The Odyssey Books 9-10 with Dr. Gregory McBrayer

Summary

Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

Episode: The Odyssey Books 9-10 with Dr. Gregory McBrayer
Hosts: Deacon Harrison Garlick & Adam Minihan
Guest: Dr. Gregory McBrayer (Ashland University, soon Miami University)
Date: May 26, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode explores Books 9 and 10 of Homer’s Odyssey, often considered the most vivid and philosophically rich sections of the epic. The hosts are joined by classicist Dr. Gregory McBrayer for a deep dive into the adventures of Odysseus as narrated by the hero himself: from the harrowing encounter with the Cyclops Polyphemus, through the beguilement of the Lotus Eaters, to the enchantments of Circe. The conversation focuses on the structural, philosophical, and psychological subtleties of these episodes, probing how Homer weaves themes of leadership, virtue, human nature, and the desire for home into an unforgettable tapestry of myths.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. Philosophy in the Fabric of the Odyssey

• The Dialectical Method of Homer (11:14)

  • Harrison introduces the idea that Homer is not simply recounting an adventure but engaging in a poetic dialectic, presenting tensions—hero/villain, intellect/appetite, action/restraint—for readers to contemplate.
  • “Somewhere in that tension, in that dialectic, is a perennial truth—an observation about the human condition.” – Harrison (11:30)

• Odysseus as Learner, Not Just Sufferer (16:06)

  • The journey is not simply punitive but pedagogical; Odysseus must learn crucial lessons before returning home.
  • “There are things he has to learn before he returns home... his journey is not simply to pay for his actions, but to prepare him.” – Harrison (16:22)

• Odysseus as Bard and Unreliable Narrator (16:48)

  • With Book 9, Odysseus becomes the storyteller—raising the question of how much the tales are truth or tailored rhetoric.
  • “Anytime we see a retelling in Homer, all our alarm bells should go off … we know Odysseus is a liar.” – Harrison (16:49)
  • Dr. McBrayer notes this is the longest speech Homer gives anyone—underscoring Odysseus’ status as master rhetorician and “man of many twists and turns.” (17:28)

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2. Structure & Thematic Progression

• The 11 (or 12) Adventures — Moral to Theoretical (21:21)
  • Dr. McBrayer proposes a central structure: the journey from moral education (first six episodes) to theoretical/philosophical education (episodes after Circe).
  • “With Circe, we get the greatest evidence that Odysseus—or the author who pens Odysseus—was a philosopher.” – Dr. McBrayer (21:09)
  • Circe’s episode is the turning point: a moral education gives way to the quest for knowledge, culminating in the visit to the Underworld, the Sirens (temptation of pure knowledge), and the confrontation with mortality.

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3. The Question of Leadership and Agency

• Tension with Odysseus and His Men (31:14, 34:54, 90:31)

  • Odysseus often paints his men as mutinous or foolish, which McBrayer and Harrison see as a rhetorical maneuver and a possible pretext for his own leadership failings.
  • “You start to realize that Odysseus senses his superiority to these men in great ways... and that’s not a very good ruler, therefore, I would say.” – Dr. McBrayer (31:30)
  • Reflecting on Odysseus' survivor’s narrative: "He’s the only one left—so he can pretty much say what he wants." (22:59)

• Do Choices Matter More Than Fate? (88:56)

  • Revisiting Chapman’s reading, the hosts highlight Zeus’ defense (Book 1): mortals often blame the gods when their woes are self-inflicted.
  • “I think the agency of man is a lot thicker in the Odyssey than it is in the Iliad.” – Harrison (88:56)

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4. The Interplay of Civilization and Savagery: Zinnia and Its Violation

• Zinnia (Guest-Friendship) as the Hallmark of Civilization (24:01, 24:38, 50:58)

  • Repeatedly, the text is structured around the ritual (and sometimes perversion) of host-guest exchange—central to Greek culture and anchored in divine piety.
  • “Guest friendship tends to be a sign of civilization … piety has three levels: towards the gods, towards your polis, towards the family.” – Harrison (51:27)

• Cyclops Episode: Civilization’s Limits (45:02, 47:54)

  • The Cyclopes lack agriculture, law, or councils—pre-political, pre-civilized beings. Yet, the victim, Polyphemus, is named Polyphemus (“many-voiced”), contrasting Odysseus’ “many-mindedness.”
  • "If one doesn't have politics, one can't have agriculture. This is sort of Lockean even." – Dr. McBrayer (45:02)
  • The episode turns on a grotesque inversion: the host consumes the guest.

• Parallels: Odysseus and the Suitors (62:41)

  • Harrison draws a provocative parallel between Odysseus’ exploitation of Cyclops’ hospitality and the suitors’ later violation of Odysseus’ own home—a cycle of violence around xenia.

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5. Virtue, Appetite, and Human Purpose

• Lotus Eaters and Loss of Purpose (38:45, 41:07, 40:24)

  • The allure of forgetfulness and false happiness in the Lotus Eaters’ land is likened to a loss of “human telos”—the need to journey home, to strive.
  • “If our humanity is tied to a certain purpose…this lotus-eating life is not a real life.” – Harrison (38:06)
  • Parallel drawn to later temptations (Calypso, Sirens, Circe): “the Odyssey says you are not human if you don’t have the return journey. If you decide to stay, you become something that’s not man.” (44:00)

• Cyclops and the Dangers of Myopia (48:10, 48:43)

  • Polyphemus’ single eye symbolizes a limited, brutal vision; Odysseus (the “many-minded”) triumphs through cunning, suggesting the value—and moral risk—of intellect over brute force.

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6. Key Memorable Moments and Quotes

The Cyclops Encounter:

• “Let's see what gifts he'd give. But he proved no lovely sight to my companions.” – Odysseus, reflecting on the misjudgment of seeking gifts from the Cyclops (60:43)
• “Come here, Odysseus, let me give you a guest gift…and urge Poseidon to speed you home…” – Polyphemus cursing Odysseus: the turning point that ensures his continued hardships (86:13)

Moral Education:

• “I see this as acadia, as a slothfulness…a cooling of love for what man was actually called to love.” – Harrison, on the vice lurking within the Lotus Eaters’ story (40:24)

Philosophy and Nature:

• “Hermes…showed me all its name and nature. Its root is black and its flower white as milk, and the gods call it moly…This is the only time that phusis occurs in either the Iliad or the Odyssey. Odysseus is the first philosopher—if you take philosophy to mean the discovery of nature.” – Dr. McBrayer (114:36)

Rhetoric and Truth:

• “We need to be very sensitive to the fact Odysseus is telling this story—and he’s a liar. And liars don’t always tell true stories, but they do tell stories that have a kind of moral or lesson in them.” – Dr. McBrayer (17:19)

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7. Book 10: Tragedy and Transformation

• Bag of Winds & The Failure of Trust (89:59, 90:31)

  • So close to home, Odysseus’ men open the bag of winds out of mistrust—a microcosm of the growing fissure between Odysseus and his crew.
  • “He doesn’t trust his men…they become a liability.” – Harrison (98:03)

• Laestrygonians: The End of the Crew (95:52, 99:14)

  • Odysseus again survives through prudence or self-preservation, but at the cost of his men’s lives.
  • “If anyone did something wrong, it’s Odysseus, who stayed outside and didn’t warn the men…” – Dr. McBrayer (96:53)

• Circe: The Fulcrum of the Journey (100:06, 101:42)

  • Circe—herbs, transformation, sex, and wisdom—marks the pivot to the quest for knowledge.
  • Connection to the Platonic tripartite soul: men reduced to appetite (pigs) but retaining mind, Odysseus retaining autonomy through intellect.
  • “Eros has no spell over you. If you’ve achieved wisdom, you are no longer charmed by Eros.” – Dr. McBrayer (112:53)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Homeric Dialectic & Platonic Soul: 11:14 – 14:01
• Odysseus as Storyteller & Rhetorician: 16:48 – 17:28
• Structural Overview of the Adventures: 21:19 – 21:54
• Civilization vs. Savagery: Cyclops Prequel: 45:02 – 48:43
• Cyclops Episode Deep Dive: 55:04 – 87:28
  • Nobody Trick & Blinding: 75:00 – 79:17
  • Polyphemus’s Curse: 86:13
• Lotus Eaters & The Telos of Man: 38:45 – 41:07
• Bag of Winds & Broken Trust: 89:52 – 91:10
• Laestrygonians & Leadership Issues: 95:52 – 99:33
• Circe & Philosophy/Nature: 100:06 – 116:41
• Preparing for the Underworld: 121:21 – 123:01

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Notable Quotes by Timestamp

• Harrison on Homer's dialectic:

  “Somewhere in that tension, in that dialectic, is a perennial truth—an observation about the human condition.” (11:30)

• Dr. McBrayer on wisdom and Circe:

  “If you’ve achieved intellectual virtue…Eros has no spell over you. Eros is a kind of irrational hope…You now have a mind that makes that not happen to you.” (112:53)

• Harrison on the hardest leadership question:

  “He’s the only survivor. Even the first time I read the Odyssey…that was an immediate question: He can say what he wants, and we’ll see that tension.” (22:59)

• On the Cyclops as a critique of the pre-political:

  “If one doesn’t have politics, one can’t have agriculture. This is Lockean even… Men who do not live in political communities are monsters.” – Dr. McBrayer (45:02)

• On piety and civilization:

  “Guest friendship tends to be a sign of civilization…You have to have all three levels of piety for it to work well: Zeus oversees it, it’s a sacred relationship, both the host and the guest.” – Harrison (51:27)

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Context, Tone, and Flow

The episode balances rigorous academic insight and the warm tone of a Great Books reading group. Both hosts and guest oscillate between close textual analysis (often referencing specific line numbers and translation nuances), Socratic questioning, and humorous asides—creating an atmosphere inviting to both first-time and returning readers.

Memorable moments include friendly banter about the upcoming Odyssey film adaptation, mock complaints about Homer’s narrative choices (“Why tell the story where he looks so bad?” – McBrayer 62:44), and running jokes about "committing adultery for the men" as Odysseus does with Circe (110:48).

The interplay between the hosts and guest creates a Socratic/collaborative model: raising questions, disagreeing, probing for textual support, and always relating Homer’s ancient themes back to perennial human questions.

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Conclusion & What’s Next

The episode concludes with preview of the journey to the underworld in Book 11, emphasizing that after Circe and the discovery of “nature,” Odysseus—and the audience—must now confront death and divine limits, setting the stage for deeper philosophical revelations.

Next episode: Dr. Patrick Deneen will discuss his new book American Odyssey; later, Dr. Alex Priou will join for the slaughter of the suitors.

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For First-Time Listeners/Readers

This conversation is ideal for both newcomers and those deeply familiar with Homer—drawing out subtleties in character, structure, and philosophy, while providing a model for reading, rereading, and thinking alongside the greatest texts of Western civilization.

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Resources Mentioned:

• The Bow and the Lyre – Seth Benardete
• Homeric Moments – Eva Brann
• History of Political Philosophy – Strauss & Cropsey

Further Reading Aids: Check the show’s website for Q&A guides and book resources.

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Transcript

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Today on the Sin the Great Books podcast we have a fantastic conversation today. It is book nine and ten of the Odyssey. Some of my favorite passages in this entire work we have the cyclops, the lotus eaters, all the stories about Circe, and it really helps that we have a fantastic guest today. We have Dr. Gregory McBrayer, previously of the new Think Free podcast came on to help us navigate the Gorgias. Always appreciate his thoughts. If you have an opportunity to listen to him, you should certainly take it. So today's conversation on books 9 and 10 of the Odyssey are fantastic. To help us dive in to this conversation, I'm going to read a summary of books 9 and 10 from our guide. We have a question answer written guide, over 100 questions on the Odyssey that you can check out on our website. So what happens in book nine of the Odyssey? The guest of good King Alcinous finally declares I am Odysseus. And he begins to tell his story. And after Troy, Odysseus and the ships under his command raided a city on the island of Ismarus, where the next morning he lost men to a counter attack by the islanders. Next, Zeus hit Odysseus fleet with a storm, a demonic gale. And then when free of the storm, his fleet was again taken off course by a riptide that brought them to the land of the lotus eaters. Having saved his crew, Odysseus and his men come to a lush uninhabited island and across the strait see an island with signs of habitation. Odysseus and his men go to the island only to end up trapped in the cave with a cyclops. Though they plead for protection as guests under Zeus, Homer tells us the cyclops grabbed two men, beat them against the ground, the brains gushed out all over, soaked the floor and ripped them limb from limb. To fix his meal, he washes down the human flesh with raw milk. Odysseus and his men cannot escape the cave due to the enormous stone blocking the entrance, and they cannot kill the cyclops in his sleep for the same reason they would be trapped in the cave. In the morning, the cyclops bolts down two more men and leaves to tend his herds. Odysseus concocts a plan to escape. Upon his return, the cyclops devours two more of Odysseus men, and Odysseus offers the cyclops a strong wine to wash down the banquet of human flesh. The cyclops asks Odysseus name and Odysseus tells him his name is nobody. With the cyclops drunk, Odysseus and his men ram a stake into the cyclops eye, blinding him. Odysseus and his men escape the cave, but Odysseus tells the cyclops his name. The book ends with the cyclops asking his father Poseidon to curse Odysseus, journey home and let him find a world of pain at home. And what happens in book 10, Odysseus and his men come to the floating island of King Aeolus, who Zeus had made master of all the winds. After hosting them for a month, the king stuffed all the winds into a bag except a favorable west wind and gave it to Odysseus. Leaving the island, they sailed for nine days until they came so close to Ithaca that they could see men tending fires on the shore. Odysseus men, however, open the bag of winds, causing a maelstrom blowing them all the way back to the king's island. The king rejects them as cursed by the gods and Odysseus and his fleet sail to the island of the Lies Trigonians. There Odysseus entire fleet save his own ship, is lost in a surprise attack by the man eating inhabitants of the island. Odysseus lone ship comes upon a new island and Odysseus men find a hall and hear a woman singing.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Inside.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

