← Dan Snow's History Hit
Dan Snow's History Hit
BONUS: The Complete Map of the Odyssey
00:51:54
Dan charts the course of Odysseus through the Mediterranean.
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Dan Snow
Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history?
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Dan Snow
the Odyssey the Ultimate Journey, A story thousands of years old about a her enduring everything Nature God and man and woman can throw at him as he tries to get home. It is the most famous journey in history. It is the first journey. And this is everything you need to know. Friends, today we are telling that story, the Odyssey. In this episode, using my mega pad, we're going to map Odysseus journey across the Mediterranean. Here is a map of the Mediterranean.
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We're going to trace his epic voyage
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as he sails from up here all the way across the Mediterranean, tossed by storms, perhaps even out of the Mediterranean, until he arrives back here in Ithaca. Yes, I hear you shouting. It is fantasy, but like all literature, it's inspired by real places. So we're going to attempt to make sense of this convoluted journey and explore some of the many theories about where some of the places he goes could have been in the real world. We're gonna tell the story, we're gonna talk about the challenges he faces. Cyclopses, sirens, lotus eaters, and what this mega myth all means. Because this is the greatest adventure story ever written. So let's. So a little backstory before we get into things. This is what you need to know. The Odyssey was a poem. It was spoken, it was sung over generations and it evolved. Bits were added, bits were edited until someone, we call them Homer, wrote it down around about the 8th century BC. The Odyssey is set in a period a few hundred years before that. The technology and the places mentioned suggest the story is set on around 1200 BC, in what we call the Mycenaean Age. This is the late Bronze Age. I've got a map here of the world that shows the big players. The late Bronze Age world, which is, roughly speaking, 1600-1200 BC, was dominated by several powerful interconnected civilizations, including, famously, you've got the Egyptians here in and around the Nile Valley. We've also got these guys up here, the Hittites, roughly speaking, dominating much of Anatolia, much of what is today Turkey. Over to the west in Greece, we have got the famous Mycenaean civilization that spreads across Greece and the islands of the Aegean. So over here, let's put them in green, we've got sort of wealthy cities down this coastal strip of the Levant, what is today Lebanon, Israel, Palestine. Then as we go further west, let's do Orange. We have the Kassites down in Babylon, which is not just off the map here, but it's towards the Persian Gulf. And then we have the Assyrians in Mesopotamia. So let's put them around about here. These kingdoms are linked by maritime trading networks right across the Eastern Mediterranean. We know there's lots of exchange, lots of contact between them all. We've got ships carrying copper, very importantly from Cyprus here. That's going in all directions. It's going into the Greek world, it's going down to Egypt here. But we've also got tin from Central Asia flowing in. We've got luxury goods, grain, ivory, gold, wine, olive oil, textiles right across this network. Bronze production really, really important that depended on long distance trade because copper and tin, which you use to make bronze, come from very different regions. A lot of that tin, if you can believe this, is coming either overland or by sea routes from little old England today, a great source of tiny now relations between these great powers. They're a mix of diplomacy, trade and sometimes warfare. You get kingdoms forming, you get alliances, you get marriage ties, but you do occasionally get conflict. We do know about one major battle. It was the battle of Kadesh. It was between the Egyptians and the Hittites. You've got the Hittites marching down here, just to a spot in modern Syria. And you have the Egyptians under Ramesses. Let's see, they march in there and they meet at Kadesh. There's also piracy, there's coastal raiding, these things are common. Now let's look at Greece over here. Look at this. They were seafarers, they were traders, Their pottery has been found across the Mediterranean world. And they probably acted as merchants and raiders occasionally, both at the same time. We know they regularly travel to Egypt and the Nile. This is the world that later inspired stories like the Odyssey. Okay, that's the context. What about the Odyssey itself? It tells the story of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, an island right on the edge of the Greek world. Today there's an island called Ithaca just over here. This one here in fact. Now I'll come back to whether that's actually in fact Ithaca in a second. Odysseus spends 10 years trying to return home after fighting a massive decade long war in Troy, which is what we'd now call in Asia Minor. That is up here in the northwest of modern day Turkey. He faces storms, he faces monsters, he faces gods, he faces temptation. And he deals with his own flaws along the way. It's split into 24 different books. While he's trying to get home, his wife is being besieged by men trying to marry her because they all think her husband's dead. And these suitors are eating all the food in the royal storerooms. They're drinking all the wine in his cellars. They're being mean to Odysseus teenage son Telemachus. They're generally being a total pain. So I'm going to be telling the story of the Odyssey, but I'm also going to get into that millennia old game. We're trying to work out if there are any real world locations that Odysseus might have actually visited or certainly that inspired the tale. So let's zoom back out to our map of the whole of the Mediterranean world. As you can see here, we got the whole thing laid out and we're going places where scholars and thinkers and fans have speculated that Odysseus would have visited or travelled to across the Mediterranean and beyond on this map here. So you can see, for example, we've got modern day countries like Turkey, Greece, we've got places like Sicily, Malta, North Africa. Some theories go a bit rogue. Plutarch, the ancient Greek historian, has him visiting the shores of the uk, but we'll get into that a little later on. But for the moment we're starting a little old place in north western Turkey today called
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Troy.
