WarTalk: Odyssey Edition

Summary

ChinaTalk Podcast: WarTalk Odyssey Edition (Part 2)

Date: July 30, 2026
Host: Jordan Schneider
Guests: Rol (classics scholar), Justin
Theme: A deep-dive on Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey adaptation, ancient versus modern morality, war, the nature of heroism, and the enduring relevance of Homer’s epic.

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Episode Overview

This episode continues the robust discussion sparked by Christopher Nolan’s recent cinematic adaptation of the Odyssey. The panel explores the art of adapting epic poetry for modern audiences, the interplay between ancient and contemporary morality, depictions of violence and suffering in Greek literature, the challenges of historical authenticity, and how modern reinterpretations shape our understanding of classical storytelling. The episode concludes with reflections on PTSD in antiquity and the value of accessible translations for today’s readers.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Adapting the Odyssey: Challenges & Choices

• Adapting Epic Scale to Screen
  • Rol commends the film for maintaining essential scenes and set pieces but notes the impossibility of fully capturing a 12,000-line epic in one film.
  • The film overlays new, non-Homeric themes (e.g. Odysseus’s reluctance to return home, self-doubt), drawing out modern anxieties and morality.
• Modernized Morality
  • The adaptation adds reflective depth to Odysseus, asking: why doesn’t he want to go home? What is he running from?
  • Rol (00:14):

    "...There's a core message to the whole movie that is not Homeric in any sense, but that I do think works with the material."

2. Ancient vs. Modern Morality

• Moral Evolution in Retelling

  • The film modernizes the characters’ morality, sometimes inconsistently. Notably, scenes like the puppy being thrown off a cliff gesture at the harsh, alien moralities of the epic world, but this isn't always sustained.
  • Ancient heroes glorify violence and war without guilt, but modern adaptations introduce regret and moral ambiguity.

• Notable Quote (02:20):

  • Rol:

    "I really liked...when they threw a puppy off the cliff...it really illustrates...this is not a world like ours, right? The morality here is different."

• Thucydides’s View

  • Jordan (01:58):

    “Thucydides says humans are the same always, right?”

  • Rol counters: cultural values evolve, and modern adaptations reveal shifting sensibilities.

3. Violence, Empathy, and the Duality of Heroism

• Glorification and Suffering

  • Greek epics simultaneously celebrate martial prowess and lament war’s horrors.
  • Later plays, like The Trojan Women, foreground victim suffering, reflecting Greek society’s self-awareness and empathy.

• Quote (08:42):

  • Rol:

    "...Heroes are great...for how well they can commit violence. But, but also violence is horrible and awful and war should not happen. Those two ideas always exist side by side."

• Discussion of how later Athenian tragedies and Herodotus reflect on the cost of war, empathy for victims, and memory of collective trauma.

4. Rationalizing the Trojan War in Adaptations

• Trade Routes vs. Honor

  • Modern films often invent economic motives for war (control of trade) rather than accepting the mythic cause—Helen’s abduction.
  • Rol (18:44):

    “No ancient source ever suggests that this war is about anything other than recovering Helen...In rationalizing it, it is also taking away something of what the story is like...”

• The panel observes that Americans now tend to doubt simple explanations for war (e.g., “just honor”), preferring complex, strategic rationales.

• Justin (25:55):

  “...in American culture, some skepticism over more honor based arguments...there has become...this belief that...it's never as simple as Iraq has weapons of mass destruction...”

5. Scenes & Set Pieces: Artistic Choices

• Trojan Horse Scene
  • Widely praised in the panel for its tension and execution.
  • Discussion of historical analogues: infiltration, betrayal, and creative siege tactics were common in the ancient world (27:28).
• Personal vs. Societal Perspective
  • Justin (53:17): Nolan’s approach is more personal (Odysseus’s view); earlier films like Peterson’s Troy are more sweeping and societal.

6. Historicization & Authenticity

• Setting: Bronze Age or Archaic World?
  • Rol (35:33): Advocates for setting future adaptations in the Archaic period (not true Bronze Age), depicting the heroes as local lords in small, poor communities—closer to the epic’s reality.
• Material Culture
  • The grandeur often seen in films (e.g., palaces) is inaccurate; real “palaces” were modest, with little hierarchy or luxury.

7. The Role of the Gods and “Moral Codes”

• Minimizing the Divine

  • Nolan’s film reduces the gods to impersonal forces, evoking awe without literal appearances.
  • Rol (43:18):

    “...the gods are like, there in an impersonal way...these forces in the world for which you are...a toy...”

• Christianizing Ancient Values

  • The movie’s emphasis on the “golden rule” is more Christian/Buddhist than Greek. Original Greek morality does not generalize hospitality into a universal ethic.
  • Rol (47:51):

    “What you can accuse this story of...is to turn this idea of hospitality into this general moral code ... That's not an ancient Greek code, right? That doesn't exist.”

8. Adaptation Fantasies & Critique of Other Films

• Comparing with Troy (Peterson, 2004)

  • Nolan’s “sack of Troy” sequence didn’t surpass Peterson’s for cinematic power but refocused on personal trauma.
  • Discussion of casting (Brad Pitt as Achilles, Brian Cox as Agamemnon) and their merits in embodying Homeric characters.

• Wish-List Adaptations

  • Ideas for centering other characters (Telemachus, Penelope), or exploring “gods-max” versions.
  • Possibility of new, AI-generated epics in coming years (63:01).

9. PTSD and Ancient Trauma

• Did Ancient People Experience PTSD?

  • The term is modern, but evidence suggests psychological trauma was known (e.g., the story of a Marathon veteran’s hysterical blindness).
  • Ancient societies may have been better at absorbing trauma due to collective experience among citizen-soldier armies.
  • Rol (69:10):

    “...because you're essentially going to war with your neighbors and your own relatives and friends, there isn't as much of a separation between home life and warfare...that would make it easier for these societies to just absorb the consequences...”

• Notable Story: The tale of Clearchos, a Spartan who could only find meaning in constant war—potentially a “war lover” warped by trauma.

10. Ancient Texts & Modern Accessibility

• The Landmark Series

  • Praised for maps, commentary, ease for modern readers.
  • Rol (74:42):

    “They really tend to be, like, fantastic ways of getting a first introduction to these texts, because they don't just give you the words...”

• Discussion of the importance of modern translations/editions with visual/contextual aids.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On adaptation choices:
  Rol (01:58):

  "The Odyssey...asks you to ask questions, right? Do you think this is right? Do you think this is worthy?"

• On modernized moral ambiguity:
  Justin (04:34):

  "How much ownership does a commander have to have over a decision...that even forces other people to be put in these...morally ambiguous or morally gray settings?"

• On making the gods ‘felt’ but not visible:
  Rol (43:18):

  “...there are powers in the world that we can't control, right? That they are vastly more powerful than us. And that, nevertheless, that doesn't mean that we are therefore helpless.”

• On historical wins and losses:
  Rol (79:20):

  “It's dedicated to the gods, you know, but I mean at the same time the...Spartans...were also celebrating their victories by putting these spoils up on display.”

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Key Timestamps

| Segment | Topic | |---------|--------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:14 | Rol discusses the adaptation’s choices and morality | | 01:58 | Modern vs. ancient morality – key questions raised in the film | | 08:42 | Duality of Greek heroism: glory and suffering | | 18:44 | Rationalizing the Trojan War: trade vs. Helen | | 27:28 | Historical analogues to the Trojan Horse (sneak-attacks, sieges) | | 35:33 | Historical authenticity: archaic vs. bronze age setting | | 43:18 | Depicting the gods as impersonal forces | | 47:51 | “Golden rule” as a modern imposition on Greek morality | | 65:53 | PTSD in antiquity: ancient trauma and social absorption | | 74:42 | The Landmark series and the value of accessible ancient texts |

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Memorable Closing

The episode closes with a poetic monologue (80:17) invoking the solitude and existential cost of Odysseus’s journey:

"Nobody came back with me... 20 years of my life for the sound of my own name called. Nobody came back with me. King of the winds... Sacked a city for a cup and I carried the cup home. That cup is the only reason anybody calls me..."

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Summary

This lively and erudite discussion illuminates how each generation remakes Homer for itself—not only via cinematic spectacle, but by reframing the core questions of individuality, war, morality, trauma, and legacy. The Odyssey endures not because it has a single truth but because, as the guests demonstrate, every retelling is an odyssey all its own.

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For further reading:

• Check out the Landmark series for accessible translations of classic texts.
• Subscribe to the ChinaTalk newsletter for more conversations at https://www.chinatalk.media/.

Transcript

[Justin]

The

[Jordan]

War Talk Odyssey Edition. We had so much fun with Roll last week. We're gonna. We're back for a part 2 ROL. What do you think of the movie?

[Rol]

Obviously, the poem is 12,000 lines. Like, it's way too long to be one movie. Right. And so you have to make choices about what you're going to keep and what you're going to leave out. And those choices have to be sensitive to what this thing is trying to say. And I liked that. On the one hand, he was really quite keen to preserve some of the original tone and some of the beats and some of the scenes and the set pieces. So he really wanted to make sure that those things were in there. And I think all of those set pieces are, at the very least, competently done. In some cases, I think really memorably done. But then he also had to make changes. And I think the way he did that was often quite effective. There were ways in which I liked the adaptation process, essentially the kind of ways in which they dealt with it, including the way that they tried to change the themes of the story. So they're giving a message that's not in there. There's a core message to the whole movie that is not Homeric in any sense, but that I do think works with the material. Right. And so this is, in this sense, it's similar to what you get in the Return. This movie that came out two years ago with Ralph Fiennes and Juliet Binoche, which is much more like low key, down to earth, low budget kind of version of this, is very stripped back, but it also does this thing where it's like trying to tell a story with a much more modern morality drawing on the material in a very effective way. It's like it's showing that this Odyssey, that this poem can still accommodate just totally new readings of what it's about. And I really like that part of the movie as well. So those were things I really liked. You know, the way that they made it about this idea that, you know, he doesn't want to go home. Why is that? What is he running away from? Like, what is it that. That, you know, that makes him feel like maybe he's not a, you know, a good man ready for a triumphal return. Right. And that, I think, is a really interesting thing that they overlaid over the story.

