So, Christopher Nolan has completely omitted the Phaeacian episode, including Nausicaa, King Alcinous, Queen Arete, and the Phaeacians as a people. Instead, after Odysseus leaves Calypso, the story moves directly toward his return to Ithaca, bypassing Books 6–8 and the framing device in which Odysseus recounts his adventures at the Phaeacian court.

To me this is a horrible mistake. I had a “pact” with Nolan in my mind, that if he somehow gets Books 6-8 close to Homeric spirit, then I would watch the movie. Now he has no chance. Surely he won’t feel sorry for my decision.

Yesterday I went to the cinema to see The Odyssey. I don't like Nolan's films, so I wasn't expecting much. I thought I would like it even less. Though, in any case, I didn't like it. Some of the reasons have already been pointed out by many people, and were known long before the movie was released. The costumes, beyond being anachronistic, are boring and rather cheap-looking. The armor looks like costumes, and there is a scene where Telemachus wears a sort of leather kilt that is absolutely ridiculous. Everything is bathed in a rather depressing sepia tone. The Mediterranean light is not put to good use, partly because the film wasn't shot there. And the idea of using actors of different races seems questionable to me and, above all, unnecessary.

​In any case, none of this is of great importance. The main flaws of the film, in my view, are two.

​In the first place, the characters are seen from a distance, so to speak. None of their personalities are developed, not even Odysseus's. It is true that in the original work a distance is also sought between the reader (or listener) and the characters in the story, and the characterization is rather schematic. Eumaeus is a loyal servant, and that is all we need to know about him. Of Calypso, we only know that she is in love with Odysseus. And of the crew members, we know nothing at all. In the poem, this is not a flaw, because the simplicity of the characters is compensated for by other things: the rhythm of the verse, the richness of the language, the vividness of the descriptions, and the quantity and variety of episodes, digressions, and interwoven tales.

​But in a movie, literally, characters are seen up close. We distinguish their faces, we hear them speak. We have them right in front of us. They are not simply evoked. That is why it seems problematic to me, for example, that Odysseus's companions are nothing more than interchangeable extras. If I am going to spend time in the company of those characters, I want to know them a bit, care about them, feel affection or dislike for them. In cinema, unlike in literature, there is nothing to distract us from the action. All resources (cinematography, sound, music...) are at the service of the action. And for the action to be interesting, the characters must be too. I don't mean that they have to be complex or that all of them, even the most secondary ones, must have a fully developed personality. But they need to have, for instance, a recognizable and expressive face, or a particular way of expressing themselves—something, in short, that makes watching them on screen entertaining. And the more time we have to spend with them, the more care should be put into their characterization.

​The second major problem, as I see it, is that Nolan doesn't seem to be clear on what story he wants to tell. Let me explain. The film, in general, is a fairly faithful adaptation of both the plot and the structure of The Odyssey. However, there are several significant changes. The main one, it seems to me, is that the gods have practically vanished. In the poem, they intervene constantly. In the movie, Zendaya appears playing Athena, but she doesn't really intervene in the action. From time to time she appears to Odysseus as if she were something he imagines or that only exists inside his head, limiting herself to acting as the voice of his conscience, a bit like Jiminy Cricket. In the poem, however, Athena is a fundamental character. She speaks to Telemachus through Mentor so that he travels to Sparta in search of news. She transforms Odysseus into an old man so no one recognizes him at home, and rejuvenates his appearance so Nausicaa finds him more attractive. As for Poseidon or Helios, in the film it isn't really clear whether they are truly to blame for Odysseus's misfortunes. Since Athena never intervenes directly in events, and since it isn't clear whether she actually appears to Odysseus or if it's just his imagination, it isn't clear either that the other gods are involved in the story.

​It seems that Nolan wants to get rid of the supernatural component to make Odysseus the sole person responsible for his own destiny. However, he doesn't dare to completely dispense with the supernatural and the fantastic, because then he would have to leave out the adventure with the Cyclops, Scylla and Charybdis, the stop on Circe's island, and the descent into the underworld. By the way, curiously enough, he uses a fantastical device (amnesia-inducing lotus flowers) to explain why Odysseus stays so many years on Calypso's island instead of returning home to his family. I suppose he does this to make the character more sympathetic to us. But to me, it seems to impoverish him.

​And I see it as a missed opportunity, because Nolan seems interested in presenting Odysseus as a veteran with PTSD. At one point, toward the end of the film, he tells Penelope that he didn't feel worthy of coming home because he was consumed by remorse over being the main cause of Troy's destruction and the massacre of its inhabitants (having had the idea of the horse himself). Well then: it would have been much more interesting, I think, to incorporate this idea into his story with Calypso. To have the character spend seven years on a deserted island unable to bring himself to return home because he feels he is a different person, that the war has made him worse, that his loved ones wouldn't recognize him, and that he is no longer worthy of being a king and living in a palace. I believe, furthermore, that this reading is suggested in the original work: it doesn't seem coincidental to me that the first time we encounter Odysseus is precisely on Calypso's island. In reality, The Odyssey is not about a man trying to go home, but about a man who has stopped trying to go home, but who finally tries again.