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The Greeks have been fighting the Trojans for years, in fact a decade. And actually just looking at the geography, you can see why it's such a valuable place. It sits on the banks of the Bosphorus, this narrow channel that leads from the Mediterranean into the Black Sea. It's always been an important place. Today the city of Istanbul is there. People have fought over this stretch of water, this landscape, for millennia. It's right on the edge of Asia, where it meets Europe. Now, eventually, the Greeks come up with a cunning plan to capture the obstinate city, a gigantic wooden horse. This makes sense when you think about the fact the Trojans were famous for, for horsemanship. They absolutely loved horses. The horse became, it was a powerful symbolic offering. The Greeks appeared to abandon the siege. They packed up their tents, they rode off in their ships over the horizon. But they left behind, in front of the gates of Troy, this massive horse made of wood. Now the Trojans debated what to do with the horse. There was a princess called Cassandra. She was a prophet, prophetess, and she warned that if you brought the horse inside the city, it would bring on disaster. But everyone ignored her. Instead, the Trojans dragged the horse through the gates into the city. They believed the war was over. They celebrated. They cracked open those last few barrels of wine. They had a party. But as they slept, a hidden hatch opened in the horse's belly. Elite Greek warriors climbed out, including Odysseus Sacker of cities, Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, Thrasymedes son of Nest. They've all got great names. And the Greeks crept through the streets over the drunken revellers, and they overpowered the gate guards. They lifted the great beam that held the gates shut and opened the gates. Those gates, closed for a decade, were now thrown open from within. The Greek army had crept back overnight under cover of darkness. They were waiting for those gates to open. They entered the city and they ransacked it. The terrible destruction of Troy began. Men were butchered. Blood ran through the streets. Women and children were enslaved. They were marched off to the ships in shackles. Troy was burned. It was destroyed. What's exciting is that we think we know where Troy was. In the 19th century, an archaeologist discovered the remains of a wealthy city in northwest Turkey, overlooking the Mediterranean, right on the edge of Asia, as I said. Now, it's a very complicated place to
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get your head around.
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Here is a map of what the surviving archaeology tells us. It is a place that was built and rebuilt several times over the centuries. There was a fortified city, a settlement on this little hilltop, as early as 3000 BC. So we call that Troy I. And we can see this outer fortification here is Troy 1, that was then destroyed by fire. And Troy 2 was built that was also destroyed after a while. And then we get Troy three. You get the picture. What we're left with is like a lasagne of Troys, all built on top of each other at different times. And we try and work out which ruin, which bit of archaeology relates to which period. Now, I recently went to Troy. Let's take a look at some of these images. It's a beautiful place to go today. You can see it's slightly raised up on that hill overlooking the surrounding landscape. Great place for a fortified settlement. The Troys that we're interested in are, I'm sorry to do this, 6 and 7, they're big cities. There is a sort of ceremonial, religious, important citadel in the middle, and then lots of residential and commercial buildings stretching off into that plain in the distance, only a fragment of which have been excavated. Now, Troy 6 was destroyed in around 1300. Troy 7 was destroyed a smidge over 100 years after that. Both of those are roughly in the set of dates that the Odyssey is set in. So perhaps, perhaps the Odyssey reflects a real war, a real siege that took place that. That ended in the destruction of this city of Troy. Now let's get back to the story. Let's get back to the Odyssey. What you've got to remember is that there is no unified Greece at The time doesn't exist. Let's come back out to our map of the Greek world here. There we go. Instead, you've got rival kingdoms, warlords. Yes, they're linked by language and religion and culture, but they're fiercely proud of their independence. All of these different contingents, obviously they all fall out the minute they capture Troy and they all sail home in their little fleets back to their particular parts of the Greek world. You've got people like the Spartans who come from down here. You've got the Cretans who come from the big island of Crete. And you've got the Ithacans heading back to their little island of Ithaca over there. And their ships were loaded with plunder and slaves. Odysseus, long and disastrous journey has begun. The gods were angry at the Greeks for their astonishing rapacious violence. So everything goes wrong pretty quickly because they've annoyed the gods. Odysseus is blown from Troy here, look at this, where the horse is up north to Thrace, this part of the world up there. He didn't want to go there, but since he's there, he takes the opportunity to sack another city. As he put it, I sacked the town and killed the men. We took their wives and shared their riches equally among us. I should say at this point that a close reading of the Odyssey makes it a little tricky for a modern audience to really root for Odysseus. It's interesting. There's a classicist, Emily Howsler, I interviewed for a project