Gods and Monsters: Homer's Odyssey

I'm in the Mediterranean on the trail of a legend.

A warrior from Greece who triumphed at Troy.

His name is Odysseus.

And he's the hero of a 2500-year-old poem called the Odyssey.

It's the diary of a lost man and a wandering soul.

It describes a ten-year journey criss-crossing these oceans

and pin-balling between islands.

Told by our first author, Homer,

the Odyssey has become a foundation stone of Western literature.

But who is Odysseus?

A brave hero, certainly.

A brilliant, resourceful strategist,

renowned for his cunning and his guile.

But is he also a bit slippery and a bit devious?

A bit of a show-off with medals and lovers to his name?

I've come to Greece not just to follow his trail and tell his story,

but to try and get inside his mind

and to try and work out once and for all

whether I really like him.

Sing to me of the man, Muse,

the man of twists and turns.

Driven time and again off course,

once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy.

In the opening lines of the Odyssey, Homer introduces us to its hero.

His name is Odysseus.

And my journey begins in the place where he made his name.

Troy.

This is north-western Turkey and very nice it is, too.

This body of water just over my shoulder here

are the straits of the Dardanelles,

a really important waterway through history.

Over there is Europe and this side is Asia and it's always

been described as a kind of cultural faultline dividing the two.

It's dripping with history and legend, it's a place that I only

thought really existed on a map and in books.

But it's real and I'm here.

Many believe these remains are those of the legendary city of Troy.

Today it's just a pile of old stones.

But 3,000 years ago, it would have looked very different.

The Troy described by the poet Homer was a powerful city state.

But then the Greeks came here to fight a famous war.

For ten years they tried to smash through

its impregnable walls.

And for ten years, they failed.

It's a bloody and grinding conflict

finally brought to an end not by brawn but by brains,

and in one of the best-known of all myths

the Greeks finally infiltrate the city

by hiding inside a wooden horse apparently left as a gift.

It's a moment of tactical genius

dreamed up by someone renowned for their cunning and their guile.

And that man is Odysseus.

Odysseus was king of a small island in Greece called Ithaca.

And his idea to attack Troy from the inside

using the horse as a hiding place was the turning point in the war.

Well, I'm inside a horse,

which isn't a line that I ever thought I'd end up saying.

I probably don't need to explain

this isn't the original wooden horse built by the Greek army

but the fact that tourist authorities

or whoever would go to the trouble of assembling this

is a testament to the enduring nature of the myth.

According to another myth,

Odysseus started the war as a reluctant conscript,

who didn't even want to come here.

But with the Trojan horse, he reinvented himself as a superhero.

Yes, it was a brilliant plan.

But it's also our first great insight into his personality.

There are moments with Odysseus where

genius seems to tip over in deviousness and

where self-preservation wavers into self-interest

and it's on those occasions where we start to think of Odysseus

as a more complicated and perhaps more questionable character.

Questionable his character may be,

but after success at Troy, no-one cares.

It's that very deviousness which has made him invincible.

Arrogant and of course, heroic.

All he has to do now is get home to Ithaca

to become reunited with his wife, Penelope,

and take his place in the Greek hall of fame.

The trouble is, it's not going to be that simple.

Preparing to leave Troy,

Odysseus is about to have the arrogance beaten out of him,

piece by piece.

Before he can find out who he really is,

he must first be broken.

The Greeks came here on a mission and they'd been successful.

They'd defeated the Trojans.

It had taken them ten years but the hard part was over.

It was just a question of getting home now,

300 or 400 miles that way, west.

They'd have come down here to this beach to get on the ships.

I imagine the mood would have been one of jubilation and triumph

and excitement at the idea of returning back to their homeland.

Getting home to Ithaca should only take ten weeks.

But in fact, it takes ten years,

as Odysseus suffers a spectacular fall from grace.

For him, it'll be the journey from hell.

And I'm going with him.

'As I leave Troy, I have my own boat, complete with a skipper -

'name of George.'

Did you ever sail to Ithaca?

Many times. I know every stone.

I'll be following in Odysseus' wake

as he arced around the Mediterranean sea, from Troy,

to his home island of Ithaca.