The woman is Circe, a goddess who welcomes all the men to a feast and then changes them into pigs. Eurylochus, the only one not to go into the hall, runs back and tells Odysseus. Odysseus sets off to the hall, but along the way runs into Hermes, the messenger God who tells him how to overcome Circe's spells. Odysseus obeys and Circe is made to swear an oath she will not harm Odysseus. Odysseus men are restored. Younger and more handsome, they remain guests of Circe's house for a year until Odysseus men remind him of his journey home. The book ends with Circe telling Odysseus he must travel to the House of Death and speak to the prophet Tiresias. Welcome to Ascend the Great Books Podcast. My name is Deacon Harrison Garlick. I live in rural Oklahoma with my wife and five children, serve as deacon at Holy Family Cathedral, Chancellor and General Counsel for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa. In my free time I like to help people read the great books and that's the purpose of Ascend here. We're like a small group to you. We can help you, help you in your read of the great books. We've read the Iliad The Odyssey, many of the Greek plays, Dante's Purgatorio, Dante's Inferno. Just many, many great works. So if you need someone to help you read these great books, we're very happy to help. You can go check us out on X, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, and also Patreon for all of our supporters who have access to chats of other people who are reading these great books. And also we have written guides, question answer guides to help you or your small groups. Go visit thegreatbookspodcast.com for more information. Okay, we're continuing our 12 week study of the Odyssey. It's been amazing. I've actually really appreciated being able to revisit a text we're actually reading before the new Christopher Nolan movie comes out, which looks terrible, but that was our goal. And I actually have to see the movie because I promised you all that we would have some kind of response episode. So I'm not terribly happy about the promises I've made. On a happier note, we're gonna have Dr. Patrick Deneen come on the podcast, the author of why Liberalism Failed. And he'll be joining us to discuss his new book, American Odyssey. What an ancient story reveals about our divided souls. The that episode comes out on July 21, which is the same day the book comes out. So good things ahead. But today we're discussing books nine and ten of the Odyssey. And joining us again, friend of the podcast, we have Dr. Gregory McBrayer, who currently serves as the interim provost and the Associate professor of Political Science at Ashland University. Welcome back to the podcast.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Thanks, Deacon. I live in rural Ohio. I'm the father too. There's a movie coming out on the Odyssey.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yes, you might. If you haven't seen the trailer, just don't bother, huh? I'm not.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

First I'm hearing of this. Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So I don't know. I. I promised I would go see it. Now I. I regret my choices.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

It looks like a mix of really, really good and really, really bad to me, actually.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, you can see he had like a couple really good ideas. And then some things I'm just like, what? What are you doing?

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So we'll see. I mean, I think in some of his interviews too, like where he talks about how he views the Odyssey and he compares it to like superheroes and Marvel and stuff, you start to see the underpinnings that I think have skewed this thing in a direction that's basically unpalatable if you appreciate the text.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right. Well, at a minimum, it's gotten People talking about the Odyssey again, which is kind of exciting. And now you've got this. You've got your series on. How many series?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

12.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

You're doing two books, 12 weeks. So two books of sessions that rank.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, so we've had. Yeah, so we've had a good showing. I appreciate everyone kind of reading along with us. A lot of people check us out on X. So, yeah, so the momentum has been good, but we're very much inviting people to actually read the Homeric text itself. Very cool, but we'll see. Okay. Before that, though, you. You have some professional news. Some things are happening in your life.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Oh, sure. Yeah. So, as you mentioned, I'm the interim provost, and that interim period is now coming to a close. I've been the interim provost here for 14 months, and in the fall, I actually will be starting as professor of an. At a new civic center and at Miami University in Ohio, and also the associate director of that civic center. So pretty excited. I'll be working with a guy named Flag Taylor, who's a longtime friend. He's the executive director. We've already hired some people that I've actually been in reading groups with. James Guest, Matthew Wells, who did a translation of the categories by Aristotle that might be an interesting chapter at some point. Joey Keegan, a guy from Chilean. So a bunch of people that I know and like and, you know, it's sad to leave here. I've been here nine years. Love it here. I've been teaching the Ashburg Scholar program, which is great, send your kids there, but pretty excited for this new opportunity. So a little closer to home, you know, a little exciting to build something. Administration these days at universities in the Midwest is a lot of managing and thinking about managing deficits and these things. So exciting rather to build rather than to have to worry about such things going forward. But, yeah, pretty exciting. Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

No, that's excellent. We appreciate your scholarship. We appreciate you being on the podcast. Fantastic to see you step into that role. Everyone go check out. Dr. Gregory McBrayer joined us for the Gorgias. We had a fantastic conversation on that. And actually, I think he recorded already twice with us on Plato's Republic, which we launch into later this fall in October. So we always appreciate you coming on,

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

appreciate your generosity, appreciate the invitation. Happy to talk about Homer, whom I've only taught the Iliad. I have maybe a small anecdote about this. Before I was at Ashland, I was at Morehead State University, and I ingratiated myself with the honors program there, which was great. Met A bunch of good students there. And they asked me to teach a class on the ancient world honors 200, the ancient world. And they wanted me to teach Homer, among other things. And you know, I do Plato's end of an Aristotle. And so I did. And I sort of. I was a little bit anxious about it. I didn't think it would go well. It went great. And I should learn to trust these texts more. Like, if you just read the book with students aloud, it's going to be very successful. But one of the more humorous parts of the story is I had a student who was very upset. She was from Taiwan and she was at a regional state school in eastern Kentucky. And she was very upset that I wasn't doing Chinese classics. And I had to have a meeting with her and the director and a dean maybe explaining why, first off, it wasn't my syllabus. But second of all I had to say, look, I'm an expert in Plato, Xenophon and Aristotle, and Homer is a stretch for me. Chinese texts are about as foreign as it would get. So I'm happy to do this. I really enjoyed preparing for this today. But you know, and this is sort of conversation, I think you'll probably make good points. I'll try to raise a few interesting questions. But what's, as I mentioned, the teaching, it was a wonderful success. And I think it's just because the book is just so good, you don't have to necessarily be an expert. You know, for hundreds if not thousands of years, non experts have read this and enjoyed immense pleasure at reading it. I think that there's possibly wisdom in this book. Maybe we can talk about that later. It's a cool adventure story. It's exciting and there's something there for everybody. So yeah, really, I enjoyed preparing the last week or so for this.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, no, I very much appreciate being able to revisit the Odyssey and just the strata that are here and how you see new things each time. And I have been more and more convinced of Odysseus or not Odysseus, well, maybe, but Homer the philosopher.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Ooh.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

First time I kind of read through the Iliad and the Odyssey, I was very comfortable saying Homer the teacher.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

That I thought he was very intentional about what he was doing. But like on the second read through and you know, some commentaries and some other influences, like there's just a deep philosophy here that I think is actually really intentional.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Can you say more about that? Because I actually was planning to build to this because I think today is the as the is the greatest piece of evidence for that.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Books nine and ten. Yeah. So there's two big things that I think stand out. One is I've had recourse to this text. So the bow and the wire. Yeah, I've heard of that. Yeah, I'm sure. And so one of the things that I find really fascinating about his thesis there is that in a certain way Plato learned a dialectic from Homer. And why I have really appreciated this, that Homer actually has baked into his text a certain poetic dialectic that he is presenting two things to you, intention, because this mimics then a dialogue, if you will. And somewhere in that tension in that dialectic is a perennial truth, is an observation about the human condition. I like this a lot because not that I find it a cop out, but you know, so many arguments on the Odyssey are, well, Odysseus is like this. Well, no, he's really like this. Or Penelope's like this, whatever. And of course these can't be relative, they have to be rooted to the text. But people typically pick like one path or the other. Odysseus is a hero, he's a vill, whatever. And I think in a lot of ways this poetic dialectic shows you like. Well, Homer's actually has both of these patterns in here, right. And he's trying to get you to compare them at certain points for some type of observation on man. So that's one thing I've. So that deep level of intentionality in the text is very philosophic. And the other thing that's convinced me of this as we read through the text is you have the like typical kind of traditional Platonic soul of the intellect, the spirited and the appetitive. And on this read through of the Odyssey, I have realized how many times in the text all three of these are present and active, presented in hierarchy and really then shown to be really moving underneath the text itself even. I mean, I think one of the biggest ones is just in book five, how Odysseus can say no to immortality. And I think that to understand that you have to have some understanding of the telos, the purpose of man. And even Odysseus answers to Calypso echo this Platonic soul. They echo, I guess what would be a Homeric soul that then Plato makes much more explicit. And so I just think that there's a lot of wisdom and depth in this text that I didn't appreciate the first couple times I read it. The first time, you know, there's adventure stories. It's interesting. You're trying to get used to Homer, but then, particularly after reading Plato and now revisiting this text.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

You see a lot of Plato in this, which really means, actually what you're seeing in Plato is a lot of Homer, no question.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

By the way, the book the Bow and the Liar by Seth Bernardi, I also consulted a book by Ava Brann, Homeric Moments, that's sort of a lot of fun. And it's little snippets, like chapters are very short. First, you know, you said that Odysseus is the hero, he's the villain. You know, I would just say, quoting the best translation I know of Homer, that he's just complicated. I mean, that's all there is to it. Sorry, I couldn't resist. And I do hope we get to the immortality bit because one of the things to keep track of is sort of the chronology of the text. So this Calypso thing is discussed in book five, but it happens later in book nine. But what you realize is that. Or, excuse me, much later, book nine, but you realize that that story of Calypso later has preceded the telling of the story with Calypso. And so I suspect that the stories we're going to talk about today and then on your next session, where you actually go to Hades, all of that stuff precedes Odysseus's decision to eschew immortality. And I think actually the readings today are what lead him to begin to think that immortality is not something to be. It's not realistic, but it's also not something to be chosen. And so, I mean, the story, the order gets kind of complicated. Right. So he's this discussion with Calypso that he's recounting Book five, he recounts later. And so then you have the steps later that come before that. So with Circe, for example, and then of course, the trip to Hades. So I think he's learned some things along the way, you know, as we all do on any good story. Sorry, I couldn't resist that one either. And that's what leads him to reject immortality. So he gets this kind of moral education, I think, and then he gets a theoretical or maybe philosophical education, as you said.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, Bergen, Yeah, no, I very much agree. I think on this read through too, I've been much more sensitive and appreciative of the fact that Odysseus learns things as he goes along. And so not just like, what experiences did he have that actually prepared him to say no to Calypso, but even what are the experiences that are preparing him to return to Ithaca.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Well, very good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So, for instance, like, you know, we saw with the Phaeacians, Broadsea is able to kind of, you know, torque him in his Thumas and his anger. And Odysseus lets it slip that he was in Troy. If Odysseus makes that mistake when he goes to Ithaca, he dies.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And so there's these things then, very subtly that Homer's showing us that Odysseus is having to learn, which is very interesting because it makes Odysseus journey not simply punitive, but also pedagogical, that there's actually things that he has to learn before he returns home.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Any. So what are some preliminaries? I mean, before we jump into book nine, because this section, we should say like this section, so, 9, 10, 11, 12. This is Odysseus telling his story.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yes, this is.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Odysseus has stepped into the role of the bard, if you will. He's going to tell his story. Anytime we see a retelling in Homer, all of our alarm bells should go off because we've seen how facts can change. We also know Odysseus is a liar. And so. And rhetoric is tailored. So we actually. We read the Gorgias together. Right.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

We discussed.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So rhetoric is tailored to the souls in front of you. And so he's telling his story. How much should we trust the story? How much is this actually tethered and tied to the Phaeacians themselves? I think these are all interesting questions that we should ask. And I think even culturally, nine times out of 10 things that people know from the Odyssey come from these four books.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, I mean, all the children's books and all the movies. I assume Mr. Nolan's book coming out. That's right. Well, since you mentioned it, I sort of have a couple things maybe I'd start with. One is. You meant, you know, I, I sort of. My sweet darling philosopher is Xenophon. And in the memorabilia in book four, chapter six, he's talking about Socrates's manner of speaking. So the rhetoric, like you just mentioned, and he says that this is Xenophon. But whenever he, Socrates, went through something in argument by himself, he proceeded via what was most agreed upon, holding this to be safety and argument. Therefore, of those I know, he, when he spoke, produced by far the most agreement in his listeners. And he, Socrates said that Homer too applied to Odysseus the attribute of being a safe orator on the grounds that he was competent to lead his arguments through the opinions of human beings. And Commentators take this to be a reference to the end of book eight of the Odyssey, which is setting up right where Odysseus is about to start telling the stories of his own travels, as you just mentioned, which means I, you know, I think you put your finger right on it, that we need to be very sensitive to the fact that Odysseus is telling this story and therefore. And he's a liar. And liars don't always tell true stories, but they do tell stories that have a kind of moral or lesson in them. By the way, this is by far the longest that Homer lets anyone speak about his own story in the Iliad or the Odyssey. And so this seems on the very surface of things to give Odysseus a kind of pride of place for Homer, that he's the one who's most like Homer himself. And actually, at the very beginning of book nine, I can pull up the line here in just a second, but Odysseus says something along the lines of, well, the best life is to eat and drink and to do poetry. And that might get modified. I actually wonder if this emphasis on pleasures of the body might get rejected, actually, in several of the first stories that we get right. And actually what you need is some kind of self control. But, yeah, since you mentioned it, we get these. Let me just say that as far as I could tell, scholars tend to identify 10 such episodes or adventures in the books that you just mentioned. Ava Brann says there are 12, and I myself identify 11. I can just give those real quick. So this is. And this. We're not doing all these, we're only doing the first six, by my count. We have this psychones. That's the first one. That's the first episode. The second is the very famous lotus eaters, the people who just get high and relax all the time. The third is the very popular, famous one, maybe the most famous incident, where Odysseus encounters the cyclops Polyphemus. And then in my count, we have like 4a and 4b where he visits Aeolus. I'm counting those as the same. And then we have his visit to the Lystrajonians, these big cannibal giant people, which would put Circe's six, where Circe famously turns most of Odysseus's remaining men into pigs. And then that's where we end, by the way. And then we get 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. He goes to the underworld next. After that, the Sirens. After that, Scylla and Charbidus, the cattle of the God, sun God, and then finally the destruction of the crew and the drift to Calypso. But if my count is correct, I want to give some more meat to your suggestion that maybe Homer is doing something philosophical, because that would put Circe at 6 and Central. And that's the story or episode where I think we get the greatest evidence, the greatest evidence that Odysseus, or the author who pens Odysseus, was in fact a philosopher. One small last point on the structure, I think, so 6 therefore becomes a

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

kind of fulcrum or pivot point.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

