The alien world of Homer’s Odyssey

Alastair Benn: I’m Alastair Benn, Deputy Editor of Engelsberg Ideas. The first words of Homer’s Odyssey ‘Andra moi ennepe, Mousa’ have been translated into English in many different ways. Robert Fagles, in his celebrated 1996 translation, begins: ‘Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns…’ Richmond Lattimore’s classic 1965 translation has: ‘Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways…’ And Emily Wilson, in her terse 2017 version, begins: ‘Tell me about a complicated man.’

It’s difficult to mount a direct assault on this poem because the man at its heart, Odysseus, is so hard to pin down. He is described as polymētis (‘of many counsels’), polymēchanos (‘ingenious’), polytlas (‘much-enduring’), and poikilomētis (‘of intricate wiles’). Nonetheless, he has now received the Hollywood treatment from Christopher Nolan, complete with the usual paraphernalia of a big-budget Nolan film: a starry cast, transatlantic accents, and booming soundtracks. But what, if anything, does Nolan’s Odyssey have to do with Homer’s Odyssey?

To discuss it, I’m joined by Orlando Gibbs, who has a PhD in Latin literature and writes and researches on the classical world alongside his career as an actor. Welcome, Orlando.

Orlando Gibbs: Thank you very much for having me.

Alastair Benn: The first difficulty about The Odyssey is its almost novelistic structure. Odysseus himself is celebrated as a great teller of tales, and he narrates a significant portion of the story in his own voice. Part of the story of Troy is also told by the bard Demodocus. Odysseus is a fast talker, constantly weighing up how he can use words to his advantage. How much does that quality contribute to the epic character of the poem, and how does it distinguish The Odyssey from The Iliad?

Orlando Gibbs: The telling of tales is a theme of both The Iliad and The Odyssey, but it receives a much fuller treatment in The Odyssey. To a degree, Odysseus is almost a figure for the poet within the poem. In both epics, the poet begins by invoking the Muse and then receives divine inspiration in order to tell the story. What Odysseus does in Books 9 to 12 is effectively have his own moment as an epic poet, recounting his adventures to the Phaeacians. Storytelling is certainly present in The Iliad, but it’s woven into the poem much more subtly.

One example comes in Book 6, when the Trojan warrior Glaucus meets the Greek hero Diomedes on the battlefield. In the culture reflected by the poems, when you meet a stranger you ask: ‘Who are you? What’s your name? Where are you from?’ It’s a formula that appears repeatedly in both epics. As Glaucus and Diomedes exchange stories, they discover that their grandfathers had once hosted one another. They therefore realise they are linked by xenia, the Greek institution of guest-friendship.

Christopher Nolan actually gives xenia a fair amount of attention in the film. Good xenia involves welcoming strangers warmly, feeding them, sheltering them and protecting them. Had Glaucus and Diomedes not discovered this inherited bond, they would simply have killed one another on the battlefield. As part of that exchange, Glaucus recounts the story of Bellerophon, a mythological figure who doesn’t otherwise appear in The Iliad but whose story reinforces this connection between the two warriors. So storytelling is already deeply embedded within The Iliad.

Another example comes in Book 9, after Achilles has quarrelled with Agamemnon. Agamemnon sends an embassy, including Odysseus, to persuade Achilles to return to battle. The embassy delivers a series of elaborate rhetorical speeches. Among them is Phoenix, an older hero who reminds Achilles that his father entrusted him with raising the young prince. Phoenix recalls being instructed to teach Achilles ‘to be both a doer of deeds and a speaker of words.’

That phrase is enormously important. In Homeric culture, being eloquent is every bit as essential to heroism as fighting well on the battlefield. Achilles himself is an exceptionally sophisticated speaker when he chooses to be. What changes in The Odyssey is that storytelling becomes absolutely central. Partly that’s because it’s a poem about civilisation and peacetime rather than continuous warfare. In The Iliad, there isn’t much time for stories because everyone is fighting.

In The Odyssey, however, Odysseus is constantly arriving among strangers. He has to introduce himself, persuade people to trust him, and explain where he has come from. Storytelling becomes not simply an ornament of civilisation but one of its essential forms of communication.

Alastair Benn: You mentioned xenia and how much of it actually survives into Nolan’s film. I think you’re referring to what the film calls Zeus’s law, which is invoked at several points. How successfully does that idea translate to the screen, and how conscious do you think Nolan is of that tradition?

Orlando Gibbs: It’s definitely a theme that Nolan has chosen to magnify. It is absolutely central to the original poem. The Odyssey begins with the invocation to the Muse, after which the poet briefly outlines what the poem will be about. We then discover that Poseidon is away among the Ethiopians, leaving Zeus to survey the world. Zeus reflects on how unfair it is that mortals constantly blame the gods for their own troubles. Human beings so often bring suffering upon themselves through their own bad decisions.

