The Lotus Eaters Episode 1: The Journey Begins

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_00] Dear listeners, thank you for joining us on our voyage into Homer's Odyssey. You're listening to The Lotus Eaters, a 12-part series on Homer's Odyssey that was funded by our generous supporters over at Patreon.com. It's because of that support that we're able to release this series for everyone. If you'd like to join them in supporting us, please head over to Patreon.com slash VeryBadWizards. One of the benefits will be that you'd get access to all of the Lotus Eaters at once rather than having to wait every week for a new episode to

[00:00:30] [SPEAKER_00] drop, but you'd also get access to hundreds of hours of other bonus content and Zeus would smile down upon you for your generosity in supporting us. So thank you for listening. Let's get to the episode.

[00:01:25] [SPEAKER_02] All right, let's dive into The Odyssey by Homer. Homer's Odyssey. This is as foundational a text as you could possibly imagine. You know, we were talking about how Plato sets the

[00:01:40] [SPEAKER_02] template for, you know, so much Western philosophy to follow for the next 2500 years. This and the Iliad set the template for so much storytelling, like storytelling, just the breadth of storytelling that can trace its influences and roots to the Iliad and the Odyssey is, it's breathtaking. Like what he's able to do in the only two works that we have of his quote unquote, because we have no, we don't know anything about this Homer.

[00:02:08] [SPEAKER_02] He's almost kind of a mythical figure himself. Yeah, man, like, a lot of your favorite movies are because and not just Nolan's next summer, but like, you know, the end of Inglourious Bastards and the end of this, a lot of similarities. It's all over the place.

[00:02:25] [SPEAKER_00] And the hero's journey, obviously.

[00:02:27] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, it is a prime example of the hero's journey. I read it once in high school, but then I got my job in 2008 at the University of Houston. And one thing that requires is every fall I co-teach with some other professors this great books course. And it includes either the Iliad or the Odyssey, and we just switch off every year.

[00:02:50] [SPEAKER_02] And so now I've read and taught, you know, in my sections and always given at least one lecture on the Odyssey, like at least probably seven or eight times over the last 17 years, I guess going on 18 years. So like, there's really nothing quite like that for me, like this big work that I just get to go back and reread every two years. And, you know, I've changed my mind about so many things about it.

[00:03:17] [SPEAKER_02] Like, it's one of the great privileges of my job. Like, I'll always be grateful that I got a chance to do this. So I'm very excited to start this series with you also.

[00:03:27] [SPEAKER_00] It's like you get to revisit an old friend. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds really nice, actually.

[00:03:31] [SPEAKER_02] It's awesome with all new generations of students, like the students I started talking about with them. They're all like in their 30s now, almost 40. So what's your background or history, if any, with the Odyssey and the Iliad?

[00:03:43] [SPEAKER_00] It is as opposite as you can imagine. I am literally reading this for the first time as we're going to be recording this. In fact, I was tempted because it's so good. I was tempted to keep reading this week. Yeah. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to like just I'm going to enjoy it. I'm going to read everything at least a couple of times. And like this isn't literally true, but it is kind of like I don't know what's going to happen.

[00:04:07] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah.

[00:04:07] [SPEAKER_00] You know?

[00:04:07] [SPEAKER_02] No, I mean, there's a lot you don't know that's going to happen. Right. I'm sure there's like the sirens and like the cyclops. You probably know about that. But yeah, no, this throws a lot at you.

[00:04:18] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah.

[00:04:19] [SPEAKER_02] I hope listeners will read along with us as we do this series.

[00:04:23] [SPEAKER_00] Absolutely should. Like my pitch is it's easy reading in the sense that it flows. Like this translation, which we'll talk about, is like written in plain English so that I think the story jumps out more at you. And it doesn't take a lot to read through a couple books at a time.

[00:04:40] [SPEAKER_02] Which is how we're going to do it. Today we're going to we're going to just generally do an introduction to the whole work. And then we're going to talk about the first two books and then our bonus episodes, which will come out most off weeks, will be two books at a time. So please join us on this journey. Join Dave if you haven't read it in a long time or ever. Yeah.

[00:05:00] [SPEAKER_00] OK. So I have two things to say that I want to get out of the way. One is that this episode, like I want it to be Tamler heavy because like you know a lot about this and I don't. And I want the background. So for anybody who has zero idea like me, I'm hoping to just sit back for a bit and hear you talk about it. For one, I'll talk a lot.

[00:05:19] [SPEAKER_03] In a very bad wizards episode.

[00:05:22] [SPEAKER_00] And two, I haven't told you this, but my pitch to you is that when we get to the last books, you come to Ithaca.

[00:05:28] [SPEAKER_02] Wow. That's it. You just sprung that on me. I did. Absolutely. We should do that. No question. Yeah. All right. We should definitely do that. Yeah. Like I couldn't be more full circle. We'll have to end the podcast after that. But whatever.

[00:05:46] [SPEAKER_00] We'll drink some poison wine together in the last recording. Set it to auto-publish on Libsyn.

[00:05:54] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. That's a great idea. That's a perfect way to go out. So you mentioned the translation and there's a lot of questions about why we chose our translation already. And I know this can be a hot button issue on subreddits everywhere. So I've just prepared a brief statement for why I selected the Emily Wilson translation for this series on the Odyssey.

[00:06:20] [SPEAKER_02] I've taught the Odyssey for the last 17 years, once every two years in the University of Houston Honors College Great Books course. Over that period, we have used three translations multiple times each. Robert Fagels and Stanley Lombardo are the other two translators. Let me be clear.

[00:06:40] [SPEAKER_02] After a great deal of careful deliberation, I decided on the Emily Wilson translation, not because I think it's the best translation or the right one for this series, but because Emily Wilson is a woman. And Very Bad Wizards is and always has been and always will be a woke podcast. No, I actually really do think it's best for our purposes. Like, I think it's the most accessible. It goes down easy.

[00:07:10] [SPEAKER_02] It's a great read. And like, I think Fagels might reach poetic heights that are higher than the heights you get with Emily Wilson's at times. But you have to put up with a lot of shit and it's much longer. And that's probably my least favorite of the three. I was tempted to go back to Lombardo. It's older. Yeah, I don't know which between those two are. They're both like late 90s, early 2000s, Lombardo and Fagels. You know, that was the one because we haven't done that in a while.

[00:07:38] [SPEAKER_02] But when I got Lombardo and I compared him side by side with Wilson, I actually liked the Emily Wilson one better overall. And I also think it's just the best one to read. Like, you know. And one thing, a couple of interesting things about her translation. Number one, she is the first woman to translate The Odyssey. And number two, she put constraints on herself in doing so that the other translators did not.

[00:08:03] [SPEAKER_02] And the two constraints are number one, that she writes it in iambic pentameter. The ancient Greek is in this meter, which we have one professor who can kind of do it. You know, like he can give the meter in ancient Greek. But she chooses iambic pentameter, which is very familiar to our ears, whether we know it or not. That was the first constraint. And the second constraint is kind of a big deal. Unlike Fagels, which is literally like 25 percent longer, I feel like, than Emily Wilson.