And the first, the ones before Circe's, seem to be mostly moral stories. So it's about a moral education or the moral virtues, if you will. And then with Circe, we get a beginning of a sort of transformation to theoretical virtues, mind, knowledge, not to say that mind is absent in the first ones, but then thereafter, right, he goes to the underworld to learn about death and knowledge of fate, these kinds of things. So it seems to me that the first ones are moral and then the second set is more intellectual or theoretical. So he learns about divine justice, necessity, death, these kinds of things. So which, by the way, interesting, maybe parallels, maybe is a kind of parallel reason why Aristotle chooses 11 virtues, I'm not sure. But these 11 stories of Odysseus, so there's the kind of structure, if you will, and as you mentioned, just to highlight again that Odysseus is the one telling the story. He's the man of many twists and turns, which is to say, in a fancy way, he's a liar. And so how much are we to trust this story? I don't know if I can defend this in a paper, but I would suggest probably not much at all, that in fact, this is an invention that's largely his, that's meant to show us something about his own education. For example, like, he stayed away for a very long time from Ithaca.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, I think that one thing that even for first time readers, like on a surface level, I really appreciate the structure you laid out, et cetera, is just even how he articulates the relationship between him and his men.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So a lot of times on a surface level, trying to track the narrative, you notice that he starts planting these seeds and then that's a big question, is like, well, by the way, he's the only one that could tell the story.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Why is that the only one left?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

He's the only survivor. Even like the first time I read the Odyssey, which was really just like a basic, let's track the narrative, the Literal. That was an immediate question. Was like, okay, well he's telling a story. He's the only survivor, so he can pretty much say what he wants and we'll see. That tension, I think, that builds with him and the men. Okay, those are great thoughts. I really like the idea, I really like the idea of Cersei being kind of like a fulcrum or middle narrative, because her. And we'll get there. Her character, I think is really interesting and I think that we should observe some interesting parallels between her and Calypso.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Oh, for sure.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Oh, for sure. Okay. Just looking at the. The book nine. So just kind of getting into the text itself. Just sketching out a few things. Many of that you've already noticed. Yeah, I'm reading, I'm looking at Fagles today.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Oh, good. Thank goodness we're on the same page.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

We already mentioned Odysseus, the great teller of tales. That epithet I think is. Is worth observation. We mentioned he becomes the bard. We do have, as you already alluded to, we do have kind of an interesting kind of famous phrase here about the role of feasting.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Things here at the beginning. I do, I think Zinnia, the guest friendship, heavily imprints this whole section. And so what we're seeing then is, you know, so we oftentimes we see the guests show up, the guest is welcomed, bathed, feasted, etc. Before they're even asked their name. What's their, you know, what, what are you doing? Your purpose. And then. But the guest friendship though is, is. Has a reciprocity to it. And so here I think Odysseus becoming the bard, if you will, to tell his story is part of that reciprocity. He becomes that entertainment.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Tells them. And I think that can start to lead into the rhetoric. So he, he is supposed to in some ways entertain. This is the story that he's telling.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

And keep in mind that some of his stories are about bad hosts and one must think about the rhetoric of that. So this, this is a way of flattering his host that you're so much better than, than these one eyed monsters and these cannibal, incestuous people. So. Yeah, yeah, very good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah. It's a general negative on guest friendship to eat your guest, which happens on. Frowned upon, I hear two occasions. Yeah, it's a negative. So the other thing I'll just mention here. Yeah. Line 20 or so we get. I am Odysseus. So he tells his name finally, even though there's been hints. So actually if you go back to him Being trained in learning, like him crying during the previous bard's songs is. You can. You can read that as a weakness. If he does that in Issaca, he dies. Yeah. He can't be moved. So it's interesting. So you mentioned earlier about the virtues. And is Homer intentionally kind of hitting different parts of the soul? Well, even with the Phaeacians, notice at one point with Broadsea, he is torqued in his thumas because he gets angry. And then in other times with the bard, he's tweaked in his sadness and he cries. Both things give away who he is, which can't happen later when he returns to Ithaca in disguise. Very good. So just tracking like I do think Homer is hitting these different parts of the soul. And any. Just another big theme, too, here at the beginning is the theme of place.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And this is this, I think, like you mentioned earlier, this is another thing that I think is woven into. It's not. It's not the only thread, but it's woven into. Part of the reason he says no to Calypso is that who I am, Odysseus, cannot just simply be Odysseus. In any given place, there has to be a home. And even returning to the home is part of that hero's journey. And if I don't return home, there's part of me that is not me anymore. If I stay on Pleasure island with Calypso, and that one has an ontological change, right. I become a God. I'm not myself anymore. And some people, I guess we can talk about it now in this book, you know, we'll make connections that there's very interesting parallels between Calypso's cave and then the Cyclops cave.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And we'll get that where he says that he's nobody. Well, would he have also become nobody if he would have stayed on Calypso Island? Because he would have no chaos, he would have no glory. He just sits around and has this appetitive life. So here, this. This passage after 30, where he talks about the theme of place. Right. I know no sweeter sight on earth than a man's own native country. And then he talks about Calypso. He actually mentions Circe, but they never won the heart inside me. Interesting distinction. And then he talks about a man's own country and a man's own parents. He doesn't talk about a man's own wife.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Which I think is intriguing. But he mentions that there is this thing about place, which then lines up a lot with piety. Piety towards your home country, piety towards your parents, obviously, I think piety towards the gods. So this theme of place in the homecoming of Odysseus, I think, is a major theme that we're still tracking, no doubt.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Let me say two things. One is it seems as though Odysseus genuinely does want to go home now. And so there's a kind of, again, to go back to the rhetoric, I have to persuade these people to help me get home. And so I'll talk about this. I'll appeal to their own sense of their love for their native land, et cetera. So let me try two tracks of this. I don't know. For a guy who wanted to get home, he sure did stay away a long time. And so I do wonder if part of his education isn't. Let me try this in the following way. I think that it's a kind of philosophical education can detach one entirely from one's native land, parents and gods. There may be a kind of, sorry to coin a phrase, second sailing, where even after one's had a philosophical education, one may see that there is. It's still. So, in other words, a philosophical education can kind of show you what actually the accident of the place you were born and then the accent of your parents and the accident of the gods they worship should. You should owe them no allegiance or loyalty. But maybe, on second thought, in other words, maybe after this philosophical education, maybe there still is something, in fact to your native land and your native parents and your native gods that he comes back to. In other words, I'm trying to reconcile the fact that he does. Maybe he does really want to go home, but it's strange that it's taken so long and there are these appeals and of course, he's maybe exaggerating or lying about his attempts to get back, but he does stay with Calypso for some time, and he does stay with Cersei for some time until his men want to get him back. So he seems to be perfectly content not to go home until he does go home. And by the way, I'll just say my own. Like, the older I get, the more I would like to be in my native country. I think that's just. And the more I miss my parents, et cetera, et cetera.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah. It is interesting to compare, like, for instance, him staying with Circe.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

With then staying with, like, Calypso, where we find him, like, crying on the beach.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And, like, what is his capacity to go home and what has he learned in those seven Years, seven years he was on Calypso's island. And it talks about that he used to be willing and now he's unwilling. So what is it that once he got all that pleasure and had this type of life, what is it that after a while he realized this is not me, or even, I would maybe argue, this is not even human.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

What did it take to move him to a point in that capacity? Okay, so pushing on. So our first little narrative, we have Ismauris, right? So he's coming home, he's raiding as they go back to Ithaca. One thing I would just point out about the story is that he really, this is where he starts to present his men as mutinous fools. So they've been with him for 10 years in the Trojan War. They're coming back, they raid, it's successful, etc. And then they're like, hey, we're stay on the beach and, you know, enjoy the spoils of this raid, et cetera. He's like, no, no, no, we have to leave, we have to leave. No one listens to their leader, apparently. And of course this is a bad idea because the next morning there's this, you know, counterattack. And then it's very formulaic, it's done. At line 70, right out of each ship, six men at arms were killed. The rest of us rode away from certain dooms. And, you know, I'd love to know your thoughts on this. I mean, my, the main thing I took away from this in a lot of ways is how he starts to present the relationship between him and his men. Because I think one aspect that typically stands out to people, particularly first time readers, is like, yeah, sure, you can present Odysseus as, I mean, just cunning and self preservation. And this guy will survive everything to make it home in a certain way. That's incredibly laudable. But also you also have to take into account that he's also the leader.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

He's also supposed to be accountable for these men. And we're going to see, I think, a few narratives here which brings that into question. So here he's like right at the beginning painting them that like, by the way, these guys are idiots. They're mutinous, they don't listen to reason, bad things happen to them because of their own fault.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, I'm reminded of the joke. Was it the guy you want to go on an odyssey? What's that? Oh, it's a, it's a trip where only the leader comes back. Like nobody, right? Like, yeah, there's a Strange. You. I start to realize that Odysseus senses his superiority to these men in great ways. But that doesn't explain, you know, of course, I'm a Xenophon scholar, as I mentioned, and in the Anabasis, I think the Anabasis is a kind of retelling of the Odyssey. And Xenophon strikes me as being much more concerned with the fate of his soldiers and his command. And Xenophon, I think, still thinks he's superior to his soldiers, but he seems to care. He seems genuinely to care for them and to try to get them back. Whereas here, Odysseus, I mean, they're pigs. I mean, if we take the story literally, but even figuratively, like they're slaves to their passions, slave to their bodies. They don't have his intellect, with some possible exceptions. I actually think Eurylochus seems fairly reasonable when he doesn't want to go in voyage and see Circe. But, yeah, I mean, you get the impression that these guys are not very impressive. And Odysseus, if it does not seem to bother him too much, maybe you can correct me that he doesn't make it back with all of them. Yeah. And that's not a very good ruler, therefore, I would say within the hurt, so to speak.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Well, and I think there's a comparison. I mean, it's trying to be disciplined, to keep within this. Yeah, of course, but there's a really interesting comparison that the first time readers should notice is that, yes, his men are gonna be turned into swine. When he returns to Ithaca, he will also be introduced to a swineherd. Right, right. A shepherd, if you will, of swine. A swineherd who not only is an incredibly loyal servant, but fawns over Odysseus as the wonderful beneficial king. I mean, without the king, Ithaca is struggling. And I. I really would like to bring up the juxtaposition. And so. And this is not a resolution in my head between Odysseus the king and the narratives we get about how well the kingdom was run and what they need from him versus Odysseus the ruler who went to Troy. Those two sometimes don't line up very well for me.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Boy. I. One of the parts I struggle with mightily is all the things that go down when he returns. It strikes me as difficult to reconcile with what it means to be a good ruler, because you're right. In the Iliad, which we're not talking about, he seems very impressive. He comes up with plans that work the midnight rock. I mean, Some of them are a little maybe of questionable ethical status, but like he's in charge. I think he. He sort of. I mean, I think Homer's indicating at one point when he sort of arbitrates the fight between Achilles and Agamemnon that, that he's actually the real natural born ruler because he grabs the thing and says there can only be one of us and smacks them. So. Yeah, yeah, I think that's right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, very good. Only other thing I would mention here is just to recall at the very beginning of this poem at book one, Homer actually introduces us to this as, you know, many pains he suffered heart sick on the open sea, fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

That's how we were introduced to this. And so I think that I mentioned at our episode with Dr. Pavlos Papadopoulos that I think that's a thesis that should be tested. And in these books I think we're going to see it tested.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Does he actually fight to bring his comrades home? Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And what is the relationship between his men and him in these books?

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

And as we mentioned, he's lying in these stories. I mean, why wouldn't he stress more that he was trying to help them? He does. There are some passages where he tries to help them, but, you know, he, at one point he flees and abandons people behind. And anyway, yeah, they're getting rocks thrown at them from giants.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, No, I think the L. Trigonians. I think that's. I think that's an incredibly important passage.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Maybe the answer is, maybe this is why he's. I mean, if it's really an invention of Odysseus, maybe this is why he's inventing these super monster foes that one can't be blamed for failing to defend one's man against giants and Cyclops, for example.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah. Who could, who could have done this? Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's an interesting.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Simply, we raided a bunch of islands and my men died. Right, yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yes, we have Ismaris. Then you know, there's a storm. They have a problem with that. There's bad winds, a tide, etc, Nine whole days. Then we get the lotus eaters, which is again, kind of a famous line. So this is line 95 or so we get the lotus eaters. I love this passage. I mean, I think it's. I would love to know what you think, because to me this is also one of the clearest examples of some type of virtue. So here are the lotus eaters. They're not going to be Violent like the last story. I think that's what's so fascinating about what you mentioned, is if you compare every little story, key aspects change that seem to be hitting different aspects of the soul and human nature. So the last one, the men are mutinous, right? They don't listen. And we have, we're, we're getting these goods and then there's this violence that occurs right here. We get the lotus eaters. There's no violence here. Totally this wonderful fruit or whatever, right? And so that's line 105 or so they simply gave them the lotus to taste instead. And any crewman who ate the lotus, the honey sweet fruit, lost all desire to send a message back. And skipping a little bit, all memory of the journey home dissolved forever. But I brought them back, back to the hollow ships streaming in tears. I forced them, hauled them under the rowing benches and lashed them fast and shouted out commands to the other. Steady comrades, quick, no time to lose. Embark on racing ships so no one could eat the lotus. Forget the voyage home. I mean, lots of comparisons in my head. First here we see Odysseus taking charge, so they're not listening to him. And where the last time, for some reason he still allowed his men to sleep on the beach even though he knew it was a bad idea, here he's forcing them to do what he thinks to be prudent and literally using

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

force, like you mentioned, he's, he's whipping them.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Sometimes ruling men requires violence. As rhetorically gifted as Odysseus is, rhetoric is insufficient to rule men. And that they especially, I mean, one can think about contemporary examples of people analogous lotus eaters and how we should treat them as a society for their own good. And here seems to be a pretty tough love suggestion. They have to be compelled not to do these things.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, I'd like to look at this as a preliminary to Calypso's island. So here you see this fruit. It makes you dissolve, journey home. So again, if our humanity is tied to a certain purpose, a place of virtue, and that purpose has to include the intellect, the noose there has to be noetic and it also has to be thematic and spirited. This lotus eating life is not a real life. It's just like Calypso's island in certain ways. So I saw this as being an impediment on the teleology of man as well. This is not going to be real living, which I think also kind of plays into a preliminary there, you know, as a moral.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

How do we put this together? The first line, when he says the best life is actually eating and drinking and reading poetry, why wouldn't. This could be compatible with the lotus eating life?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, that's a good question.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

I mean, maybe the home part, I guess, is that because it even makes you forget about home?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, because you're not.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

It's a testing out of that thesis that he begins book nine with, like, this is the best life. Well, if so, then what's wrong with the lotus eating life?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, that's at line 11. This is. This is, to my mind, is the best that life can offer.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah. So what would be the distinctions here? One he's talking about in the context of home and also in zinnia, of guest friendship. We also see. I would say that zinnia is a hallmark of civilization. So you can't. You know, it's. It's not just simply the appetitive. It's not just simply, like, I have food and I feel satisfied, but rather the act of hosting and the feasting has to be predicated upon a certain level of civilization and culture and things like that of, you know. And we'll see in these stories, right, who can welcome the guest and who cannot.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

So the man is political. In other words, civilization being the kind of Roman version of so what?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

The.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

The lotus eaters are not political or something like this. They don't live in community.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

They're not to have the. I mean, where's the noetic for the. For the lowest eaters? Where's. Where's the.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

I guess they're not even telling stories, are they?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Doesn't seem like it. I mean, it just seems like you eat. It's a drug, right?