[Jordan]

Let's start with that then. This idea of a modern morality versus an ancient morality, which I think is where a lot of the discourse has been centering on over the past two weeks. What do you mean when you say that. And to what extent are we just. I don't know. Thucydides says humans are the same always, right?

[Guest or Additional Panelist]

Rohl.

[Rol]

Well, yeah, but I mean, human society and human values are not always the same, right? Like, we all have different ideas. And this is. You know, Thucydides gives some great examples when he starts criticizing Homer for the kind of things that he did wrong. There's all sorts of ways in which ideas change about how people are supposed to behave, right? One of the things that I didn't really like that Emily Wilson also pointed out, is that these characters have been modernized in a lot of ways. There's Morality has been modernized. I really liked. This is a weird thing to say. I really liked it when they threw a puppy off the cliff in the beginning. This is strange. What I mean by that is that it really illustrates in this one brief moment that this is not a world like ours, right? The morality here is different. They treat things. They treat the world around them differently. But that wasn't really followed through. They didn't really stick with the idea that these people think differently about things, right? About what it's like to be a good person, about how they're supposed to respond to the world around them. So the original story, I mean, no one ever questions that Odysseus did a glorious thing, right? He sacked Troy, which is the source of his great glory and renown. And the Greeks, having done that, have gone home with massive spoils. And that is why they are glorified in their home communities. They've succeeded. They brought back the spoils. They've affirmed their status. They are the biggest, baddest people in the land. That is something that in Homer is unequivocally good, right? That is what you're supposed to do as a Homeric hero. That is obviously something that feels for us really unpalatable. And so what they tried to do in this movie, as well as in other versions, retellings of the Odyssey, is to give these heroes a lot more reflection on what it is they've actually done, right? So to talk much more about the violence of war, the miseries of war, and the extent to which, you know, destroying another community and wiping out an entire city and destroying its population, enslaving its population, whatever. Like, is that actually something that anyone benefits from? You know, is that something that is good to anyone, including Odysseus himself, who obviously isn't left with anything when he gets home. You know, he doesn't even have the spoils anymore. All he's lost all of his crew. He's lost all of his possessions. In that version of the story, you can legitimately ask, like, what have you done? Like, how is this. How has this benefited anyone?

[Justin]

Yeah, I. I actually thought that the treatment of some of the morality, too. I. I actually like the inclusion of Sinon, you know, obviously from Virgil's poem, and. But then also because it ties into kind of a more modern take on Sinon, more modern than obviously than Virgil had, which was him being in. In the Inferno. So if you look at Dante's Inferno, Sinon's someone who's seen as a betrayer, and he's seen. I think he's in the eighth circle of hell. If you read, you know, Dante's Inferno, and then you fast forward to this version where they actually say, like, no, like, this was somebody who, if he betrayed, it was not his sin that he was carrying. It was a sin that was from the design of the way that the attack happened. And they did kind of, like, how much. How much ownership does a commander have to have over a decision he makes that even forces other people to be put in these, you know, morally ambiguous or morally gray settings? That. I think I enjoyed that addition to it and the changes there of not having it be Achilles that came and spoke to him, but that it was, you know, sign on and tying this together in a very meaningful way that I thought was. I thought that was actually a good use of bringing it forward to a modern morality, kind of tying strands of these multiple stories that have kind of come off the Odyssey together, to then bring it into something that was more modern.

[Rol]

Yeah, and I really like the idea, as you said, like, he's really being forced to confront this question of, like, if you deceive other people around you in order to get what you want, including the people that. That look up to you, like Sinon and his own troops, like, you're still deceiving them. And it comes out when he's going through Scylla and Charybdis, right, where he says, oh, I told you to do this because I knew that you would do the opposite. And that's what I actually wanted you to do. And Eurylochus is standing there like, but you just lied to me. Like, you're just, like, outright telling me, like, manipulating me. And I like the idea that they're confronting him as, like, is this leadership style? Does that make you, like, a good leader? Is that actually something that, you know, do. Do. Do you deserve people's trust? Do you deserve people like, following you and looking up to you. I think that's a really interesting way of exploring how Odysseus does things, right? It's a more interesting or more compelling way of looking at what he's like and how he achieves things than the poem, which straightforwardly says, well, that's how he is. He just lies to people almost compulsively. And there is actually a scene when he arrives back on Ithaca and Athena shows up in disguise and tries to sort of interrogate him. And because he's a little bit suspicious of basically anyone, he just sort of spins a whole story. And Athena is just sort of quietly laughing because obviously she knows best, right? Like, she's not gonna be deceived, but it's. It's this whole thing where she basically calls him out and says, like, you always have to spin a story, right? You can't just be straightforward about anything. And that's, you know, she also goes

[Jordan]

like, this is why I love you. This is why you're my favorite.

[Rol]

That's why he's her hero, right? Like her champion. But it is something that is worth interrogating, I think. And that's, again, like what I said last time when we were talking about this. This idea that the Odyssey, it asks you to ask questions, right? It asks you to talk about this. Do you think this is right? Do you think this is worthy, etc. I think the movie did that to some extent, right? It actually did raise questions. And not even necessarily the questions that are already in the poem, but other questions besides that are also relevant. Interesting.

[Jordan]

Come back to the sort of, like, do you feel bad being a Homeric hero? You know, we talked about the kind of sp. I don't know, the similes in the Iliad, in the Iliad in particular, and how kind of fun and awesome it makes crushing skulls seem. I'm curious, Rol. Is there, like, what is there in the. Or is there anything in, like, the corpus, if you want to just start at, you know, 350 BC or whenever that has people feeling bad about, like, sacking towns and killing enemies and women and children?

[Rol]

Well, absolutely. I mean, that's right. That's baked in. It's right there from the beginning. It's one of the things that we really have to always reckon with when we're talking about Greek sources. On the one hand, they do glorify, you know, victory in war and the capacity to sack cities. You know, this epithet of sacker of cities is just something that gets applied to Heroes, clearly, in a positive sense. But there's also at the same time already in Homer, this recognition that war brings endless suffering to people. And, you know, both to the people who are fighting and to their surviving, you know, relatives, their wives, their children, their, their parents. Like the, the empathy is right there and it's always there and it's there throughout. Homer in particular is one of those people who will constantly, simultaneously tell you heroes are great and wonderful people for how well they can commit violence. But, but also violence is horrible and awful and war should not happen. Those two ideas always exist side by side. And later Playwrights from 5th century BC, Athens in particular, really explore this in a lot of detail. You have plays like the Phoenician Women, plays like the Trojan Women, which deliberately put the suffering of victims of war front and center and literally just tell you how horrible it must have been for these, you know, for the surviving women, after all their men have been slaughtered and they've been violently enslaved and, you know, who knows what's been, what's been committed to them already. And in some cases we do know, because that's part of the myth, right? For instance, Cassandra is raped at the altar of Athena, which is why Ajax the Younger doesn't make it home, right? Because he also offended the gods in doing that. But fundamentally, he's the only one who gets punished for the kind of behavior that is generally inflicted on these populations. And so there is a real sense in which all of these people who told this story are very aware that it is a story about the massive suffering inflicted on the Trojans, right? And they are able to perceive the Trojans as stand ins for potentially people they know and people of their own people, for instance. You know, some of these plays get produced in an atmosphere where Athens is committing the same similar atrocities on other communities. And it's clearly the Athenians reflecting on what they've done by talking about the Trojans, right? So this is something that's absolutely in their minds.

[Justin]

That's what I thought too, is when you look at it, like, there's definitely a deep. Yes, it wasn't written when Homer was written, it wasn't in the Odyssey or the Iliad. But there was definitely a tradition where you look at the Spartan women and you look at the trials and the tribulations that were written into that play. And you say, like even Antigone, like we talked about on the last show, like there were things in Antigone where they're talking about not only the horrors of death, but the horrors of not going through the proper rites and the proper burials. And like, even if someone rose up against a king and, you know, in some ways kind of was a traitor to, you know, the, the crown, he still deserved to be treated a certain way. And the king was willing to, to kill his own daughter, you know, to punish the, the body of his son and to go through with that loss. I think including that in some way, shape or form or acknowledging that in the way that the movie kind of brought some of those. They're not super modern ideas. They're not this, this, it's not this wholly modern reinterpretation. They were things that existed in the ANC world and maybe not in the Homeric times. They may not all be present in Homer's poems, but then again, we also don't know because there are like seven other books that don't exist that we don't have in between the Iliad and the Odyssey, that we don't know what, what was happening in those and what those were about. So I, I again, I appreciated the fact that there were some of, at least allusions to some of that.

[Rol]

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's because this is a reality, right? Like, I mean, you always have to. So people tend to go too far and say, okay, ancient moralities were different and Absolutely they were. And I, I have been trying to say, like, okay, I would have like if that was more present in these movies, that this is just a different moral environment. But on the other hand, I mean, it's not that they didn't care about life or didn't love their kids or anything like that, which is often an assumption that people make when they take it way too far. I mean, we have very strong evidence that they love their kids, even though infant mortality was through the roof. Right. Like that. It's just they're still human and these kinds of things just occur all the time. When you see throughout these texts that there is a lot of empath empathy alongside a lot of this sort of glorification of violence. And these two things are obviously in conflict with one another. They're obviously dissonant. But the Greeks were absolutely sort of affirming both all the time. And one of these examples of that which is a tragedy back when in the early 5th century BC they were still writing tragedies about historical events, which they stopped doing very quickly. So the only one that survives is the Aeschylus Persians. Right. That's the only tragedy we have that is about historical event. All the other ones are about Myth. So there was one that we don't have is lost. But it was supposedly about the Persian sack of Miletus, which happened during the Ionian revolt in the 490s BC. He wrote a play about this. They put it on and the Athenians found it so distressing that they fined him for writing and they forbade it from ever being performed again. And the idea there obviously is that, you know, this is a story about the sack of a city that's far away. But it hurts them so much because they can relate, right? They can sense this kind of thing perhaps coming for them too. Right? And so there is this, this, this awareness that on the one hand to be victorious in war is glorious and great and brings all these benefits and to dominate others is good and great, but also that flip side of that coin is always there and they, they never forget it.