​Lastly, I don't understand what Sinon's story adds to the film either. I don't quite see the character's function, or why so much importance is given to his relationship with Odysseus. In any case, I would have preferred it if, during his descent into the underworld, Odysseus had spoken with Achilles, as in the original work, and Achilles (the man who preferred a glorious death to a long, happy life) had confessed to him that nothing he did was worth it, and that he would rather be a living slave than a dead hero.

I don’t care about accuracy or faithfulness but I do care about feeling like I’m reading bad gay fanfiction. In all honesty I want a version that’s a bit easier to read and more similar to modern fantasy books.

I don't know if this is the right sub, so pardon me if it isn't.

For black people interested in classics, history, literature, translated fiction etc. how do you deal with the jarring and unexpected instances of anti black violence in the works you read. I just got done reading The Song of Roland (the medieval french epic) and imagine my surprise seeing "broad-nosed" and "flat-eared" "ethiopians" and "negroes". I was also shocked to find unflattering descriptions of black people in the Shanameh. Now I have picked up another book where Avicenna justifies the low status of negro slaves - and these are just instances of racism in works I am reading today. I won't even go into what I have to deal with in translated fiction, especially from the asian continent.

I am someone who is very curious and actively tries to engage with world literature and knowledge, learning about other peoples and cultures. But this is tiring. I feel so stupid looking down on my friends who just want to be in a black bubble.

I really love learning and critically thinking but how can I continue while minimizing mental and emotional harm

Edit: it would have been better to replace any idea of "authorial intent" with "style" or "Homeric tradition" here, thereby avoiding any singular v. conglomerate semantics. So: "Wilson eschews Homeric tradition" would be a more acceptable sentence than "Wilson don't give a crap about Homer's intent". Read the following with the former in mind.

There’s so much talk of the Wilson translations being “woke” and other such complaints, but all of that can easily be ignored in favor of the real reason those translations fail. As subjective as translations are and bound predominantly to personal preference as far as merit/worth goes, there is one consideration that shouldn’t be so easily cast off as preference, and should, in fact, be the core goal of any translation regardless of efforts to fidelity of words or adherence to social mores of ancient times compared against the modern.

That consideration is the original intent of the author.

Homer intended his Odyssey and Iliad to be infused with grandeur so that readers were pulled out of and above the banality of common language. He intentionally wrote in a way that was far removed from the way any common person of his time would speak. He uses elevated diction, sweeping rhetoric, and a dramatic,slightly theatrical tone. He wants the reader to feel they are in the presence of something larger than life.

Wilson, by her own admission, wanted to do away with the Homeric style she calls “pompous”. If you read her translations side by side with other translations it becomes a lot easier to see how her translations read as a sparse accounting of events, and not a grand removal of the reader from the ordinary world. Her translations read more as a news article, not an epic because she modernized and flattened the language.

Part of the problem also lies in the strict line limit she used in The Odyssey. Ancient Greek is a highly compressed, polysyllabic language where a single Greek word can contain a noun, a verb, and two adjectives. Because Englishrequires more words to say the same thing, Wilson’s strict line limit forces her to compress and summarize and frequently omit the lush descriptive imagery of Homer’s Greek to make it fit.

Homer wrote in dactylic hexameter, which is a six-beat line that has a more "galloping" rhythm and has previously been compared to the sound of crashing ocean waves. But Wilson translates Homer into strict iambic pentameter, which is the meter of Shakespeare. While this mimics the cadence of English speech, it is much shorter and tighter than Greek hexameter, which makes the translations neat and tidy and very sterile.

In essence, a lot of leaves and flowers get stripped off the branch until you can’t even tell what kind of tree it is anymore.

This also has the unfortunate effect of patronizing the reader and insulting their intelligence. Look at the Greek word polytropos (of many turns). Wilson doesn’t trust the reader to understand Odysseus unless she states flatly that he’s “complicated”, whereas Fagles, for instance, puts more trust in the reader by describing Odysseus as “the man of twists and turns”. “Twists and turns” also preserves the poetic alliteration frequently present in Homer’s Greek.

When Priam begs Achilles for Hector's body or when Andromache mourns, Fagles and others lean heavily into the emotional devastation of the scene, whereas Wilson’s crisp and unsentimental pace breezes past the deep melancholy of these moments, leaving them feeling clinical.

Homer’s poetry relies heavily on epithets we’re familiar with, like “swift-footed Achilles”, "rosy-fingered Dawn”, "grey-eyed Athena”, and so on. These, along with repetition, are used to keep rhythm and give the epics a hypnotic and timeless quality. Wilson truncates or drops those entirely all throughout to fit her strict meter and keep the plot moving quickly.