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Which is interesting because in that way, there's an antecedent there to Cersei.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

I actually think there's a really strong antecedent here to Cersei. We can. We can talk about that when we get there. I see this as acadia, as a slothfulness.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Oh, fair enough.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So not just like. And again, that. That. That vice is typically misunderstood. It's not just something. A physical laziness, but it's. It's a cooling of love for what man was actually called to love. Right. The soul itself cools and typically falls into an appetitive life that then neglects the noetic and the thematic and what the soul is actually designed to do. So I think there's a deep read here, just as this really short story of why is this not a life worth living?

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right. It's very short by the way you're right, I mean, comparatively.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, it's a. It's an artificial happiness. I think, in a lot of ways, I think you compare it to Calypso, you can also compare it to the Sirens. Right.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

So what's the problem?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

on Ismarus, the problem there is that what's the moral vice there? Sort of a failure to obey your leader.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

It seems like there's. I mean, I'm just, you know, raw thought. Yeah, there's. So Odysseus represents. Yeah. So let's just go straight Neoplatonic. Homer's a theologian. Okay, so Odysseus then represents what? The noetic. He's the mind. The men seem to be some mixture of the thematic and the appetitive. So here they do something thematic. They take. They take things. Now they're feasting in the appetitive, and the noetic is saying, hey, we've got to go. This is not prudent. They don't. Those two parts of the soul don't listen. And they suffer violence because of the.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Okay, so this is helpful as you're thinking about. As I think about categorizing each episode. It's like, are the hosts friendly or unfriendly? Who gets. So in other words, it's. In both these first couple cases, it's the men who want to stay. Right. And he's forcing them to leave. What's interesting then is that some of the next ones, it's Odysseus who wants to stay. And so is there a kind of notion there that there's a kind of intellectual vice? It's. It's a kind of. I don't know how better to say this, but. So they want to say it because of repetitiveness. They want to say. Because of thumos. Anger. They want stuff. But does Odysseus want to stay because of intellect? Like, he's curious about the world, and even that can get you. Is this. I mean, maybe this isn't what Homer's saying. I'm not sure, but. Right. What is it that he wants to learn about these people? He's fascinated by these statues or these animals, for example, and he's. He wants to learn about these people that are on this island. And so there's a kind of intellectual vanity. Maybe there. I don't know.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, no, I think that. I mean, we know that that's. Or we're going to see. I guess that that is his primary desire. So one thing we have to watch for is that when the sirens sing, the Siren song is not the same for everyone. It's not monolithic. It is tailored to the soul they're trying to seduce. And so I think one thing for us to pay attention when we get there is what then is the song that the sirens sing? And I think that also helps us understand why he said no to Calypso. Because in that moment, we see what is it that his soul longed for the most. And he's not going to get it on Calypso's island. And here we're getting, I think, little hints of it as Homer gives us these little, dare I say, like, short little moral dramas, just something about humanity. Because I really do think that one of the things about the Odyssey is, is that you are not human if you don't have the return journey. You have to make it back to Ithaca to really, truly be yourself. And if you decide to do something else, like stay on her island or stay with Circe, you. You become somewhat subhuman. You become something that's not entirely man. Which is, again, the first word of this text.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, very good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Okay. All right. Forward. Okay, so now we get. Oh, man, this is just enjoyable. Okay, so we're gonna get into the Cyclops narrative. I. Okay, so just like with the men, we have this, like, preamble where he's trying to explain and give some context for this. Right, right. So he talks about the Cyclops. He says they're lawless brutes who trust so to the everlasting gods. They never plant with their own hands, they never plow the soil. They're not cultured. He says they have no meeting place for council. No laws either. No. Up on the mountain peaks, they live in arching caverns, each a law to himself, ruling his wives and children. Not a care in the world for any neighbor. So this is. I know you have a political bent, Right. So this is a highly political critique of these Cyclops. I mean, one answer, one question is, what is the critique? What's he trying to communicate? And two, why. Why is this a good preamble to his story?

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, let's start and see where we go. No law, no agriculture, no council. And. Right. Aristotle makes mention of these in book one of the Politics. This is sort of pre. Political man in many ways. Another thing, of course, they're Cyclops, so they have. They have one eye, and there's a kind of myop. Myopic quality to them. Contrast this with how many poly terms are used to describe Odysseus, the man of many turns. The man of many. I Don't know how you translate this. He said it'd be polymatis at one point, a lot of craftiness maybe or something like this. And so all these poly terms for Odysseus and then these sort of single mindedness of the Cyclops that there's a kind of limitation of your intellectual horizon if you remain totally within the Oikos, within the family. There are families by the way. Right. Each man is a sort of law to his himself and his family, his wives and children. And I think there's a kind of implication of incest here. I'll be explicit later on with another group. And so I think the idea. And by the way, it's this, my, is this myopia that makes the Cyclops vulnerable to Odysseus tricks. So there's an incapacity to see things from more than one perspective it seems. And of course just relying therefore on force for everything and ultimately not realizing no, Odysseus has just used force with his men, but he's also capable of using fraud. And the Cyclops don't seem capable of fraud or even sort of the nuance of mind that can understand that fraud might be a thing. I'm sure there's more to this, but I mean there's the connection seemingly between laws, agriculture and political communities, councils. Right. That if one doesn't have politics, one can't have agriculture. This is sort of Lockean even. Right. If you don't have some political community to protect your land, you have no incentive to cultivate the earth. You know, I mean we talked before we started recording about some of the biblical echoes or contrasts and one wonders here also about the first human beings being shepherds. And so again pre political in some way, if I were to. I know we're trying to focus on this, but it seems to me that one of the teachings of Genesis early on is that actually the God of Genesis at least chapters 1 through say 11, prefers human beings to not reside in the political communities, but to reside in these kind of extended family communities, patriarchies for example, and the founder of the first city is a murderer, Cain. Right. Murders his brother. And so here I think by contrast you get the Greek kind of criticism of man outside of political community. He's a monster. Men who do not live in political communities are monsters.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, very good. You could tie Babel into that as well.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, for sure.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Together to create. Yeah, there's. So what is it about that patriarchal structure and these large family groups? Right. So even like someone like Abraham, he's serving not only as the political leader of the group, but he's also the priest.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

He also offers the sacrifices. It's. Yeah, it's a really interesting comparison with the cyclops. I really liked your idea. Between the cyclops as representing something analogous to being monolithic and then the poly side of Odysseus. I think that's fascinating because that lends into certain implications and subtleties in this text that the cyclops that Odysseus deals with is somehow different than the rest of them because again, what's his name?

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

He has a poly name.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, that's right, Polyphemus.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, yeah, right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And also his.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Doesn't it mean like says a lot of stuff?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, like many voices or something.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah. And, and which is not necessarily an accurate account of him.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

No. So like what is it about him? You know his father is Poseidon. There's so I, I've seen some people try and push into. There's something unique about him even amongst the cyclops themselves.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

You know a small tangent by the way. Odysseus is recounting this story to the king of the Phaeacians who is the grandson of Poseidon. So he's cousins nephew, like. Right. I mean that's the one with polyphony. Sort of interesting anyway.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, no, yeah, very good. Yeah. And I think, I mean just some other things just around the edges. I think it'll. I think certain ways Odysseus has a. Again if he's lying, but again he doesn't, he never just full bore lies. Benedetti has a wonderful phrase in which he basically says that all of Odysseus's lies are always Odysseus but in different circumstances he always acts the same way that he would act but he changes the situation. Which I thought was a really interesting peg here. I think Odysseus's own behavior calls in some ethical questions. And when I say ethical I mean like in the Homeric, not, not Christian, not whatever.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Like how he put his men to danger here because what.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Well he gets critiqued for that too, so we'll see that. But I think actually under guest friendship, under Zinnia does he violate guest friendship here? And so I actually think that he has a. In certain way. I mean one negative read here would be that he has a benefit of trying to explain right off the bat that these guys are lawless, they're just God forsaken, individualistic, atomized people. Because why guest friendship is the sign of civilization do these people like when he washed up on Theacia, how many times that he mentioned the Olympian gods. He's trying to figure out whether or not these people engage in some level of civilization. So here, of course, with Cyclops, what do we get? We don't obey the gods, we don't like these things, etc. So I think in a certain way Odysseus has to paint them because I think in certain ways he has to leverage his own behavior here. Because remember, raiding is fine. If you have the strength to go in and do something, go in and do it. No one, none of the Greeks are going to get mad at you for raiding. Yeah, but violating guest friendship is sacrilegious. So I mean, let's maybe get more

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

about that real quick before we move on. I mean, like, right, so Odysseus does ask, are these God fearing men? And, and so you're connecting. I think your connection of the guest friendship relationship to the gods is really interesting and I think that's correct. I guess I hadn't reflected on that sufficiently so that the gods are required to undergird this practice. Because I mean, in other words, I need to find out if you are God fearing because if you are, then therefore you're civilized and therefore you'll honor this custom. But if you're not, then you, you won't.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, it's all, it's all tied together. So for instance, you can look at, you know, oftentimes it said that piety has three levels, right. So you're pious towards the gods, you're pious towards your polish, you're pious towards the family. So one of the reasons that Zinnia tends to be this guest, friendship tends to be a sign of civilization is because you have to have all three levels of piety for it to work well. So Zeus oversees it. It's a sacred relationship. He guards both the host and the guest. If you recall, when Menelaus is able to duel Paris, beginning of the Iliad, he calls out to Zeus, you have to let me win. Because the whole world needs to see what happens when a guest violates guest friendship. Again, if Paris just would have gone in and raided Sparta and taken Helen, set aside the oath they had. But if he just would have gone there and killed men on the taken Helen, that's fine. Great power to you. That's wonderful. But he violated friendship. Right. But to be a man's guest.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And abscond with his wife, I mean, this is, this is why. It's just I try never to do

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

this when I go to people's house.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, it's a negative, just in general. It puts a damper on the evening.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Can I ask a question about this? So one of the things that's interesting though is that our Cyclops do trust their. The everlasting gods. This is on Fagel's line 120. So. So my question, and here I. Forgive me, this might be a totally ignorant question. So they do trust the gods, but they don't. They're not fearing, fearful of them. They don't follow their laws. So one question I would have. How do we square this? Does this mean that they fear the natural gods? Forgive me, like the, the ocean and the sun and the moon, as opposed to Zeus, Hera, Apollo, et cetera. Because I found. I was on. I was tracking everything you were saying, but I thought it was strange that the remark is that they do trust. They're so trustful of the everlasting gods that they don't even bother to plant. They're so trustful the gods will take care of them. Which by the way, would suggest, and I think this actually tracks with Genesis, that agriculture exhibits a kind of distrust in the gods. We don't trust that they'll provide for us, therefore we have to provide for ourselves. I guess one can reconcile this with a fall by saying, well, we were provided for until we messed up and then the curse was we have to go provide for ourself in any event.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah. I mean, the role of techne in all this is really fascinating.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Well, okay, so some raw thoughts. One, it's Odysseus that says this about the Cyclops. The Cyclops, how they speak for himself, obviously through the mouth of Odysseus is a little bit different.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Two, it's interesting because there is an Olympian God baked into this, which is Poseidon. And so here he just says everlasting gods. He doesn't. And he doesn't really explain it.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

The Cyclops tends to make a distinction between we don't care about guest friendship, which is overseen by Zeus. But then later it's very clear that they do have recourse to Poseidon.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So how. Where does that actually play? Because I think that lineage is actually really important to the story.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Sure. Very good. Okay. Sorry I derailed you.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

No, no, all these things are very good. I mean, maybe just to kind of skip forward a little bit. They, they're looking at this island across from there. They see like, you know, are there signs of habitation? This goes into some of your comments about does Odysseus have maybe, I hesitate to say a curiosity, but does he have some type of intellectual desire to just see who's on this island? Because he does make several curious statements. So for instance, a little after 190 he does say, you know, I'll go across with my own ship and crew and probe the natives living over there. What are they? Violent, savage, lawless or friendly to strangers. God fearing men. By the way, they're on this other island. They have everything that they need.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

He just talked about there's goats everywhere, everything's fine everywhere. So he goes over there and I will say just, I'm gonna skip just a little bit, but I want to tether it to something.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Is when he, after he talks about the wine, which is important.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really strong line. Really strong.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Around 240.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

He already has kind of. He already makes a comment, a sudden foreboding. Told my fighting spirit I'd soon come up against some giant clad in power like. Or yeah, power like armor plate. A savage. Death to justice, blind to law. So he is already. My point here is he's already making certain anthropological assumptions about what type of people have to live on this island.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Oh, very good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Based off what he can observe, he sees no shit.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

No ships for example. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So he. So it's interesting like because your question was really apt earlier is like why does he want to go over there? And you could say, oh, they're raiding and etc. He wants a guest gift, which is something by the way.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Contrast is another thing to contrast as you make your chart of all the visits, like when he draws lots, for example, and someone else has to go or when he volunteers to go himself. And this is the case where he volunteers to go himself. As you mentioned, he brings 12 of his best fighters or whatever.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah. So if we, if we lend, if we kind of leaned into that.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Then again kind of going to like a, A thicker understanding of Homer.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