on this. She explained to me that a Greek hero is not necessarily someone who we just admire a hero in the modern sense. To the Greeks, a hero is someone actually who's got main character and as you, sure, but someone whose ambition for glory ultimately leads them and everyone around them to ruin. So they're a character that we just can't look away from. It's true that Odysseus, he often makes mistakes and most of them are born from his ambition. And he makes one now, the Thracians. So the people up here, they counterattacked Odysseus and he and his men barely escaped on they sailed down here into the Aegean. So I'll put a little helmet up there for Odysseus, first stop on his journey home. But let's quickly talk about the geography really of the Greek world. Look at that, look at that. It's a place of islands, it's fragmented. This is a. A culture of seafarers. There's a maritime culture because you've got to sail from A to B. The mountainous Interior of Greece is very hard to travel across. So people are sailing around the coast and it's a coast of headlands and bays and harbors and caves. These are places to shelter from storms and enemies. And that creates a world of diversity, a world of pirates and kings who are of them the same person. And it means that each one of these islands has its own particular customs and rulers and character. And it means that Odysseus never knows quite what kind of society he'll encounter next. That's very different to the large unified river based civilizations, place like Egypt down here or Mesopotamia over in Asia. The Greek world was much more fractured, much more maritime. Odysseus is about to launch himself into that world, but also a world of fantasy and magic because he's about to have his first unreal experience. A violent storm drives him and his men for 10 days until they arrive at a lush island inhabited by the lotus eaters. Now where was this mysterious island of lotus eaters? We've got all sorts of theories. One takes us to Djerba in Tunisia, just here. That's the most enduring and widely accepted geographical theory. But we've also got, well, the whole of the Libyan coast here. It could have been somewhere along there. That's where the ancient Greek historian Herodotus placed the lotus eaters, somewhere on the coast of Libya. And he described them as a people that ate the fruit of a special tree that tasted like dates. Some people suggest that it could be on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, way to the west, because they argue that Homer intended for this land to be at the extreme edge of the known world. And it's true that the lush coast of Morocco does so vaguely fit the mythical description of this place that was at the end of the world. We are going to stick with Djerba in Tunisia. So let's chart this journey. They're blown down here by this terrible storm until they reach Djerba. Some men when they arrived at this place went inland and they discovered these lotus eaters. These were people who ate an addictive special fruit and once they ate it, well, they lost all their ambition. In fact, the sailors who discovered these guys tried the fruit and they lost all of their will to return home. Odysseus had to go inland. He had to drag them back to the ships and he tied them beneath the benches. So this is Odysseus first brush with the supernatural. It certainly wouldn't be his last. So I'm putting the lotus there in Tunisia for the second stop on his mythical journey. Right Next we have reached the most famous moment of the story I think. Odysseus pulls up at another island, this one home to the cyclops, the one eyed giant. Now we have obviously no idea where this is Euripides, the ancient Greek playwright. He locates the land of the cyclops on the isle of Sicily. So let's zoom out a bit and come over to Sicily here, the big island off the south coast of Italy. He thinks it's near Mount Etna. Now Virgil, the Roman epic poet, he has the cyclops also living on Sicily, also near Mount Etna. Now who am I to disagree with Euripides and Virgil? Let's say that Odysseus next voyage is up here to north east Sicily in the shadow of Etna. We're told that Odysseus lands on a fog covered island with a good natural harbour. He and his men feast on wild goats. They drink strong wine, camping on the beach. Then Odysseus and 12 chosen companions explore inland and they discover a giant cave. There's cheeses in there, there are livestock pens full of sheep and lambs. But everything's on a huge scale. It's clearly home to a giant. Now his men want to steal supplies and get out of there immediately and I do not blame them. Odysseus strangely insists on staying to meet the cave's owner. Well he would live to regret that because that night a giant got back. A cyclops, one big eye in the middle of his ugly forehead. He rolled a massive stone across the cave entrance. He traps the Greeks inside. After Odysseus says, hey, what about a bit of hospitality? The cyclops grabs two of his men and gobbles them down. Odysseus wants revenge immediately but realizes there's no point killing the cyclops because they cannot move the huge stone blocking the exit. The next morning Cyclops eats two more men and Odysseus comes up with a plan. He prepares a big wooden stake, a big piece of big log in there. He sharpens the end and turns it into a spear. So that night when Cyclops returns and eats another two men for dinner, by the way, Odysseus offers him strong wine. The cyclops becomes drunk. He collapses. Odysseus men heat the sharpened stake in the fire. Then they all heft it onto their shoulders and drive it into the cyclops single eye. Blood pours out, the eye crackles, we're told, like hot metal in water. The cyclops is