How Homer's Odyssey Conquered the Ancient World
Shownotes
Ever since the Odyssey was composed, people have retold the story, played with it or used it as a departure point for similar or related stories. In this episode, Mary and Charlotte look at what happened next. How the Odyssey inspired other writers long before Christopher Nolan thought of adapting it for the big screen.
As now, the ancients were drawn to certain episodes more than others. One was the cyclops, who becomes the unlikely subject of a satyr play (think Benny Hill sex comedy) by the playwright Euripides in the 5th century BCE. two hundred years later, the poet Theocritus imagines the cyclops as an articulate, love-sick shepherd. Meanwhile, Apollonius of Rhodes responded to the epic scope of Homer’s story with the Argonautica - a famous story about Jason and his crew of Argonauts searching for the Golden Fleece.
Roman authors were equally drawn to the Odyssey. Virgil used it as a template for a foundation myth for Rome - a Trojan prince leaves Troy, experiences various adventures, including a trip to the underworld, and ends by founding Rome. Ovid, who takes a rather less referential approach to the Odyssey in his Metamorphoses, has a brilliant scene where he retells the Circe story from the point of view of Odysseus’ men as they are turned into pigs.
Further reading
The Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes is available in World’s Classics and Penguin Classics English translations
Plutarch’s Gryllus is available online in translation
Theocritus’s Idylls are available in translation online - Idyll 11 is the Cyclops poem
Ovid’s Metamorphoses can be found in many translations, and also a decent one online. Circe and her pigs appear in book 14
Virgil’s Aeneid – there are many recent translations including by Sarah Ruden from Yale and online.
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