As evidence, Zeus cites the story of Aegisthus, who conspired with Clytemnestra to murder Agamemnon, despite having been warned not to do so. Orestes later avenges his father by killing them both. So the first substantial story in the Odyssey is not actually about Odysseus at all. It’s about the House of Agamemnon, and it casts a long shadow over everything that follows. The murder of Agamemnon represents hospitality gone catastrophically wrong.

After ten years at war, the place where Agamemnon should have found safety was his own home. Instead, Clytemnestra and Aegisthus conspire to murder him. The very institution that ought to offer welcome and security has been corrupted. Throughout the Odyssey, there is an expectation that if you arrive at someone’s house as a stranger, you should first be given food, a bath, a bed, and conversation before anyone even asks who you are. Only afterwards does your identity become important. The poem repeatedly varies this pattern.

Sometimes hospitality is properly observed, for example when Telemachus visits Pylos and Sparta in Books 3 and 4. Likewise, Odysseus is magnificently received by the Phaeacians from Book 6 onwards, where they listen patiently while he recounts his adventures before ultimately providing him with safe passage home.Again and again, the poem explores what happens when xenia is honoured, and what happens when it fails.

Alastair Benn: That brings us back to the film, because one of Nolan’s biggest departures from the poem is structural. The film is largely told through flashbacks, with Odysseus serving as the vehicle for remembering them. When we first encounter him in the present timeline, he’s almost an amnesiac. He’s heavily drugged, unable fully to remember what’s happened to him. It’s such a different starting point from the poem. Does that feel like a deliberate declaration that Nolan’s Odysseus will be fundamentally different from Homer’s?

Orlando Gibbs: I think it does. The effect of having Odysseus continually eating the lotus flowers, Calypso repeatedly asks him why he won’t stop, is to create a version of the character who has been profoundly damaged by the Trojan War. You could call it a proto-PTSD, or simply PTSD. Towards the end of the film, Odysseus reflects that ‘we broke the bonds of men.’ He sees himself as the architect of that destruction.

The Trojan Horse itself becomes a symbol of violating the conventions of hospitality. It is, after all, a deception that exploits trust in order to win the war. When Odysseus tells Penelope that perhaps the man she loved could no longer bear what he had done, it completes the portrait established on Calypso’s island. He uses the lotus flowers to forget, to forget the suffering, but above all to forget his own actions.

This produces a version of Odysseus that lacks many of the trickster qualities that are absolutely fundamental to the Homeric character. That’s not to say the reflective Odysseus isn’t present in the poem. His very name is traditionally connected with suffering and grief. One strand of ancient etymology links it to the Greek verb meaning ‘to suffer’. Endurance and reflection are therefore intrinsic to his identity.

In Book 8, when Demodocus sings of the quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles during the Trojan War, Odysseus bursts into tears. So Nolan hasn’t invented this aspect of the character. Rather, he has chosen to magnify it while greatly reducing the qualities that make Odysseus such an extraordinary manipulator of language, trust and identity. That inevitably changes the moral texture of the story. The Homeric Odysseus is capable of deeply ambiguous behaviour. He lies brilliantly, deceives constantly and enjoys doing so. Those qualities create all sorts of uncomfortable ethical questions that are difficult to preserve in a major Hollywood film.

I can understand why Nolan opted instead for a more solemn, reflective hero. In fact, there is almost no humour in the film. The only line that could really be described as a joke comes in a flashback to the Trojan War, when Matt Damon’s Odysseus says something like, ‘Let’s get off this effing beach.’ When I saw the film, nobody in the cinema laughed. By that point, everything about the film had established Odysseus as an intensely serious figure.

Alastair Benn: I think there are shades of Robert Oppenheimer in Nolan’s Odysseus, actually. Returning to the poem itself, we don’t even meet Odysseus until Book 5. The opening books belong instead to Telemachus.
His story is almost a miniature hero’s journey. He leaves home in order to save it, acquires new knowledge through travel, and returns transformed. Like his father, he even conceals his departure from Penelope. He’s already showing signs of Odyssean cunning. Why is Telemachus so desperate to discover what has happened to his father?

Orlando Gibbs: It’s fundamentally about insecurity, both personal and political. The household, or oikos, is one of the central organising ideas of Greek literature. From the earliest texts onwards, the household functions as a microcosm of the wider political community. If the household is healthy, the state is healthy.

In Ithaca, however, the royal household is profoundly disordered. The opening books repeatedly demonstrate this. Politically, there is no real unity. We are told that there has not been a public assembly for years. When Telemachus finally calls one, the suitors themselves remark that nothing like this has happened in decades.

Meanwhile, the suitors effectively conduct their own private councils, creating the impression that Ithaca is drifting towards oligarchy rather than functioning under legitimate kingship. All of this reflects the collapse of the proper order associated with the palace culture of the Late Bronze Age, a world in which a good king governed by example and provided stability for his people.