blinded. He falls into a kind of fitful sleep. But in the morning he wakes up and he's forced to roll away the rock that guards the entrance to the cave because he's going to let his gotta let his sheep out to go and graze. But Cyclops has got his arm across the entrance, making sure that only his sheep can get through. Odysseus ties his men beneath the sheep's bellies and the Greeks escape unnoticed, hanging from the bottom of the flock. They flee to their ship. By the way, they steal the sheep and then they start rowing away. But Odysseus cannot resist at this point doing something very, very stupid. He taunts the cyclops from the sea. His crew beg him to stop provoking the giant. Instead, Odysseus proudly reveals his name. He shouts that he is Odysseus, king of Ithaca. Now the cyclops that was called Polyphemus. He also reveals his identity. Disappointingly, he reveals he is the son of the sea God Poseidon. And he prays for revenge. He says may Odysse never return home. Or if he does get home, may he be late and broken and alone. That curse terrifies Odysseus crew. They sail onward. But they're now shaken. They're mourning their dead and they're very worried that the God of the sea, Poseidon, has condemned them. Now what does all this mean? I think the Cyclops chapter of the story symbolized a clash between civilization and savagery. And the cyclops is seen as a an evil figure because he violates the sacred Greek code of Xenia, which means hospitality, because he eats his guests. And the story also highlights Odysseus cunning. He's famous, isn't he, all over the world ever since for being the cleverest of the Greeks. So he's showing cunning. He manages to overcome brute force. He escapes through deception, through trickery and planning rather than physical prowess. But now let's just say this also exposes Odysseus greatest flaws, greed and pride. Why on earth was he snooping around this cave in the first place, stealing things and hoping for a gift from the owner? And why by the thunderbolts of Zeus, did he reveal his true name after escaping? Because he's arrogant. Because he wants the world to know that it was him. But actually he's now cursed. He turned victory into disaster. So I've got my Cyclops there. Now let's get on with the next stage of the journey because Odysseus and his men are sailing on. They're mourning their mountain casualties. They're getting a bit worried. But they reach the floating island of Aeolus ruler of the winds in the ancient and modern worlds. This part of the myth is tied to the Aeolian islands, which are actually very close by. They're located right here in the Tyrrhenian Sea. We've got Lipari, it's the largest and it's the most populous today of all these islands. And ancient writers associated Lipari directly with the home of Aeolus. But Stromboli, you've heard of that, another island in this archipelago, this one over here, famous for its continually active volcano. It's also linked to this myth because inhabitants used to predict the weather based on the shape and direction of the smoke and the clouds rising from the volcano's peak. And that was a skill that was all attributed to the God of the winds. Anyway, this was a place of feasting and ease, and Aeolus gives Odysseus a leather bag tied with silver wire containing all the nasty winds, all the stormy winds, leaving only the perfect wind to get home to Ithaca. So let's assume it's the Oleans. I'm going to take Odysseus the long way around, for reasons I will explain later on. So here he goes, he's sailing around there and he arrives at the Aeolian islands. Now he's got his bag of wind, he's feeling good about himself. They've got full bellies, they've had a bit of feasting, and they're going to sail with those wonderful winds all the way from the Aeolian islands round here back towards Ithaca and the Greek world. For nine days and nights, they sail perfectly until Ithaca itself appears on the horizon. But at that exact point, exhausted from steering constantly, Odysseus falls asleep. How his crew believe he's hiding treasure from them, and they crawl down and open the leather bag. All the winds burst out of the bag, there's a terrible storm and his fleet is blown all the way back again to Aeolus. And that second time, Aeolus refuses to help. He's convinced Odysseus is hated by the gods, he doesn't want to be involved, and the crew row their ships miserably onwards. After a week of rowing, we're told that's a lot of rowing. They reach Lystrygonia, which turns out to be a land of giant cannibals. Now, it's funny this bit, because it's not one of the most famous moments of the Odyssey, but for me it's certainly one of the most important. Now, where did all this take place? You'll be surprised to learn we have absolutely no idea, but really it could be anywhere. People have come up with theories from Sicily, here to Sardinia, and indeed all the way out into the Atlantic. However, later writers like Thucydides, the great Greek historian, or Pliny the Elder, the Roman, they argued that Laestrygonia was a fictionalized account of early settlements in central Italy. So we're going to send Odysseus up to central Italy up here. As they land, they are attacked by the Laestrygonians, giant men hurling massive rocks from the cliffs, smashing ships to pieces. The men swimming around in the sea were speared like fish. Odysseus noted to cut his own ship free and orders his crew to row for their lives. Only Odysseus ship escapes. The rest of Odysseus fleet is destroyed. So we've reached the part of the epic story where now nearly all the survivors of Troy have been wiped out. Odysseus and his crew sail on alone, devastated, feeling increasingly isolated. This episode is sponsored by Quo.