[00:08:32] [SPEAKER_02] She said like however many lines were in each book, she was going to confine herself to that number of lines. So this is the exact length of the, you know, the ancient Greek version of The Odyssey and the Iliad. That's impressive. Yeah. And, you know, maybe some things got lost because of that choice. But like, you know, with a lot of things, constraints are often a really good way to have your creativity come out in fruitful ways. So I really like it.

[00:09:01] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Having nothing to compare it to, I really like it. And I read her translator's note, and I think that the points that she raises all kind of make sense. Like, and one of the points that I like that she makes the most is that to Greek ears, this would have been plain spoken, like to ancient Greek ears. Like there is a temptation, because this is a classic piece of literature, to make it sound like the English from 100, 200 years ago or King James English or whatever.

[00:09:26] [SPEAKER_00] And that is adding a layer of artifice to it that is not really either important or part of what the original experience would have been.

[00:09:35] [SPEAKER_02] That's right. And I think, to be fair, Lombardo also takes that approach. And those are the two most, I think, readable translations. And I think Fagos should have more. You know, it's not that his, he doesn't write in King James English. He writes in our English. But the poetic flights of fancy are, I bet, greater than what you find here. So, but I don't know, because I don't speak ancient Greek. So. I'll help you. I'll help you. Okay, good.

[00:10:02] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, I know you can pronounce the names in ancient Greek. I've been practicing. So stay tuned for that. All right.

[00:10:11] [SPEAKER_00] What did you think about the first two books? I don't know what I was expecting, but I was surprised at how, first of all, like how fast-paced it is.

[00:10:20] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah.

[00:10:20] [SPEAKER_00] And how much of a page-turner it was, where I'm like, okay, you dive right in, which is, I forget what's the Latin term.

[00:10:30] [SPEAKER_02] In medius rei or something.

[00:10:31] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, something like that, which is great. It feels like a modern conceit. And so you dive right into the action. I really liked it. Like I said, I'm holding back.

[00:10:41] [SPEAKER_02] It feels modern is something you're going to be saying a lot as you go through, I think. You know, just the idea that Odysseus, you know, he's the main character, obviously, of the Odyssey. That's the reason it's called the Odyssey. And he is not going to appear until book five.

[00:10:59] [SPEAKER_00] This is like a fucking Quentin Tarantino movie over here.

[00:11:02] [SPEAKER_02] It's like, well, or it's like, you know, like there's so much art. And this is like a storytelling structure that a lot of people use where you hear a lot about this person before you actually meet the person. Yeah. Like Great Gatsby is a great example of this. And, you know, the Iliad, like the Iliad literally comes in in the middle of an argument between Agamemnon and Achilles. So it's just like, yeah, he got down to business in this. Let me give a little background quickly since you said you would tolerate it.

[00:11:30] [SPEAKER_02] Almost nothing is known about Homer and very little is known about like when this poem was originally composed. It certainly had probably at least a couple hundred years of just being passed along by oral tradition. Some people say it was composed in the 8th century BC. Some people say it was much earlier. The Trojan War, which is the subject of the Iliad, a sliver of the Trojan War. And then the Odyssey takes place in the aftermath of it.

[00:12:00] [SPEAKER_02] That's set in, I think, the late Bronze Age. So maybe 11th or 12th century BC. Not that that necessarily actually happened. I don't think there's any agreement about whether some version of the Trojan War happened. But in any case, it's not written down the Odyssey and the Iliad till some people say 700 BC. Some people say 600 BC. People just really don't know. People don't know anything about Homer.

[00:12:26] [SPEAKER_02] We know that the ancient like Greek poets and playwrights and philosophers would often talk about this Homer. But it's not clear what they knew about Homer. But they talked about him as a person. And he may well have been a person. But, you know, a little like the Bible, you just don't really know how all of this got put together. But with this, as opposed to the Bible, it's just like a masterpiece of storytelling. Like it's structurally just brilliant, both of them.

[00:12:55] [SPEAKER_02] And so it's kind of amazing that it exists. Like I'm always just in awe of the fact that it exists and how little we know about how it came to exist.

[00:13:06] [SPEAKER_00] What's mind-blowing to me is the age that, you know, to be fair to the Bible, it never pretended to be a single narrative. But that we have a single narrative that was maybe written down in the 8th century BC, you know, 700, is crazy. So like for Plato, this would have been like us reading some shit written in, you know, Shakespeare.

[00:13:27] [SPEAKER_02] Right. Yeah, that's right. And it was like in the same way that in England they live and breathe Shakespeare, like it's just baked into the culture. It was baked into the ancient cultures and in Athens and the great age of theater there. The tragedies that they would put on were almost always part of this mythic background that Homer and Hesiod, who I actually don't know very much about. But yeah, they would use those same characters, those same themes.

[00:13:52] [SPEAKER_02] Let me just give for readers who are approaching this the first time some like just of the mythological background. Like, you know, just to set the context. The action of the Odyssey begins 20 years after Odysseus has left Ithaca to join the war against Troy. Agamemnon and Menelaus, who are brothers, asked him. They sailed to Ithaca to ask him along with other Greek heroes like Ajax and Achilles and Nestor, who will meet.

[00:14:22] [SPEAKER_02] You mean Ayas and Achilles? Yeah. You know, we just did Ayas the play and it was actually like that's how they called him, Ayas. Because, yeah, well, for reasons I don't need to get into. I told you, I'm an expert.

[00:14:35] [SPEAKER_00] I've watched two YouTube videos.

[00:14:36] [SPEAKER_02] Nice. You're the real expert, it turns out. That's the twist. Fantastic. So the 20 years before this starts, Odysseus left, joined Agamemnon and Menelaus along with these other heroes, Achilles and Ayas. How do you say, how do you do Achilles?

[00:14:53] [SPEAKER_00] The C-H is...

[00:14:54] [SPEAKER_02] Achilles.

[00:14:55] [SPEAKER_00] So, yeah. Get your Hebrew chops going.

[00:14:59] [SPEAKER_02] Paris came to visit Menelaus on Sparta and made off with his beautiful wife, Helen. That was the cause of the Trojan Wars, to reclaim Helen. And that lasted for 10 years, the war, for various reasons. And like the first half of the ninth year is what the Iliad is about. That's the pretext of the war, that Menelaus wants his wife back. But it's also, it wasn't just that he made off with Menelaus' wife.

[00:15:28] [SPEAKER_02] It was that this extreme violation of the Greek word is xenia, which refers to their codes and norms of hospitality that play just an absolutely enormous role in both texts in all sorts of ways. First of all, Zeus, the head god of the Olympians, is the god of xenia. Like he's in charge of upholding xenia.

[00:15:58] [SPEAKER_02] The expectations of how hosts should treat guests and also how guests should respond to hosts. Like these are kind of sacred norms, much more ethically central than certainly in the United States where we barely have hospitality codes and norms. But my point there is what Paris did in taking Helen wasn't just like, I'm cucking Menelaus.