So Telemachus’ search for Odysseus is partly motivated by his awareness of this political vacuum. At the same time, he’s experiencing a profound crisis of identity. One of the most significant moments occurs when Athena, disguised as Mentes, speaks to him in Book 1. She tells him that he is his father’s son. Telemachus responds with remarkable uncertainty. He says, in effect: ‘How can I know that? No man can ever truly be certain who his father is.’ That anxiety recurs throughout Greek epic and tragedy. You always know who your mother is because she gave birth to you. Paternity, however, is inherently uncertain, and Greek literature repeatedly returns to that insecurity. The story of Agamemnon reinforces exactly this concern. The murder of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus introduces the possibility of rival claims to succession. If Clytemnestra has children by Aegisthus, who is the rightful heir? The stability of the household, and therefore of the kingdom itself, is immediately threatened. Telemachus’ uncertainty about his own identity therefore reflects one of the poem’s deepest political concerns.

Alastair Benn: During his journey he visits some of the surviving heroes of Troy, including Menelaus. What does he learn from them, and how do Menelaus’ stories illuminate Odysseus’ own?

Orlando Gibbs: Both Nestor and Menelaus have remarkably little concrete news of Odysseus. What Telemachus gains instead is an education. Menelaus recounts his own difficult return from Troy. In many respects he experiences a miniature version of the kind of wandering that characterises Odysseus’ journey. He even encounters supernatural beings, most notably Proteus, the shape-shifting sea god. Menelaus captures Proteus in order to learn two things: first, how he himself can return safely home; and second, what has become of Odysseus.

So Telemachus receives information about his father only indirectly. More importantly, however, both Nestor and Menelaus model what mature kingship looks like. In the absence of Odysseus, Telemachus learns from them how an honourable ruler behaves, how he carries himself, how he governs, how he commands respect within his community. That experience is precisely what equips him to return to Ithaca with greater confidence and authority.

Alastair Benn: Menelaus is rather different in Nolan’s film. He’s presented as a deeply traumatised figure.

Orlando Gibbs: Yes, and I think this is another example of Nolan amplifying trauma beyond what we find in the poem. That’s not to deny that Menelaus has suffered enormously. Anyone who survived the Trojan War has. But the Menelaus of the Odyssey isn’t presented as psychologically broken in the way Jon Bernthal portrays him. In the film he cannot bear to hear Agamemnon’s name mentioned. He repeatedly interrupts Helen and refuses to listen whenever she begins talking about the past. It’s actually quite an effective dramatic choice because it establishes a broader theme: every Greek hero has been permanently scarred by the war. Whether, like Odysseus and Menelaus, their journey home was painfully prolonged, or whether, like Agamemnon, they returned quickly only to meet catastrophe, all of them are shown as carrying the psychological burden of Troy.

The difficulty is that this simplifies the relationship between Menelaus and Helen. In the Odyssey, theirs is a much subtler marriage than the film suggests. It isn’t simply one of bitterness and silence. Indeed, one of the most beautiful moments comes when Helen mixes a drug into the wine that allows everyone present to speak about the Trojan War without being overwhelmed by grief. In Nolan’s film, Helen herself appears almost completely broken, physically and emotionally damaged, and cowed by Menelaus. It’s striking that Nolan effectively inverts the symbolism of the drug. In Homer, it enables memory. It allows painful stories to be told. In the film, by contrast, the lotus flowers suppress memory altogether.

Alastair Benn: It’s interesting that Nolan almost reverses that symbolism in the Calypso episode. In Homer, Helen’s drug enables people to remember and speak about their suffering. On Calypso’s island in the film, the lotus flowers do the opposite: they block memory altogether. Again, it feels like an accommodation of the poem to modern ideas about trauma and war.

Orlando Gibbs: Yes, and I think it’s also a simpler way of expressing something that runs throughout Greek literature: the medicinal power of storytelling. Words, language and narrative themselves function as a kind of healing process. This is an idea that appears much later in authors such as Theocritus. I’m thinking particularly of the poem in which the Cyclops sings about his hopeless love for the nymph Galatea. The poem is framed around the idea of a doctor prescribing a remedy, and Theocritus suggests that song itself is a pharmakon, both a drug and a cure, for emotional suffering. That idea is already present in the Odyssey. Storytelling is cathartic.

It is cathartic for Odysseus when he hears Demodocus sing of the Trojan War. It is cathartic for Menelaus and
Helen’s guests when Helen’s potion allows them to discuss painful memories without breaking down. Nolan effectively reverses the symbolism. He transfers the lotus flowers from the early episode with the Lotus-Eaters to Calypso’s island, so that forgetting rather than remembering becomes the means by which Odysseus copes with his suffering. It’s one of several structural changes that reshape the moral emphasis of the poem. In Homer, the Lotus-Eaters are encountered very early in Odysseus’ wanderings. In the film, the motif becomes psychologically central.

Alastair Benn: Calypso herself is very different. In the film she’s almost a therapist. She calmly observes Odysseus, listens carefully, asks measured questions, and gently encourages him to confront his memories. The relationship feels therapeutic. In the poem, though, it’s something rather different.