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- [33:38]
Dan Snow
Odysseus and his crew next reached the island of aea. Now my most bonkers theory about where this island might have been was put forward by Robert Graves, the wonderful novelist and poet. The British novelist and poet. He thinks that it was way up the top of the Adriatic. It was on the coast of Croatia. But the most famous, the most long standing theory that the ancient Greeks and the ancient Romans believed was that it was here in a place called Monte Chacheo. And that is important because aea, this island was the home of Circe, the beautiful sorceress. And today that is still known as Monte Cherchio, so there's a bit of a link there. Now, it would have appeared more of an island back then. It's a beautiful promontory on the coast of Italy. It would have appeared more of an island back then because it was surrounded by marshes. So that is where Roman writers like Strabo and Virgil believed it was. And it's very cool. It still has that name today. The crew are exhausted. They're traumatized. They're grieving after all their recent losses. They send a scouting party inland. They're very fearful they're going to encounter another monster or hostile tribe of cannibals. But they actually discover a beautiful house deep in the woods. And inside lives Circe. She's described as a beautiful, dreadful goddess. She welcomes in the men, she offers them food and wine. But one crewman remains suspicious, and he stays outside, and he witnesses Circe transforming all the other crewmen into pigs. They're herded into a pigsty. This surviving crewman runs back to the ship in terror, and he says to Odysseus, let's get out of here. Don't try and rescue them. Let's just sail away. But Odysseus refuses to leave his men and he marches inland towards the house. And on the way, he's stopped by Hermes, messenger of the gods. Hermes warns him about Circe, and he gives him a magical antidote, a white flower with a black root. Circe welcomes Odysseus into her hall. She seats him in comfort, and she secretly laces a drink with her concoction, her magic spells. When Cersei tries to transform him, though, the magic fails instead. Odysseus draws his sword and Circe begs for mercy and asks Odysseus to become her lover and her ally. And Odysseus says, sure, but first you have to restore my men to human form. And Circe does that, and she turns his men back into humans, and they're all quite happy. In fact, Odysseus and his companions remain on Aeaea for a year, feasting, drinking wine, enjoying comfort and safety. And Odysseus enjoys Circe's bed as well. But eventually, the crew remind Isius they still need to get home. But before they depart, Circe gives them some crucial advice. If they're going to get home, they had to visit the underworld. Now there he must seek the spirit of the prophet Teiresias, because only Tiresias can tell him how to get Home safely. This is a fascinating section of the story and it really explores the temptation, the masculinity, self control, and the danger of forgetting your purpose. Homer reminds us, if we need to be reminded, that men can easily surrender their reason and discipline to appetite. Thanks, Homer. I'm not sure it took an epic poet to point that one out. The episode deliberately twists again this Greek concept of Xenia. As I said, hospitality. Remember, there's no money in Bronze Age Greece. There are no hotels. So when you travel, you have to rely on the kindness of strangers. You get food, you get a bed for the night. And then when other people travel, they can expect the same thing in return. So it's a whole culture that depends on trust. Circe appears to be the perfect host. She welcomes the strangers and gives them food. But beneath that hospitality lies danger. And for Homer's audience, this really reflects a real anxiety. Not every welcoming stranger is what they see. And in this seafaring world where survival depended on hospitality, well, that was sacred. It could also be dangerous. The crew push on. Following Circe's instructions, they head to the underworld. Now, as you'll have spotted, the underworld is obviously a mythical location. It is beyond the edge of the known world. But ancient Greeks did believe that they were able to pinpoint a location. In the 5th century BC, the Greek historian Herodotus mentions a river in northwest Greece, the Acheron. And he said that there, there was an oracle associated with the underworld, speaking to the dead in that area. Thucydides, another historian, another Greek historian, also refers to, to that region having mythical associations. A place where the boundary between this world and the afterlife was at its thinnest. Another Greek writer, Pausanias, says that the rivers in that part of Greece were entrances to the underworld. So let us take Odysseus and his men back up here to northwest Greece.
- [38:56]
Ryan Reynolds
There we go.
- [38:57]
Dan Snow
Boom.
