Read this before you watch The Odyssey: [Spoiler? I mean, you had 2K+ years to read Homer or watch “Troy”. GTFO!]
- Agamemnon was the most powerful king in Greece.
- His brother, Menelaus, was the king of Sparta.
- Menelaus was married to Helen, whose beauty was legendary [“White armed”] across the ancient world.
- In the city of Troy lived Prince Paris and his brother Hector, Troy’s greatest warrior.
- Paris met Helen and the two left Sparta together for Troy.
- Menelaus saw this as a grave insult and asked the Greek kings to help him bring Helen back.
- Agamemnon united the Greek kingdoms and launched a massive invasion of Troy.
- This conflict became known as the Trojan War.
- Many legendary heroes fought in the war, including Achilles, the greatest Greek warrior, and Odysseus, the clever king of Ithaca.
- While Achilles [& Ajax] was famous for his strength, Odysseus was famous for his intelligence and strategy.
- The war lasted 10 years and neither side could win.
- Finally, Odysseus came up with a brilliant plan: the Trojan Horse.
- The Greeks hid soldiers inside a giant wooden horse and pretended to sail away.
- The Trojans brought the horse into their city, believing it was a gift.
- That night, the hidden Greek soldiers opened the gates of Troy, and the Greeks captured the city.
- The Trojan War was over. End of Iliad start of Odyssey.
- After that, Odysseus begins his long journey home.
- That journey filled with gods, monsters, shipwrecks, temptation, and loss is called The Odyssey.
- And that’s what the film is about.
Needless to say, I watched Nolan’s “Odyssey” earlier this week. I went on supersaver Tues, assuming we’d have the theater to ourselves. NOPE. It was actually packed. I also assumed this would be a total dad-flick with the majority of the audience being bearded and bifocaled, old arcane classical, lit majors or history buffs – like moi – also wrong. The crowd was mixed. Young, middle aged, elderly, of every persuasion, even a few hotties. My nephews went with their friends to watch it on opening night, so still hope my fellow grumpy erudite kin!
That being said, I had VERY mixed feelings about the movie itself, and it basically kicks you in the nuts in the very first scene before you even get a good hand of popcorn; however, more on that in the actual review.
For now, I came across this fantastic doc on the ever mysterious “Sea Peoples” which the film alludes to. They were more or less like the Bronze Age Vikings, and much like the Vikings, were expert sea terrorists, ravaging, raping and pillaging wherever they landed, and not much was really known about them for centuries. This is a concise history of them.
Here’s another by the ever-excellent Kings & Generals channel.
In the movie, they were casted as the archetype of chaos which would consume the ‘civilized’. They were Vandals, the Vikings, The Barbarians, the Eastern Horde…every culture has their ‘other’ which they fear will doom their way of life. The Sea Peoples where the Bronze Age boogeymen, an alien savage threat from beyond the outer-rim.
But “clever” Odysseus realizes that they were only an external threat, and external enemies can be combatted. Odysseus recognizes, too late, that the TRUE enemy of civilization is internal – namely, the erosion of goodwill, honor, hospitality to the stranger – keeping “Zeus’ Law.” Odysseus knew when he built the horse that he essentially sacrificed all that was “Greek” to win, and his ‘victory’ exacted a tremendous cost to himself, his crew, his home, and ultimately, Golden Greece itself: the Sea Peoples were the avenging instruments to the Gods much in the same way the ancient Hebrews casted the Assyrians, Babylonians, and even Romans. Odysseus and Greece betrayed their covenant in Troy, and for that they were smoted and never again the glory of the world.
By William Butler Yeats
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?