Even when Odysseus decides he must leave Ogygia, there’s still that remarkably ambiguous final night they spend together. He desperately wants to go home, he sits weeping on the shore every day, but then they sleep together once more before he departs. There’s a very complicated emotional dynamic there.

Orlando Gibbs: Absolutely. The film almost completely removes the ambiguity surrounding Odysseus’ desire to return home. The very first image we receive of him in Book 5 is of him sitting alone on the shore, weeping as he looks out across the sea towards Ithaca. That’s one of the defining images of the poem. What’s striking is that Matt Damon’s Odysseus scarcely cries at all. From memory, I don’t think he sheds tears anywhere in the film.

That’s a fascinating choice because weeping is actually a perfectly normal part of Homeric masculinity. Achilles cries repeatedly. Odysseus cries repeatedly. Great heroes are not diminished by grief; quite the opposite. Their emotional openness is presented as entirely compatible with heroic strength. The film largely abandons that aspect of the tradition.

I think there’s perhaps one moment when Tom Holland’s Telemachus hears news of his father and briefly wells up. But even then it’s presented as evidence that he’s still just a boy who struggles to contain his emotions. It’s not treated as something integral to heroic identity. Whereas in the poem, emotional catharsis becomes essential to recognition itself. When Odysseus finally reveals himself to Telemachus in Book 16, they embrace one another and both burst into tears. That’s a profoundly important moment.

Alastair Benn: Again, the film changes it. Telemachus witnesses the recognition involving Argos, and what follows is much more restrained, a sort of stoic father-and-son acknowledgment.

Orlando Gibbs: Exactly. Some of that is simply compression. The film has to fit an enormous poem into just under three hours. But the emotional register changes quite significantly. In Homer, the reunion is overwhelming. Both father and son weep openly in one another’s arms. That emotional release is central to what recognition means. In the film, by contrast, it’s much more subdued, almost a quiet affirmation between two sturdy, self-controlled men. Again, I can understand why Nolan made that choice. His Odysseus is consistently defined by restraint. But it’s another example of the film moving away from an important aspect of Homeric masculinity. The heroes of the poems are extraordinarily emotional people. They mourn. They lament. They cry. None of that undermines their heroism. In many ways, it confirms it.

Alastair Benn: Almost everyone listening to this will know about the famous cast of monsters in the Odyssey, probably the most famous monsters in all human culture: the Cyclops, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis. Much of the film is really motored along by these big set pieces. A few classicists have commented on the lack of comedy in the film, and specifically on the lack of comedy in the Cyclops episode. I think the Cyclops episode is the first moment where Odysseus is trying to overcome a monster, the first moment where he’s really on his own personal quest, away from the war. In that sense, it’s very revealing about what the film is trying to do. What were your thoughts?

Orlando Gibbs: It’s interesting. I think the biggest change is obviously tonal, and part of that is brought about by the fact that the Cyclops doesn’t really speak. In the poem, Polyphemus is actually very articulate. He’s quite a good character. He’s almost quite funny. When Odysseus gives him the wine that leaves him drunk, not only asleep but unable to wake, which allows Odysseus to heat up the shepherd’s staff and use it to blind him, Polyphemus says, ‘Well, thank you for this wine. I’ll eat you last.’ It’s quite a neat bit of wit from the Cyclops himself.

Whereas in the film, all we really hear him saying is something like, ‘Father, they’ve hurt me. Poseidon, my father, they’ve hurt me.’ Odysseus’ men hear part of this, but it’s very strange that the Cyclops doesn’t really speak to them at all. There are lots of reasons why Nolan might have chosen to do that. One might be to emphasise the complete lack of civilisation in which the Cyclops lives. Another might simply be to other the Cyclops, to make him seem more frightening and more obviously an obstacle.

Odysseus himself also has much more comedy in his telling of the story in the poem. Nolan completely gets rid of the ‘No man’ trick. I do understand why he’s done that, because you need the other Cyclopes for the joke to pay off, and it also becomes very wordy. Odysseus has to spend quite a long time talking to Polyphemus. A lot of the humour of the ‘No man’ trick is linguistic. Odysseus calls himself Outis, ‘Nobody’. Another Greek form meaning ‘no one’, depending on the syntax, is mētis. Those words sound extremely close to one another, but mētis is also the Greek word for wit or cunning, the very quality that defines Odysseus. So the joke isn’t just a joke. It’s also a revelation of Odysseus’ character. By playing this trick on Polyphemus, he’s revealing himself to be a trickster and a joker.

Alastair Benn: Yes, absolutely. Then Polyphemus calls to the other Cyclopes, ‘Nobody’s hurting me! Nobody’s hurting me!’, so naturally they don’t come to help him. There’s another aspect of Odysseus’ identity that the film changes. In the poem, as they’re sailing away, he can’t resist revealing who he is. He shouts back, ‘It was me. It was Odysseus who did this.’ In the film he just rather petulantly fires an arrow back at the Cyclops as they’re escaping.