[Jordan]

Is, is now a time for the contrast between that and American Sniper.

[Justin]

You know, my stance on watching Navy SEAL movies, I, I don't do it. So I, my, my will be complete supposition. I have no idea what actually happens in that movie. I think it like, even, even a good contrast though too is not necessarily a contrast, but something that kind of harkens or points to it is Thucydides when he does the Melean dialogue. And you have like the, you know, why can't you honor that which is hard. Why do you have to honor that which is soft? And the entire point of that is to show that like no despotism and like just ruling, you know, the weak, suffering what they, what they must is actually not the morally just thing. Which again is directly in contrast to what you would, what you would expect if you were to say, well, everything was clearly based on this Homeric impulse of might and good and kings, you know, or noble warrior kings. Because clearly even Thucydides was saying like we were wrong, like we should not have done what we did in Milas.

[Rol]

Because like, I mean there's tyrannical, fantastic scene in Xenophon Zelenica when they, the Athenians receive the reports the battle of Aguspotami, which is where their fleet is finally destroyed, right? And they have absolutely no chance of recovering that defeat. So they know that the Spartans are coming for them. They've lost the war. Right? They already know they've lost the war, but hasn't happened yet, which is a really horrific moment when the news arrives in Paras from the official ship that brings it. And he describes it as if in the middle of the night, people are literally Just turning to each other in the street and shouting the news. And it makes its way as like a wave of sound from Piraeus through the long walls to the city. You can follow the, the sound of the wailing essentially as people are gradually finding out from their neighbors what has happened. And in that moment, he says they all remembered what they had done to all the other Greek states because that meant that they were expecting nothing less from the Spartans when they were at their mercy. So there's this understanding, like you can commit to others all you want in the moment of your power and ascendancy, but you do have to bear in mind that, you know, the bill is being recorded, right? Like eventually there's going to be that reckoning. And they absolutely expected that their community now would be wiped out. Right. They narrowly escaped that for complex reasons, which we won't get into here. But they, they absolutely expected that that was going to happen to them.

[Jordan]

Should we do a little Odysseus Melanaeus contrast?

[Rol]

You know, so do you want to be Menelaus in this movie or Menelaus in the Odyssey?

[Justin]

Because yeah, he wasn't the joyful, he wasn't the joyful tear in his eye cup for every, everyone that came to his house red haired, happy go, lucky guy that they depict in the Odyssey, that's for sure. When Telemachus shows up, he's a pretty dark, brooding guy at that point. No.

[Rol]

So it's a really interesting thing which I think the Menelaus they were drawing on is Sophocles. Menelaus, who is this sort of. Basically the idea is that Sophocles is writing during the Peloponnesian War. So Athens is at war with Sparta. And so the Spartan guy is obviously going to be turned into this sort of brutish warlord. And so in those later tragedies he becomes this sort of really violent, angry man. And I think that's the Menelaus that they used in order to, you know, they gave it to John Bernthal. Like when you read the Odyssey, you would never cast John Bernhofer. He's like slightly dorky, he's like a bit dumb, but he's fine. He's a nice guy. He just wants everybody to have a good time in his palace. He gives you all sorts of things you don't need. Telemachus has to tell him, I have no use for horses, I live on an island. Right. It's really different. It's really different. And I think that is the idea. They're projecting this back from the later versions of those stories, and they similarly did do the same thing with Flight and Estra, where they use the sort of, you know, the Aeschylus lights in Nestra rather than the one that is in the Iliad, who's kind of an instrument to Aegisthus rise to power. Like, she's not the one who kills Agamemnon even in the Odyssey. But of course, in later tradition, she gets put front and center because that's, you know, it's a lot more interesting. She's the one who actually suffered the loss of her child. So obviously we sort of put this from the perspective of the mother who was wronged. But that's, you know, that's not the Odyssey version. That's the 5th century BC version.

[Justin]

The scene with. With Menelaus, that stuck with me because there's this whole thing about. It was never about me. It was always about trade routes. And, like, him even making that comment of like, well, maybe now it's only 500 ships. Like, in having that kind of dark, glib comment about.

[Rol]

First of all, that line is. Is. Who is it? It's Merlo. It's Marlo, Chris Marlo.

[Justin]

Is it Marlon? Is it Christopher Marlowe?

[Rol]

I think, in any case, the point is, like, it's a modern line that they put in the. Put in the show because everybody knows the line. But it's like, let's not consider this like some kind of arithmetic. Like, she is worth 500 ships now because she's slightly scarred. Like, what the. Like, what is that? Like, we're not expressing her price in oxen. This is an expression about how. Just how compelling she is. It's weird to me that there has been so much comment on that kind of aspect of the casting or whatever when. When, like, I have no question that she is absolutely beautiful and compelling as a person and that her role is also, like, I think, very effective. Like, she. The kind of limited screen time she has, she does have a real presence in it. So I really don't mean to, like, diminish that, but I don't like the idea that all of these modern movies like to do this, that Troy did this. The Helen of Troy TV show from many years ago with Sienna Guillory did this. All of these modern versions want to rationalize the Trojan War. And so she gets shunted into the background by this line that's in there in the crispr Nolan movie as well, where, oh, it's just Agamemnon's excuse because he wants access to the trade through The Hellespont. This is a modern fantasy, right? This is a modern imagination. Because they like to rationalize causes of war. We now find it difficult to accept the idea that you would go to war to get a woman back. We want states to behave out of strategic interests, and so we can understand access to the Hellespont. Hell. We have various wars. We have the Gallipoli campaign. We have all sorts of things about the Hellespont and its access. So we can say, okay, we understand that, right? And Troy is about. In the right place to control that access. So let's say it's about access to Hellespond and trade routes and all that. The fact is that not a single ancient source ever suggests that this war is about anything other than recovering Helen. Right. That is the entire reason the war happens. That's the entire reason why Agamemnon is involved. Nobody here has any ulterior motives. This isn't about trade. And so I get very upset about this precisely because it is, in rationalizing it, it is also taking away something of what the story is like and what makes the story interesting and compelling. But also it makes it somehow less different, less historical, less interesting, because it doesn't acknowledge the terms of the story. Like, it doesn't want to believe that its own terms are valid. Right. It rejects the idea that this war could have been about what it says it's about. And it just invents other reasons. It's just, well, I'm not satisfied with the Helen story, so I'm going to make up something else. Don't do that. I wish they hadn't put that line in. I don't like it. And Troy did this massively. Or Troy made the whole thing about imperialism. Right. It turned the whole story into. Agamemnon is an expansionist warlord. He wants Troy, and everything else is just an excuse. Like, that's his. His little, like, you know, foot in the door. I didn't like that part of it. But that is. The whole movie is made like that, Right. Like, they turn the whole thing into that. That kind of story. So it kind of fits, you know, the early 2000s kind of. Kind of political environment where you can imagine that that's the kind of message that people just find instinctively understandable. We don't need to do that now. I feel like we don't. We. We see people go to war for idiotic reasons.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Rol]

So, you know, I.

[Jordan]

There's something like.

[Justin]

There's a.

[Jordan]

There's a little layer on this. Like, we've We've talked about dueling culture and the U.S. the early years of the U.S. navy, where, like, someone says they think your shoe isn't shined enough, and all of a sudden you have to, like, shoot them in order to prove you're brave. But I do think there's. There's. There's something about the, like, okay, Helen, there's some offense, right? But then you have. You layer on that. Like, we have this, like, glory, hero sacking culture where, like, all right, it's, you know, it's summer camp. We're gonna go, you know, we're gonna. We're. We're just gonna. We're gonna play the hits and we're gonna do our thing. Because this is, like, what else is there to. To live for besides sheep?

[Rol]

Some very nice sweet wine, apparently, according to the. To the Odyssey. But no, I mean, there. There are all sorts of things that, that these people possess that. That they think are worth having. Luxury imports from all over the world. They can get all sorts of things from the Phoenicians if they just maintain peaceful relations. I mean, there's all sorts of ways in which you can live well. So it's not like that's what they want, but what they want is to make a name for themselves, right? They want renown. And that is one of the big motivating factors for a lot of the people who are involved. I mean, on the one hand, they swore an oath, right? They have to uphold the sanctity of the marriage of Menelaus and Helen, so they are obliged to go, but they do it because they want to be there. Right? Like, and this is something that Troy actually articulated, for all its faults. I mean, that is a movie that hews quite closely to the Homeric values of saying, well, this is going to be the biggest war ever, and you got to be there. Like, if you weren't there, you're going to have FOMO for the rest of your life, basically. And that is closer to the spirit, I think, of what a lot of these heroes would say. I mean, if they miss the opportunity to gain wealth and renown, then, like, why are they sitting in their palace drinking fine wines? I mean, nobody's going to believe that they merit that, right? And so in that sense, that morality is there. But it's very interesting as well that if you read Herodotus, who traces back the origin of the idea that there's wars between Europe and Asia, right? That's how he simplifies it. So you have Greeks and barbarians, Europe And Asia. And he says, okay, well, there's all these conflicts going all the way back into mythological times. But the escalation came with the Trojan War because initially it was just like, you know, raiding back and forth or people stealing women from each other. But then that one time when the people from Asia, the Trojans stole a woman from the Greeks, the Greeks actually decided to invade, go to war and destroy Troy. And he says that the wise men from the Persians, if they even knew this story. But that's the story that he tells, right? The Persian logioi, the Persian sages, they hold the Greeks responsible for all of this, for the Persian wars, for everything else, because they escalated first. They started it, they went from us just sort of tit for tat raiding kind of thing to all out war. And you shouldn't have done that. Right? That was bad. That was just, you know, massive overreaction essentially. So there is discourse, and I'm not saying that this literally happened in that way. And there's some really horrible victim blaming that goes into the argument, right, With Helen, you know, she probably wanted to go like, why would you even bother? So there's, there's some, some pretty nasty argumentation that goes into this. But fundamentally the idea is that there was discourse among the Greeks about was it a proportional response to go to war over this? Which implies again that there is no discourse whatsoever that there was any other cause for this war. Right. Everybody knew that the reason why the Trojan War happened was because Helen was abducted or perhaps absconded with Paris. But that's it. No one ever thinks, oh, actually, you know what? That wasn't really why this happened. Let's be real here. No, this was the reason. And everybody who went along with it, they just wanted part of the action.