- [38:58]
In there. Luckily, I've just been following the footsteps of Odysseus and his crew. I happen to see it. Let's check it out. Look at this. You can just see why the ancient Greeks associated this with the underworld. It was a gloomy, mysterious, quiet, magical place. And water spurts from out of the earth. The rivers appear from underground. You can walk all the way up it and truly it feels like you're passing from one dimension into another. There is also an archaeological site there which could be a necromanteon. It's a cavern in the earth, which some archaeologists think was a place that subsequent generations of ancient Greeks would climb down into and perform rituals which involved talking to people in the afterlife that could be inspired by the Odyssey. What Odysseus does here is he sacrifices a sheep. He pours fresh blood into a trench and that summons the spirits of the dead. Ghosts swarm around the blood. Odysseus encounters many famous people. You've got the lord Agamemnon, overall commander of the Greek coalition. He'd been murdered by his wife and her lover upon returning home. You have Achilles, the greatest of the Greek warriors. He was killed in the battle for Troy. You have Patroclus, Achilles closest companion and best friend. You have Ajax, one of the greatest Greek heroes. But this is also. It's like a who's who. He also sees other mythical figures. Minos, Heracles, Sisyphus, Tantalus, you name it. But he's also very sad. He meets the spirit of his mother. She had died while he was away at Troy. And three times he tries to embrace his mother, but each time she slips away because she's a ghost. Odysseus finally talks. The prophet Tiresias. He tells Odysseus that he must sail to the island of the sun God Helios. There he will find Helios sacred herd of cattle. But under no circumstances should the cattle be harmed or eaten. If the crew obey, they may still reach Ithaca. If the crew disobey, the ship will be smashed and destroyed. Then Teiresias tells Lysias that there's trouble bringing Ithaca because all the suitors are trying to marry his wife. And he says that in order to lift the curse of Poseidon, he's got to go on another adventure. He's got to carry an oar inland until he meets people who don't know anything about the sea. Then he's got to put the oar in the ground and sacrifice a bull to Poseidon. Only then will Poseidon forgive him. So that's quite a miss. Odysseus sailed onwards, but obviously he's going to face more challenges. The first are the Sirens. They are monsters who lure men to their deaths on the rock by singing a beautiful song. Now Odysseus has a plan to get past the Sirens. He's going to plug his crew's ears with wax and he's going to tie himself to the mast because he'd like to hear their famous song. But he doesn't want to drive his ship to destruction. As Odysseus sails past the Sirens, he hears that sweet song. They're tempting Odysseus with stories about himself. They sing of his heroic deeds. So Obviously Odysseus loves that. He begs to be released, but his crew ignore him. They can't hear anything because they've got wax in their ears and they safely row past. So let's put the sirens somewhere magically in the middle of the Mediterranean. Here. Next, Odysseus comes to a terrible place. A narrow strait with not one but two monsters in it. Charybdis is a giant monster who sucks down the sea causing a massive whirlpool and then eats anything that gets sucked down and spits out the debris into the sea. But also Scylla, a six headed monster lurking in a cave above. Most people associate this part of the story with the Straits of Messina right here. These very narrow straits between Sicily and and mainland Italy. Odysseus steers the ship away from Charybdis, but this brings the ship to within reach of Scylla. And Scylla snatches six crewmen from the deck, lifts them up off the ship and devours them. Odysseus later calls it the most heartbreaking sight in all his years at sea. They press on to find the island of Helios. So I'll put my little whirlpool right in here. Shockingly, the island of Helios has no universally accepted real world location. We've got a couple of geographical clues. Some have speculated that it's Malta down here. It's halfway between Sicily and North Africa. It's an important waypoint if you're trading through the Mediterranean, but we've got no evidence. Most ancient Greeks thought it was Sicily itself. The name given in the Odyssey is Thynakia, which could be linked to Sicily's roughly triangle, three cornered shape. So once again Odysseus is back in Sicily. Let's take him along there and put in at the north coast of Sicily. Both Tiresias and Circe had warned him, do not touch Helios sacred cattle on this island. And Odysseus really hoped to avoid the island completely. But he has to go there. His men are exhausted. They desperately want to rest, pull the ship up on the shore and take a few days off before landing. Odysseus makes them swear they won't harm the cattle. But then a violent storm blows up and they're trapped on this island for a month and supplies run out. They eat the birds, they eat any fish they can find, but they're really, really hungry. And Odysseus goes away. He has a little prey and he falls. And his second in command persuades the crew to break their oath. He Says, look, we're going to die anyway. Let's die with full bellies. Odysseus wakes up and he can smell roasting meat. And he knows what's coming. He knows it's going to be a disaster. The men have killed the cattle of Helios, the sun God. It's not good. As soon as the weather clears, they set sail. And as soon as they do so, the sky darkens, there's a terrible storm. Lightning smashes into the ship, the whole boat collapses, the mast comes down, the vessel's shattered and the entire crew is killed, apart from Odysseus. He is left clinging to the wreckage, drifting for days at sea, and eventually he is washed ashore on, you guessed it, a distant, mysterious