That felt to me like one of the biggest missed opportunities, because the taunting really reminds me of the Iliad. Warriors taunt their victims before or after killing them. For modern readers, those passages can be pretty challenging. It’s incredibly brutal. Achilles tells Hector the dreadful things he’s going to do to his body, and then he actually does them. I feel that’s the shadow of the Iliad again, and it’s something Nolan largely suppresses. The Iliad is in the film in terms of plot, but less so in terms of character.

Orlando Gibbs: I think it would have made Odysseus’ character journey more satisfying if we’d had more moments where he was essentially a bit more unpleasant. The film toys with the idea that he’ll do anything to survive, and that’s certainly part of the poem. But there’s much more colour in Homer. As you say, there’s much more of that Iliadic colour. When Odysseus shouts back, ‘Ha! It was me!’, that’s much closer to the moments where Achilles tells Hector that he wishes he could eat him raw in Book 22. It’s horrifying. What’s interesting is that the poem allows Odysseus to grow out of that. By the time he reaches Ithaca he’s learned that there are moments when silence is more powerful than boasting. He has to endure insults without revealing himself. He has to let people underestimate him.

That contrast is one of the things that gives The Odyssey its moral shape. The boast to Polyphemus is one of the reasons everything else happens. Poseidon’s anger, and therefore Odysseus’ long wandering, all stem from that moment of hubris.

Alastair Benn: We can go into what actually happens in the poem in a moment. But just to remain on the quest itself, there are a couple of set pieces that, I think, don’t really demonstrate anything much other than: they come to shore, it doesn’t work out, and they run off again. The Circe episode in the film is a lot richer, and I think it’s broadly successful, but for reasons that also reveal some of the film’s flaws.

So Circe is this witch on an island. She turns Odysseus’ men into pigs, and she challenges Odysseus. In the film, she claims that all he and his men do is rape, pillage and plunder, and that he’s responsible for it as their leader. She’s presented as a kind of Baba Yaga figure, very different from the poem, where she’s a beautiful, seductive figure, actually quite similar to Calypso. How does that create a different moral vision in the film?

Orlando Gibbs: It’s really interesting quite how different it is. I agree with you that it’s successful, and I think that’s partly thanks to the performance of the actress playing Circe, who I thought was terrific, Samantha Morton. In the poem, Circe is essentially Calypso Mark Two, or I suppose Calypso is Circe Mark Two, given that Circe comes first chronologically. Circe is an alluring figure. She’s not this old crone that the film leans towards presenting her as. It’s also part of the film’s repeated tendency to put sex to one side.

Alastair Benn: Yes. Odysseus has sex with Circe as well.

Orlando Gibbs: Yes, for a year. That’s something the film completely changes. He’s with her for a day. He lives with Circe for a year before living with Calypso for seven. The most overtly sexual moment in the film is actually between Odysseus and Penelope in a flashback. Again, I think this is part of the film’s desire to streamline the narrative around Odysseus’ longing to return to Penelope.

Alastair Benn: He’s presented as this rather chaste figure. He carries Penelope’s brooch with him throughout the film. It reminds me very much of the good American boy carrying a photograph of his sweetheart in his wallet while he’s in Vietnam or Europe.

Orlando Gibbs: Yes.

Alastair Benn: Whereas there’s a very good BBC documentary that Simon Armitage made about 10 years ago. He’s travelling around the Greek islands, talking about The Odyssey and reflecting on what he thinks it means. One of the most interesting interviews is with a couple of Greek sailors. It’s such a maritime culture. If you go to the Greek islands, almost everyone has some connection with the sea. They talk about Odysseus’ infidelity in completely pragmatic terms. They say, ‘Well, when I was young, I travelled. Like Odysseus, I saw many places, met many kinds of people, and had lots of experiences, many of them sexual.’ For them, those episodes where Odysseus delays his return before finally coming home really resonated as sailors, as people whose lives are shaped by the sea. Again, that’s just not there in the film.

Orlando Gibbs: But, for obvious reasons, that’s what you always encounter when you adapt something like this. Many of the cultural assumptions of the Odyssey aren’t actually that different from what we’d like to think are our own, how you treat other people properly, how important trust is, and how easily trust can be abused. Honour, respect and speaking well all remain very live values in Western culture. The attitude towards sex, though, is different.

Alastair Benn: And if we come back to this idea of Zeus’s law, the film’s way of talking about xenia, it’s almost glossed as ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ We all know where that comes from, and how it eventually becomes codified in liberal thought through Kant’s categorical imperative. It feels as though the film is really trying to impose a Judeo-Christian moral vision onto the poem.