[Justin]

Renaissance America, we'll call it. During the founding, when you had all of these men who had read the Enlightenment books and they were still dueling, that would have been a message that honestly I think people could have gotten behind because like an overreaction to your honor, being drugged through the dirt, that actually is something that would not necessarily register with a modern viewer who isn't, who hasn't read those and who hasn't looked at those. So I don't know. I do see a reason by giving a bigger rationale because there is this belief that like, oh, machinations that happen within government, there's always things, there's always another cause. It's never as simple as Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. It's actually owning the oil fields and all of these things. I do feel like, yeah, there has become, at least in the American culture, some skepticism over more honor based arguments that he was touching on. At least alluding to, directly touching on, not even alluding to when he makes those, when he writes those in or makes those comments.

[Jordan]

Let's come back. Okay, back to my favorite scene in the movie was them in the Trojan Horse, which I thought was just brilliantly, brilliantly shot, brilliantly conceived, brilliantly executed. I mean, who knows if it happened? But are there other, like, tricks as outrageous as this which were like actually pulled over the course of Greek history?

[Rol]

Of course. I mean, the idea is that besieging a city is very difficult under any circumstances. It's very difficult to take its city, and especially Greek cities, which have very limited means. You know, they have limited economic means to keep an army in the field for a long time, limited means to develop machinery and tools in order to overcome strong fortifications. So by far the most common way for a city to fall was treachery from within. Right. Somebody will open the gates to you. The second most common way I would guess, is infiltration. So basically you find some way to get in without being noticed. And obviously the Trojan Horse story is really quite elaborate and difficult and risky. And so that is just that one version that happens in the story. I think the closest parallels during the Peloponnesian War. At one point, people hide under a boat essentially, and they sort of sneak in that way. But most of the time what you do, and this is a very common thing throughout ancient history, I think, and probably right up to, up to the modern period, is you find a place that's less well defended, partly because it's very difficult to approach. A lot of the time you sneak a couple of guys in that way, and either you use those guys to open the gates or you cause such a shock that the garrison will just surrender. And that has happened on many occasions. I mean, famously, it's how the Persians took the great fortress at Sardis from the Lydians. Just basically giving people reward. Say you see that giant cliff face? There's no guards up there because they think you can't climb this cliff. Prove them wrong. I'll give you loads of money if you prove them wrong. Alexander did this numerous times. The exact same trick. Basically tell them, I'll bury you in gold if you make it up there. And obviously some people die trying. And we have some reports of that happening, people just falling all the way back down. But usually if they, once they get up there, that's it game over. Yeah.

[Jordan]

Can you talk about the Roman award where, like, if you were verified as the first one, you know, up on the wall, you like, became a senator,

[Rol]

not became a senator. I'm not sure. I mean, usually it's a monetary reward, right? Usually you would just get loads of money, which is how soldiers.

[Jordan]

There was some class upgrade thing with it too. Let me look this up.

[Guest or Additional Panelist]

Yeah.

[Rol]

I mean, you can get promoted. I'm not sure about this one, about the exact parameters. I have heard of this one. Basically, first upon the Walls is one of those things that are specifically given an award that is about storming a wall. Right. But it's the idea that if you're the first there, you're most likely to encounter the strongest resistance, but also be the first to achieve what we want the entire army to achieve. And so there is a specific reward for that. To get people to take the risk. Right. To get people to put themselves in front. And on various occasions, Alexander at the siege of Tyre and also one of the cities that he conquered from the Mali in India in what is now Pakistan. Those are occasions when Alexander himself was first up and over the wall, precisely because he led by example. That was his leadership style, is to just do what he asked others to do. So that's a common method. Obviously, it's not a trick. Right. It's just assaulting. So the point I'm trying to make is that most of the time these walls are not conquered by brute force. They are conquered by infiltration or by treachery from within. And so the Trojan Horse is kind of the ultimate example of that. The most famous example from the Greek tradition. It's not literally repeated, partly because everybody knew the story, right. If you showed up in a wooden rabbit Holy Grail style, they would probably not fall for that. But very similar, you know, just ideas of like, how do you get through a wall? Well, you, you try not to be seen doing it or you get someone from the inside to help you. Right, that's, that's very.

[Justin]

Well, it's funny too. I mean, like, probably the. A very direct allegory, I think, is during the, during the Gallipoli campaign, very early on, the British were having a hard time gaining a good foothold and there became the idea of running what was going to look like a derelict ship onto the shores under the idea that then they would be able to pop out of it and it would be this surprise and they would be in the midst of the Turkish lines. And of course what happens is this derelict looking ship that kind of loses its rudder, hits, and the Turks just turn all their guns on it and just like, slam it and hit it and hit it. And everybody's pinned down and they can't go up and extricate them, and they can't get them off, and they're just kind of there getting hammered by Turkish guns until the night falls and they're finally able to pull them back. But, like, that's a very clear, like, clearly inspired by the attempt to have, like, a Trojan ship, basically, that's going to hit and then actually be part of the overall campaign. And you see how difficult something like that is. So there's also, like, this showing the acme of Odysseus plan and his capability and his ability to, like, think through this, you know, this deception and be able to convince other people that this is actually a real thing, which I think also then pies back into the story of, like, why he's racked with such guilt. Because this shouldn't have been something that was possible. It shouldn't have worked. It should have been something that they were able to see through. But he was able to layer it in such a way that it did work because, you know, had the soldier say it was a gift, you know, Sinon losing his life, all of the things that led up to it actually getting inside the walls. They did Helen them with their wives, voices brutal.

[Rol]

I mean, there's the other. The other version of that as well, where Laocon, the priest, tells not to take. And then the gods intervene, right? They send snakes out to grab him and his sons, which leads to that. That famous statue of him and his sons sort of writhing and being surrounded by snakes because, you know, the gods are at this point basically fed up with this war as well. It has been determined, of course, long ago that. That Troy would fall. So we're really just trying to get to that point. And, you know, the gods intervene on behalf of Odysseus to make sure his plan works. But that is in itself is. Is. Is another example of how, you know, how intricate this plan has to be. Like, how many different steps have to occur before the Trojans are actually convinced and are able to fall for this. They obviously see this as a sign as well, that resisting taking this horse is a bad idea. None of that's in the Odyssey version of this, the very short account that we get of the Trojan horse. All of these additional reassurances are there. They just kind of roll in. But those elaborations on the story, they show that People are already kind of a little bit unwilling to accept that it was that easy. So they're kind of trying to add different kind of safeguards essentially to this one.

[Jordan]

So it was, it's called the Corona Morales. And you literally got a golden crown that had like, that looked like a castle on it. So, I mean, medal of Honor, eat your heart out. Like, this is.

[Rol]

Yeah, I would take the crown of the castle.

[Justin]

Yeah. I'm guessing they didn't give many of those. Humously. They were probably posthumous awards for the most part.

[Jordan]

No, you only get it if you're alive.

[Justin]

Oh, okay.

[Guest or Additional Panelist]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

And apparently one time there were two guys who each thought they should have earned it and like, they almost had like a little civil war in the camp. Polybius, everyone dig that up.

[Rol]

As I said, there's a number of occasions, at least that I know from Greek warfare, where essentially once the wall is breached or when it's clear that the enemy is in a position to overcome the defense, is that the defense just breaks immediately. So you don't actually have this forlorn hope kind of tradition of people. If you're the first through the breach, then you're probably dead. There is much more of a sense that if you are the first through the breach, you might just actually be the first to survive, essentially. But it depends on the situation. A lot of other cases, the defense become extremely stubborn at that point. And. And there are also known cases where the enemy, once they breach the walls are driven back out again, sometimes several times in a row. I mean, some of these, some of these defenses are really, really tenacious.

[Jordan]

I want to know what's. Yeah. What's the royal three hour adaptation? What are you, what are you spotlighting?

[Rol]

No, it's. It's an interesting question, actually. I do think, actually one of the things that I really didn't like is its attempt to try and be, to be relevant to Bronze Age history, which it isn't. I mean, it shouldn't have been. They shouldn't have put that in there. I think that was, that was a mistake because it's not meant to be historical story.

[Jordan]

Right.

[Rol]