island. This island, Ogygia, is another very mysterious location. In the Odyssey, it's inhabited by another beautiful goddess, Calypso. Homer describes it as a sort of remote paradise where Odysseus will be held for seven long years. But he doesn't provide many geographical details. As a result, scholars and travelers have had a great time. There have been local traditions that have popped up all over the place. One of the most persistent is a place on Gozo known as Calypso's Cave. So let's take Odysseus, for the sake of argument, round to Gozo. Here we go. His ship has been destroyed, he's coming round here, he's floated a long way and he's reached the island of Gozo, right next to Malta. That island has dramatic cliffs, it's got secluded bays, it's got a fertile landscape. So, you know, it could easily match Homer's description and the locals are thrilled. They tell everyone who will listen that this is definitely Ogygia, since, well, for centuries that's been going on. There are some problems with this. There is no ancient evidence linking that. So the ancient Greeks and the Romans were not super convinced about that. So the association is much later than the ancient world. I want to just shout out one of the most rogue theories here. So I'm coming out to this big map here because Plutarch, the ancient Greek historian, says that Odysseus washed, swept out of the Mediterranean altogether into the Atlantic. And Plutarch says that he was five days west of Britain. So where does that get us? So he comes out of the Mediterranean into the Atlantic five days west of Britain, potentially Iceland, Greenland, Newfoundland. Now I have been to those places and they could not be described as tropical paradises, but who knows? That's how widely the debate around the geography of the Odyssey has ranged. But for our purposes, we're putting him in slightly more temperate gozo. And on that island, Calypso keeps Odysseus for years. She loves him. She wants him to stay. Homer says that Odysseus is trapped. He's not willing. He longs for Ithaca. He longs for his wife Penelope. He longs to get home. He spends his days weeping on the shore. Poor Odysseus, forced to share the bed of this beautiful, supernatural woman on this tropical paradise during those seven long years. Penelope, his wife, back in Ithaca. While she understandably believes that her husband is probably dead, his son Telemachus grows up without knowing his father. The suitors are pushing ever harder. They're abusing the rules of hospitality. They are demanding that she marries one of them. Finally, Odysseus catches a break. The goddess Athena intervenes on his behalf. She persuades her father Zeus to help Odysseus. Zeus agrees and orders Calypso to release poor Odysseus. Hermes, the messenger God, goes down and delivers that command to Calypso. So, reluctantly, Calypso helps Odysseus build a raft, get some supplies together and set out on another voyage across the sea. He's now alone. He's carrying a bit of food and wine. He's navigating by the stars. But Poseidon spots him as he's halfway on this voyage towards Greece and smashes the raft to bits. Odysseus ends up once again swimming in the water and is eventually washed up on the island of Phacia.
- [49:32]
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- [50:02]
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- [51:18]
Dan Snow
So Fascia is another mythical place. It's full of magic. There's vessels that steer themselves, there's extraordinary wealth, there's a special relationship with the gods in this particular place. Ancient scholars have suggested Corfu. That's this island here. It's one of the most beautiful of the Ionian Islands. It's got lots of nice harbours and beaches and it could easily fit Homer's description. So let's take Odysseus from Calypso here on his raft, via a catastrophic shipwreck up here to Corfu. Odysseus is washed ashore. He's naked, he's exhausted, he's alone. He hides beneath leaves. He's terrified about what awaits him him. But instead of monsters, he meets a princess, Nausicar, daughter of the king. She's playing on the beach. Odysseus wins her trust and manages to get himself into the royal palace. And then he tells the story of his wanderings. And the Phaeacians are spellbound. The king orders a ship to take him home. Loaded with treasure and gifts, Odysseus sleeps all the way back and the Phaeacians take him to Ithaca. They carry him ashore. Asleep, they lay him to rest on a beach, finally on ithacan soil after 20 years away. And importantly, he might not have any men with him, but he's got booty. He's got lots of wealth and treasure given him to him by the Phacians, which means he's actually richer than he was when he left Troy. Side note, as the Phacians sail away, Poseidon punishes them for helping Odysseus by turning their ship into stone. So here's Odysseus on the final part of his journey, being taken home to Ithaca. Right there. Now, I was lucky enough recently to follow in those footsteps in the wake of Odysseus. And I too went ashore on Ithaca for our recent history hit documentary. I say the real island of Ithaca. And this is the island today in Greece that has the name Ithaca. But there is a little Bit of a problem because Homer specifically says that Ithaca is the westernmost of these Ionian islands. And you can see that today Ithaca is not the westernmost of these islands. Look, there's a huge big island here, Kefalonia just the west. So some people say the old Ithaca could be Lefkas up here or it could be Cephallonia. But a theory that I find quite exciting is that this bit of Cephallonia here, this sort of peninsula on the western edge, that this was once an island and that because of seismic activity. Let me just rub this out. You get a land bridge forming here and that today is low lying, it's quite marshy. And that means that Cephallonia was joined to the island to the west. So that could have been the original Ithaca. Awesome. But