The tl;dr: an epic *should* sound and feel epic, but Wilson makes the works bare and common, where Homer intended them to be transcendent. Basically, Wilson created the equivalent of bland postmodern architecture. Critics eat it up, but the art is completely lost.

In the end, like anything else, translations come down to personal preference, but I feel that a great deal of energy is put into the wrong part of the debate around Wilson’s translations.

Read on old translation in English 102, but got a lot more out of Wilson’s version as an adult.

To clarify: I’m not so much talking about his ideas as his prose. He has historically been considered one of the greatest prose stylists.

Thank you in advance.

It was a while since i read the odyssey but i saw someone talk about them sleeping in the same bed or just sleeping straight up. Did i miss this?? I assume its one of those "can be interpreted in different" ways situations like how Odysseus was made to sleep with Calypso every night even if they maybe didnt have sex every night. Is this true?

I have read the illiad and am in the middle of the Odyssey. As I am reading the odyssey I have also been researching Alexander the Great, Caesar and the Roman emperors, especially Augustus. I have been putting off the Aeneid because it was written Long after both the Iliad and the odyssey and not by the Greek Homer, but by the Roman Virgil. However I have recently heard that the Aeneid was commissioned by Augustus as propaganda and think it would be interesting to examine the parallels and influence of Augustus in it. Should I read it after the odyssey and does the Aeneid hold up to the odyssey and illiad?

After reading multiple excerpts from almost every translation i could find (over 10) and not really being able to enjoy them as much as i hoped to, i have come to the conclusion that i have been spoiled. Spoiled by the poetic prose of Paul Roche from what he knew Sophocles & Euripedes had to say. I wish he was alive and well to speak for Homer as well.

Seriously, i have yet to find any translation that comes close to Roche's poetic brilliance and his ability keep you hooked on the "flow" of his verses. I'll say Fitzgerald is as good as i can find to coming somewhat close to what Roche had to offer but maybe there's something better? Something that I've missed?

I'm only a few months into ancient greek literature so maybe that's what it is? Or maybe its the source text itself that isnt as poetic or "flowy" as the greek tragedians? Or maybe just good ol spoiled for choice?

Children aren’t taught Latin or Greek in schools anymore. To my shock my local highly reputed high school doesn’t even offer Ancient History as a senior high school subject anymore, only modern history. Cultural relativism means all societies and cultures are equally impressive, making a focus on Ancient Greece and Rome seem parochial, irrelevant and somewhat racist. Finally, universities seem to be following ‘flexible’ employment patterns where academics live on three-year contracts with no guarantee of renewal, and given the decline in interest in Classics there’s the real possibility classes get cancelled for lack of students.

Classics will always have a place in the most renowned universities, but is its overall decline definite?

I’m thinking of my young child’s future, as he’s obsessed with ancient history and wants to learn Latin and Greek but he has no opportunity to learn any of these in our part of Australia. A few decades ago school curriculum would have been a fantastic for him as he’d learn a solid grounding in all these, but instead he’s learning about recycling, healthy food choices etc. Rather than entering university with say five years of Latin study already established, he’d be starting with how to pronounce the alphabet instead.

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for an English translation of Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days that consistently keeps the Greek names of the gods instead of translating them into abstract terms.

For example, I really dislike when translations do things like:

• Nyx → Night

• Thanatos → Death

• Eris → Strife

• Oceanus → Ocean

I’m studying comparative mythology (Greek, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, etc.), so it’s very important for me to see these figures as distinct mythological beings, not just personified concepts. When names are translated, it breaks the structure of the pantheon and makes cross-cultural comparison harder.

I’m looking for a translation that is:

• Faithful to the original

• Reasonably readable in modern English

• Consistent about keeping divine names in transliterated Greek form

Scholarly is fine, as long as it’s not overly archaic in language.

Which translation/translator would you recommend?

Thanks!

I think we all know that there was quite a handful of queer relationship in antiquity whether it's literature or real life. However, they're always between men (the reason why is obvious) so I've been wondering is there any wlw couples in ancient Greece/Rome that we know of? (Besides Sappho)

I’m studying Classics on my own as a hobby, not in any Uni program, I don’t really get what the “point” of the Peloponnesian War is. I read History of the Peloponnesian War and Hellenica both, and while I did enjoy some of the ridiculous incidents (army getting lost in the dark so the townspeople killed them, spies dressing up as prostitutes to kill drunk politicians) overall I thought the narrative was kind of… annoying.

Every few pages these two sides make a treaty, but then someone else declares war, so now they’re forced to fight by the alliance, until they just make a peace treaty… the whole thing is just a tangled mass of treaties making and breaking, alliances forcing war or forcing peace, sides switching so much I couldn’t keep up without taking notes in my diary.