It's never trying to be historical story. And trying to make it a historical story about the Bronze Age is also just misguided because it doesn't describe the Bronze Age. This poem describes the early Archaic period. So if I had to, if I had my druthers, I would make this very firmly set in the Archaic period. Right. I would. Would try to create a world that is compared to what we understand from the Late Bronze Age. But also generally what we understand the world of small states and kingdoms to be, I think it would be a world that is much more of a low level of complexity, a low level of organization, a low level of wealth. I mean, this is a world that is only just emerging from a long period of disruption, upheaval and recovery. So we're talking about very small communities. These kings, I mean, the kings of Homer, the heroes of this story, are not kings in the sense that we understand, you know, who live in palaces and rule kingdoms. I mean, they're petty lords, and often there are several. Ithaca doesn't have a single king. It has loads of people calling themselves kings. Right. Odysseus is only the wealthiest among them. He's not in any sense kind of like crowned and sits a throne and lives in a palace. I mean, he's just a guy who has more wealth and more power and more retainers than others and, you know, more flocks and more wine in his storage room terms. I mean, this is the kind of way in which you distinguish yourself in this world. It's just a hierarchy of wealth in which some of these people get to call themselves lords. Right? So that's the world that I would have, in which, you know, understandably, because of that, you know, there's no institutionalization. There's no formal procedures of power. Power is much more brittle. Power is in the hands of those who can affirm it and take it. That is why the sutras are such a problem. That is why Telemachus can't just say, now everybody out, I'm king. You know, he doesn't have any institutional backing. He doesn't have any kind of law that says he should be in charge. You know, this is a much more might makes right kind of world. And because of that, I think. And much more modest in terms of its means and its material realities. And because of that, I think you can much more easily imagine how chaotic and how disorderly these heroes actually are and how much it matters to them, you know, to sack a city in order to steal a couple of goblets or, you know, to enslave some people, because that is the entire basis of their status in society. So I feel that there is much more potential there to make this story make sense if you just set it in that archaic world. Right. I'm always pointing this out like, you know, you have to stop putting Odysseus in a palace in Ithaca. Like, no, he. If you read the actual text, right? Okay. He has. There's. There are some upstairs rooms, fair enough. But most of the houses that are the palaces that are described in by Homer, they have three rooms, right? They have a main room, they have a back room, they have a portico that is the entire space of a Homeric quote unquote palace. These are small houses, like two room houses. Why is that? Because you look at the archaeology of the period, like the 8th and 7th century B.C. there are no bigger houses than that in the Greek world. That is the house that they know. Right? Even the biggest person within these sort of cluster communities that you see on the ground live in a slightly bigger version of that same house, right? There are no palaces, there are no enormous expansive mansions or villas in the Roman style. This doesn't exist. So you have to imagine this world is infinitely smaller and simpler and poorer than the world of kingdoms that we imagine. And I would like to set it like that. I would like to set the whole story in a world like that, because then you can see, okay, well this, it matters that these suitors who are themselves practically, they are kings in their own right. That they vie for the hand of Penelope to affirm their status, which they already have. And why their family members are a real problem for Odysseus. You know, they also have weapons, they also have retainers, they can muster an army and come and take his stuff. You know, if he antagonizes them, there is civil war, which he will lose because he's just one guy with his retainers against all these other guys with theirs. So there's. There's much more of a sense that this is not a world in which the questions of power are settled. Right. And I think that could make for a very compelling version of the story. In terms of what other elements from the story you include. I mean, I'm very glad that the movie talked about. Xenia talked about hospitality. That is the absolute core theme of the Odyssey. This is a song about hospitality. That's what it is, right? It's. It's about what it's like to be a good guest and a good host. That is all that Telemachus needs to learn. That's what the sutras need to learn. That's what Odysseus needs to understand about the world. You know, how to be a good guest, how to be a good host. So I like that. I put that on as a theme, although I think they twisted it a little bit. They made it into some kind of general moral code, which I think is putting it a bit too far. But fundamentally, I like that they kept that. So I definitely appreciate that bit. So the rest of it is just like, which of the stories, which of the bits do you want to include? I think they were quite pragmatic about what they did and what they didn't do. It would have been nice to have Scheria in there, to have the Phaeacians and Nausicaa and all that, that would have been fun. But I can see why they didn't want that extra step on the way. Right. Like they didn't want to include that sort of, you know, the rise and then fall. Again, this kind of whole story, it kind of makes sense from a pragmatic. This has got to be a three hour film perspective. And from that sense as well, I really like the fact that the Lotus Eaters, which is a very short, like it's six lines in the Odyssey or something. It's almost nothing. Like no one of his crew, Odysseus never touches this stuff. Right. It's like two of his men try it out. This is a very irrelevant little bit in the story, but everybody knows it. The fact that they transposed that to the island of Calypso and made it into something that he takes because he wants to forget. I think that's really elegant. I thought that was a really good idea because it suddenly turns this irrelevant little story about like, oh, you might forget everything and stay forever living in bliss, but then of course you disappear into nothingness. That that's something he actually wants and that it's not something that is done to him, but something that he actively does to himself. I think that that's something that makes sense within the way that they've rewritten the themes of the story. So I really like that, you know, that's, that's a really interesting idea. So again, I mean, it just keeps coming back to the same, same thing where we're just like. I like some of the things that it did, I like some of the ways that it, that it changed it. And I think some of those I would, I would change further and other things I would, I would keep. But fundamentally I would like to have been. I would like it to have been set in the early archaic period. I would like it to have been honest about the, about the difference of this world, like how far and removed it is from our understanding of, of, you know, political order.

[Jordan]

I think that's, this is the best compliment that I can give to Christopher Nolan as I walked out saying, oh, I need to write my own adaptation of the Odyssey because like we all

[Justin]

need to write our own.

[Jordan]

Not because he did a bad job, but it's just. It's such an interesting intellectual exercise, right, because you're operating under real constraints and you do have to cut stuff and the. And the ways in which you can remix it. And. And as we've been talking about bringing in Roman stuff, bringing in, you know, classical. Classical Greek references, it's just really cool. The one thing I had is, look, he basically took out the gods, which is fine, but I wonder what, like, a God Max version of the Odyssey is, because it always struck me when these. It's like these gods are just playing and they don't really care, and you're just like. You're just like a pet insect to them.

[Justin]

Does it not. Does that not become like that bad Clash of Titans movie, though, or whatever? Remember, that was. That was so bad. That's the problem is you have a movie like that that ruins it because

[Rol]

it's also very Percy Jackson, right? Like, okay, the gods are actors in this actual world. Well, can you do that in a way that's actually compelling? I mean, one of the things that I really liked about this, and this is like a really small moment, but I felt that it really hit for me, it really landed for me, is that when Odysseus finally leaves the island of Calypso and he sort of drifts off on this raft and basically she tells him, like, you got to take your punishment, right? Like, Poseidon's going to batter you, but Zeus won't let him kill you. And I think at that point, by that point in the story, we've become so sort of persuaded by the fact that this world is infinitely dangerous. It's full of threats that are too big for Odysseus even, right, like, that are too powerful for him to confront, and that he is at the will, at the mercy of these forces in the world, to then be told that at least one of these gods not only looking after you, but is actually more powerful than the other forces. I think it really works, right? At that point, you're just like, okay, actually, I'm not worried for him. Even though he is being committed to the sea again, he will be fine. And so in some way, even though the gods are not in the story, there is a way in which he's managed to convince you. And I think this is really, to the full credit of the score and the mood of a lot of these episodes, that there are powers in the world that we can't control, right? That they are vastly more powerful than us. And that, nevertheless, that doesn't mean that we are therefore helpless. It can also mean that they're helping us, they're on our side. And so in that sense, I think it's done a decent job of that. Instead of having the almost inevitably fairly goofy actual presence of the gods, it has more of a sense that the gods are like, there in an impersonal way. My favorite example of this has always been, did you ever see sunshine sci fi, Danny boyle movie from 2007? This fantastic sci fi. It's a totally different genre, totally different mood. It opens with this scene there's a spaceship that's flying towards the sun. And it's opening with this scene in which somebody is trying to see how far they can filter down the screen through which they're looking at the sun. And the ship computer is basically warning them, like, oh, if you go beyond this certain point, it's like 4% of penetration, right? If I let in more than 4% of the light, then your eyes will burn away, essentially, is what it's saying. And so he's sort of setting it to as close as possible to that. And visually it's made really, and sort of the music kicks in and the way that it's portrayed. So you are persuaded of the immense power of this thing, this formless thing that is in front of you. And then you're being told that's that thing at 4%. Right? So the way that that movie establishes the antagonist, because the sun is the antagonist of the movie, right? They're trying to fight the sun, essentially. It's so powerful because of the way that it manages your understanding right from the beginning of just what you're up against, right? They're saying you personally, physically cannot withstand 4% of the power of this thing. You will die. Right? That is the way that you convince us, an audience, of the existence of powers greater than us and make us in awe of the people who are brave enough to stand against that.

[Guest or Additional Panelist]

Right.

[Rol]

Who are nevertheless willing to confront a world that has those powers in it. And I think the Odyssey does that to some extent. I think that's a much more effective way of doing the gods than having them sort of appear in a toga and talk to you. In a lot of ways, I feel like that is more like what you want those gods to. To be is. Is these forces in the world for which you are, as you say, you know, a toy, like something that has no consequence, no value, no, no, you know, no persistence whatsoever.

[Justin]

So.

[Jordan]

So speaking of gods, you know, there was some critique of no one for, like, putting in Christian morality into all of this. What I thought was interesting is, like, look, there is enough in the soup of 3,000 years ago that we have kind of parallel myths going on, right? With Odysseus on a raft and Jonah. Like, it doesn't. It doesn't seem to me. I mean, the morality thing, I guess you can sort of debate. But, like, there are enough, like, story beats, which you can find moments that the two, I don't know, eco, like, story ecosystems talk to each other, that I think it's, like, totally fair to kind of look at these guys as, like, you know, what Christ would have thought about.

[Rol]

What you can accuse this story of that is not Greek at all is to turn this idea of hospitality into this general moral code, right? Like, they take this idea that you have to be a good guest and you have to be a good host into the golden rule, right? This idea that you have to treat others the way you'd like to be treated. And that is much more general than any Greek would ever articulate this. And it's not a Greek morality, not an ancient Greek code, right? That doesn't exist. However, it's not just Christian. There are lots of religions that have the golden rule. It's also Buddhist. It's also. Other religious traditions also have this same ultimate principle of morality, which is that you have to treat other people the way you would like to be treated. And I think in that sense, you can accuse him of introducing Christian thought, but as you say, it's much more that you're drawing on a more. Much more general idea of what it's like to be a good person. Unfortunately, not an ancient Greek idea of what it's like to be a good person. And that, I think, is legitimate criticism, which I've raised now several times. He's not really willing to confront the idea that people just had a radically different morality than us, except in those little moments where, you know, you throw the. The puppy you don't want, you just sort of chuck it off a cliff. Like these kinds of, like, tiny little moments. There's a few of those. But generally he doesn't really want to confront that, which I think is fine. It's a modern adaptation, of course, but that makes it a little bit less Greek, but a little bit more universal to modern audiences, I think.

[Jordan]

Justin, what's your Odyssey adaptation or Iliad?