Orlando Gibbs: I can see why that’s tempting. It offers lots of neat and straightforward answers. The advantage of an oral poem like the Odyssey is that inconsistency can actually become part of the point. You don’t have to have a simple, unified moral vision. You can have a unified moral vision that’s complex. It’s not that a Judeo-Christian answer to those moral questions is necessarily easy. But I do think it sands down a lot of the rougher edges of the poem’s moral tapestry.

Alastair Benn: We’ve got to spin through the rest of the plot, because the Odyssey is a bit of a shaggy-dog story and there are lots of episodes. But one of the most important scenes in the poem is the Underworld scene, when Odysseus, after he visits Circe, goes there to hear a prophecy. In the film, Nolan pulls it off quite stylishly, but there are a few people missing.

Orlando Gibbs: Well, the most glaring omission is Achilles. It’s this beautiful moment that I think is actually crucial to understanding both the Iliad and the Odyssey. Odysseus says to Achilles, ‘It’s great to see you, and I’m so pleased that you’ve achieved your goal of dying young and having everlasting kleos.’ Kleos being the fame and glory that you accrue from doing wonderful deeds. As Phoenix teaches Achilles, you do these deeds, you die on the battlefield, and your name is known for ever. Odysseus is essentially saying, ‘I’m jealous of you.’ And Achilles says, ‘Don’t be jealous of me. I’ve messed up here. If I could have my time again, I would choose to be completely unknown and live a long, fulfilling, happy domestic life.’

Achilles even says, to reinforce the point, that he would happily be the lowest kind of serf, the lowest kind of indentured labourer, tantamount to slavery, on the worst possible estate, and live a long life rather than have the existence he’s had. This is a real turning point in the Odyssey, because it introduces Odysseus to the idea that the Iliadic dream has, in a sense, been sold to them as a lie. The Iliad does subtly make this point. By the end of the poem Achilles is miserable, and he realises how wrong he has been to give himself over so completely to martial rage and glory as the only things that give meaning to life. But the Odyssey crystallises the point. Right in the middle of the poem, if you like, there’s a real moral turning point for Odysseus, where he realises, albeit in flashback, that the way to live your life is not to value the glory that comes from great martial exploits. Another very important figure in the Underworld is Odysseus’ mother, which is a very moving scene.

And, very crucially, it features Odysseus’ interaction with Ajax. In the Trojan cycle, after Achilles has died, the Greek leaders argue over who should inherit Achilles’ armour. Ajax and Odysseus quarrel over it. Odysseus gets the armour because he’s better at argument than Ajax. Ajax goes mad and kills himself. When Odysseus meets him in the Underworld, he says, ‘Hello, Ajax.’ Ajax ignores him. He doesn’t speak to him. Again, that’s perhaps a subtler way of making the point that Achilles makes. Not only is the Iliadic code unsatisfying for the individual, but endlessly caring about martial valour, glory and the spoils of war ruins friendships, relationships, and the bonds between men. In many ways, Nolan including those two moments would actually have been very helpful for the point that he’s trying to make. Instead, Nolan places quite a lot of emphasis on Sinon, who’s a character who doesn’t occur in the Odyssey.

One thing that reveals is that part of Nolan’s research was probably reading the Aeneid, and particularly the Odyssean section in Books 2 and 3, where Aeneas tells the court at Carthage about the fall of Troy and his own wanderings. Sinon is effectively Odysseus’ right-hand man in selling the lie of the Trojan Horse. Why Nolan has decided to have Sinon there, I don’t really understand.

It may simply be neater dramatically to have one person whose life has been damaged by Odysseus’ behaviour. It may also be easier than using Agamemnon, who comes with so much narrative baggage. A further thing that puzzled me about the Underworld is Agamemnon. I kept expecting him to take his helmet off, but he never does. Throughout the film we never really see Agamemnon’s face, and I’m still rather baffled by that. It may be because Agamemnon represents the whole motivation behind Odysseus’ ‘breaking the bonds of men’. So much of forming a bond with another person depends upon seeing their face, knowing their name and knowing where they’ve come from. If Agamemnon is the symbol of the idea that all that matters is trade, conquest and winning, then perhaps it makes sense to hide his face.

I also wondered whether it might be a veiled reference to Heinrich Schliemann and the so-called Mask of Agamemnon, which Schliemann claimed showed him ‘the face of Agamemnon’. In a way, the film reverses that act of recognition. It may be reading too much into it, but it’s another interesting possibility.

Alastair Benn: Just before we round up on some of the bigger themes, we haven’t really talked about the suitors. The main suitor, Antinous, is played by Robert Pattinson in the film. Emily Wilson, in her review of the film for the London Review of Books, says he seems to be the only character who’s having any fun, and I agree with that. Weirdly, I found myself thinking he’s almost more Odyssean than Matt Damon’s Odysseus. He’s guileful, he’s tricksy, he’s got that swagger that Odysseus has in the poem.