[00:16:24] [SPEAKER_02] It's also this violation of this really central moral code of how guests and hosts should treat each other. And so that also made Zeus kind of almost reluctantly on the side of the Greeks in their battle against Troy. So that's the pretext for the war. Odysseus, when he left, he left his infant son, Telemachus, who we meet very early on in the Odyssey. So he's now about 20 years old.

[00:16:51] [SPEAKER_02] And then the last thing I want to say before we dive in is that the story of Agamemnon and his return from the Trojan War kind of hovers over this text and often comes in explicitly, as it already has, in book one. But I think a lot of people might not know this story. You'll learn about it later into the text.

[00:17:12] [SPEAKER_02] But when Agamemnon came back and, you know, he had some problems sailing back from Troy, but not anywhere near as bad as Menelaus, his brother, and certainly Odysseus. So he gets back. He has Cassandra, his captured slave, who is also his mistress. But little does he know that waiting for him in ambush is Aegisthus, who has been the lover of Clytemnestra.

[00:17:40] [SPEAKER_02] And they murdered him on the day he came back. And then also Agamemnon's son, Orestes, he killed Aegisthus in revenge for his father's death and, in some tellings, Clytemnestra. So that's kind of hovering over this situation is what happened to Agamemnon. Now, I guess last bit of background, Athena's favorite human has always been Odysseus.

[00:18:08] [SPEAKER_02] And I think there's reasons for that. Athena kind of feels like he's the human version of her. He's scheming. He loves to come up with complicated plots and con jobs. And he loves disguises. He loves to be in disguise. But their relationship is kind of interesting throughout. Athena is Zeus's daughter, who had no mother. She just sprung out of Zeus.

[00:18:35] [SPEAKER_00] I did not know that.

[00:18:36] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah.

[00:18:37] [SPEAKER_00] Anyway, let's dive in.

[00:18:39] [SPEAKER_02] Enough of me talking.

[00:18:39] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Just for my sake, the gods are together at the beginning of the book. And Athena's going to Zeus and being like, hey, can we do something about Odysseus? That's like a normal thing? Like they're taking? Yes. Are they just interfering selectively for their favorite humans, like you said?

[00:18:58] [SPEAKER_02] So the gods, they definitely interfere in human affairs. But they also refrain from interfering. And there's no clear principle as to when they do or when they don't. There's also no clear principle about what happens, like how much credit or blame do you give to the humans if something was God-influenced or God-determined? And that's definitely not a settled question in any of these texts.

[00:19:27] [SPEAKER_02] So there's the gods interfering often on behalf of their favorite humans. But then there's this other thing, fate, the fates. And this is a very mysterious thing in these works. Are you regretting asking me to talk?

[00:19:41] [SPEAKER_00] No, not at all.

[00:19:42] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. So like in this case, what Athena is kind of reminding Zeus is like on the one hand, she's saying, come on, you owe it to him. He's best sacrificer to you.

[00:19:54] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. That's why they're like, oh, this guy does a lot of animal sacrifices. Like we got to look out for him. Yeah.

[00:20:00] [SPEAKER_02] But at the same time, there also is like there are prophecies out there of him returning in a certain way that we'll get to. And so I feel like she's also saying like we had to do this at some point. It doesn't seem like fate determines things to the day. It's like there's flexibility, but eventually certain things have to happen. But it's a really super interesting little conversation that they have there at the beginning, Zeus and Athena.

[00:20:25] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. And it almost starts out with Zeus being like, why are they always blaming us when so much of the human suffering is brought about by their own folly, their own poor decision?

[00:20:37] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. And he uses Agisthus as an example. Agisthus who killed Agamemnon and said, well, that was his fault. He knew it would do him all. But you don't know if Zeus is just like sloughing off like responsibility.

[00:20:49] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah.

[00:20:49] [SPEAKER_02] You can tell he's already defensive about like the humans blaming the gods, which they do. This is very different. People are blaming the gods for stuff all the time and it's never clear to them whether the gods are with them or against them. And, you know, if it's Job or something, then you see it. But like it's a much more ambivalent relationship between humans and gods.

[00:21:10] [SPEAKER_00] You brought up Job and it reminds me that like in the Near East traditions, there is this divine council that actually is what's happening in Job. Like the story is really like even though Christians and Jews have suppressed it, the earliest versions of all of that were that there's just lots of gods. And they come to a divine council and they argue amongst themselves and they say, look at Job. He's my favorite or whatever. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:21:35] [SPEAKER_02] Even Genesis, there's suggestions of multiple gods.

[00:21:40] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. They're like, let us make humans in our image. Yeah. That's just very clearly.

[00:21:44] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Job actually reminds me of something you would come across in a Greek tragedy or something like that. It's also funny because one of the things that you, I don't know, that I kind of took from it this time around reading it was Odysseus is her favorite human. But like he's been on Calypso's island for seven years right now. And she just, it seems like Athena kind of forgot about them too. Like Zeus definitely kind of forgot about them. And Athena kind of did too, because, you know, this is the key difference between gods and humans.

[00:22:13] [SPEAKER_02] You know, they have a lot of the same kind of envies and bitterness and jealousies and all of that and rivalries. But like the big difference is they're immortal. And so like time.

[00:22:24] [SPEAKER_00] What's seven years?

[00:22:25] [SPEAKER_02] Just completely. Yeah. It means something totally different. And life means something totally different. And that's definitely a big theme in these works. But Zeus says there's a lot of spoilers in the first book. That's just how they didn't fear spoilers. They probably all knew the story. Poseidon rages unrelenting because Odysseus destroyed the eye of godlike Polyphemus or how would you pronounce that?

[00:22:51] [SPEAKER_00] I actually don't remember that.

[00:22:52] [SPEAKER_02] What about the tribe he belongs to?

[00:22:54] [SPEAKER_00] Oh, the Kiklops. The Kiklops.

[00:22:58] [SPEAKER_02] Yes.

[00:22:59] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, of course. The Kiklops.

[00:23:00] [SPEAKER_02] So you see, like, Poseidon doesn't want him to get back home. But, you know, it's a little weird what Poseidon thinks can happen. But they're saying he can't fight against the will of all the gods. Poseidon is Zeus's brother and his kind of near equal, but not quite equal. It's just something he's always grousing about. And then Athena says she's going to go to Ithaca to rouse the courage of his son, Telemachus, who we're about to meet.

[00:23:26] [SPEAKER_02] And she appears on Ithaca in the guise of someone named Mentes, who was a guest friend of Odysseus from way back in the day. And here's where you get the first indication of this Xenia relationship. This, like, someone who's a guest friend, you have a bond with them. And you hosted them. And now you are connected in a deep way. And not just you, but your families are connected.

[00:23:55] [SPEAKER_02] Your ancestors are connected because you established this guest friend relationship. So that's who she pretends to be. We meet Telemachus, who is...

[00:24:05] [SPEAKER_00] Poor guy.

