So a hero in the ancient world is someone who, yes, they use the same word, heroes is the Greek word for hero. But it's someone who is much larger than life, who's often quite destructive, who's in search of something greater than himself, whether that is immortality or an impossible return home. And in so doing, he often destroys all of those around him in the pursuit of that incredible goal.

51:25So we see someone like Achilles, for instance, who's seeking immortality. And in the search for immortality, he actually ends up, you know, causing the deaths of many, many Greeks and his own. You see Odysseus, who's seeking this impossible return across the Mediterranean, across fantasy worlds, monsters, witches and so on. And he ends up losing all of his men and then creating slaughter on Ithaca when he returns. So that is an ancient hero. That is the great man narrative of the ancient world. That is not the great man modern narrative, which is, yes, you might have a flawed and complex hero, but they nevertheless care for their community.

52:02Right. That's what we're seeing with him caring for his crew. They do not slaughter defenceless men. There is a line that does not get crossed for that modern great man. And those lines have continuously been put in by Nolan. And I think for audiences who are not aware of the difference between this and the Odyssey, they will not see the curation that has gone into that narrative to generate that modern hero version of Odysseus, as opposed to that quite brutal, quite harsh, quite destructive ancient version, which we're not seeing as much here.

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53:55So let's get to the portrayal of the Trojan War, shall we? Because it all kicks off with the Trojan horse. And I actually very much liked how they did it with Sinon, with Elliot Page's character, and then how he comes back once in a while as, you know, this young soldier who was evidently very, very close to Odysseus,

54:29was very much devoted to him. And then there's that whole other storyline with him and Antinous as well, and him going out. And going back to that traumatised part of Odysseus' story, the fact from very early on, you know, he is devastated by the fact he has to trick this very loyal soldier to him, Sinon, to stick with the Trojan horse and, quite frankly, sacrifice him to win the Trojan War. And I actually very much liked that character and Elliot Page's portrayal of him. I think it was very good. Again, that is an innovation, an introduction that is intended to tie together the Trojan horse episode,

55:06which in the ancient myth is Odysseus' stratagem. It is his idea. But here in Nolan, we're getting this addition of this kind of immediate sense of his conscience, his immediate sense of, yes, he's come up with this idea, but also he's uncomfortable with it. And I think it is that unravelling of that sense of discomfort with the destruction that he caused that is really the engine of much of Nolan's movie, that you get to the end and he really feels, I can't believe that I did all of that. Sinon is the start of that. And in fact, that scene where they're inside the Trojan horse and Sinon gets murdered right through,

55:40just outside, the weapon actually kind of goes into just where Odysseus is, crouching inside the Trojan horse, is very, very impactful. But all of that, again, is part of this construction of this hero who is beginning to have regrets for what he did. Because it feels like you are sacrificing what feels like the youngest, most devoted member of your crew for this car, you know, for this key moment in the story from straight away. And then throughout the movie, you get more and more flashbacks as the Trojan war goes on.

56:11And from rolling, well, from pulling the Trojan horse into the city itself, I found that interesting with the use of rollers. It just made me think of something like Stonehenge and the great stones of Stonehenge, how they're kind of bringing it up, quite Stone Age in its idea, to the whole portrayal of Troy itself and the soldiers, to very slowly the revealing of the trap itself and then them opening the gates. And the kind of how it was spread throughout the story as more and more of the Trojan war,

56:42of the fall of Troy, is revealed in Nolan's Odyssey. And I must admit, that final climactic part of it, the real devastation of Troy, is only revealed right at the end of the movie. And for a time, I wasn't sure if they were going to show it. But they did go back to it at the end. It's almost kind of, they were finishing off that part of the flashbacks. They're kind of building up to that kind of, what almost felt like, for Odysseus, the ancient version of PTSD that he gets from that very moment. Absolutely. Which is certainly kind of that feeling that he can't access that part of the archive of his memory

57:18because it is too traumatic. And it is only as he goes through the process of the movie of the Odyssey that by the end he can access that. And of course, Athena, who we talked about already, is part of that kind of healing for him, as well as that realization of the damage that was done. Yeah, no, it is incredibly powerful. And that moment I found the kind of opening of the gates of Troy, that feeling of that incredible betrayal that they had done to the Trojans, I think is very, very clear.

57:48And I think you have the sense of just how, you know, we've been talking about how much Odysseus is trying to kind of make reparation, but you do get a very strong sense of all of the damage that he caused in that war and the darkness that is there. We're talking about that darkness. When they open the gate and like you have the rest of the Greeks waiting outside, but they really do, and I love that we're going to talk about this now, they make a big fact of Agamemnon and the armour, the black, the dark armour that he is wearing.