I feel like I'm in some huge car, with a gear stick.

Oops, sorry. Wrong way.

Let's go some left. 30 degrees.

You're like my dad on my driving licence,

he kept grabbing hold of the wheel.

You are a good captain, but you need more lessons.

I just thought you needed a good hat and it would all fall into place.

'As Odysseus leaves Troy, he's in holiday mood.'

That's a good plan.

Dual controls.

First stop is a nearby coastal town for a bit of plundering.

But he bites off more than he can chew.

And ends up scarpering with a bloody nose.

Straight into another problem - the weather.

They say Britain is a sailing culture because it's an island

but it's nothing like Greece.

Greece is all about water and islands and travelling around and

when you're out here on the water, it's the uncertainty, really.

And the vastness as well.

When it's calm, when the sun's shining,

it's fine, it's beautiful.

The minute that the wind gets up and it starts to blow you

in any direction, it feels very threatening.

'Odysseus is barely off the jetty when a cataclysmic gale hits.'

'For nine days, he's sent spinning across the Mediterranean.'

'When his fleet emerges from the chaos, Odysseus drops anchor

'in a strange and unfamiliar world.'

'The Island of the Lotus Eaters is an exotic paradise.

'But danger lies within.'

'The Lotus flowers covering the island seem innocent enough.

'But when eaten, they send the men into a drug-induced stupor.'

'Odysseus keeps his head, and hauls the men back to the boats.'

'On this occasion, it's the lower ranks who've messed up.

'But Odysseus is about to trump them with a mistake of his own.'

'Sailing north overnight,

'the fleet puts in for supplies at the next island.

'It's the land of the Cyclops.'

'Odysseus is wise enough to know he really should

'steer clear of this lot.'

'The Cyclops are a breed of lawless one-eyed giants,

'with no respect for either humans or gods.

'But Odysseus can't help himself.'

'Especially after he spots some tasty-looking sheep inside a cave.'

'They belong to the Cyclops Polythemus.'

We see three different aspects of Odysseus's character

in this incident with Polythemus the Cyclops.

His men want to loot the cave, but Odysseus says

"No, let's wait and see if these goods are given to us as gifts out of politeness."

'Interesting idea, but also naive.

'When the Cyclops does return,

'he eats two of Odysseus' men as an appetiser

'and puts the rest in his larder for later.'

Then we see cunning Odysseus heating up a shaft of olive wood in the fire

and jabbing it into Cyclop's eye

to blind him so him and his men can escape.

"We took the fiery pointed stake

"and whirled it around in his eye and the blood flowed round it,

"all hot as it was.

"His eyelids above and below and his brows were all singed

"by the flame from the burning eyeball

"and its root crackled in the fire."

Finally, we see boastful Odysseus, goading the Cyclops as he sails away

on the boat, shouting, "Tell all men that Odysseus did this to you."

Blurting out his name just to show off, is a huge mistake.

That's because the Cyclops' father is Poseidon,

god of the sea.

And annoying a god like him is a very bad idea.

This is the Temple of Poseidon.

Overlooking the Aegean Sea, it's as good a place as any to ruminate on Odysseus' unfortunate gaffe.

Life's what you make of it, that's what we tend to say these days, but we also talk about good luck,

bad luck, coincidence and chance,

as if there was some indefinable forces at work in the background.

In Homer's world, those forces were known as gods,

and the whims and the moods of the gods could determine

not just a man's future, but the destiny of an entire civilisation.

Poseidon's not the only god who pokes a trident into Odysseus' affairs.

In fact, a lot of the others have quite a soft spot for him.

But Poseidon matters more than most.

He's the one who now wants Odysseus dead.

Of course, the gods are a great literary device as well.

They offer a parallel narrative and we're privy to their decisions

and interventions in a way that Odysseus isn't,

and it makes us very powerful as readers, almost god-like.

It's a fantastic act of reader flattery on Homer's part.

Poseidon's vendetta is destined

to unravel with violent and bloody consequences.

As Odysseus escapes from the Cyclops,

the sea god looks on as the fleet is again swept into no man's land.

And the men are turned into mincemeat

by hordes of cannibal giants.