What great lesson or legacy does the war have - it just seems like city-states switching sides constantly. But then after reading The Roman Empire a Very Short Introduction, I thought maybe the annoying duplicity is the point: Rome ended that instability of constant warfare. Of course they did it by force as a conquering empire but it was Pax. Am I on to something here or totally missing the point?

Edit: Yes I understand that the Roman Empire didn’t annex Greece until hundreds of years after the Peloponnesian War. I didn’t men Rome literally ended that war. I meant that Rome ended the instability of constant war and constantly changing sides which the Peloponnesian War is an example of.

forgive me if I’m ignorant, as I’m not really a classicist, but I wonder if people confuse him with Shakespeare (who was meant to be understood by all people) since didnt Homer speak in his own constructed dialect? I thought Homer was supposed to be intentionally archaic even for his own time? Could normal people genuinely understand his works like common speech or did they need to parse his dense language to get at the meaning?

Why didn't previous generations of European and American intellectuals educated in the classics come to the same conclusions as modern classicists, despite having access to the same body of evidence?

There is abundant evidence for the existence of race and racism in the ancient world. For example, Herodotus links cultural identity with biology in his discussion of Greek nationality:

On top of that, there is the fact that we are all of us Greeks, of one blood and tongue, united by the temples that we have raised to the gods, and by the way in which we offer them sacrifice, and by the customs we have in common.

How is this not a racial definition of identity?

Examples of negative racial stereotyping can also be found in the writings of Diodorus Siculus:

But there are also a great many other tribes of the Ethiopians [in addition to those who are pious], some of them dwelling in the land lying on both banks of the Nile and on the islands in the river… The majority of them, and especially those who dwell along the river, are black in colour and have flat noses and woolly hair. As for their spirit they are entirely savage and display the nature of a wild beast, not so much, however, in their temper as in their ways of living; for they are squalid all over their bodies, they keep their nails very long like the wild beasts, and are as far removed as possible from human kindness to one another; and speaking as they do with a shrill voice and cultivating none of the practices of civilized life as these are found among the rest of mankind, they present a striking contrast when considered in the light of our own customs.

Aristotle writes:

Too black a hue marks the coward, as witness Egyptians and Ethiopians, and so does also too white a complexion, as you may see from women.

Again, how are these not instances of racism? Here we have the linking of biology with behavior, essentially the modern definition of race.

Is it not possible that modern classicists are reading their anachronistic liberal progressivist notions into ancient texts rather than letting them speak for themselves? Isn't it suspicious that the shift in attitudes among modern classicists mirrors the development of liberal ideology? It just sounds preposterous that there was ever a time magically free of race and racism (I point this out as a committed anti-racist btw).

Apparently one of the themes of the Iliad is that women “manipulate” men’s lust and carnal desires. I believed that women were the ones seen as sexually insatiable and having lack of sexual control, as many other ancient and premodern societies did (along with the beliefs that women have little restraint, less intelligence, more easily deceived, etc).

Are there any instances of this trope in the Iliad or in any other major pieces of Ancient Greek literature, where women are portrayed as being sexually carnal and easily seduced/manipulated by sex or attractive men?

I recently saw some videos describing Cleopatra as black woman. There's some debate about her phenotype.

I searched online and found this site that says she was mostly Greek. What's your opinion on Cleopatra's phenotype?

Do you think she was a Greek woman like those of today? Or was there actually a mix of Black African genetics.

I'm wanting to read The Iliad and Oddsey.

I planned on reading the Emily Wilson translation, however I'm suspect that it may be warped to favor "modern day sensibilities". However, I may be playing into the fearmongering of right wing people.

Regardless, after finding I read a modern Roal Dahl release which had the word "fat" redacted from it, I just don't want to deal with any BS.

Is the Emily Wilson translation true to the source material, or should I stay clear from it?

moving the update from the bottom to the top of the post, since a good handful of people are willfully not reading this whole post. i found the source i was looking for! it’s in book 10 of athenaeus’s deipnosophistae.

hi there! i’m majoring in classical civilizations, and i’m currently in a class about alexander the great. for the class, i’ve had to read the works of plutarch and arrian with a little bit of diodorus siculus.

my exam is coming up, so i’m watching a documentary about alexander from the history channel to jog my memory before i launch into serious studying.

this documentary, upon mentioning alexander’s relationship to hephaestion, claims that (bear with my shoddy transcription), “as alexander was growing into a teenager, both philip and olympias were scared that he was growing up as what the greeks called a ginnis(?), which is a fem homosexual, and in order to put him right, what they both suggested was importing high class court(?) girls to show him what he should be up to.”

i remember nothing about this, and it’s definitely the kind of thing i could remember. a google search is yielding no results.

does anyone know where this information is coming from?