[Justin]

Yeah, I would redo the Iliad. I think that Troy was just such a terrible movie for both the story and Just the way that they told it. And I would want to see. And I would really want to want to see the, the idea of like the, the actual, you know, the God kings, for lack of a better term, going out and fighting and having these like, you know, again we talked about it like Hector, Hector pushing them all the way back to their ships and just being out in front just, you know, laying waste to the, to the archives as he pushes them back into the sea. And then. And the decision how that turns and Achilles re entrance into the war. I thought the entire way that the. In the old Troy movie when they killed Menelaus and had Hector like become this weirdly compassionate person over Paris, which. There's nothing in the poem that says that he would react that way. There's a lot of him kind of berating his brother and blaming him for all of this happening throughout the entirety of the poem. And I would much rather have that because I think there's a lot more. There's a lot more there that just hasn't been actually laid out. And to, to include like, I think it was the six late 60s version of Achilles, which they try to at least start kind of the same way that the poem does, where it's an argument inside of. Of Menelaus's tent where it starts or Aggie Memnon's tent. I'm sorry, not Menelaus's tent. But then like the rest of the movie is kind of terrible, kind of a Charlton Heston esque era, notoriously stood

[Rol]

up for Troy a few times. I do actually think that it does certain things right. But one thing that I really will say, I mean for all the merits of Gris Nolan's cinematography and his direction, his scene of the actual sack of Troy I thought did not improve upon Peterson's example. Like, there's such a gorgeous moment in Troy when the gates are opened and from the dark plane you see this massive Greek army converging on that gate in silence, emerging from the shadows, literally, like it's coming out of thin, out of thin air, like converging, funneling through the gates. And then you kind of. The camera then sort of swoops down, you follow them as the noise starts to swell up. The screaming and the roaring of the soldiers and the screaming of their victims. And that is such a good moment. And in this movie it's just, you know, there is a little bit of like floating around Ait Ben Hadu, where they filmed it, where there are a couple of fires and you see some people being killed in the background and you follow Odysseus around. But I didn't feel like it was doing anything to build upon or improve upon or to make you feel like it was necessary to do this again. Essentially, the collapse of the towers, that was pretty cool. But otherwise, you know, at the moment when the gate opens and Agamemnon's standing there, okay, that's a cool moment. That's got a lot of impact.

[Jordan]

It's like a WWE walk on.

[Justin]

It was. It was.

[Rol]

I mean, you can definitely hear that. Yeah. So, I mean, but I genuinely didn't think that it was. You know, it is worth seeing that if you've seen Peterson's Troy, like, that. That particular scene. And I don't mean to say that about the whole movie, obviously, I'm glad we have both movies and they can all do their thing, but in that particular scene, I think the Troy is just a better movie. Like, it's. It does something that really sweeps you along and makes you feel the sort of. The almost unnatural horror of this army swooping down on the city. I mean, it's my absolute favorite line from the Odyssey, I have to say, when he says, like, you know, what if he saw 10 years of hate poured into the city in one night? That is my favorite line from the entire movie. That is so beautiful. Like, that is honestly a really effective way to convey what happens. It's really, really gorgeous. And not from the poem or anything. That's just writing for the movie. But the scene that accompanies it does not match Peterson, I think, for cinematic brilliance.

[Justin]

Well, so the only thing I'll put out is I do think that Nolan tried to tell. At least when I watch it, it's a much more personal take of the battle. And it really is like, it is centered on, obviously, Odysseus, whereas I think Peterson's was a much more. It's a much grander. It was a societal level. You were watching this huge thing, whereas it's really. The perspective that you're seeing is basically Odysseus perspective of everything. There's a little bit of third person in there, but a lot of the walkthrough and the looking around is supposed to kind of look like you're there just looking. So you get a very narrow perspective of what's being shown. Again, you said maybe there was even the thought of, I can't recreate this because it was already done. So I'm going to do this other thing that's, you know, slightly different. But again, I still hold that If I was going to recreate one of the Homeric poems, it would be. It would be the Iliad for the rest of it. I mean, honestly, like, the, the end part of Troy is the best part of Troy. The, The. The rest of it is like, even the way they introduce Achilles in it, where he's like this, you know, the fast sprinter, but he's going against this, you know, giant of a man, and he kills him in one blow and all that stuff at the very beginning of the thing. The whole thing about the poems is he's supposed to be this humongous man that he kind of is like a first among equals. Like, Ajax is the only one that's supposed to be bigger than him. I think when you, like, read, like, the way Homer kind of lays out all the descriptions, you know, that he's the most powerful and he's also the fastest. And it's not. So it's supposed to be like this really, like, catches you off guard. Whereas you see. See Brad Pitt play him and you're like, that's Brad Pitt. Looks like Brad Pitt.

[Rol]

I don't know. I like him in that role, but it's because he really didn't like it. Apparently he didn't want to do this movie or something. He hated working on it. But he brings this surliness to the role. I think really fits Achilles, who's obviously a very flawed character. To say as nicely as I can, he's a very flawed character. I mean, I don't think you're supposed to sympathize for Achilles at any point, point in any of these stories. But that is one of the things that he puts across really well. Like, he combines this kind of, like, ultimate warrior kind of figure with the surly teenager, and I think it's perfect. Like, that's exactly how you want to see Achilles. It's just like a really petulant, annoying man that you don't want to work with, and he doesn't want to work with you either. So everybody wins, right? Like, that's.

[Guest or Additional Panelist]

It's.

[Rol]

It's. I find it quite an interesting version of that, but obviously not definitive. I mean, you can keep on doing different versions of Achilles. Like, please do. I love David Gyazi in. In the Fall of Troy series, the BBC did, like, he did a really convincing job of being this, you know, this angry, ultimate warrior figure. So there's different ways to do that character, obviously. But I liked. I quite liked Brad Pitt as, as Achilles precisely because he didn't seem to enjoy himself at all.

[Justin]

What about, what about Brian Cox? Is he the. Was he the wrong casting for Agatha?

[Rol]

Brian Cox is perfect. You cannot possibly say anything about Brian Cox.

[Justin]

I think he's an amazing actor, but I just, I don't know if he's the perfect person to actually play this.

[Rol]

Again, just the age wise Brian Cox understood the assignment. He was just chewing the scenery. He knew that he was in a terrible movie in the sense of like a movie that like. So Troy is my ultimate example of a movie that's so bad it's good, right? Like this is a movie that is not good, but is good because it's a extremely watchable and everybody in it's having a great time except Brad Pitt apparently. And so Brian Cox completely understood that and just went like, you know, I love it, I love it. I enjoy every second of him being on screen. Just old school, like hamming it up in the extreme, not giving a shit, you know, the lines are terrible. It's. It's wonderful. He gets to quote the poem a few times. I love that. That opening scene that you mentioned where Achilles fights, writes Boagrius. And he says this line to Nestor, aside of all the warlords loved by the gods, I hate him the most. Which is a line from Homer that's in the poem. Like that's in the Iliad. I love it. Like, let's have him sort of like chew the scenery with lines from Homer. Please. More of that.

[Jordan]

Like the fact that Nolan couldn't. Sorry, no.

[Rol]

In fact, in Nolan's Odyssey, like the scene where he goes to the underworld and he meets obviously Sinon, who he talks to quite a bit and Theresa Seer, Tiresias the seer. But also he talks to Agamemnon. And that is one of the bits that is most faithful to the poem. Agamemnon is the one who warns him, don't just walk into your house thinking you're going to be welcome because look at what happened to me. And that's exactly what happens. He gets that warning, which is obviously a plot crucial moment where he's just like, you have to approach this indirectly because otherwise you never know what's going to happen. And especially you don't know if your wife is still faithful to you, right? And so you have to test the waters before you just march in. And so he is the one who tells him that. I mean, very unfortunately it comes with some really sort of classical Greek style misogyny over the top, like you can't trust a woman. But this kind of thing is a really nice demonstration that Nolan does actually like and appreciate and understand the source material, which he did put that in this movie. So I really like, like, what's yours, Jordan?

[Jordan]

My. I'm sorry. My favorite.

[Justin]

Yeah, your remake, I think your.

[Jordan]

Your.

[Justin]

Your remake, which I said.

[Jordan]

I said my. Well, you guys, no, nobody liked my God idea.

[Justin]

I like the gods. As long as it's not.

[Jordan]

I think that, like, you know, the female forward ones could be cool. Like, we got. We got just a little bit of Cersei, a little bit of Calypso,

[Rol]

not enough Penelope.

[Justin]

You could make Madeline Miller's book into a really good. And then you get the Ulysses poem from where he goes crazy at the end. And you get that whole end scene too, which is different take on Odysseus.

[Jordan]

I mean, I think also, just like, you can center Telemachus also. I mean, he has like a whole big arc, like the fighting and the temple was sort of weird. And I think just like watching him mature, you know, I'm gonna cut that. I don't.

[Rol]

I don't.

[Jordan]

I don't really want to see Aslamicus.

[Justin]

No, I like the idea of Tom Holland.

[Rol]

The Odyssey ends like one of the last lines of the. Of the poem like this. The final scene is when. When Odysseus and Laertes, his dad and Telemachus his son are gathered together and the army of the suitors families is coming for them, right? Like, because they killed all the suitors, now they're coming for revenge. And there's this beautiful moment where Laertes basically, like Telemachus and Odysseus are basically vying, saying, oh, I'll kill the first man. No, I'll kill the first man. Or like, I'll do it. I'll handle it. And Laertes is just standing there just beaming with pride because his son and his grandson are vying for the honor of being the best warrior here. And it's always intensely Homeric. We find it very difficult to associate with that morality. But it tells you so much about what this society is that all that Loetes wants in his possibly his final moments on this earth. And he's waited so long, right? He's so old by this point, is to see his father, his son and his grandson being brave warriors, right? With him, standing with him in a vassal line. This is the Homeric world of heroes in a nutshell, really.

[Justin]

But I do love the visualization at the very beginning of the poem. Not beginning, but early on when they come to get Odysseus initial. And he's like, I'm going to be crazy. I'm going to tell him I'm crazy. And he's out, like, so and so in a beach with salt, like, driving an ass and a horse. And they're like, what's wrong? He's like, I'm crazy. Look at me. And they're like, oh, yeah, you are crazy. Except for the one guy who walks over and, like, takes Telemachus and puts him in front of the plow and, like, let's see how crazy. And he's like, you got me. I guess I'll go to war.

[Rol]

Yeah. No, again, I mean, I don't think that's in the. I don't remember if that's anywhere in the epics, but it's definitely sort of in the wider sort of knowledge of the. Of the story comes up the wider, like that.