After the attack, only one ship out of the fleet of 12 survives.

They're picked off like fish in a barrel.

Devastated and depleted, Odysseus sails on and he finally

arrives at the island of Aeaea, notable for being an island

made up entirely of vowels, but also for its most famous inhabitant,

the goddess and sorceress Circe.

Like the aforementioned giants, Circe's also a man-eater.

A perfect example of one of the Odyssey's greatest themes.

Temptation.

Having turned some of Odysseus' men into pigs,

she then lures Odysseus into her bed.

A bed he stays in for an entire year.

"She set me in a bath and bathed me with water from the great cauldron,

"mixing it to my liking

"and pouring it over my head and shoulders,

"till she took from my limbs the soul-consuming weariness.

"But when she had bathed me and anointed me richly with oil

"and had thrown about me a beautiful cloak and a tunic, she brought me

"into the hall and made me sit upon a silver-studded chair,

"a beautiful chair, richly wrought."

Odysseus's behaviour is questionable, to say the least.

Has he forgotten his wife, the loyal Penelope,

who's been waiting for him back home?

Or is he just recuperating after getting hopelessly lost,

and watching most of his men die in agony?

It reminds me a bit of that story

about George Best at the height of his notoriety,

he's staying in some swanky hotel and the bell boy walks in

and finds George surrounded by

empty champagne bottles and a former Miss World lying on the bed.

And the bell boy says, "George, where did it all go wrong?"

But am I being too quick to judge Odysseus?

Leaving him alone with his libido,

I've headed back to the Greek mainland

and a small harbour near Athens.

It's a funny thing, temptation.

Is Homer condemning Odysseus for his infidelity with Circe?

Or is he just saying that boys will be boys?

I thought I'd ask Dimitris and Andreas,

a couple of retired merchant seamen

who spent much of their working lives at sea.

What do they think of Odysseus's behaviour,

and especially his long affair with Circe?

His big failing was the adoration of women.

I like the fact that he was womanising. I can't feel a man,

a young man like him, to go away,

years and years away from his country, and not womanise.

My seaman's life was just the same life.

I went to too many places, I had a lot of experiences,

I have met lots of women.

I was womanising for a great part of my life, and then I came to an end.

I think all of us come to an end. That is the story.

It is a very, very human story.

-So that makes it more real?

-It is real.

That is why this poem is eternal.

If you read it, and see the details and so on,

you will discover

your own life.

This is my life.

So if you've lived the life of Odysseus,

does that tell you anything about his character?

Do you feel as if you know more about the Odysseus of the book

because of the lives you've led?

He went through too many adventures.

He has experienced a lot of things, as we did, as seamen, both of us.

Every man has his Odysseus inside.

In his mind.

But after that, you have to settle down.

And this is what all of us, we do in life. It's a lesson of life.

And when you are a young one, and you go to work on a ship,

you think that everything is a game.

But as the years have passed,

you feel very, very different.

One thing I understand from meeting people like Andreas and Dimitris

is just how important the Odyssey is to the Greek people.

Someone once said the Odyssey is

"alive to every tremor and gleam of existence."

And that doesn't just include love and sex.

Odysseus' next lesson is going to be the most powerful of all.

Finally, he's about to understand the meaning of death.

Tearing himself away from Circe's island,

Odysseus and his remaining men once again sail for Ithaca.

But he's desperate to know what the omens are.

Helpfully, Circe's given him the name of a very reliable soothsayer.

Consulting the soothsayer seems simple enough,

except there's a catch.

I'm going to hell!

He's dead.

This is the river Acheron.

But round here, they have another name for it -

the river of pain.

To the Greeks, it was the highway to hell.

Or as Homer himself put it,

"a place where horrid night spreads over wretched mortals."

Homer even gives directions on how to get to the underworld.

When the river finally runs out,

I make the rest of the journey on foot.

The place itself is called Necromanteion.

Or "oracle of the dead".

From Homer's day right up to the 18th century,

Greeks came here to contact the dark side.

Getting the ghouls to appear required lots of drug taking

and some really bizarre rituals.

A bit like cooking.

Circe's given Odysseus

a list of ingredients that he needs to pour his libations.