If Odysseus is someone analogous to the intellect like he, he has what some. He has a desire for truth here. He has a desire for just understanding, man.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, that's very good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Again, I, I think that because it's

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

what, what's motivating the men.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

I think you're right.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Is a kind of either they want stuff or they want to take it easy. And they look at like not desert island but an island that offers nothing of that and there's nothing for the men over there. And so he wants to go. Yeah, very good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah. So that's some, that's a question. Oh, he also says, yeah, actually there's another line too, a little after 210, where he actually gives another anthropological description. A grim loner, dead and set own lawless ways. Here was a piece of work by God, a monster built. No mortal who ever stepped on bread. No. A shaggy like peak, I'd say a man mountain.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Rearing head and shoulders over this world. So why he goes over, I think is a big question. Yeah, it doesn't seem just to be to raid. Now the wine, I think is interesting. I didn't pay. The wine stood out to me on this reread. And the only thing I think I would mention is that he only has the wine. So. Well, one, why does he have the wine and why does he bring it? Right, so he only has the wine because of maybe broadly contextualized an act of piety. He saved this priest, this priest of Apollo. And so that's the gift. And so that, that really stands out to me that like, okay, so this is a gift that maybe has a divine origin and it has, it's connected to divine, it's, it's connected to piety, etc. And then to your kind of thread that you're, you're showing us, he brings it because why it's, it's basically like a primitive understanding that even if this man, mountain man on this lawless island has nothing, he's got to understand why, he's got to understand like this gift, like what, what is the.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Oh, I took it to be the entirely direct. Now remember, we've just come from the place where people, as a result of drugs, becomes super easygoing.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So it's his own lotus flower. Yes.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

So I mean, he's, if he sees, if he can already determine apparently that there's no agriculture there, then you know, wine comes very late. I mean, in the game here. Yes. I mean what I think is probably discovered by accident or something like this. And so I, I imagine that Odysseus must think he's innocent to wine, but maybe that's, maybe that's reading into it too much and that therefore it'll be easy to get drunk.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, you can't have wine without agriculture. So he, he takes this because he knows that if he engages with a primitive man, they're not. I mean, there's many ways to read that one.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

I mean, look at what, look at what we did with Native Americans, for goodness sake. Right? I mean, like you can, if you, you give booze to people innocent of Booze, you can ruin them.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Right, so that, yeah. So it goes both ways. One, it's a gift that he would see as high esteemed. It's not something they're familiar with.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

But two, it's a double edged sword because then they don't understand the moderation.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And this is a incredibly potent wine.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah. It's not been cut with water yet. Right. And so, and it's. So first it's not cut and it's already super concentrated. And so. Yeah, it's very potent. Very good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Okay.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, yeah, I need to reread. I don't, I don't remember that Polyphemus had wine of his own. He had cheese and other goodness and meat, but no wine. Right, correct. Yeah. Okay, that's what I thought.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So he has enough culture to make cheese and to shepherd.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And he knows his flock by name, but there doesn't seem to be any type of agriculture.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, yeah, very good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Okay, so here. Okay, so here's where I start to question whether Odysseus has violated ethical norms according to Homeric period. Okay, so what happens? So they go up there. Yes. There's a cave. They see, okay, here's a cave. There's all this stuff inside. It does look like a giant mountain man is in here. Okay, great. Just steal all his stuff and leave. That's what his men want to do down at. This is a little after 250, like, let's make away with the cheese. And we can, we can take her, we can take all this stuff. We're gone. What does Odysseus say? He says, but I would not give way. And how much better it would have been. Not till I saw him, saw what gifts he'd give. But he proved no. Lovely sight to my companions. So this is interesting. So here the men are, the ones who arguably want to do something that's actually more prudent.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

And he seems to be admitting, as he's telling the story that this was a mistake on his part.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Right, correct.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

How much better it would have been if I hadn't. If I hadn't. If we had just left. Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And so that could be like, okay, he made the wrong decision. That doesn't mean it's like immoral.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

But what caught my attention was the line, let's see what gifts he'll give. Oh, so this is a problem. This is a problem. In guest friendship we have never seen. So Telemachus journeys, we see all of this guest friendship in Zinnia, we never see any guests show up and say, hey, I'm here. What kind of gifts would you like to give me? Yeah, no, this is. That's not how this works. You show up, they receive you in a certain level of like, trust and dare I say, humility, of like, not asking your name, of bathing you, feasting you, et cetera. And then you tell your story, and then they understand your purpose, your mission, and then they give you gifts to help you in that.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Telemachus never shows up and says, I'm here. Where are my guest gifts? Like, that's ridiculous. And so I. So here. What's happening there? So you could argue that he is abusing guest friendship to get something out of the men. And if I can just play my cards here, is that I think how Odysseus is going to act towards a Cyclops is in part how the suitors act towards his house. And so he wants to consume the house, he wants the guest gifts, he wants more. He's abusing guest friendship for his own benefit. And I actually think that then when Odysseus returns to Ithaca, in a certain way, he plays the role of the cyclops, he comes in and consumes those interesting in his home. And I actually. Indeed, you can tether it to the fact that it's actually because of the curse that we'll see here in a bit, that he comes home to a world of pain, that he comes home to a world of people who are now violating his home and his guest friendship. He has to deal with the same stuff that he just made the cyclops have to deal with. I don't think that makes them a good black and white, good guy, bad guy.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

But I think that these two things are deeply tethered.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Why tell this story where he looks so bad?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

That's a good question.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, yeah. No, I didn't mean it. I wasn't contradicting. I was just like, what? It's curious that he tells. I mean, I mentioned earlier, one reason to tell the story is that to impress upon your host that he's doing so much better. But it might also find the host think was the only reason he's being nice to get gifts, just like he did to Polyphemus.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Right.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

What's interesting too about him saying that the cyclops is completely lawless. They don't have this culture. Whatever. Okay, well, something's wrong because when he sees the home and he sees the culture, he thinks it's worth staying to get a guest gift from. Well, you're not going to get a Guest gift if the person's too primitive or lawless to understand what zinnia is.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Oh yeah, very good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So there's an interesting thing here about his own decision making process through this. Not only is he abusing something, but in this story he seems to be speaking out of both sides of his mouth of like, these guys are lawless brutes, they don't respect the gods, et cetera. By the way, when I got there, they had enough culture and shepherding, et cetera, that I thought I could probably get a guest gift out of him. You can't abuse a cultural norm if they don't have it.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, I want to correct myself on a couple things here. First of all, so one is, I wonder if when he's giving that account of them, this is now again the problem of chronology. Like this is after the fact. He only learned this later. So when he. Because this is the setup for that story, right? That's who was over there, the Cyclops, which he couldn't have known at that point until he got there. But another thing is, it does seem as though they had wine. By the way, where is that? Page 215, line 120 and so. So they didn't have agriculture unsown, unplowed. The earth teams with all they need, wheat, barley and vines swelled by the reigns of Zeus to yield a big full bodied wine from clustered grapes. So ostensibly they must have wine.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, so they have it. That goes back to just trusting in the God. So they have no intentional agriculture. But they do have wild. Yeah, but that means they also would have to have fermentation process.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, it seems strange to have want to develop wine without agriculture. But I suppose they'd have to have

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

the techne to do that. But they also have the techne for cheese.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, cheese seems. Yeah, I guess both could be accidentally discovered. You leave some milk out and then, oh, what's that? And then it tastes good. And same thing with, with grapes, I

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

suppose we have to be brave enough to try it. That's what I'm always surprised about. Okay, onward, onward. Okay, so what ends up happening? So they stay, they, they decide to choose Odysseus, et cetera. Okay, so then the quote unquote, man mountain guy comes back and he happens to be a Cyclops.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And so now they all scatter like roaches into the dark recesses of the cave. He finds them around 285 or so strangers. He thundered out, now who are you? So what's interesting is then at 300 Odysseus tries to use his rhetoric. We're at your knees. In hopes of a warm welcome, even a guest gift. So again, he's not even see, like maybe a gift.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

I don't know.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, like this is hilarious. He's like, hey, we're here. Like, do you want to give us any gifts or whatever? I mean, even outside the fact that the cyclops seems incredibly primitive and I don't think it's going to work.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

It would be like bizarre to show up to like King Alcinous house or like Menelaus's house and be like, I'm here. Where are my gifts?

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, that's right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And so he, and he actually pushes on zinnia. He says, that's the custom. Respect the gods, my friend. You know, at your mercy, Zeus. And this is where we get the Zeus comment. Strangers are sacred, et cetera. The cyclops pushes back that, you know, the cyclops never bring blink at Zeus or Zeus's shield of storm or thunder or any other blessed God. We've got more force by far.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Never blink. So they reference their own eyes by the way. Right?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, they're more powerful.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah. So they don't give credit to the Olympian gods, but some. Yeah, very strange.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Which is interesting.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

So this seems to be. The cyclops seems to be connecting human frailty then to belief in the gods. And by the way, again, you know, over and over again human beings are identified as bread eaters. But if there's no agriculture, these guys can't be bread eaters. Right. Cause you need wheat for that. Okay.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

You also have to have a process by which you.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

These monsters are inhuman for a number of reasons. Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

What's interesting is my conversation with you on the Gorgias just keeps resonating in my head because Odysseus has his rhetoric and does his rhetoric even work here? And again, so if this is all, then a test, a pedagogical formation for him that the gods know that he has to have before he goes to Ithaca, which I don't think is exhaustive of everything, but just on that thread. So here he tries to appeal to guest friendship, which I don't think anyone is like, this is not going to work, buddy. Like, terrible. But then. So his rhetoric is not. Is not working. It's not serving as that ring of Gius, if you will. Right. He's not invisible. He can't do whatever he wants.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

The rhetoric is not landing well with the cyclops. Then you get another interesting back and forth. So the cyclops then Says, but tell me, where did you moor your sturdy ship when you arrived? I'd just like to know. So here's the thing is, like Odysseus, translate. Seems to translate this as the Cyclops as being clever and trying to see what he's doing. Because then Odysseus answers my ship. Poseidon, the God of earthquake, smashed my ship. I really wonder if this is a huge blunder on Odysseus part.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Oh, I took this to be a clever lie on Odysseus part. In other words, his rhetoric's working now. Yeah. Why is this? So tell me why it's not a blunder.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Okay, so why. Why could this be a blunder? A few things. One, he just said that I don't have a ship.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Okay?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Okay. So if you kill me, there's no one, there's no one else coming to defend me. There's no revenge. There's no. There's no army of men that are down on the coast.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Oh, good. Okay, very good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

If you kill me, I'm isolated. 2.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Oh, good, good, good. Yeah, that's good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

You're. What are you gonna do with me? Like, you're. You don't. Strangers. You can't send me back.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Okay, very good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, eliminate me. And three, that's very good. I just told you that your father is mad at me and destroyed my ship.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Well, he doesn't know it's his dad yet, does he?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

No, it's the Cyclops father.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

No, I understand. Does Odysseus know that yet?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

That's a good question. Yeah. Are all the Cyclops children of Poseidon? I don't know.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

And does he know that?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Maybe that one's not an intentional idea.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

I'm also intrigued by how does the Cyclops know to ask about ships if they don't have navigation? I guess they've seen them from their island. Seen them?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Maybe.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, but that's strange. Okay. All right, good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Okay. I think the lie to be pretty smart.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Like, I thought it was preserving his men that he thought the Cyclops would otherwise go out and get them.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

That could be true.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah. No, I like your. I like yours, though.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

It's very good. Because. Well, here's the thing. So does the Cyclops then realize so for. Because I guess the. What?

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

I'd like to think he realizes he's lying.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

You don't think so?

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

No, no, I think he's a rube. That's. I think that's part of the. That's. And I think this is how Odysseus is going to realize he can trick him. But. Yeah, no, no, I. But maybe I'm wrong. In other words, I take. I take Polyphemus or Polyphemus to not understand lying and wordplay and tricks.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So he has no reason to lie.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

He's powerful.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So when he asked about the ship, do you. Do you find that to actually be that he's like, he's trying to deceive Odysseus into giving something away or it's just an. It's like. It's just a normal question that you would ask, like, where's your ship? How'd you get here?

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Oh, I don't. Yeah, that's good. I took him to be just saying. Not even thoughtful enough to realize that. Yeah. So I guess that's a pro. Problem for my interpretation. Because I'm suggesting if he doesn't understand lies and he wouldn't know how to lie himself, maybe he's just that stupid that he doesn't even think that it's about like, where are your men? And how'd you go eat them too? Because he immediately be like, as soon as he answers, he just immediately bashes two guys brains and it eats them.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Right?