[Justin]

That he was the one hero who actually did try to get out of the. Of going to the. To the. The battle and to get out of being. Being there, you know, again, to the point that he was different than all of the other heroes, and he was kind of seen as different than all the other heroes. Yeah.

[Rol]

And Achilles as well. Right. Like, he. He just sort of hides somewhere else and dresses up like a girl to. To avoid being. Being called up. Or at least his mom dresses him up like a girl, too, to hide him. And then Odysseus gets sent there to find him out, basically, which is a fun sort of catalyst where they don't actually need Odysseus to come along. They need Odysseus to get Achilles to come along. Yeah. I don't know if there was anything else that you wanted to talk about or mention or if we are happy to.

[Jordan]

I think this is. This was super fun.

[Rol]

Yeah, I enjoyed it.

[Justin]

I had a good time.

[Rol]

Do it.

[Jordan]

Do it again. Sooner rather than later.

[Rol]

When is Nolan making another movie about antiquity?

[Justin]

Somebody said that because he likes playing with time, his next one will be the Iliad. He'll do them in reverse.

[Rol]

But please, please do an Iliad. Right. Like, let's go. That sounds.

[Justin]

That would actually be really cool. But. But it would also really fit within his I like to play with time thing.

[Rol]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

I mean, I just think, like, the. Just the idea of, like, us dreaming up adaptations is not as crazy as it was even five years ago, because you can just have AI make movies for you, and it's not like now.

[Guest or Additional Panelist]

What.

[Jordan]

I know, I know, but no one's giving me $100 million to shoot an IMAX 70 millimeter and, like, get wet on a beach in Tunisia or something. So there is something.

[Justin]

Something cool.

[Jordan]

Like, we're going to have a lot of Iliad, five years.

[Guest or Additional Panelist]

We are.

[Justin]

We're gonna get the Grok one, which I. I can't delete. Terrible. But, like.

[Jordan]

But there are. You know, there are a lot. It's obviously far more ideas for classical literature adaptations than there are Hollywood budgets. So I think there's. I think there's something to look forward to with this technology stuff. It's good to dream.

[Justin]

I do.

[Rol]

I don't know if you guys wanted to talk about ancient ptsd, because we haven't really covered that.

[Justin]

Yeah, let's close on ptsd. It's my favorite subject.

[Rol]

You talk about it. Yeah, because we get this question all the time on Ask Historians. It used to be one of our most frequently asked questions is, did people in ancient times or in pre modern warfare get ptsd? Which is kind of a weird, narrow way of asking the question, because, of course, we now know that post Traumatic stress disorder doesn't just relate to war trauma. It relates to any kind of traumatic experience. It can result from domestic violence or sexual abuse or all sorts of situations, or witnessing crime or anything along those lines can trigger ptsd. But of course, in public discourse, the most common context in which is brought up is military veterans. And so there's often been this question of, like, well, is this a universal experience for people coming back from war, or is this something that only affects people who fought in modern wars? And obviously, that is partly because it's only really been diagnosed as such, defined as a diagnosis. Post traumatic stress disorder during the Vietnam War, basically, or after the Vietnam War. And it's often been sort of associated with previous diagnoses like shell shock or trench fatigue or whatever other names it's had. But before the 20th century, this was essentially not a defined thing. We can't really sort of say that people were being diagnosed with it because there was just no diagnosis of this sort. So that's been a common question that arises both from scholarship and from public curiosity.

[Justin]

Yeah, I mean, like. Like you said, I mean, like, it at least predates, you know, there's definitely discussions of it, Civil War, Revolutionary War, where there have been people that wrote about, you know, battle fatigue and the shell shock and just, you know, people being haunted and talking about, you know, veterans coming back from wars and being haunted by the things that they had seen. And there's clear allusions to that in both literature and historical context. So I. I think it would be it would be very difficult to believe that it didn't exist in ancient times if Thucydides is right, and. And men don't change.

[Rol]

Yeah. So the problem has often been like, okay, where do we then find it? Is the problem with something that isn't recognized as a disorder that is well defined and clearly understood to affect a specific group of people is that it might just not get noticed. Right. Because no one's looking for it. No one's trying to say that these things are the same. And so there isn't any sort of clear and unambiguous testimony that it is understood that if you have been through these experiences, that these are the kind of symptoms you might. Might display. Right. And so people have been really trying to mine ancient sources for potential cases, and there are a couple of ones that keep coming up. And one of those is that there was a veteran of the battle of Marathon who supposedly went blind. Like, he suffered hysterical blindness. He wasn't harmed at all during the fighting, but he couldn't see for the rest of his life. And the story that he told, it's his recording eroticus, is that he saw a soldier come at him. He was a very large hoplite, he said, with a beard covering a shield, like the scary figure of a giant approaching him. But instead, he passed him by and he killed the man next to him. And from that moment, he went blind and couldn't see again. And so people have often taken this to be like, this is a clear case of the kind of thing that we're looking at. But the thing is, firstly, that he is reporting no other symptoms. Right. It's literally just hysterical blindness. So it's very difficult to make a diagnosis. A modern psychiatrist wouldn't make the diagnosis on the basis of just one symptom, because that's not how psychological disorders work. But the other thing is that the reaction to that is very, very different from what veterans now often experience, where they experience, you know, separation, detachment from their families, from their loved ones, and ostracism from society because of the way that the disorder is affecting them. And it's very difficult, often, for them to reintegrate. Whereas Epizelos was a hero. In fact, he was telling everybody this story. Everybody loved him because his granddad, who was at Marathon, and he's telling this wonderful story of what happened to him, and it's really spectacular and interesting, and that's why Herodotus recorded it. So the question has often been like, can we say, okay, this is definitely what we're looking for? Or is this very different both because of the, the, you know, the lack of detail on the diagnosis, but also because the reception from society is just radically different. And that is something that is acknowledged about PTSD is one of the things that makes it so much worse is that it alienates you from the people around you and that society doesn't know how to deal with it.

[Jordan]

Right.

[Rol]

And that is why it's often been so debilitated. So that is something that's grown over time to become hopefully better, but that has often, you know, caused a lot of problems. Whereas in this case the way that they deal with this veteran who is obviously harmed in non physical ways by his experience is radically different.

[Justin]

Is there, is there something to the fact that like, because the hoplite armies were comprised of so much of like the individual, the citizens of the city states that there was almost, there was more of a society and a kind of an understanding of kind of what happens? Or do you think that that could have played into it? Or is that not, you know, because we like have the issue in the US and Britain as well of like the all volunteer force where it's a very small percentage of the population that actually, you know, is in the armed forces. If it was a much higher percentage, conceivably there would be a much greater degree of understanding of kind of, these are, this is what happens and this is kind of how society can, you know, reintegrate and you know, rebre. And bring these people back into society.

[Rol]

Yeah, so this is the argument that was made by Jason Crowley, a scholar in Manchester who has written a book on specifically this kind of thing and has also studied like this, this question in particular. And his argument has always been that because you're essentially going to war with your neighbors and your own relatives and friends, there isn't as much of a separation between home life and warfare.

[Guest or Additional Panelist]

Right.

[Rol]

There isn't as much of a sense that you are leaving your society and then having to integrate into it. There is some, you know, more recently, Owen Rees and other scholars have sort of qualified this a bit. But fundamentally it is true that you're not as separated from your normal life in the same way that you would be in a modern all volunteer force, all professional force, and that that would make it easier to integrate simply because, you know, everyone, you know, has gone through the same experience. Right. In a lot of ways they know what it's like, they know how to, they were there with you and they, when you go home, they're still there with you. So to that extent it may have been easier for these societies to just absorb the consequences of this. Right. But of course, I mean, traumatic experiences do change personalities. And one of the examples that they cite for that is this Spartan commander, his name is Clearchos, who gets murdered at one point in mercenary service. He's in, in the Persian Empire. And somebody who associated with him, the author Xenophon describes him afterwards. He gives a little sort of post mortem about his, what he was like, like. And he describes him specifically as somebody who was so obsessed with war that he couldn't let it go. He was a war lover, which is a very rare word in Greek. He's philopolymos. So he is somebody who devoted himself singularly to warfare. And he says, you know, would even, you know, do all the things that other people have, you know, normal people have hobbies, right? They will spend money on, you know, on, on pretty boys or on festivals or, or on, or on drink or whatever else. This man would spend everything he had on war. Like he was just, just doing war stuff all of his, all the time. And that was the only time he's happy. And his character was there for like, very hard to deal with. Like he was very good in a crisis, but otherwise just unlikable, basically. Like he was too hard and too harsh and too unkind and too sort of single minded. And a lot of people have seen this as a mind that's been twisted by PTSD as well, that it has turned him into somebody who cannot do anything but fun. They can only function in a. In that same context in which he was traumatized, essentially he was only happy when he is in the environment that feels relatively safe to him, which is an environment of constant danger. And that it has more legs in the sense that it at least tries to understand a holistic picture of a person. But it is still not obviously something that was recognized in that context as a disorder. That is just his personality. And we can almost imagine that his Spartan upbringing might have already resulted in that personality. Quite frequently people who go through this kind of training program since they're children may well end up more regularly being sort of traumatized by default. It's almost built in to the Spartan system. I mean, they are constantly abused. Essentially this is just a normal part of their upbringing. And so that kind of thing is perhaps more common. But in this case we actually do have a description of it so we can do something with that. And again, Spartan society, just like in the Athens we described, maybe it was more easy for the society Give that a place. Just because all of the adult male citizens at least have gone through. Okay.

[Jordan]

It's just. This is a tough. This is a tough place to end.

[Rol]

I mean, you shuffled it around last time as well.

[Jordan]

Is it chance or is it circumstance? The Sea people will rise again.

[Rol]

The Sea People, yeah.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Justin]

Ro, did the Sea people have ptsd?

[Rol]

Definitely.

[Jordan]

Do they feel bad about their raiding?