She's told him to dig a pit and pour into it various things -

water, milk, sweet wine, honey,

white barley meal, whatever that is, and the blood of a black ram,

so it's a pit a cubit each way.

I think that's from your wrist to your elbow,

so that should do it.

OK.

Here's a bit of the honey, drip a bit of that in.

The local supermarket didn't really have everything I wanted.

I got the nearest I could. The white barley meal.

It's actually rice pasta, but it's the nearest I could get.

And then the sweet wine -

obviously the dead have a bit of a sweet tooth.

In it goes, like so. Bit of milk.

I could only get semi-skimmed, so I hope that's OK.

The supermarket were right out of black ram's blood

so a bit more sweet wine.

And according to the recipe that should do the trick.

Just have to sit back and wait for the ghosts to appear.

The libations are poured and Homer invokes a terrifying spectacle -

out of the swirling mist, come the dead, and it's not just the old,

it's children crying for their mothers,

it's mothers crying for their children,

it's soldiers in their battle garments

all tattered and bloody and torn.

It's a terrifying occasion.

With the preliminaries over, the soothsayer appears.

He's called Tiresias.

And he has some good news.

Odysseus will return safely to Ithaca

and be reunited with his wife.

So far, so good.

But the flames licking

around Odysseus' feet are about to get hotter.

In one of the most compelling and affecting passages

in the whole poem, the face of a dead woman

appears out of the darkness,

which Odysseus finally recognises as his own mother.

And to begin with he refuses to accept it, and then he asks,

"What kind of foul play brought about this murder?

"Tell me and I will revenge it."

And his mother says, "There was no murder, Odysseus.

"I died out of longing for you.

"I died of a broken heart."

News of his mother's death shakes Odysseus to his core.

But it gets worse.

The next spook in line is Achilles,

the greatest warrior of the Trojan War.

Or is he?

Achilles doesn't see himself that way any more.

"And he at once made answer, and said,

"'Never try to reconcile me to death, glorious Odysseus.

"'I should choose so I might live on earth

"'to serve as the hireling of another,

"'some landless man with hardly enough to live on,

"'rather than be lord over all the dead that have perished.'"

Achilles, apparently, would rather be a nobody on earth,

than a hero in hell.

Coming from one of mythology's greatest ever fighters,

it's a pitiful speech.

In the whole of classical mythology, only a handful of people

get to visit the underworld and live to tell the story.

Tiresias has offered Odysseus a glimmer of hope.

But he's seen friends and family as ghosts

and he's witnessed the greatest warrior ever known to mankind

reduced to wretchedness and misery.

Is this how heroes are rewarded by the gods?

Odysseus travels onwards

but he does so a changed man.

To him, everything he achieved at Troy

now just seems like a huge waste.

Tiresius' advice to Odysseus has been about as clear as mud.

So after his harrowing night in hell, he nips back to see Circe,

who describes the route he must take

as a kind of supernatural obstacle course.

First challenge - sail past the alluring sirens.

In Greek mythology, the sirens were temptresses,

who lured sailors to their deaths, just because they could.

Circe's warned Odysseus of the sirens.

They may be enchanting, she says,

but around their feet you'll see rotting corpses.

Once again, Odysseus can't help himself.

But this time,

he hatches a plan that means he can have his cake and eat it.

Odysseus tells his men to bung their ears with wax

so they won't be able to hear the beautiful song of the sirens

and then to lash him to the mast.

Why he doesn't bung his own ears with wax, he doesn't really explain

but it's one of those moments

that opens a little window on his personality.

This isn't just about the destination,

this is about the journey.

He wants to experience the experience.

Odysseus is a man who likes to sail pretty close to the wind.

It's also as if the adventures are queuing up to meet him now.

Next he's got to sail between Scylla on one side,

a 12-legged six-headed monster,

and Charybdis on the other,

a whirling pool of water that sucks everything down three times a day.

He's having a bit of a tough time of it.

Odysseus isn't the only one struggling.

From around 600 crew who set off from Troy,

there's maybe only 50 left.

And they're not happy.

I want to get a sense of what it's like to be at sea for long periods.

So I've come to a naval base on the Greek mainland.