58:20And when people first saw the images in the trailer, you know, everyone's talking about this is Bronze Age Batman, or this is Bronze Age Bane, right? Because the armour looked so ridiculous to some. And yet I guess it was, it reinforces Agamemnon as this larger than life figure, at least in Odysseus' memory. And when they open the gates, you see his shadow, and then all of the other warriors pouring in. It's almost like he is the man in charge and he is leading them through. But he is also just as much, if not more than Odysseus,

58:50he is the cause, he is the creator of Troy's suffering and Troy's destruction. And yet, of course, we never actually see him. And I think that's really interesting. You never see him take off the helmet, do you? No. So he is sort of almost a disembodied suit of armour. So yes, I mean, we're not going to get into the accuracy, because look, this is obviously not accurate. Just put the dendropanoply on him. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Let's get a dendro armour on, then we'd be okay. But look, this is a creative choice. It is a choice that, as you say, I think says a lot about how Odysseus remembers him,

59:23as well as about the emotions that he evokes. And that, to me, does slightly speak of how we hear of Agamemnon. If you think about the beginning of the Iliad, you've got a quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon. And Achilles says that Agamemnon has a black heart. So I feel like there is this sense of that darkness around him, irrespective of perhaps whether that doesn't look like a Bronze Age warrior. However, for Odysseus, I think it is that memory, isn't it, of this is,

59:55he almost represents the Greeks and the pouring of the Greeks into the Troy. We just sort of see Agamemnon and we remember all of the lives that were led to Troy and bled out of Troy because of him. Shall we explore, and I've been very much looking forward to getting this part, I've labelled them the Bronze Age Easter eggs in Nolan's Odyssey. And let's start with Troy, first of all, because, of course, in the story, it's very much, you know, Helen of Sparta, Helen of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships, or maybe we should say just over a thousand ships.

1:00:29But, of course, when you watch Nolan's Odyssey, if you listen closely enough, you'll hear little mentions of Troy, and I think this goes back actually to Odysseus' cleverness and a clear nod to whoever's influencing Nolan and the creators of getting once in a while that little mention of the Bronze Age world in which it's set. Because I believe, I remember there's one line when Odysseus, I can't remember if he's talking to Penelope, or he's talking to someone before he goes to Troy

1:01:00and he's received the message from Agamemnon that they've all got to go, supposedly, to rescue Helen, to take back Menelaus' wife. And Odysseus just says, that's an excuse. The real reason they're doing that is that Troy is this key trading port, you know, and it's rich. And this is the real reason that Agamemnon is so keen to take so many people to fight in Troy and to launch the Trojan War. It's the prize of controlling Troy itself. It's the wealth of Troy.

1:01:32And we did an episode of Eric Klein not too long ago, you know, when you look at Troy's position, when you look at the archaeology, first off, yes, it is one of those key ports for all those ships at their time that were sailing up towards the Dardanelles today, the Hellespont, the ancient Hellespont, into the Black Sea. Secondly, we know from archaeology that it is sandwiched between these two great powers of the Late Bronze Age, the Mycenaeans in Greece, the Achaeans, the Danaeans, and the Hittites further east. And you've got, you know, Hittite records that mention fighting around the area of Troy,

1:02:02the mention of Willusa, potentially the mention of Paris as well, Alexander. Like, that's a fun little nerdy payoff, right? To actually realise that they are addressing the fact that Troy was an important place that was desired by a king in Late Bronze Age, Greece, like the figure of Agamemnon in the story of the Iliad and in here, Nolan's Odyssey. Absolutely. And that's really quite an interesting choice because when you think about looking at the Iliad or the Odyssey, Troy isn't talked about in those what we might call historical terms.

1:02:38So, you know, Agamemnon isn't saying, I'm doing this because of access to trade routes across the Black Sea or something like that. That is what historians then look at Troy and, you know, historians like Eric Klein and say, well, actually, look how strategic that is. That actually does make sense in terms of the workings of history. So what's happening here, why I found that really fascinating is you've got Nolan attempting to sort of clash together myth and history. You've got the myth of the Odyssey, the myth of the Trojan War, but then you've got this very real reference to trade and strategy that is a

1:03:10reference to history and is a reference to the real site of Troy, which we do have, we do know where it is. So a really interesting kind of attempt to bring a historical layer into it. And then the historical mystery layer, which is dotted throughout, you know where I'm going with this because everyone's fascinated by this, the peoples of the sea. Yeah. We know them as the sea peoples, but I do love the fact in Nolan's Odyssey, they call it the people of the sea coming from the West. Yeah. And they're portrayed as this kind of invisible force on the horizon that people are hearing

1:03:44about. But no one quite knows who they are, but they are destroying the world as they know it. And that is very much a link to an old theory, isn't it, around the Bronze Age collapse? Well, absolutely. It's really interesting because it is a term that isn't an ancient term. So the sea peoples term is something that modern scholars came up with as a theory for how to describe what happens around 1200 BCE, where we get a major civilizational collapse across the Mediterranean world