The way the suitors are dealt with in the poem, and indeed the women who have slept with them, is much more brutal than anything we see in the film. In the film it’s a bit Seven Samurai. In the poem it’s something quite different. Why is it so horrendous in the poem? You were talking earlier about that Iliadic frame coming back into the Odyssey. It’s almost as though this is the only way the problems of the household can be resolved. How does the poem handle that? And how should we respond to Odysseus’ behaviour, which, if you haven’t read the poem, is deeply disturbing?

Orlando Gibbs: We’ll start with the suitors themselves. Broadly speaking, I think the film gets right the fact that they’re a troubling alternative to Odysseus’ own crew, particularly in terms of appetite and the way they yield to the desires of the body. Repeatedly in the poem there’s a condemnation of the person, usually a man, who lets his stomach govern him. That’s adjacent to the Iliadic idea that a man can also be governed by his rage. In Greek, a lot of the vocabulary for anger is tied up with the guts or the spleen.

The suitors are appetite first. They eat all Odysseus’ food, drink all his wine, and consume his wealth. I actually think Antinous is one of the film’s greatest successes. That’s partly because Robert Pattinson is very good in the role, and because he really is having more fun than anybody else. Emily Wilson’s review is pretty damning overall, but I think she’s right that he’s almost the only actor who’s capturing that combination of playfulness, brutality and chaos. Nolan has explored that sort of character before with the Joker in The Dark Knight. Antinous is similarly enslaved to his desires, particularly in the way he flirts with Penelope one moment, appearing completely sincere, and then immediately goes off and kisses Melantho, the slave girl who leads the women sleeping with the suitors.

What’s interesting is that, in Book 22 of the poem, Antinous is the first man Odysseus kills. Nolan makes a perfectly valid dramatic choice in turning him into the climax of the slaughter instead. It’s a very difficult scene to put on screen. One thing the film does, though, which I found rather odd, is insist that Telemachus doesn’t kill anybody. In the poem Telemachus is throwing spears left, right and centre. He’s wounding people. He’s killing people. There are 108 suitors. That’s a lot of people to kill if there’s only one person doing it.
I’m very happy for the film to emphasise Odysseus’ strength, that’s something Homer repeatedly emphasises as well, but in the poem Odysseus and Telemachus are really a swashbuckling duo. It’s actually Telemachus who stops Odysseus from killing certain people. The bard Phemius begs for his life, and Telemachus tells his father to spare him. Odysseus does. That’s another change Nolan makes that struck me as rather arbitrary. The bard in Ithaca is called Demodocus in the film, but in the poem he’s Phemius. Demodocus is the bard among the Phaeacians. I’m not quite sure what that change adds.

The slaughter itself is brutal, and I found myself really invested in it while watching the film because it’s one of the great achievements of the Odyssey. You’ve spent the whole poem hearing stories about Odysseus as a great warrior, and you’ve also seen what the warrior code has cost him. Then suddenly there comes a moment when that very same code is needed. The poem synthesises those two moral visions remarkably well.

There’s even a moment that’s almost amusing, where Athena appears to Odysseus and says, in effect, ‘You’ve gone soft. Your courage is failing.’ That prompts him to fight harder. It’s a very Iliadic moment. The gods appear on the battlefield, encourage heroes to fight, or strengthen them, as Athena does for Diomedes in Book 5 of the Iliad, when he even wounds Aphrodite. I thought the battle scene in the film was about as good as it could have been, but understandably it puts the brakes on the brutality. It feels much more like a just killing than a killing that’s both just and savage.

Alastair Benn: Well, in the poem he hangs the women.

Orlando Gibbs: Yes. It’s one of the most troubling images in the whole poem. Odysseus asks Eurycleia to identify the maidservants who sided with the suitors and slept with them. He then tells Telemachus to kill them. He doesn’t specify how. He simply says to take them outside and kill them with swords. Instead, Telemachus hangs them from one of the beams of the house using ships’ cables. The simile compares them to birds caught in a snare, hanging there with their necks caught, still quivering. Odysseus doesn’t condemn Telemachus’ decision. Neither does the poet. The image is simply left there. It’s one of the most difficult passages in the whole poem to interpret.

Alastair Benn: We haven’t really touched on Penelope, who, again, in the poem is much more like Odysseus. To be fair, in Nolan’s film she is quite like the Odysseus of the film: steadfast, with something about her, but not cunning and tricksy in the way she is in the poem.

The ending is also very different. In the film, Odysseus recognises that he has broken the code of xenia, Zeus’s law, and goes into exile to pay homage to his fallen dead, sailing into the West. That’s another tradition about Odysseus that gets picked up later in Western culture, in Dante and then, in a rather different way, in Tennyson’s Ulysses. Penelope leaves with him, and Telemachus becomes the true king, with this kind of golden band around his head.