Today's sailors live and work among the cold clean lines of grey steel.

But 3,000 years ago, when Odysseus was a captain,

the fleet would've looked very different.

This is a reconstruction of an ancient Greek warship.

The design dates from the 5th century BC,

which is actually 500 years after Odysseus.

But the conditions on Odysseus' ship

wouldn't have been all that different.

It's all skeleton and no flesh.

You know, there's no concession here to comfort or convenience.

There's no obvious place to eat, sit down, sleep, go to the loo.

And for these three rows of oarsmen, you've either got

somebody's backside in your face or somebody's sandal in your ear.

I don't know which would've been worse - sitting here

with the wind and the spray lashing you

or down there in the stinking bilges.

Maybe this was the prime position somewhere here in the middle.

It's an invention of travel and war.

It's all function - just for the task of getting there

and getting back and I suppose killing a few people

in either direction.

There's no doubt, back then, it would've been a very grim existence.

I'd love to chat with Odysseus about his leadership skills.

But since I can't, I thought I'd try the next best thing.

Commander Spyros Lagares is in charge of 160 men

on the Greek Navy Frigate, Nikiforos Fokas.

I've come to talk to him about Odysseus' increasingly bolshie crew.

But before I do, I cheekily wonder whether he fancied himself

as a bit of a modern day Odysseus?

Has it ever crossed your mind that as a man of rank

in the Greek Navy, you are in some ways a descendant of Odysseus?

Could you have his DNA in your bloodstream?

I think that all Greeks do believe

that we do have a connection with Odysseus.

You can say so, yes.

This is the way I feel and I think most of us feel this way.

What kind of qualities are needed to be a sailor?

Discipline and being able to function as a team

are the main characteristics of a mariner.

Of course you have to bear in mind that the crews for this time

were free men.

In other navies, this was not the case.

They had slaves but in Greek ships, they always had free men and they

were not always the professionals that we do have in the Navy today.

There were farmers,

there were fishermen and I think that's the reason that we do see

things not being done properly and not being very disciplined men

the way we see it today.

So if they were just a selection of fishermen and farmers, it would mean

they would have to have fantastic respect for their captain

for discipline to remain and once the respect had gone,

presumably the discipline would break down?

That's true. I mean, it's one of the worst thing that can really happen.

I would say then you do have a mutiny.

HE SHOUTS COMMAND IN GREEK

A mutiny is precisely what Odysseus is about to face.

Miserable and starving, his crew finally crack.

Spotting some tasty looking cattle at the next island,

they move in for the kill.

Odysseus warns them not to touch the animals,

since they belong to the God of the sun.

But while he sleeps they defy him,

gorging themselves on the forbidden flesh.

The gods then at once showed forth portents.

"The hides crawled. The meat, both roast and raw,

"bellowed upon the spits.

"And there was a lowing, as though of cattle."

Odysseus and his men will pay a heavy price for their barbecue.

Back at sea, the gods smash their ship to pieces.

And everybody dies.

Everybody, that is, except Odysseus.

Clinging to a piece of driftwood,

he's swept towards the nearest island

and the low point of his life.

The island Odysseus washes up on is called Ogygia.

It's now seven years later and Odysseus is still here.

Clean out of ideas and paralysed into inaction,

Odysseus is on the rocks.

His mother's dead. His men are dead.

And it's now two decades since he last saw home.

To make matters worse,

he's also the prisoner and sex slave of a goddess called Calypso.

"By night indeed he would sleep by her side in the hollow caves,

"unwilling beside the willing nymph

"but by day he would sit on the rocks and the sands,

"racking his heart with tears and groans and griefs

"and he would look out over the unresting sea,

"shedding tears."

The tears are for his lost wife, Penelope.

And for himself.

The arrogant hero of Troy is no more.

This is a broken man.

But then, something happens.

After seven depressing years,

the gods decide to give him one last chance.

So Hermes, the messenger of the gods, is despatched in his golden

immortal sandals with the little wings on the bottom

and he flies across the sea

very close to the surface, like a cormorant.

Hermes forces Calypso to free Odysseus

and give him the thing he most needs to get home...

..a boat.