[00:24:06] [SPEAKER_02] Poor guy. Yeah. So, yeah, what's your sense of Telemachus right now in these first two books?

[00:24:11] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. So he's in, like, quite a situation for Telemachus' mom, Penelope, the wife of Odysseus. Nobody knows what's happened to Odysseus. And people presume maybe that he's dead or maybe desire him to be dead because he's the king of Ithaca and they want to take over. So they're courting his mother. So he's basically at home for, like, years now. Yeah. Where, like, a bunch of dudes. You say 107. I didn't catch the number. The number comes later.

[00:24:39] [SPEAKER_02] But that's how many there are. Yeah.

[00:24:41] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. So they're all in his house eating his food, drinking his wine, fucking his slave girls.

[00:24:48] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah.

[00:24:48] [SPEAKER_00] And competing, basically, to be the next husband of Penelope. And Penelope clearly is just barely putting up with it. But I love that Telemachus is starting out because, you know, he's this 20-year-old, presumably, kid who has been putting up with this. And you're really getting a little mini coming-of-age story here. You're getting a mini, like, the maturity of Telemachus kicks in with the help of Athena.

[00:25:12] [SPEAKER_00] And you get the feeling that Athena knows that he needs to get off of his ass and do something about it. But he's been a kid this whole time.

[00:25:21] [SPEAKER_02] He needs to put on his big boy pants and starts. He's kind of trapped. And I think a lot of Ithaca is trapped in this, like, static state where they're not developing. Things aren't flowing properly. Things aren't maturing properly. He's kind of in this liminal space between childhood and adulthood. But he has no father. He has no model. He's, you know, the paradigm of just this fatherless child that doesn't know how to handle what's going on.

[00:25:50] [SPEAKER_00] And he's never been trained in combat. So it's not like he can even challenge these guys.

[00:25:54] [SPEAKER_02] And there's 107 of them. Like, they're clearly just kind of they have the run of the house. And nobody on Ithaca is kind of doing anything to stop them. You said Penelope is barely putting up with it, which I think is right. But I also think it's an open question that we have to just keep an eye on of what power did she have? Like, I don't think it's clear. Now I think it's too late in terms of kicking them all out. But it's not clear that that was true when they first came. So they've been there for about four years.

[00:26:22] [SPEAKER_02] So Trojan War ends 10 years ago. Then, you know, they're waiting for Odysseus to come home. And he never does. So then six years after that, the suitors start showing up. And then it's very weird. They're like it's almost like the house is infested with them. And there's a lot of that kind of language of an infestation. And the house, Odysseus' house, is kind of like if a house is abandoned and it just starts getting overgrown.

[00:26:49] [SPEAKER_02] And so Ithaca's state right now, it's this kind of stagnancy that, you know, it needs Odysseus to come back to set it right.

[00:26:59] [SPEAKER_00] And this is you really getting the sense that, like, I mean, obviously these guys are not welcome as far as Telemachus is concerned. They're burning through his riches and his inheritance. But you do get like this idea that they are violating Xenia. Yes. Like hardcore. Right. They are abusing the hospitality that he's sort of compelled to provide.

[00:27:20] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. They're abusing the hospitality, even though they've kind of taken over the house. They're not hospitable to guests, which is why Telemachus is the one that has to go and welcome mentees. Otherwise, nobody would have. And there's some really interesting things that he says about his father in this. So what did you what do you think of his feelings about being Odysseus' son at this point?

[00:27:41] [SPEAKER_00] I mean, like he says, like, I'm not even sure, first of all, that he's my father. But second of all, if he is like what luck I have to be born to the most unlucky man who's like ever existed. Yeah. So I read some resentment in there. But like the notion of luck was an interesting one, too, given that we've already been thinking about who's in control of what.

[00:28:02] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. And I think that the questioning of his paternity is super interesting, I think. He says, my mother says I'm his son, but I can't be sure.

[00:28:12] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah.

[00:28:13] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. But why not? Why wouldn't you just trust your mother on that one? She's probably knows what she's talking about. She did deliver you, you know? But yeah, I guess.

[00:28:21] [SPEAKER_00] It sounds like he's like, maybe this isn't my thing. Like, maybe if I'm not his son, then I wouldn't have to be so wrapped up in this bullshit.

[00:28:28] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Because he's not sure, like, is this a burden to be his son? And he's not prepared because nobody has been there to model what, like, a man and a leader and especially, like, a prince, how he should conduct himself. Which is why the suitors treat him just like a little annoying little cousin or something like that that they all just make fun of.

[00:28:49] [SPEAKER_00] If only he had a mentor.

[00:28:50] [SPEAKER_02] If only he had a mentor, yeah. I think that's pretty interesting, the way he talks about him. And we'll see over the next two books. The first four books are often called the Telemachy because they're really about, as you say, his coming of age story. But that's another thing to keep an eye on is his complicated feelings about Odysseus, the potential of Odysseus returning, and then what that means for him.

[00:29:15] [SPEAKER_00] You know what I like is the minute that Athena arrives, you know, in her guise as mentees, it's like her job is to embiggen his spirit. And you can already tell a change just in the first few pages when she's like, no, Odysseus was great. And if you are his son, like, you should believe that he's alive and you should, like, embrace it. And you can already see him.

[00:29:38] [SPEAKER_00] Like, the first time it's clear to me that, oh, now he's, like, actually becoming the man of the house is when all the suitors are drinking and doing all the shit that they're doing. And there's a poet that's telling the tale of the Trojan War. Yeah, singing. A bard. Singing. Yeah. And the mom comes down and she's like, stop it. This always makes me cry, this one.

[00:29:55] [SPEAKER_02] I will not have you badmuffing Penelope on this podcast. I love Penelope. Jeez.

[00:30:02] [SPEAKER_00] Telemachus says, nope, mom, nope, let him sing. Like, that's the shit that just happens. That's reality. Like, that's what happened. And you can't blame the poets for what happened.

[00:30:11] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. And then he says, go in and do your work. Stick to the loom and distaff. Tell your slaves to do their chores as well. It is for men to talk, especially me. I am the master. Like, I think that's a little try hard on his part.

[00:30:23] [SPEAKER_00] It's a little incel-y.

[00:30:26] [SPEAKER_02] More like he just doesn't know, like, how he's supposed to act. So he's going to be, like, talk like this to his mother. But I don't think he can sell it yet. And I think it'll be interesting to compare it to later in the book, his interactions with Penelope. So he's very inconsistent, I would say, in these first two books. Like, sometimes he's tough and he knows what to say, whether it's Athena-inspired or just him.

[00:30:52] [SPEAKER_02] But then other times he'll just break down and start crying, like he does in the speech at the beginning of book two. He just kind of gives up helpless and starts crying. So he's still got some work to do.

[00:31:03] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah.

[00:31:04] [SPEAKER_02] So Athena tells him, go find out about your father. Sail to Sparta. But first, on the same island that Sparta is, is Nestor, which is where he's going to go first. They were in the war. They might have some news about him. So go see what you can find. And it's this trip leaving Ithaca that is going to be like the crucial thing for him to actually come of age. And it's the next two books are fascinating just seeing how that happens.