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And that's what really caught my attention on this read through. Is that, what is it about Odysseus answer that Polyphemus is like, oh, okay, and just eats the two of them.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Maybe there is a kind of duplicity in him because maybe if he thought there are there. I'll keep you guys in here. I'll go get them and eat them first and eat you guys later. Yeah, that's good. That's good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah. Or even if Odysseus does, an error in mentioning Poseidon the cyclops hearing that Poseidon is angry at them. I mean, there's a way to read this that these are Poseidon's gifts to him.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Oh, yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Hey, by the way, Poseidon ruined our ship. We're here. It's a gift to his son. Please eat us.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right, Right. Yeah. Especially considering they do have this belief. Right. That the gods provide for them. Yeah. And so this is just Poseidon providing for me.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Here's.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Thanks, dad.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Right. We already mentioned it. The deep irony of eating your guest.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So you're supposed to feast your guest

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

or not feast on them. Yeah, Very good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So that's right. Okay, so one thing on. So this, Homer, the soul, the psychology. One thing that's really fascinating here to me is that we should Observe is around 340. Okay. We get one of these narratives again, where Odysseus is having an internal monologue.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So it's not as clear, I think, as the famous, like, speaking to his own Thumas when he's off Eclipso's island, which I think happens like three times, but here, once again, he says, I groped for the fatal spots. What's going to happen? He's. He's just like, I'm going to take my sword and kill the cyclops.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

But then he has to, because he falls asleep. Okay, well, then he realizes, Right. He says a fresh thought held me back. Yeah.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So the only thing I want to point out here is what we saw in the Iliad that played out between Achilles and Athena, goddess of wisdom, where Achilles, as the rage, the Thumas incarnate, is held back by the goddess of wisdom to not kill Agamemnon at the beginning of the Iliad. That whole drama now is taking place internally inside Odysseus. He has the capacity. So, I mean, I think, I do think the Odyssey has a deeper anthropology than the Iliad does. And I think this is one of the ways, is that these fresh thoughts, these other ways, are not being contextualized as gods coming down and showing them to you, but rather like Odysseus has the capacity to have this discursive capacity inside of himself. Himself.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, for sure. And yes. Right. And to think strategically and to think, okay, I can't do this. We'll be trapped and we'll die. Yeah, very good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Okay. So they.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

One question I would have is, does Polyphemus know this?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Like, what's, what's this? That, that,

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

that Odysseus can't simply kill him. This is why he's fine going to sleep. Does he know, does he anticipate, like, what are they gonna do? They can't just kill me. They'll all be trapped here because he doesn't really take any precautions. And so is it just all premised on. Well, they can't. I know that I can overpower them so I don't have to worry about anything.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

I don't know. Yeah. They're not a threat in the least. Yeah. It seems like to me still that it's, It's. He's dull and obtuse. It can't be that he, like, worked through this whole thing. It's like, these guys are just small. They're not a threat. They can't do anything to me.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah. Yeah. Very good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Okay. Because how would you not mention, by the way? They could definitely blind my eye or they could definitely have one. Yeah. They could also stab me. I mean, there's lots of. They have swords. There's lots of things that they could do. So I guess to that narrative, like, how do we take. Yeah. So obviously they take his club, which is interesting. They take his club, they make it into this, you know, Spike.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And. But what do we think about the. The role of wine in that wine place here? Right. Because he eats the two men. So six men die.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

In this capacity. Yeah.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

We're down to six. Half. What's the question about the wine?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Well, we're given the wine. The wine then ends up playing. This is the pivotal part. Right.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

This is 390.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yes. Where he gives him the wine. Here, Cyclops, try this wine to top off the banquet of human flesh. You've bolted down. Which. The only thing that's better than this is the fact that then the guy gets drunk and vomits up all of his comrades.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah. Some of their, like, bones are coming up.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, yeah. He would wash this down. So it's interesting here. So this. This context of. So the thing. The thing with the wine, I guess, works to a certain degree. Maybe it's something he has, maybe it's something he doesn't. I'm sure the text is, like, terribly clear about this. Whatever it is, the Cyclops does not handle it well. But it's also, we know, an incredibly potent wine.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

That's given into the context of piety. So even though Odysseus kind of figures this out his own, he also has to use a gift that's kind of given to him through the context of religious piety and a pious act, which I think is interesting. And then he gets the famous nobody phrase.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

What's your name? And again, I want to point out that not only. How do I phrase this, it's not just that Homer is subtly playing off of guest friendship and this whole infrastructure of the story is zinnia, but the characters in the story themselves realize what is happening is a perversion of guest friendship, which I find fascinating. So he actually says, so Odysseus finally tells him his name, which is part of the reciprocity of guest friendship. And then the gift he gives him, the gift of guest friendship. What's his gift? I'll eat you last.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

I'll eat you last.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So they, the characters themselves understand that there is this parody, this perverse parody of guest friendship that's occurring.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

So the Cyclops does kind of understand guest friendship, even though he doesn't subscribe to it. Yeah, yeah, very good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah. So he has to have a certain level of culture because he, he can play off of this, which I guess that goes into the point of he's clever enough to make a joke.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, very good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So they make. I will, just for a theme, I'll point out that again, this is the stake is made out of olive wood. Kind of an architectonic thing to track in. The Odyssey is the role that olive wood, which again is the tree of Athena, plays throughout this whole process. We've already seen him, correct? Yeah, we already saw him sleep between the two olive trees, one wild, one domestic, when he washed up on the shore of Phaeacia. Like, there's just how he plays. The wood plays a subtle role throughout this. So it's one thing I'm tracking. It's not something I've paid attention to in the past.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Okay.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Huh. Okay, so he. Okay, so he's blinded. And this is really fascinating. So he's blinded, he's crying out.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

So we make this clear. So just back up a second. So this is. His men are trapped in the cave. Polyphemus has rolled a boulder over the exits. They're trapped in the cave. Polyphemus has eaten his men two by two, three times. So we're now down to half. The remaining men fashion something they're going to stab his eye out with out of an olive tree, as you mentioned, and they heat it up and they blacken it and all this stuff. Okay, good. I think that's where we are. So the plan is to stab him and have him figure out how to let us out. Maybe when he lets the goats out and the sheep out tomorrow morning. Okay, yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And so it's successful. So they stab him in the eye

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

and Odysseus says, my name is no man. Right, okay, good. Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And so what's. So what is. Okay, so now what we're getting is in the aftermath, the Cyclops starts calling out.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah. To his fellow Cyclopes.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Cyclopes, you know, Cyclops and Fagles. It's cyclops, but I was. Yeah, Benedetti has a fancier word than that.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, yeah, Cyclops is fine.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Plural.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

The plural of Cyclops.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

In Oklahoma we just say Cyclops.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, Cyclops is fine. We just call them one eyed weirdos where I'm from.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Okay, so, yeah, just a few things. Like one, it is his neighbor Cyclops, around 450. They respond, why, you know, Polyphemus, what in the world's the trouble? Roaring out in the godsent. Night to rob us of our sleep. Surely no one's wrestling your flocks or your will. Surely no one's trying to kill you by now by fraud or force. Nobody, Nobody's trying to kill me if you're alone, his friend said. So this is kind of fascinating to me, and I wonder how much you push into this. So, one, they can't be too terribly atomized. I mean, they don't care enough to go over and look. They want to get a question from him. But like, one, he has an anticipation if he cries out, that they're going to answer.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, that's good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Two, they do answer. They're referred to as his neighbors. They're referred to as his friends. Now, granted, they're, you know, they just hear him screaming. They're like, okay, he's probably got the plague. We're going to leave him alone. But I think it's a fascinating little insight there that Homer includes the fact that the cyclops does cry out to his community and the community does respond in a certain way, and there are certain expectations of this.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, it's very good. Yeah, the community does respond. And ostensibly Odysseus must have known that that would be the case, otherwise he wouldn't have had this ruse about making his name no man or no one or nobody or whatever.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, that's a good question. I think, too, you can tether that to, you know, is there a failure of pride or being arrogant here at the end? Because he then does tell the cyclops his name and this leads to a lot of problems.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So even if he doesn't know he's going to cry out to his friends, there does seem to be a general prudence to not give your enemy your name, particularly when cursing your name to the gods is an efficacious route to ruining your life.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, there is at line 460. By the way, I find there's a big pun here. Odysseus connects nobody to mind. So they lumbered off the other cyclops. That is. The laughter filled my heart to think how nobody's name, my great cunning stroke, had duped them one and all. There's a kind of pride at how he's made everyone feel stupid because he's tricked them. And cunning stroke is mind Metis, which Udis at some point is no. 1, and Metis is also no. 1. And so there's this nice pun on no. 1 slash mind. Now, I don't know how much farther we could go with that, but there's Odysseus seems to be Connecting. I mean, the most obvious thing is Odysseus has concocted this story about no one using his mind. That's the simplest kind of thing. But one wonders you. Well, you just mentioned this pride in being who you are and your pride in your name. I am Odysseus. Is there a more philosophic account of things where you're actually no one? I realize that might be going too far, but like there's an unphilosophic or unintellectual emphasis on yourself when you're thinking, insisting upon your name. I don't know, maybe my first blush at this is all there is. Maybe it's just that he had the mind to be able to come up with this trick. But there's definitely a pun being made there. It seems to me his great mind stroke.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

No, I like that. I like that a lot. I, I do think, I don't think it's. It's outrageous to think that Homer is playing with this on multiple levels because I, as I mentioned earlier, I really do like the idea that here he becomes nobody in this cave.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Which is what he would have become if he would have said yes to Calypso. He would have become a nobody in her cave. He would have lost his clayoffs. He would have lost his journey home. He would have lost, I think the noetic as well. She's just pure appetitive.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right, Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Actually, it makes me wonder how much you can compare her to the Cyclops. So maybe she's pure repetitive and no noetic. And here the Cyclops is pure Thumas and also no noetic.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

They're not, they're both. I mean, who's smarter, the Cyclops or Calypso? Not entirely sure. So just a thought.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So, you know, does nobody. Does the role of nobody play a role in both caves? No, I think he's playing off of it in an intentional way.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah. And as I mentioned also, he's described many times as Polymatis, Odysseus, that is. And so the. No man is actually mini men or something like this, if that makes any sense.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Okay. So we have this like clever way to get out of the cave. And so he lashes together. So the animals are in the cave, like the sheep, etc. So he lashes them together and you know, they're going to ride underneath them. So again, sometimes you see some really good art on this where the basically Cyclops is sitting at the beginning of the cave, the opening of the cave, because he's rolled the stone away so this is part of the brilliance that only he could do. And he's basically tapping down on the top of the sheep to make sure it's only them that are leaving. And Odysseus is tying his men underneath, so he's actually tying the sheep together by threes. They're grabbing in on the. On the middle one. And so then when he puts his hand down, he's only feeling the sheep. And Odysseus then, in somewhat dramatic fashion, carries himself underneath the old ram. We actually get this, like, very. I don't know what you took of this. Not endearing. I don't know. But the Cyclops knows his animals very intimately. There's an intimacy here. Right. Dear old ram.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Why? The last of the flock to quit the cave in the good old days, you know, you'd never lag behind the rest, et cetera. And then he actually attributes a certain empathy between the ram and himself, between, you know, the. The shepherd and his sheep, if you will.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah. Are you sad for me? Right? He asks the ram. Yeah, Very good. And by the way, he still lets them out. Yeah. It shows a care for them, even. Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So. Yeah. And I then somewhat, I want to say, heartbreaking. I don't know why, but I do, just to put a cap on that. It's actually the dear old ram that Odysseus sacrifices at the end of this book.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah. That's funny. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So he leaves. I don't know if there's other stuff you want to talk about here, but. And it's with a burst of anger as he finally sees that he's out of harm's way, tells him who the heck he is. You can say it was me, Odysseus, raider of cities. He gets out of your eye, Laerte's son, who makes his home in Ithaca. So it's anger. I didn't check to see if that's Thumos. I assume it might be, but. And so therefore, he lets his anger get the better of him here and has to insist upon his own name. And that insistence on his own name is what leads to, of course, many of the travails, many of the problems that come next.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Correct. And here again, his men. So we've. It's flipped. Right. His men are saying, why do this?

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And he actually has a line. Right. So they begged me, but they could not bring my fighting spirit round. Yep. So he tells him his name, Odysseus, and actually that, you know, he makes it home in Ithaca, and then even The Cyclops then contextualizes this as, let me give you one last guest gift. So this is down at like 575. Come here, Odysseus, let me give you a guest gift and urge Poseidon, the earthquake God, to speed you home. And so this is then where we get the famous prayer the curse. A little bit 4 or 5, 90, where he says, right. He never reaches home. Okay, we can't do that because of fate. Or if he's fated to see his people once again and reach his well built house in his native country, let him come home late and come a broken man, all shipmates lost alone in a stranger ship, and let him find a world of pain at home. So this is where I think you can. So this is one just a big kind of like, you know, architectonic narrative. All of the Achaeans to a certain degree, are cursed and have problems because of Athena's rage while leaving Troy. They all have to suffer that. Odysseus has that now. Plus the curse of Polyphemus, who then is the curse of Poseidon, which we saw at the beginning of this entire play, or, excuse me, this entire poem is the rage of Poseidon against Odysseus is then one of the main impetuses of him having take so long to get home. So this is where he then, in his own error, if you want to say it that way, Right. His own foolishness of telling him, he wants everyone to know who it was that was so clever that could pull this off. Right. He has to let him know that it's him. This is then the origin of most of his problems. Yep.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

And the curse happens. Everything that he curses him happens. Right?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah. And this is right.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Okay. Grant that he never reaches home. Okay. Not that. Or if he does go home, then the following. And that's what happens, Right? So he says, curse a, curse B, dear Poseidon, give him curse A. If not curse A, curse B. And curse B is in fact what happened. Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And it's thematic. So then what happens to him is that, yes, he loses his man, et cetera, but when he comes home, what's he have to deal with? He has to deal with a violation of guest friendship. He has to deal with the fact someone is eating and consuming his house and now he will have to consume them. And I think we'll watch this when we get to there. I think Homer plays off this because when you get to, you know, actually it's Dr. Alex Preu who's coming on to discuss the slaughter of the suitors.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, I figured he'd want to do that part.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, happy to have him. So when we get to that, though, there's a lot of imagery between food and slaughter, between the food and the gore. There's an interesting mixing there that I think is recalling the consumption of the Cyclops, because actually, even Odysseus at that time, if memory serves, at the end of what would that be? Book 21, he talks about with Telemachus. It's now time. Right. To give the suitors their supper.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right. Oh, there you go.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Any other thoughts here on book nine?

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

No, I mean. I mean, just the parallel structure of 9 and 10. 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3. So we had 1, 2, 3, and then 4, 5, 6 episodes. And it seems like the third and then sixth are kind of peaks, as it were. So there's a kind of parallel structure, it seems, going on.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

That's about it, I would add.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

It sure captures the imagination. Oh, I love this. For whatever reason, this Cyclops thing really captures people's imagination.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And this is where I fell in love with Odyssey the first time I read it. Now, granted, because of the program, I was in a few other things. We didn't. I didn't read the Iliad first. And if you don't read the Iliad first, there's a lot of, you know, Telemachus journey that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. You're not. You're not. You're not running into old friends, and so you're, you know, et cetera. Book nine is where I really fell in love with Odyssey. Like this. This has a lot of layers. They're much more clear here. The only other thing I would add here is again, recalling back to book one. Zeus gives a defense of the gods by basically saying. By pointing to a justice and saying, actually, a lot of the woes of men that are blamed on the gods are actually because of the bad choices of men. And I think that's actually really clear here. Another example of, you know, why did it take Odysseus so long to get home? Oh, the gods were angry at him. Poseidon was angry at him. You know, X, Y and Z. Okay, but whose choice.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Precipitated all this?