It's true that a man could have a worse jailor than a beautiful nymph

with a healthy sexual appetite but the compass of his heart

points in the direction of Ithaca and Penelope

and this is his big chance.

He sets sail.

Potentially he's only a couple of days from home.

All he needs now is a following wind

and the gods to smile kindly upon him.

Trouble is, not all the gods are smiling on him.

Especially his nemesis, Poseidon, God of the sea,

who has one last act of revenge up his sleeve.

"So saying, he gathered the clouds and seizing his trident in his

"hands, troubled the sea and roused all blasts of every sort of wind

"and hid with clouds, land and sea a like

"and down from heaven night came rushing."

Abandoning his sinking ship, Odysseus swims for his life.

And then, a miracle.

Land.

It's not yet Ithaca but he's now tantalisingly close.

You could think of Odysseus as the first ever tourist

around the Greek islands, albeit an accidental one.

That's Corfu,

traditionally associated with the island of Scheria,

land of the Phaeacians, and that would've looked very, very sweet.

By this time he's been bobbing around in the sea

for the best part of three weeks,

first on a raft and then clinging to a spar.

Its not home but I think by this point,

it would've been a case of any port in a storm.

Today the locals are celebrating.

It's the anniversary of their unification with Greece.

Looks like I've landed in Corfu at just about the right time.

All this pomp and ceremony.

They're famous here for their hospitality so

I can only think that Odysseus would've been in good hands.

The king is delighted to offer free board and lodging.

In return, he asks only one thing -

that Odysseus agrees to tell his story.

HE SPEAKS ANCIENT GREEK

The Corfu poetry society is tonight re-enacting

Odysseus's famous speech.

The moment when he rediscovers the hero inside and tells

the complete story of his travels.

Actor Nikos begins the story in the original Ancient Greek

but then it's time for me to take over with a version of the poem I wrote myself.

I feel a bit presumptuous, I have to say.

After a seven-year crisis of confidence,

Odysseus is now able to recognise his own failings

and learn from them.

So this is following on from the piece you read.

We plundered the city, took meat and wine and women and grain to be shared equally among the men.

Then I ordered the retreat.

"Leave the rest. Back to the boats everyone.

Back to the coast".

But my army were boggle-eyed with treats, went on slaughtering the plentiful flocks and herds,

and while they butchered and ate and slept, the enemy grew,

drew strength from further afield, gathered all night in the dark

then attacked out of the dawn mist.

Cut us down like stalks, flattened us into the battlefields.

Six men from every crew were lost The rest of us skedaddled in the boats.

Sick with grief, we saluted our dead

then swung our oars into the water and rowed and rowed and rowed.

Odysseus has done a lot of rowing since Troy, but he won't have to do much more.

His hosts, moved by his dream to be reunited with his wife, agree to take him home.

But is Odysseus ready for Ithaca?

Is he ready for the biggest challenge of all?

The more I walk in his shadow and the more I sail in his wake,

the more intriguing Odysseus becomes as a character.

Yes, he can be heroic, capable of great bravery and courage,

but he can also be arrogant, conceited, greedy, flirtatious,

voyeuristic, indulgent, indolent even.

There are a couple of moments in the text when, instead of being

on his toes and ready, he's snoring his head off.

He also seems like a born liar.

To almost everybody he meets he describes himself as somebody else and it makes me think that

the real mystery of this book and the real excitement isn't whether

or not we're going to find out if he gets home, it's whether we're going to find out who this man is.

Odysseus makes his last journey, not as a captain, but an ordinary

passenger, hitching a lift on a ship organised by his hosts.

Still fearing Poseidon's wrath, they sail at night in the hope that he won't notice.

And it works.

A decade after he first set sail from Troy,

Odysseus finally reaches the glittering paradise that is home.

Ithaca.

If Homer really is our first author, then it's amazing he should have

such a finely developed sense of drama and irony.

In the hands of a lesser writer, Odysseus would arrive home

in a blaze of glory, but actually he falls asleep on the boat

as he's being brought here by the Phaeacians.

He's deposited on this beach and when he wakes out of his slumber, he doesn't recognise the place.

He doesn't even know he's home.