[00:31:32] [SPEAKER_02] Like, and of course, you don't have to think that it works fully either. That we have to wait till the end.

[00:31:39] [SPEAKER_00] Right. And so you can already see like exactly what you're saying. He's not selling it well. And the suitors are like, oh, whoa. Like the Sopranos, whoa. Like, look at this little shit telling us what to do.

[00:31:51] [SPEAKER_02] Calm down.

[00:31:53] [SPEAKER_00] Calm down. Yeah, totally.

[00:31:55] [SPEAKER_02] They're making fun of him. Like one of the lead suitors in Tenuous and one of the worst ones. Just a total like murderous asshole. He's like, oh, no. Telemachus is coming, is going to kill us. He will bring supporters from Pylos or from Sparta. You know, they're just like laughing on the floor. It reminded me of like, did you ever see A Fish Called Wanda? When he's like, Ken is coming to kill me. Kevin Kline making fun. That's how they treat him. Like they just can't take him seriously. At this point.

[00:32:25] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. I made a note that like that was pretty like sarcastic for 800 BC. Like, I guess we've all this is the thing that you get when reading this shit. It's like, yeah, we've always just been sarcastic. We've always been dicks. Yeah.

[00:32:37] [SPEAKER_02] We've always just like made fun of a little stupid little cousin. Yeah. He is quite determined, they say.

[00:32:46] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. So when Athena leaves in her guys' mentees, she's like, you know, it says like she flies away like a bird. And that's when he's like, oh my God, that was a God. And I think this fills him with some faith that like her words are true, you know, that he should do this trip. And so he's like, gets this confidence. But she comes back, you know, like as mentor or whatever. Like are her disguises trying to fool him? Even though like at some point he realizes that he's in contact with a God?

[00:33:14] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. It's very weird, this whole thing, because yeah, first she comes as mentees and keeps the guys for the whole time, except right at the end where she just flies off. Like you said, that seems like it would be such a big deal. And it is to him, but it's more like it gives him a little confidence to know that that was a God. Like, but this is just their worldview. They're not, they don't live in a disenchanted world like we do. Yeah.

[00:33:42] [SPEAKER_02] When she comes back as mentor, I mean, I don't want to like spoil it. There is a little question of whether he knows it's him or not, but what's very confusing is so she starts out as mentees, then mentor, the real mentor gives a speech at the beginning of book two, you know, talking that I want to talk about. And then she becomes mentor like later in the book and then on the journeys.

[00:34:05] [SPEAKER_00] I like how you said they don't live in a disenchanted world. Like I just immediately pictured their version of Richard Dawkins yelling at him like it wasn't her. It wasn't God. Well, that's, I mean, you have that, right?

[00:34:15] [SPEAKER_02] Like, so at the meeting when Telemachus or who is it? Somebody says that Odysseus is going to come back and kill them all.

[00:34:21] [SPEAKER_00] It's the old man who's prophesying.

[00:34:23] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, that's right. It's the old man. And then the eagles come and just attack. Sometimes eagles are just eagles. Yeah. That's an Antinous. Or Euromachus, I think is the one. He's like, yeah, sometimes an eagle is just an eagle. Yeah. So they had their Richard Dawkins. Even he's not original. Yeah. So do you want to talk about the meeting? So one thing that's kind of surprising is that this is the first one since Odysseus left, like this council.

[00:34:52] [SPEAKER_00] It's a point of like just random thing that bothered me until I tried to look it up. The words that are being used here when he calls a council are, let's get all the Greeks together, which makes me think like being Greek is something. But it's not really. These are like, how do you say it? Achaeans?

[00:35:11] [SPEAKER_02] Achaeans. Yeah. They're all Achaeans broadly.

[00:35:15] [SPEAKER_00] Right. And so it's not as if there was a thing called Greece. These are just like these people. There's some unity to this group of people called Achaeans.

[00:35:24] [SPEAKER_02] Yes. In contrast to the Trojans.

[00:35:26] [SPEAKER_00] But there's like the Hellenos people, like there's a broader Hellenistic umbrella that's not the Greeks as we. Yes.

[00:35:33] [SPEAKER_02] But one thing that's important, like background is that there's no hierarchy among the Achaean kingdoms, right? Like Agamemnon was the commander of the Trojan War because he has the biggest army and he was doing it on behalf of his brother. But they're all kings. They can't tell other kings what to do. Once you signed up for the war, you kind of signed up to be under Agamemnon's command. But like that was your choice. You were volunteering for glory and spoils.

[00:36:02] [SPEAKER_00] So they're all just city states with their own kings.

[00:36:04] [SPEAKER_02] Yes, exactly. Yeah. And they make relationships as using these guest friend codes. Like that's how these alliances are created. And maybe say something about that. So one of the key aspects of that code is when a stranger comes, you offer them shelter, you offer them food, like a meal. And you're supposed to do that before even asking like who they are, what their name is, anything about that. And not everyone follows it, as we'll see. But like that's what you're supposed to do.

[00:36:33] [SPEAKER_02] And that's what Telemachus does. So he has it in him that he wants to like follow these codes in the way the suitors don't. He just doesn't totally know what to do. But that's a big part of it. And you'll see in the next two books like how it works when it's really observed properly. Okay. So yeah, what did you think of this meeting? So first of all, just the fact that they haven't had a council meeting on Ithaca in 20 years. And meanwhile, these suitors have just descended.

[00:37:01] [SPEAKER_02] There are some suitors from Ithaca, but most of them are from other places. And, you know, they're not doing anything about it. It's really like when he abandoned them, they were completely just rudderless. They didn't have anything to like keep things moving.

[00:37:17] [SPEAKER_00] And it's not even like a power vacuum in the sense that these people are trying to lead really. No, not at all.

[00:37:22] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Most of the suitors just want to take Penelope back to their own islands or cities.

[00:37:27] [SPEAKER_00] Maybe get the dowry from her dad.

[00:37:28] [SPEAKER_02] Exactly. Yeah. Who doesn't, I don't think lives on Ithaca. So I thought that's kind of interesting. It really just shows the state of Ithaca, you know, is mysteriously just lacks any kind of direction or orientation, anything to keep things moving, which is why I think there is this kind of sense of stagnancy in like, in the same way, like rats can take over an abandoned house. That's like the suitors, you know, are taking over.

[00:37:53] [SPEAKER_00] Right. So I like how he sends heralds to call this meeting, but no one's quite sure who's called it. But there's like this excitement, you know? Oh, we got a meeting. Exactly. Somebody called a meeting.

[00:38:01] [SPEAKER_03] Like who called a meeting? Like they woke up or something like that. Yeah.

[00:38:05] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. And then they have the speaking stick, like they have some sort of Robert's rules for these meetings.

