688. The Odyssey: Return of the King (Part 2)
7/15/20261 hr 6 min
How did the second half of Odysseus’ long journey home to Ithaca play out? What does the epic’s account of the Olympian gods indicate about Ancient Greek religion? And, how did Odysseus finally make it home to Penelope and her suitors?
Join Tom and Dominic as they reach the dramatic conclusion of Homer’s Odyssey, and the story of Odysseus’ dreadful return…
*The Rest Is History LIVE: The Ultimate Victorian Adventure*
The maddest expedition in history and it’s NEVER been heard before on the show: join Tom Holland & Dominic Sandbrook LIVE at the Southbank as they tell the bonkers story of Queen Victoria ordering one of history’s most daring assignments ever. Tickets available for Friday 4th September, the Saturday show is SOLD OUT.
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Lloyds. 250 years on and still backing the nation's aspirations.
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Video Editors: Jack Meek, Harry Swan + Adam Thornton
Social Producer: Harry Balden
Producers: Tabby Syrett & Aaliyah Akude
Senior Producer: Callum Hill
Executive Producer: Dom Johnson
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSpeaker 10:11
Let us now speed Hermes, the guide, the slayer of Argos, toward Ogygia Island so that he can speedily announce your steadfast decision to the nymph of the beautiful braids, that Odysseus, whose mind stands fast, shall make his journey home. For my part, I will embark for Ithaca, there to breathe purpose into his son, that I might instill a man's courage within his heart, and to make him call an assembly of the long-haired Ithacans and tell all the suitors to go, those men who never leave off slaughtering throngs of his sheep and his lumbering twisty-horned cattle. To Sparta I shall send him, and to sandy Pylos too, to learn whatever he can of his dear father's journey home, and to help him as well to earn a noble renown among men.
Dominic Sandbrook· Host1:02
So that was Dame Edna Everage, uh, playing the goddess Athena, and Athena is talking to her father Zeus, king of the gods, and this is in the first of the 24 books that constitute Homer's great epic, The Odyssey. And as we were saying in our first episode, there is something very Australian about the expedition of Odysseus and his men across the Aegean, barbecuing, uh, on the beach, drinking unnecessarily, behaving badly,