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Well, actually, it was Odysseus's, because I do think that the agency of man is a lot thicker in the Odyssey than it is in the Iliad.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

That seems right. Yeah, yeah, that seems really right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Okay, book 10. Book 10.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

All right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Book 10. Okay. So the first narrative we get. Oh, this one's kind of heartbreaking. Right. So they leave and, you know, we should mention again that he still has a whole fleet with him at this point. Yeah, at this point he still has a whole fleet. And so now they go to the home of Aeolus. And so this is the guy, right, that he is kind of the gods have entrusted to him the winds. He's in charge of the winds. I guess I'll just say this very briefly and then we can talk about whatever you want. Yeah, It's a heartbreaking narrative. So what's he do? He. He bundles up all the winds except the wind that they need to sail home. They sail home in somewhat short order. They get so close to Ithaca. This is line 55 or so.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

They can see it. Yeah, yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

They can see the men tending to the fires on the shore.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

But what happens here? The men, his men on the ship, do not trust Odysseus. And I think you could say that Odysseus doesn't trust his men either, because notice that Odysseus tries to do this entire journey by himself. He tries to stay up the whole time. So I think there's a deep mistrust. My thesis would be. And I think it's made very explicit later on, somewhere around Circe. There's a few lines there. The Cyclops narrative has broken the trust between Odysseus and his men even more than it was already.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

It's Odysseus's fault that these six men died and died horrific deaths, and then he almost got their whole ship destroyed twice by yelling at the Cyclops while he's throwing boulders. So they distrust him. They open the bag of winds, because of course it has to be some kind of treasure that he's not sharing, Right. And this turns into a maelstrom, which then basically blows them all back out away from Ithaca. They go back to Aeolus and say, hey, we're back. Could we have those winds, you know, bagged up again? And we get a very interesting insight into Zinnia, in which we have a host guest because the guest is cursed by the gods. I thought that was very fascinating.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. One question I was, why does Odysseus go to bed? I mean, like, okay, fine, enticing sleep came upon me, but if you didn't trust them and you're that close to home, why. Why go to bed? But, yeah, you're right. In other words, I think here we see Polyphemus's prayer coming and we're Seeing it happen. Right. But again, it seems like this is entirely humanly. Like, why didn't Odysseus tell the men what was in the. In the bag? Why do they suspect it's riches, silver, etc. And why does he go to sleep? So again, does Aeolus correctly infer that the gods are out to get him, or was this completely explicable in human terms? Well, his, his men, they let these things out and it was just entirely the. The fate of man. By the way, one point is when, when Odysseus realizes what's happened before they go back to Aeolus even to even contemplate trying to recover the winds, he contemplates suicide. Round line 55. Like, he's so sad that they're not home. Maybe I should just leap overboard and drown at once. So maybe life is not worth living at this point. He's probably at his lowest point, it seems to me.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, a few things there. One, sleep has got to be a motif.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So negative read here would be that sleep allows him in a certain way to sidestep the issue of leadership. But why did you stop your men from doing this? Why didn't you do this? Why didn't you talk to them? Well, I fell asleep and we're going to see that pop up a few times. 2. Yeah, your point about the suicide is well taken. And I would again point out that here it is again. We see the discursive nature of man that Odysseus is able to contemplate. If you want his own fate, what should happen to me internally.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yes. Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Just as a small point is that we've already seen, we didn't highlight it, but we've seen at certain points, like when they were raiding and things like this, Odysseus made it made a very strong point to say that he shared all the goods equally.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah. And he doesn't hear. Oh, very good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And yeah, he either doesn't hear or the Cyclops narrative has for some reason broken that trust, assuming that he's telling the truth. And I think that that's a huge thing because remember, this is in a certain way the genesis of the issue with Achilles and Agamemnon is the sharing of treasure.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And so it is interesting me that Odysseus in his narrative stresses, well, I always did this. But then his men, when he has a bag they don't understand, immediately go to, he's not sharing this. We need to see what it is.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Okay. The Lystrajonians this is the one. I think this is the one where I. The particularly first time I read the Odyssey. And I will say I've said this before, the first time I read it, I read it with a group of men who were very much like, Odysseus is a hero. He loves his wife, he's coming home to his son. This is a beautiful homecoming story, etc. The Last Trigonian narrative was the one where I about lost it and was like, there is no way you can contextualize him as a good leader. Now that's laying it on thick, but let's see what happens. So again, let me just. I'll just lay it out and then we can talk about what you want. So what ends up happening? Okay, so he has his fleet. They. They go to this island. It's, you know, it has basically like a cove or a bay. They all, the whole group of, you know, the whole fleet goes inside. But Odysseus, you know, he. He gets, you know, his spider sense goes off and he's like, no, I'm not doing this. And so he anchors outside of the bay, but strings up his ship so they can actually crawl up and get onto the island. He sends out, you know, scouts, if you will. They run into a girl by the well. And I love. Actually, I gotta read this. I love this line. So they take. They. The girl takes them to the palace. And this is after 120. They entered the sumptuous palace and found his wife inside. This is the wife of the king, a woman huge as a mountain, Craig, who filled them all with horror. And so what ends up happening? She calls to the king and they end up snatching one of the men and tore him up for dinner while the other two run back to the ships. So maybe just stopping here, a few things. Like. So again, we get a context of Zinnia, of guest friendship. We get another theme of a giant cannibal. I guess they're humanoid, if you want to call it cannibalism, I don't know. Right. But they eat another humanoid, which is a terribly perverse understanding.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Otter does not strike them as giant.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, I was wondering that, like, is this a giant woman girl? Like, nothing about this seemed odd to you? I really. I have low hopes for the movie. But, like, come on, you've got to give us a great picture of the woman as large as a mountain, Craig. So the question is, I mean, if we try and push ourselves on our own thesis, it's like, what is it that this narrative, this drama is Sharing that is distinct from the others. Or is there a lesson we have to learn? Because what ends up happening? So they sound the alarm and there's this wonderful. Well, wonderful, because wonderful is the wrong word. Very vivid scene in which basically all these cannibal giant creatures are throwing down boulders, et cetera. And he talks about that they're getting speared like fish, right? The men, they're spearing these guys pulling them up, et cetera. It's a horrific scene where basically the entire fleet is destroyed except for Odysseus's ship that he anchored outside of this, you know, cove or bay.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

This one doesn't seem like anyone did anything wrong to me. Like, as opposed to the previous ones.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

You don't think Odysseus did something wrong?

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Oh, no, no. Yeah, fine. He's. But I mean, like, they didn't go. They weren't going up trying to like sit, you know, it wasn't the competitive part, it wasn't the thumos part. They're just going on, you know, like, okay, fine, let's go check out this place. It didn't seem like in all the other cases, it seems like there's a more vivid connection between the destruction of the men and their. And their viciousness. And here if anyone did something wrong, it's Odysseus, let's say, who stayed outside and didn't warn the men. But it's very, it's just very quick. What happens to them. There's no. Like with Polyphemus, there's a luring into the cave.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

It just.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

I don't, I don't know. This strikes me as. And by the way, this is where he loses the bulk of his men, Right? This just seems like a very quick situation. Came upon them over all very suddenly, and he just did his best to survive and get out of there. But you're right, there's not a lot of concern for the fellow men. Like they're getting speared, they're getting rocks thrown at them and he's just able to get out. Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So here's my theory. Well, a theory. He does this intentionally. So after the opening of the bag of winds.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Oh, very good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

He doesn't trust his men either. They've become a liability on him getting home. He can handle maybe one mutinous crew. He can't handle an entire mutinous fleet. So. And it's not entirely clear cut, but I think one question I would have is why does he not share the sense of danger with the fleet overall? Why allow all of your men to go into this situation that you yourself realize as the leader, he's not just some sailor, he's. He is the leader. Why do you not share this? And I think, yeah, he has a strong sense of self preservation. You know, he was critiqued of this in the Iliad too, if you remember, Agamemnon critiqued him and said, you hang back.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

You use other people as a meat shield. You talk about this, but you hang back. Now, granted, we've seen that he can be thematic, he can battle, he could do these things. We saw that with Diomedes.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

And maybe it's simply. And maybe it's. I was trying to look for this spidey sense thing here, and I didn't necessarily see it. So maybe it's just the last time I got in trouble by going first. Maybe this time I won't go. Maybe this time I'll hike back. Because. Right. With. In the case of the Cyclops, he leads his men out. And so maybe it's not even necessarily as ill intentioned as you suggest. It's. But it's still not great. It's like, why don't you guys go this time? Let's see what happens. As opposed to going himself.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

But.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, I know, very good. I mean, I alone anchored back.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah. So maybe just more muted than I recall.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

But I mean, you're still right that like, I mean, it seems like he's definitely not at the forefront and he's perfectly willing to let other people go forward. This time he's definitely going to hang back.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah. And that seems to match his. The pattern we saw of him in the Iliad as well.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So anyway, that's. I mean, this. Yeah, this is the. I mean, practically speaking, this is then the loss of his entire, entire fleet with another thing of Zinnia, another thing of a cannibal host.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Okay. Cersei.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

This is another cannibal host. Yeah. Cersei. Yeah. Good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah. Let's talk about Cersei.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

So just to what I said earlier, I. If by my count, this, if. If you're willing to grant that the Aeolus example is a single case and not two separate cases, this would make 11 episodes and this would make this the central one, if I'm right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah. And even by other countings, I've. I've seen her fall in the middle. I think that even dramatically speaking, I think her narrative becomes different. As we stop the island hopping, we stop the narrative, we're going to go to something that actually then is dispositive for future journeys and that they actually come back to. So I think her role is different. So maybe just some preliminaries. So, like 150, we're introduced to Circe. She's this kind of like, immortal goddess, witch character. There's things about her that are intriguing. One, she's a daughter of the sun. She's a daughter of a cosmic God. She's not an Olympian.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Very good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

She's part of the older, you know, ancient regime. I think that's. I think that's something worth noting. Connecting her to the sun is also, I think, something that should be observed. We can compare her to Calypso, whose name means concealer. It's a cognate of eclipse. Okay, so there's. Those two seem to be playing off. So we have one, a daughter of the sun. The second female is. Well, again, narrative order. So the way we've been introduced to them is distinct. So I think those two play off one another. And then the role of Techne, she has a magic, but it's through herbs and through these types of things, these potions. And notice that she doesn't live in a cave, she lives in a house. And I think that's distinct. The cave is. Polyphemus lives in a cave because he doesn't have the technique to build a house. Calypso lives in a cave because on Pleasure island, you don't have to do any work. We're not building anything. He or she lives in a house.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And has potions, and I think that's worth noting. So he. Oh, go ahead.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Drugs. Yeah, yeah, Drugs. Potions. Yeah, yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So just sending them out. Right. So they land. They're.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

By the way, think of the. The obvious parallel here with. I mean, Odysseus really kind of uses a drug to knock out Polyphemus Blefemus. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And. And I mean, you could also tether this to the lotus flowers, which are not exactly that. It doesn't. It doesn't seem like they're skipping a step because this seems to be a fruit you can eat. You don't have to do something to the fruit. You don't have to make it into a potion. But I think they are connected. The effect here, by the way, I think, is very connected between Cersei and the lotus eaters. Okay, so what ends up. I mean, so, long story short, right, so the men go up, they're turned into. There's these predatory beasts that seem to be somewhat calm. They go into Circe's house. She turns them all into pigs very famously. Homer also tells us through the mouth of Odysseus that they retain their human intellects.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah. That's strange. By the way. Eurylochus seems to suggest that these other animals also are men who've been turned into animals. Right. So then one, then one thing that comes to mind thinking about the end of the Republic is are we to suggest that, you know, is Odysseus suggesting that his men are pig like and that there are other human types are turned into other animals? Are there wolf like human beings and lion like human beings and then pig like human beings Anyway?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Well, that would be interesting about why are they turned in the pigs? Does she, does she select their repetitive types?

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Does she select that they're turning the pigs or the. Do the humans then turn into pigs or a lion or a bear based off their own quality of soul?

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, yeah. That's what, that's what I was wondering. I don't know if there's any evidence that that's actually true about the wild animals, but maybe because they're not vicious. Right. They, they sort of nuzzle up. Even the, the carnivorous animals are sort of nice to the men which.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Right.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

They have their minds.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah. And they seem to be guarding the house.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

I can't find the line right now, but that was my impression is that they, the predatory beasts are also former men.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

By the way, then if we have multiple different animals on the island that used to be men, I've always been very worried about the stag.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Oh, Dagon. Yeah, very good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah. When they're sitting here eating this animal was that there's even, even lines. There's. The stag has a few interesting descriptions.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

He sent me a big stag with high branching antlers right across my path. So I, I've always been a little worried.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

No, that's very good. That's very good. And maybe the stag was going to help him.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Finally humans are here.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

I can help you help me out. Sure, yeah. Very good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

I think it's really interesting is that they do see smoke and Odysseus is going, wants to send people out. So this is before that around 2:20. So he wants to go explore again and it's very fascinating. He says my message broke their spirits as they recalled the gruesome work of the lie Trigonian king and the hardy cannibal thirsting after our blood. The burst into cries wailing. Their thumas is broken.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Very good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And so he's going to send them. So he still breaks them into the groups and then it's the first group that goes. Yeah, no, actually, that's where the predatory is.231 mountain wolves and lions were roaming around the grounds. She bewitched them herself. She gave them magic drugs. So I guess that is ambiguous. Still, is the animal giving drugs per animal, or were they given drugs and turned into the animal?