[00:38:10] [SPEAKER_02] And being able to speak, right? That's such a big power. Like that's like a weapon in, you know, this culture. And like you see people are really impressed at times when Telemachus speaks, like how did you have the ability to speak with such power? But then, you know, again, it's sometimes he has it. Other times he stops and starts crying. So.

[00:38:32] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. And this is like he lays out like, well, look at what this has become. And I couldn't tell whether he would be perceived as whiny or as like assertive in his plea for justice because he's like, what did my dad do to everybody here that you would be so unjust in your behavior?

[00:38:51] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. I think it'll be interesting like to see this performed, you know, because I think you could perform it in a whiny way, which I think I might like if I were Christopher Nolan, I would want to at least try to see how that looks because I think it fits. But you wouldn't have to, you know, like you could do subtler things. You could, you know, make it like he's almost there, but not quite there.

[00:39:12] [SPEAKER_00] They ruined my whole house. Yeah. It's not fair.

[00:39:15] [SPEAKER_02] But at the end, yeah. Like I love that because at times like he's really got everybody's attention. He just gets so despairing at the end. He said, oh, if only you Ithacans would eat my stock yourselves. If you did that, I soon would get revenge. I would come through town and keep demanding like this is an empty thing to say. He wouldn't do that until it all got given back. But now you make me so unhappy. This is pointless. And then that's where he bursts out.

[00:39:39] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. He loses it at the end there because I was reading it. It was kind of rousing. Yeah. At first. Yeah. And then at the end, you know, he just loses it. He's like, I'm going to kill all of you guys.

[00:39:50] [SPEAKER_03] You could tell you could see the suitors just going like rubbing their eyes.

[00:39:54] [SPEAKER_00] Like you cry. You cry. So Lemachis, you stuck up willful little boy. How dare you try to embarrass us and put the blame on us?

[00:40:02] [SPEAKER_02] This is a really interesting speech, actually. So this. It's really good. Yeah. It's one of the best like defenses of the suitors. This is Antinous. And he says, blame your mother. Don't blame us. Yeah. He says it's the third year. Soon will be four years that she's cheated us out of what we want. She offers hope to all, send signs to each. But all the while her mind moves somewhere else. And here's where we learn about her famous trick where she was weaving this funeral shroud

[00:40:30] [SPEAKER_02] for Laertes, who is Odysseus's father. She says.

[00:40:34] [SPEAKER_00] And still not dead.

[00:40:35] [SPEAKER_02] He's not dead. Right. But she's like, if I'm going to marry one of you, I at least need to make him a shroud. And then I can try to figure out which one of you suitors I should marry. And so she would weave it during the day and then unweave it at night. And it worked for three years. But then one of the slave girls snitched on her.

[00:40:57] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Sold her out. Yeah.

[00:40:59] [SPEAKER_02] Which is, yeah. We'll meet the likely culprit later in the text. But so, you know, it's almost like fair enough. Like, she's kind of keeping them around, too. But stalling and stalling and stalling and stalling. And the weaving and the unweaving is such a great metaphor, I think, for, like, time is standing still here. Everyone's, like, in suspended animation. And it's almost like she's controlling that.

[00:41:24] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. I get what she must be feeling. Like, you know, I'm maybe imputing. But, like, she's in a situation where she doesn't know what her fate's going to be. And she's probably holding on to some hope, like, doesn't want to just give it up. I think you see this whenever somebody's relative or loved one disappears and they don't have a body. You're just like, I don't want to say that they're dead. Like, at some point, you have to agree. But what point is that?

[00:41:50] [SPEAKER_00] And she doesn't want to send them all away and then lose the ability to ever have another husband because that's probably not ideal.

[00:41:56] [SPEAKER_02] Right. And so that's the one reason to think that she really has been, like, she didn't necessarily want them to all leave because if Odysseus is dead, she might want another husband because otherwise she's on Ithaca in this rudderless place where nothing's happening. But she wants to keep postponing making that decision. That's certainly one way to read it. Yeah. So there's that.

[00:42:24] [SPEAKER_02] There's also what I think is interesting is he says to Telemachus, he says, we suitors will keep eating up your wealth and livelihood as long as she pursues this plan that God has put into her heart. For her, it may be glory. But for you, pure loss. We will not go back to our farms or anywhere until she picks a husband. So how do you interpret that? For her, it may be glory. But for you, pure loss.

[00:42:49] [SPEAKER_00] I mean, I think they're thinking that she's being the manipulative one and like trying to get things to work out the way that she wants at the expense of him.

[00:42:57] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. But the glory part, like. Oh, to her glory. Yeah. I don't know. So I think it's that it's such a famous trick. Right. Like the weaving thing, like, like you might not know anything about like the Odyssey, but you might know about Penelope and the weaving thing. So it's her like kleos, you know, glory. That's her claim to fame. And I think what he's saying to Telemachus is poets, bards are going to be singing about this trick for 23,000 years, which they have.

[00:43:25] [SPEAKER_02] But like you are just fucked. Like nobody's going to be talking about you because you can't grow up. You can't do anything until she just picks one of us. Then it's almost like because Odysseus, he's in the superposition of alive or dead, you know, like that's the thing that Pelemachus is keeping him in this state of arrested development. And I like that Antinous says, that's your mom's name. Talk to your moms. Don't talk to me.

[00:43:51] [SPEAKER_00] Right. I also like that in the midst of blaming her for this situation, he's like Athena blessed her with intelligence, great artistry and skill, a finer mind than anyone has ever had before. Even the braided girls of ancient Greece.

[00:44:03] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah.

[00:44:03] [SPEAKER_00] There is this sort of like giving her props for the cunningness of her like plan. But he's like, but, you know, just know she's the one fucking you.

[00:44:10] [SPEAKER_02] And, you know, that's a good example of saying that Athena did that. It doesn't mean she doesn't get glory. She still gets glory. Absolutely. Even though, you know, he's implying that Athena kind of put this trick into her head.

[00:44:23] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. And then I like that after he says this, Telemachus is just now breathing hard. Yeah. You're just like, he's like.

[00:44:31] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah.

[00:44:31] [SPEAKER_00] He's just like been super pissed.

[00:44:33] [SPEAKER_02] Like, talk about my mom. I mean, think of how much courage it took to speak in front of this assembly, given that he's had nothing. He's had no training. He's had no male role model. Like he's, I think like he's always on the verge of having a kind of panic attack. Yeah. You know, it totally captures that. But this actually speech that he gives is pretty good in response to that. Like out of my house, stop eating all my food, devour each other's property, not mine. Or do you really think it's right to waste one person's means of life and go scot-free?

[00:45:03] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. May Zeus give recompense someday for this. You will die here and nobody will care. I like that last bit. And nobody will care. Yeah. And it's actually here where the eagles come.

[00:45:13] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. So Zeus turns into eagles or sends eagles.

[00:45:16] Yeah.

[00:45:16] [SPEAKER_00] And starts like picking at the faces of the suitors. So here's where my question was, like Zeus gets involved in this moment. Yeah. Is it because Telemachus was in real danger of getting fucked up right there?