In the poem, though, it’s actually rather strange. Teiresias tells Odysseus that, late in life, he must carry an oar inland until he reaches people who have never heard of the sea, on the basis that they won’t know what the oar is. Adam Nicolson, in The Mighty Dead, which is a very good book on the Homeric world, suggests that this is a kind of dream-time vision, reaching back to the northern steppe warriors who came down into the Mediterranean world. It’s a deep utopian vision of a life before the sea, before people’s lives depended on something so dangerous. Only then can Odysseus finally return home and die peacefully, surrounded by his family. Nolan’s ending is quite different. It’s making a much bigger civilisational claim that’s threaded through various statements from Odysseus. Did you think it came off? Do we leave the cinema feeling that we’ve been given a richer view of our own civilisation? It reminded me a little of the ending of The Return of the King, where the Hobbits, and Gandalf, go because they’re tired, and they’re heading into the Undying Lands.

Orlando Gibbs: Well, Frodo goes because he’s so traumatised by the journey. Whereas this felt a little more like exile because you’ve unwittingly given way to a world where people don’t trust each other any more, or where people manipulate one another’s trust. Again, it has its own neat internal logic. On Teiresias’ prophecy, it seems totally arbitrary to me why Sinon is the person in the film who says this stuff about going into the West.

The sea is a really interesting theme in the Odyssey. A lot of classical literature talks about how evil the sea is and how it ushers in a period where everything goes wrong for mankind. It brings out the worst in people through trade, war, and interaction with people they perhaps should never have encountered. That’s part of the Golden Age tradition, which first appears in Hesiod’s Works and Days. It’s a didactic poem, written in a style very similar to the Homeric poems, and it goes through the ages of humankind. The Golden Age is, essentially, a period before seafaring.

One thing I always find slightly amusing is that, as soon as Odysseus gets home, he’s told he’s going to have to leave again and carry this oar inland until he reaches people who’ve never seen the sea. I can see why the poem does it thematically. It’s tying a neat bow around Odysseus’ life at sea.

He does come home. He is reunited with Penelope. But there’s still this question mark over the trauma he’s experienced. So, in a kind of ritual logic, it makes sense that he should only truly be at peace once he has expiated his offence against Poseidon. After all, the whole thing that lights the fuse for Odysseus’ suffering is his act of hubris against Polyphemus, Poseidon’s son. The film’s version of that, Odysseus going into exile with Penelope, almost on a kind of retiree’s cruise, offered a recognition that a civilisation often restores itself by removing a poisonous or corrupting element. For Odysseus, that removal becomes a kind of self-sacrifice, and I think that taps into the Judeo-Christian imagery that the film is trying to graft onto the poem.

It also reinforces this idea of Odysseus as the man who endures, the man who suffers and wanders. In a way, it’s quite a happy ending. It certainly feels satisfying. Both Odysseus’ punishment for what he has done and his reward for getting home are that he goes into exile, but with Penelope. It’s Nolan’s choice. I’m not sure it’s the one I would have made, but I’m not Christopher Nolan.

Alastair Benn: I do think it’s good that people will go out and buy the Odyssey and read it. It’s a great poem, and there’s an enormous amount to think about. What other texts from the classical world do you think are ripe for adaptation? Watching the film, particularly the scenes of warriors travelling together, made me think of Xenophon’s Anabasis. A group of men stranded far from home, trying to make their way back to Greece through all kinds of dangers. It fits quite well with that Vietnam-war tradition in American cinema, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, a group of men stranded somewhere, trying to work out how to survive. What other texts do you think could make a big Hollywood epic?

Orlando Gibbs: It’s a really interesting question. I’d be surprised if Christopher Nolan himself made another classical film. I’m not saying he won’t, but he seems to like mixing up his repertoire. I mentioned the Aeneid earlier. It has a very satisfying structure, and it asks important questions about the cost of progress and the cost of civilisation in a form that we would recognise. Aeneas is charged with founding what will become the Roman Empire after leaving Troy, and the poem combines big historical questions about winners and losers with an epic tone. The Homeric code is still there, and it’s still something, particularly for men, to grapple with, although there are also some brilliant female characters. You have Aeneas’ relationship with Dido, another superb Underworld scene, and I think it would make a fascinating film.

If we’re thinking about literature that’s grounded much more firmly in real history, I’d also mention Sallust’s account of the Catilinarian Conspiracy in the late Roman Republic. You have this aggrieved politician, Catiline, who fails to become consul, is thwarted by Cicero, and is eventually killed. Sallust’s history of the conspiracy reads almost like a novel, and I think it would make a very exciting film. Something with a rather lighter tone would be Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, usually known in English as The Golden Ass. Lucius is transformed into a donkey and has to work out how to become human again. Trimmed down a little, I think that could be tremendous fun. What seems to be happening at the moment is a renewed interest in presenting the classical world in forms that are accessible to a wider audience. The nice thing about Sallust or Apuleius is that they’re well known within universities, and sometimes studied in schools, but they’re still sufficiently unfamiliar that they could broaden people’s interest in the classical world.

Alastair Benn: Orlando, thank you very much for coming on.

Orlando Gibbs: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.