1:04:18and beyond. So we get not only the Mycenaean civilisation collapsing, but also, as you mentioned, the Hittites in Anatolia. We get the city of Troy falling right about this time. Ugarit as well. Ugarit, exactly. In the Eastern Mediterranean, we get attacks in Egypt. And in Egypt, that's where we get records of the people who are doing this. But they're not called the sea peoples. They're given the individual names of their tribes. So what's interesting is that Nolan is kind of hooking on to this scholarship that has collected these different tribes together that have been attributed to

1:04:51this collapse and is calling them the sea peoples. Now, in fact, the latest scholarship is suggesting it's much more complicated than that. It is not just kind of invasions of this mysterious brigade of people, but rather it is a combination of climate factors, drought, famine, earthquakes. And then given that, we've got the movement of peoples, we've got rebellions, and then we get armies moving around. So we've got perhaps, shall we say, a simplified version of a historical event here. And it's interesting as well, because I think there are conversations between Tom Holland and

1:05:22Anne Hathaway, so like Telemachus and his mum. And they're saying, look, we need a ruler of Ithaca, because there's this strong rumour that the sea peoples are coming soon, the peoples of the sea, and they've left destruction in their wake. So Ithaca needs to be strong to fight off this being. And are we going to wait for Odysseus? Or are you going to let me become the new king? Or are you going to marry someone else? And when I was watching the movie, I was thinking, are they then going to, like I was thinking with Nausicaa and Ariti, like whether they were going

1:05:52to introduce them or not. And as time went on, I felt they can't introduce them now. It feels now too late. I was feeling like they've mentioned the peoples of the sea here, there and everywhere, and now we're getting near the end of the movie and they haven't shown. And I feel it's too late to then introduce a giant new fleet on the horizon that we haven't seen. And so they do something, I think it's quite clever, but it's quite meta at the same time, which is Odysseus revealing that he and his crew and the rest of the Greeks were actually the sea peoples. Yeah, I think it is really actually quite clever. I think it also gestures to the fact that the legend

1:06:28of the Trojan War, as it was remembered hundreds of years later into Homer's epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, was a memory of this great disruption, this great civilizational collapse, at least in part. And that that memory was something that the Greeks, we think, were probably a part of, those historical late Bronze Age Greeks, that that historical war in Troy, if it happened, it probably didn't happen the way that Homer says it, but probably a sequence of different wars, but that the Mycenaeans probably were involved around that city. That devastation, that expansionism that we are

1:07:02seeing in the Mycenaean late Bronze Age civilisation, that is something that the legend of the Trojan War remembers. So I think it is quite a clever gesture to the fact that that is part of where Homeric epic comes from. Now, again, I think it's worth saying that is not something that the poetry does. The poetry tells the legend of the Trojan War, it doesn't situate Troy as a historical city, and it doesn't situate this as part of a wider conflict. That is something that is more of a historical project. And so almost what you've got with Nolan is you've got the myth, you've got the

1:07:33kind of the fantasy adventures, you've got what happens on Ithaca, that's the kind of core. But then outside it and around it, you've got this historical layer that he's kind of added on to try and contextualise it. Yeah, and Odysseus trying to, it's almost like he's repenting, he's remembering their bad actions, their bad style of warfare, quite frankly, their abuse of hospitality, their bad treatment of the gods, the statues, and you mentioned like, you know, the brutality of the sack of Troy. In a weird kind of way, I guess it's like we've become barbarians in what he's thinking. And so

1:08:08that's how he says we've become the sea peoples, because we are now just pillaging and destroying and not the type of warfare, it seems, that he was used to, that he was expecting almost. Yeah, but again, that circles back to what we said about this repenting Odysseus, right? Because this is an Odysseus who now sees the kind of horror that he's left in his wake. And it's also an Odysseus who is now trying to generate through that final voyage, some kind of penance for everything that he's done. So yes, we're seeing the destruction of civilisations. Yes, we're seeing the Greeks taking

1:08:44some responsibility for that. But we are also seeing him saying, oh, I'm deeply sorry, and kind of I wouldn't do it again, which is very different from how we see it in the Odyssey, where the sack of Troy is done. We do get these moments, perhaps where, you know, there's that wonderful moment we talked about, about Achilles in the underworld, where he says, you know, I wouldn't do that again, if I could live again. But we don't end up there. What Nolan is essentially doing is showing an Odysseus who is seeking the forgiveness of his men, but he's also seeking reparation for the fact that he has caused the