[00:45:30] [SPEAKER_02] I mean, you know, that's open to interpretation. I don't read it that way. I almost read it as like something about Telemachus's assertiveness there in that particular speech. Like just Zeus got wind of it and was like, hell yeah. And sent the eagles there to kind of punctuate what Telemachus had done because he had kind of earned it.

[00:45:52] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah.

[00:45:53] [SPEAKER_02] That's how I read it. But, you know, Zeus's motivations are very unclear often. So, yeah. And, you know, it could be that Eurymachus is right. You know, Ithaca, ancient Greek Richard Dawkins. When he says, oh man, be off. So then the prophecy comes, which is that Odysseus will come back and kill everybody.

[00:46:15] [SPEAKER_00] Have we seen this guy? So old Halithyrsys, son of master, who starts prophesying and he says, look, I know prophecy. And I said when he left that he would come back after 20 years.

[00:46:26] [SPEAKER_01] I don't know. Like we don't have any way of like verifying whether that's true.

[00:46:29] [SPEAKER_00] No, no, no. I'm saying like, is it in like the Iliad or anything? Like that.

[00:46:32] [SPEAKER_01] Oh, no.

[00:46:33] [SPEAKER_00] That this old man gave this prophecy? Or is he just sort of like, no, no, I said it.

[00:46:37] [SPEAKER_02] There's almost nothing in the Iliad that anticipates the Odyssey actually. Which I think kind of implies that it was written or composed after. You know, prophecies are another big thing. We're going to see a lot of prophecies throughout the text. And I like that they're often true. But it's clear that sometimes they're not because the characters don't always trust them. And so some of these people are charlatans.

[00:47:05] [SPEAKER_02] And there's even question of like whether that's even possible, you know. So when Eurymachus, who's kind of 1A suitor, he says, go home and spout your portents to your children or it'll be worse for them. But I can read these omens better than you can. Many birds go flying in sunlight and not all are meaningful. So he's got a very deflationary account of omens.

[00:47:30] [SPEAKER_00] Odysseus is dead. All you're doing is making this boy angry. Attributing ill intention to the old man. Saying like all you want is like for him to give you gifts.

[00:47:39] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. And then Mentor gives a speech. And Mentor is someone who I think Odysseus really trusted. And he gives this speech to the rest of the Ithacans as well as the suitors. But there's one part that I find super interesting, which is, well, first he says, I'm the friend he asked to guard his house. And he says, this changes everything.

[00:48:04] [SPEAKER_02] Should always be cruel since the people whom he ruled as kindly as a father have forgotten their king Odysseus. I do not blame the suitors' overconfidence, rough ways, and violence in eating up his household. So he's saying I don't blame the suitors here. They risk their lives supposing that the master will never come back home. But I do blame you others. Boy, do they. Yeah. Sitting passive, never speaking against them. You far outnumber them. What do you think he's saying there?

[00:48:33] [SPEAKER_00] I mean, it's like he's condemning the fucking passive nature of the people. It's an indictment that would sting me if I were in the audience. Like, yeah, you all could outnumber these fuckers. Kick them out. And you haven't done anything.

[00:48:46] [SPEAKER_02] Get them the fuck out. And you haven't.

[00:48:47] [SPEAKER_00] Like, it's just no respect for the thing that Odysseus made.

[00:48:51] [SPEAKER_02] By all accounts, like a good king for the Ithacans too. And that's what he's saying. But I like when he says, I don't blame the suitors. They're at least putting their lives on the line. Like, they know if Odysseus comes home, it might be curtains for them. So I can forgive them. They've committed. They've made their bet against justice and morality and observing codes in the hope that Odysseus won't come home or the gods.

[00:49:19] [SPEAKER_02] So at least they're putting their lives on the line. Whereas you guys are just sitting in your fucking houses, not doing anything while, you know, your king's house is just getting raided and infested by all these suitors. My question for Mentor is, well, what have you been doing these last 20 years? He's an old man. I know, but like he was asked to guard his house. Like, dude, we don't really know, like, if he tried. He tried to recruit other people or not.

[00:49:46] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, that's true. Maybe have a fucking council once every 20 years. And like ask people what they're doing. Don't wait for his 20-year-old son.

[00:49:53] [SPEAKER_02] But they really just are leaders. They have no leader. Like, nobody seems to know, like, how to deal with anything here. So then the suitors are like, they tell him to quiet down, old man.

[00:50:04] [SPEAKER_00] And they double down with their overconfidence. Like, even if he does come back, like, he's going to die. So, like, leave us alone.

[00:50:11] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah.

[00:50:11] [SPEAKER_00] What they're pushing for seems like even less about winning Penelope's hand in marriage and more about, like, you just get the sense that there's a bunch of dudes party. Yeah. And they don't want to stop their partying lifestyle because obviously the king has a lot of shit and they want to go through it all. Like, they're going to burn through it all.

[00:50:26] [SPEAKER_02] It's definitely like burn the house, whatever. One of us is going to be walking off with Penelope or, you know, maybe we'll all die. But in the meantime, let's keep dancing, you know.

[00:50:38] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah.

[00:50:39] [SPEAKER_02] If that's all there is, let's break out the booze, which they certainly do. Then Athena's, yeah. Do you want to say anything?

[00:50:47] [SPEAKER_00] Telemachus prays. Like, he goes out and he, like, summons Athena. Yeah. Who comes back as mentor, which is just leading to my confusion. Like, does he know that this one?

[00:50:57] [SPEAKER_02] It's certainly not clear now. Yeah. I think we'll get, if I remember right, we're going to get another question where this might come up in the next two books.

[00:51:06] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. And maybe my understanding is that Athena in the guise of mentor is where we get the word mentor. It's when Athena is, like, counseling him. I didn't even know that. But that makes sense. I just read that. Yeah. And so she gives him, you know, she's like, look, your father was amazing. You will be amazing like him and not be like these other assholes who have no brains and no morality. I'm curious what the word morality was that got translated to morality.

[00:51:33] [SPEAKER_02] It's not morality in the, like, fussy way. I mean, in the objectively correct way.

[00:51:41] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah.

[00:51:42] [SPEAKER_02] Both, like, I think analytic philosophers and psychologists make more a big deal of that word than I think normal people. But it is a good question in the sense of I think morality here is in the broadest possible sense. Like the proper codes that are set down by, you know, the gods and just their customs and expectations. Yeah.

[00:52:05] [SPEAKER_00] So in the guise of mentor, she says, like, I'll go through town. I'll find us a boat and I'll get some dudes and you go home and get some rations.

[00:52:15] [SPEAKER_02] One thing she says that's kind of interesting in this pep talk. She says if your father's forcefulness runs through you, you're going to be brave and thoughtful. But then he says your journey will succeed if you are his. If you're not his son by Penelope, I doubt you can achieve what you desire. And she says it's rare for sons to be like fathers. Only a few are better. Most are worse.

