The Real History Behind The Odyssey
7/13/202653 min
Is there any truth in the Odyssey, and what does it all mean? We know it's a story where a man convenes with monsters and gods, ghosts and mythological beings, but the Odyssey actually does tell us a lot about Ancient Greece - about traditions, anxieties, storytelling, geography, values and what it is to be human.
In this episode, Dan is joined by world-leading classicists Professor Dame Mary Beard and Professor Edith Hall to break down Homer's epic poem to make sense of its history, characters, the mythology, what is based in truth and what we do and don't know about its elusive author.
Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore
You can enjoy more history from Mary Beard in her podcast Instant Classics.
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First 90 secondsDan Snow· Host0:00
Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to History Hit and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard III. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe. Welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. [gentle music] So Odysseus has made it home to Ithaca. Ten years after the end of the Trojan War, he's faced trial after trial, storms in quick succession, sirens, the Cyclops. He's lost all his men, every single one, and he finally returns to his wife, Penelope, and his son, Telemachus, with armfuls of treasure bestowed on him by kind souls who helped him along the way and who met a grisly end for doing so. There have been so many versions, reversions, translations. Some of those highlight the stories of the kind of gods and monsters. Some focus on the women of the story. Some turn Odysseus' journey into a kind of retribution arc for his role in the sacking of Troy. But let's strip all that away, and let's try and ask ourselves what Homer or