# There is a house built out of stone

# Wooden floors doors and window sills... #

He may be home, but his journey won't truly be over till he reclaims his wife and his son.

But to do that, he faces one last battle.

# This is a place where I feel at home... #

In his absence, Odysseus' mountain palace has been overrun by the so-called "suitors".

The suitors are a bunch of local gentry who've long since had their eyes on Odysseus's money...

..and Penelope, his wife.

Many people claim that this was the actual site of Odysseus's splendid palace.

It's seen better days, but these rooms here were where the suitors

were camped out, feasting and gorging and lighting their fires.

Up there was Penelope's apartment and bed chamber.

After years of pressure, Penelope knows she can't stall the suitors any longer.

Which is why she's finally agreed to re-marry.

Her new husband will be the suitor who wins her in a great sporting contest.

A competition involving archery and 12 axe heads.

Whoever could string Odysseus's great bow and then fire an arrow through the 12 axe heads

would win her hand in marriage, so that means that this area here was where that competition took place.

I've never fired an arrow before.

-Hello.

-Hello.

-Hi.

But these local archery experts say they can teach me in 15 minutes.

Welcome to the palace of Odysseus.

Using a bow that Odysseus himself would have recognised.

It's a beautiful thing. It's much lighter than I thought it would be.

Very balanced.

I guess it's one of those odd pieces of equipment which is both art...

and it can kill you.

Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, enters the palace just in time for the start of the competition.

-And then don't release... all right.

-Yeah, OK.

Right. I'm all set, I think!

While Penelope waits upstairs, the suitors each take their turn.

All hoping to shoot clean through the axe heads lined up across the room.

In the end though, no-one can do it.

It's a good job I'm not Cupid.

There'd be some very lonely people out there!

Still hiding behind his beggar's clothes, Odysseus steps forward and asks if he can have a go.

-It's the moment he's been waiting for.

-Lower...

Oh! Get in!

-Congratulations.

-Thank you.

Odysseus hits the mark first time.

In the melee, loyal servants quietly lock the doors.

Odysseus then shakes off his beggar's disguise

and the bloodbath begins.

Homer doesn't spare us the details.

The suitors' ringleader takes the first shot full in the neck,

causing blood to spew through his nose.

One by one, the others succumb in similar fashion.

Homer compares their flaccid bodies to dead fish in nets and describes their souls -

crying like bats, as they're led into hell.

When it's over, the maids who have been

disloyal during Odysseus's absence are told to clean up the mess,

then taken outside and hung.

Odysseus has won the battle for his house,

but he must now win back Penelope.

The two meet after the massacre but she still can't quite believe it's him.

He's been away for 20 years but she seems so hard and unwelcoming

and they have what in today's parlance might be described as "a bit of a domestic".

She sends him to the spare.

She tells the maid to take the marital bed out of the bedroom and set it up elsewhere.

But it's the very same bed which, once and for all, gives Odysseus the chance to prove who he is.

"Woman, truly this is a bitter word that you have spoken.

"For a great token is worked into the making of the bed.

"And it was I that built it and no-one else.

"And her knees were loosened where she sat

"and her heart melted."

And it's at this point that Penelope realises that he must be who he says

he is and she breaks down in tears,

she throws her arms around him

and you don't need me to spell the rest of it out.

The poem ends with Odysseus getting the girl and the glory.

It's hard to appreciate what being away from family and friends for 20 years actually feels like.

But I've made this journey to try and get a sense of the difficulties and the distances involved.

And it seems to me that it's impossible to understand Odysseus.

Because after all his trials and tribulations

and after all his humiliations and the hardship,

he doesn't really understand himself.

All he has is that longing to return, the "nostos"

as the Greeks call it,

and he won't be allowed that pleasure until he's been stripped

of his crown and his clothes and his dignity and his identity.

Not until he's arrived home with the appearance of a beggar, scrounging for crumbs

at his own table, will he be allowed to return as a father and a husband.

So the question of whether or not I like Odysseus now seems irrelevant.

He will always remain an endlessly intriguing and enigmatic character and we have Homer to thank for that.

He's the real hero of this story.

Whoever Homer is, he's the one to be admired.

MUSIC: "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want" by The Smiths

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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