[00:52:38] [SPEAKER_02] So it's, you know, it's like a pep talk that a coach might give where it's like, or you might suck and you might be worthless. But I think you won't be. And then she says the part that you just quoted. So it's kind of interesting that even her, she or mentor from Telemachus perspective is saying, I don't know if you're Odysseus' son or not, you know? So she's kind of leaving that an open question.

[00:53:04] [SPEAKER_00] I'm because I'm kind of stuck on my notions of what gods know and don't know. It seems as if, okay, well, she could know and tell him. Like, I don't think it matters. But like in my mind, I'm like, is she leaving it open because that's an important thing for him to work through? Or is she just like, well, I don't fucking know either. Yeah, I wasn't there. We'll see.

[00:53:29] [SPEAKER_02] I didn't see Odysseus fucking her. Like, I probably would have killed her if I had. So that's a great question. And I think it's a kind of question that will be presenting to us over and over again. And I don't think there's a resolution. My, if you want to know my instinct on this particular question is she probably knows he's the son and wants him to find out for himself since that's like a key question in his mind that requires resolution.

[00:53:57] [SPEAKER_02] But I like the idea, actually, that you raise, which is she doesn't know for sure because she wasn't there. They're not omniscient. And, you know, she says, I think you will. Like, I think you're better than all of them.

[00:54:11] [SPEAKER_00] So I think she's taking a risk here, too. She's like, let's.

[00:54:14] [SPEAKER_02] I'm backing Rocky.

[00:54:16] [SPEAKER_00] I'm backing this guy. Yeah. I've sort of like made my appeal to Father Zeus. And so now her job is to kind of like get things going.

[00:54:25] [SPEAKER_02] That's right. Kind of interesting, like not on Odysseus's end right now, but on this end with Telemachus.

[00:54:31] [SPEAKER_00] Right. You would think that this whole book is about Telemachus from these first couple of days.

[00:54:35] [SPEAKER_02] That's what I mean. It's like hovering over these four books, but it's not in it.

[00:54:40] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, it's cool.

[00:54:40] [SPEAKER_02] It's very cool.

[00:54:42] [SPEAKER_00] Okay. So I really like this next part where when he goes back home, you know, and he sees all the suitors, you know, it's like he opens the door again and he sees all the partying and he's like, fuck, man, these guys. And Antinus?

[00:54:53] [SPEAKER_02] I think maybe it's Antinus. I always call him Antinus for some reason, but it might be just Antinus. Yeah.

[00:54:58] [SPEAKER_00] Okay.

[00:54:59] [SPEAKER_02] Antinus. Maybe it's Antinus. I'm going to stick with that.

[00:55:02] [SPEAKER_00] Okay. He tempts Telemachus. He says like, what are you doing all this for? Why don't you just stay here and party with us? Like, just give it. And like, I like this moment because I like to think that this is a crucial moment of temptation for Telemachus. Yeah, I like that. He's like, you know what? I don't really know. Like, even mentor slash Athena wasn't like able to tell me whether I'm going to really succeed. And why not join these guys?

[00:55:29] [SPEAKER_00] And, you know, you can imagine a fatherless child being raised by a group of suitors at this point and getting just like, yeah, fuck your mom. Like, let's just sit here and eat and drink and be merry. You can get us the good shit. Yeah. As we'll see. That's right.

[00:55:43] [SPEAKER_02] No, I think you're right. I love that. I don't know if I've ever thought of that. But I think this is a good, a big moment for Telemachus because it might be tempting to just say, you know what? Fuck it. Like, clearly there's no justice, no morality. I'll probably Odysseus, my father, if he is, my father is dead at the bottom of the ocean somewhere and he'll never be found. And so maybe just break out the booze.

[00:56:05] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. It says, why not put all your troubles from your heart? Come and eat and drink with me just as before. So we sense that they might have partied before. You know the Greeks will fix it all for you.

[00:56:14] [SPEAKER_02] Which I don't know what that means.

[00:56:15] [SPEAKER_00] I don't either. But it says they'll select a ship and crew and soon you'll reach pilots. Oh, yeah.

[00:56:19] [SPEAKER_02] So it's almost like they want to get him right now. But I think, like, maybe your point that even strengthens what you're saying because it's like, this is the temptation. Like, if he did that, he wouldn't go. Like, if he started drinking, he would just decide to join their rough ways. And I like that a lot. But he is savvy enough to, you know, not fall for these kinds of advances.

[00:56:46] [SPEAKER_00] He's heeding the call. He's heeding the call. Like, he's felt it. He says, I can't eat. I have no peace or joy when I'm with your selfish shooter. Now I've grown bigger. And I got advice from other people. I'm not stupid like everybody says.

[00:57:01] [SPEAKER_03] I'm smart. It's not like people say.

[00:57:04] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. And this is where the sarcasm kicks in that you were talking about. Oh, no. Telemachus is going to kill us.

[00:57:10] [SPEAKER_03] He will bring supporters from Pylos or from Spartos. He is quite determined. Like, look at what.

[00:57:15] [SPEAKER_02] Oh, he is a big man. It is. Yeah, that's very funny. And I, too, have had that reaction when you see sarcasm in these ancient works. It's like, oh, man, there is just something so deep about that. Like we thought like the British invented sarcasm in like the 1800s or something. But like, no.

[00:57:33] [SPEAKER_00] Oscar Wilde. Like made it.

[00:57:38] [SPEAKER_02] So, yeah. Is there anything else to say about these first two books?

[00:57:41] [SPEAKER_00] I don't think so. You know, like the plans. They get the ship. Athena puts in the work. And so he gets the wine. Not the best stuff because they're saving that for Odysseus, which is a nice little moment. And Athena calls the favorable wind and they go out.

[00:57:54] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, I like also that Telemachus says, don't tell Penelope until she notices because she'll start crying. It would spoil her pretty skin. And I don't know if that's actually like a cool thing to say or if he's actually just feeling like he doesn't like he wants her to look good. Or if it's kind of sarcastic, if it's a little biting, you know, like she clearly just has to look so pretty for all these suitors. So we wouldn't want her crying. I don't know what. But it sounds kind of like, I don't know, assertive in some way. But I'm not sure how.

[00:58:24] [SPEAKER_00] But you do definitely get the sense that he's like starting to make decisions for him. Yeah.

[00:58:28] [SPEAKER_02] And so in the next two books, he's going to meet Nestor and Menelaus and Helen, the legendary beauty Helen, which I can't wait to talk about a couple of those scenes. And if you would like to hear this, dear listener, our next series of episodes, please become one of our beloved Patreon supporters where there is just a lot of bonus material available for you.

[00:58:53] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Read along with us. Comment. And it's going to be fun.

[00:58:57] [SPEAKER_02] People are calling it the best deal in America and possibly the world. Like, that's just what people are saying. But yeah.

[00:59:06] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, I believe it.

[00:59:07] [SPEAKER_02] All right. I'm very excited, too. I'm glad. This was your idea to do it, and it was a great one.

[00:59:12] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. I'm excited.

[00:59:13] [SPEAKER_02] All right. Join us next time on Very Bad Wizards.