for the moment we're going to assume that Ithaca is Ithaca. Now, as I've mentioned earlier this year, I was able to follow in Odysseus footsteps. I was able to sail his wake. And I too washed up on a beach in Ithaca for my recent history hit documentary. It was so exciting to step foot on Ithaca after years of hearing stories of the Odyssey and reading it and studying it. It's one of those places where archaeology and tradition and myth and storytelling all collide. Look it, we need to say, it may be that everything in this story is pure fantasy. It may be that looking for Odysseus palace is like looking for Hogwarts in Scotland. But it may be that there is a kernel of truth, a whisper of history that inspired the epic story. So perhaps, just perhaps, someone called Odysseus did once come ashore on this coast. Just imagine that, it gives you goosebumps. In fact, speaking of goosebumps, there was a different island near Ithaca that we visited where we were charged by wild boars. They were all quite chill until the kids arrived. And at that stage the mum started to get a bit nervous that we were getting too close to the children. And we did get charged a few times. And if you'd been there, you'd have heard and seen some grown men running into the sea in absolute terror. And strange fact, those pigs could swim. There you go. So even today these islands are still full of strange and wonderful things. On Ithaca there are sites that are associated with Odysseus. It's really interesting. There are buildings from the Rite period, so from the Mycenaean period, but which we know, the ancient Greeks and the ancient Romans, they believed they were connected with Odysseus. So they would visit these Places like this one here. I've got an image here. We filmed at a place called Odysseus Palace. This is a place that was visited by ancient tourists who came here to connect with the Odysseus myth. So let's get back to the Odyssey. Our wandering king Odysseus, he is back in Ithaca. He doesn't immediately reveal himself. Instead, with Athena's help, he. Well, first of all, he hides the treasure that's been given to him by the Phacians. First things first. But then he realises he has to proceed cautiously. He's been gone for 20 years. A new generation has grown up with little personal connection to their absent king. So Odysseus has lost everything that underpinned his power. He hasn't got any ships, he hasn't got any men. His loyal servants have probably grown old and died. So instead, Athena disguises him as a beggar and he works his way into the palace to sort of beg for food and gather intelligence. And the suitors mock him, they abuse him. He watches the feasting, he watches the music, the partying that's going on. He watches his household, his wealth being consumed by these terrible suitors. He reveals himself to his son Telemachus. They have a tearful reunion and then they come up with a plan. How are they going to win back the kingdom? Athena inspires Penelope, Odysseus wife, to announce a contest. Whoever can string Odysseus great bow and shoot an arrow through an opening in 12 axe heads, that person will win her hand in marriage. The suitors try. They each take their turn. They compete with each other. None of them can even string the bow. They can't bend the bow to fit the bowstring, let alone shoot an arrow. The disguised Odysseus, the old beggar, asks for a turn. He steps up and strings it. Effortlessly. Odysseus shoots an arrow cleanly through all 12 axes. And at that moment he reveals himself. He kills Antinous, leader of the suitors, with an arrow through the throat. Pandemonium results. The suitors beg for mercy. They offer repayment. Odysseus and Telemachus refuse. There is a battle and father and son, side by side, slaughter the suitors. Odysseus then stands victorious, covered in blood, having reclaimed his palace and his kingdom. After the slaughter, Odysseus orders the palace to be cleaned up. And Penelope comes down from her bedroom, is brought before Odysseus. But she's pretty skeptical. She's wise, she's nervous. This man is truly a husband. Could this be a trick being played by the gods. So Penelope tests him. She says, bring down our marriage bed from my bedroom so that this gentleman can have a nice rest. He can go to sleep. And Odysseus reacts immediately. The bed cannot be moved because he himself built that bed carved from a living olive tree. And only then Penelope finally believes him. Only then does she know that this is the real Odysseus. The only man who knows that secret husband and wife are reunited. Odysseus is finally home. Well, that's it folks. That is the end of this particular odyssey. I really hope you've enjoyed it. It was great fun to make. I've actually got a big series coming up on the megapad this summer on the history of Britain. It will be delivered straight to your devices. Make sure you smash all the buttons on Dan Snow's history hit and you won't miss a single one. See you next time.
- [59:46]
Optum Announcer
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- [60:15]
Aura Announcer
Most people don't realize how much of their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet, then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where Aura comes in. Aura actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web. But Aura goes beyond data protection. With one app you get a vpn, antivirus, password manager, spam, call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to 5 million in identity theft insurance. All backed by 24, 7 US based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring or even just a vpn. Aura gives you all of it together at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today at aura.com safety. Protect yourself now at aura.com safety.
- [61:31]
Dan Snow
Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history?
- [61:34]
Sign up to History and watch the
- [61:35]
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