[Rol]

That's why they went raiding? Yeah, no disturbance. Sea people. We only know these from, like one or two Egyptian inscriptions. They were not the reason for the collapse of the various kingdoms in the Bronze Age. This is just a discredited modern theory. And they certainly had nothing to do with Trojan War. But that is the way that Nolan wanted to roll together a couple of things that he knew about them, about the Bronze Age, I guess, with a couple things you knew about Homer. So that's what we're stuck with. Now I'm going to be facing endless questions about whether the Sea people veterans of Troy were the Sea people. Okay, so we have a list of names. We know they were from Palestine and from Lycia and from possibly Mycenaean Greece. There's a list of peoples that are in the inscriptions. So we don't have to wonder who the Sea Peoples were. It's just like, not the reason for the Bronze Age collapse. Guys, we can set that aside. Can we please stop talking about this?

[Justin]

There's a good reason for ancient historians to be mad at Nolan that they have to answer this question again. It's been fundamentally answered.

[Rol]

Put this front and center in his understanding of the Trojan War. Very sad.

[Guest or Additional Panelist]

Yeah. I mean,

[Justin]

you know, that was the thing, I think, at the end of Emily Wilson's entire translation, which. Or her entire write up when she's like, at least it'll bring more people to the books, which it, it has. It's, you know, seven. Sales are up 76% from last year at this time of the Odyssey.

[Jordan]

It seems really low. It's got to be higher than that. Oh, my last question for you. Can we talk about landmark. The Landmark series for a second?

[Rol]

Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

[Jordan]

It's just the coolest thing. And then why don't you explain it to people? Let's, let's, let's pitch this books.

[Rol]

The Landmark translations is a series of books. I think they're privately funded, actually. There's just somebody who wanted these editions. It's really great. But they get scholars to write or update existing translations or write new ones, and then they illustrate them with a massive array of maps and they add all these appendices to explain various aspects of the source. And they really tend to be, like, fantastic ways of getting a first introduction to these texts, because they don't just give you the words. They will just try to make sure that they. That's fully contextualized in the world in which it's taking place. So I really, really love landmarks. They're great for, you know, Xenophon S Lenica for Thucydides, but you can also get them for a lot of other texts.

[Jordan]

We've got Herodotus, Thucydides, the Hellenica, Arian and Caesar. Forthcoming Polybius Anabasis.

[Rol]

Nice. I think in the Anatomasis. Cool, cool.

[Jordan]

What's the. What's the. What's the addition you want to make? Roll. If the editors are listening here.

[Rol]

Oh, for the landmark, it would be really interesting to do, like, a landmark Cyropedia. So Xenophon has, you know, the Hellenica they're already doing. And you're saying they're doing the Anabasis now, which is great. He also has this essentially historical fiction novel about Cyrus, like the Rise of Cyrus the Great. And obviously that takes place in the real world. You know, it's a fictionalized version, but it has some grounding in real history, and it's set all over the Persian Empire. So you could do something like that. You know, Know, you could have that as a. As a parallel piece to the Xenophon's Anabis into Aryan's Anabisis as well. That would be really fun.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Rol]

We need the Chinese version. It's due in your translation, because the Lowep translation that I have, the little green book translation of encyclopedia is a bit of a mess.

[Jordan]

It's just like. I don't know, someone handed me. What is it? Alexander Pope did a Thucydides or. No, no, no, no, the philosopher.

[Rol]

Oh, Hobbes did.

[Jordan]

Yeah, Hobbes did it. It's just, like, impenetrable. You don't know where the places are. You don't know where people are going.

[Rol]

16th century, man. You can get a more recent.

[Jordan]

But no, I'm not blaming him, but giving someone in the 21st century something without maps and diagrams and photos of what, you know, the armor looks like. There's just. They're just ways to make this so much more engaging.

[Rol]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, the Oxford World Classics, the Hammond translation of Thucydides is really accessible. I always sort of recommend that as an easy way in. It's not necessarily the best version of everything, but it's really cheap and it's got your maps and everything else, so you can go for that. But otherwise the landmark facilities has all the maps you could ever want. And it has a lot of extra contextualization in the notes and the appendices as well. So, you know, go for that. If you're willing to shell out with one of these big tomes.

[Jordan]

I think this is in the Agora Museum as well, is there's like a shield that the, like the Athenians went on some raid. It was like Pylos maybe. And they have a. Was it. Do you know what I'm talking about? It's like a shield and it's like etched in. Like, it's like we. We stole this from these guys on this date at this battle and they just, like, they thought it was so cool. They had to like, etch it in.

[Rol]

No, no, because it becomes a dedication, right? So they dedicate these spoils to the gods. So they put them on display. And of course, in order to make that a proper dedication, you want to inscribe, like, what is the context of this? So they inscribed it with where they took it. So it just has a few words, but basically from the Lacedaemonians at Pylos, right? So we stole this from the Spartan forces that attacked us at Pylos. The Odyssey connection there actually is that part of the movie was filmed right there where that battle happened. Happened. So the cave of the Polyphemos the Cyclops, that's Nestor's cave on the rocket pillows. So that is where exactly where that shield. Like, that's a few hundred meters from where that shield was captured. So that's where they went to film the cave and the site of the cyclone, which is really great. But fundamentally that is the battle of Pylons Facteria during the Peloponnesian War, 425 BC, in which the Spartans were not only defeated, but a number of Spartans were captured, they surrendered, which is not something Spartans are supposed to do. So that really actually affected the course of the war. It was a really major event. And it's really wonderful that we have a physical token that was found in a well in the Agora that shows that physically confirms the narratives that we get from literary sources. Sources.

[Jordan]

I love the idea of the. The Spartans coming into Athens, seeing this and then just like throwing it down the well. Like, don't you dare be celebrating our defeat. We're gonna memory hold this.

[Rol]

They gotta respect it. They gotta respect it. It's dedicated to the gods, you know, but I mean at the same time the, the, the Spartan temple to Athena on their acropolis in Sparta. It was known as the Athena of the bronze house. And there's two different accounts of that. One is that the interior of the temple was plated in bronze. The alternative account is that it was so covered in dedications that it looked from the outside like it was made of bronze. And so, you know, they're doing the same thing. They're obviously also celebrating their victories by putting these spoils up on display.

[Jordan]

All right, I think we're going to call it here. Let's leave them wanting more. Rol, thank you so much for being a two part twice in ten days war talk guest first in our history.

[Rol]

Well, I'm very glad to be here, honestly. This is a lot of fun. So thanks for having me.

[Guest or Additional Panelist]

Cost me 10 more years and every man I knew many many hooks let's go. Nobody came back with me Nobody came back with me Everybody who believed in me Is in that wine dark sea the only one that made it home with nobody. No, no Build a horse out of a lie Put a kingdom in the ground Walked up in a man's cave Ate his food without a sound first rule that he is and I broke it like it wasn't nothing Blinded him and left him standing in the dark with nothing he asked me who he was Told nobody that's who Nobody holler nobody killing me and every giant went back to sleep on cue we was gone we was clean we was already free but free ain't enough when don't nobody knows me so I stood up on that deck and let him know I'm gonna see your son Ladies they know my tricks Everywhere I go and my fang go all the way to heaven don't you know Then he prayed on me Let him come home late Let him come alone in another man's boat and let him find trouble waiting at his own gate his daddy hurted his daddy out for me I wanted him to know it was me I wanted him to know it was me no nobody came back with me Nobody, nobody nobody came back with me Said it out loud one time Now I can't say it all 20 years of my life for the sound of my own name call Nobody came back with me King of the winds hand me a B Don't nobody touch Got close enough to see the smoke off my island Then they cut it rose a finger dawn come up in my island Gone again I ain't never trust me Cause I ain't never let them in Fess and the rocks and never told us them they was chose you real Ouches. You was right about me. Told you go left. Cause I knew you go right Ain't no way you couldn't see Every call I made was smart Every one of y' all still died. Nobody came back with me. Nobody no, no nobody came back with me Learned all their names and I buried them all at sea Nobody came back with me Asked Achilles and the dark was the glory worth it? Said he rather work a landless man's dirt Than be a king over all of the dead that's the best of all of us Wishing he was poor and breathing instead Reached for my mama and my arms went straight on to her she said it was longing for me that took her. Then the guy that's held out forever said stay, never die I said give me my home Give me a wife that's gonna get old Give me something that can eat King in the dark sitting walking your door with your chest out Said he came home like a hero in his own house Laid him out so they loud his name on the water Knock like a stranger at the gate Bag of rags beg a name 20 years years late men in my house eating 20 years of her calling they self guest not one of them thought the ass beggar his name that's how you fail to test dog Wag his tail one time and drop his ears down low Ain't had the strength to come to me but he the first one to know Poor woman washing my feet felt the scar and said my name 20 years I've been dying for somebody to say that name now it'll kill me if she do had to hold her mouth and take the blame Stroke my bow in a room a man who couldn't lifted off the floor and it got real quiet in there Nobody talking no more Nobody came back with me Nobody Nobody came back with me Nobody, nobody Nobody came back with me how did I my own name Cross the water like a fool Cost me every man I knew Nobody came back with me Nobody Three years she w a dead man's burial cloth in the daylight and pulled every thread of it back out at night held off a 100 men with a loom and ain't told her so 20 years and she still ain't believe me Told him move to bed just to hear what I was saying I said ain't nobody move that bed I cut it from an olive tree still rooted in the brown that's when she broke the song say she cried like a man come up out the water when he finally see the sh. Gave him my shift back. That's how you know Then the goddess held the sun down under the world so we can stay up talking. They call me Sack City. They call me the one who in d one of them ever got me anything and she the one who really endure. Nobody came back for me. But somebody was still here. Wealthiest man on a rock in the sea which on this island means 11 more of me. No crown, no throne, no law, no gate. Just jars on the shelf and the flax on the hill. Three rooms and a portico. Three room that's a palace where I'm from no marble, no dome, no walls that hold just more wine than you. That's all a king is. That's all a king is. Sacked A city for a cup and I carried the cup home. That cup is the only reason anybody calls me. Soup is in my heart eating 20 years of hurt that's not bad manners. That's the takeover boy wants to see. But the sea isn't real. Who enforces it? Nobody's coming. Power's not a title. Powers. Who shows up? Storeroom deep, Wallace thin. And a party. Go3. One. Sam.