1:09:20downfall of a civilisation. He's not saying, this is what I've done, and we've got to live with it. He's trying to fix it. And that is a really interesting change. It's also interesting that we could talk for hours about this. I feel that the Trojans are portrayed, and I understand it because they're not, well, at the same time, they are a main part of the story, because it's very much the roots of Odysseus' repentance in many ways, alongside the homecoming. I feel the Trojans are quite faceless in the movie. You don't get any of the figures. There's no Prime. There's no Cassandra. There's no Hecuba. There's none of that. It's just the soldiers

1:09:55themselves, really, and then the brutality of the slaughter of the people that you see dotted throughout. And the soldiers are all kind of with their kind of Corinthian-like helmets of much later time on. And yeah, there's kind of no particularly named Trojans in this movie at all. It is just kind of the destruction of that people, which maybe is also kind of aligning with what we've talked about as well. Yes. And also perhaps suggests that people could stand for multiple other peoples and other civilizations that could be destroyed. I think the other side to it is that actually,

1:10:26if you think about the Odyssey and Homer's Odyssey and what that's doing, it is very much a post-Trojan War epic. It is not the place where we get figures like Hector and Priam and Hecuba and so on. That is in the Iliad. So when we do get memories of the Trojan War, even in Homer's Odyssey, it's quite generalised. So perhaps that is a function of the fact that we are moving out of Troy and into the return home. Very much so. Well, this has been a lot of fun. Glad to get the Sea Peoples in there at the end. Absolutely. We couldn't do it without the Sea Peoples.

1:10:57It's always nice because Torin Territ Klein, who's saying how with the records that survive in Egypt, they mention like the Ekwesh and the Danuna, and probably likely the Ekwesh is Achaean, Danuna, Danaeans, other word for the Greek. So I just want to say that as they're above the end. But it's been fun to kind of dissect Nolan's Odyssey. I will go back to what I said at the beginning. I was entertained. When I look at all of these big movies, I think as long as it's a gateway into people wanting to learn more, then it's brilliant. You know, it's the way to get more and more people interested. This is why

1:11:31we're doing all these podcast episodes today. This is why we're exploring the real story. And then these Bronze Age kernels of truth behind it. It is the first rung on a ladder for, you know, people today to get interested in these stories and then to find out, okay, what does Homer say in the Odyssey? How is Odysseus portrayed? What do we actually know about these characters? What other characters were omitted that had their own amazing stories that we now need to explore further? So I was entertained. Yeah. Well, that's absolutely it. I think that for me, it is the start of a conversation.

1:12:05It's not the end. So I think that's in a way how this conversation gets born out of that. And hopefully many more. I think as a classicist, as someone who loves these texts, you can keep coming back to them again and again, and you can see something new. It's about questioning what new has been created out of it. And I think that's what we've been trying to flesh out here. Absolutely. Emily, this has been absolutely fantastic. Last but certainly not least, you have written a book which explores many of these characters that also feature in both Homer's and Christopher Nolan's Odyssey, it is called.

1:12:35Yes. So it's Mythica, a new history of Homer's world through the women written out of it. So that perhaps informs some of the discussion we've been having today. But yeah, I'm really interested in thinking about, I suppose it crosses over with what we've been saying about the Sea Peoples, really. It's how we can put myth and history together, archaeology, epic, all of those into the kind of cauldron of Homer. And then we can use that as a way to actually start thinking about the real peoples of the Late Bronze Age, the real women, and then almost kind of check how that makes us read the myths differently. And for me, that's been really

1:13:07fun because obviously, Homer's epic, it covers so many different experiences, so many different figures. But at the end of the day, it is myth, it is legend. And Nolan is kind of perpetuating that myth, it's changing that myth. But what can we do to use the real archaeology, the real bones of history to uncover the experiences of women? To me, that's been a fascinating story to start with them and then read the myths after that. And the book is called Mythica. Very good one. So you've been on the show in the past, talk all about Cassandra, who also features heavily in this episode. And I'm no doubt

1:13:38we'll get you back on again to talk about other aspects of that world. Emily, it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the show. Thank you so much, Tristan. I've really enjoyed it. Thanks so much for joining us on The Ancients. And thanks to our guest, Dr. Emily Hauser. It has been such a joy to journey with her through the Odyssey for the last three episodes. And I'm sure it won't be long before she is back on The Ancients again. Now, if you have enjoyed this series on The Odyssey, then why don't you take a listen to our series on Greek gods and goddesses, beginning with Zeus, king of the gods.

1:14:10We'll also go and listen to our previous episode with Emily all about Cassandra, daughter of King Priam and priestess of Troy, who was destined to have all of her prophecies ignored. And listen up if you are a listener in Australia and New Zealand. Go and buy tickets to our live tour, where we'll be delving into this Bronze Age again, this time to unpack the story of Hercules. We can't wait. Finally, if you are enjoying The Ancients, then why not become a History Hit subscriber? You could have access to hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release

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