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Okay, so she turns them all into pigs through a techne.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Her wicked drugs, they turn into this. Eurylochus is the one that runs back to the ship.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

He'd sensed a trap. And he was right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And he was right. Yeah. Which is interesting. A really interesting parallel what we just saw with the lies. Trigonians.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, no, he stays back, like. Yeah, very good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

He stays back just like Odysseus did.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So 290, you know, lead me back. Odysseus says, well, I want to go. And this, you know, actually, this is. Eurymachus is like, no, we can quit running. The rest of us here, we can still escape the fatal day. So Odysseus is like, no, necessity drives me on. I'm going to the house of Circe. So then it's really interesting. So Hermes then gives Odysseus a counter potion, this counter techne to fight against what Circe has to offer. And then again with the. Keep in mind, Odysseus is retelling his story. Hermes is the one that tells him, you have to bed Circe. It's just part of the plan, brother, you have to do this. So this is a little bit. 4, 330. She'll cower in fear. Coax her to her bed, but don't refuse the goddess's bed. Not then. Not if she used to release you and your friends. And then he has to get her to swear an oath.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Why that's binding, I have no idea. But okay, fine. And then we're all good. Yes.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So what's interesting here is. Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, how do you read these with Calypso? I mean, particularly like. So, you know, if our, you know, if we read these stories, like, at our local little Catholic classical school. There's Catholic presuppositions here that get brussled pretty heavily about Odysseus being unfaithful to Penelope. So Calypso, we had this, like, weird line of, like, you know, he was the, you know, unwilling lover to the lover. All too willing, right? And here it's like, well, the gods told me I had to it was

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

always my excuse anytime I had to.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So what's interesting here is I don't think the. What is Homer's purpose? Because it doesn't strike me that the Greeks would see this as too terribly of an unethical act. So why is Homer running interference? Or why is Odysseus running interference? And I do think there's something intriguing about this because in book five, we had Dr. Glenn Arbery on from Wyoming Catholic, okay. And he pointed out that nowhere in the Homeric corpus does Odysseus ever take a slave girl, unlike basically everyone else. So every time, obviously you have Agamemnon on Achilles, but for instance, even when you go to like Nestor's tent in Menelaus tent and et cetera, it always talks about the slave girls that they've taken. And Odysseus never has that. And so that there's a, you know, so I'm not a huge one to run and contextualize the Odyssey as some love story between Odysseus and Penelope. I think they have a connection and I think that has to be explored, but it's not what a lot of people make it in to be. But here it does seem that Homer runs interference for certain reasons. And I'm, I'm curious as to why that is.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

So what's the, what's the interference? Help me. Like, I, I'm, I'm intrigued.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

But why give the caveats like, why. Why does. You know, why. Why does Odysseus have to be an unwilling lover to Calypso? Why say that Hermes says you have to bed this goddess, like, you know, mind again?

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Of course, this is Odysseus telling the story. Is this to make his.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Okay. Even there, though, why would Odysseus. Why does. Does anyone in King Alicenus court care that you vetted a goddess? Is anyone in that context, in the Homeric context to be like, well, you weren't faithful to Penelope. These guys all have slave girls. If you can sleep with your slave girl without any kind of moral turpitude.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

No, that's good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

If you get a goddess, that's going to be a problem. That's not going to be a problem.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Okay, fair enough.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Does that make sense?

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

No, it's very good. I don't have an answer. Except that it does sort of make Penelope. I mean, it does make her patience seem worth it if he's only ever compelled to do these things. But, but yeah, that's, that's, that's really good. I mean, you often read this with students and they're always sort of like, why would Penelope stay loyal? He's not loyal, this, that and the other. And well, I mean, if you buy the, the that he was compelled in the one case and told by God in the other case, then,

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

and that's why. No, I, I like that idea because that's what I'm trying to, I'm trying to ferret out a bit, is like, is most people take this immediately as a moral question universally for the Homeric Greeks.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

I'm curious as to whether Homer presents Odysseus as having some type of particular virtue or particular quality here. He never takes a slave girl. These two indiscretions that he had, if you want to call them that, both have caveats. So therefore he goes back to Penelope, who's basically the only woman in this narrative worth anything. There's something there to explore.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

No, that's very good. I, I, I'm gonna take us off on a slight tangent to Aristotle's ethics, where adultery is one of the few things that's always bad. But I actually, you know, but he says that adultery already has the bad baked into it. So that there are that sexism in of itself neither good nor bad, but that, you know, like, murder is bad, killing adultery is bad sex, etc. But then I always press the kind of Machiavellian thing with my students. I mean, could there ever, could you ever imagine a case where adultery would be acceptable? And, you know, Machiavelli kind of gives the example of, well, what if it were required to preserve the kingship, the monarchy? In other words, that the country would fall into civil disunion, civil war. If we don't have an obvious heir, then would it be okay? And you sort of, well, I mean, we can all disagree, but you can at least see the argument that, well, maybe it's acceptable in that case. And so maybe it's the, it's that he does it, it's to save the men, right? At this point, isn't that kind of what's going on? I mean, isn't this why he does it?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Oh, I love that. Yeah, I love that. It's for the men.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

That's why every time I've committed adultery, it was always for my men under my command.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

It's the beginning of the Odyssey. He's just trying to, to keep his men and save them and bring them home. It's just part of the duty.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

And I don't want to get too literal in the text, but Hermes says, don't let her unman you, I don't know if that means literally don't finish because that's where you would be at your most weak. So in other words, then, that does lend some creams to the fact that he's just doing it to like. I mean, it's still pleasurable, I imagine, but if it's not to completion, then maybe it is still showing a kind of self restraint and it is to try and get her to let her guard down.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

In other words, what's intriguing about that is that maybe just like in Homer, but in the kind of Greek corpus overall is that sex with a God is always fecund because all things, they're perfect. So the act itself is always brought to its natural fruition.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Oh, very good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

What's very interesting here is that Homer doesn't record any children by Calypso or Circe by Odysseus. However, the corpus around these tales all do, and that Odysseus does have children by Calypso and by Circe because these acts are going to be fecund because it's with a, you know, immortal. So that's. That would, that's a. That would be an interesting take.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

What's interesting though too is that her. How does she contextualize it? So if you look down at like 365. So he takes the potion. Her potion doesn't work. He's doing exactly what Hermes said. She says you have a mind in you. No magic can enchant. You must be Odysseus, man of twists and turns. There's that phrase again. Hermes, the giant killer God of the golden wand. He always said you'd come homeward bound for Troy in your swift black ship. Come, sheath your sword. Let's go to the bed together. Mount my bed and mix in the magic work of love. We'll breed death. Deep trust between us.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Are you on my little interpretation?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Go for it.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

If you un. If you've achieved intellectual, if you achieved wisdom, if you've achieved intellectual virtue. This is a very Platonic reading. Eros has no spell over you. Eros is a kind of irrational hope for what can be achieved for human beings. And this. You have mind, you have intellect, it's Nous. So the fact that you have understood things, you're no longer. We can't charm you with Eros anymore. You can't hold out hopes for erotic. The hopes that Eros puts into your heart. You now have a mind that makes that not happen to you. So immortality, you can't achieve it. And if you if we don't mind, I'd like to go back and read my favorite lines in the entire text because I think this is where. So in other words, I'm connecting Odysseus's intellect to his recognitions of limitation of Eros to also the more importantly, he's the first guy who sees nature. So this I take to be the key to the entire passage. This begins on the bottom of 239, line 330 or so after Hermes says, you know, don't have sex with her, but don't let her unman you. Then he says, with that, the giant killer handed over the magic herb, Hermes that is pulling it from the earth. And Hermes. And by the way, it's actually not Hermes in the Greek, it's his. It's a. It's a different patronym, which is slayer of Argus. He showed me all its name and nature. Its root is black and its flower white is milk, and the gods call it moly. This is, by the way, where the word, the phrase holy moly comes from. Not true, I just made that up.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, totally plausible.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Dangerous for mortal man to pluck from the soil, but not for deathless gods. The gods have all powers or have power to do all things, or something like this, which, by the way, gosh, my thoughts are all over the place. But first is Hermes reveals to Odysseus the nature of a particular root and the idea here, and this is the only time that Phusis occurs in either the Iliad or the Odyssey. And I take this to mean, and just. Kira, I'm going to read from Strauss and Cropsey just page three of the History of Political Philosophy. I take this to be the discovery of nature. In other words, Odysseus is the first philosopher. If you take philosophy to mean the discovery of nature. Here's Strauss. If we are entitled to take a poetic utterance literally, we could say that the first man we know who spoke of nature was the wily Odysseus, who had seen the towns of many men and had thus come to know how much the thoughts of men differ from town to town or tribe to tribe. And if you read up from where I began, you'll understand. I mean, he's pointing precisely to this passage where Homer is the one who discovers this idea of nature as something that not even the gods can change. And so then there's a certain irony in what Hermes says. When he says all lies within the God's power, it seems as though that's not the case. There are certain things that have natures that not even gods can change. And I connect this to the beginning of the next book where one of the nature things that it can't change is human mortality. And so you could connect that back to Eros, if you like here. But like Odysseus is learning that things have natures, and part of that is his exposure to various nomoi or various ways and customs that people think. And yeah, I mean, I don't want to put too much. Maybe it's impossible to put too much stress on this, but he showed to me the its nature.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

I like that a lot. I. It's interesting to me that in the context of discovering that things have a nature.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

It's immediately tethered to it, creating a utility.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yes.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Like, so not only does this have a nature, but then it actually, once you understand the nature, it has a use like a techne. There's that you can actually use this for a purpose. And then maybe to your comment you were saying just there at the end, the immediate use of the understanding the nature of this root is actually to impede the will of one of the immortal goddesses.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yes.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

It's actually to impede the divine. Now, granted, it's at the instruction of another divine, and this is the Euthyphro problem, but that's a fascinating context for this to be raised for in its origin.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, I think that that's right. And by the way, I connected it to his noose that she says the line that you read from Circe, that now he has this intellect. Yeah, I had something else there, but I suppose I've lost it. By the way, Hermes is there called Slayer of Argus, and he's called that because he slayed this guy who had over 100 eyes. If you want to connect that back to Polyphemus. And so just some fascinating things going on there.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah. One off aside that I have, and I'd love if someone's listening to Tell Me if they know, but it's really interesting that she puts him in a silver studded chair and it's a chair that he's supposed to then lose his identity. Right. The potion is supposed to actually make him lose that thought of home and transform him. And I am actually really curious about whether or not CS Lewis is drawing from this in his book the Silver Chair, which has the exact same effect on the character when they sit in it, that's also owned by a witch.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah. So anyway, it has to be then.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, you would think so, but my limited Internet skills did not find a tethering. But the two track, they're deep parallels between them.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, very good. And by the way, as I sort of lay it out then I think the next stop is the afterworld or the underworld, Hades. And I think what's happening is Odysseus is getting ready to embark on an investigation of the truth. He's, he's. He's passed through a kind of moral education and now he's on to his theoretical or philosophical education.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, just. Just a few other scattered thoughts. It's interesting to me the role of sex with the. The female goddess and the host. So we see with Calypso, we see this with Circe. And to what degree is this always a temptation to lose your teleology, to lose your purpose? So it's very fascinating to me that he can, you know, I think one thing to observe is simply that he can then impede the potion because of this thing from Hermes.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Oh, right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

But then he becomes seemingly becomes addicted to Circe herself. The sex the. Becomes the drug. And then we get this narrative again where his. What happens?

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Men have to.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, his men have to yank him out. This is at like 520 right after. This is madness. High time you thought of your own home at last. If it really is your fate to make it back alive and reach your wellbe built house and native land. So here we get like the lotus eaters, but the drug comes in a different format because he stays there for a year.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, that's right, over a year, Frank.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

It's, it's implied, I think that they're having relationships during this whole time. Hermes never tells him he has to continue. Continue to do this.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

That's right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

That's just as a side note.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Yeah, that's very good. By the way, a small funny matter is that Eva Brand has the suggestion that the root is garlic has a garlicky odor to it. And so that's the, that's the magical power that prevents her from being able to do what she wants because it's stinky, stinky breath. In other words, I. But I find it funny enough to relate.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So that's a delightful book by the

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

way I mentioned at the beginning. But it is sort of fun to read.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah. Do we wanna say anything then about that next. That next step? So she, what happens is she becomes then somewhat of a guide and she tells them like your next step is that you have to go down into the house of death. Yeah, it's Tiresias, which, you know, people don't know Tiresias. He's this kind of like, you know, prophet Nathan figure, Gandalf figure. He's going to. He's. He knows, but he's dead. So he has to go and talk to Tiresias in the house of the death. She gives him this very complicated ritual. Well, which we'll see in the next book. I have a lot of questions about how this actually works. I think maybe just a few large comments here. This is part of the hero's journey. Going down into the house of the death is part of that. Hercules did it. We'll see. Aeneas will do it later as well. Like this is part of that Katabasis that going down into and then coming back. And I think that obviously there's a deep allusion to this at the beginning of Plato's Republic as well. So this is part of that hero's journey that he has to go down into the house of the dead.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Well, if I'm wrong and counting there to be 11 episodes in there, in fact 12 that would give much more like than the parallel to Hercules would be right there. The labor of Heracles would be much clearer. Yeah. And that's. That's very good. Yeah. I mean I think I agree with everything you just said. I wonder if the idea is one if the next step is Hades. And so after one discovers nature is the next thing to reflect on mortality and you know, forgive me my Straussian circumlocution, but the theological political problem. Right. We're going to go talk to a prophet now. Now that we understand the nature of. And we're going to try to understand death, as it were.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

I see. So that not. You can look at that as the noetic keeps increasing. So now we know knowledge. Now we're going to have to learn about death. And I think that's fascinating because I think next book we'll see is Odysseus trying to escape death. Does he see what the end of death actually brings? And is he going to try and find a different answer to that? Because he's been offered immortality. But maybe that's not the exact end that he wants.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

And we didn't even talk about. I mean there are these mass deaths, but we didn't talk about the one guy who by name is mentioned who dies right. In book 10, Elpenor or whatever. Yeah, maybe there's some preview for what's coming in book 10 through his death. I couldn't make any headway on that at all. I don't know if you did.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

I think the death of Elpenorm Yeah. Gains its meaning in the next book. So again, I think as we read this one. So here we go. We have to go to the House of Death. And right as we end, someone dies.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Right.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

I think all I would say now is notice they don't bury him.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Okay.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Do the rituals. They don't do anything. Odysseus is like, no, we've got to go. We got to go to the House of Death. Guess who is going to beat them to the House of Death?

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Elpenor.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Elpenor.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Oh, very good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And so we're going to have a little there. Okay. This has been fantastic. I really appreciate it.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

Thanks for letting me reread this. Thanks for opening my eyes to some of the things I hadn't seen. I always enjoy talking with you, Deacon. I feel like I learn. And hopefully the listeners get to enjoy that as well. And then I'm so impressed by these folks reading all the way through the

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Odyssey on their own.

[Dr. Gregory McBrayer]

So you're doing a real great service here, as we've talked about before.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

No, we deeply appreciate it. I know you've got to run, but everyone, please, you know, you can Google Dr. Gregory McBrayer, see all of his books, find him on X, et cetera. We always appreciate it. And we will see you guys next week.